The Jefferson City Council met last night in regular session.
The Council approved purchasing four bronze plaques that will be placed at the alleyway entrances around the downtown square at $1,500 a piece and will be made by locally. The funding for the project will be from the community-donated streets-cape fund and are projected to be installed by the Bell Tower Festival in June.
City Administrator Mike Palmer was appointed as acting City Building Inspector due to current building inspector Mike Wright taking another position with Midland Power Cooperative. With the City’s ordinance, the mayor has the power to appoint someone to the position as acting building inspector until a proper replacement can be found.
The Council also approved a resolution to demolish a house at 305 South Georgia Street. City Attorney Bob Schwarzkopf said the City has a resolution for any property that they deem abandoned and unsafe to notify the property owner of the unsafe condition of a house and then a certified letter is sent telling the owner to demolish the building within 20 days which the City did on January 31st.
The Council agreed to give the owner, David A. Greif until April 30th to tear the house down or the City would do it and put a lien on the house until payment was made back to the City.
The Council voted to deny City Engineer John Milligan’s request to have a study done for the northwest portion of the City. Milligan recommended that they go a head of the study because whether or not a casino is approved, a study needs to be done before any other kind of development happens in that area that’s northwest of Highway 30 and Highway 4 intersection. The study would also look at the watershed and any lift stations that serve that area which Milligan believes is adequate for now but he doesn’t know what will happen if a big development takes place north of the railroad tracks in town.
The cost of the study is $13,750 and Councilman Gary Von Ahsen questioned why they needed to do the study and he wanted wait until they knew for sure what was going to be developed in that area. Since there was only three council representatives at the meeting and the vote was 2-1, there needed to be at least three yes votes to make an approval, so it failed.
During the city administrator’s evaluation, Mayor Craig Berry said Palmer was rated on a scale of 0-5 with 5 being the best score and Palmer received an average score of 4.0 with no negative comments made about his performance.