After months of being short a board member after Nick Cherry resigned from his seat shortly after being sworn in, the Madison City Council has a full council as of Monday night. The board appointed new resident Bekah Selby Leach to serve on the council.
Leach is a professor at Emporia State University and has experience in grant writing which was high on the wish list for the current members as there are many projects that are on the list in which grants would help the city out considerably.
There were initially two other residents who applied in which one took their name off the list and the other did not have grant writing experience which the council thought was crucial. Mayor Dean thanked the candidates who applied and thought it was great to have some interest again after all these years of not.
In other business, Kim Gaines was present as the newly appointed Library Board President and brought before them policies that needed to be approved on an annual basis and an amendment to the library conduct policy about child supervision and disciplinary actions. The main addition was that anyone under eight years old needed to be accompanied by an adult at all times while visiting the library.
She also got approval to appoint Bekah Selby Leach to the board. But since later in the meeting Leach was also appointed to serve on the city council, she will need to make a decision on which entity she would like to serve as she will be unable to do both since they are both city organizations.
Matthew Knobloch, who is on the volunteer fire department addressed the council in regard to the fire hydrants in town and the water lines that feed them. He mentioned that many hydrants are in bad shape, which Dean acknowledged and said they have hydrants in place they are waiting to be installed.
Knobloch also explained that the fire flow (how many gallons a minute water flows through the hydrant) was a concern and most of the hydrants in town are under the recommended flow which is concerning to both residential and business areas in the event of a fire.
He also stated that he would like to see some sort of fire code to the buildings downtown during all the remodeling that is starting to happen to help with preventing the spread of a fire through a downtown block if one were to start.
The council appreciated his time and was glad to have the information but no decision or recommendation was made on a solution.
The council approved the bid for the approval of Schwab-Eaton, an engineering company that will assist the city with advice on how to repair the street issues on Standpipe, McKinley and Grant. The council also approved the liquor license approval for The Ranch, which will be a bar and grill that will be opening soon in the old 19th Hole building by the Miller family.
Bids were accepted for the demolition at 202 Garfield and Leiser Excavating was awarded the job with his lowest bid of $4,800.
