City Council Meeting & More ~ 2/14/12

          This proved to be a long evening as it began at 5:00 pm with a tour of the first floor with the City Council and all of the Department Heads.  The purpose of the tour was to show the Council the necessity for the safety redesign.  The actual layout and features were presented by the City Engineer.  Following this was a short Budget Work Session to give the Council a prelude of what to expect in the upcoming budget.  Following the Work Session, there was a brief Executive Meeting (which has been about the only thing that I have not been included in).  The City Council meeting began at 7:00.  The first item on the agenda was the year-end financial report, in length and detail.  Assistant City Manager Lunda Asmani is in charge of financial matters.  He discussed some history leading up to 2011 and then compared 2010 to 2011.  For the past three years Newton has drawn down some on the General Fund balance, but in 2011 there was a surplus which was great news.  I already knew much of what Lunda was saying as I had spent a couple of weeks researching, comparing, and graphing the General Fund budgets versus actual revenues and expenditures.
          The second item on the agenda was consideration of an agreement for the South Kansas Renovation Project and this was presented by the City Engineer and passed by the Council.  (South Kansas is a street in Newton)  For the third item, the City Attorney presented an ordinance which established reporting regulations for pawnbrokers, secondhand dealers, junk dealers (and jewelry stores) within the City.  There are basically two pawnbrokers in Newton, one reports items pawned daily to the Police Department and the other reports weekly and does not want to report daily.  The Police Department compares items reported stolen with these lists.  This ended up being tabled due to further research being needed due to State regulations concerning this.  The City Attorney did read parts of statutes that are still on the books that sound as though they came from the early 1900s.  The City Attorney spoke once again when he presented the fourth item on the agenda about giving consideration to an Ordinance authorizing the City to participate in a consortium of counties for the HUD Sustainable Community Planning Grant.  The counties seem to be a bit disorganized and this, too, was tabled pending county interest in participating.  The fifth and final item on the agenda was presented again by the City Engineer to consider a Resolution establishing a truck route relative to the new Kansas Logistics Park. This was also tabled as the City is waiting on confirmation of part of the funding from KDOT.  The Council meeting was adjourned at 8:30...one very long day for this intern as my day began at 9:00.