City Council met for its regular meeting of January on 1/2 and 1/16 with a light set of agendas for both – though very significant ones – notably:
- Finance administrative items (annual appropriation, investment of funds authorization, and requesting advanced payment of funds from Hamilton County Auditor)
- Introduction of new employees (Elizabeth Johnson – Fitness Center Manager, Paul Hansen – Firefighter Paramedic, and Brandon Padilla – Firefighter EMT)
- A vote on the proposed Earning Tax change
I was personally very glad to see the new folks join the City. Several folks had reached out to let me know they had great first impressions of the new fitness center manager – she runs several of the classes for the seniors and was quickly settling right in. (Thankfully!?) I haven’t had too many folks reach out with EMS connections for the firefighters, it is quite a sight in the council chambers when new first responders join – so many fellow firefighters so up to welcome them.
On the business side of things the City Council did unanimously approve sending the proposed Earning Tax change to the voters. Its up to the community now (on May 7th!) to decide the issue. Looking over the numbers I believe it would be impossible for the City to maintain the level of services we have now without this increase. Even with a great deal of differed maintenance over the past 10 years the ‘annual run rate’ of the City would not work. You can only kick the can down the road so far before you run out of road, I believe without the increase we would have to make a number of difficult service cuts. I’m open to other views on this. I know even small changes can throw households budgets off – though if the vote were today I would still say ‘yes’ on the increase. It is one of those cases where small changes for each of us can have outside impacts for everyone.
In other news – have you noticed the progress at the old GE Park re-development? The site has been totally cleared! Same for the new Springrose sites! Progress!
Related Links
ICRC Meeting Recording Link (1/2) Link (1/16)
Written Minutes Link (1/2) Link (1/16)
Agenda Link (1/2) Link (1/16)