City continues talks on prison labor partnership

The Lennox City Council met Monday, July 27.

With no visitors to be heard, Mayor Danny Fergen asked City Administrator, Nate Vander Plaats to give highlights on the consent agenda. 

“The state water application that we’ll submit for $16.3 million. Again, I do expect that to be paired back to a smaller project. Alderman Peterson asked today if that will be reduced even further with special assessment for those streets and that is accurate as well. Special event permits for Park Drive After 5 in August and September, my understanding is that there is going to be a chili feed in September. In the Mayor and Council pay analysis, I did a little bit more searching for some information there for your review. There are some amended personnel policies, adding a media relations policy, amending the City Administrator job description to include safety coordinator, and a Lennox community grant application,” Vander Plaats said. 

In old business, discussions continues on Department of Correction’s prison labor. 

“We had another call with the Department of Corrections a couple weeks ago, working through some of those details. They’ve not done a formal agreement on these before, a memorandum of understanding (MOU), I don’t think they’re opposed to doing so, but I think to them it’s such a simple project that it doesn’t really bear the necessity. We did have Kristi reach out to Total Tree to see what the cost difference would be. We got those two quotes and it’s in my mind a significant cost savings on even a small project. I think internally we still need to figure out who is going to be responsible for what so that we can get them trained. It would probably be a very small group so that it could be handled by one person because if I’ve got to dedicate a parks maintenance supervisor plus a streets person then I’m taking away from some pretty important work that needs to happen throughout the street department in the summer. So, if we can do it with a smaller crew, that can be handled by just a parks person I think we’d probably be in good shape, but that person has to be an adult and has to go through the training,” Vander Plaats said. 

“After reading through everything, it makes total sense for us to continue this conversation and if it leads to an agreement to act on this, I would say yes,” said Alderman Bill Daugherty. 

Vander Plaats asked if it was the councils preference to use an MOU or if the agreement was not important. 

“As long as we have clear understanding of what liability we have and the individual as you stated who is going to be running this crew is trained adequately and understands what their role in this is. That’s where the rubber meets the road,” Daugherty responded. 

“I think this will work out and will be a great opportunity to save some money if we have a staff member that is willing to do this and they’ve got reservations or concerns, they can bring them to you and then go from there. But if not, lets keep moving forward,” Mayor Fergen said.

“Do we have to pay them a certain amount or do we know any of that yet,” asked Alderman Laura Thiesse. 

“We don’t pay anything on those,” Vander Plaats responded. 

The council discussed surplus equipment within the city. 

“I just want to make sure I fully disclose our planned course of action before we formally move down that path. Surplus resolution this time around is not going to be as large as the one in 2023, but it’s got enough large equipment that an auction is a more feasible option compared to opening sealed bids. Last time we did this, we contracted with Big Iron Auctions through a local rep and we’re very happy with that process and we’d like to use them again. Prior to moving in that direction and in the interest of transparency I just want to make sure everybody knows that Josh Kranz is the spouse of Parks and Rec Director Kristi Kranz. So I reviewed the city’s conflict of interest policy and consulted with the city attorney. We both agree that an agreement with Josh and Big Iron would not be a violation of those policies or state law,” Vander Plaats reported. 

“It feels right to keep it local to me,” Alderman Daugherty said. 

“I agree,” said Alderman Thiesse. The council agreed to move forward with Big Iron Auctions.