T-L Photos/GAGE VOTA ABOVE: Re-elected St. Clairsville city council members Don Vincenzo, from left, J.C. Thrash, Kristi Lipscomb, and newly elected council member Mike Kasper are sworn in by law director Joe Vavra.

ST. CLAIRSVILLE — Newly-elected city council member Mike Kasper was sworn into office during Monday’s regularly scheduled meeting alongside re-elected council members Don Vincenzo, Kristi Lipscomb and J.C. Thrash.

The four were sworn in by law director Joe Vavra as the council meeting began.

Despite it being his first meeting on council, Kasper — who narrowly defeated Terra Butler this past November with 140 votes to Butler’s 111 — got off to a running start by providing council with his idea for council committees to move to once a month instead of bi-weekly.

“So many times, residents out there asked me ‘why are there never committee reports? If you have committees, why are no committees reported?’ Well, I think it’s very important that we do have reports on our committees, but the fact remains we meet twice a month. If we’re somehow able to break them up, break it in half and meet once a month, every committee could have a report,” Kasper said. “You’re really not going to be able to make a report every two weeks on something. If you do, that’s great, that’s really great, that would be wonderful. But if you don’t, then in our records, it states there’s no report so [residents] want to know, why do we even have the committees.”

Kasper said that he explains to residents that due to the committees meeting twice a month, it’s hard to have a report every meeting as he pushed for a remedy.

“I don’t know if we could break this somehow in half and make that work,” he added. “I don’t know what the right process would be for that, but it’s just food for thought.”

Mayor Kathryn Thalman agreed that committee reports are important and helps inform residents what is happening in the community.

Vincenzo said he likes Kasper’s idea of the council regularly having reports.

“I like the idea of having their reports. Citizens are concerned about it, they are aware of it, and I’m glad they are. And yeah, I think we should have reports,” he said.

Council member Mike Smith concurred that it is virtually impossible for council to have committee reports due to them meeting every other week.

“This has probably been set up since the city’s been a city but that doesn’t mean we have to keep doing it,” Smith said.

Council president Jim Velas also agreed that council committees should switch to meeting once a month. He added that each council member should take time to think about whether they would like to take action to switch to once-a-month committee meetings.

“Maybe over the next couple weeks, council members can look at the committees and look at the agendas and see what they think could be changed,” Velas said. “I’ve been questioned about the no reporting. So kick it around and make a decision on how we want to handle the council committees.”

Lipscomb said that some committees don’t meet unless an issue occurs.

“I just wanted to say that there’s some committees that just don’t meet until there’s an issue like the planning and zoning. We don’t have a meeting even once a month, unless something comes before that committee, but the Rec board, even if we just meet once a month, I’d still get an update from Eric [Gay] of what’s going on,” Lipscomb said. “Maybe certain committees just need to be put on the agenda when there is something to report, and that would be up to that council person to put it on the agenda because there is an issue to talk about.”

In other matters, Vincenzo made an announcement that Belmont County’s CodeRED emergency system is operational again — this past December Belmont County was the victim of a cybersecurity incident involving the OnSolve CodeRED system — and he encouraged residents to sign up to be notified for time sensitive emergency notifications.

Residents can go to belmontcounty911.com or call the city’s utility office at 740-695-1410 ext. 2 to enroll or re-enroll in the program.

Vincenzo said that Belmont County 9-1-1 advises residents who enrolled into the program after March 31, 2025 to re-enroll. He added that the program is a free service for the city to use and believes that it is important for residents to have to receive accurate and time-sensitive information in the time of emergency.