City Hall 4Jamestown, ND (KCSi-T.V. News) — The Jamestown City Council met in Special Session Thursday afternoon (May 30, 2013) at City Hall for the purpose of consulting with the City Attorney, concerning territorial service claims by Stutsman Rural Water District and the City of Jamestown.

Council Members Gumke, and Brubakken were not present.

City Attorney Ken Dalsted was present.

At Thursday’s meeting, the city’s legal counsel Tami Norgaard, from the Vogel Law Firm in Fargo, joined the meeting by telephone conference.

She went through the draft agreement, saying the draft will include provisions approved by the city.

She added that she was not comfortable with some areas concerning the scope of service, and specifically with Great River Energy, contract issues.

The agreement with GRE, concerning water service is with the city, and SRWD.   Stutsman Rural Water District, wants the new agreement to address what occurs if a “material breech ” of contract occurs, regarding serving GRE with water.

Mayor Andersen said she is leery of the agreement having other issues “unnecessarily lumped into the draft.”

Ms. Norgaard also reviewed other draft agreement provisions.

Council Member Buchanan commented about back up emergency water service provisions in the draft, to Jamestown Regional Medical Center.

The agreement includes a territory swap allowing the new Titan Machinery building to be served by Rural Water and an area south of the airport to be served by the city of Jamestown. It also sets the boundary between the two utilities as the city limits as they existed in 2010.

The city wants a 40-year contract, and Rural Water District wants to extend the contract beyond that if Rural Water still has debt to the federal government.

Thursday’s meeting follows a joint meeting on Tuesday this week, between the city council, and SRWD board members.

It was noted that attorneys planned to review new wording for the issues discussed at that meeting.

The parties have purportedly agreed on principle on the majority of issues, but desired different language.

Any agreement between the City and SRWD would require the agreement of USDA officials and representatives of the North Dakota Financing Authority because both the city and Rural Water are indebted to those organizations.

Mayor Andersen moved, and it was approved unanimously to have Ms. Norgaard authorize and submit the draft changes during the Thursday meeting to SRWD.

The issues and draft revisions move from the City Council to the Stutsman Rural Water District board for their review.

The meeting was shown live on CSi Cable 67 followed by replays.