City Council News Briefs
Council votes to form citizen commission for water treatment plant
BY GINA KEATING | EDITOR
The Olney City Council voted to form a citizen’s committee to monitor expenditures and advise the council during the construction of the water treatment plant, officials said. The Council approved a plan at its July 11 meeting to approach former Olney Mayor Phil Jeske, Rogers Drilling administrative assistant and bookkeeper Sonja Gray, accountant and financial advisor Bob McQuerry, Clancy Myers and Jackie Griffin-Voyles, owner of Olney Auto Tire & Truck. Members of the new committee served on a finance committee for the project last year. “They make the decisions,” Ms. Gray said of the Council. “They’re just going to run things by us … to have a fresh set of eyes on it. We don’t actually make any of the decisions at all.” The Council also voted to have at least one Councilmember attend the committee meetings on a rotating basis.
Mr. Jeske said he was “happy to be on the committee that gets this process off the ground and hopefully to completion.”
He said the committee will be “looking at the invoices that come in that are approved by the engineers to make sure they make sense and match up with what the bids are.”
City Council keeps Aug. budget meetings at convention center
BY GINA KEATING | EDITOR
The Olney City Council voted to hold its Aug. 8 and Aug. 22 meetings at the Olney Convention Center at 210 S. Grand Ave. to allow the public to attend sessions dealing with the city’s fiscal year 2023 budget. Mayor Rue Rogers suggested the council hold the September budget meetings at the convention center as well, although the council will have to rig up the same technology it relies at City Hall on to edit and view documents. “For the next two months, let’s just be here,” Mayor Rogers said. “We have the meeting open to the public and it’s their budget, they need to have input. We need to make it as inviting as possible and then beginning in October we will go to City Hall.”
Council considers restaurant inspections
BY GINA KEATING | EDITOR
The City Council is once again considering whether the Olney Police Department should conduct local restaurant inspections, after the county health department indicated it did not have enough personnel to perform an annual inspection at Olney’s school cafeteria. The council tabled action on an ordinance that mirrors a measure passed a couple of months ago by the City of Graham until it has more information on the liability associated with conducting inspections at restaurants, schools and the hospital cafeteria.
“My only concern is the liability associated with it and then getting the prices all the same,” Mayor Pro Tem Tom Parker said.
If the ordinance passes, it will require OPD officers to take a 14-hour online class, and use a State of Texas-provided checklist as a basis for the inspections, Olney Police Detective Dustin Hudson told the council. Detective Hudson said a county health official inquired whether the city would take over health inspections to relieve the county of that duty.
“Based on the information she gave me, we have a health inspector in town about once every 18 months unless they have a complaint, and then they have 45 days to respond to that complaint,” he said. The county last responded to a complaint about an Olney restaurant after it had already closed, he said.
“We are at the mercy of Wichita Falls, and we are not their top priority,” Mayor Rue Rogers said.