The Westport Town Council met on January 13, 2025.
The Town Council President will remain Bryan Gatewood and Vice President will remain Glenn Black.
The December meeting minutes, adjustments, payroll vouchers, and monthly bills were approved.
Rachel Runge, Commonwealth Engineering provided an update. She said that they did have the construction meeting in December. The next meeting is this week. They are planning to begin construction in February depending on the weather. On 1/14/25 there is a site visit scheduled. A pay application for $474,715.00 was submitted to Rachel, and she brought it to the council. The Town Council voted to submit the pay application to be paid out of the grant. This pay application is for materials that have been purchased for the project.
Damon Land came to the meeting and stated that they had worked very hard to get the streets cleaned during the recent snow. He said that they are having a lot of problems with their backhoe which is 1986 or 1988. Damon priced new backhoes, but they are priced beginning at $120k. He went ahead and priced skid loaders and received 3 bids. He feels that they can do the work needed with a skid loader. McAllister bid was $88,429.86, Koening Equipment bid was $73,529.04, and Lett’s Hardware bid was $66,806. All three machines were comparable. The Town Council asked that he return next month so that they can then vote on these estimates.
The Town Council requested that the library come to the next meeting to discuss the possibility of having some programming in the front room of the Community Building.
Bryan stated that they are getting better numbers from IDEM for water quality. The letter residents may receive in the future is from going above the numbers are for the exceedance in 2023. Bryan said that he feels the changes at the new Water Plant have been helping with these numbers.
