Clarksburg’s Mayor and Aldermen met in their regular meeting Sept. 28 to consider several items of business. Prior to the regular meeting, a public hearing was conducted relative to the condition of property located at 165 Chumney Lane. The property is overgrown with weeds, and the trailer on the property is not considered habitable. Multiple attempts to contact the owners have been unsuccessful.
“We have spent a lot of time trying to get in touch with the owners to persuade them to clean up the property, but none of these efforts has produced any results,” Mayor Howell Todd informed aldermen. “We have no choice but to issue a formal order which will allow the city to clean up the lot and thereby place a lien on it. The adjacent property owners deserve better.”
The Mayor and Aldermen discussed the method of conforming to an assessment the Carroll County Election Commission places on the city for holding a city election. In the past, the city sent personal checks to each of the five election commissioners following each city election.
Mayor Todd questioned this practice, and in a September 11 letter he was informed that there was a 34-year- old agreement between the Commission and each municipality in the county that a flat fee of $140 would be paid directly to each election commissioner in lieu of being charged for the Commission’s expense of holding a city election. An option was given Mayor Todd in the September 11 letter to pay the county trustee directly rather than direct payments to the individual commissioners.
“I much prefer the payment to the county trustee rather than making payments to individuals,” said Todd. “It provides a transparent path for our auditors with the check between two government entities.”
The aldermen agreed, and the procedure was changed.
The mayor informed aldermen that the state Water and Wastewater Financing Board acted on the city’s report on its sewer financials at its August 27 meeting in Nashville. The Board acknowledged that the city had complied with its previous directives in setting sewer rates. However, the city remains under the board’s review with a requirement that a status report be made March 1, 2021 and every six months thereafter, until there is evidence that the sewer fund maintains a positive balance for two consecutive years.
In other business, the August financial reports were approved, and June Murphy was reappointed to the City Park Board. The next regular meeting is October 26.
