Councilman resigns, says city repeating bad decisions

McCook City Councilman Jerry Reitz has been fighting for nearly two years to develop a well field north of McCook.

His level of frustration reached a peak Monday night when a majority of the council voted to hire an engineering team from Omaha and McCook. During the "Council Comments" portion of the meeting, Reitz announced his resignation from the council, citing an increase in his plumbing business.

This morning, during a phone interview, Reitz said the direction the council is taking on the water quality project was his motivating factor. "It's one thing to go the wrong direction, but it's another to keep making bad decisions. Enough is enough."

The council's agenda was full. It included a public hearing on the 2004-05 budget, which passed without comment from the council. It included a two hour closed session in which the council discussed legal issues. It included a ground water assessment report on the proposed water wells on the Hancock property south of McCook. It included a number of consent items and several zoning ordinances, plus a new job description for the public works director and a new position for utilities director.

In the middle of it, the council was asked to choose between two engineering firms to develop the city's water treatment facility -- the team of W Design of McCook and Jacobson Helgoth of Omaha or Black and Veatch of Kansas City, Mo.

Reitz made a motion to select the Kansas City firm. "We're on a new frontier," he told the council. "You hire a really good airline to take you across the country, but if you want to fly to the moon you hire NASA."

The motion failed on a 2-3 vote.

Mayor Jerda Garey thanked the firms for their interest in the project. A motion to hire the Omaha and McCook firm, and the action passed on a 3-2 vote.

Seven items remained on the agenda. Six included new and revised zoning regulations. Rietz and Kenny abstained from voting on any of those issues.

The remaining council members voted to pass five of the ordinances, a sixth one was tabled until the Aug. 16 meeting. Kenny did vote to approve a revised job description for the public works director and a new position of utilities director. That action passed on a 4-0 vote.

During the council comments portion of the meeting, Kenny told city attorney Rhonda Vetrovsky he hoped the contracts with the engineering team would be written in such a way that if the city has a problem, it could go back and revisit the issue.

Vetrovsky assured him there could be a 30-day escape clause written into the contract.

Reitz' letter of resignation to City Manager John Bingham can be found on page 2 of today's Gazette.