One of the things the Cub Scouts routinely do is tour City Hall.  Our Community Relations and Tourism Director, James Kunke, does a great tour for young and old alike.  Our scouts enjoy it because it also counts towards their citizenship award and they get a cool patch for their brag vest.  I'm sure if you asked nicely you would also get a patch from Mr. Kunke- assuming you participated in the entire tour.  This evening the Wolf Cub Scouts from the Pack I'm Cubmaster with attended, and did the pledge.  Was really proud to see those guys do so well.

First on the agenda was to renew our ability to tax 'Goods-In-Transit'.  The state required us to state publicly that we would continue to exercise this tax.  We could exempt businesses from paying this tax, but it would cost the city over $600,000 in revenue per year.  Councilman Gorena was against it as he is philosophically against property taxes which is how approximately 30% of our city budget is funded.  The majority of that goes toward paying for police and fire services.  He chose to vote in favor as we would have to have an extra council meeting to approve the vote should it not pass with 4 of the 5 councils votes, and he didn't want to cost the citizens the additional cost of an extra council meeting.

We then approved the receipt of over $230,000 in grant funds from the Department of Homeland Security for the Fire Department to replace equipment and provide rail security training for the police.  Our departments do a great job bringing in grant funds throughout the year.

Next up was a rate increase for Waste Management.  Per our 10 year contract, WM receives an annual cost of service adjustment based on the Consumer Price Index.  This year is 3.65%.  This means trash rates will increase beginning January 1.  There was a Trash Rate increase earlier this year when we increased the recycling frequency to once a week from twice a month.  We could lower rates by moving trash to once a week instead of the current twice a week.  I'd be interested in seeing what the community thinks of a single trash and recycling pickup per week.

Finally, the Council approved itself as the Board for the Crime and Fire Control Districts that oversees the 1/4 cent sales tax increase voters approved this Fall.

With that, council adjourned and then convened the first meeting of the Crime and Fire Control Districts.  Board Members Ueckert and Durham were appointed Chair and Vice Chair of the board.  We then approved the sales tax.  There was some discussion when it was pointed out that this sales tax applied to all items that people pay sales tax on in the city.  This included gas, electricity and telecommunications.  The state requires that those specific items be pointed out and approved seperately.

Matt Lampe pointed out that people might not have thought that this sales tax applied to their gas and electricity since those items aren't normally thought of as taxable items.  While I understand where he's coming from the flip side is how much hand holding does government have to do.  The ballot stated sales tax and was clear in my opinion.

All these rules passed without dissent.  What's particularly interesting is that the spending of these funds for the next five years have been laid out by the group that set up the sales tax election.  A huge thank you to those citizens for their help:  Avie Raburn, Ken Judkins, Mark Payne, Jeff Pelletier, Mike Pedigo, Steve Griffin, and Alvin Turner.  Council's job will be to ensure those fiscal plans are followed and to call for a renewal of the sales tax by citizen vote at the end of the five years if we believe it necessary.

One item of note:  Make sure to keep an ear and eye out for Santa.  He'll be patrolling the neighborhoods with the Lewisville Fire Department for the next week or so.  There will be one more Council Meeting for 2011 on the evening of the 19th.

Apologies for the late and intermittent blog posts.  I'm working on a refresh.  Please feel free to follow me on Facebook and Twitter if you'd prefer your council news in a slightly more bite sized form.