NJN logo

KIMBERLY—On Monday night the Kimberly City Council established the monthly salaries for its members throughout the 2020-24 term.

A unanimous vote passed in favor of keeping the current rate of $100 per month to council members and $250 per month to the mayor in place.

The council also heard an update on an ongoing project to build a storm shelter in Kimberly. According to Jim Lehe, the job has been put up for bid twice without an offer being made—something Lehe says he’s never seen before.

“The federal law allows us to do what they call noncompetitive proposals. We go directly to a contractor and negotiate something without having to rebid it a third time,” said Lehe. “All is not lost. We’ll find somebody to build this.”

In other business, the city will be changing its phone contract from Verizon to AT&T. The council voted to purchase four new phones, two of which would go to the fire department and the other two would go to the police department.

The new AT&T plan will include a service called FirstNet—a public safety communications platform.

“This is a government plan to where if there is a natural disaster, it [FirstNet] takes priority over any cell service,” said Kimberly Police Chief Ricky Pridmore.

According to a FirstNet representative, the service allows users to connect to the nearest cell tower, regardless of the network. The representative also said FirstNet would provide temporary towers called “deployable units” for the community if a disaster occurred that disabled the cell towers in range.