New London School Board gets gassed up

NEW LONDON - The New London school board was unable to approve the agenda Monday night before member Jesse Howard spoke up in disagreement over an action item. According to the agenda, the board was to approve a membership for the State of Iowa Fuel Card program, WEX, but Howard moved to make it a discussion item instead.

'I just don't think that as a board we were all informed,” he said. 'I would move to make discussion on that.”

New London superintendent Chad Wahls defended the decision by saying he briefly mentioned it in his report at the last meeting, but agreed there was no rush and further discussion was appropriate action.

The motion was seconded by Skye Wellington and will be an action item at the next meeting.

In the October meeting, Wahls mentioned the fuel tanks the school uses to fill up vehicles, such as buses and other school owned equipment, were wearing out and causing problems for the vehicles. The maintenance team at the school reported fuel filters on the vehicles were failing faster than usual, possibly because the tanks were not properly taken care of.

The City of New London owns two tanks: one for city purposes and one for the schools. The meters were purchased by Prairie AG, who is responsible for the gas and the care of the meter. Wahls said since Prairie AG has taken over, there have been a number of problems.

Wahls said the problems are frequent and reported that last Wednesday the tanks were unusable because the company did not put in the right kind of diesel fuel and the fuel inside the tank was frozen.

An option to solve the problem could be to put out bids for a new company to take over, but Wahls did not feel this was the right approach because Prairie AG owns the meters and could take them with them if their contract is not renewed.

This would leave the school board responsible for new meters as well as the purchasing contract, causing costs to rise. Instead, he proposed the WEX program which allows gas to be purchased from any participating gas station and for the amount to be tracked. The proposed plan would eliminate the tank problem.

Howard agreed that he was in favor of this idea, but did not want to approve it just yet, because the city owns the tanks and he did not want the council to think they were trying to breach the contract with Prairie AG.

'I just think that there's got to be communication because when you talk to a couple city council members, they think we're trying to pull out of this contract,” he said.

The board was unaware of how long the contract was in play, but decided to meet at the New London City Council meeting on Dec. 4, to discuss the possibility with the council.

'We don't want to upset anybody,” Wahls agreed. 'We want to continue to have a good working relationship with everyone.”

The next meeting of the New London school board will be Monday, Dec. 17, at 7 p.m. in the boardroom.

Note: This story has been corrected on Friday, Nov. 30, 2018.