City Council meeting 12-27-2016

The City Council Meeting on Tuesday night (moved from Monday because of the Christmas holiday) was short and uneventful. After the usual preliminaries, the first order of business was the first reading of the electric rate ordinance. This had been prepared as the result of the report from John Julien at the last meeting and it was passed unanimously. There should now be a notice of a public meeting published in the paper and if it is done in time, there will be a public hearing on the ordinance at the next meeting.

Next up was the electric rate tracker, and I did not fully understand this. It is only reported quarterly, though the mayor wants to get it monthly, and it is three months behind. It is a decrease of a bit more than $3.00 per thousand kilowatt hours but I do not know if it applies to past usage or future usage.

There were some funds transferred and then the police department representative announced that the department had received a grant to purchase a new radio console for $142,000. The way the grant works is that the department must purchase the equipment and then it is reimbursed.

In superintendents' reports, the assistant street superintendent said that the recycling department has been picking up a lot of cardboard. 'Tis the season for cardboard.

The mayor reported the Blacker Trust has given the City its property and house that is on College next to what will be the Jasper Foundation Park. There are restrictions on what can be done with it. Also, the buildings on the old State Highway Department lot in the north east part of the City have been demolished. I visited the site this morning to see what had been done. All the buildings were gone, as were their concrete slabs. The first picture is taken a bit south of the intersection of Maple and Scott and shows where the main building once stood.

The next picture is from the intersection of Oak and Milton. There is still a lot of asphalt on the lot--most of it was paved.

(For a picture of lot with its buildings still standing, see here.)

At one time the State indicated it was willing to give the property to the City but it is now indicating that it will sell the lot to the City. There still needs to be more environmental studies.

Continuing down Maple, I noticed that the construction trailer that was at National Gypsum is now gone. Construction seems to be complete. Also, the walls are starting to rise at the new Sayler Apartments on Elza.