There will be no parking on the east side of Fifth Street between Stewart and Sycamore again in Carmi. After tabling the agenda item at the August 20th meeting, council spent the first 15 minutes of Tuesday night’s gathering discussing the matter. Doug Hays, who along with Mike Knight represents the ward where the homes affected are located, said he’d tried to be in touch with as many of those homeowners as possible to explain the situation and discover how burdensome taking that street parking away would be. Most didn’t take issue; there was one homeowner it could create an issue for.
They don’t have a lot of width to go wide, but they do have some depth where they could extend their parking forward. They would have to shuffle vehicles, but I don’t think they’d be against that. The one problem if we move forward is there is a tree there. It’s already well trimmed because it’s between houses there. There’s nothing valuable or sentimental about it and they would be willing to lose the tree. But that tree is hampering them from going forward. That’s my dilemma. A part of me thinks we should help them since we would be causing the hardship to them if we make the no parking. The other side of me is…we do have a city policy that we don’t trim private trees. That’s for power lines, primary, secondary, whatever. And I’m a firm believer 99% of the time you don’t violate the policies because if you create a gray area, somebody else is going to say hey you did it for them. But, this case is a little different since the city is going to create that hardship.
Hays would go on to say he’d been working on it the last two weeks, but fellow council members were just learning of it so he’d welcome their feedback over the coming days with regards to the tree in question and whether the city would dedicate resources to helping alleviate the issue for the homeowner in question.
Also Tuesday night, council agreed to an extended road closure for Corn Day. It will run on South Church between Main and Robinson now, plus Robinson from Jessup to Walnut, and Walnut from Cherry and Robinson. The additional space is needed as the Carmi Kiwanis Club has secured larger carnival rides from Swyear Amusements and they will need more room than in previous years.
Council members agreed to a pay request from Marshall Electric amounting to another $19,495 for work performed north of Council Chambers and the City/Light building. They also agreed unanimously to a resolution authorizing the transfer of TIF funds between TIF 1 and TIF 2.
Council passed two ordinances. The first, directing the sale of real estate. The city has 17 pieces of property, empty lots, 12 of them on 1st or 2nd street that it intends to sell. The list includes:
614 2nd
604 2nd
509 W Sycamore
515 Smith
611 2nd
507 1st
606 ½ Sycamore
514 2nd
805 3rd
509 2nd
717 1st
713 1st
706 1st
708 1st
710 1st
712 1st
There will be a minimum bid of $300 on each parcel. Bids can be submitted through October 10th by 3pm and they’ll be opened at the October 15th meeting.
The other ordinance is part of more housekeeping. Mayor Pollard explains.
That was actually an ordinance we found from ancient history for ESDA. So since we decided not to have ESDA anymore; this tells us that you have to have ESDA, so that’s why we’re repealing it. You’d be surprised what we’re finding.
Finally, city leaders agreed to a payment estimate to Trikote for $301,927.50 for the water tower and a pay request to Brown and Roberts amounting to $21,542.73.
The Carmi City Council opened Tuesday with a moment of silence for Don Kittinger, a long time educator, City Clerk and beloved resident who has lost his battle with cancer. Funeral arrangements are pending.
