City Council - Regular Meeting

Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Susie, if we could do roll call, please. Council member Ritzma, here. Council member Burl Barkcus, here. Council member Eric Barkcus here. Mayor D'vor is absent and Mayor Pro Tim Sal here. I'll look for make a motion to excuse the absence of Mike D'Vor tonight. I'll make that motion. All in favor by saying I. I. I.

Motion pass. Look for consent of tonight's agenda. I'll make that motion. I'll second. Uh any questions, changes? Susie, roll call, please. Council member Ritza, yes. Mayor Pro Sal, yes. Council member Eric Farcus, yes. And council member Burl Vargas, yes. Okay, motion passed. We'll look for citizens comment for items on the agenda.

Curry Beum 924 Riverside Drive. First, let me congratulate LOL High School Wrestling. This last Saturday, they ran away with the division 2 state team finals. This makes 13 years in a row as state champions. As for as for Riverside Drive, one is I do not like the new procedure for comments on agenda items. You have to give your comments before you learn what this council is thinking. This week, the agenda was posted. It has findings of a traffic study and four engineered generated diagrams of intersections of Elm, Spring, Suffach, and Foreman all on Riverside with no narrative and there's no narrative with no narrative. Therefore, citizens have to make a whole lot of assumptions. I'm making the assumption that all four may be implemented. Elm, so that would take you to Elm. There's a bump out there that I think throws you a little bit into oncoming traffic. You would go down to Spring Street. You'd go, that would take you back to Hudson. You would go up, you could go up one block to Howard, go back over to Riverside. Go up. Then then you get kicked back off on Suffach. You take it over. You take it over to Hudson again, which Suffach is the um uh the major entrance to the middle school parking. I think you're going to have uh issues at the at the time of uh when school starts and school ends. Then you'd go up one block and you would um go back on Foreman uh and then take up to Foreman. uh all of the the drawings appear to show curves and if that means that there's a curb at Suffach and a curb at Foreman, then there's no traffic

unless for emergency vehicles unless you drive up and over the curb. Um and it just it just doesn't make a lot of sense. Um uh suffic mentioned that middle school. Um, I I just this just seems to make every going to make everybody upset if you implement this whole thing. And again, maybe you're not thinking that, but there's no narrative on the agenda. So, how how do you know? Um, let's think of compromise instead of um what what I see. Thank you.

Thank you, Perry. Bruce Matthews on 326 Riverside. Um, again, thanks to the council and to Mike, city manager, for the uh consideration of alternatives and trying to find the best uh answer to uh to some of what's uh to the problems that we have and we know what the problems were. The problems, you know, were documented. um the uh volume of traffic uh the the classification of that street is not for that volume of traffic and the safety of the uh uh both the residents and the users um of that. We know what the problems are and we know that we had a fix at Elm Street. It worked. Um didn't make everybody happy, but it worked. And most importantly, in my view, it had the support of almost every resident along that street who are affected most who pay the taxes on that on those properties. Um, as Perry said, and I agree with him wholeheartedly and echo that, uh, I'm disappointed that, you know, we we were forced to make comments on an item on the agenda without knowing what discussion was and with an explanation that's lacking in the uh in in the board packet. Um, I will also note that these drawings, um, at least if I understand them correctly, uh, were drawn in November and submitted in early January, and yet we're only now seeing what these alternatives are when we could have had an opportunity to better understand what they were. Um, I may be mistaken, but those are the dates that are on these drawings. Um, if we're talking about transparency here, um, this does not sit very well with me.

