At our meeting in August Council had tabled legislation regarding approval of funds to pay for the SKiP Playground project. Based on the state rules regarding borrowing from other funds, the legislation was required to include language that the City could issue bonds to fund the notes between accounts. Mr. Earle was present at this meeting and clarified that the City will not be issuing bonds, but that the City will be borrowing from internal accounts to pre-pay about $350,000 (half) of the SKiP Playground project. While there are pledges committed to pay for the entire project, some of the donors are paying for such over the next 5 years. Being the playground has been ordered and will be installed when it arrives, the City has to pay for this now, and then such notes and borrowing from internal funds will be paid back as the donations are received.
Council also approved the Parks Master plan with a modification that now that the plan is approved the Administration and the Parks Board should work together to create a 10-year plan to prioritize the projects from the Master Plan. While we would all love to see the whole Master Plan implemented, the funds to do so is rather steep and we need an action plan to start working towards the Master Plan goals. While we often do master plans in our City, sometimes we fail to get a short term action plans together to start completing the larger concepts. As a former member of the Parks Board, I am excited to see them get involved in this project and starting to define the next actionable steps. There will also have to be discussions regarding funding and if we can find some additional funding resources to accomplish more items than our current budget would allow for.
Council also discussed trash pickup in the City and how often trash is not being picked up the planned day of service. Kimble is currently the preferred contract trash provider in our City and they did have a representative who came out to the meeting to discuss as well. The Kimble representative did share they are struggling with staffing and supply chain issues like most of the rest of the country right now. They did state part of the issue is the trash pickup times in the City are restricted to 7 AM to 5 PM, and that if they could pickup 7 AM to 7 PM this would assist them being able to complete pickup the day of scheduled service. The Administration is going to discuss with Kimble about potentially revising the contract. I appreciated they had someone come out to the meeting and actively engaged with the City to try and better serve our residents.
Finally, Council passed legislation to address some issues of feral and wild animals that can sometimes create nuisance issues in the City. This legislation creates a new penalty under our animal and fowl section of our code which would penalize residents if they are feeding stray animals including dogs, cats, skunks or racoons and then such feeding causes a nuisance condition on other people’s property. Nuisance can be noise, odors, or damage to property, or the animals defecate on the property of someone else or public property that is not removed or cleaned up. This topic has been discussed before Council for several months and hopefully this new ordinance will address some of the ongoing complaints related to these situations.
Council will next met on September 22, 2022 and based on the size of the agenda and Committee meetings we will start at 5 PM.