The Jefferson City Council met last night in regular session.
The Council approved several payment items. They approved paying $2,000 reimbursement to David Baugh for the demolition of 605 East Washington Street from the Neighborhood Improvement Program. They also approved increasing the parks and recreation assistant director’s salary of $429 based on the recommendation from the Wage and Benefits Committee. The Council approved paying $11,559.98 to Wicks Construction for the downtown restoration project which City Engineer John Milligan says is about 97% paid for with the remaining balance to be paid after the Iowa Department of Transportation approves all final work.
The Council approved several other items including a resolution for the Road Use Tax Report that will be sent to the DOT for the 2012-13 fiscal year, agreed to pay a maximum of $10,275 quote from Cline, DeVries and Allen, LLP for the 2012-13 audit, set a public hearing on October 8th to allow hotels/motels, state license permitted by state law, food services or restaurants and convention or banquet centers to be zoned as light industrial.
The Council approved installing a street light in the alleyway on the south side of the square and using $2,900 from community donation fund for downtown renovations, a policy about using banners in the downtown square for only city purposes and not allowing individual businesses to advertising using them along with transferring $16,395 from waste water fund to waste water sinking fund for the 2012-13 fiscal year were also approved.
During the committee and city staff reports, City Administrator Mike Palmer discussed with the Council about using a new program to help speed up the process in which abandon houses could be purchased by the City faster so it could have a new house build sooner, using a program with Region XII Council of Governments in Carroll.
A yard waste policy for Jefferson residents was also discussed in regards to the yard waste dump site. The Streets/Sewer Water/Sanitation Committee approved a policy that letters would be sent out to contractors and other businesses and they cannot dump concrete or whole trees that those items need to be taken to the county dump site. If they violate that policy, then the City can shut down the dump site entirely or put an extra fee and everyone’s water bill to compensate the City crews that have to spend extra time and equipment on hauling those items out of there.
Finally, the priority workshop occurred. After all the council members had time to look over the 25 item list, the top four priorities the Council decided on was: economic development, housing rental inspection, code enforcement and neighborhood improvement program.