the current situation um with the uh the barriers moved to uh Spring Street. Um you know, I'm not sure what particular problem they're alleviating. I don't know what's going on down at the the turn off uh off of Main Street, but uh I do know that uh the the traffic that's that's coming up to Spring Street and making that turn, which is the only thing they can do. Um, you know, we have the uh the machine that's that's measuring it, but they're coming by awful fast. It's kind of a racetrack turn. It's a one lane street and they're turning onto onto Spring Street. They're turning fast, gravel spinning, and uh it's not a very good solution in my view. Um, and I think that uh uh you know that that probably will be documented in terms of the speed of those folks that are coming through there in that uh in that study. Um, we need a stop sign at that turn. People need to stop before they, you know, they spin around that that turn, which they, you know, when they come around that turn, they can't see very well coming down the street. There could be oncoming traffic. There are people often parked there. Um, not a safe situation. Um, so I I just uh would would again reiterate that um uh the opportunity to comment uh on on a less than informed basis uh doesn't seem right to me. and uh and I would uh appreciate more transparency from y'all um in the future on this.

Thank you. Thank you, Bruce. Kimble De Riverside. Um I want to bring up something that I had brought up before on on the Riverside issue to me. Um so I think the barricade that was in place worked well. I think it was um half of a block too late. Um, I have a bright. Okay. Okay.

Um, you know, I don't think that we ever have 53 ft trailers when a semi trying to go around um the front of um low light power. I think the GFL truck or like our fire truck are probably about the biggest trucks that we could ever expect going through the parking lot there, I'm going to call it. And I really believe that if you moved that um yield sign and maybe moved a couple of the um parking spots right in front of the the houses and I forget the name of the street that's not Riverside there that goes out to me um and move those to where you barricaded off the road. I don't know of a 26 foot box truck or something that could make that turn fairly easily if they didn't have any driving skills at all. So, I would I would almost like to see that still tried. Um I think Mike Burns um had heard from some other folks that there was some concern with that, but I don't know we know that we actually tried it. So, it it seems like that would still that that means that any section that would be blocked off right now, we have to change part of that to a two-way street and it ends up kind of wonky. if you cut it off there, it's a it's a you turn around out of the parking lot basically. And that just seems a lot cleaner to me. Um and alleviates some of that. The other thing I um I brought up last time was um I would really hope that on Hunt or on um um yeah, what's the name of the street there? Not Lincoln Lake, but um Hudson, there we go. that um somebody could check into just raising the speed limit on that. If you look at Riverside Drive um and it's funny that it's called that in Ionia, that one's crazy stupid fast. Um and it's barely wide enough for two

lanes and it's 45. If you go to the section of Burton that's between Cascade and the Y, those are all residential neighborhoods. That road's not nearly as wide as Hudson here. and that's 45. It seems like moving that up to um 35 at least and then do the flashing signs during the school hours would help make traffic move through that a little bit quicker and maybe take off some of that strain. So, those are the two things I have. One is I I still think moving that back and I think trying a truck around that corner would really make a lot more sense. And the other is we should look I think you should look at getting the speed increased on Hudson to alleviate some of the strain there. That's all I've got. Thank you very much and I do appreciate you trying things and and listening. I appreciate that Dawson. I live in James Township. Uh, I mentioned last week I I I I've had a business in town for over 40 years and Riverside Drive is my w my road home every day and I drive at the speed limit and I drive it less and there's a lot of people that are like me. Sure, they're speeding. They're speeding on all roads. I know, of course, the people on Riverside Road want it all shut down. understand, but I think a series of bumpouts, maybe a couple stop signs would help. The argument is nobody stops at stop signs, but they slow down, right? That's what you want them to do. You want them to slow down. I don't like getting pushed back out on the Hudson. Now, you want to raise it speed limit over there. You jump out on Hudson. You want to go a block and turn back over. Those people coming up Hudson don't really appreciate you doing that in front of them because they want to go

home too. Um I just there's got to be a solution. Nobody on Riverside is going to want to stop sign on my corner. Nobody wants that barricade on their corner. Elm Street work except for the Roth Roths funeral situation which I mentioned last week as well. So thank you.

