Cuba Board of Aldermen on July 7 discussed approving a temporary hiring freeze and establishing minimum staffing numbers.

Comptroller Jennifer Basham said she met with all supervisors to discuss minimum staffing requirements.

Proposed minimums for each department include 12 for police, one for property management, four for electric, two for water, one for the treatment plant, one for the pretreatment plant, two for sewer, four for streets and two for the visitor’s center.

Animal control has a minimum of one part-time animal control officer with two part-time animal care attendants, the grounds department has one full-time and one summer-only part-time employee and the airport has only one contract employee.

The Cuba Municipal Court will have a minimum of four employees, including a prosecutor, a contracted judge, a full-time clerk and a part-time clerk.

While the natural gas department currently has three employees, but if one leaves, they will drop to two employees unless they are training or in construction.

There is currently only one employee in the code enforcement department, but the position will be eliminated when the current employee retires.

This is only a trial-period hiring freeze for six months, where it will be reevaluated afterwards. It does not require departments to fire employees who have over the minimum number, but if someone leaves within the six-month time period, the position will not be refilled. Any department that falls below the minimum staffing will be allowed to rehire positions to bring it back up.

Mayor Pitts Lesesne said that as of July, Cuba’s general revenue funds were short $2.1 million, and that’s what funds the city’s manpower.

“All the spending and all the stuff from before is starting to roll downhill. It is finally accumulated, and we will be in the red as of today, about $2.1 (million),” Lesesne said.

He blamed the situation on not having rate increases in utilities like electricity and natural gas since 2014, and now the city has to make small incremental increases to try to make up for it.

“You can’t overcome it by just saying, okay, say we’re at $1.38 for a cubic foot for our natural gas, and everybody else is selling those for $1.89. We would cripple anybody on social security or anybody that’s on a fixed income or on welfare because if we went to $1.89, they could not afford their gas bill that month,” Lesesne said. “The side effect of that is, since we’re not doing one big one at a time, we can’t see all the benefits of what we haven’t been doing for 10 years, 15 years, 20 years. We can’t see all that gain at one time.”

A motion to adopt a six-month hiring freeze was accepted with a 4-2 vote, with Aldermen Ward 3’s Jeff Bouse and Joyce Hartzell voting against it.

Alderman Ward 1 Ray Mortimeyer said that Treatment Manager David Minardi has one of the best treatment plant licenses in Missouri and was told during former mayor Kevin Copling’s office that if he got that license, Minardi would get a raise.

When he did get the license, Minardi asked for a seven percent raise, but the city didn’t have the money for it.

Lesesne addressed that the city was freezing pay increases to help better the city’s financial situation, but that Minardi was promised a raise.

“We came to an agreement that we would step, that he would go up one step, which is not seven percent,” Lesesne said. “He agreed that he would take the step 26.”

It was confirmed that if the city were to find the money, Minardi agreed to stay on step 26 and would not be bumped up to the seven percent raise.

A motion to approve moving Minardi to step 26 for an increase in pay was approved with a 6-0 vote.

In other business, a motion to accept Bill No. 2227, which authorizes the mayor to enter into an agreement with Williams, Robinson and Wiggins for legal services was approved with a 6-0 vote and is Special Ordinance No. 968.

Bill No. 2228 is now Special Ordinance No. 969 after a motion to authorize the mayor to execute and agreement with the Crawford County R-2 Public School for providing a school resource officer (SRO) was approved with a 6-0 vote.

A motion to accept Bill No. 2229, which authorizes the mayor to enter into an agreement with Christy Mathews, CPA was Busch, Mathews & Associates, CPA for establishing financial policies became Special Ordinance No. 970 after it was approved with a 6-0 vote.