March 8th City Council Meeting.

City Council meeting on Wednesday March 8th includes the following key items:

1.Amending Fee Schedule
2.Small Cities Grant Presentation
3.Sale of City property at 30 West Main.
4.Final City Hall cost of $1,555,784.21
5.New City Hall cost $25,000

1.The new fee schedule has extensive rate increases. The specific fees that concern me are the building fees. Many of these fees have dramatic rate increases of 40% to 50%. These are the fees that you and I pay as individuals. There is also the nebulous increase in deck and basement fees from the 1994 to the 1997 structure. I had asked for examples of this increase in dollars. This has yet to be provided.

2.I wanted the Small Cities Grant tabled from the last City Council meeting so the City could get more than one bid to administer the grant writing. The only applicant also has a relationship with another City Vendor. The second bid the City received looks to be $5000, or almost 30% less than the previous quote. I hope that City staff will in future do due diligence and receive multiple quotes.

3.The sale of this property seems to be the best thing for the City as a whole. I do not think Government entities should be in the business of owning excess property. This move does however cause a parking issue downtown. I want to create a committee of Main Street Businesses to work on the parking problem. This would follow on the heels of the Sign Sub-committee that has been incredible successful. This is a partnership with business that will succeed.

4.The cost of City Hall was roughly 30% over budget. This has been a failure in city planning. The full budget was not revealed until the middle of 2005. This was a failure in city Council oversight that must strive not to repeat.

5.I will not tolerate any more spending on City Hall that is not cut from somewhere else in the Budget. Enough said.