LINGLE – The Lingle Town Council held its first February meeting on Wednesday the 5th at the Lingle Community Center. Present at the meeting were mayor Micah Foster and council members Kathy Wilhelm, Tabitha Lambert and Jeff Jerome. Council member Shelly Duncan was excused.  The meeting was called to order promptly at 6 p.m. by Foster and the Pledge of Allegiance followed thereafter. 

A motion was quickly made to accept the evening’s agenda by Wilhelm which was then seconded by Jerome. By vote, the agenda was approved and Foster moved on to seeking the approval of the January 22 meeting minutes as presented to which Wilhelm made a motion and Lambert supplied the second. The motion carried and the council moved on to the next item on the short agenda, the monthly bills. 

Lambert noted the bills had been reviewed and there was a total expenditure of $124,060.74 and total revenue was $188,198.28 which leaves the town $64,137.54 positive. Lambert then made a motion to approve the bills which was seconded by Wilhelm.

With no public comment, the council moved on to departmental reports where they heard from Lingle Police Chief, Endra Andrews. 

“We’ve had a few suspicious circumstances, a little bit of traffic, had an aggravated assault a reckless endangerment and I still have several DFS cases which means I have been doing a lot of MDTs, been in district court and circuit court,” Andrews explained. “That’s all.”

As the council waited for Anna Barnes, the town attorney, they moved on to Logan Dailey who presented the town maintenance report. 

“The post-grade building that we were told to look into up at the landfill, we’ve been having a heck of a time with that,” Dailey said. “We’re not getting a lot of feedback from that. Morton came in with a bid of like $300 and some thousand dollars, clearing was like 200 and some thousand. So, we found plans to do it through Menards and it’s like $50,000. We are going to try and get a few contractors to see if we can get bids to get that and put that up. That would fall under the landfill closure so we’d still only be subjected to the 10%.”

Dailey agreed to keep the council informed as more information was collected. 

“The only other thing, I have just a real quick PowerPoint to show you. I am sure that Anna will also probably discuss this,” Dailey explained. 

Barnes joined the meeting and Dailey added he had received a call about the west end of town.

“Just outside of the – so, there used to be those couple of residences that were in town that have now been de-annexed and they’re all in the county. We currently supply all the utilities to those properties,” Dailey explained. “It’s back behind Anderson Carpet and they wanted to know if we could just create a line that says west of that line is all Wyrulec and then east of that sign is all ours. We provide utilities for that.” 

Dailey noted he didn’t see a problem with establishing the line and he advised the council the landowner had advised Banes. Dailey showed the PowerPoint presentation which he then indicated the landowner wanted to build a small shop which would require power. Barnes expressed the landowner had checked with benchmark and there were no survey records for the location. She also mentioned there would be a definitive line for where Lingle is willing to serve. Barnes did explain the issue would not need to be heard in front of the county commissioners because there would be no new service established. 

“It would take a simple memorandum of agreement just so that Lingle knows where our service area is and Wyrulec know where their service area is,” Barnes said. “We don’t have to present it to the commission or to anybody else. It’s just so that we have clear communication between our two entities.”

“So, basically, all you’re doing is clarification if something should come to fold later?” Wilhelm asked Barnes who affirmed. 

“They’re wanting to put a shed in there so it’s just clarifying who would give service to that shed,” Barnes explained.

The council agreed a memorandum of agreement would be helpful. Dailey also explained there would be a town garden this year and a business owner had approached him about adding some raised garden beds. Dailey also stated he was currently working on a plan for the geodome. Dailey also explained to the council he was currently working on bringing more people to the geodome. 

Barnes further explained there had been an attempt to collect unpaid utility bills which resulted in the town sending out three letters via certified mail to WyDot. Barnes noted she would develop the memorandum of agreement and the council moved on to the fire report. 

“Not much going on around our part of the world either. We had eight ambulances, two fire calls last month,” fire chief Kasey Bangerter reported. “Kind of keeping a close eye on some of the senate bills. I don’t want the property tax one. I don’t know if any of us know how it’s going to roll out. For fire service people, we are pretty nervous. It could be detrimental.”

Moving on to administrative items, clerk/treasurer Ritch Reyes explained the Red Cross License Trainer Provider Agreement was approved by the Red Cross. Reyes also asked the council when they would like to advertise summer job opportunities for the town and the council expressed the postings should be done as soon as possible. 

With no further items to discuss, the council meeting was adjourned at 6:17 p.m. to reconvene on Wednesday, February 19 at 6 p.m.