November 20 Council Meeting

Had a reasonably short council meeting. We had moved it to Tuesday to let everybody get off to their families on Thanksgiving Eve. CM Sargent was not in attendance, so we had a quorum with the other 3 council members and myself. Got kinda hard to hear, as there was an event on the other half of the community center. I think that got everybody in the mood to take care of biz, and get out.

The council appointed Jerry Balmer to the city council to take the place of Chad Proctor. Jerry has served on the Roland Park Board for a few years, so I will need to find a replacement for him. He has done a nice job of helping out there. As an appointee, Jerry's term will go until after the next city council election is certified in November of 2013.

We discussed the open records policy. We were ready to approve, but after discussion, wanted to insert a deposit clause in there. So we will have that at the next city council election.

We also had a discussion about the pending open records request, and whether to waive some or all of the fee. That still is up in the air, as there still is some discussion as to what is really desired, and to have an attempt to keep the fee down.

There was also a discussion about the proposed donation of the Slagle building to the city. That is the building just to the north of the old library. The council to decided to investigate a DNR grant that may pay for the checking on if the building has asbestos. It is also believed that the building shares a common wall with the old library building, so we discussed the problems with that. The council budgeted to move city hall into the old library building. However, the council is now pondering whether maybe both buildings get torn down, and put a new building in its place. However, the council also wants to know what they are getting with the free building.

If memory holds, the building is assessed at around $10,000. But it is not in good shape, and probably just needs to be torn down. So more to come on that.