DUBOIS – Multiple updates were given during Monday night’s DuBois City Council workshop meeting.
Due to a procedural error, council’s agenda was only posted for 22 hours prior to its meeting. The state’s Sunshine Law requires that it post the agenda for all public meetings at least 24 hours in advance.
Council didn’t want to cancel the meeting, anticipating that it would be well-attended. So, it was conducted as a workshop meeting and no official action was taken.
Council will have a special meeting March 4 to handle urgent items of business that cannot wait until its next regularly-scheduled meeting March 11.
For this meeting’s purposes, public comment was modified to comment only. Council did indicate it would answer any questions it could but would note questions to address next time.
Council introduced Shawn McCleary as its interim police chief, noting that Chief Blaine Clark had been placed on paid administrative leave Feb. 16.
Shawn Lesky of DuBoisLIVE announced that DuBois Days planning has reached a new milestone.
As of Monday morning, DuBois Days now has a bank account with Next Tier Bank, and can receive donations. Organizers also plan to launch a GoFundMe fundraiser page.
Lesky noted council normally provides funds to Community Days, and since DuBois Days will fill that gap in 2024, he hoped council would consider financial support so organizers could make event bookings.
With the cancellation of Community Days, Lesky said some vendors have already booked another event, and DuBois Days needs to work on booking vendors, especially since there will be no parade this year.
Council was presented with recommended pool rates, which were unchanged from 2023. The rates, however, will not be official until finalized by council.
Council was also presented with a $5,000 donation from Mike Arblaster of Domtar for the city to purchase and plant trees.
Kristen Vida of DuBois sought an update on the 2022 audit.
Jan. 9 Interim City Manager Chris Nasuti reported the city’s receipt of the 2022 audit draft. He planned to provide copies to each council member for review and questions before it was finalized.
At that meeting, Nasuti noted the only weakness was a lack of in-house personnel to perform audits internally—a “normal” issue according to the auditing firm.
Vida suggested that this weakness could be easily resolved without hiring any new employees or firing any existing employees.
During her previous employment, she said there was a similar remark on their audit, but they were able to remedy it by contracting the auditor to come in monthly to perform necessary accounting.
Later in the meeting, Nasuti indicated that the audits had been approved and submitted to relevant state agencies.
He said there had been a request for proposals for the 2023 fiscal year, but no firms have expressed interest at this time.
Nasuti did say he’s reached out to a few people and hopes to have a recommendation for the next meeting.