Blog posting of last night’s Council Meeting - Redux
OK - as promised, the blog posting from our guest blogger.
A Council Redux – 18-April-2007
So what happens at a Town Council meeting? What is a Town Council and how does it work with the Mayor? Well we can’t promise that this “redux†will help you out with that, but we’ll certainly try to provide an informal summary, sometimes lightly opinionated, of what’s happening during council meetings.
So the next question is probably – Ok what’s a “redux� According to Cooking with Marie, a reduction or “redux†is:
“to boil a liquid (usually, a stock, wine, or sauce mixture) until the volume is reduced by evaporation. As the volume reduces, the sauce thickens and the flavor intensifies. This thick, flavorful sauce is then referred to as a “reduction.”
What you read below is not minutes; not a verbatim of what happened. It’s a dump from my imperfect brain of what I heard, summarized with my own special spices thrown in for flavor – if you want perfection we have a fantastic clerk who works very hard. You can get the official minutes from Town Hall.
Onto the meeting:
As we’ve done since the start of the Iraq War, we began the meeting with the Pledge of Allegiance and a moment of silence for the allied troops, especially the American soldiers and especially those from New Jersey that have been killed. There was also a moment for the 32 VT students that were killed this week.
1st Open Discussion – council meetings usually have an open discussion period near the beginning and near the end. Since there were only about 6 people here (besides the council itself and the clerk and counsel), the discussion was brief. The Lebanon Fire Dept. will be having a raffle to try and raise funds for equipment and services. That was about it…
After the discussion period the council launched right into a whole series of roll-call votes on various ordinances. These are usually covered in the agenda so if you’re curious check them out ahead of time on the town website, but I’ll admit that they go by so fast that it is hard to really participate in the meeting. Here’s a great example: What the heck is Mount Laurel and an RCA? Apparently is important, but I’ve got no clue. Lebanon’s Counsel is advising that we approve this because we might be able to use this as some kind of planning tool that helps with fighting certain kinds of actions/development to build housing – similar to COAH I think. Counsel says this is a “no brainer†thing to approve – although I’m not sure if that’s a legal opinion or his personal opinion on how the town should conduct planning. After a brief discussion this was approved in a roll-call vote.
There’s a laundry list of other items voted on – all were approved. An interesting one is this
· 47-2007: Funds for maintenance and special crap for the municipal building and its renovation. Money was approved last summer so now this is just actually doing it. Evaluation on building; a survey; and a soil sample.
This means that more planning on a new municipal building is still being kicked around – or at least some thinking about what to do with the building we have is going on still. This is an obvious thing that everyone in town should be paying attention to since no matter what happens, some significant spending is going to happen.
2007 Budget for Borough:
Lebanon’s Auditor (Collantano) gave a quickie summary of our financial affairs: Revenues up; total tax went up by $0.23 – Joe Hauck gave him the money to make up the gap; Revaluation will confuse everyone, but overall taxes will stay the same. The mill rate has been cut to $0.16 from about $0.32 since on average home values increased 40-50%.
Gary Quick pointed out that we have about $200K in the bank (Mr. Collantano said this is actually closer to $250K) for capital for improvements stuff like roads, sidewalks, building, parks, etc. That’s pretty cool – a nice nest egg in case we need a town square or a really nice town swimming pool or perhaps a new roof for a large building…hmmm….
Council is going to try and get more people involved in the budget process. The meetings this year were a first step, but next year we will do more to involve and communicate to the people in town. There was a public session on the budget, but not a whole lot of comments. There are not a ton of people here – which is also a problem – people should be more involved. There are 6 people are town here, myself included.
There’s usually a “report outâ€/status update from all the commissions and the school board:
Parks: April-28th is park clean up day. Coffee, donuts, and 200 yards of mulch…woe – that’s a ton of mulch! Wow! But don’t worry Garry said they’ll have a front loader to “help outâ€. Yaaa – sure – well good exercise so bring your gloves and a rake.
Environmental: Bridge? What bridge? This must be for the walking path to the gas station. There’s something funny about an environmental commission building a bridge to a gas station and a donut shop.
The Hazardous Tree Study is done! Soon we’ll be able to relax in the knowledge that we’re free from the imminent attack of the trees. They are going to cut down the Mulberry trees in the park. That’s a shame. They should plant Elm trees. That would be cool – Valley Forge Elms – they are resistant to Dutch Elm, they grow fast and will grow very tall. They are coming around to plant new trees where they are needed. Who knows where they will pick? Not me.
Schools
Budget passed in the vote held on 17-Apr-2007; Some big bill has passed that is going to have some effect on us related to superintendents and stuff at the county level – they will have more power and we will have less, but they need to get this fully approved still. A “super superâ€-intendent concept at the county level or something like that is what they are talking about. School budget down by $50K – and they also have a nice nest-egg for a rainy day.
Utilities/Sanitation/Recycling: There’s some wacky new regulation for something or other…we have to increase our tonnage? For what? Huh? Ok – we’re short 5 tons of recycling crap. I guess we need to have some kind of percentage. There are 5 new requirements, but the Petticoat facility only takes plastic, glass, and newspaper. We might have to have some kind of “recycling daysâ€. We need an inspector apparently to look in everyone’s trash and catch the people that don’t recycle! Cool! I wonder if a radio comes with that job!
Beautification: Wee hooo - the flower pots are funded. Where are these pots anyway? They are also talking about banners and stuff. No clue where these things are – how come these aren’t on Brunswick or in the park? They must be somewhere on Main Street. We should spend some of these bucks on fixing up that embarrassing memorial in the park. It’s a real shame that it’s so run-down. Sometimes I think I’ll go over there and do it myself. They are doing something with rain-barrels. Apparently setting up one of these is pretty darn complicated! JThe committee is hosting a class on how to do make one – check the calendar on the town’s site.
That’s about all I stuck around for – council went into a personnel session so I wasn’t sticking around. Let us know what you think of this “redux†– or post some comments. There may be different chef’s cooking the sauce, so let us know what you think.
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I’m a fan of the so-called ‘redux’ of the Council Meeting, at least this one. It’s nice that those of us that are interested but couldn’t get to the meeting can catch up without reading the actual
offical minutes.
I’m happy the budget for the schools passed. I also think ideas like this website and blog are a good idea, too…information is key in a small Republic like Lebanon Borough.