Ritzville Council discusses upgrades for the city

The Ritzville City Council met on Tuesday, Sept. 1, and began the meeting by passing a motion to provide up to $10,000 for the Well No. 9 Project. This was a unanimous decision.

It was deemed a reasonable cost to obtain a diagnosis of the remaining problems at the Well No. 9 Pump Station.

The Ritzville Golf Association has an informal committee reviewing the golf course fees to see if there are any improvements to be made.

Additionally, the current building permit fees are being reassessed to see if there are any changes to be made there.

The Finance Committee met with Visions Municipal Services on Aug. 20 to discuss a Cemetery Program that would digitize all of the records so as to retrieve information more efficiently.

The Visions Municipal Services Company, based in Spokane, Washington, specializes in building innovative software for local government solutions.

The cost for this software was stated to be a total of $6,000. The software would ensure the accuracy of plots still vacant and of those already occupied.

Larry Kiesz and family donated $2,075 to the project, which leaves only the remaining $3,925.

This amount will come from the Cemetery Capital Investment Fund that is set up for capital improvements such as this one. This money is set aside solely for the cemetery and cannot be used for anything else.

There is a $600 per year maintenance fee for the software as well; this cost will be covered by a separate fund that has an input of approximately $2,000 annually.

This same company is also interested in being contracted for IT services for Ritzville.

Previously the city has worked with Adams County for these services. By switching to Visions Municipal Services there would be a savings of $2,300 annually.

The City of Ritzville is the only portion of the contract with Adams County that the Council passed terminating.