Thank you Dale. My name is Annette Ritzma and I live at 525 North Hudson Street. And I guess I'm just kind of constantly surprised that the people that suggest that Riverside Drive is closed down. It's not closed down in any way. And the residents along that street perform the same out and in pattern and but the Okay, so that's a disadvantage. But what's the greater good? I think you have to look at the greater good. I was stunned to hear how well it has dealt with the problem of the parking lot that all where all the people are um coming out of um the inn, the restaurant, moving into parking. And I think that's the biggest driving factor, safety. Because if you looked at numbers of people, there's, you know, residents on Riverside and there's the number of people that use that area. If you did a head count and individuals impacted by road safety, the greatest impact is south of Elm. That's where you have more people. And I think that should be a driving factor. And if we have to give up some convenience for the safety of these people going to a dumpster or going into a restaurant, you know, maybe that's our role as a citizen to give to our fellow man to give safety to the people in that area south of Elm. So, I suggest that we leave um the road as it was um diverted at Elm and the rest of us are just going to have to, you know, make accommodations so that the people in that highly congested area have safety. That's my thoughts.

Thank you, Annette.

Uh good evening. uh Steve Doyle, 706 Riverside Drive. I think that, you know, again, the the you know, the day the the barrier went in, it's it solved it solved the issue. Um I respect everybody's uh viewpoint and so forth, but to to me it it seems like we're just we're kind of starting to throw darts. Um the traffic was at a count of I think just under 4,000 cars per week with 65% 65% of the cars going over the speed limit and the car the the traffic has significantly been reduced. I mean I've been home for 3 hours and I think two cars, you know, two cars went by. The road is not closed. Elm Street is is the ideal street because Elm Street is actually that's actually considered a major street. Elm that section that's not a local street. The next street up where you put the barrier though now now those become local streets. So you know it it really accomplished a lot I think with the traffic reduced that much. Then all stop signs or speed bumps. They're they're really they're just not needed. I mean, if you're going to have stop signs for for, you know, 15 cars a day or speed bumps, uh, you know, they're they're not really accomplishing anything. Plus, with all of those things now, we have to have signs, you know, speed bumps signs lining Riverside Drive. Right. Right now, there's there are, you know, there's no signs there uh other than this the name of the street. So I think you know again it worked uh you know for almost almost two years and to my knowledge I don't know if there's been really any uh during that period you

know a super number of negative comments during that period. So I think it's you know it's accomplishing what it what it set out to do and then everybody can enjoy driving down Riverside Drive with no speed bumps and no no uh stop signs. Yes, you have to go around the one block, but you have that full full path and you know, so you know, people that live out of town or or all the residents, you know, now we all have to everybody has to contend with those things. So, thank you very much. Thank you, Steve. Susan Stevens, 16 Jefferson.

Um, had a conversation with Eric earlier today and I had mentioned an idea to him. Um, as I said last meeting, I see the parking area and people could refer to it as the parking lot of Riverside Drive where there's angled parking as one issue and the pedestrian traffic that goes back and forth. Uh, and then from El North as a separate issue because they are different. I I've heard numbers about the traffic study in that first section where 6,000 vehicles a a week, that's a lot of traffic in a pedestrian area. And I suggested to Eric perhaps we change the speed limit in that section to 15 miles an hour. Like the Meyer parking lot has a posted speed limit of 15 m an hour because it's a parking lot and there are pedestrians and it's about safety of people. Um, nobody's going to like it. Are people going to drive faster than 15 miles an hour? Yes, they f they if it's 25, they drive faster than 25. If you lower it, you're going to get enough people who slow down that over time it will slow down some of the faster drivers or as I said last week, make Hudson more attractive for the people who are just racing through so that they don't go through the parking lot. Um, and I I did mention that speed bumps were problematic in that area. The only spot I can think of that it might work maybe is where the dump dumpsters are and the parking shifts from the right to the left side of the street.

Sorry, Greg, that's going to mess up your access to your property. But that's about the own spot. Thank you.

