Spring Valley in danger of shutting down without insurance renewal
- Spring Valley faces a possible shutdown as the board didn%27t approve a policy renewal Tuesday.
- The current policy will expire June 30.
SPRING VALLEY – The village is on the verge of shutting down as the Board of Trustees was unable to come to an agreement Tuesday night on a resolution to renew its insurance.
The insurance covers all the village's operations and its property, such as police, public works, workers compensation and buildings.
Mayor Demeza Delhomme is holding a special meeting at 2 p.m. Friday to again seek the board's approval. If the resolution doesn't go through Friday, Delhomme says, the village would have to shut down its operations.
The current policy will expire Monday.
"The village will be shutting down. The police will not have insurance to drive cars. The village workers will not have insurance. We cannot move the village," Delhomme said. "We will not be open because they refuse to pass insurance, which is a normal policy. You have to pay for it."
Trustee Vilair Fonvil said the board was not able to come to an agreement Tuesday night because Delhomme didn't provide any backup document for trustees to look at even though Trustee Asher Grossman asked for it when he first found out about the renewal. The only paperwork provided to the board before Tuesday's vote was a $1.8 million bill to pay for the coverage, Fonvil said. To make things worse, the amount is higher than the current policy, he said.
"Usually, if you have car insurance, before it's due, you have a month and a half to shop around before renewal," Fonvil said. "It's not fair to spend people's money like that."
The renewal premium is about $30,000 less than the budgeted amount, and it's about 8 percent higher than the current policy of $1.67 million, according to the village Clerk's Office, which also said trustees were advised to come to the Mayor's Office to review the insurance policy as early as May.
Fonvil said Grossman had finally gotten the necessary information, and they will be looking into it before Friday's meeting.