With a very special audience in attendance, members of the Pine Bluffs town council considered the professional services contract of Stateline No. 7 Architects and Lidstone and Associates during Monday’s regular session of the council.

In attendance at the meeting were several students from Pine Bluffs Elementary School third grade class. Mrs. Wanda Theobald, teacher to the students, informed council that her class was working on their community unit and wanted to see how a real town council operates. As part of their assignment, students had to get the names of every member of council.

After thanking the students for being in attendance and ensuring every council member had introduced themselves, council continued with the business at hand.

After a short review, members of council approved the professional services contract of Stateline No. 7 Architects for work at the Community Center, one

of two professional services contract up for review during the meeting.

In reviewing the second contract held by Lidstone and Associates, members of council agreed they needed more information from Lidstone and Associates before they could approve more design work on the water distribution project.

"We really need to consider the direction we’re going to go moving forward with our water projects," said mayor Bill Shain.

"We’ve already paid for most of the design phase of this project; does it make sense for us to go ahead and pay for something that we don’t know when we’ll have the money to complete," Shain questioned.

A key to the council’s consideration was at what point could the town break up the project and put portions out for bid.

"We’ve sort of fallen into a way of doing things that aren’t necessarily the right way of doing them," said councilman Bill Cushing.

Driving the conversation was the council’s desire to award more of the contracts to local companies such as Alliance Construction Solutions of Wyoming.

"I’ve done about $90,000 worth of work for the town over the last ten years or so and put back about $60,000 in that same time through the use of local materials," said Scott Brelsford of Alliance.

"Not keeping that money in Laramie County, watching it go out of state, is kind of a bummer," Brelsford added.

After some more discussion, council agreed to keep current professional services contracts in place with Lidstone and Associates but, as councilman Mark Fornstrom noted, "leave ourselves open to future request for proposals."

Members of council also decided to have Lidstone and Associates present at the next council meeting.

"We need Lidstone to come up here and defend why we should move forward on this particular project," Shain said.

"I think we’ve gone from not having enough information to having just enough information to ask the right questions," added councilman Alan Curtis.

In addition to the professional services contract, council is determining if it should spend $145,000 on further design work or cease the design portion, for now, and complete as much work as possible on the water distribution project with the money saved.

In other business, members of council, on the recommendation of councilman and police commissioner Fornstrom, agreed to offer the position of Pine Bluffs police officer to Richard Hillhouse.

Members of council also approved a building permit to Tim Bland for a privacy fence at 118 Elm Street, sight of Elite Towing and Recovery and approved a change order to install water meters at the new day care center.

In the update of committees, town attorney Alex Davison explained that a slight snag was reached in clearing the title of the old care and share property, next to the new daycare.

"Apparently there is an unreleased mortgage on that property dating from some thirty years back," Davison said.

Davison went on to explain that somehow when the one of the owners of the property, Richard Vossler, purchased the land and paid the mortgage, the title was never released by the previous mortgage holder.

"The mortgage holder before the Vosslers is deceased further complicating matters," Davison said adding he was a personal friend with Rich Vossler and had already spoke with him on the matter.

"We’re going to see if an affidavit certifying the mortgage was paid is good enough for the title company," said Davison. "Rich (Vossler) said he has the supporting documentation and is willing to dig them up and present them to the title company."

Davison said the issue wasn’t a serious hindrance to the town acquiring the land and should be cleared up soon.

With the coming daylight savings time change, council will once again hold their regular meeting beginning at 7:30 p.m. The next regular session of the Pine Bluffs council will be held at town hall, Monday March 15 beginning at 7:30 p.m.