Villisca resident files contempt of court complaint against City

GREGORY OREAR
General Manager/Editor
VILLISCA — A District Judge will listen to arguments that the City of Villisca violated a 2007 court ruling during a hearing next week in Montgomery County.
Former Villisca Municipal Power Plant board member Cheryl Lee Fidler filed the contempt of court complaint against the City Nov. 5, and a show cause hearing is scheduled for 1:30 p.m., Dec. 13.
Fidler’s complaint stems from a 2007 lawsuit she brought against the City, alleging city officials were improperly combining the electrical and water bills. While the judge in that case ruled the City could do combined billing, he said the funds from the sale of electricity should be allocated into a separate Power Plant account.
Fidler contends that still isn’t being done.
“The judge issued a permanent injunction against them, ordering them not to combine the funds,” Fidler said. “They are ignoring that order.”
Villisca City Attorney Carl Sonsken filed a response to the complaint Nov. 23, in which he stated the power plant passed a resolution Nov. 11 establishing a separate system for accounting, billing and payroll, that will be operational by the end of the year.
Fidler contends while the power plant did pass that resolution, the Council has to agree to the changes as well, which as this point, they have not.
“I want the light plant to be run the way it is supposed to be run,” Fidler said. “In my opinion, the City only wants the money. They don’t care about anything else. The light plant was established in 1931 and it was supposed to be run by the people, and the Council isn’t letting that happen.”
Mayor Larry Figgins explained the current billing system was implemented in 2007 to save the City money.
“According to other cities that had the same program, they did the same thing and their costs were cut in half. They had less labor and less bookkeeping,” he said. “She (Fidler) thinks we have taken money from the power plant, which we haven’t. We have been audited every year, and it has cost us thousand and thousands of dollars. It is just getting to where it is just costing us every time we turn around, just because we tried saving some money the first time.”
Fidler was appointed to the power plant board in 2005. But after she filed the lawsuit against the City, the board was reorganized by the Council.
“I had the City in litigation and I wasn’t going what the City wanted to do, so they disbanded the board and reformed it with new trustees in a period of about five minutes,” she said.
The five-member board, of which two had resigned, became a three-member board. Fidler was the only one of the remaining three board members who wasn’t reappointed.
And while she paid $3,000 in legal fees for the first lawsuit, she is representing herself in this action, claiming she has all the evidence she needs to prove her case, including power plant bank statements indicating funds weren’t being transferred.
“I just want them to do the right thing, that’s it,” she said. “A lot of people call me an activist or a troublemaker. But this is wrong, dead wrong, and it needs to be fixed.”
Figgins disagrees wholeheartedly.
“Each account has its own number, and the computer automatically divides out the money,” he said. “Everything has been kept separate, and we keep track. The City Clerk has kept a record of all the deposits and it’s all there. Any auditor who has come in the last few years has seen there is nothing wrong.”
However, with the power plant’s Nov. 11 resolution creating a separate billing and accounting system, Figgins believes the whole issue will soon be moot.
Assuming the Council approves the changes at its Dec. 14 meeting, Villisca residents will once again be receiving separate bills for water and electricity.
“It’s going to cost both entities a lot of money doing it that way,” Figgins said. “But I guess that is how they want it done.”