February Council Agenda: What's To Come
Street Department gave their monthly update to the council. You can read over that below.
City Planner, Sara Jondahl, spoke about an amazing grant opportunity called the RAISE Grant. It is a $25,000,000 grant (with no stipulations for the city to have to match or contribute any money, sweet) and would be used for roughly 13 miles of new multi-use trails connecting areas north of I-40, through to downtown, medical facilities, schools, our industrial areas of town, and then down to lock and dam park. To meet the criteria for the grant you need to be in a historically disadvantaged area, which all of Russellville falls under. However, these new trails would focus on connecting parts of our community that most need them. The council moved to add an agenda item to pass a resolution for the support of this application.
DIG Russellville update. Working over on El Paso and 2nd St, still no sign of turtles, much less ninja ones. Will be working over between W. B and W. C St, then over by the courthouse. They found there are several more service lines than there are buildings to they're going to have to basically untangle that mess to make sure all the active lines are still functioning. Still waiting on a lot of permits- they are running about 6-12 weeks from the highway department.
Unfinished Old Business
Item #1 + #1a are all about the pups. This has been debated and discussed for many months and will be addressed at this coming council meeting on Thursday 2/16. During the prep meeting we decided to remove Item #1 which would have been a "soft repeal" of the breed specific ban. Basically that pit bulls are allowed but there are still restrictions and some hoops to hop through. Item #1a is a hard repeal where the ordinance is simply repealed allowing pit bulls within city limits. Since I am the one that voiced moving forward in this way I want to take a second to explain why. Read all about why here. New Business
Item #1 is basically to protect the investment that DIG Russellville is making by creating an aesthetically pleasing streetscape. This ordinance would prohibit any new utilities from being installed above ground.
Item #2 is to establish Downtown Russellville as an Entertainment District which would allow businesses to sell a customer an alcoholic beverage (in a neat special cup with designated logo) that they could then walk around downtown with. There will be boundaries clearly marked, businesses would simply opt-in if they are okay with being part of the Entertainment District (aka allowing booze in the door) and it would be 7 days a week 10am-12am. This is an item that will have people asking many questions and this first reading will kick that off. It is sponsored by Councilmember Nathan George. Councilmember Shawn Harris requested that Pope County Courthouse, which is located within the downtown district, be excluded from the allowed area in which the full council agreed. There was also excellent discussion about logos- which I am all about (graphic designer by trade, here).
That closed our agenda prep session.
Then we began the quickest City Council meeting ever with a special called meeting to approve funds for Hickey Pool. Seriously, it took just about as long to do roll call than to read and pass the resolution.
That's all for this episode of City Council Rundown: Agenda Prep. Now you're ready to show up to City Council with knowledge on your side.
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