Alturas City Council
City Hall Council Chambers
August 20, 2024 at 2:00 p.m.
Alturas City Council Mayor Paul Minchella called the meeting to order at 2:00 p.m. at the City Council Chambers. Councilmembers present: Paul Minchella, Brian Cox, Duanna Knighton, Jennifer Engel and Jodie Larranaga. Councilmembers absent: None. Staff present: City Clerk Tacie Wheeler, City Treasurer Dorothy Long, Director of Public Works Warren Farnam, Officer Cody Widby, Fire Marshal Eric Hunter and Fire Chief Jimmy Lloyd. Public attending: 18. All present joined together in the Pledge of Allegiance.
Jake Luba introduced himself, and inquires about a dog park in city limits. He asks Council what it would take to get one.
Councilmember Engel states that it is her understanding that a dog park is supposed to be included in the new park that is being built.
Ray Van Nes stated that West 3rd Street is a fire hazard. He asks the City to take a look at it, and to give the fire chief or marshal the ability to take action and enforce a time limit to clean it up.
Fire Marshal Hunter verifies that we do have a process that he has to follow, and they are on schedule, and asks Mr. Van Nes to bear with us. He states it is on his list.
Jenn Anderson, representing the High Plateau Humane Society, explains that she worked with the City to help with the dogs at large. She says that the pound, or do shelter, is deteriorating and needs to be repaired.
The roof needs to be done, but it would’ve take all the grant money, so she hopes that it will be on the city’s radar in the near future to replace. She adds that the kennels need repairs as well. She is hopeful the City can work with the Humane Society to get these renovations done, and suggests that Council takes a tour of the kennels to see everything that needs to be done.
MOTION by Councilmember Engel, SECONDED by Councilmember Cox to approve the agenda. ALL AYES.
MOTION by Councilmember Cox, SECONDED by Councilmember Engel to approve Consent Agenda as follows: a.) Approve minutes of July 16, 2024 meeting; b.) Approve minutes of July 29, 2024 special meeting; c.) Approve City Warrants for June 2024 in the amount of $861,186.71; d.) Approve City warrants for July 2024 in the amount of $30,326.45 e.) Approve ACH reconciliation report for July 2024 in the amount of $150,517.17 f.) Adopt Resolution #2024-34 removing inactive water and sewer accounts from July 2024 in the amount of $732.53. ALL AYES.
Councilmember Minchella asks former Councilmember Cheryl Nelson to come to the podium. He reads the Resolution of Appreciation for her 20 years of service on the Alturas City Council. The public, staff and Council stand to applaud her dedicated service.
Councilmember Cox states that we had a meeting about the power company explaining that these power outages could happen, it has never been this bad before. He receives phone calls and sees it all over social media, so he was wondering if we should write a letter.
Public Works Director Farnam explains that the heat sensor that is so sensitive now that it trips the power more often. When it trips, the power goes out and they have to send a crew to check all the lines before they can turn the power back on.
Councilmember Larranaga states that we are on “Orange” which is the highest level and the crews are working non-stop.
Mayor Minchella suggests that we maybe request that they come to a meeting to explain to the community why this is going on so often.
Councilmember Cox says that we should ask them to show up and explain.
DPW Farnam adds that it is expensive for the City with these outages with the generators and staff overtime.
Jake Luba states that he has talked to Pacific Power multiple times, and some of it is the sensitivity, other times is only during a fire season. He wants them to implement a system internally that can automatically read that there is no issue on the line, so we can get the power back on faster, instead of sending crews to check it.
MOTION by Councilmember Larranaga, SECONDED by Councilmember Engel to authorize Director of Public Works Farnam to reach out to Pacific Power about sending a representative here to explain these issues. ALL AYES.
Officer Cody Widby explains that this is a longstanding Memorandum of Understanding with the Sheriff’s Office to help us when our dispatcher is gone or sick. Our dispatcher is going on a training for a month here soon and they will take over for her while she’s out.
Councilmember Cox states that we are getting a great deal.
MOTION by Councilmember Engel, SECONDED by Councilmember Cox to adopt Resolution #2024-35 approving the Memorandum of Understanding between the City of Alturas and Modoc County Sheriff’s Office for 911 Dispatch Services, effective July 1, 2024 through June 30, 2025. ALL AYES.
Treasurer Long says that rolling the previous year’s budget just keeps business rolling until we adopt our new budget. This is something that we do every year.
MOTION by Councilmember Knighton, SECONDED by Councilmember Larranaga to adopt Resolution #2024-36 approving Fiscal Year 2023/2024 budget to roll over to Fiscal Year 2024/2025, until the adoption of the new budget. ALL AYES.
Director of Public Works Farnam tells Council that Ms. Anderson has been working diligently to get this grant. He states that he would like to focus on the roof, as there is only so much more time that we can bite off. The dog kennels are 4th on his list at this time, and asks if we can maybe just do the roof.
Jennifer Anderson states that Calturas could not get to the roof until next year. Her priority is focused on the exercise yard and keeping them safe. The roof is not a priority. She has contractors ready to order things now and get this done next month.
Councilmember Cox states that the goal is to have a dog facility. A roof seems like a necessary thing to provide a dog facility. It seems that an exercise yard and kennels are secondary. If we can’t provide a roof, do we even have kennels?
Ms. Anderson says that the interior of the kennels is not safe, they are rusty. If we can get an exercise yard in, and the City staff can repair the kennels, we will have roughly $15,000 left to go toward the roof.
DPW Farnam asks how she sees the exercise yard being used.
Ms. Anderson explains that right now, Craig just lets the dogs out to get some exercise, he doesn’t need to be there. We could send volunteers out to the yard to exercise them and work with dogs to get them adopted.
