Granada Trustees Approve New Billing Procedures

Granada Town Complex

The Granada Trustees approved combining several savings accounts into the general operating account for future transactions. “This will make things less complicated for the town,” said Jackie Malone, Town Clerk.  She said she has to write separate checks from different accounts to pay bills and using a general operating account will be easier.  “Each of the checks will be notated for the accounts they’re intended for,” she explained.  The VALE account, which benefits victims of crimes, may need to be kept separate from the others and this will be explored for a correct action.

Granada will also investigate using a credit or debit card ‘swiper’ attachment for payment of bills. To date, the town only accepts payment of bills through checks or cash.  Trustee Shannon Venturi made the suggestion, stating, “This can be attached to a computer or a phone and acts like a credit card machine, only the charge for transactions is about half the cost of a credit card machine.”  Malone will look into securing one for the Town.  The Trustees also decided to pool several individual Fireman’s Pension CD’s.  Currently six or seven are being held and the town may see more return on investment by consolidating them into one larger CD account.

The Trustees passed on first reading, an ordinance disconnecting a tract of land from the town, known as Jesse Melton Property. The property is along Hoisington Street and CR FF.5 in Tract A, a res-subdivision of Tract NO 35 of Manvel Farms.

A review of the policies for rental of the Town Complex will be reviewed. The Trustees will determine if a community holiday tree lighting and visit with Santa on December 8 would conflict with the Senior Citizen’s schedule.  The senior class wants to hold a giant indoor yard sale at the complex in the future, but the Trustees want to make sure that items that could damage the tile floor would be left outside.  Flu shots have been scheduled for October 16 between 4pm and 6pm and the Senior’s Halloween Party is set for October 27 from 6pm to 10pm.

John McMillan told the Trustees he has hired a part time employee to assist him with town maintenance tasks. The person will work thirty hours a week and will be on a probation status for the first six months of employment.  McMillan said the town’s ISO insurance rating should be upgraded from a seven to a five, based on general water flow improvement of the town’s fire hydrants.  “They had been running at 600 pounds of pressure and now they’re up to about 1,100,” he said.  He remarked that the response and turn out of County Fire Department personnel during the last house fire aided the ISO rating with the number of responders and pieces of equipment that came out.

Granada Police Chief David Dougherty said the town recently received the intergovernmental agreement for the second phase of the CDOT grant for the safe route to schools project. Dougherty said CDOT engineers felt that because of the length of the project and the onset of colder weather, the sidewalk and curb construction project would probably begin once the school year had ended.  He added that the City of Lamar will bill Granada for its share of communication software upgrades known as E-Force.  Several Prowers County agencies including E911, Granada and the Lamar Police Department are sharing in a percentage of the cost of the updated program.

By Russ Baldwin