Members of the Morton City Council approved a pay raise for the caretaker of Gust Backstrom City Park during their regular monthly meeting on Monday, Aug. 24, after the previous caretaker was let go by the city earlier this summer, Councilor Peter Hansen explained.
Morton City Council meetings are held in the Bob Lyle Community Center, located right next to Gust Backstrom Park, which also serves as a city-owned RV campsite. The caretaker’s role is to maintain the park and RV hookup sites.
“We’ve been working with FOMP (Friends of the Morton Parks), and what’s going to happen, mainly to this park right here,” Hansen said. “One of the things I brought up, and it’s been a topic for a long time, that the (caretaker) position doesn’t make very much and we really get what we pay for … I said that salary, that position, needs to be bumped up a little bit to encourage some better people to apply.’”
He added recently, Morton Mayor Rick Mead has even volunteered to work on the park’s bathrooms. The temporary pay raise, a total of $4,000 over the next four months, is being sourced from the city’s tourism funds. The current stipend for the park caretaker is $1,000 a month, Hansen added.
“Bump it up to $2,000 a month,” he said.
Hansen, also on the city’s budget committee currently drafting the city’s 2027 budget, stated a permanent pay raise will be incorporated next year’s budget for the Gust Backstrom Park’s caretaker. Councilors voted unanimously to approve the temporary pay raise.
During Monday’s meeting, further discussion was held concerning how members of the Morton City Council should go about holding town hall events. Councilor Jason Sawyer brought this issue up at their previous meeting in July, as previously reported by The Chronicle, citing concerns about wanting to avoid state Open Public Meeting Act (OPMA) violations while still holding town halls.
Specifically, Sawyer’s worry was accidentally holding an illegal public meeting by having three or more of the five Morton City Council members at a town hall, constituting a quorum.
After around 10 minutes of discussion, councilors began leaning toward adopting a second scheduled monthly meeting aside from their regular monthly council meetings, to only be held like a work session which could be used for town hall events. Being a work session means no voting actions would be taken, and attendance would not be mandatory either.
This would enable councilors to hold a town hall to gather public input without holding an illegal meeting — while still being able to give public notice of the town halls.
As regular Morton City Council meetings are held on the fourth Monday of each month, it was proposed to have their meetings for town halls on the second Monday of each month. Morton City Attorney Marissa Jay was tasked with drafting an ordinance establishing the meetings, which will be presented at a future Morton City Council meeting for adoption.
