The Monday February 22nd, 2010 Mountain Home City Council Meeting Review.

There was a very short City Council meeting last night and its showed with very few citizens in attendance.  Counting myself, there were only 4 "non-city employees" at this 35 minute meeting. This brought out the good nature of our council as they had a few good laughs and had some frank discussion on the few items placed on their table.
 

Subjects Covered:
1.  Considering a "No Dogs Allowed in City Parks" Ordinance.   There have been some complaints about dog poop in the city parks.  In short, dog owners need to clean up after their dogs our some type of ordinance will be passed banning dogs from ALL parks.  It was said this is primarily a health and safety issue for the people of our community.  I disagree completely!  This is RESPONSIBILITY issue. If citizens can’t take responsibility for their own pets, how can we expect them to act responsible when it comes to darn near anything in life.

In any case, the council is considering all their options.  Most likely Legacy Park will eventually be "dog-free" because there is a "dog park" across the street of Legacy.  Seems like a reasonable restriction to me but when I had a dog, I liked walking my dog there.  As far as banning dogs in the rest of our parks, that will be entirely up to our dog owning citizens.  Don’t clean up. then lose the right to take your dog to all city parks.  This "no dogs allowed" thing is a sticky (smooched between the toes if you know what I mean) issue but is not a done deal YET.  By the way, I will likely be getting a new dog in the next month or two…Hopefully other dog owners will not ruin it for me?

2.  Discussion/Decision on Agreement with ENEROC on Demand Response Services Proposal and Authorize the Mayor to sign agreements. Hopefully there was a just a small typo in the Mountain Home City Council Agenda on this issue.  

In short, a company called "EnerNOC " (with two N’s) wants to give the city money for conserving water/energy during peak demand hours.  The smelly part of this issue is how it was explained to the council.  If the city turns off one of our city water well pumps during peak demand hours, there will be a rebate given to us.  This even applies if the city turns off one pump but simultaneously turns on another pump?  Sometimes if an offer sounds too good to be true???

The city attorney currently has the contract that may have some issues.  Hopefully his complete and in-depth review of this company and contract will shed some light on if the council should move ahead with this issue or walk/run away.  Please note…The City Fire Chief does not like this idea AT ALL and I suspect it has to do with water pressure and fire fighting capabilities.  

Hopefully our City Council will not only keep our Fire Chief in the loop but make him the point man on this issue.  

Thanks for visiting and commenting on this story.

-S-

Tim Bondy
The Bondyweb.Com author