The Warsaw Common Council meeting Monday night started without a quorum, which is necessary if the council is to take any action.
While waiting for a fourth member of the seven-member council to arrive, resident James Cress was present at the meeting to hear about the status of his prior request for the board to revisit the city ordinance that prohibits chickens within the city limits.
Mayor Joe Thallemer said he mentioned it to Council President Jack Wilhite and asked him what his desire was on bringing that topic back up to the council.
Wilhite said, “I talked to a number of the council members, and at this point we do not have any appetite to go forward with trying to change the ordinance to allow chickens, and I guess that’s it.”
With Councilman Jeff Grose becoming mayor next year and Juergen Voss taking over Grose’s seat on the council, Wilhite said maybe the new makeup of the city’s elected officials would be willing to entertain the idea at that point, but being close to the end of the year at this point, “it’s just not going to be an agenda item.”
Thallemer asked Cress if there were more comments he’d like to make on the topic. Cress said that while he could go on with more comments on the topic, he understood about the timing and changes to the council.
“I understand and I appreciate you guys giving me the opportunity and all. I’ll still be coming in and bringing it up, I suppose,” Cress said.
Once the council had a quorum, they approved two transfer resolutions.
The first was a request from Parks and Recreation Department Superintendent Larry Plummer to transfer $20,000 from park insurance to park repair maintenance and $20,000 from park insurance to park equipment.
Plummer said the transfers were to finish up the Center Lake Recreational Trail.
“$20,000 for the contracted part of that, and then the other part is for equipment, that will be the benches that go on the trail,” he explained.
The project is coming along, Plummer said, and he thinks all the concrete will be done by the 15th, which is when the contractor R Yoder Construction, plans to have everything done, except for the decking at the old pump house.
“Looking to wrap that up pretty quick,” he said.
The second transfer request was from Community Economic Development Director Jeremy Skinner. He wanted to transfer $20,000 from improvements/other buildings to professional services.
“As we complete some of the oversight on the Marsh building, we contracted with Dilling to go through the building to make sure that there wasn’t anything in there causing damage to it that would further damage it,” he said.
The funds in the transfer will help pay for that contract.
The city bought the Marsh property, 500 S. Buffalo St., from Cardinal Services for $1.25 million earlier this year. The Warsaw Redevelopment Commission also approved an agreement with Ram Development earlier this year for Ram to have one year to try to market the building to a national retailer, preferably a grocery store.
At the Warsaw Redevelopment Commission’s September meeting, that commission approved two agreements with the Dilling Group. The first was for the Dilling Group to do weekly inspections of the Marsh building, and the second was for the Dilling Group to do assessments of the plumbing, electrical, roofing and HVAC on the building over a two-day period.