The Village of South Jacksonville Board of Trustees held their public hearing last night and could do little else for their scheduled monthly meeting.
Village Treasurer and de facto City Clerk Mindy Olsen admitted to not issuing the regular scheduled board meeting’s agenda on time this week to be in compliance with the Open Meetings Act so no official action on any items could be taken last night. Units of government must submit an agenda for publication 48 hours prior to an open meeting to be in compliance with the state law.
The only action the board took was holding the public hearing on the Fiscal Year 2025 appropriations budget. Since the public hearing requires a 30-day notice, Village President Dick Samples opened and closed the hearing as there were no members of the public present to ask questions. The acceptance of the budget will have to be done at a special board meeting later this month.
Open discussion was then held on all remaining items that were released in an agenda on Wednesday. Village Public Works Superintendent Brian English provided both good and bad news about the village’s water plant at Oxville.
He says that the village was able to go on its own water for about 48 hours before switching back to the City of Jacksonville’s water because of a malfunction with the plant’s water pump controls: “We had our water turned on Tuesday after the holiday weekend. We got it started up, ran our water, our pumps shut off. When they turned back on – it’s a board called the VFD (variable frequency drive) was set up for our old pumps – we can’t get it switched over to our new pumps. Basically, we had to much pressure and it caused a blow out on our transmission line. Right now, we are trying to get everything figured out to see about getting this VFD switched over. If not, we will have to find new ones.”
The blow out on the transmission line occurred along the rural transmission in eastern Scott County near Old 36. The blow out ended up causing a boil order for rural customers for two days. English told the village board last night that the new pumps installed at the plant are at least three times stronger than the previous pumps, which is likely why the transmission line broke.
English says that the electrician they are working with believes that cost to repair the regulator drive would be about $20,000.
Village President Dick Samples says that the part hasn’t ran for the better part of a year, so no one had any way of knowing it was damaged: “It’s a device for the computer that tells the pumps to kick on and pump water when the water storage tower reaches a certain level. It hadn’t been used in over a year. We don’t know if lightning hit it or something happened to it in that time. We can program it, but then it kicks back into the original settings, and that’s not right.”
Samples says when it’s all said and done, the village will have spent about $325,000 to get the water plant operational again. He says a notice will be sent to village water customers once the village is back on its own water.
A timeline on when the pump regulator drive’s repair was not given an estimate. Village officials say that they hope to be back online with their own water before next month.