By Natalie Bazinet
Staff Writer
CARIBOU — Agendas for the Caribou City Councilors meetings have been available on the city’s website for years, but a March 11 vote determined that the expanded agendas will also be available online within a reasonable amount of time.
The unanimous decision to have the expanded agendas posted electronically came after citizen Mark Reschke addressed the council during public input with his concern that it was hard to follow along with council’s decisions without all of the information.
The council approved the motion after discussing it under the “other business” portion of the agenda, with the understanding that the expanded agenda — the packet of information given to the councilors with additional information about agenda items — cannot feasibly be posted to the city’s website automatically at noon on Fridays before meetings and will not include any sensitive or personal information when posted.
The expanded agenda was one of two citizen-requested items discussed during the meeting — the second request was neither approved nor voted down.
Citizen Wilfred Martin addressed the council regarding the necessity of holding a workshop with concerned citizens to discuss the city’s budget; he also stated that there are a lot of people who are afraid to come to council meetings due to the belief that if they aggravate council, their taxes would go up.
“I know it sounds silly, but that’s a big percentage of the people in Caribou and a lot of them are older citizens.”
Mayor Gary Aiken informed Martin that he was open to a workshop, but requested at least 25-30 people turn out for the discussion; Aiken also suggested that councilors be informed as to what citizens wished to discuss so that the councilors could be prepared for the topics, as opposed to coming into the talks cold.
Citing high taxes and a budget too high, Martin also suggested at one point that the council limit who could attend the theoretical workshop.
Mayor Aiken was quick to interject; over similar rumbling amongst the councilors, Aiken told Martin that the workshop would be open to everyone.
“I’m talking about a workshop of people who live in Caribou from the private sector that they won’t get confused by people that work for the public sector in this city,” Martin added.
Again reminded that the city council can not stop citizens from attending a workshop, Martin rescinded his request but stated “I can get 25-30 people in here, but we don’t want to be coming in here and then it’ll be full of public sector people who will go against everything we say.”
As council deliberated with Martin about the proposed workshop and suggested topics, Reschke interjected with a reminder to Martin that both sides of an argument need to be presented.
“If someone wants to come up and speak against you, then you have to be willing to listen to them,” Reschke said.
While council was receptive to creating a workshop/public hearing type session to speak with concerned citizens, they did request that Martin gather public support for the event and find out what the citizens wished to speak about.
“This is your request, so I think you’re the one who should probably be putting a notice out,” said councilor Joan Theriault. “You came to us requesting a workshop, so get the people, get the questions, tell us when you’re ready and we’ll set up a date,” she added, emphasizing that she was willing to meet with anyone.
Martin agreed that Theriault’s suggestion was fair.
During the March 11 council meeting, a new cleaning service was selected for janitorial services, which were reduced from five days a week to two days a week, in order to reduce costs.
The two low bids were B&B at $845 per month and Damboise Cleaning Service at $667 a month.
City Manager Austin Bleess informed council that the city had done background checks on both low bidders and, due to the concerns that came up in the background checks, city staff suggested that council award the contract to B&B cleaners.
After a motion failed to award the contract to Damboise Cleaning Services, the council approved the cleaning contract with B&B.
The next regular meeting of the Caribou City Council will be at 7 p.m. on Monday, March 25 in the councilor chambers.
