Special Called council meeting moved up to Friday at noon

While the agenda has not yet been released for the meeting, the special called Crossville city council meeting originally set for Monday September 19 has now been moved to Friday September 16.

The meeting was originally set for Monday as councilman Pete Souza said at last week's regular council meeting that he would be out of town at the end of this week.  The first notice moved the meeting to 5 PM Friday evening and then a short time later another email announced the meeting would be held at noon on Friday.

The meeting was set during discussion of reviewing requests for qualifications as the city seeks an engineer to design a splash pad to be located at Centennial Park.  The lengthy discussion to set a meeting included problems with coordinating council members schedules and all seemed to finally agree they could all be present on Monday September 19.  Then this morning the meeting was moved by request of council members Danny Wyatt and Jesse Kerley.

The meeting was further discussed at the end of the regular council meeting as the members talked about the possibility of creating the new position of a city comptroller.  The matter was not on the agenda but came up under the city manager's report.  Interim manager Steve Hill said that two council members, Danny Wyatt and Pamala Harris had talked to him separately about investigating such a position.

Hill said that such a position could work on water and sewer rates, institute internal controls and risk analysis as well as financial planning.

Wyatt said during the discussion that he felt a comptroller position would help simplify the budget process, something he said had been a nightmare to him for 6 years.  Wyatt then moved that the council seek resumes of those who might be interested in such a position and set a salary at the level of a department head. He said this didn't mean they would necessarily hire some one, just determine interest.

Councilman Pete Souza called a point of order saying that such action was not on the agenda.  I lengthy discussion followed including councilman Jesse Kerley's comments that he was opposed to creating additional jobs at city hall.  Mayor Mayberry ruled in favor of Souza's objection.

It was agreed to add the potential comptroller action to the called meeting.