NB council hears budget, airport, moratorium requests

By Barbara Brown
The North Branch City Council took on a varied agenda at its Dec. 22 meeting and voted on items from the budget to a possible North Branch airport.

After receiving orders from the council during the last meeting, city department leaders re-worked their budgets to reduce a proposed equipment certificate by $23,900.

That amount is equivalent to all the items less than $5,000 requested in the equipment certificate.

Staff also reduced the general fund budget by $8,800 by reducing overtime in all departments except police and public works by $2,800 and reducing the budgeted amount for the city engineerís office by $6,000.

The $6,000 is saved by retaining the engineer as a contract employee at $50 per hour rather than taking on the cost of hiring the engineer full time and paying benefits.

The council adopted the total levy at $2,304,415.
The council also heard a request from AmericInn manager Jack Juve to have a representative from the Minnesota Department of Transportation aviation division give the city a presentation.

Juve asked the council to invite MNDOT to a meeting to present information on municipal airports.

While the council did not agree that it would support, fund or build a municipal airport, the council members were curious about what would be involved and voted to invite the MNDOT representative to talk about the possibility.

Resident Theresa Furman talked to the council about the possibility of installing a residential development moratorium, citing safety concerns and traffic on the Hwy. 95 bridge over I-35.

The council denied that request, but in the course of the discussion agreed to examine the possibility of installing emergency interruption systems on the cityís traffic lights.

The lights could be changed by emergency personnel responding to incidents if the systems were installed.

City Administrator Joe Lynch said the council staff is supposed to meet with MNDOT representatives during the next legislative session to discuss the status of the project and see if it could be pushed into the top 25 state projects.

Staff also could meet with state and federal legislators to see if the project would receive funding.

The council voted to wait until June, when the legislative session is over, to make a decision on installing the emergency interruption system.
The city has budgeted $10,000 in a line item dedicated to the system.

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