Board stalls action on rail equipment

By Rupert Howell
Batesville city officials voted to pay claims, requests for payments on contracts and to purchase new police vehicles, but they “balked” when asked to pay for $120,000 in electronic equipment for the new rail crossing proposed on 35 N at the Indian Mound site.
The city has an agreement with Iowa Pacific Railroad to place a crossing there and has budgeted approximately $250,000 while receiving a $180,000 bid for the crossing’s installation.
Not wanting to buy a “pig in a poke” and without much comment Mayor Jerry Autrey said, “We need to be careful with that,” and instructed City Engineer Blake Mendropp to look further into who was responsible for purchasing equipment to be installed and where it would stored until put into place.
Iowa Pacific Railroad has recently shown signs of slow and late payment to vendors and employees of the Polar Express North Pole Excursion causing extra concern among city officials about the purchase.
Other requests for payment from Mendropp included requests to pay Brocato Construction two amounts, $64,372 for work on Eureka Street project and $22,530 for preparation work at the Indian Mound crossing site. Both were approved along with a request to pay Tri-State Metering $175,947 for a gas line relocation project on Highway 6 west.
Another Mendrop request was to pay Lehman-Roberts $320,000 for asphalt work completed last year. The amount included work on city streets as well as the Downtown area.
The city engineer also requested permission to proceed with advertisement for bids to purchase two “Splash Pads,” one for Trussell Park and one for Patton Lane Park.
BBI, Inc.’s low bid of $5,824 for Municipal Court software that brings capabilities to required standards was approved. Syscon was the only other bidder in the amount of $17,000.
Batesville Police Chief Tony Jones received approval to purchase four new Ford SUV vehicles at state contract price from Gray Daniels Ford in Brandon for  a total of $109,386.
Jones explained the department was trying to “…get away from the Dodge Chargers,” stating the vehicles were, “hard for officers with equipment on to get in and out of.”
The chief went on to explain that four of the five recently purchased 2016 Dodges were using oil and said he was told that was normal by a company spokesman.
Jones advised city board members that something was wrong when a motor with 20,000 miles was using a quart of  oil every 500 miles and indicated he had turned the vehicles’ records over to the city’s legal staff.
Fire Chief Tim Taylor’s request for the city to accept a quote from Global Install of $2,025 to place fire training devices into the training facility on Panola Avenue was approved. A competing quote was reported in the amount of $5,600.
Approval was also given to Taylor to purchase six bunker coats and pants (turnouts) for his department using the state bid price of $2,203 each.