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Judge Bravo has Mrs. Nipp pin badge on the newly named Superior Police Chief Mark Nipp.
Nina Crowder | Superior Sun
Superior Sun
The Superior Police Chief’s position has been officially filled.
The Superior Town Council, last week, offered the position to Mark Nipp. Superior-Kearny Justice of the Peace Larry Bravo attended the meeting and swore in the new top cop. The new chief’s wife pinned on his badge and she was pleased to do the honors.
Open Meeting Law
The Arizona State Attorney General’s Office has made several recommendations to the Superior Town Council to prevent further violations of the Open Meeting Law. The Town’s Attorney Steve Cooper read a nine page letter from the AG’s Office that described the violations. The council was told it would need to have an attorney monitoring each meeting as well as approving all agendas and minutes. The council will also have to attend Open Meeting Law Training, which is provided to the town free of charge from the AG. The council agreed with the recommendations.
Awards for the Town
The Town of Superior received two awards of excellence from the Arizona Municipal Risk Retention Pool for Risk Management and Control of Losses. Certificates of recognition were presented to former Planning and Zoning Commissioners Karen Afdahl, Pamela Dalton-Rabago and Judah Nelson.
Message from the Mayor
Mayor Jayme Valenzuela wanted to convey to the community:
“This weekend is fast approaching and our weather couldn’t be better for our annual Apache Leap Festival. A lot of positive things are going on in Superior. We are all looking forward to the town goals being met and are making great progress. I have seen the great changes going on with the Magma Hotel and have been updated on the progress within our departments. I want to discuss the goals and progress of the departments in Superior,” said Mayor Valenzuela.
“I want to start off with the finalizing of the police chief position: The chief of police process is complete and I am happy that we have taken the first step in rebuilding our police department by appointing our Chief of Police Mark Nipp. We now have a full board of Planning and Zoning that will be tackling some tough issues here in the near future working toward the benefit of the town. An agreement was signed concerning the fire department vehicles being serviced in Mesa. Thanks to the collaboration of teams from our town of Superior and Resolution an affordable and economical service plan was worked out,” added the mayor.
“Public Works has received two awards in safety. This is a great success as we have not received this before. Our street sweeper is working and our crew of three has been working very hard along with our mechanic to get our town in order. The sanitation area work is at about 90 percent complete. With the approval of CDBG money we will be working towards more improvements in the coming year, hoping to modernize and bringing up to date. Public Works is working with Adelante Juntos so they can move into one of the town buildings and open a teen recreational center which should happen in the next couple of months,” he said.
“Town Hall now has all department reports online. We are progressing towards getting previous year’s fiscal audits in place in the coming months. Also an agreement has been made with ADEQ giving us a two year period to address issues at the landfill so we can move towards reopening it. We have reached an agreement with the Attorney General’s office regarding the Open Meeting Law violation. The proposed resolution states the council and staff will receive more training from the League of Cities and Towns. We hope to move towards talks with the Superior School District regarding combining our resources for a single library. This has been done successfully in other towns such as Florence.
“I would like for our town to work with our director in providing our seniors more activities in the senior center. Some suggestions/complaints have been made and I feel they should be addressed. There will be a committee in mid-March consisting of 200 plus children from the LDS conducting a community cemetery clean up and will be providing their own tools and weed spray. The Magma Hotel is moving along and has an estimated Sept. 6 opening date,”he said.
“Now that you are excited and anticipating great progress, there are a few items I would like to mention to bring awareness and to give us all an opportunity to digest it and have some opinions about it. The opportunities for improvement in our town are great. I would like to have more resources created for our residents and children to enjoy the atmosphere of our town and welcome others by possibly creating a quad baseball/softball complex for our little league and possible softball tournaments. I would like to know the ideas that we could all come up with in possibly making this happen,” he said.
“I would like to see an expanded, multi-faceted library with access to more reading materials, computers, internet access and teaching classrooms for children and adults to increase their knowledge and experience with new technologies and special interests, hobbies for example typing, internet and media, environment education, jewelry making, beading, knitting, sewing, dancing, exercise, etc,” said Mayor Valenzuela.
“I would like to get many diverse age groups developing different ideas to incorporate more community interaction. I believe the other residents have a lot of knowledge to offer the younger age groups more energy and enthusiasm. I believe the interaction would benefit all of us and create a stronger more successful community.”
“Today we have discussed the progress of our departments and future goals. I have also brought up a few ideas to generate communication about the needs of our residents to promote and further our community interaction, improvement and enjoyment. There has been great progress within our town and there is room for more. Take the positive information today and spend some time thinking about ways to support the progress of our town and how each of us can help promote its growth.”
The next regularly scheduled town council meeting is scheduled for March 20 at 7 p.m. All members of the community and public are welcome and encouraged to attend.
Nina Crowder is a resident of Mammoth. She volunteers in several local organizations. She covers events throughout the Copper Corridor and Superior Town and School governance.
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