Thank you, Sue. Any anybody else? Hi, Rob Newman, 920% Drive. Wow. Um, kind of figured this was going to happen after we opened it up when you guys opened it up. Uh, I kind of see what Perry was talking about. I I have to say this, I live on Riverside. I take it home every day. That's how I go home. So, um the bottom line is when it was at Elm, the traffic's been just phenomenally less and uh unfortunately we don't have the officers to patrol and I'm sorry for that. I wish we did have more people in the in the patrol department, but um the way it has been has been very nice. It's been very quiet. There haven't been too many speeders. I've seen one too here. But uh I think continuing to chop it up by moving the barricade down further and further and further is just taking away from Riverside Drive. I think Greg Canfield signed it up best. It's a nice drive up through there and it's too bad everybody can't obey the law. But um yeah, I I would say the barricade worked and uh I'm just afraid now you're going to chop up the rest of the road where it's not going to be a beautiful ride anymore. So thank you.

Thank you, Rob. Anybody else? If not, we'll close the public comments and go on to old business point.

Yep. So, um I do want to kind of respond to some of the concerns um that that came about. Um I apologize for the commu confusion. So, that's why I was going to put everything in the packet and walk you through it. Um so um the I was directed at the last meeting to provide an update to you and I was directed to move the barriers. So what we first did um after after uh think after discussing it with staff and discussing with a couple other people, we first moved the barrier to Spring Street to see if it would alleviate um the concerns at Rothkurst. Um before that I had the police department run the speed trailer for one week um to catch the northbound traffic on river on Riverside before Elm. And if you look through the first p the first page of speed studies, what it it shows is what the traffic trumps were um and their speeds. And the the 50% speed was 16 miles an hour. And if you look at this first study, it shows that once you get past 25 mph, the speeds went way down. Um, we had very few speeders that were over 30 m an hour um or drivers over 30 m an hour. We also had a count of 6628 vehicles. We we're probably I'm gonna because it's not a true speed study where you don't have to there's a certain there's a certain monitor that you have when you do speed studies. We didn't have that here. So I'm going to I'm going to guess that you're probably about 95 to 98% correct with vehicles. There were might have been walkers, bikers. I don't know what the weather the weather wasn't that great. So it's probably more cars. But let's just for for for the sake of

argument the 66 28 is the number of vehicles. So we're just under 1,000 vehicles a day in that 7-day period. So what you what you see in the first two um the first two graphs were were the speeds. And if you look at the the second graph where it shows 95 percentile that's the 95 percentile speed that shows speeds at 26 miles an hour. So, the majority of the of the drivers were were driving at or near the posted speeds. And then if you go continue through the graph, it does break down hourly um the number of vehicles that were passing through the location. Obviously, between the hours of 1:00 p.m. and 5:00 p.m. the the uh the traffic volumes are much higher. Um, you do have a little bit between 7:00 and 8:00 in the morning. Um, but your your your vehicle counts are coming in at at times you would expect. And then you continue. It just shows the number. It it it shows the 15minute quadrant intervals of of the of the of the cars passing um and so forth. So when you continue, I I'm not going to go through all that data. I just wanted to go through the through the graphs. But when you when you continue to the drawings, so the drawings were after the discussion Tuesday night, um Williams and Works just came up with some conceptual items to consider. We did not we are not proposing any of these. Um these are just conceptual drawings of what might look like at different intersections. Um, I can tell you that in the week that we've had the barrier at spring, I

