Bylaws and Staves
By PJ Martin
Editor
The Herald-News
The Edmonton-Metcalfe Industrial Development Authority (IDA) held its regular monthly meeting on Monday, March 17th, with everyone in attendance. Donna Caffee and Terry Garrett were absent from the meeting. A quorum was present.
The minutes from the last meeting on February 24th were approved with motions by Matt Gallagher and a second by Jerry Garmon. The minutes were approved as written.
Secretary Alley Bragg presented the financials for the period of March 17th to April 21st.
“We had our normal ESB interest deposit of $2.16, Pennington Stave Company made their payment of $10,941.90. We’re going to make a payment on the ESB loan of $10,941.90, which is going to leave us with a balance of $21,638.05.”
The motion to approve the financial report was made by Jerry Garmon, seconded by Gallagher, and approved.
Chairperson Lisa Boswell stated, “Next, leftover business from last month. I see we have an email from Brian (Pack)…Question, just out of curiosity, how many people on the board have seen the interlocal agreement or have a copy?”
Only a couple of people acknowledged they had seen it. Then City Attorney Brian Pack explained the need for sections in the proposed bylaws compared to the original interlocal agreement. He also provided a copy of that agreement to each member.
Pack spoke, “I’ve got the interlocal agreement here…So the way your board works…let me use an analogy. In the law, we have the Constitution, that’s the highest document. Then you have statutes…And then below that you have rules and regulations. Well, so you all you have, we have the state statute, we start there, that allows you all to exist. Then underneath that is the interlocal agreement between Metcalfe fiscal court and the city of Edmonton, which is this document that was adopted September 3, 2008, the bylaws that you’re trying to do, you can do bylaws, but they cannot in any way conflict with either the statutes or that interlocal agreement.”
“What I tried to do is just take out the part of your proposed bylaws. Most of them just duplicated what was in the local agreement that there was nothing wrong with them. It just duplicated.”
“So, what I did was kind of saying, for example, Article One is not needed. I don’t have a problem with anything written in Article One. We just don’t need it, because the interlocal agreement covers it. That’s true of Article Two, section 1 and 2 parts of section 3. All section 4, really, the Article 3 is the one that I think in 3 through 4, 5, 6, and 7, I really didn’t have a problem with where you decide, officers. Things like that, because that’s not inconsistent within a local agreement. So, if you want to do bylaws in that regard, I think those would be helpful…The city asked me to give an opinion. So, my opinion was to the city. It’s really not to you guys.”
“…articles 3 through 7 are the only ones that are not in the interlocal agreement. But I still say, let’s table this one more month. We get an opportunity to go home read through the interlocal and look at this for ourselves,” suggested Boswell.
Gallagher made the motion to table the bylaws for another month, seconded by Luke Wilson, and approved.
Boswell asked for any other business, and former Judge/Executive Harold Stilts was in attendance and spoke up. “I just dropped by to check to see if the board could shed any light on the future of the stave mill. I knew that it was shut down for several months, and during my administration, we spent a lot of time and effort on this stave mill. I was trying to get it up and going and hoping it would be a great asset to the county.”
Gallagher replied, “I know they got, they’ve got a crew down there working two weeks. I don’t know what they’re doing. They are working…but they’re getting ready to start sawing.”
Jerry Garmon spoke, “Harold, since you brought it up, I try to always go through, cover it every other meeting. I think we should talk about it at least. And we did talk about it the last meeting. But since you brought it back out. I have a question for Larry (Wilson). Larry, has there been any payments made to the county?”
Mayor Doug Smith broke in, “Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. This is really not the venue to bring that up, but that should be brought up at the fiscal court, not up here at the Industrial Board. The Industrial Board has nothing to do with the CDBG grant, And, I mean, y’all do what you want to do, but this is not the appropriate place to bring it up its all county, right?”
Garmon replied, “Yeah, so maybe so Doug, but we’re all taxpayers here, all taxpayers of the county, and we stand here, maybe for the Industrial Board, but we also need to be thinking as devoted taxpayers and worried about our fellow citizens in the county.”
“Yes, sir, all the grants came through the fiscal court, the CDBG grant, and the ARC grant came through the fiscal court that we got for that fit-up operation out there. So, I mean, I just, I was just concerned about this, all the obligations being met that was agreed to,” explained Stilts, also adding,” I was just hoping to get it started back up, because it’d be a big asset to the county.”
Chairperson Boswell told the board member that she had attended the Metcalfe County fiscal court on March 27th and requested the RDAPP funds. Now the board just has to wait for those funds to be sent.
With no other new business, the meeting adjourned. The next meeting is scheduled for Monday, May 19, 2025, at 2 p.m.
