DOE visits Harrington council, says records falsified

Library program

Harrington – About a dozen students aged 5 to 12 attended the Harrington Public Library's after-school program on Dec. 16. Instructor Kris Moritz expressed appreciation of parents and other volunteers who caused the project session for making Christmas decorations to function smoothly. One project was a clear ball partially filled with Styrofoam beads. The students then painted and swirled the balls in glitter paint. The next group of decorations involved making balsa wood Santa and snowmen. The children were provided markers to color them.

The group has plans to learn how to perform line dancing in January, and some students were eager to begin learning and practicing the steps. At the conclusion of the session, the participants had hot chocolate and candy canes for a snack.

City Council meeting

The Harrington City Council met Dec 15 at city hall with Mayor Nathan Luck at the helm. As with the last council meeting, the YouTube version was of sorely limited value as a record of legal significance.

The mayor did ask the visitors to acknowledge their presence, but the first half of the names could not be heard. The mayor also made no attempt to identify the participating council members. Some of the individuals present included council members Dave Buddrius, Stephen Hardy, Justin Slack and Peter Davenport, plus Clerk Jere Lee and visitors Scott McGowan, Tim Campau, Andy O'Neill (DOE), Casie Monge (Level II Operator for Harrington), mayor-elect Jess Silhan, Joe Armand, Denisa Holling, Stan Roth, Cynthia Silhan and others.

Mayor Luck turned the meeting over to Andy O'Neil from the Dept. of Ecology and Casie Monge. O'Neill came to educate, build a network of communication between the city and the Dept. of Ecology and to attempt to provide sound recommendations for the city to follow in order to avoid future fines and penalties. He emphasized that the city needs to be cautious in hiring new employees for the wastewater treatment plant.

Among a multitude of issues brought up was that newer public works employees had recently falsified some records. This was a concern, since Harrington has allowed itself to get back into possibly facing more penalties.

Monge made it clear that she needs to have confidence in the person filling out the required data from the water treatment plant, since her license and credibility is on the line for all the data that is turned in by the City of Harrington. Monge's comments included the level of trust she had in former public works supervisor Scott McGowan and his abilities. Apparently, Mayor Luck withheld payment to Casie Monge for six weeks for the services for which Harrington had contracted for her employee McGowan. The mayor took issue with having to remit a payment that might benefit McGowan when McGowan would not take orders from the mayor. This action by the mayor appears blatantly inappropriate, since McGowan is no longer employed by the city.

Other issues discussed briefly included the Mayor saying he has no update on the Johnson Family Towing lease and brief and interesting revelations regarding irregularities that occurred when the city voted to be included into Fire District #6 (the end result being that the city will be refunded the tax monies that had gone to the Fire District).

Mayor Luck concluded the meeting with a number of budget revisions with no action taken on any of the topics.