personally do not like it. Um, I watched I sat out there two days last week and watched the vehicles um and watched traffic and I don't like it. Um, the reason being is obviously it creates a no outlet situation for cars coming off Hudson to Spring and they have nowhere to go because they're not supposed to go right because that's not the way the tra the traffic is supposed to go northbound, not southbound and it's obviously blocked northbound. So that tells me spring is not a good alternative. Um, and so I was going to keep this I was going to keep the uh the I was going to keep the barrier there till Friday. That was the plan was for 10 days at spring and then we were going to move it up to Suffach, which is the other drawing on the map. Um, and uh I did have Williamson works. They sketched these last week. That was the first I've ever seen them. Um, so I understand the November, but I I assume that's when the original they were just additions to the regular to the drawings that they had, but they sketched these really quick after our after our discussion on two um at the last council meeting. Um, so these are really just concepts. They're not we're not proposing anything. Frankly, um, after a week, I'm convinced that I'm hoping that you can make a decision by March 16th, but I my recommendation to you would be either a if you're concerned about the traffic volume and reducing traffic volume on on on um, Riverside, then I would I would put a permanent barrier out. Um, and then if you're if you're just concerned if you're not concerned about the volume and you and you want to keep the street open, my suggestion would be put two speed bump or speed tables in somewhere on Riverside, one near Elm and one further north. And then I would put a

stop sign at Mercer. Um, to me, um, it's really at this point it's a decision the city council has to make, but there was no ill intent trying to deceive anyone or anything. We just came up with different drawings. After the discussion, I was told by council to come up with, you know, to try and think of things and so that's what we did. Anybody have any questions of Mike or the or the study or anything at this point? I I agree with Mike about I would go with permanent at Elm to put the tables and a stop sign in. How many holes are we going to drill into the into the road and then you're going to have if say something breaks down on the table? Then you're going to get water in that. Then we're going to have you have it even worse. So, what we would propose with what we would propose with the speed tables would be they would be asphalt um and they would be um they would just be extra quantity asphalt is how we would bid it. Um we wouldn't be screwing into the road. We would just it would they would be asphalt based, but you always run the risk of a plow scraping it. Um that is always a risk. Um but that's what we would do. Anybody else?

I have a couple comments. Number one, this 6628 vehicles a week is just incredible. I that just we cannot have that. That 4,000 was bad enough. Now it's 6,600 in the winter. When you repave and in the summertime, that's just going to get worse. And so I agree with Susan. We really need to think about the area at Easy Street and Sabore, whether that's speed tables. We need to do something there. And we cannot allow 6600 cars to travel riverside. Number one, it's not designed for that. The base is probably not adequate to cover that. And it it's just not safe. So whatever we do, I I will never allow my on my vote to allow 6,600 cars on a local street without some sort of speed um t calming procedure and the other city or the other roads and the other residents that are on roads that have speeding. Uh if if you're concerned, if you think you have 4,000, 5,000, 6,000 cars, please come to us. we'll do the same thing as we're as we're doing now. So, we're not trying to favor anyone on Riverside. Um, but I I want to go back and Perry and Steve mentioned to me years ago at Lincoln Lake, you had the same exact problem right by the park and they put in the diversions and it worked wonderfully. And I I don't know the history, but um we're not doing anything different than what the people did back then. And that worked very well. And people were upset then. But now you wouldn't you don't even think about it. And if we chose to remove those diversions now, I bet the room would be

filled with residents that weren't happy with that. So this is a tough decision. Um, again, this 6,600 cars is crazy. And I'm going to go back to I think we should try either leave the barrier at Elm or try speed tables. Thank you, Barl. Anything? I guess I'm just in agreement that's a lot of of traffic. Um, Kimble mentioned moving the barrier back closer

on the other side. Yeah, there are semis that pull in there. Um, Sabore has a a tractor trailer delivered to them and when Easy Street was open, they did also. So, there are there are there are tractor trailers in there. So, I'm afraid that that's probably not an option um just because of the the business. I mean, we've had deliveries in tractor trailers at Ability Waivers. So, I think that's that's probably not a good good option. So, uh, I just want to re have my memory refresh. So, you're saying there's 6,000 plus cars a day going down Riverside, that one block, and then turning left up on that week. One week.

A week. So, you're probably just short of a thousand a day. Thousand a day. Yeah. Yeah. I broke out the numbers. Um, weekday average was,043. Weekend average was 821. Yeah, it was down on the weekend, but that's still a lot of still a lot of cars. I was surprised it was that hard or that heavy on like Sunday, still. And I if you want if you don't want me to continue the test, I can just put it back where it was. That's not a problem. I can put it back. I would I would say put it back because I went up by like you did at spring and it's it was worse.

