By Jill Fennema –

Last week’s city council meeting centered on finances. Muelebroeck and Taubert and Company accounting firm gave the annual audit. They gave the city a good report. According to Dave Fredrickson, the city is sitting good on the ratio of expenditures to revenue and have funds in reserve. 

Total revenue for 2021 was $1,500,453. That was better than budget by about $159,000 and up about $217,000 from last year. Total expenditures were $1,157,391; that was better than budget by about $129,000. That gave the city excess revenues of $343,062.

The enterprise funds of water, sewer, and refuse were all profitable and had an increase in revenue, mostly due to the increase in rates. 

In a letter to the city management, the auditor noted that the preparation for their audit fieldwork was complete and exceeded their expectations. 

On Monday, August 8, the council will have a special meeting with Mike Bubany  to discuss the city water and sewer rate changes to support the Capital Improvement Plan. Bubany is a financial consultant with David Drown Associates. 

When the USDA finance package for the city’s CIP was presented, the clerks office was hoping that it would be significantly larger than it was. Since that time, Joel Farrington has been busy looking for more grants or financing options. He reviewed some of his activities in that regard. He is also working on ideas and options that could set the city up for a better grant position for Phase 2 of the CIP.

The EDA Director Salary was also discussed. Clerk Farrington also serves as the EDA Director. Last year, he asked for a raise and the council at that time, which included people who are no longer on the council, approved the raise as long as the additional funds came from the EDA. 

While the EDA will pay the additional $17,000 this year, that board did not want to deplete all their funds by paying a salary; they want to have money available for loans to businesses. That board made a decision that they would be wiling to contribute 50 percent of their interest income to the EDA Director salary. 

The council will take that suggestion into consideration when they begin 2023 budget discussions.

DGR is working on their preliminary design for the CIP. The final design will be ready in December. In the coming months, they will spend a lot of time digging deeper into things like street widths, driveway connections, street make up, etc. They will also be meeting with public works a few times in the coming weeks.

“We are progressing well and are right on track where we thought we would be,” Trent Bruce said. 

The city park project is also moving along. That project has been let out for bids. Bid opening is scheduled for August 3 at 10 a.m. Those bids will come before the council on August 10 at their regular meeting. The plan is that the work cannot begin until August 22, 2022 and needs to finish by June 23, 2023.

The council agreed to pay DGR an additional $70,000 for the engineering and other professional services required for the Safe Routes to School project. DGR will begin working on the design of that project which includes sidewalk along CSAH 9 and 17. Their plan is to have a construction plan in place by the beginning of 2023 so that the project can be completed next year. 

In other matters, the council approved the election judges for the 2022 election. Those judges are Head Eection Judge Joel Farrington, Elberta De Jager, Mike Drooger, Ann Haga, Marlene Kreun, Mary Kreun, and Judy Zwart-Van Essen.

The Chamber is planning an event on Main Street and Howard Street as part of the De Boer Chevrolet 75th anniversary on Wednesday, August 17 from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m.  They plan to have a “Cruise In” and other events.  The council approved closing the streets in that area during this time.