Friday, June 20, 2008

CITY COUNCIL MEETING 6/19/08

Our beloved City Council managed to vote on 10 Ordinances and Resolutions last night, and all before 10:00. I think they earned their paychecks for this meeting.

It went something like this: This is a very condensed version of the agenda.


R-08-23 Expanding a TIF area to include the Loop Island wetlands: vote 8-1 with Steve Price having the only nay vote


R-08-33 Concerning M & V investments, sorry I didn't quite get the story on this one but it did pass 9-0

R-08-34 A zoning resolution for the West End: The discussion went on forever on this one. Dan Coffey wanted to change some of the zoning so that the residents could build single family homes and duplexes but have a more difficult time obtaining zoning rights for multi family residences and retail businesses. There was a disagreement between Mr. Messer and Mr. Coffey as to whether property values would suffer because of the red tape developers would have to cut through. This is similar to the type of zoning in Cedar Bough and Catherine place. The vote was 6-3 (against) with Mr. Coffey, Mr. Price and Mr. Gonder having the yes votes.


A-08-08 Appropriation for a grant to purchase an AFIS machine. This was neat. Thanks to Baron Hill and a Federal Grant, New Albany will have a state of the art fingerprint database that will link up to the entire country. We will be more advanced than Louisville. In fact they will have to ask Sgt. Fudge (our fingerprint expert) for help. Vote 9-0 of course.


A-08-09 Additional Appropriation for the Riverboat Heritage Fund. No brainer.
Just use the $50,000 in private donations for fireworks at our July 4th celebration.


A-08-07 Additional Appropriation for roads and streets, this is to use the $500,000 we already have to pave the streets. This passed 9-0 of course.


Z-08-08 The Gary McCartin Charlestown Rd development. After hearing from several residents speak against this, the entire council voted no.


Z-08-10 Amendment to Code...Silvercrest Hospital development; all votes were yes.


Z-08-11 Storage units on Paoli Pike for the apartment complex. All voted yes.


Z-08-24 SDR Development - the development on Grantline Rd. SDR will pay tap in fees in advance and help to allow the surrounding homes access to city sewer lines. All yes on this one too.


Sorry about the lengthy post but it was a long night.


On a personal note, I was able to corner John Rosenbarger after the meeting about a comment he made in regard to the next Redevelopment meeting, Tuesday 6/24. It seems that Redevelopment has decided to include the entire city in the proposed study about home ownership. (see previous article)

Mr. Rosenbarger had me on his "call list" of local citizens to interview. The commission will be interviewing people from all parts of town and all age groups to determine how to encourage people to want to live in our fair city.
The target demographic will be younger people (under 35) and baby boomers who are looking to downsize and purchase retirement homes.