Couple honored for years of service

Shirley and Roger Harris were honored at last week’s Pea Ridge City Council meeting for their decades of service to the city. The couple retired from the Pea Ridge Volunteer Ambulance Service which recently merged with the Fire Department.
Shirley and Roger Harris were honored at last week’s Pea Ridge City Council meeting for their decades of service to the city. The couple retired from the Pea Ridge Volunteer Ambulance Service which recently merged with the Fire Department.

— Nearly speechless, Shirley and Roger Harris smiled as they were applaued by more than a dozen volunteer firefighters, city department heads and officials and City Council members for their many yeras of service to the city of Pea Ridge.

The the City Council meeting, Fire Chief Frank Rizzio presented the couple with a clock adorned with a brass plate commemorating the Harris’ service in the ambulance department to the city. The couple retired this past year and the ambulance service merged with the Fire Department.

“I’m speechless. I’ve enjoyed every minute of it,” Shirley Harris said.

Roger recalled that he began working in 1958 when patients were transported in the hearse owned by Sisco Funeral Home.

“We appreciate everything you’ve done,” Mayor Jackie Crabtyree said. “You’ve been a mentor to me. When I first went full time, I didn’t know beans ... Fortunately, we had people in place who knew what they were doing,”

Rizzio said that over the past 60 years of recorded history of the fire department, there were many benchmarks, one of which is the recent merger with the Ambulance Service.

In other business, the City Council were presented with the audit report for the Water/ Wastewater Department from Leroy Duell, CPA, with Keen & Company.

During the presentation of the audit, council member Nadine Telgemeier took note of the auditor’s comment about “material weakness identified.”

Duell said it was because of “inadequate segregation of duties with respect to cash transactions,” but that was a factor of the size of the city and of the department. After much discussion, with Telgemeier asking how to solve the problem, Duell said:

“It’s not a problem.”

City recorder/treasurer Sandy Button said: “I’ve been here 33 years, and that’s always been there.”

“With the staff that you have, youre people are doing what they can do,” Duell said. “It’s just to make you aware of the condition because the Council is the oversight body for the department and you need to be aware that the condition does exist.”

“Can the risk be minimized through technology,software ... are there ways to be a little more accountable?” Telgemeier continued.

Duell said: “I’m just pointing out the condition.

I’m not saying it’s a problem.”

In other business, the mayor presented two ordinances addressing the merger of the Ambulance Department with the Fire Department and asked council members to review the ordinances to consider at the March meeting.

News, Pages 1 on 02/24/2010