|
Cottonwood City Council meets It was a busy agenda for the Cottonwood City Council at their Nov. 8 meeting. Before the regular meeting started there were a couple of public hearings, one drew a lot more comments than the other. The first public hearing was in reference to a conditional use permit request by Joe Didier. This is for an RV park that Didier has had in place for over 20 years in violation of the class B residential zone that it is in. Now that Didier is looking to sell the property he wants to make sure it is in compliance and has retained attorney Adam Green to help with that. There were several citizens who made comments, mostly against it. Later during the regular meeting, after some debate, the council decided to approve the conditional use permit request on a 2-1 vote. The other public hearing dealt with foregone budget. There were no comments during this hearing and it quickly closed. The first item of business in the regular meeting was Hunter Edwards and Ryan Uhlenkott. Ryan and Heather Uhlenkott are looking to subdivide and sell the lots in Ironwood and are planning on installing water meters at each residence. Ryan Uhlenkott said what he would like to do is bring it into the city. City Attorney Joe Wright said a letter requesting annexation would start the process. The next set of visitors were from the Cottonwood Saddliers 4-H Club. Halee Rowland acted as spokesperson for the club and requested the City waive the hall rental fee for Santa’s Cabana. They are looking at moving Santa’s Cabana to the hall from the fire station at the request of the fire department. They would also like to use the Hall for their regular meetings as there are very few places to hold a meeting for a club with 80 members. They asked if the rental could be waived for that as well. The Council approved waiving the fee for Santa’s Cabana. Council president Pat Holthaus would like to have land and buildings commissioner Linda Nida’s input on the other request. Since the first meeting isn’t until January, they can take that issue up at the December meeting. Uhlenkott had another item to bring before the council as he and his wife Heather would like to see the city park get some upgrades on playground equipment and other things. Coincidentally 5 mothers, all who have small children, also appeared before the council with a proposal to fund raise for new playground equipment and a possible splash pad. Appearing were Chaelena Stubbers, Jenny Rad, Amber Nuxoll, Molly Nuxoll and Charlene Nuxoll. Wright suggested developing a plan to take to people when fundraising. It was also suggested they might want to work together with the Uhlenkotts. A Summerfest followup was held with Police Chief Terry Cochran outlining some issues he felt needed to be addressed. Serena Lockett represented the Summerfest Committee. One of Cochran’s concerns was the alcohol at the softball fields. Another was the fencing for the beergarden area downtown. Lockett said the committee is looking into hiring a security firm to help police the downtown area and they will get some orange fencing to make for a stronger fenced in area. The committee is willing to work with the city to address issues. The council said they would like to see the festival continue and they are impressed with the work the people on the committee have done to bring an event back to Cottonwood. The foregone budget resolution was approved by the council. Pay raises for city employees were discussed. This was tabled to the December meeting as there was a question on whether non-police employee raises are in the budget. Keith Holcomb said the West Camas Transportation group has asked if the City would like to buy in on the paint truck. The council voted to buy into ownership of the truck and then passed a separate motion to amend their agreement with West Camas on the items they share with West Camas. A new headworks for the sewer lagoons was discussed. Roy Uhlenkott said it is becoming a necessity with all the “flushable” wipes that are filling up the lagoons. Their engineering firm is looking at about $22,000 to start working on the project. Roy Uhlenkott and Lynn Guyer have a meeting set up with the engineer and will get back with the council as to how to proceed. US Bank’s closure was discussed. City Clerk Lynn Enneking said they could get a check scanner to deposit checks. Depositing cash would be an issue though. Holthaus said he would like to stay local but doesn’t know what would be involved in switching to the Credit Union. Wright suggested checking with the auditor. The building inspector was discussed. Their previous inspector has passed away. There is a new person interested who is already serving some of the cities their previous inspector serviced. The city will offer the same contract they had with the previous inspector. In the reports Holthaus noted the city apparently pumped less water than they sold. He said they have agreed to provide water and sewer service to St. John Bosco Academy but informed them of the water pressure issues that far from their pumps. The school is looking into what they can do. Holcomb said that West Camas Transportation is looking into another signage grant and wanted to know if the City wanted to sign on to it. He will get more information. The meeting adjourned at 9:13 p.m. The next regular meeting will be Monday, Dec. 13 at 7 p.m. |
|
|
|
|
|