Poplar Bluff City Council will take the unusual step Monday of holding three separate voting sessions.
This will allow an outgoing member to act on two controversial issues before a new council member is seated, agendas for the meetings show.
Mayor Susan McVey chose not to seek re-election for her Ward 1 seat and will be replaced on the council by Lisa Armes Parson, who voters selected April 2.
A special meeting will be held at 6 p.m. in the city council chambers at the Black River Coliseum to vote on the hiring of a new city clerk and a company for $18.2 million in upgrades to the city’s wastewater treatment plant.
A second special meeting will be called to order at 6:45 p.m., when Parson will be sworn in. Ward 3 council member Barbara Horton, who ran unopposed, will also be sworn in for a second term. The council will reorganize and select a mayor and mayor pro-tem from their members.
The third meeting, the council’s regular meeting, will begin at 7 p.m., with a workshop session that includes eight items and a voting session that has four items (see page 6 for full agenda).
City manager Mark Massingham confirmed that he could not recall the council taking steps like this in recent memory.
“This is a little unusual, but both issues (city clerk and wastewater project) have been going on awhile and the new council member coming on has not been involved in any of the discussion or in the (clerk) interviews,” Massingham said.
Both the city clerk hiring and the wastewater bids have been the subject of split or failed votes by the council in recent weeks.
The council held a second round of interviews for the city clerk’s position April 8, when they decided 6-0 to offer the job to planning department secretary Nevada Young.
Young is not currently a resident of the city. City ordinance requires the clerk to be a resident. A vote to change the rules failed 3-3 in March, with council member at-large Steve Davis recusing himself from discussions on the matter.
The council also held a failed vote at that time to prevent the hiring of the relatives of city council members.
The position was also the subject of a closed-session vote earlier in March which extended the search from internal-only candidates to allow members of the public to apply.
The wastewater treatment plant bids were first brought before the council in March and have been tabled twice. The council voted April 8 to hear concerns about the bids in closed session, with Horton opposing the move out of a public meeting.
Ward 4 representative Shane Cornman has expressed concerns over costs presented by the apparent low bidder, Brockmiller Construction of Farmington, Mo., are unbalanced.
Brockmiller has said line items for new or refurbished blowers include only the labor, and that the cost of the parts are in a different line item.
Engineers with Smith & Company say a bid must be both mathematically and materially unbalanced. According to engineers, quantities of the item would need to change during construction to meet both criteria.
Action items at the regular meeting Monday, after Parson is seated, will include another item that has been tabled by the council, a union contract with police dispatchers. The contract was expected to be voted on April 1.
In a surprise move, the matter was tabled instead of moving forward for approval. Massingham said at the time the council needed to discuss questions in closed session before holding a vote.
It would be the first contract for the new group, which is part of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 702.
Dispatchers voted in 2018 to join IBEW, along with a separate group of police officers. The second group is in negotiations now with the city.
A request at the time from union representative Mark Baker to proceed with a vote on the contract was unsuccessful.