Blanding City talks utility rates, accepts 70k grant

by David Boyle
News Director
Blanding City Council members updated their on-call policies, received a grant and tabled discussion for outside city power and natural gas rates at their latest meeting.
Members of the city council approved an updated policy related to employees and serving in office at the September 24 meeting.
City Manager Trent Herring explained the city already has in its policy that any full-time employee who is elected to city council or as mayor must give up employment with Blanding City. Despite that policy being in place Herring explained the city was recently made aware that a similar policy had not been in place for part-time city employees.
The conversation was the second time the issue had been brought before the council in recent meetings with Mayor Logan Monson adding “Council members that are making the policies should not also be employed by the same organization that they’re making policies for, pretty standard for what you’d see in government.”
Members of the council unanimously approved the update to the policy to include that all permanent employees may not also hold office while being employed by the city.
Blanding City Council members also approved the receipt of a $70,000 grant from the San Juan Clean Energy Foundation to build a shade pavilion by the city tennis and pickleball courts. Members of the council offered their thanks to the organization as part of the unanimous approval of the receipt of the grant.
Blanding city council again tabled discussions to raise outside city limit rates for power and natural gas. After bringing projected trends for growth and sale of utilities outside the city, staff will again be bringing additional information to examine the options related to changing hook-up fees vs changing a rate.
The discussion has been ongoing for several weeks with percentage increases of three, five and eight percent presented to the council for consideration. Those amounts would be an average increase of roughly $3, $6 or $9 a month for electric or natural gas customers outside of city limits.
Members of the council spent about 10 minutes again debating the reasoning for increasing out-of-city rates against keeping them the same.
Reasons for higher rates for outside city limit accounts included incentivizing annexation within the city, as well as covering the costs for servicing utilities further out of the way and raising funds in order to bring on an additional employee to cover possible gaps with just one employee in the gas department.
Those against a rate raise noted that increased volume sold to customers would increase margins, and noting that the natural gas line is already checked monthly with many accounts located just off the main line.
During public comment one utility customer outside city limits raised the question if rates could be raised, Herring confirmed that a rate increase would not impact those who were involved in providing a right-of-way noting they are grandfathered into the city rates.
Members of the council voted to table the discussion again to come back for discussion at another meeting.
Members of the Blanding City Council also approved an update to the city dog license requirements and fees.
Among the changes include a reduction to a one-time fee of $10 per dog, including issuance of a dog license tag, which are $5 to replace.
The updated licensing also removes a requirement for an annual renewal of licenses and proof of vaccination, although vaccines for dogs are encouraged for the safety and health of the community. The updated policy also means the one-time lifetime fee applies to all dogs regardless of spay or neuter status.
The city recently introduced lifetime dog licensing and Herring reported they’ve seen great success.
“We already sold triple as many in the first four months than we did ever, we’ve already had great response to it.” 
Herring added they’re still working on animal control issues, including considering a maximum number of dogs. Members of the council approved the updates to the dog licensing requirements and fees.
Members of the Blanding City Council also updated their policy for public works employees to be on-call.
Herring explained that the on-call policy has been that employees are paid $1 an hour to be on call, if that employee is called in they are paid for a minimum of two hours and after exceeding two hours they are paid time-and-a-half.
Herring explained the multiple calculations are messy and recommended changing the rate to $2 an hour for an employee to be on-call and to be paid time-and-a-half when they are called in.
City staff estimated the difference in payroll would be about $500 more for the city, but Monson noted the main benefit will be for accounting purposes, with manual calculations out of the equation and a cleaner, smoother process.
“I think that is beneficial for us when it comes to our audits and things, to make it very easy to report and track.”
Members of the council unanimously approved the policy change.