The Salem City Council has agreed to give its garbage contractor 50-cents more per customer for 120 days to help with inflationary costs. At that time, the council will look at the situation again. DBS had asked for an increase of $1 per customer per month.
City Attorney Mike Jones noted there was not a provision to reopen the contract, but DBS could give 90 days notice that they wanted out of the contract. City officials fear any new bids would be much higher than the extra dollar per customer DBS was seeking. Councilman Craig Morton failed to get a second on the motion to stick with the contract terms feeling it wasn’t fair to the other bidders to allow DBS to be paid more than their bid price.
The city will absorb the temporary increase and will not pass it along to customers.
In other action, the Salem City Council will implement a $250 a year fee on all video gaming machines in July of next year. Mayor Nic Farley hopes the fee will discourage additional video gaming expansion, but wanted to give the video gaming businesses enough time to plan for the fee. Non-profit organizations offering video gaming would be exempt from the fee.
Salem Police Chief Sean Reynolds has announced a nearly 24 year veteran of the police department, Sergeant Greg Wright, is retiring and will work his last shift on May 10th. Reynolds reports the city currently has two slots in the Southwestern Illinois Law Enforcement Academy reserved for the August class for new officers.
