City Of Fruitland Newsletter

CITYHALL

City Council Meeting: The Fruitland City Council will meet in regular session on Tuesday evening, August 10, 2010, at 7:30 p.m. in the City Council Chambers. The usual staff meeting will held in the conference room at 7:00 p.m. to review the agenda with council members. A copy of the agenda and the unofficial minutes of the July 13 meeting are enclosed for council members’ review.

Sign Ordinance First Reading: A first reading of the new sign ordinance will be done on August 10, 2010. This will set new fees for business signs and spell out rules for use of other types of signs by individuals and nonprofit organizations.

Dog Ordinance First Reading: A revision of the Animal Control Ordinance #186 will be presented to Council on August 10, 2010. Our current Ordinance gives the responsibility of dealing with dog complaints to Wicomico County. Unfortunately the County has cut their enforcement arm in the Humane Society and has turned over dealing with these issues to the Sheriff’s Department.

Website and IT RFP: RFP’s for website maintenance and information technology services will be put out for bid in September. Currently the City is without formal contracts for these two important services. The RFP’s are currently under review by staff and the current provider will be advised next week.

Drug Testing: A final review of the drug testing policy for the City is underway and the implementation schedule will be formally announced to the employees in September and full implementation will begin in January.

ADP Payroll Processing: A productive meeting was held this week with representatives from ADP to work through some issues that have arisen in the implementation of our changeover in outsourcing our payroll. An on-going evaluation is in process on the cost benefits of this system.

Credit/Debit Cards at City Hall: We continue to work with GovPay on the installation of a CC/Debit Card system and our goal is to have the system in place in October. We are consulting with other jurisdictions using the same system. The system will have no ongoing cost to the City except minor initial IT upgrades.

Real Estate Tax Bills: Property tax bills have been processed and will be mailed at the beginning of next week.

POLICE

Our “National Night Out” block party held on Tuesday (3rd) was very successful. We had the largest turnout since the beginning of the event three years ago. A huge “thank you” to Cooper Townsend and his staff, all the local businesses, civic organizations and individuals for their donations and time rendered preceding and during the event.

PUBLIC UTILITIES

Installation of an 8- inch isolation valve was completed on School Street to minimize water service outage to the Fruitland Intermediate School by field service staff.

Field service staff installed a new water service at the new Fruitland Falcons Concession Building on South Brown Street this week. A new sanitary sewer service will be installed within the next couple of weeks.

Water meter reading for courtesy leak notification was performed this week. A total of 206 (9.8%) accounts of the 2,097 read, were identified as having a potential leakage problem. Property owner notification should be completed by early next week.

Staff performed a demonstration “point repair” on a defective 8-inch sanitary sewer main line located on Jefferson Street. This work is part of the overall Infiltration and Inflow reduction program the City has undertaken to alleviate leakage within the sanitary sewer system.

OTHER

Happy Birthday to Corporal Matt Brown who turned another year older this past Thursday (5th), and to Doug Ransley on Tuesday (10th). Best wishes from all of us.

The Live Demonstration for a Proposed All Terrain Vehicle (ATV) Park, originally scheduled for Thursday, August 5, has been rescheduled and will be held on Thursday, August 26, 2010, at 7:00 p.m. at 613 Cedar Lane. This FREE demonstration is open to the Public and ALL are welcome!

On This Day In History

On August 6, 1787, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, delegates to the Constitutional Convention begin debating the first complete draft of the proposed Constitution of the United States.

Today’s Quote

“Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.”
Immanuel Kant