City Council

Caught most of last night's city council meeting (thought I did miss the section of the meeting wherein I got appointed to the city's sustainability commission). The warrants got passed with minimal discussion with questions only about Duncan Associates as a consultant for the Zoning Ordinance update and extending the city's contrat with Marion Pepsi-Cola Bottling Companies.

The council then passed a series of resolutions commending Danny Piquard, Charles Vaught and Janet Vaught (yes, they are married) on their service to the city and congratulating them on retirement.

The new order of business, consideration of community and economic development organization funding requests should have been pretty short, since it typically just acknowledges that the city has received these requests, with the actual presentations occurring at the March council meeting. Someone forgot to tell the organizations that though, as Randy Osborne from the Boys and Girls Club launched into a full fledged presentation, complete with letters of support from the community.

After this, 90% of the orgnazations that had submitted funding requests made a presentation to the councils, cumulating in a 15 minute long presentation from Attucks Community Services that the mayor finally interrupted, asking why the organization sought $153,000 in funding when it still owed the city two months in rent and had only received $35,000 in rent and cash last year. The presentation then descended into a mild argument between the Attucks representative and the mayor regarding what what appropriate for discussion during the presentation. Under prodding from Councilmen Haynes and McDaniel who pointed out Mayor Cole planned to direct $150,000 to the school systems for a summer math and reading tutoring program, the mayor agreed to revisit funding for Attucks and the I CAN READ program, both of which had been zeroed out in the proposed funding budget.

Council went into closed session about 9 p.m.