Oh, bad. you know, I'd say put it back. Yeah. And the issue you have with SUFFK and and Perry's right, you're going to have during peak times of school is you're going to have choke points at SUFFK, Howard, and Elizabeth because all those streets feed into the school on the other side of so and the only the only advantage of putting it at SUFFK is there's no driveways between Foreman and SUFFK. Um, that's the only that's the only real advantage I see. Um, but I don't have to move it. I can put it back at home. It's not a big deal. I just We were We were told to to move it around, so we did.

I am sort of concerned about the safety factors with our emergency responders getting up in there um getting trapped in there. I And I think moving it is as big or bigger issue, you know, then they don't know which which uh which corner it's on. So I think it has been confusing at that level.

Well, by bringing the barrier back, you relieve the problem on Riverside. But what do you do on the small Riverside up to Elm Street? I mean, a thousand cars on uh two blocks a day. That that is now my concern. What do we do to correct that problem around that? I mean, that's just

I think that I mean, I think that's like as I mentioned at the last meeting, that's probably something we can budget for with DDA to have them look at that. Um cuz I think that there it might be a reconfiguration of that area. Um you know, I don't know. I mean, people aren't going to like it, but maybe it's the elimination of the angled parking and and making it more of a linear parking. It's going to take it's going to reduce, you know, it's going to reduce parking stalls, but That's a decision that has to, you know, that you're going to have to make one way or another. Um, the other, you know, the other thing is, I mean, it's a really tight area. I don't know what improvements we can make, but we can at least we can look at it in the upcoming fiscal year. I mean, they're two they're two they're two really separate issues, but they're not. My observation from from seeing it on the business side in the parking lot side is that when the barricade was placed at Elm, I I'm kind of like u Steve Joy in that it it limited almost instantly even in the parking lot because people weren't cutting through any longer and so it is much better than it was previously. It would in Well, I guess that 6,000 is is with the barricade in there. So that's a lot of traffic, but it's it's way better than when it was open to wide open that it would be chaos in there.

Well, I think on what Mike mentioned about the linear parking instead of the angle, I know several times when I'd come off of Main Street onto uh Riverside right there, I had to crawl or stop before I even made my turn cuz there's people backing out of those parking lots and spike spaces and that's dangerous. So if you got somebody that's rolling around there coming off cuz I've seen people come off Main Street at a good clip and if somebody's backing out, we're lucky we haven't had any accidents.

I'm just not aware of any accidents. Not that there haven't been any, but uh you know, so I I went through there the other day just to try and know that the barrier was was moving. There's no way I could even hit 30 miles an hour on that stretch with the amount of cars and how they're parked at just so narrow right there. I mean, I I just don't know how anybody get up that fast. Well, the speeds tell you, too. I mean, this the speeds in the report tell you that people are driving close to speed. It's speeds. Exactly.

When it was in Elm, I mean, it it addressed speed. It was a lot. Obviously, people drove through there slower. The data shows it. So I think in the same more and easy street area speed tables which also act as a pedestrian crossing with uh signage in that would help a lot. So Jim to your concern I think speed tables there would be an easy fix in my opinion. Does the council have any interest in speed tables on the rest of Riverside? I've mentioned it a few times. I I I'll quit asking about it. Uh but does anyone else want to consider that? I know there's the noise and the start stop, that sort of thing. But

if you were to leave the area where it's at or or just deaden that off and and remove it, just have it blocked off. I couldn't see why you would need to put the speed tables there then. No, I'm saying remove the barrier. Open road, lots of speed tunes. No, try it. Stop trying the volume. Don't change the volume. If I may, I live by speed tables. The constant vehicles accelerating away is annoying. So, the more you add, the more you add that. Okay.

