STEELVILLE -— Steelville City Council discussed possibly publishing business licenses and unpaid taxes in the newspaper.

Alderman Ward 2 Jason Ward was opposed to publishing unpaid personal taxes.

“I wouldn’t see an issue with business licenses because that’s business. Now people’s personal taxes, that to me is crossing the line,” Ward said. “That’s just my personal opinion.”

Public Works Director Jason Evans wanted a timeline for when the information would be published.

“Is there a time limit on when you put these businesses in the paper as a whole?” Evans asked.

Alderman Ward 1 William “Bill” Bennett believes the timeline should include those with delinquent taxes over the past two years.

“I think we ought to put ‘23 and ‘24 in the paper and then negotiate,” Bennett said.

As another option, Alderman Ward 1 Curtis Crouch brought up a proposal from the county.

“I would still like to entertain a proposal from the county, understanding that they offered to do them for us for one percent of the total,” Crouch said. “The main advantage of that is when they do them, if they don’t get paid, they go into arrears, and they get sold on the courthouse steps.”

It was clarified that if the proposal is passed, the county would only be handling property taxes, and the city would still be in charge of handling business licenses.

It was decided to wait on the decision, and publishing anything could wait until the first of the year.

In other business, a motion was passed with a 4-0 vote to pay the $122,895.34 accounts payable.

Treasurer Regina Slovensky said it was a very productive week.

“We were able to get the trial balance to zero. As of today, we got all the cash reports all done except for the main account,” Slovensky said. “We’re just off by $11,773.32, but...the bank cash report makes sure that the general ledger and the bank match. In this system, sometimes it doesn’t communicate, so some of, probably a majority of that, is going to be the reconciliations that I haven’t completed yet.”

City Clerk and Collector Jamey Griffith gave the water shut-off report and the city usage report.

“So on the shut off report, there were 12 total. Three are still unpaid and zero final bills,” Griffith said. “Then on the city usage report, electricity sold was 74 percent, water sold was 29 percent and city water use was one percent.”

​ Evans gave city utility updates.

“The guys are reading meters this week,” Evans began. “We’ve got two days left on Oak Street. We ran out of rock, so that was delivered today.”

Trimming is done in the community building. They are currently working on caulking and painting, and a few fixtures need to be installed. 

Water samples came back good, and quarterly samples for the treatment plant were sent off.

“We’ve had a round of heavy metals testing for our water system and radon testing for our water system,” Evans said. “Those have been sent off. We usually do pretty good on those.”

​ Dent County overhead doors will come to replace two garage doors at the electrical department because the current doors open whenever they want.

There is about a three-day period left to fix the City Hall roof — just waiting for good weather.

Mayor Terry Beckman wanted to know what was going to happen with the roofing that was being taken off.

“Are we going to salvage any of that roofing?” Beckman asked. 

Evans answered that, yes, the roofing will be salvaged.

“So we’ve got those trusses and the roof metal that came off of it,” Evans said. “With the roof metal here, we can use that for wall metal. We would be out a very little bit of money to build a machine shed for parking dump trucks, backhoes and things out back to kind of get everything out of the weather.”

Sherman gave the end-of-the-year police report. A total of 530 reports were taken, 802 traffic stops, issued 110 summons, and made 35 arrest warrants. Also, all Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) hours are up-to-date.

In other business, the meeting set for Jan. 19 has been moved to Jan. 20 to observe Martin Luther King Jr. Day.