MOUNT VERNON – Newly hired Interim Utilities Director Aaron Reinhardt started on the job on Monday, Mayor Matthew Starr said, and will get to see what projects the department has been managing.
“We’ve also been working on Clarifier No. 1 at the water treatment plant,” Starr said.
Olde Inc. was the contractor that completed the blasting and re-coding of all the steel components in November. Since then, the clarifier’s rake drive and turbine driver were being leveled, with other minor tasks also completed. The clarifier was up and running on Thursday.
“We’re continuing to monitor to see if that thing is going to be purring like a kitten, I guess if you will, but it's been down for two years,” he said.
They will monitor that clarifier for a few months before they shut down clarifier No. 2 for maintenance, he said.
“This is a very important part because we have not had this necessary redundancy in place for two years. And this is one of the many reasons why we needed that rate increase just to keep up with all of the maintenance that has to happen,” Starr said. “And there are some other redundancies that we have to get in place as well.”
Storm sewer work at Verndale and Marita
Storm sewer installation was ongoing at the intersection of Verndale and Marita Drive last week, Starr said. Palmer and Son Excavating was the contractor.
“We’ve had some problems in that area,” he said.
Palmer and Son was renovating and repairing the storm sewer, which required closing the road to traffic. They are expected to return this week to finish the work. Starr reminded motorists about the potential road closures because that is part of a popular cut-through for traffic between the south side of town and the east side.
Applicants compete for fire department jobs
Civil Service Commission Administrator Tony DeIuliis is scoring the civil service exam taken by 27 firefighter-paramedic candidates who took the exam last Wednesday at the Knox County Career Center.
“They’re all competing for three possible upcoming job positions with the fire department,” Starr said. “And these positions by the way are being funded by what’s called a SAFER grant. And it stands for Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response.”
The grant funds three years of salary with possible extensions, he said.
The candidates will go on to interview and then also take an agility test to qualify, he said.
The city is also taking applications for a new civil service exam for a customer support specialist position in the city water-billing office. Pay for that position starts at $20.92 an hour and increases to $22.25 after two years.
Ride Knox Area Transit for free
Knox Public Health and Knox Area Transit have combined to provide free transportation to locations offering health care, food and other resources.
Stops are scheduled for every 30 minutes at each location, from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday through Friday.
This fixed route has the KAT bus traveling to the stops in this order: Station Break to Knox County Service Center to Knox Community Hospital to Opportunity Knox to Knox Public Health to Walmart.
Residents who live within walking distance of any of these fixed-route stops can access the new route during its scheduled stop and travel free to any of the other stops along the route. Riders are responsible for getting to one of the stops on the route.
“You can just ride for free in Mount Vernon and schedule its structured pickup times just like any other bus service and any other big city would do,” Starr said. “We've never had that here.”
Youth Leadership Council learns about drug task force
The Mayor's Youth Leadership Council met Thursday. The educational portion of the meeting covered the police department.
Chief Robert Morgan gave a presentation to the group, which had “a lot of interesting questions with regard to the realities of being a police officer in today's world,” he said.
The high school students who make up the council asked questions about training, the metrics of the drug task force from different counties and how officers deal with drug issues, Starr said.
City’s next budget in the works
Auditor Terry Scott, the mayor and Safety-Services Director Rick Dzik have been finalizing the interim budget information. That will be coming after the next council meeting, Starr said.
“We’ll have to approve an interim budget to get us through the first couple of months,” he said.
The entire budget will be discussed in the Jan. 21, 2023 work session of the city council.
Parking garage close to reopening
The contractor is still working on attaching steel supports for the Municipal Parking Garage. An inspector still needs to come by to make sure everything is perfect before it is opened back up for parking, he said.
Once work is complete, Starr said they’ll have more of an idea of the exact number of parking spaces that will be lost on each of the floors, but it still will have spaces available.
“We don't have to eat up precious spaces of spaces along the Public Square or over at The Living Center,” he said. “They’ve been very, very gracious with us and we were just incredibly grateful [for] their adaptability and just for allowing us to park. They’ve been great neighbors.”
