City Beat

CITY BEAT

By George Murin
The Weekly Recorder
April 18, 2008

Washington- Washington City Council had a special meeting on April 14th. The limited agenda for this meeting included; buying some equipment for the fire department, approving payment to Washington School District for the ‘Strengthening Families Program’; contracting for street sweeping; entering into an agreement with MCTL Services for delinquency notices to property owners on behalf of the city; personnel hearing on two employees; and to start on the engineering of fixing the collapsed storm drain at Wylie and Jefferson Avenues. Councilwoman Virginia Ullom was not at the meeting; reportedly she is on vacation somewhere in Europe, along the Danube.

But what wasn’t on the agenda proved most interesting. During the public participation part of the meeting at least six landlords lined up to speak out against ‘Bill #8 of 2008’ in which the city would enact a licensing fee and inspection of all rental units. After the first speaker, Mayor Sonny Spossey stated that he would like a motion “to delay action on the bill until we do have a meeting with the landlords at some point in time in the future.” Councilman Matt Staniszewski made the motion and Councilman Terry Faust seconded it and it passed 4-0. The rest of the landlords decided not to use their time since the bill isn’t going to become an ordinance until after they have a chance to meet with council. The landlords, of this city, already held one meeting that was well attended (over 75 people) and seemed to be united in their opposition to this bill as written and hope to force council to revise this bill. This is the kind of reaction I expected with the tax increase that was passed earlier this year but, it didn’t happen.

The sale of Strawberry Alley to W&J College is the other point of interest. Items 4 & 5 on the agenda were to approve payment to York Realty for the work they did on the proposed sale. Spossey made the motion to pay them, but it died for a lack of a second. At the end of the meeting during the elected official’s time to speak, the mayor also defended W&J College as only having 30% of all the tax exempt property in the city, that means 1/3 of all tax exempt property is owned by the college; according to Spossey the college is 10.6% of the assessed value of the property in the city. ONLY 10.6%!!! According to the revised city budget real estate taxes bring in $4,304.734. That means that the college could owe $456,301 in property taxes this year. That burden has to be picked up by the other taxpayers in city. For the city to suggest the college to assess a fee of $100 per student per year really asking too much? The college says that the fee would chase potential students away. Really; would a student paying $35,000 a year balk at $35,100? I think not. Some think that the city is foolish for turning down $100,000 for the alley. That one time amount would be nice, but an annual $130,000 ($100x 1300 students) would be a lot better and that is what city council is asking for; just a little bit back to the city and its residents for all the property they have given up to the college.

After the meeting Councilman Faust asked me to correct the amount that the city donated for the 4th of July fireworks. In the Agenda for the April 3rd meeting it was listed as $3,000 but the motion made was for $1,000.

In another matter, the potential hiring of I.T. / computer contractor Lynn Galluze as a full time employee, over a dozen city hall employees have reportedly sent council letters supporting her. This support from the people she works with has to lift her moral.

The next agenda workshop will be 9:30 a.m. on May 5th, and the next regular meeting on May 8th at Noon. But I’m sure there will be something before that; as I said last week, council is always calling special meetings.