Former mayor raises budget questions
In the News
Despite objections posed from the gallery by a former mayor, the Maryville City Council moved forward Wednesday with approval of the 2016-2017 municipal budget.
Keith Walburn, a retired officer of LMP Steel in Maryville, now a division of Nucor Corp., served three full terms on the council from 1976-1984, including consecutive one-year terms as mayor in 1978-’79. He addressed the governing board during the meeting’s opening “petitions and requests” section.
Walburn said his primary reason for taking the floor was to voice opposition to elimination of the manager’s position at Northwest Missouri Regional Airport, a step Maryville City Manager Greg McDanel said was taken as a cost-saving move.
The position has been held since 2003 by Kevin Rankin, who has also long served as the airport’s “fixed-base operator,” a private-sector role that public airports often grant to a person or organization charged with handling such duties as fueling, hangaring, tying down, and parking aircraft in addition to offering airplane maintenance, flight instruction, and other services.
McDanel said the city had a contract with Rankin to continue as the airport’s FBO through fiscal 2018, but that Rankin opted to cancel the agreement after being told that the manager’s position was being eliminated.
In his remarks to the council, Walburn said trying to run the airport, currently closed for runway replacement, without a manager or an FBO was a “scary” prospect that would expose the city to “potential liability.”
Rankin is to be replaced, at least for now, with three part-time airport attendants who McDanel said will be trained to fuel aircraft and perform other basic tasks related to airport operation. They will not, however, undertake higher-level aircraft maintenance or mechanical repairs.
McDanel said after the meeting that the airport would, at some point, seek a provider for fixed-base operator services, and that City Hall would work with the Airport Board to that end. He declined, however, to set a timetable for bringing a new contractor on board.
On other fronts, Walburn weighed in on a proposal, still in the early planning stages, to construct a new Maryville Public Safety police and fire headquarters due to concerns related to space and security at the current facility, a converted grocery store located at 222 E. Third St.
Walburn said the existing headquarters, which he played a role in acquiring for the city as a member of the council, has a steel-beam skeleton and has not reached the end of its useful life.
He suggested converting the structure for sole use as a fire station and building a new police facility across the street on what is now a city-owned parking lot.
The ex-mayor also questioned a budget line item approving the purchase of a street-striping machine
for $52,000, which he characterized as a “fixed expense” that would continue to cost the city money for maintenance.
City officials recommended purchasing the machine late this summer after contractor bids for striping work — including all of Main Street — came in more than $30,000 above estimates.
In remarks on the budget later in the meeting, McDanel defended purchasing the machine, saying that striping could now be carried out by city workers for a fraction of what it would cost to hire a contractor.
McDanel added that a city crew will now be able to proceed with striping the newly paved portion of North Main Street, work, he said, that will have “an immediate public safety impact.”
