The administrative and utility committees of the Trenton City Council held meetings Tuesday evening, with the administrative committee voting to recommend a change to the city ordinance in regard to exotic animals and the utility committee hearing a report on what the February cold snap will cost the city in terms of electricity.
Utility Committee
Like everyone else who opens their electric bill after a cold spell, the city of Trenton had an unwelcome bill from the Missouri Public Utility Alliance for February, with the total bill coming in at $1,214,751.02. Trenton Municipal Utilities Comptroller Rosetta Marsh said that bill is usually around $490,000. The city has paid $589,146.95 of the bill with the remaining $783,325.30 to be paid for over a 10- or 12-month period through a low-interest loan. It was noted that those figures don’t include the credit the city will earn from the power it generated during the storm, a number that City Administrator Ron Urton said could be a couple of hundred thousand dollars.
Board members discussed the dwindling reserves in the electric department and said there’s a good chance that rates have been set too low and the council may have to look at raising them in the future.
Board members heard reports from department heads and Urton presented a marketing operations report by the MPUA that explained how the various power pools work and how the February weather event unfolded and was handled across the country.
Administrative Committee
The committee voted to recommend to the full city council that the exotic animal ordinance be changed to allow non-venomous snakes in excess of eight feet within the city limits. The ordinance will require a registration fee of $190 per year per snake. The change came about after Trenton resident Adam Clear made the request to the council so it would be more in line with state law. He hopes to open a “reptilarium” in the downtown area.
Committee members discussed how the rental inspection process works. Landlords are required to have the property inspected each time the occupant changes, however, if the utilities are in the landlord’s name the city does not know the occupant has changed unless the landlord reports it. Inspector Wes Barone said the process works very well 90 percent of the time. The committee decided to send letters to landlords to remind them of the ordinance and to ask local media to publicize it. Barone also noted that there are several rental properties in town that don’t fall under the city’s rental inspection ordinance, including HUD houses and those that are inspected by other organizations, such as Adams Park Apartments and the Plaza Apartments.
The committee will also recommend to the council that asphalt be added to the threshold areas of several of the hangar buildings at the municipal airport due to the floors settling. Barone, who also serves as airport manager, said some of the floors have sunk so low that pilots are struggling to get the planes in and out of the hangars. Barone said two of them are very bad, with about a six-inch dropoff. It will cost an average of about $600 to fix the hangars that are most in need of repair and the committee agreed to endorse the expenditure. Barone said it is a good “band-aid” for the problem, but not a really good fix for the long term.
In other business, the committee discussed the issue of surplus bicycles with Trenton Police Chief Rex Ross, who said he has at least 11 bikes that he needs to dispose of. Ross said he used to put them in the city surplus property sale, but since the city now utilizes an online auction service, he has no way to dispose of them easily. Ross was told to follow state statute, which requires him to advertise their existence and wait the required 180 days. At that point, the group will decide how to dispose of them. It was noted that state statute does not allow them to be donated to an organization and Ross said many of them are in very bad disrepair.
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