Councilmember Cox states that the exercise yard would be on City property and we would need insurance to cover volunteers to go out there, and for public to go out to evaluate. It’s a liability for the City.
Ms. Anderson says that she has been going out there for eight years and Craig is always there to escort.
Councilmember Larranaga asks about going back to bid for the roof and what rules we need to abide by to get a bid.
DPW Farnam explains that this is going through the Humane Society, and the City just needs it to be a licensed contractor.
Ms. Anderson states that the Humane Society is hiring someone to build something as a gift for the City.
We want to hire someone who we know does good work so it reflects well on the Humane Society. She doesn’t have another name for a roof contractor. She adds that an exercise yard will be about $12,000, and the interior would be maybe $1,000. She is not willing to pay for insurance for the City.
Councilmember Cox asks DPW Farnam if he has staff that could replace the roof before winter.
DPW Farnam answers no.
Councilmember Cox asks Ms. Anderson what happens if we can’t get to it until spring.
Ms. Anderson says that this is their offer. She will continue to look into more funds for the roof since we have at least six months before anyone can get to it anyway. She says they can purchase materials needed for the roof.
Councilmember Larranaga asks if she has reached out to Rotary.
Ms. Anderson replies that reality is that it is volunteers coming out to do that, which would be a liability.
We could provide Rotary with the materials if they could do the interior repairs.
Councilmember Cox states that he would be willing to see a proposal from Rotary.
MOTION by Councilmember Cox, SECONDED by Councilmember Engel to accept the building of the exercise yard and labor and materials, upon approval of a licensed contractor by DPW Farnam. Anything further with the interior and roof will come back to Council. ALL AYES.
COMMITTEE REPORTS
Councilmember Knighton says she has been to a couple meetings. One of them is conflicting with her current schedule. The finance committee met with Treasurer Long and went over the budget and how it looks. She adds that it was very informative and that the new budget will be on the City website. She would like to see it quarterly.
Councilmember Engel says that she met with DPW Farnam and Mayor Minchella to tour the pool and recreational facilities. She is glad to see that the pool roof will be fixed as it does have holes in it. She also attended the LAFCO meeting, where they selected Ned Coe to be the new chair and Laurie Pearce Price to attend the conference and be the voting member. The City Clerk/General Government committee met with Clerk Wheeler to discuss ideas and trainings.
Councilmember Larranga says she attended the MCTC/MTA meeting, where they did a resolution in honor of Cheryl Nelson. They are working on Quickbooks updates and added that the City projects are being well ran.
COUNCIL/STAFF REPORTS
Officer Cody Widby states that they have a new officer, F. Alcala, in phase 3 of training and doing well.
He is set to clear FTO October 1st. Our dispatcher is going to POST training. There were 49 arrests made last month. We received our radios, which have now been sent out to get programmed. Officer Harrison went over to the Sheriff’s Office, so we are actively flying that position. A lateral would be ideal, as the incentives are not active anymore for new applicants. We have received applicants, though, including some laterals.
Fire Chief Lloyd states they are working on weed abatements. Some properties are fire hazards. The process takes a while in contacting homeowners, giving them time to respond, then contacting again per City ordinance. We have to wait two weeks after we send the first letter, then another two weeks after a second letter is sent. Then we can eventually start fining homeowners if it’s not taken care of. He would like to look into streamlining the process. Daywireless came and did their audit on our radios, and they are actually in better shape than we thought. Fire Marshal Hunter is working with Corbin at the Sheriff’s Office to clear the static. We had 3 fire calls and 36 medical calls in July, one being a false alarm.
Treasurer Long informs Council that August 27th at 1:30 will be our work session. The first two hours will be Ethics training, then from 3:30 to the end of the session will be DPW Farnam and I giving you in depth explanations on City workings. We are wrapping up pool stuff. The staff cost has been about $5,000 each pay period, plus the cost of the daily chemicals and such. She is also wrapping up on fiscal year end.
Director of Public works Farnam states that the power outages are killing us. Jonathan got his D II certification. Aaron is working on his Vector license. The mill still has some hurdles, and are talking about lease extensions, but there are definitely issues. Working on the design for the new wastewater treatment facility, the property is in escrow. There is a right of way issue with the Department of Wildlife. There was a 50-year lease that the County had that apparently expired last year. Our SCADA system is very old and we are working with consultants to upgrade our water system. For roads, 8th street is about done. North Court should begin paving next week. Pot hole are being filled on the west side of town and West 3rd is in the works. We have crack seal left over from the airport so we will see how far we can get with that. Our STIP projects are West C and Nagle Streets. The old wastewater treatment plant is battling us. The generator had been overheating, so we fixed that. Then it went off again. We purchased a generator from Alturas Ranches so we got that up and going. We are still looking for a new one. We put the RFP out for the HVAC system.
Councilmember Engel asks if we can look into what other cities do. She states that a dog pound should be a dog pound, not where we facilitate people to go to adopt dogs through the Humane Society.
DPW Farnam continues that they are still spraying for mosquitos, in the middle of the night and even on weekends. With the power outages, our guys are already getting called out often on their own time. We have another guy in training for his vector license. The airport is rolling along. We are spending what’s left of the Covid money of the geothermal. At the next meeting he would like to invite the pool committee to see what they would like to see, and maybe combine the recreation and pool committees. For planning, they are working on LEAP housing plans that are in review with Dominic.
With no further business to come before City Council, MOTION by Councilmember Larranaga, SECONDED by Councilmember Cox to adjourn the meeting at 3:56 p.m. and to return in regular session on Tuesday, September 17, 2024 at 2:00 pm, City Hall. ALL AYES Respectfully,
Tacie Wheeler
Tacie Wheeler
City Clerk