So, But I I mean I'm going to provide another update in two weeks. The next update I'm going to provide you I'm going to have police department we're going to move it back to Elm like you requested and then I'm going to have them come I'm going to have them run the radar and I'm going to come back with another report that'll be in the packet. There'll be no other drawings. Um, I'm going to ask at some point, hopefully by the 16th, we can make a decision. Um, so we can move forward and and and just put this to bed. Sounds good.

But my re my recommendation is I mean, I'm giving you two recommendations that it's either we put a permanent burm at at Elm and like we have it now, just permanently, or we open it up with speed tables. I mean it's that it it is really a decision that the council has to make. I I have one final comment. Sure. Is that we're not looking at the same road a year from now. We're looking at a repaved nice smooth road in that area which will increase traffic speed.

Yep. It'll be it'll be a racetrack. I mean anytime you put a new street down it's it's always an issue. All right. You got some directions, Mike? Okay. Okay. We'll close the Riverside conversation and move on to new business. Mr. Kent, if you want to come up and give your presentation in regarding the grants for the LCTV fund, I appreciate that. Sure. Thank you. Close enough. So, so thank you.

My voice carries. It's been a rough winter for my voice, tell you. Um uh so first of all, I'm Dennis Kent. I'm the LOL cable TV board chair. I want to uh express express my appreciation to the board members uh for their time and commitment to this uh this activity and to uh Susie for helping us put all this information together and for the work put into the applications by by the applicants. So we had as we do most years we had um um more uh more requests than we had funding. um we had about 111,000 to uh distribute and um it wasn't uh a lot more but it was uh it was more. So we went through board went through and reviewed the applications and u we had one uh one project that we felt needed uh a little more uh analysis. So we opted not to fund this one that one this year. That was the the cemetery project, fence project, and we uh so when we took that out, we actually ended up with less uh less uh uh projects than we had funding for. So we took the difference and distributed it to two of the other uh projects. Uh one for the fire department, one for Snider Manor. uh based on some discussion that we had uh it was kind of a board discretion. So these are recommendations to uh to the council. You are free to do as you feel is fit with our recommendations. So anyway, I'll just go through these quick. Um uh the cable TV fund administration u uh that's an annual

aotment of $4,000. Uh we have support services building for from uh over at the old gas station at Jackson M21. Uh we had chamber commerce u uh building upgrade. Um we had fire department uh battery uh cut off saws uh as well as some related equipment. That's one we increased a little bit with what we had left over from the other one. Little historical museum missing along Main Street project. uh additional funding for little showboat uh facility enhancement. Uh the women's club uh technology upgrade. Um they always do a good job on their annual report. So we wanted to note that they're kind of like the smallest grant applicant and they always do the best reports. Uh the uh the biggest project was u little youth football and recreation park uh upgrades which are not all related to football. We didn't have a lot of information but there some of that was provided uh later because I don't know if it's in your packet here or not but um uh there was more information provided uh provided later. We talked about that for a while and because we really had enough money this year, we decided to uh fund that one completely as requested, which was part of a was a part of a total request, bigger request. Snider Manor security upgrades. Uh we we we added a little more to that one because u as many of you know there have been some uh at least one incident there uh uh lately and both the ones we added to Snider Manor and the fire department are both both

organizations that provide a service to a broad segment of the community. Uh let's see. L barn for ecquin learning provided an upgrade for their electric and water and YMCA small request for expanding uh access to health and wellness and u so I think that u that was pretty much what we are recommending. It comes out to I think just under 111,000. We always leave a little bit a little bit just in case. So that's our recommendation. Jim on the board have any additional comments?

Uh it's always fun to give money away especially when it's not yours. And this year we were pretty blessed that uh it was just about an equal amount for what the requests were for. Um, moving moving forward, I I'll just look for the same thing again for you, Dennis. Thank you for reuping for next year as well. And, uh, with that, uh, if any board members have any, council members have any questions of Dennis right now. Right.

