Lamar City Council Approves Board Appointments, Passes 2nd Amendment Resolution

 

Jim Gill Addresses Lamar City Council on Second Rights Resolution

 

The Lamar City Council postponed the Lamar Redevelopment Authority Board meeting for a later date. The meeting was to provide information from two attorneys, John Batey and Paul Benedetti, on how to best make use of TIF (tax incremental funding) generated within the urban renewal district in Lamar. 

Linda Williams, Lamar City Clerk, provided the latest sales tax figures, showing a slight increase for the beginning of the year of 1.19% over 2012. City Administrator, John Sutherland, outlined upcoming calendar events in Lamar including the annual Snow Goose Festival, the annual meeting for Prowers County Development Incorporated on February 27 at the Rodeway Cow Palace Inn, the annual meeting for LPI, Lamar Partnership Incorporated, also at the Rodeway Cow Palace Inn at noon that day, a council retreat set for March 13 at Lamar Community College and the city’s annual spring clean up date, set this year for Saturday, April 20. Sutherland mentioned he’s been meeting with Lamar Police Chief McCrea and Lamar Fire Chief Marshall Cook, to investigate developing Community Emergency Response Teams, or CERT, which will be comprised of trained, neighborhood volunteers who will assist first responders in time of local emergencies. 

The council approved several board appointments, including re-appointing council member Anne-Marie Crampton to the Lamar Community Resource and Senior Center Advisory Board until 2017, appointing Leo Hernandez to the Lamar Utilities Board for a five year term. Hernandez will fill the vacancy created when the term of John Munez expired. Toni McPherson and Diane Pool of the Wild West BBQ Cook-off were granted a request for overnight parking for contestants in the annual KCBS sanctioned contest set for Willow Creek Park on May 10 and 11. The cook-off will be held in conjunction with Cinco de Mayo festivities this year. McPherson said she will ask Lamar Police Chief McCrea to provide overnight security for the contestants in the park, as stipulated in the contract with KCBS. She mentioned the local bbq cook-off, the Backyard Grillers steak contest, will be back this year and there will be a green chili cook-off. The Wild West BBQ committee is partnering with Voces Unidas for Cinco de Mayo events to run with the BBQ contest. Ten local judges will be required to sample and vote on all the best entries.

 Pat Mason, City Public Works Director, thanked the council for the new dump truck which, he said, will be able to be repaired locally as almost all the repair parts will be available in Lamar. Mason compared the new truck to the ones he worked on when he began his career with the city 29 years ago. “We had nine men assigned to three trucks back then and we were lifting 50 gallon drums on our pick up route,” he said. Now, Mason explained, two men on two trucks can cover 4,000 stops a week. 

The city council also approved a resolution in support of the second amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Several counties in Colorado have come out in support of the resolution which is also under consideration by the Prowers County Commissioners.  All three commissioners voted in favor of the resolution in a straw poll.  The Holly Town Trustees approved the resolution at their monthly meeting.  Jim Gill led several dozen concerned citizens in the audience in their request to pass the resolution. Following the unanimous vote, Mayor Stagner said it will be forwarded to various state and national representatives including newly elected state senator Larry Crowder and U.S. Representative Cory Gardner and Governor Hicklenlooper. 

By Russ Baldwin

 

Filed Under: BusinesscommunityCountyEconomyFeaturedLamarProwers CountyPublic SafetyRecreationTourismUtilities

Tags:

About the Author:

RSSComments (0)

Trackback URL

Comments are closed.