Riverside looks to hire new billing clerk

RIVERSIDE ? The Riverside City Council voted Monday to offer the position of utility billing clerk to one of the 23 applicants. The opening was created earlier this summer when the former billing clerk, Missy Carter, accepted the council?s promotion to city clerk June 20. Prior to that time Carter had been the billing clerk since January.

Deputy City Clerk Donna Leyden said at Monday?s council meeting that the council could not release the name of the person chosen until he or she accepted the offer. Newly sworn-in councilor Christine Kirkwood asked about the city?s policies on promoting its employees. Specifically, she asked if current city employees are promoted to other positions regardless of their qualifications.

?I understand that, for a utility clerk, it?s not like you have to have a degree,? Kirkwood said. ?But if we had a position open up, as we did with Missy, do we have to offer them first consideration if they are not qualified for it??

Councilor Todd Yahnke said, ?If they don?t meet your standards ? the minimal qualifications for that job ? I don?t see how you could.?

Kirkwood asked, ?Does this tie our hands if we have another position open up? Do we have to go through that same procedure as we did with Missy? We did that with her, but she was qualified in that case.?

Kirkwood was referring to the fact that the city first sought applicants for its city clerk opening among city employees before it accepted applications from the public.

Councilor Rodney Waldschmidt said, ?It?s not an automatic hand-you-a-job-because-you?re-here.?

Yahnke explained how that particular applicant was chosen from the pool of applicants.

?The hiring committee reviewed all the résumés,? he began. ?We went down a list of five to 10 names of who we thought were best qualified. We sat down together and the people that all the committee thought were qualified were the ones we interviewed. From those, we interviewed four and made our selection.?

The council agreed to offer a wage of $12 an hour to the next billing clerk.

Leyden informed the council that Casey?s General Store does not want a sidewalk on its property. The council had previously considered building a sidewalk to connect Casey?s to the Riverside Senior Village and for the sidewalk to go all the way to Highway 22. Public Works Supervisor Brad Herrig said the city may be able to build a sidewalk on the property that belongs to the fire department.

The council considered a request from the Trinity United Methodist Church to reduce its water and sewer bill. The church owns a house which it rents out. The church recently received a water bill for $56 for the rental property. Kirkwood is the treasurer for the Methodist Church and looks at the bills. She said she thought that bill was high considering that no one lived in the house from June 1 to July 1.

?We don?t want to appear like we?re complaining or raising a big fuss over this,? Kirkwood said. ?It doesn?t amount to a lot of money, but [the church trustees] didn?t think it was right.?

The council discovered that the meter wasn?t read at the time the former occupants moved out. Waldschmidt motioned to charge the church $23 instead of $56. The council voted 4-0 on the motion. Kirkwood abstained.