Community Foundation to buy Memorial Hall
The sale of the Phillips Memorial Hall from the village to the Phillips Community Foundation which has been in the works since last spring finally passed last Tuesday night on a unanimous vote of the three village board members who actually voted.
When the resolution authorizing the sale of the hall came up for a vote at the July meeting of the board, chairman Les Dana and board member Wayne Berkmark abstained from voting because both are also members of the foundation. That left only three of the five trustees — Jason Fry, Jordan Watson and Jim Crawford — to vote on the resolution and Crawford voted no, citing concerns about the uncertainties of the future contract between the village and the foundation regarding the village’s continued use of an accompanying storage building as the reason for his opposition.
At the time, the vote was declared by village attorney Kent Rauert to have been in order and the motion passed. However, at the next monthly meeting of the board in August, Rauert told the body that he had erred and with further study of the law he had determined the two abstentions actually counted as no votes making the vote 3-2 against the sale. That led to a substitute resolution rescinding the July vote, which passed 3-0.
Rauert was not present for September meeting, but about midway through the agenda, his revised Resolution 2023-4 was presented to the board. Dana pointed out that the terms of the sale remained the same as before — a purchase price of $14,000 which includes the village storage building which will be leased back by providing utilities, lawn care and garbage service to the hall at no charge.
“It’s still going to be part of the community,” Dana pointed out. “It’s just that if the air conditioner goes out they pay to fix it.”
Crawford, who had been the deciding vote against in July, commented, “I think it’s positive going forward. It’s in the lease agreement, not in the bill of sale. That was my biggest concern.”
He then made a motion to approve the sale, which was seconded by Watson and the measure passed on a 3-0 vote with Dana and Bergmark again abstaining.
“It’s gonna be a good thing; the village will have less liability,” Dana commented in the wake of the vote.
The September meeting was also the time for holding the hearing to amend the 2023/24 budget for the village.
“It’s going up quite a bit,” Dana stated, noting that the village budget will be increased by more than $1.1 million next year. He said the main reasons for the increases were streets, general maintenance and general government, which he said was going up from $150,000 to more than $300,000. The total proposed budget for FY 2023/24 is $1,326,765.
The board also passed Resolution 01-31, which set the village’s property tax request for the upcoming year. The request was set at $86,180, which is $0.449997 per $100 of assessed valuation.
Also approved was a 1 percent increase in the Restricted Funds Authority, which includes such things as motor vehicle taxes and highway allocation funds.
Earlier in the meeting the village board approved the purchase of new equipment for reading of water meters at a cost of $7,000 plus the cost of a tablet, computer and other necessary equipment.
A final topic of discussion was the village’s water system which is under scrutiny by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) because of high uranium concentrations. Village maintenance supervisor Scott Hooley reported that the community does not qualify for EPA funding to address the problem and suggested that Phillips might need to work together with Giltner, which has a problem with manganese, to come up with a solution to the water problems faced by both communities. He suggested that the village needed to put together a study to look into options and funding to fix the problem.
Larry Steele of Miller and Associates Engineering was on hand to speak to the issue. He said two options to be considered by the village would be to partner with another community, as suggested by Hooley, or consider building a treatment plant to filter out the uranium. Another possibility discussed was establishing a county-wide water system that would provide water for all the communities.
Hooley expressed frustration with the EPA, noting the agency had lowered the uranium threshold for parts per million of uranium which had thrown the village into non-compliance.
Steele said his company would discuss the various options and send a letter of recommendation to the village board for consideration at the October meeting.