Wapella pays bills in special meeting

WAPELLA — The Wapella Village Board voted to pay the village’s approved bills during a special meeting held on Thursday. On July 17, the board failed to gain the votes necessary to approve payment of its bills, the second such incident in two months.

The same topic that prevented enough votes for passage at the earlier meeting proved to be an issue again Thursday, a $600 bill from an area business to paint three restroom doors from Wapella Park.

Trustee Sharon Riddle objected to the bill during discussion on July 17. Feeling the charges for the work were too high, she called the job a waste of money.

Trustee over public health and safety Vernon Meadows said at that meeting he had the doors removed and painted after other methods to refurbish them failed.

“It started out to be a simple job, but everything we did didn’t work,” Meadows said on July 17. Meadows said the objective was to have the doors in good shape for the recent Wapella Summer Celebration.

On Thursday, Riddle repeated her objection to the charge after trustee John Goergen asked about the bill. Goergen was not present at the July 17 meeting.

“Six hundred dollars to paint three doors,” Goergen asked. “We couldn’t do that ourselves? That’s a little excessive.”

“We tried, let’s put it that way,” Meadows said.

For the complete article see the 07-27-2012 issue.

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