ST. CLAIRSVILLE — City leaders intend to hold orderly council meetings, even if disruptive participants must face criminal charges.

Guests noticed some changes in the meeting chamber following the last council meeting, which featured angry outbursts and accusations surrounding information allegedly leaked from closed-door sessions and posted on social media.

This was not the first time a council meeting has dissolved into angry exchanges, but council President Jim Velas intends for it to be the last.

“Council right now is facing situations, very serious issues,” he said Monday. “In order to do that, we must be able to allow council to conduct orderly meetings. … We have in the past on many occasions had disruptions in council meetings. Sometimes it was the same people, sometimes it was different people, and all that does … is disrupt the meeting and interfere with proper handling of city business.

“In the past, everyone’s tried to be as lenient with this behavior as possible. … We are going to adopt a different policy as far as disruptions at a council meeting,” he continued. “We are not going to tolerate any disruptions, any outbursts, any type of behavior that would interfere with the city conducting their business.”

Velas said Ohio Revised Code section 29-17.12 is being invoked. It covers disruptive behavior at a public meeting and allows the alleged offender to be charged with a misdemeanor of the fourth degree. Velas said guests would receive one warning.

Bill Brooks, who was involved in the last meeting’s disruption and is running for a council seat, was present and did not speak during public participation. Last meeting’s disruption included an exchange between him and Councilman Perry Basile.

Afterwards, Brooks said he supports civil discourse.

“I think a citizen should be allowed to speak without registering (the Friday before, to be on the agenda) as long as he can speak in a mannerly way,” Brooks said. “I don’t believe council should be allowed to say anything to a citizen in the audience. If we can’t say nothing to them, they shouldn’t be able to say nothing to or about us.”

Meanwhile, the city’s water service remained at the forefront of Monday’s discussion. Safety and Service Director Jeremy Greenwood reported progress has been made in preparing to run a new main waterline from the treatment plant after a major break was found where the main crosses beneath Interstate 70 two weeks ago, with the potential to interrupt water service to the city should the line collapse.

Since then, Greenwood said, city workers have been fusing and laying out a 14-inch line with an inside diameter of close to 12 inches and running it down the Ohio Department of Transportation right-of-way on the north side of I-70.

“We’ve got a lot of the pipe run to the temporaries,” Greenwood said, adding the city must determine where the pipe will connect. “We’ll just have to get it figured in and figure out when we’ll have a date for the shutoff.”

The city has secured a right-of-way permit from the Ohio Department of Transportation to run the line across the bridge deck over Reservoir Road.

“We’re going to have to close one lane of the bridge, and that’ll be the temporary fix. The permanent fix, we’re working with ODOT to see about the right-of-ways and we’ll go from there,” he said.

Greenwood said since this is an emergency, the city has selected Border Patrol of Hopedale as the contractor without putting the project out for bids.

“They had access to all the materials,” he said. “It was an emergency and it was here, we got to go.”

Greenwood said he hopes to have the temporary line completed by the end of this week, but expected heavy rainfall might stall the work.

“When they fuse that pipe together and they weld it together, they have to have it when there’s no rain,” he said.

For the permanent new line, Greenwood said the city is still awaiting right-of-way permits from ODOT.

“We’re going to schedule an outage. We’ll fill up all our tanks. We’re going to schedule a time when we’re going to shut the water plant off,” he said, adding water should be shut off for two to four hours.

Greenwood said the city has applied for funding from Ohio House Bill 168, which provides grants for various projects.

“We submitted three projects,” Greenwood said, noting the estimate for the waterline project comes to $874,635.

He thanked EQT Energy for paying for three 21,000-gallon tanks to be transferred to the park for firefighting should they be needed.

In related matters, Mayor Kathryn Thalman said there has been misinformation on social media about the potability of the city’s water with posts implying that residents should purchase bottled water because city water is unsafe. Thalman said these rumors were not based in fact.

“This is careless and reckless and causes people to panic,” she said.

Thalman also commended city employees for their work and responses to this and other waterline breaks.

Due to the Labor Day holiday on Sept. 6, the next meeting will be held at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 7, rather than on its usual Monday.