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Nola Sizemore

Staff Writer

During a meeting of the Lynch City Council on Tuesday, serious concern was expressed over the city’s water plant operator, failure to attend the last eight regular scheduled meetings.

After a lengthy discussion on the matter, a motion was approved to send Wendy Brashears a final letter requesting her presence at a special called meeting on Nov. 13, noting if she fails to attend sanctions will be issued.

“This is getting to be a broken record,” said Carl Collins, a member of council. “I’m getting sick of this. It’s been eight months and for some reason, mayor, we can’t get our water plant operator up here to attend a meeting. We have asked and asked, saying we’re going to put a sting in it if she doesn’t start coming and still nothing. What are we going to have to do to get her here? We all need to ask her questions about our water plant operations. We’ve had about all we want of this stuff.”

Mayor Johnny Adams said Brashears was notified of the meeting. He asked the city clerk if Brashears had called to give a sufficient reason on why she was not attending the meeting.

“She said she wasn’t coming — she was taking her kids to the tree-lighting ceremony,” said Erica Eldridge, the city clerk. “Our meeting began at 5 p.m. and the tree lighting is not until 6 p.m.”

Collins suggested placing sanctions on Brashears for her failure to attend meetings as instructed by mayor and council.

“We’ve sent letters, called and she still refuses to come,” said Collins.

Adams said Brashears needs to be told if she wants to continue working for the city, she must attend the scheduled council meeting each month.

“It’s only one night a month,” said Adams. “If she doesn’t want to do this, she can leave. She was supposed to have had her license by December of last year and now it’s a year later and she still doesn’t have her license. These are things we need to discuss with her. “

Councilman Taylor Hall said he felt “it was time to bite instead of barking.”

A motion was made by Collins stating if Brashears fails to attend another council meeting without a verified excuse, she will be suspended without pay for a period of five days by order of the council for every meeting she fails to attend.

A special meeting was called for Nov. 13 at 1 p.m. to allow Brashears a chance to answer questions from the council and mayor. It was noted Brashears is scheduled to work on that day and, if she fails to attend, she will be suspended without pay.

In other action, Adams said the last time the city’s water plant was inspected it had a pending violation on the backwash system. He said the city has until April to make necessary repairs.

“The backwash is discharging into the creek,” said Adams. “We didn’t have any other violations. But, we have to get this fixed before April.”

Councilman Terry Lewis suggested a pond be dug for the discharge. He said the pond would dump out into the creek, but the backwash would settle in the pond for “so many” days and then discharged. He said this allows the chlorine to “burn out.”

Adams told council he talked with Leo Miller about using a re-circulating system to eliminate the need for a pond to solve the problem.

After rolling around several ideas, Kenny Widner, sewer plant operator, said he believed a pond would be more suitable to eliminate the problem. Councilman Winston Yeary suggested using an old abandoned concrete pond once used by a coal company in the area. Widner responded he will check to see if that will be suitable.

Reach Nola Sizemore at 606-573-4510 or at nsizemore@heartlandpublications.com