Wastewater treatment plant funding resolution passes Palmer council

PALMER — Palmer voters approved a ballot measure in October to authorize up to $8 million in repairs to the Waste Water Treatment Plant, mandated by Federal Consent Decree that was reached in 2016.

On Tuesday, the Palmer City Council unanimously approved Resolution 21-007, which authorized City Manager John Moosey to apply for $8 million in State Revolving Fund in interim financing for construction and installation of two secondary clarifier units at the WWTP with a possibility of a third clarifier in the future to support a maximum monthly flow of 1.5 million gallons per day.

“Before we move forward on any of this, we went to the voters for approval to bond and borrow funds to do this. What this is doing is allowing me to put in an application for $8 million, it does not, we are not going to grab all $8 million and it really doesn’t take any action. What it does with the state revolving loan fund is put a marker on it that says the city of Palmer may need this money and this is an interim basis. Essentially we borrow the money, get another grant, another loan most likely loan, and as the construction comes we pay the construction company, turn in that bil for the USDA money to come forward,” said Moosey. “We are very, very fortunate that there is money to borrow on an interim basis.”

Councilman Richard Best provided additional context as to why the city of Palmer required the consent decree from the EDA.

“It’s not so much that it was working improperly, it’s that the Federal regulations were modified to where the limit of percentages had changed to where they were less than what they were, the clarifier was clarifying to, so it had historically been working at a certain range but then the Federal regulations reduced that amount which made us out of compliance so that we could come back into compliance,” said Best.

Moosey concurred with Best’s historical context. The resolution was required to apply for the SRF funds and passed the Palmer council unanimously. The council also discussed what types of public record is taken and how it is noted in the minutes. Mayor Edna DeVries asked Clerk Norma Alley about if a policy change or code change would be required to include all written testimony and verbal testimony on the record.

“It’s something that we should put down and concrete, so again as I said at the last council meeting I want everybody to be treated fairly whether we have 15 of them or 1 or 1500,” said DeVries.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, written testimony had not been read into the record at meetings. However, last June the clerk began reading emails into the record at the request of residents, a practice which resulted in four meetings of reading more than 600 emails on the proposed mask mandate last November before the ordinance was ultimately voted down.

“We do have in title 4, the council rules section already. So either one, it can be either one. You can fold this into the council rules under title 2 or if you guys want to create policy like we are the code of ethics right, that’s going to be by resolution,” said Alley.

Councilman Richard Best also noted that testimony given in person at meetings is paraphrased and included in the minutes rather than transcribed verbatim into the record. Recently, a new audio/visual system was installed inside the council chambers to allow for more simplified participation in meetings with audio and video. City Manager John Moosey said that the system is designed to allow for residents to provide public testimony from their own homes, but that has not yet been demonstrated.

“With respect to whether reading people’s commentary into record, whether you do it as a policy or an ordinance it would have the same effect no matter what. It’s really up to the council and Mayor what they would like to do to address that,” said City Attorney Michael Gatti. “I look at it more as, the process is very important for people to be heard is very important and there’s numerous ways for that to evolve so I’d be interested to see how the council reacts to discussion on that particular issue.”

The council will discuss the council code of conduct and hold a committee on the whole discussion on elections at their next meeting on March 9. Following two planning sessions with a mediator, a plan will be submitted to the council on March 23. Additionally, the expiration of Governor Dunleavy’s disaster declaration on Feb. 14 triggered the reinstatement of the plastic bag ban in Palmer after 60 days.

“The state of emergency passed on Feb. 14 and if you remember, we had Ordinance 20-007 regarding the temporary lifting of non plastic bags. So with that ordinance, that was passed we gave the recipients 60 days to make sure they could come into full compliance,” said Moosey. “That is going to end on April 15 so as a a proactive move my office will be sending out to all those folks that have business licenses in this area informing that April 15 they have to have non plastic bags to meet our ordinance so there should be no surprises.”