The city wants Entergy to begin fulfilling what they deem dated requests for street light repairs before aldermen approve a large payment to the utility.
The Board of Aldermen decided to hold back a $12,134.16 payment, on the street light portion, of Entergy’s bill to the city.
“It is taking them entirely too long to replace our bulbs,” Alderman Carver Randle said, adding his concerns as to why the city was still paying Entergy, when the service provider, he says, has failed to repair city streetlights after repeated requests.
A similar protest was lodged against the electrical service provider earlier in the year after city officials cited a lack of communication with Entergy. Randle noted that he has received numerous complaints from his constituents about the outages.
“We’re paying for something we’re not getting,” he said. “They need to respect us and respect our citizens.”
Mayor Steve Rosenthal called it “poor service,” and said he reported the problems to Entergy in October and again in November, but has yet to receive a response.
Alderman Ruben Wood asked who was reporting the lights out and Rosenthal said he and his wife check and mark the poles once a week and report the outages to Entergy twice a month. Randle too said he marks the poles that he sees.
In addition to the company’s lack of response to light repairs, Alderman Gary Fratesi said the company is butchering the city’s trees.
Aldermen called the tree trimming, “unsightly.”
Entergy has received a thrashing from local citizens in the past few weeks over the way their vegetation contractor has been cutting back trees around their power lines in town.
Fratesi said in other counties the vegetation crews actually cut a circle around the line, “Instead of cutting half of the tree off.”
Alderman Larry Brown said if they couldn’t do the pruning any better than they have, “I would just as soon they cut the tree down.” He said it is costing the citizens money to go back and have the trees redone.
In other business,
The aldermen also mentioned the railroad’s lack of attention to the crossings in town and suggested that it too be addressed at a future date.
A payment request on the docket for a grooming fee for dogs from the animal shelter raised some concern and Fratesi asked why the city was paying a grooming service to bathe and clip dogs, especially when he had gotten a call that the Humane Society had offered to do it for free but were refused.
Shelter director, Elizabeth Elmore denied the refusal but said the animals were high maintenance small dogs, a Poodle and a Pomeranian, that were completely matted and she didn’t know how to groom them.
Rosenthal said the shelter should be responsible for maintenance of the animals but anything above that should be left up to the Humane Society. Fratesi added, “We’re there to feed them, if they come in sick, take care of that part of it,” but nothing to do with grooming, he said. They agreed to get with Elmore and create a list of what is and is not acceptable because they said the city shouldn’t pay for grooming.
They also voted to seek proposals for financing the new dump truck and street sweeper they decided to purchase.
After emerging from executive session, the board announced that they had decided to hire Betty Fowler to replace Marvin Elder as process server beginning Jan. 1, and to make an exception for a police officer who was still on probation to use his accrued time even though by policy it would be unavailable to him until after his probationary period.
The officer has a one-week old child and suffered a heart attack and has been in ICU unable to work. Other officers in the department have also donated time and money, as did other local citizens and businesses to help with expenses.
