Claims presented and approved by Paullina Council on Monday April 3 included claims spread across all departments for electric bills accrued by the departments but not paid since September, according to the claims list. Cities owning their own utilities are required to pay the bill by each department to the appropriate utility fund. Also paid by all departments was PC Advantage Inc. PC Advantage is a computer service business from Hartley, Iowa. The company was paid $165.00 from the general fund, Water utility fund, and the electric fund for a total of $495.00. John Ihle, owner of Compu-Wiz built some of the city’s current computers and designed and installed the network. According to Michelle Wilson, Deputy City Clerk, the service was to update two old laptops and to install “G-works” software onto the computer used by Superintendent of Utilities, Kelly Top. Each department was charged the same amount of money for the service call, $165.00. Other persons with involvement in the computer work state an old password was used to open email “on a new computer.” One person close to the computer work says verification for authority to use the password was provided. As a result of using the password to open the city email caused a release of thousands of emails. The system to allow a user into email has since been changed by TCA.
Liquor licenses were approved for Junior’s Bar & Grill and Paullina Golf Club. Junior’s is contingent upon obtaining dram insurance. Randy Riedemann’s hiring as part time summer help was tabled until the current state of the budget is available to determine funds availability.
A discussion of hanging the banners for each member of the Class of 2023 was held. It was announced that the banners could be foot longer than prior years. This may cause some extra work to move one of the brackets to hang the banners. Discussion broke out about asking Sutherland and Primghar to send one of their staff to assist with the hanging of the banners with Carol Honkomp stating, “They’re South O’Brien, too!”
It was decided that the banners would be hung with or without the assistance of other communities.
A resolution to set a public hearing for the proposed 2023-24 budget was set. A public hearing about the next budget is set for Monday April 24 at 5:30pm. The proposed budget is in this week’s newspaper. Contact the city office, 949-3428 with any questions, or attend the public hearing to learn more.
Special committees for the library, website and first impressions were established. Honkomp and/or Jean Unrau have been attending library board meetings. The extra involvement is to assist with the transition of the city managing the library funds. Jay Jones, Lexy Murphy, Brenda Ebel-Kruse and Michelle Wilson are working as the website committee. Discussion of “ownership” of the domain seemed to be the overriding factor for Jones. He has also expressed concern for city access for uploading information. Other discussion of development, management and hosting costs presented by councilmember’s were the more than $3500 of development fees and annual licenses for software proposed for use for the city’s website. Three interested parties submitted offers, Spireworks submitted an estimate, Pinnacle Marketing Group submitted a cost estimate and contract, Marcus News, Inc, publisher of O’Brien County’s Bell-Times-Courier submitted a proposal. Pinnacle Marketing Group’s estimate was submitted to the city on August 15, 2022, shortly after Marcus News, Inc. purchased the domain name, paullinaiowa.com, from John Ihle, from whom Mayor Brenda Ebel-Kruse had tried to take from him without compensation and without proper notice or authority. Spireworks’ estimate expires on April 8, 2023, giving the city council less than 1 week to evaluate their services. In November 2022 paullinaiowa.com was taken down for deliberate non-payment by the City of Paullina. Since then, the website has been moved off of City-paid hosting space and relocated to another hosting location and it is active and functional as council members work to understand websites and reach a decision.
City Administrator/Clerk Scott Wise submitted his resignation to the council for review at the April 3 meeting. His last day was announced as Friday, April 7. Council accepted his resignation. It turns out that the end of the meeting was also the end of Wise’s tenure with the City.