Published: August 20, 2008 12:47 am      

Council privately discusses mediation

Over difficulties with Fairmont water plant

FAIRMONT — Most of Tuesday’s Fairmont city council meeting was spent behind closed doors when members voted to go into executive session 15 minutes after it began.

Mayor Scott Sears stated sections 2 and 9 of the West Virginia Open Governmental Proceedings Act, which address personnel issues and commercial competition, as the reasons the session became private.

City Manager Jim Snider said one of the subjects discussed during the session, which lasted about an hour and 15 minutes, was the upcoming mediation scheduled between Fairmont officials and water plant engineers and designers Chapman Technical Group, and manufacturers GE Zenon Environmental.

The mediation is scheduled for Aug. 28, and Snider said council members discussed with their attorney what the city’s strategy will be during the mediation. He said this would be the only meeting held with council members before the mediation, but that city staff would probably meet again to discuss it.

Currently, the city is facing significant debt because of a pair of emergencies that occurred within the faulty 5-year-old plant during the winter of 2007. Officials are looking at a 50.7 percent customer rate increase to cover the costs of the necessary repairs made to the system following the crises.

But officials are hoping to receive compensation from Chapman and Zenon, which they believe are responsible for the problems, and are going into mediation and possibly eventual litigation to negotiate this.

Other issues discussed during the executive session concerned matters of city personnel.

During the open portion of the meeting, council members set two public hearings on Sept. 9 for property acquisitions.

One was to officially take over the former site of the old black Elks building, which was demolished under emergency ordinance on Aug. 9. The collapsing building had become a public-safety hazard, and council was forced to take over ownership of the building to raze it.

The public hearing set for next month will start the ball rolling for the council to officially take over the site, which Snider said officials are looking to sell for future redevelopment.

The other public hearing was set to allow the sanitary sewer board to take over two houses, one on Ridgely Avenue and another on Howard Avenue, because of sanitary-sewer problems, city clerk Janet Keller explained.

E-mail Mallory Panuska at mpanuska@timeswv.com.