 Downtown area to gain four new parking spaces
When the parking spaces for the downtown area of Lincoln were
originally laid out, there was a gas station on the northeast corner
of the intersection of McLean and Pulaski streets. Motorists could
gain access to the station from McLean on the north side of the
intersection and from Pulaski just east of the intersection.
Today that area is an office complex that houses, among others,
Country Companies Insurance and the Forman Law Office. The driveway
is a parking lot for those businesses, and on the south side, facing
Pulaski, there are parking blocks that have effectively closed the
driveway to traffic.
City engineer Mark Mathon said he had received an e-mail
suggesting that the city could stripe parking spaces into that area.
Mathon said that doing so would involve re-striping the traffic
lanes on the east side of the intersection, but if the city would do
so, indeed they could gain possibly four parking spaces there.
City attorney Bill Bates did some quick research to determine if
that area had ever been officially designated as "no parking" and
found that it had not. Because of that, no ordinance is required to
establish the new spaces.
Tracy Jackson, superintendent of streets and alleys, told the
council that special equipment will have to be rented at a cost of
just under $600 in order to mark the spaces and re-stripe the
traffic lanes.
Logan County Fair offers to pay for street sweeping
Alderman Marty Neitzel, who chairs the street and alley
committee, announced that she had an offer from the Logan County
Fair board to pay for street sweeping services at the fair next
week. The offer is in the amount of $436.14 and will pay for services
beginning Aug. 4 and running through Aug. 9.
Busby asked whether that was a sufficient amount and Jackson said
that it covered man-hours, equipment and travel time.
Busby asked about disposal of the waste, and Jackson said that
they would add it to the already established pile.
Busby explained this, saying the public may not know that street
sweepings are considered hazardous waste and cannot be deposited in
the city landfill.
Permission to submit grant applications for downtown streetscape
projects
Neitzel said she had received an e-mail from Mayor Keith Snyder,
who is on vacation, asking that permission to apply for two grants
be placed on the voting agenda.
The grants include one for $675,000 through the Illinois
Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity and another from the
Illinois Department of Transportation in the amount of $1,875,000,
which if awarded, would be used for the downtown streetscape plan
that was unveiled earlier this year by the mayor and Wanda Lee
Rohlfs of Main Street Lincoln.
Bates told the council that there would be a cost involved in
applying for the grants, amounting to about $2,000 per application.
He said that one of these $2,000 fees has already been covered by a
private donor, and Snyder is hoping that the second one will be
covered in a similar manner.
Alderwoman Melody Anderson, who chairs the finance committee,
also noted that if no donor comes forward for the second application
fee, there is money in the mayor's budget to cover this.
Hulett expands on comments by assistant fire chief
In recent meetings Busby has publicly voiced concerns about the
Lincoln Fire Department's budget and what he perceived as being
excess spending.
During a somewhat heated discussion two weeks ago, he suggested
that perhaps one solution to the problem would be to order the fire
department to stop responding to emergency calls with the Logan
County Paramedic Association.
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Since that time, the fire department, through Assistant Chief
Steve Dahm, who acted on behalf of the vacationing Chief Kent Hulett,
has noted to the council the importance of their EMT services to the
citizens of the city.
At last week's meeting Dahm recounted that the fire department
had resuscitated three individuals in the previous week.
Tuesday evening, Hulett expanded a bit on that report. He said
that being able to resuscitate a patient on the scene is very
unusual and that statistically only 10 percent of such patients
survive. Hulett said that of the three patients, two survived. (Due
to Illinois privacy laws, no further information can be given.)
He said that this level of success was achieved through a
cooperative effort, with the fire department being first on the
scene, the Logan County Paramedics responding quickly and then the
efforts of the emergency service providers at Abraham Lincoln
Memorial Hospital.
When Hulett finished speaking, Busby said, "If you're wondering
why the fire department was the only ones there, the three units of
the EMT were in Springfield, so our fire department is the only
backup this city has."
Bates explains a situation with a second mortgage on a business
property
In the mid-1980s the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic
Opportunity awarded grants to municipalities for the purpose of
investing in their local businesses, either through new business
startup or existing business expansion.
The grant allowed the city to issue loans to business owners with
a payback contract typical of a mortgage or second mortgage.
Tuesday evening Bates discussed a problem with one of these
loans.
Being careful not to use a name, he said that in 1986 the city had made a loan to two individuals
for the expansion of their business. The city had then acquired a
second mortgage on a piece of business property as collateral. The
business is now closing and the property in question is for sale.
The owners have discovered that the city of Lincoln still holds
the second mortgage. Bates said he has done a great deal of
searching on this and can find no record of the loan being paid
back. He also noted that he can find nothing that indicates the loan
was not paid back.
Furthermore, the current owner of the property cannot produce
proof one way or the other.
Jackson said that there are boxes of documents from the city
warehoused in one of the street department buildings. He and Bates
have done some checking there and will continue going through the
boxes on Wednesday with the hopes of finding some documentation
regarding this situation.
Bates also noted that if the note has not been paid, there will
be very little if anything the city can do about it.
[By NILA SMITH]
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