Sheldon, Iowa — The union representing City of Sheldon employees has requested that the current Collective Bargaining Agreement be extended for another year. But, the City Council took no action on that request at Wednesday’s meeting. City officials noted that if the agreement was extended for one year, the only item up for negotiation would have been wage increases. Without an extension, all aspects of the union contract will be open for negotiation. Before any action takes place there will have to be a ‘retention vote’ by the employees to show they want to stay with the union.
In other business, the council gave their approval to continue participation in the Northwest Iowa Regional Housing Trust, and heard from Scott Te Stroete on the status of Premier Communications facilities in Sheldon. Te Stroete outlined many of the improvements their company has made over the past few years, including extensive installation of fiber optic cable and updating the entire city with wider bandwidth which has made it possible for heavy use such as the cable system has been experiencing since the beginning of the pandemic. He also told the council that the Premier system has redundancy which means if some part of the system ‘goes down’, another part takes over, usually unnoticed by customers using the system at the time.
In his report to the council, City Manager Sam Kooiker said that another nuisance property, this one at 907 Western Avenue, is in the process of being demolished and that the old Can Redemption Center at 428 West Park Street is scheduled for demolition soon. The Public Works Director reported that despite the very dry weather recently, there is no concern about the amount of water that is available and they are not considering any restrictions at this time. He noted that the city is using about nine hundred thousand gallons of water per day at this time.
