The Grayville City Council held their first meeting for November Monday Evening.
According to City officials, the city is in search for a new police vehicle, but they are currently holding on purchasing the vehicle until they find out if they have received grant funding from the USDA. As they await word on grant funding, the city has put back into service a 2015 Ford Explorer that has around 79,000 to 80,000 miles. According to city officials, there are some items that have had to be put in to make the vehicle work once again as a police vehicle. Officials say that once they get a new police vehicle, the items that have been installed on the 2015 Explorer will be stripped and put into the new vehicle.
There was a brief executive session going over items involving collective bargaining with city utility workers. After the executive session, it was announced there will be a special council meeting on November 20th.
Under old business, a reimbursement in TIF district 2 was approved with Grayville Liquor Lake.
Under News business, a reimbursement request was approved in TIF District 1 for Southern Gray LLC. The overall cost to Southern Gray was $74,778. The city approved reimbursement of 50% of the amount or $37,389. Janel’s Parlor, doing business as AJ’s Parlor, is in the process of being sold to Paris Lee Pennington Jr. out of Lawrenceville. City officials say that while normally a transfer of a license doesn’t happen, in this situation, the transfer of the shares of the LLC are pending approval from governing bodies. Since the proposed new owner has passed the background check, city officials approved the change in ownership. Finally under new business, the council approved the request from the Ministerial Association to solicit donations at the 4-way stop on Saturday, December 2nd.
In the financial report, the city has a total of $3,014,014.89 in money. Of that, 1,872,849.90 was in restricted funds, 955,014.51 in cash reserves, and 186,150.48 was listed as cash on hand.
In the police report, the city received 97 calls for service and opened 10 case files. 46 citations, 10 warnings, and 1 motor vehicle crash was investigated.
At the end of the meeting, Mayor Travis Thompson is working on a way to attract new residents to Grayville. Mayor Thompson laid out of idea of how he could see it happening.
Mayor Thompson said that the model Grayville is looking at is based off of Dubois County, Indiana.
Dubois Strong is administering the grant in the county in partnership with Radius Indiana.. Regionally, the grant is administered by the Make My Move / Choose Southern Indiana Initiative with TMap. The group awards $5,000 in grants to out of state workers who choose to move to the Dubois County area. Grant recipients as a condition of the grant are required to stay in the Dubois County area for 2 years.
Mayor Thompson says that the program in Grayville would offer $5,000 to attract new residents to the community and would also require them to be committed to the area for 2 years. Thompson told the council to look into the program in Dubois County and then check other area programs to see what would be beneficial
No vote was taken on the matter. The matter will be brought up at the November 26th meeting.
