The Red Boiling Springs city council dropped its intention to annex any additional property into the city last Thursday night, after a number of Carthage Road residents appeared to protest the plan.

Discussion of annexation had been delayed at the last council meeting when it was said that residents of the area had not been properly notified of plans to annex their property into the city. With notification, a number of residents appeared at the city council meeting December 13 and voiced their opposition.

The most common objection was that paying city property taxes outweighed any city services they might gain by being inside the city.

“If they don't want it, they don't want it,” said councilman Ray Bilbry.

In addition to dropping the annexation proposal, the council also decided to drop participation in Planning Commission activities, which are paid up only through April of next year.

The Grinch and a tight budget stole a Christmas Eve holiday for RBS city employees. City Hall will remain open on Monday, December 24. A motion by Tommy Spivey to close at noon on Christmas Eve died for lack of a second. If city employees take the day off, it will not be a paid holiday this year.

However, employees will still each receive a $100 bonus and a Christmas turkey from the city.

In other business, Nestle Waters has proposed a flat rate for disposal of waste water from the RBS bottling plant, with a Nestle spokesman noting that most of the water discharged from the plant does not require treatment.

Only employee-generated waste water would be sent to the RBS sewer plant under Nestle's plan, which would include the plant providing a new water discharge line (at an estimated capital cost of $200,000) that would return un-used water not requiring treatment to a nearby creek.

The company paid the city $318,000 last year to run all of this water through the treatment plant.

The mayor and council agreed to meet with Nestle executives an hour before their January meeting to further discuss the proposal.

Just before the conclusion of the meeting councilman Ray Bilbry proposed a resolution stating that no city employee be authorized to use city equipment for anything but official purposes.

It was noted that this was already in the city's charter, but Bilbry persisted, stating that he didn't mind being specific about what his resolution was about-”the use of the city's phones to vote in the NCTC Director election.”

Mayor Kenneth Hollis protested that although he had voted the city's phone lines in the first election, he had not done so in the second, and denied that he had instructed vice mayor Tommy Spivey to vote them in the second round of voting.

City Attorney Jon Wells agreed to draw up a resolution prohibiting any city employee from voting for himself in any North Central or Tri-County EMC election.