Carmi Police has a new Sergeant. He’s not new to the force however. Chief Jason Carter introduced the promotion of Matthew Long at Tuesday night’s City Council meeting.
I’d like to introduce you to Matthew Long. Matthew grew up in Norris City. He’s the son of Matt and Dawn Long. He graduated from NCOE and went on to SIC where he got his associate’s degree in criminal justice. He moved on USI in Evansville and obtained his bachelor’s degree. We’ve been fortunate to have him with us since 2021 and he went through the promotions process and interviewed with the board of fire and police commission and was promoted to Sergeant. He takes over his duties on Sunday, April 6th.
Long’s wife Cheyenne and son as well as his parents were in attendance.
The meeting went pretty quick following pictures and pinning with only two agenda items. Council approved a Bridgewell Resources invoice amounting to $19,717 for new light poles. That expense is in the budget.
Finally, after the February 4th meeting, council tabled a Vipower Services quote for a system upgrade on engine 7 at the power plant that would’ve cost more than $68,000.
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Councilman Tracy Nelson said at the time he wanted to see about additional quotes, specifically from Marshall Electric. Tuesday night, he was back with his findings which led to some discussion.
Nelson: We got a quote from Marshall; the original quote didn’t have a ‘not to exceed’ limit…this one does: $20,000 versus $68,000 from Vipower. The big difference here is Vipower was planning on putting in all new equipment and Marshall is going to retro fit some of the existing panels. He is going to put a new Allen Bradley processor in there so as long as it doesn’t exceed this price, I think we should probably go with Marshall.
Doug Hays: Well if you remember the whole gist of this was to try to get the credits [from IMEA] from getting this engine going again. Yeah, $20,000 would be a lot quicker to get the credits than the $70k.
Sheila Headlee: Is it putting a band-aid on it though with the $20k or is it going to fix the problem?
Nelson: Yeah, it’s not to exceed $20,000 and we talked to him last week with a confirmation it wouldn’t go over that and he’s supposed to have it done by May or June.
Hays: Testing is June so they’ll have to be done by then.
Council moved forward with the Marshall Electric $20,000 bid with unanimous support. Alderman Jeremy Courson was absent.
No report from Mayor Pollard and the only council person with a note was Headlee who asked if Holly Healy might be able to look into some grant money potential for a street in her Ward.
On Burrell Street from Stewart to the railroad tracks, that road is just getting awful. We’re losing base; it’s getting more narrow and when trash barrels are out, almost two cars can’t even pass. So I didn’t know if we could maybe look into something that would help redo that road. That’s the only portion of the road we haven’t done and it’s just in terrible shape.
At 5:42pm, council entered Executive Session. Mayor Jeff Pollard invited his successor, Bill Stendeback to stay for the behind closed doors portion. There was no action to follow and council adjourned.
