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Wednesday’s Houghton City Council meeting delved into an eclectic mix of subjects. The most pressing orders of business involved resolutions 2021-1772 through 2021-1775 which involved the paying of various bills. After those were approved unanimously, each council member was allowed to bring up items that they felt deserved discussion.
City Manager Eric Waara, who serves on the Planning Commission, asked for a change to the agenda so the council could consider a request from that body. At Tuesday’s meeting the commission decided that the best way to tackle the work on the big parking deck is to include potential revisions to the Master Plan as a whole. They wanted council approval before expanding their mission. Council member Joan Suits gave it an unequivocal endorsement.
The whole council approved it as well.
Councilmember Jan Cole used her time to bring up a subject that is related to downtown development.
Manager Eric Waara said that he had access to that data from a previous endeavor and the city will work to transfer their files to the website in the near future to make it available to the general public.
Waara discussed audit results for Fiscal Year 2020. The city passed, as expected, and the report contained good financial results. Waara said you have to dig a bit to find them, though.
Grant money from the flood inflated the 2019 audit numbers and has subsided in 2020. Property tax revenue rose five percent, with inflation being responsible for only half of that. The rest indicates solid net new development within the city.
