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Vienna City Council OKs pay raises

Photo by Madeline Scarborough The final piece of the remediation plan at Spencer’s Landing, the river parcel of the Johns Manville site, will be completed today, after all the piled dirt is smoothed out and topsoil, grass seed and straw are laid.

VIENNA — Vienna city employees will be getting pay raises.

Of the two resolutions on employee raises presented at the Vienna City Council meeting Thursday evening, only one passed.

The resolution passed establishing salary increases for full-time, permanent employees of 65 cents, which is added to the annual 35-cent raise, for a $1 increase per hour. This resolution included a $1.65 raise for full-time permanent police officers, increasing their hourly rate by $2. This will be effective as of July 1.

Council member Mike Elam expressed his concern before the resolution passed about across-the-board raises rather than rewarding those who do good work.

“I am all for our officers getting a raise. I am concerned with the other full-time, permanent employees obtaining a raise that they may not deserve, rather than just rewarding our hard workers with a raise,” Elam said.

The resolution for increasing the annual salary for the positions of computer systems administrator, human resources director and community event/planner coordinator was tabled until the next meeting.

Council members expressed a concern with the resolution reading that those three positions would also gain the $1 an hour raise for city workers, giving them a $5,580 pay increase for the year instead of the original agreed upon amount of $3,500.

An ordinance that would have prohibited the feeding of deer within city limits did not pass at Thursday’s meeting because of concerns about its enforcement.

Council agreed there is a problem with the deer population, and that feeding should not happen within the city limits. But without a clear route of enforcement, the ordinance failed in a 4-2 vote.

Mayor Randy Rapp announced the city is planning to hold a city deer hunt this fall.

“We do not have the dates picked out yet, but everything is in place to apply to the Department of Natural Resources to hold the event,” Rapp said.

The land of several property owners will be used for the hunt, he said.

“The event will be open to anyone who can qualify,” Rapp said. A person with the DNR will provide tests to make sure those interested are proficient with a bow, he said.

Rapp said Chemours has begun building the carbon filter production site for water wells seven and eight and the two wells have been sent out for rehabilitation.

Council member Jim Leach said the river parcel at the former Johns Manville location has almost been finished with capping three sites, and plans call for the work to be completed today.

After the topsoil is added, the remediation plan will be completed, and the site can become open to the public.

During public forum at the council meeting, Kim Williams asked why she has to fill out a Freedom of Information Act to obtain the supporting documents to the council agenda for Vienna. She said it is difficult to give comments during the forum on topics to be voted on that evening if the documents are unavailable to the public.

Williams called on council to sponsor a resolution allowing the documents for the upcoming agenda to be disclosed to the public on the day the agenda is available. No resolution was discussed further at the evening’s meeting. But City Attorney Russell Skogstad said the city is in compliance with legal requirements by only providing the agenda.

It is up to city council on how it wants to present the agenda information, Skogstad said.

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