Alva Mayor Kelly Parker announced some really good news at Monday night’s city council meeting. Since the Alva swimming pool was closed by the state health department, the city has been seeking ways to build a new aquatic facility. A committee of citizens was appointed to address the funding for the project.

Fundraising efforts received a big boost when the Washburn family donated $500,000 to the project to honor the memory of Cory Washburn. Now Mayor Parker said he’s been notified by Johnny Jones that the Share Trust has pledged to match all donated funds up to $1.5 million. With the Washburn gift and other donations plus the match by Share Trust, the pool fund now stands at over $1 million.

Over the years, the Share Trust has helped the community in many ways. However, they like to see citizens get behind projects too. That’s why many of their donations come in the form of matches to citizen efforts.

Donations are being handled through Freedom West CDC, a non-profit organization, so they qualify as tax write-offs. Blake Jordan is chairman of the pool fundraising committee. Dr. Kay Decker is on the committee and also executive director of Freedom West. You can contact them or the city office about donating.

Long City Council Meeting

Many years ago, my late husband Lynn came up with the idea of videotaping meetings we attend for news and posting them on our website. We keep the links to the six most recent videos there. If you want to see past videos, you can try searching the website or you can search YouTube. They are posted under Lynn Martin but searching his name will bring up years of material. You might want to include the name of the meeting or event.

These videos help the newspaper because when we quote someone, we can prove the quote is accurate. It also expands our ability to cover meetings and events. A non-writer can cover a meeting through video and turn it over to a writer who can turn it into a story.

Recently, Alva City Council meetings have rarely lasted much over an hour. That’s well within the life of my video camera battery so I haven’t run an extension cord to a wall outlet for long-term power. I regretted that Monday night. The meeting ran past the two-hour mark.

Right in the middle of an interesting debate over ambulance rates, my camera turned off. I pushed the power button and realized my battery was dead. Through various experiences, I’ve learned to carry backups. I grabbed the extension cord and camera power cord from my case. Of course, the extension cord was tangled but I managed to stretch it to the wall.

When I turned on the camera, at first it didn’t recognize it had power. It kept turning off. I even pulled out my phone and started recording audio just in case. Finally the camera decided to accept the new power source and began working. That’s why there are gaps in my video of the meeting.

As the meeting continued, I began to worry about the capacity of the SD card holding the recording. I carry a spare for that too. I had it in my hand, but luckily I didn’t need it. Changing out the card requires pulling the camera off the tripod and removing the mounting plate to get to the SD card slot which would have been another break in the video.

While I’m operating the video, I’m also taking written notes about the meeting to help when I write about it for the paper.

Two things on the agenda caused the long meeting. First, the city council heard a report from the auditor on the FY 19-20 audit of city funds. There were questions and discussion. Then there was a lot of discussion about the ambulance rate adjustments. The audit was accepted by a 7-1 vote. The ambulance rate discussion was tabled to be addressed by a couple of committees before coming back to the council.

You can watch the two-hour meeting video on our website at http://www.AlvaReviewCourier.com to learn about the issues. There were two different segments about ambulance rates. In the first, Taylor Dowling was reporting on the Public Safety Committee meeting where the rates originated. The second segment occurred later in the meeting when the full council addressed the issue.

I’ll be writing about the meeting in stories this weekend in the Alva Review-Courier Friday and Sunday editions.