By Lauren Brown
Burns Times-Herald

At the April 23 meeting, the Burns City Council appointed Darwin Johnson to fill the vacancy left by Jim Eshelby, who resigned in March.

Johnson will serve the rest of Eshelby’s term, which will end in December of this year. In his letter of interest to the council, Johnson, who works for the county planning department, stated, “I love this community and hope that the experiences and knowledge I have will be beneficial to the council and community as a whole. I appreciate the history of our city, community, county and the great work which volunteers such as you have done in making this a desirable community to raise a family, work and enjoy the recreation that Harney County has to offer.”

Johnson was sworn in at the beginning of the April 23 meeting after the council unanimously approved his appointment. Johnson’s was the only letter of interest the city received for the vacant council seat.

In other business:
• the council made a couple of decisions regarding the upcoming budget. The council gave the budget committee the go-ahead to give city department heads up to a 2.5 percent cost-of-living increase in their salaries and also agreed to put the cemetery, parks and airport contracts out for bid.

City Manager Justin Boone said the contracts should be ready to put out to bid in the next month or so. When asked why they couldn’t be done sooner, he replied that the city attorney still needed to look them over.

However, City Attorney Steve Finlayson said he was under the impression the city was simply going to renew the contracts for another year, but he said he could have the contracts ready in the timeframe Boone outlined and hoped to have them ready by the May 12 budget meeting;

• the council approved 4-2 an invoice in the amount of $8,700 for legal services rendered from July to December 2007 by attorney Finlayson.

The invoice included hours spent on airport issues, the Burns water/sewer project as well as ordinances and franchise work. It also included 78.1 hours of work labeled “other.” When asked what kind of work would go under that classification, Finlayson said he couldn’t remember exactly off-hand but that it likely included reviewing resolutions as well as litigation work that he couldn’t talk about in open session.

Councilor Sean Wilson asked if the city had the money in the budget to pay the invoice. City Manager Boone said that while the city doesn’t have the money in the city attorney’s line item, the money could come from elsewhere in the budget, possibly the contingency fund.

Mayor Laura Van Cleave and councilors Linda Johnson, Bill Renwick and Darwin Johnson voted in favor of paying the invoice, while councilors Len Vohs and Wilson voted against it;

• Councilor Wilson gave a report on the bid received to move the airport fueling ramp. He said that only one bid was received, and it was higher than the engineer expected. However, the bid included a couple of project options — one for asphalt and one for concrete. The concrete option was more expensive, but would also last longer. Wilson said he thought the Airport Committee was leaning toward the concrete option but would discuss it further at the next committee meeting and come back to the council with a committee recommendation.

Airport Manager Walt Sitz said he would prefer the concrete option, and if the project had to wait a year in order to gather extra funds to pay for the concrete, that would be OK;

• Councilor Linda Johnson said she has been contacted by a number of residents on the recycling issue. She said residents appreciate the 4R Recycle Center and hope it stays in business.

Curbside recycling has been a contentious issue of late as the 4R Recycle Center would like to offer curbside recycling, but cannot do so because C&B Sanitary, which offers curbside garbage pick-up, holds the franchise rights.

City Manager Boone said that he believed C&B Sanitary would work out an agreement with the 4R Recycle Center.

Councilor Renwick noted that Rimrock Recycling, which offered a recycling day once per month, recently closed its doors. He commended them for their work over the years;

• Mayor Van Cleave appointed new councilor Darwin Johnson to lead the parks committee.

The next Burns City Council meeting will be held at 6 p.m. Wednesday, May 14, at Burns City Hall.