The purpose: to settle what Councilman and Vice-Mayor John Cook called an “ongoing problem for a lot of people.”
The issue: sewer meters.
“We just might as well talk about it and get it over with,” Cook suggested Thursday night when the RBS City Council met for its monthly meeting at City Hall.
Specifically, two sewer meters RBS city officials and councilmen said are owned by Nestle Waters and located on Nestle property.
Mayor Kenneth Hollis said the city has “limited access” to those meters.
One meter is located inside the plant, city officials said. The second is outside the building on Nestle property.
Nestle tells the city how much to bill it each month, city officials said.
“I’m the No. 1 supporter in Red Boiling for Nestle,” Cook said. “But we have a responsibility to take care of this city. Nobody else reads their own meters and tells us what to charge, and I don’t see why we allow them to do it, either.”
Cook stressed a non-confrontational approach. He said Nestle was “totally honest.”
“We need them. They need us,” Cook said. “We need to be best friends.”
Still, Cook said the city needs to “lay the law down of what we want done.”
He said the city “needs to get control of those two meters.”
Reached by the Times on Friday morning, Nestle spokesperson Pat Nolan offered the following statement:
“Nestle Waters has enjoyed we think a good working relationship with all the local governments in Macon County,” Nolan said. “We look forward to the opportunity if we do have issues to sit down and resolve them as we always have in the past and we think we can probably do in this case.”
Possible dates for the special called meeting are Feb. 23 or 25. The exact date and time are to be determined.
In other news from Thursday’s meeting:
Water agreement:
Nestle came up again during discussion of utilities department business. The second of two items listed for the department was an “amended water purchase agreement from City of Lafayette.”
Hollis said he’s looked the agreement over and didn’t like what he saw. In one draft of the agreement he viewed, Nestle was listed as a third party in the agreement along with RBS and Lafayette, the mayor said.
“They’re just a water customer,” Hollis said of Nestle. “I don’t think we need a third party between us and Lafayette.
“The way it reads, the way I read it, is that we’d have to shut the town down to give them water.”
Cook said he agreed with the mayor and that any agreement should involve just two parties – the cities of RBS and Lafayette.
“There should be no third parties,” Cook said.
Added Hollis: “We can’t guarantee nobody water, especially when you’re going to have to shut customers off in town to furnish a factory. I don’t see that happening.”
Cook made a motion “that the water agreement simply be between the city of Red Boiling Springs and Lafayette and no third party and wait until next month until our attorney and engineer can present us with an agreement between Lafayette and Red Boiling only.”
The motion passed 6-0.
Overtime pay
Overtime for city employees will continue, the council decided with a 4-2 vote.
Cook made the motion “to stop all overtime unless it is an extreme emergency and the mayor approves it.”
Voting yes – to do away with overtime – was Cook and Terry Newberry.
Bobby Etheridge voted against cutting all overtime but said he agreed that overtime needs to be scaled back.
“I don’t think we can just stop it completely so I’m going to vote no,” the councilman said. “I think we need to work on it.”
More details from the meeting to follow online next week and in Thursday’s print edition of the Times.
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