Alva Review-Courier -

A week ago Monday night Kiowa's City Council held a special meeting to give an update on the city burn site, the proposed city budget for 2019, and an executive session to discuss non-elected employees.

City Administrator Lou Leone said the first executive session lasted one hour at the end of the meeting. The second one was 15 to 20 minutes, he said, and confirmed that no action was taken after returning to open session except to adjourn the meeting.

Mayor Ron Rohr opened the meeting with The Lord's Prayer and The Pledge of Allegiance. There were several members of the public present. After a few minutes into the meeting all council members were present, including Bill Watson, R.L. Simpson, Russ Molz, Brian Hill and Tom Wells. Leone also sat at the council table as did City Clerk Trish Brewer.

Leone updated everyone at the meeting on what's transpired at the city burn site the last few weeks. He said the city has a new gate in place (after the previous one was vandalized). The burn site has been closed over a month after people threw construction waste and other trash there. Only limbs have been permitted to be dumped there although grass always was also until recently. That's after Leone discovered Kiowa did not have a permit to dispose of grass (compost) there.

Leone told the group he has filed for a grass permit and it will hopefully be processed in two weeks, depending on the state.

City employee Shon Webster sat at the burn site the afternoon and evening of July 20 at designated hours and Saturday morning. He reportedly had several people dump limbs. However, the city had run their Thursday grass route to pick up yard waste, so lots had already been dumped.

Leone confirmed the city's burn site is less than a half acre of composting. The administrator said he favors going back to the days of about 10 years ago when you had to go by the city office and get a key to the burn site to dispose of yard waste there.

Webster said the city does need to keep a dumpster there. Leone said an inspector who looked at the site recently confirmed that having a dumpster there is required.

The council hopes that by having new security cameras in place, it will help them see what people do and it will serve as a deterrent to illegal dumping and vandalism.

The budget discussion will run in a separate article.