City Council Hears COVID-19 Updates, Tables Final Ordinance Reading To Gather More Information

WAYNE – Officials with the Wayne city council meeting saw an early distraction in the agenda due to a few random people connecting and making comments that caused a restart.

Council held their Tuesday meeting by video/telephone conference as members of the public are allowed to attend electronically.

Under the Open Meetings Act, anyone can attend these open meetings. Mayor Cale Giese said the meeting experienced some low-level trolling.

“These people slowly infiltrated the meeting,” said Giese. “They got up to about 4-6 of them and then all at once they started speaking and unmuting themselves to disrupt the meeting. Brian Kesting, our IT guy took about 30 seconds to try to mute them and then he deiced to just pull the plug on the meeting.”

Council then restarted the meeting and didn’t allow those people to join back in. City staff will also be looking to improving their protocol to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Into the meeting, council first heard an update on COVID-19 from health director, Julie Rother with the Northeast Nebraska Public Health Department. A question was brought up from the council about community garage sales. Rother said she hasn’t heard other health directors ask the governor but it is coming up across the state.

“If you think about really what the governor has loosened up in the Directed Health Measures it really has a lot to do with economic impact to communities,” said Rother. “Most of the time garages sales aren’t really like how people make their lively-hood. So, I would say that as a community it’d be best to hold off on those for a while.”

Councilmembers also approved a Memorandum of Understanding between the City of Wayne and NNPHD to implement local directed health measures in the future deemed necessary.

Chief of Police, Marlen Chinn informed the City of Wayne that no warnings will be issued just citations for those who violate the DHMs.

An ordinance was then tabled during the third and final reading to allow limited semi-parking at Williams Form Engineering waiting for the next truck ahead of them to unload only on their busy days. Councilmembers will look to explore more information and research on which side of the road to place the rock.

Bill Downing, vice president of manufacturing with the plant, joined Tuesday night’s meeting and explained they were looking to eliminate any parking on the south side of Summerfield Drive and add 100-150 feet along the north side of the road to park up to three trucks. The northside of the road is the property of Great Dane as information was also brought forward there was 18 feet of Right of Way (ROW) so there would be plenty of room on the north side in the terrace.

Downing added truck drivers will not leave their trucks unattended.

“They’ll come into the office, they’ll check in, then they go back to their trucks and they wait until we bring them in,” Down mentioned. “We don’t just let people park overnight and such like that. If they’re going to be there overnight, which we have very few circumstances where we’ll have trucks overnight, we’ll bring them into the property and let them park out back.”

Williams Form shipping hours run from 8 a.m. until 8 p.m. as in-bound trucks are received on the east side of the building and out-bound trucks are on the west side. The ultimate goal of Williams Form is to expand their facility as they have looked at options of adding an outdoor crane on the east side and run a two-lane road at an angle on their property to allow trucks to be unloaded easier.

Council also approved an agreement with the Certified Testing Service, Inc. for the “Transmission Water Main from North Well Field to City Limits” project. Estimated fees are $311.50 for the full trip or $209.75 prorated trip if in the area. The service will be kept separate from the engineering contract as it is more economical for the City of Wayne.

A second reading of amending the City of Wayne Land Use Map of the Comprehensive Plan was also approved.

The next regularly scheduled City of Wayne council meeting will be held on Tuesday, May 19 at 5:30 p.m.

Share:
Comments