City Council Meeting

Apparently there was quite a turnout for tonight's city council meeting, but everyone had left by the time I got there.

The vast majority of them came for the first time on the general business agenda, a rezoning request for the northeast corner of the intersection of old and new Highway 51. The trust owning the property, on which now sits the Beadle dentist office, got grandfathered in when the city annexed the area, which is currently zoned Rural Residential and General Agriculture. The trust appears to have gotten some inquiries about further commercializing the property (a gas station/conveneince store would be my guess) and wanted to take tentative steps towards making that possible. However, residents of the area turned out en mass to protest the rezoning, citing increased traffic, additional lights and declining property values. At the request of the trust which had made the proposal under a misapprehension of the zoning status of the property, the council removed the ordinance from the agenda.

A similar fate befell the next ordinance under consideration, making E. College two way and establishing No Parking along the street. The rational for this is to increase access to the new Police Department building, going in on the south side of East College. Owners of rental property in the area turned out for this one, since a number of them rely upon E. College to provide parking for residents of their rental properties and that making it a "No Parking" zone would render their properties unrentable since many of them didn't have enough space on the properties to add parking (no mention was made by any of them of turning one of their properties into parking space for the tenants in the area. Go with the taxpayer subsidized street parking appears the preferred option). Council decided on its own to pull the item from the agenda and meet with the landlords to see what can be worked out.

The last item, rezoning a property in the 1200 block of E. Walnut from Planned Unit Development to Professional Administrative office, almost sailed through. The owner plans to donate the property for construction of a Hindu Temple. The only concer, I gathered was that there might be difficulty with water from a pond there formed by the building of Sports Blast Road. Don Monty (sp?) tookt he podium to suggest the city build a culverty under the road to alleviate any potential drainage problem. This agenda item got approved unanimously, so it looks like C'dale will soon have a Hindu temple and less taxable property.

Mayor Cole dismissed us at 8:40.