David Jones suggested that he and other Hennessey town trustees take some workload off the town’s administrator.

Jones’ idea was to help with “oversight…splitting up the departments and each of us focusing on making it a little bit better.”

Town Administrator Tiffany Tillman was not at the Thursday night meeting and was out of the office until Monday.

Jones, who went on the board in March, said he wasn’t “talking about personnel,” but “improving communications.”

He’d talked to past board members who’d used a similar system years ago “and there were positives and negatives,” Jones said.

In that system, the mayor (who is elected by the board) appointed each trustee as commissioner of a department, i.e., police commissioner, parks commissioner, library commissioner, etc.

Problems in Past

Mayor Bert Gritz said there were problems in the past with board members who used their own rifles on one occasion.

He also said a former board member told him after he was appointed police commissioner that he went in to talk with the police chief. The chief got out a pad and said he was ready “for a list of the people you don’t want me to stop.”

Jones said that was not his intention and also stressed that trustees couldn’t give “directives to any employees.”

Hire Public Works Director?

“She (Tillman) has a lot on her plate,” Jones said, “and the board needs to decide if we’re going to hire another public works director.”

He said if they couldn’t hire someone soon, they could help her and supervisors with getting information ready for the January (yearly) meeting to make plans for the year in each department.

Although Tillman was named town administrator and Curtis Turner as public works director in February 2007, former mayors continued to make those commissioner appointments until early 2016.

Back then, Tillman’s job included oversight with personnel in the police, fire, ambulance, library, swimming pool and town hall staff.

Turner handled the water, sewer, streets and parks departments until he was fired in June 2020, due to “drastic” and continued drops in sales tax revenue.

Since then, Tillman has also been in charge of public works employees.

She later named superintendents over each public works department and holds a monthly group meeting with them.

Wait for February Election?

Jones said he thought about waiting until after the town election in a few months before asking board members to be assigned to work with certain departments.

“I think that’s a good idea to wait,” said Mayor Bert Gritz.

Then Jones said he’d changed his mind and thought they should start now.

“I need more input on this. I’d like to wait until Tiffany gets back,” said Gritz before the agenda item was tabled.

Three seats on the five-person board are up for election in February.

Those seats are now held by Gritz, Vice Mayor Clifford Vogt and Trustee Richard Simunek. Filing is Dec. 5-7 and if more than three file there will be an election Tuesday, Feb. 7, to determine the top three vote-getters.

Open Bulk Sewage Disposal

“It’s been closed for six or eight months,” said Trustee Harold Shaw about his agenda item to reopen the bulk sewage disposal.

“We need to open it back up so we can start making some money again,” he said.

There was discussion about how to handle keys and entry into the disposal site and that the muncher kept going down.

Shaw said Tillman had talked about looking at other towns and what they charged, but they didn’t have that so the board needed to put a price on it and open it up.

Fire Dept. Medical Director

Gritz, who is also the fire chief, recommended approval of a contract with Heartland Medical for $500 a year with Dr. Bill Worden as the volunteer fire department’s medical director.

That cost includes continuing education in several areas and CPR training.

The fire chief said that department currently has one certified EMT-Intermediate, Brandon Scott.

He said Scott does a great job and is now working on paramedic training. All firefighters are also first responders and the town is getting more and more “medical assist calls. We used to get six to nine medical calls a year, now we get about …” “229 medical calls logged so far this year,” said Police Chief Aaron Pitts from the audience.

Gritz introduced firefi ghters Randy Bohnstedt and Levi Copeland who were in the audience. He said they will start EMT training with Heartland soon.

Both are on Heartland scholarships so the classes won’t cost the department anything.

“Did you say $500 a year?” asked Howdy Travel Plaza’s Jay Ruiz from the audience.

“Yes,” said Gritz. “I want to pay the $500 for that,” he said.

Gritz, other firefighters and trustees thanked him.

Switch to Emergency 911 Dispatching?

Gritz said he wanted the board to look into 24/7 emergency (police/fire/ ambulance) dispatching through the county E-911 service.

“What’s different about it now than when I suggested it earlier and you didn’t like it?” asked Shaw.

“They didn’t have the E-911 director they have now,” Gritz said and he also went there and saw firsthand the equipment and operation which is more advanced than they’d had before.

“We’d continue to have someone in the office there during the day,” said Pitts.

E-911 would be able to sync with Hennessey offi cers’ phones, ambulance service and the fire department so that would cut out transferring information from one department to another, said Pitts.

Gritz said he thought it would save the town money, but said they need to check out what the costs would be for those services.

There was no talk about how that would involve operation of the jail if there was no one at the police department 24/7. However, in previous discussion that seemed to be an issue.

Other Business

“We had $11,307.77 in meter deposit refunds?” asked the mayor.

“That’s for two months,” said Shelley Burch, town treasurer. “We’ve had a lot of move-outs.”

Trustees approved the 2023 renewal of employee health, dental, vision and life insurance with Blue Cross Blue Shield with a 2.8 percent increase over this year. Insurance agent Pete Town told the board that many others have 10 percent increases.