Council approved public record of October 17

The Tarentum Borough Council last night held a brisk fifty-minute meeting that began at 6:30 PM. There was not much that was controversial in the meeting.

The Council approved a resolution to designate an agent for Hazard Mitigation. This was a significant action that will bring a close to some unresolved issues left from the Hurricane Ivan flood last year. Some of the houses in the Mill Street neighborhood damaged by the flood are not going to be repaired. The resolution makes it possible to demolish the structures, reclaim the land, and create some green space in the Bull Creek flood plain.

The Council hired Carl Garrett & Son to furnish and install space heaters in the water plant.

The Council accepted the Pennsylvania Niagara power allocation beginning September 1, 2007. This action is necessary for participating in the power grid, and does not modify the current contract with Dominion Energy.

The Council also hired Raimondo Contracting to repair walls at the Summit Hose Fire Hall. This action was urgent because a wall was bulging out and needed immediate repair.

In an earlier post in this blog an anonymous commenter asked "what [code] enforcement has been done." In last night's meeting the Code Enforcement Officer gave his monthly report for October. He said that there had been 32 occupancy inspections, 24 re-inspections, 26 complaints, 3 building permits, and 3 demolition permits. I am assuming that when he said there were 26 complaints, he was describing complaints that he had investigated. All of this supports my impression that, while there may be a need for more code enforcement, there is in fact code enforcement in the borough.

The motion to approve the minutes of the October 17 meeting passed without any debate. I was watching for this motion because of an earlier disagreement about what the minutes of this meeting would show (here and here). I have been disputing the erroneous claim made during the election campaign that there was a unanimous decision not to embark on the $2 million project with replacing water and electric meters and having Neptune handle the system for ten years. My memory is that no decision was made. The minutes that were approved report the remarks by a number of council members; there is no vote on the matter in the minutes, no recorded motion presented to the Council, only the following statement:

"A discussion was held."

You can now check that in the public record. No Council member who earlier made the erroneous claim that there had been a unanimous decision about the water meters even disputed the accuracy of the October 17 minutes; but you need to wait for the minutes of the November 21 meeting to be approved to verify that.

File under : Tarentum, politics, power, water