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Thursday, November 5, 2015
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Dealing with a budget shortfall City Christmas party could be on the chopping block By Goldie Rapp grapp@bcrnews.com
PRINCETON — The Princeton City Council has been forced to find ways to come up with $75,000 to pay for road and sewer repair work. At the Monday, Nov. 2, council meeting, Mayor Joel Quiram said $65,000 worth of road work is needing to be done on South Church Street and in the Bailey Subdivision following sewer projects. The work includes preparing roads for future pavement, which apparently was not budgeted in the original project bid, according to Quiram. Also, the city recently discovered two areas where the sanitary sewer had collapsed on North Pleasant Street off of Clark Street. Work has started on the project, but it will cost the city another unexpected
$10,000. The needed road and sewer work is not in the city’s budget, and Quiram and Princeton City Clerk Pete Nelson have sat down and combed through areas of the budget that can be adjusted to help pay for the projects. Quiram shared their five budget adjustment suggestions at Monday’s meeting: 1. The city will be able to use $10,000 that was originally sitting in the motor fuel tax fund. Quiram said the city was contacted by the state, which let them know those monies did not belong in that fund. The city will be able to transfer those monies to the general fund and use them to put toward the project costs. 2. Cancel this year’s city Christmas party, which is a $6,000 expense. “We can better utilize that on these projects,”
Quiram said. He did add later on in the meeting that canceling the Christmas party would not include the service awards that are given out at the end of the year and does not include Christmas gift cards that are given to city employees. “Those will remain,” he said. 3. Discontinue the prescription plan for retirees over age 65, which would generate a savings of $36,000. 4. Defer the planning departments’ budgetary balance of $18,000 for equipment and software and $3,000 for engineering to next year’s budget. 5. Borrow the remaining $2,476.50 from the $800,000 settlement the city received after they went after the manufacturer of a failed cannibal system used at the wastewater treatment plant.
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Accepting a ‘gift?’ Princeton looks at pros and cons of Main Street building By Goldie Rapp grapp@bcrnews.com
PRINCETON — Should the city of Princeton accept News Tribune’s donation of its old building, which has been sitting vacant for almost two years on the corner of Peru and Main streets? Discussion on this topic was brought up in new business at the Monday, Nov. 2, Princeton City Council meeting. Commissioner Laura Favia said it was brought to her attention that Mayor Joel Quiram had posted about the News Tribune building on his Joel Quiram Mayor of Princeton Facebook page. According to the mayor’s Facebook post on Tuesday, Oct. 27, Quiram stated the city has an opportunity to receive the building as a gift. He stated there would be no cost to the city in the transfer of property. In the post, Quiram also suggested deconstructing the building and taking some of its material to be reused or repurposed. He said volunteers or “a supervised group or organization” could look into doing this for the city. Quiram went on to state once the building is demolished and removed, the empty lot could be transformed into a green space, which would help rejuvenate South Main Street.
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BCR photo/Dave Cook
Falling ... into autumn Jason Taylor of Princeton recently used an afternoon of beautiful autumn weather to perform a good deed by raking the leaves from the yard of a friend. As trees continue to finish dropping their fall colors, the sight of this yearly chore will become more frequent during the next few weeks.
Walnut works on village website By Nita Wyatt news@bcrnews.com
WALNUT — The Walnut Village Board is considering the possibility of a village website. At a previous meeting, Walnut Police Chief Glenn Lawson presented a proposal for the development of a municipal website for the village of Walnut. The costs for the website in Lawson’s presentation were $802 for ini-
tial set-up and an annual fee of $603. The proposal was tabled at that previous meeting with the recommendation that other village websites in the area be explored and also information be gathered regarding the Walnut Chamber of Commerce site. Board member Brian Stull stated he had visited the village of Bradford’s website, and he was impressed by its functionality. The administrator of their page, who Stull had contacted, was very enthusiastic about
Cold weather is on it’s way!
the website and felt that even though the board in Bradford had been nervous about its development, it has become an asset for the community. Board member Sharon Smith presented information about the costs associated with the Chamber of Commerce website. This site was developed through GoDaddy.com and had an initial set-up cost of $2,500 with
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