By Marty Mayfield
KRTN Multi-Media
Raton City Commissioners heard about the budget and handled other money matters Tuesday evening during their regular meeting.
Commissioners first heard from Dan Campbell concerning the USDA funding application for the water filter plant. This public hearing is part of the application process and no comments were heard from the public on the matter.
Good news on the financial front as the gross receipts tax for July sales showed an increase of 13.799% year to date. With this kind of increase, it puts the city budget back into good shape and it is expected that August receipts could be as good. (Link to financial-report)
Commissioners approved the second budget adjustment for 2016-2017 fiscal year budget which included transfers into funds so that when the payments are made they won’t show a negative balance which would require the city to report monthly instead of the current quarterly reporting. (Link to budget-adjustments)
Commissioners at the request of City Manager Scott Berry rejected the bid for the Troy Street fire station parking lot work. The scope of the work put out to bid was more than the budgeted amount would allow. The budget amount was $150,000 and the bid came in at over $315,000. The bid was rejected and a new bid will be put out for a smaller scope of work.
The city will terminate the contract with ambulance billing service MediClaims and enter into a new contract with Enhanced Management Services. The new contract will be for 7.5% rather than the 8% that MediClaims was charging the city. EMS will also be able to work with a collection agency to collect more on the billings and hopefully bring more revenue to the city.
Commissioners approved the funding for the chip seal project. Berry is hoping that they can get everything in order to do the chip seal on the streets this fall but if not they will push the project back to spring of 2017.
Berry noted in his report to commissioners that city crews have been working on cleaning up the streets for the chip seal project and that the downtown repaving projects are complete. Berry also noted that the property on Santa Fe Drive had been cleaned up. That is the property that Chief Matthews had requested the city clean up as a nuisance property.
The landfill reclamation project is progressing with the soil layers being placed down and he is hoping that a temporary ground cover can be done before long with the permanent seeding to be done in the spring.
He also noted that there will be a freeze placed on capital outlay projects that were approved before 2016. Berry doesn’t think that this freeze will affect any of the projects the city currently has money budgeted for or already allocated.
Commissioners will meet again on October 11, 2016 at 6:00 pm in the commission chambers at city hall.
