CARTHAGE, Mo. — Carthage Mayor Dan Rife said he and the city council were working to find new people for the Carthage Water & Electric Board of Directors and obtain the information the council needs to finish its fiscal year 2023-2024 budget and get past the disputes of the past few weeks that have left the utility in turmoil and the public on social media incensed.
Rife said he was working with CW&EP General Manager Chuck Bryant to get the utility’s salary information for the next fiscal year before the city’s budget has to be given final approval at the Tuesday, June 27 meeting.
“I’m still in conversations with the General Manager and I’m confident that it will be done,” Rife said. “The way their budgets are developed, there are no line items that can be identified as salaries, so it’s difficult to determine what salaries are. That was the reason we requested the list of all positions and their salaries so it was right there and clearly, easily read and could be understood by council.
“The general manager and I have had conversations and been working to come up with a plan to get the list we need, and we’ve been back and forth about what do you need, will this work, and I think we’re to that point where it’s going to be there before this final reading of the budget.”
Bryant confirmed that he and the mayor were working on getting the required information to the Council.
Threats among employees
Rife said the Carthage City Council took the unprecedented move to remove all six members of the CW&EP Board not just because of the missing salary information but “also the fact that employees were being threatened.”
“We had threats from (CW&EP) employees to other city employees, some physical threats but mostly you better come down on the right side of this whole issue,” Rife said. “This is not the kind of thing we want city employees to be going back and forth with. I think Water & Electric staff believed they were fighting for their jobs and their livelihood and I get that. But at the same time there are things that should just not happen, and I believe the management is responsible to make sure that’s not going to happen. I’ve been told that he’s going to put a stop to that from his employees and I have no reason to believe that’s not the case.”
General Manager Chuck Bryant said he was unaware of any accusations of anyone threatening anyone, “and I will not ever stand for that.”
“I do not know what that means, I don’t know how it’s defined, I don’t know if it’s true, but our employees will not threaten anyone and have not threatened anyone and the fact that that accusation is flying is deeply disturbing to me,” Bryant said. “Threatened is a dangerous word. Every day our employees work hand in hand with good employees of Carthage to make our community a better place to live. Any confrontation between departments is absolutely not tolerated. I expect my employees to handle themselves in a professional manner every day and I fully expect city employees to do the same. There would be no reason ever for one party or group to threaten another when we all have the common goal to make our community better.”
Rife said the reported threats were the main topic of conversation during the two-and-a-half-hour, emergency closed session held by the City Council on June 15.
He said the Council did not talk about the CW&EP Board during that closed session, something that would have violated the Missouri Sunshine Law, according to Missouri Press Association Attorney Jean Maneke, because the utility board members are not city employees.
The 7-2 vote to remove the board came after the council came out of that closed meeting.
Council members Brandi Ensor, Chris Taylor, Trudy Blankenship, David Armstrong, Ed Hardesty, Mark Elliff, and Tiffany Cossey voted in favor of removing the board and council members Terri Heckmaster and Alan Snow voted against.
The CW&EP Board Members removed by the council said in a written release earlier this week “on advice of legal counsel” they believe that the council’s decision to remove all of them all at once is unlawful, and they believe they are still the CW&EP Board.
The city followed with another release doubling down on the removal. “… the Water and Electric Board was legally removed and they have no authority to act on behalf of the city. The best interest of ALL City employees and the welfare of the citizens of Carthage have been and will remain the primary focus of the Mayor and Council,” the release said.
In a telephone call late Thursday, one of those Board Members, Danny Lambeth, said he didn’t have enough information about what Rife said on Thursday to comment about it.
Following the ordinance
Rife said for years the CW&EP Board and staff had called local and area public utilities to get their salary structure and verify that utility employees were being paid a fair salary compared to utilities in the area close to Carthage.
But at some point the utility board stopped doing that and relied on salary surveys provided by the American Public Power Association and the American Waterworks Association.
“The city ordinances delegate to the Board the authority to establish the compensation of employees and officials subject to standards that must be just and fair for the type and amount of work done and compatible with, but not in excess of, compensation for similar work in similar communities,” Rife said. “The CWEP Board and management followed this process for many years as verified by speaking to employees that were involved in the process of surveying similar utilities in the area to ascertain wages. It was discovered that this practice stopped in the last few years.”
Rife said the surveys by those professional organizations are only surveys and cover a wide geographic area.
“Not all utilities reply to this survey which can skew the results,” Rife said. “All other city departments must comply with salaries determined by a salary study with defined pay ranges that were adopted by Ordinance. Water and Electric must have specified guidelines as well. A salary study creates a pay structure that is just and fair for all employees.”
Salaries for city employees, including CW&EP, are public information and are viewable at https://govsalaries.com/state/MO?employer=Carthage.
Bryant said he is working with Rife to get the information the Council needs, but he decried the politicization of the utility board.
“The political process does not work with a utility operation for this reason,” Bryant said. “Our goal is to provide low rates, reliable service and safe service. That means the safety of my employees is paramount. We ought not to ever be a political hot potato for anyone. My job is to make sure the people doing a very dangerous job every minute of every day, go home to their families every night. That is my goal and it will be for the rest of my career.”
