City Council addresses budget, fees and street plowing policies

The Lennox City Council met Monday, Dec. 22 at Lennox City Hall to discuss agenda items including supplemental budget, resolutions, and street plowing discussions. 

The City Council must pass a supplemental budget by the end of the year to ensure spending authority is extended to current expenditures, City Administrator, Nate Vander Paats asked the council to pass Ordinance 664 – FY 2025 Supplemental Appropriations to true-up accounts. 

“Overall, I’m okay with how we did this year. We expect to see a net gain in the general fund most years, but we made some early year adjustments that led to some loss there,” he said. 

Also reporting losses in the ambulance, recreation, and swimming funds, Vander Plaats believes those are due to historical challenges in operating the enterprise funds.  Concerned about the cash balance of the Second Penny, Vander Plaats warns they need to find new way to adjust equipment purchases in 2026. 

“We’ve already talked to staff about what that might look like, but it’s too early to say anything else,” Vander Plaats said. Motion to approve the first reading of Ordinance 664 by Bill Daugherty, seconded by Lauren VanDriel, motion carried. 

Vander Plaats asked the council to pass Resolution 2025-12-22-01 Schedule of Fines and Fees, a resolution that sets the fines and fees for services throughout the upcoming fiscal year. 

“The changes this year include adding the annual drainage fee, that has not been on there before, but we really should have it on there. Adding the annual street maintenance fee, that should also be on there, a water and sewer surcharge is going to see a small reduction, adding oversized vehicle parking violation fine, increasing the plat and subdivision fees, increases to the pool season passes and swimming lessons, spring soccer, 8U baseball and softball, reduction in the 14U softball program, and an increase in the tournament team fee and one final change of reducing the bulk water rate to reflect our actual water rate,” Vander Plaats said. 

A motion to approve by Daugherty, seconded by VanDriel, motion carried.

The City of Lennox is required to annually publish the wages and salaries for the upcoming fiscal year, Resolution 2025-12-22-02 authorizes publication. 

“The wages and salaries proposed in this resolution are based on two calculations. First, the Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) is determined by the Midwest Rolling CPI available from the US Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. The most recent calculation puts that number at 2.8%. The second calculation is determined by cross referencing the employee’s performance evaluations scores with the formula contained in the City’s Personnel Policies. The resulting calculation is included in the wages in this resolution,” Vander Plaats said. 

A motion to approve by Daugherty, seconded by Billy Welch, motion carried.

Vander Plaats asked the council to consider Resolution 2025-12-22-03 Contingency Transfer of Funds. 

“This resolution is to formally make some movements in our finances. Each year, staff budget approximately $50,000 in contingency funds that are to be used to provide additional funds for unknown costs. This year, we recommend using those funds to cover expenditures in the General Fund department for Recreation Administration. This resolution transfers the excess funds to that department, and it is reflected in the FY 2025 Supplemental Budget,” Vander Plaats said. 

Motion to approve by VanDriel, seconded by Daugherty, motion carried.

In 2019, the City began working with Motorola to implement body-worn  cameras with the Lennox Police Department and in-car camera systems with an evidence library subscription. Due to various complications, it was nearly two years later, in 2021, before the agreement was ultimately finalized. The current Motorola contract is scheduled to conclude in 2026. Chief Will Ericksen was present to discuss a transition from Motorola to Axon beginning in 2026.

 “There isn’t a lot that I can really say about Motorola that I have loved. It has worked, it has functioned, but there are some challenges that the company has. The one thing that I have learned in my time of law enforcement, if you do something well, stick with it. Motorola does radios really well, their body camera systems, their in-car camera systems, I’m not 100% sold with them. Axon has been the industry leader for this for a lot of years and their products are designed around the officers. They spent a lot of time developing their product to fit officers,” Chief Ericksen said. 

President, Chad Swier asked if there would be trade in value for the old Motorola equipment. 

“No, but we potentially could surplus the equipment. Tea uses Motorola equipment, and there are other smaller agencies who may be looking for this equipment, it’s possible,” Chief Ericksen responded. 

VanDriel asked Chief Ericksen to explain the cost difference between the two services. 

“Originally, my plan was to pay off Motorola with funds still available for 2025. Pay the $10,000 off in 2025 and then use the allocated $10,000 for Axon in 2026. Unfortunately, we didn’t have the $10,000 that was available so I went back to Axon and they said they’d help us out by cutting it down from $10,000 and stretch they payments a little bit larger which got us down to $4,000 to get in on year one,” Chief Ericksen responded. 

Motion to approve the Axon quote by Daugherty, seconded by VanDriel, motion carried.

Council members Swier and Welch requested the Street Plowing Policy be added to the agenda for discussions. 

“I have included policies drafted in 2019 and not regularly updated, I don’t think, since then. At that time, we implemented them because there was no system in place, it was just a fly by the seat of your pants operation and we wanted something firm in place at that time, and this is what resulted,” Vander Plaats said. 

Street Superintendent Brian Lathrop was present to answer any questions the council had. Alderman Welch stated there was confusion amongst the community during the last snow event and asked Lathrop to explain the process of caring for the streets.

 “For us a typical snow event starts with the forecast, I think the last couple years we have been lucky on the amounts we are getting. We are usually about the four to six inch or below range, which is right on the edge of a snow alert and for some people it’s very difficult to find a spot that’s not on the street so we kindly ask that you move them,” Lathrop said. 

The timing of the snow dictates when workers are able to get to the plows and move it, and workers know that the highest traffic areas will already be hard packed. Lathrop is hoping to find a storage solution problem to be able to implement salt into the trucks to the sand they currently use, but the storage of the salt is the problem. 

“We can use 10,000 pounds a winter or 30,000, you can’t plan for this kind of thing, so storage needs to be a priority,” Lathrop said. 

Vander Plaats reported to the council that it is frustrating to see residents pushing snow into the streets and warned this will probably be the first year they see a ticket for the act. Council members also reminded the public to keep children out of snow banks at night when city workers are removing snow from the roads and to clear an area out around all fire hydrants in town to help the local fire department incase of a fire.