I do. I'm just wondering if the fire department is allowed is a nonprofit. Is are they allowed to put in a request? I guess they did. They put in a small request. Can they um I I just I know the fire department has a lot of needs. So, I'm hoping that in the future maybe they could reach out for more of this money or we should Oh, sorry. So,

we we consider them not or a governmental agency, so they qualify regardless. And u um um this was part of the thinking going into giving them a little more than what was requested. So, uh, yeah, they're they're they're free to, uh, to ask for more. I think they've asked for more in other years, those requests.

What what they had asked for was a, uh, saw that will cut through, aluminum, steel, anything that they may need to save a victim, whether it's a car crash or a burning building. Um, so that part of it and, uh, they didn't ask for additional blades. So when we had a few dollars left over, we said, "Why don't you go buy some extra blades for that in case one break?" So it was money well spent and uh it wasn't terribly. It was around $5,000 and I think that the blades were around 2,000. They're very expensive blades for cutting in those saws. So look forward to hopefully we never have to use them. Hopefully it maintains in the the fire department's arsenal without using. But, uh, you know, those are the fun things that that that I personally like to give when when we're giving stuff like that, stuff that helps the greater community. Uh, same way we we know what the youth football is going to be doing down at the park over the next 10 years as they have a lease with us. And this is just the start of uh concrete work, grass seeding, making making the park what we want to do. And it's just not just for youth football, but it's other organizations as well, too. So uh we we thought that was really uh well money spent the first year you know knowing that they will be coming few years down the road asking for additional funding. So uh and we do take into consideration you know how many years in a row they they ask money and you know things like that part of it. So we we do take that into consideration. I I know prom is asked uh uh a a lot and we we give them a lot too for what what they also give in the community. there there's not one of these organizations that that we don't support that don't help the community. So that's the way I look at it. So with that, I'll look for a motion to approve um the spending of the grants.

I'll make that motion. I'll second. Susie will roll call, please. Mayor Proen Salo. Yes. Council member Eric Barkus. Yes. Council member Burl Barkcus. Yes. Yes. And council member Ritzma. Yes. Okay. Thank you, Dennis. Thank you. Motion passed. Mr. Budget.

All right. Good evening, council. Like that you hear me well enough. I mean, I talk loud enough. People would say talk a lot. Often people will say as well. But um first of all, I want to say thank you uh for the grant uh towards the fire department. Um you know, we feel very blessed from not only the cable fund, but just the greater community as well for the equipment, the tools we get to use. Anytime you walk into our facility and you see the trucks are all labeled community fund, you know, we wear that name. We're part of it. And so anytime we have the stuff and the equipment we get to use, we always say it's not ours, it's yours. We're just privileged to be able to use it for the community for the greater good. So, um it's always good news. um on that standpoint. But um it's been a little bit of a minute since I've been here. So I wanted to at least come back to the council, kind of give a recap cuz the calendar did change over. I know we're into March. Boy, does the year seem to just fly by as we go through it. But want to recap a little bit of just where we were. Um we were we missed our meeting for the fire authority in January. Weather constraints, boy, I think we all felt that in January. The weather hit us and the fire department just as well. Uh it was a very busy month for the month of January. Um we hit our record call for 141 calls in January, which is the highest we've ever had outside of a storm month. So it was an exhausting month to say the least. But a little recap of the previous year. Um you know, and uh calls and responses wise, last year we ran 1,265 calls. Uh most we've ever ran. Um at least a 6% increase call volume from our previous year. So it was a busy year. People have asked me, "Hey, what is it that's the call increase? Where is it?" I think Riverside kind of speaks to it. People. We have more people in our area. We have more cars in our area. There's more houses being built. We see that. We feel that. Um, so it has increased our call volume. Um, from the city of L. Last year, there was 455 incidents in

the city of LOL. So, we did turn our wheels. That average sticks the same. About 65% of our calls are medicals. So um from that standpoint um we stay pretty busy in the city.