HERMANN – After casting the deciding vote Monday night on three bills, Mayor Bruce Cox mildly chided two aldermen for their opposition that he says casts a bad light on the city to outsiders. It’s not the first time the mayor has expressed frustration with the pair’s contrary positions on issues.

Cox cast the tie-breaking vote on three key pieces of legislation during Monday night’s first regular session of the month: An electricity rate increase, a gross receipts fee payment plan for the Electricity Division and the city’s Fiscal Year 2027 operating budget. On all three bills, Aldermen Dolores Grannemann and Jim Schirmer voted against while Aldermen Chad Walton and Ash Geers voted in favor. That put the deciding vote in Cox’s hands. He voted in favor of all three bills.

After acting on routine measures and moments before adjournment, the mayor offered comments aimed at Schirmer and Grannemann without specifically referring to them. “I’m very disappointed,” Cox said. “We worked really hard on the budget,” he added.

But perhaps more important than the pair’s votes on these bills, Cox views their opposition as a dent in the city’s image to people outside the community.

“The split voting doesn’t paint a good picture” of the city, he said.

About a year ago, the mayor voiced disappointment about opposition from Grannemann and Schirmer regarding a big increase in the city’s rate for electricity — a 10-percent hike in the first year of a three-year plan to make up a $300,000 deficit that developed over several years in the Electricity Division. The two aldermen offered critical comments about the way city government had failed to deal with the developing deficit in that part of the Department of Public Works.

As the discussion was growing more heated, the mayor issued a directive aimed at heading off further debate, suggesting at that time the lack of unanimity on the part of the board was hurting the city’s image.

At the end of Monday night’s session, Grannemann offered to explain why she voted against the city’s $15-million budget, but the mayor declined to listen, saying the meeting was over.

After the meeting, Granneman, a former city clerk and former mayor, said there’s always room to cut in a budget, suggesting that she believes the spending plan might be too large. As for the electricity rate increase of 9.5 percent, which is included in the new operating budget, Grannemann indicated at the previous board meeting that she felt it was too high, especially after the 10-percent increase to residents’ monthly bills added last July 1.

To get to the 21 percent increase city officials said a year ago was needed to make up for the $300,000 deficit, another 2-percent increase will be necessary at this time next year. City officials say that even with these rate increases, the price of electricity use by Hermann residents remains competitive with the price paid by customers of Ameren Missouri and Three Rivers Electric Cooperative, the two nearest providers of electricity.

A gross receipts tax — formally known as a Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) payment — is an amount of money paid by the city’s individual utilities into the General Fund. Each division of the utilities — electricity, natural gas, water and sewer — traditionally has paid 9 percent of its gross revenues back into the General Fund.

But for this fiscal year, which began last July 1, the PILOT payment for the Electricity Division was set at 0 percent, meaning the money remained in the Electricity Division’s bank account, helping make up the division’s deficit. That abatement was for one year. Monday night’s legislation raises the Electricity Division’s PILOT to 7.5 percent while leaving all other utility PILOT payments at 9 percent.

There was no discussion among the aldermen prior to a vote on any of the three bills that were decided by the mayor.

Another rate increase bill, a 2.5-percent hike in the sewer rate, received unanimous approval. The rate increase from .0058 cents per gallon of water to .0060 cents, coupled with a bump in the monthly access fee from $30.50 to $31, is necessary to meet the covenants of the 2016 bond issue that funded sewer system projects, said City Administrator Patricia Heaney.