by Carrie Moritz, Gazette
The Garretson City Council met both in person and via Zoom on Monday, November 9. While it was a fairly quick meeting, the council approved a mask-wearing resolution, looked at its current debt load, heard an update about bike trails, and discussed the results from the ash tree count that had been conducted in September.
All council members were in attendance, with council member Richelle Hofer attending via Zoom.
The first order of business was a mask-wearing resolution, which requested all people in Garretson wear masks in public in order to reduce COVID case numbers. The numbers of infected have gone up significantly very recently, impacting the local nursing home, churches, and businesses. Due to this, the council is requesting all members of the community help take care of each other by continuing to follow all CDC guidelines and wearing a mask when not in the home. The council passed the resolution unanimously. (For more details on the resolution, please see the November 12 issue of the Gazette.)
The council then had the first reading of a 2020 Supplemental Appropriations ordinance for $52,700, which was similar to 2019 ($74,000). City Finance Officer Anna Uhl explained supplemental appropriations as moving budgeted amounts from one account to another, in order to help the budget balance. Some areas spent more money, while others spent less. This occurs every year.
After tabling a discussion on the employee handbook until December, the council heard an update from council member Hofer with regards to bike trails. She met with officials from Game, Fish, & Parks (GFP) and Palisades State Park in October, and discussed how to continue a trail from the park to Garretson. Palisades State Park is planning to build a bike trail to their lodge, which is approximately a mile north of the current entrance to the park on 485th Ave. Hofer was interested to learn the options that GFP had for building bike trails, including funding and grant opportunities.
“They think that we really need to pursue this right now, for several reasons- from a financial standpoint, it makes sense,” Hofer said. “ [The State] would like to connect the trail to Garretson, and so that would make it an automatic priority. The GFP would like to help us get funding.” She noted that everything, such as planning, proposals, and funding requests take time, which means getting started sooner rather than later is the best course of action. If the City were to wait, then GFP priority for funding would decrease substantially.
She also spoke about how previous concerns about the township road had been figured in, but since funding for bike trails is separate from road funding, the GFP official recommended that it should no longer be tied together.
The City has plans in hand from Infrastructure Designs’ Chad Hanisch on a proposed bike trail, and Hanisch, who was also in attendance via Zoom, noted that they can work from those with some minor changes. The council agreed that moving ahead with funding requests and planning was important, and gave Hofer and Hanisch permission to continue moving forward.
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