Friday, March 29, 2024

Financial stability is evident after City Council meeting

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    After lively discussion, crossing their t's and dotting their i',s at the study session earlier that morning - the Leavenworth City Council had a busy Tuesday, November 13 City Council meeting. The agenda had ten action items that varied from monetary to a possible relief to the persistent parking problem.
    Some of the council members contributed various pieces of information such as: noting that the collaboration with the Public Utility District will not be happening due to PUD not updating their water meters for another 10 years and information about the planned bid in January for the installation of two new HAWK system crosswalks (a less disruptive due to syncing up with the traffic light) on Highway 2 and a flashing light down by the Park-n-Ride.
    Also the completion of transitioning all of the streetlights with LED lights is near along with the February residential garbage transition to Waste Management. Though not open to the public, local law enforcement is conducting a tabletop exercise to strengthen ability to help for mass casualty incidents, which will beheld at the Fire Hall and hosted by Chelan County Sheriff's office.
    Led by Chantell Steiner, there was a Preliminary Budget Administrator presentation that went in depth on the previous year and upcoming year's funds. Steiner also pointed out how voters and their wallets would be spared.
    "The voters did approve the park bond, but the council has to chosen not to add that additional levy to the taxpayers and instead since the city had cash on hand. we are paying for those improvements and just reimbursing ourselves out of the property tax that we did increase a year ago as a temporary fix that dropped this year and then re-bonded with that park bond," said Steiner.
    Through that process, the city will be saving voters a good sum of money. Other accomplishments include the PUD substation location being chosen after a year long study and the city being approved and authorized a $13.4 million loan that will be used to the Wastewater Treatment Plant upgrades.
    The estimated largest revenue sources for the city were lodging, utility, retail and sales tax and intergovernmental. 25% of the entire budget was from intergovernmental which is funding from outside government entity.  
    "Sales tax, which is generated from mainly our downtown area, is what funds all of our parks, general fund services, streets, snow removal," said Steiner.  
    The final budget public hearing will be on Nov. 27. After rounding out this presentation, the council adopted the Ad Valorem Tax option that was suggested by the city which is to just take that 1% tax and not take the bank capacity - which is beneficial for the tax payers to have left on the table, according to Steiner.
    "I don't know of a city in this district or anywhere else that doesn't take all of their bank capacity every single time so that says something about the prosperity of our community and the careful stewardship of the money that comes to us and how that affects our taxpayers," said Mayor Cheryl Farivar.
    In an effort to lessen the difficulty of finding parking in town, the council also purchased the 1.6 acreage WSDOT parking lot. This was followed up by the approval of the WSDOT non-discrimination agreement.

Some other business conducted at the city council meeting:
    ▪    The approval of the traffic flaggers and foot patrols for the Christmas Lighting Festival
    ▪    Approval of the contract from Protham to select the next City Administrator after Joel Walinski's resignation, which will not exceed $24,000
 

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