CHAFFEE COUNCILMAN LOSES SEAT AFTER LEAVING WARD

CHAFFEE - To all aspiring Chaffee City Council members: The council has a seat open; Ward 3 Councilman Randy Dooley has left.

Mayor Ron Moyers said at the council's Monday evening meeting that Dooley had moved from the ward, thus vacating his seat. This coming April Dooley would have been up for re-election after serving his first two-year term.

Dooley did not attend Monday's meeting. Moyers said he wanted to make an appointment to the seat by the next council meeting.

Following Monday's meeting, Moyers said Dooley had moved to the city's Ward 4 last week. Dooley had missed the council's last couple of meetings, he said.

Reached Monday night, Dooley said he "had just moved to a different house in town." He said he was disappointed to have to give up his council seat.

"I'm still intending to maintain a working relationship with the city," he said. "I'm not sure exactly what I'm going to be doing."

That working relationship would mean serving on committees where he is needed, he said. But Moyers, Dooley said, hasn't decided where that is yet.

Dooley didn't rule out a future campaign for a Ward 4 council seat, although he said he didn't anticipate one soon.

"We've got two good council people in that ward right now," he said. Representing the city in Ward 4 are Tom Cunningham and Brad Bader.

Moyers read a proclamation Monday supporting American Education Week, which started Sunday and runs until Saturday. He then said it was ironic that the proposition was being read almost two weeks after the failure of Proposition B, the state education-and-reform-tax measure. The package failed at polls across the state by more than a 2-to-1 margin on Nov. 5.

The mayor derided the bill, calling it a loophole-filled "piece of trash" that left too many unanswered questions.

"We can't run our city the way they are running the state. It's deplorable to think that our legislators sit there on their hands and let something like this slip through their fingers," he said.

"Anytime it takes 14 or 15 pages to put something together it's a piece of garbage."

The people he talked to, Moyers said, were not opposed to the tax; they opposed how the proposition was put together.

Council members Monday also ratified the results of the city's bond issue election two weeks ago. Voters passed the $500,000 bond issue to fund improvements to the city's waste-water plant and the installation of a sewer line and pumping station along North Frisco Street. The issue passed 395 votes to 145.

The council Monday approved a $275 expenditure for a computer system upgrade that would allow the city's payroll checks to be processed through the system. It is hoped the system will be upgraded by Jan. 1, said Moyers.

The city will have a local brick mason inspect several cracks and crevices in City Hall. If the work to repair the areas isn't too expensive, the city will have the work done.

City Administrator Reece Brown told the council the areas need to be fixed because mortar has fallen from them. Brown said water could get behind the building's rock front, causing a condition that would be expensive to fix.