The Lennox City Council met Monday, August 26 in the Lennox Boardroom. Mayor Fergen and City Council Alderman heard agenda items including property purchase updates, iPad gifts, prison water treatment and more.
City Administrator, Nate Vander Plaats was asked at the previous City Council meeting to look into possibilities for acquiring the property at 609 South Main Street. Vander Plaats returned to the council with his findings.
“Even with this purchase, we should retain over $1 Million in available cash and reserves in second penny. The most recent offer includes the anticipated sales price but also includes an option on the property. The price on the option is the equivalent of monthly principal and interest payments on the existing mortgage until May of next year. We don’t know those amounts at this point, it’s something that we would need to get from the current owner,” he said.
Alderman Britney Mower asked to know the purchase price, not just the offer price for the property.
“The property isn’t listed, they have not asked anything, they asked us to name a number,” Vander Plaats responded.
The offer the city came up with was based off an assessment from their realtor according to Vander Plaats. The board agreed to learn what the final purchase price would be before they moved forward with the agreement.
The City of Lennox is proposing updates to the current ordinance regulating accessory buildings. The ordinance makes the distinction between a garage and a storage shed. With no changes from the first reading, a motion was made to approve Ordinance 652. Motion approved unanimously.
The City of Tea is interested is securing addition water capacity to serve their needs in the community.
“I met with the Tea City Administrator within the past month and discussed reviving those discussions from August of 2022. At that time, we just couldn’t come together on a price for access for our reserve capacity. Tea obviously continues to need some water and community reserve is just over 1 million gallons a day when they joined Lewis & Clark, but their growth has brought them to a place where they need frequently or sometimes exceeding that number,” Vander Plaats said.
The City of Tea would be interested in having a guaranteed amount of water each day. Vander Plaats would like to propose subcommittees compromised of representatives from each community to discuss the formation of the agreement including the Mayor, Chair of Water, City Administrator, Finance Officer, and Utilities Superintendent.
Mayor Danny Fergen asked for public comment on the matter. Chad Reilly joined the meeting for his thoughts.
“I was actually on the council at that time and can tell you why we didn’t do it. There’s a scarcity of utilities that you need for industry, so why would we give away our surplus water to a competitor to attract an industry that we could attract by having water,” Reilly said.
“It’s a sizable commitment that they’ll have to make and neighborly is not the question, this is an asset,” Councilman Bill Daugherty said.
Vander Plaats is going to bring the questions to the City of Tea and find answers for the Council.
The City of Lennox has excess equipment to dispose of including laptops and iPads. The Lennox Fire Department has expressed interest in the iPads and the City could gift them as they are under $500 as stated in the Resolution.
“Two I’ve been able to get wiped so far, the other ones are giving me a little bit of trouble which is part of why we moved away from iPad in the first place for all you. The fire department has expressed an interest in obtaining them for operations and it allows us to gift those, but they need to be appraised by three property owners in the city and they all appraise for less than $500,” he said.
With no questions or comment from the council, the motion was approved.
Vander Plaats requested Resolution 2024-08-26-02 in which the City of Lennox will be dramatically impacted by the passage of Initiated Measure 28 which will remove sales tax on consumables and should oppose the measure.
“The November ballot will include an initiated measure that removes the sales tax on consumables. In our case, we expect to lose between $140,000 and $156,000 per year if that passes. It’s a decrease of 14 per cent in our budget that will directly impact our ability to apply sales tax revenues to larger projects to lower surcharges, to fund quality of life projects and improvements, and to expand economic development efforts in an effort to continue decreasing our tax levy,” he said.
Motion approved.
Vander Plaats presented Ordinance 653: Fiscal Year 2025 Appropriations.
“This is the most pessimistic budget I think we’ve ever worked on. It was a tough one, but it’s realistic. I don’t think there’s any real fluff in here, I did provide a comparison in your packets this morning. My thanks to Heidi in particular for bearing with me through her first budget season,” Vander Plaats said.
Motion to approve the first reading was approved.
Vander Plaats added a sewer connection with Department of Corrections discussion to the agenda at the beginning of the meeting.
“As you know, the Department of Corrections (DOC) has chosen the site South of Harrisburg for the new men’s prison. Obviously, this site must be served as a variety of utilities in these plans with wastewater needs of approximately 1,500 prisoners and 400 employees. DOC had been in discussion with the City of Harrisburg to connect their wastewater plant until last week when the Harrisburg City Council voted not to accept that facility’s wastewater. Upon hearing that, I contacted the governor’s office and asked if we could start discussions,” he said.
Capacity and pre-treatment needs would need to be reviewed before the City would know whether or not their facilities could treat the extra water. Vander Plaats feels it would potentially save money to use the same agreement that was drafted with Harrisburg and replace that with Lennox.
“I would expect most residents to see a reduction of at least 20 percent in their monthly utility bill,” he said.
Mower asked to view the Harrisburg contract to determine if there are any provisions the City of Lennox needs to add due to the age of the water treatment plant.
“I think as we’ve talked a lot with our community members and their concerns with our utility bills, and we’re always looking for an opportunity to reduce our utility bill amount and here is an opportunity for that, so I think it would be in our best interest to at least pursue it,” Mower said. No motion was needed as Vander Plaats was just looking for a discussion at this time.
Comments