Town Council News 9/1/10

District 5 News:

Hello,
News from the latest town council meeting September 1, 2010.
The Cumberland Arts goes to Market was a big success. Twice the size of last year and at times so many people walking down Saturn that you couldn’t squeeze by. We had some great arts vendors, the farmers market vendors and music and performances at 2 tents. The rain even held off except for the one 10min rain about 2:30.
We had a guest from the Hancock County Education Alliance (HCEA) speak to the council. There has been many meetings about this topic in Greenfield of late and many citizen groups involved. He did say that they were going ahead with opening and will be using empty building space until an investor comes on board and builds at Progress Park and that they will be leasing any structure not building it.
We approved the spending of funds on inside and outside video cameras for around town hall. These funds are from a JAG grant and a Homeland Security grant.
We are also looking at alarm systems for the town buildings but will need to check the current budgets for these departments before we can determine weather to go ahead or not.
The town is working with Central Indian Power regarding the trees vs power line issue on 21st st and Buck Creek road. The lines were moved from in ground to above ground when 21st was rebuilt. Now the trees are growing up around the power lives and CIP wants to cut them down. We will continue to work with them on this issue.
The town is having DEA drug toss on Sept 25th. Residents are encouraged to bring there out dated prescription and over the counter drugs to the town for proper disposal by the DEA. Just use a marker to cross out any names or cut the name of the label but leave the drug name intact which will make it easier to dispose properly.
We received what I believe to be the final draft of the 2011 budget and I am very disappointed that it has an overall increase of over 500,000 and we have no large project currently scheduled for the next year. The increases seem to be across all departments which to me if we are going to increase for a big project then that fund is where we would have the increase. The first budget that I was in office for was the 2009 which had a increase of 5% and I voted against it. The 2010 budget had a decrease of 8% and I felt we were moving in the right direction. Now this 2011 budget has a 12% increase and I will be voting NO. I offered some suggestions to help get the budget down but they were not included. One Council is asking for 35,000 to pay a professional firm to maintain the plantings in the medians being build down Washington st. Another councilman was pushing for spending 750,000 to expand town hall. This last one did not make it in but the previous one was at a lesser amount. I was asking for funding for another police officer and that may not happen as I had hoped.
The Pennsy trail is still on schedule to open on time this fall (NOV 1) and there will be a ribbon cutting scheduled around that time.
The Washington street project is many months behind schedule and will miss the completion date of this fall and will be finished in the spring. I will again be asking that all of the barrels be removed from the road way before winter weather sets in.
We will be looking at preliminary work to rebuild the sewer and roadway on Hugo. There are many spots where the road is starting sink into the ground due to storm sewer breakdowns.
The Farmers Market is still going until the end of Oct and I will be there this sat 9/11 to work the towns welcome tent. Stop by and get your weekly produce and say Hi.

Joe Siefker
Cumberland town council Dist 5