Council moves forward with advertising for supervisor

By Chad Koenen

Publisher

Several dozen people attended a special city council meeting last week, while dozens more attended the meeting online. The meeting itself lasted less-than 20 minutes.

During its special city council meeting on Monday, Jan. 31, the city council approved the resignation of utility workers Brenden Markuson and Travis Arndt. Councilman Jim Haberer was the lone person to cast a vote in dissent to accept their resignation. The resignations bring the current utility worker staffing from four full-time employees to just two.

Following the acceptance of Markuson’s and Arndt’s resignations, the council approved advertising to hire a full-time utility supervisor to replace Markuson. 

Councilwoman Tammy Fosse also made a motion to immediately hire a fourth employee to replace Arndt. The motion was seconded by Haberer. 

However, city attorney Tom Jacobson questioned if Fosse could participate in the meeting since she was attending the meeting via Zoom and was not in person. 

Since there was no longer a state of emergency covering the City of Henning, Jacobson read through portions of the open meeting law that would allow a council member to participate in a meeting remotely. He said it did not appear Fosse met some of those requirements. As a result, Fosse dropped her motion.

Haberer then made a motion to immediately hire a fourth utility worker, which died for a lack of a second.

While several people in attendance expressed a desire to speak during the meeting, the council did not accept public comment last Monday since the meeting was a special one. That follows past practice for the city council in which public comment was not typically accepted at special meetings and only occurs during regularly scheduled meetings.