Harrisburg City Council appoints new commissioner
The Harrisburg city council appointed a new commissioner to fill the seat left vacant when Dale Fowler was appointed Mayor last month.
In a unanimous vote, Mayor Fowler and Commissioners Fearheiley, McPeek and Schiff appointed Wayne Horstmann to the position of Public Properties Commissioner. Fowler officially resigned from that position in the Sept. 18 meeting and Horstmann was sworn in immediately following the vote on his appointment.
Horstmann is a local man, a Harrisburg resident since 1985 and is a sales representative for Prairie Farms. Horstmann is married with five children and seven grandchildren and is looking forward to serving his community on the council.
"I hope that I bring something good to the table," Horstmann said after his swearing in ceremony.
The council took several other important steps for the Harrisburg community in the September meeting. The council heard from Water Superintendent Kelly Hefner and Treasurer Linda George regarding replacing the software of the city's automated water meter reading system. The water meters in Harrisburg are read via radio transmissions from each meter to a central computer in the city. The software package that the central computer system operates on has developed problems and was probably inadequate for the job when it was installed.
Now, there is a real problem with the water office receiving reliable data from the meters.
"I don't have any faith in the integrity of the meter data," said Linda George.
Hefner made very similar statements and proposed the purchase of a new software package for the system. The new software is produced by the same company which made the software currently running in the meters and Hefner stated that it is a superior product and could be relied on to seamlessly integrate the data into the city's records.
Hefner also stated that the new software offered a number of improvements in billing and customer interaction, allowing customers to review their water use records for over the last two years and would allow owners of multiple properties to review all of their water use records at on a single file. After discussion, the council voted to approve initiating contract negotiation for the purchase of the new software package, at the cost of $84,600.
The council accepted two bids for the construction of water and sewer lines in Harrisburg. The first was a bid of approximately $102,000 for the installation of water and sewer lines in the Cummins Commercial subdivision. This contract went to Dean Busch Construction. The second bid was from Bryant Construction for the water and sewer line work around the business of Unique Homes. This bid of $74,000 was also accepted by the council.