The Jefferson city staff and council will go through a process for strategic planning and goal setting at the suggestion of new city administrator Scott Peterson.
The city council at its Aug. 8 meeting agreed to pay an amount not to exceed $2,000 to Callahan Municipal Consultants of Anamosa for the work.
The last several years the council has started its budget process by prioritizing items of importance to city residents, with items like housing, downtown development, recreation, animal shelter, or the east entry to the city on the list. The prioritization has primarily been budgetary.
“We’ve had the priorities workshop every year, and it’s been good having those priorities in front of us,” chair of the council’s finance committee Harry Ahrenholtz said. “But we have a great opportunity with Scott (Peterson) coming on board…. as a council to look at those priorities and set some goals, some timelines and action plans that may get us off dead center. We’d at least be able to look at the reality of doing something in the next year, two years or three years.”
The planning process will begin in November, with Patrick Callahan meeting first with city staff and then with the council.
The council approved the second reading of an ordinance increasing fees for use of the yard waste site.
The council also approved a resolution increasing fees ranging from the charge to have a dishwasher picked up curbside by the sanitation crew ($40) to the reimbursement by an offender for a taser cartridge used by the Jefferson police department during enforcement ($45). Property owners will be charged a minimum of $200 if a city employee removes snow from a sidewalk or mows grass.
Those fees are intended to be more consistent with the cost of providing the service, Peterson explained.
They go into effect immediately.
The council approved the first reading of an ordinance increasing the cost of building permits. According to building/zoning code enforcement official Chad Stevens, the cost of building permits hasn’t been increased in several years. The new fees are from the most recent edition of the International Residential Code (IRC), published by the International Code Council. The ordinance ties building permit fees to the fees in the IRC. An increase by the IRC will trigger an increase in Jefferson building permits.
The published agenda suggested waiving the second and third readings of that ordinance. Council member Dave Sloan questioned that and the council approved only the first reading.
The council approved a resolution supporting the designation of Hwy 4 (Elm St) within the city limits as the LCpl Benjamin Carman Memorial Highway. Carman, a Marine, was killed in Iraq in 2003. His parents Nelson and Marie Carman and his sister Amelia were at the meeting. The Carmans thanked the council, but specified that the designation was initiated by Survivors Outreach Services, not their family.
The council held a public hearing on expanding the easement Hardin Hilltop Wind has for a substation on city-owned property on Orchard Ave north of Hwy 30. No comments were heard and the council approved the easement. Hardin Hilltop Wind will pay the city $5,000 for the easement.
City council member Matt Wetrich brought to the council’s attention the change in Greene County Schools bussing that will put may more youngsters walking along streets without sidewalks, particularly on Westwood Drive and near the high school. “It’s something to be thinking about. We’ve talked about the Westwood project in the past. It may be something to revisit, to see what that would look like,” he said. “There’s a lot of concern by parents.”
