At the February regular Emmet City Council meeting Thursday, council members expressed surprise at the number of wastewater pumps not working right now, especially after the number the city replaced just last year.

City council member Rob Clark said at one point in the hour-long session, “If we’ve replaced six in the past year, and now we’ve got three bad, that leaves us with one old pump. We’ll have nine out of ten of them replaced within a year.” 

Clark urged Mayor Dale Booker to do some research on whether the city could upgrade to better quality pumps or whether it needed to purchase pumps with higher capacity, making adjustments to the system to accommodate them as well.  

“To up the size,” Booker said, “You’ll have to up the mounting bracket. I’ll talk to some people.”

Booker had said that the leading cause of the pumps going out was that residents on the system were flushing items the pumps were not meant to handle. Clark said the city would need to buy pumps to handle that problem and get guarantees or warrantees from manufactures. 

In other business, the council supported Booker’s ongoing efforts to get their telecommunications company to repair a landline so it does not go down each time something in one of the city’s outbuildings is fixed, heard that a project to resurface streets will cost about $10,000 over the funding of about $300,000 that the city will receive as a grant. The city will cover that remaining amount.  

How to deal with customers who are behind on their water bills was discussed with Clark and City Councilman Grant Cox expressing concern about whether ratepayers would be given enough time to pay their bills after receiving it and before the due date of the 10th of the month. Mayor Booker said he would need to consult the particular ordinance that applies to know exactly how many days a customer had before a water cutoff. 

He also said the state Attorney General had raised concern about the city carrying too many unpaid water bills. “It looks like we’re going to have to enforce the rules and regulations to a t,” Mayor Booker said.

The Attorney General’s office had also contacted Booker to raise concerns about the city providing a limb cut-down service for a local resident with a house on non-city-owned property. The complainant did not realize the city had been paid $100 for the service. Mayor Booker and the council members agreed that the practice of providing such services could not continue even if residents paid.

No action was taken but Booker said an ordinance may need to be drafted on the matter in the future.

The city has received a replacement fire truck, which cost $35,000 and has 10,000 miles on it. Mayor Booker said it drove well and he could see no reason the 10,000 mile reading on the odometer was not accurate. The council members okayed selling the old fire truck along with some other city vehicles, possibly doing so by attaching these vehicles to a county sale.

Booker said two council members, Rob Clark and Shannon Peck, have not filed their paperwork yet to run for reelection. Clark said he intended to “take my spot” and joked, “Didn’t anybody else want it.”

Booker also announced that the Park Pavilion roof has been replaced using American Rescue Plan Act funds.