Council to hold public hearing at July meeting

By Chad Koenen

Publisher

The New York Mills City Council is hoping new language in three parking ordinances will ease confusion surrounding the implementation of each ordinance.

During its regularly scheduled meeting last week, the NY Mills City Council held a public reading of an ordinance regulating how long a vehicle can be parked on the street in the downtown area, parking large vehicles on residential streets and the calendar parking ordinance. The ordinances have all been on the books in the past, but portions of the ordinances were not regularly enforced due to a lack of teeth in the ordinance and overall lack of knowledge of the limits in parking vehicles on the streets for long periods of time.

Vehicles and trailers that are parked on Main Ave. to Centennial 84 Dr. and Park St. will now need to be limited to 24 hour parking at a time. The ordinance also took out the two hour parking limits on Main Ave. between Park St. and Front St., as well as Front St. between Main Ave. and Walker Ave. 

A second ordinance clarified that 24 hour parking shall be put in place in residential areas as well and sought to clarify what constitutes 24 hour parking. Vehicles can no longer remain on a street for a period of longer than 24 hours, which was a change from being located on one side of the street. 

However, residents can seek a permit from the city office to keep their trailer or vehicle in one spot on the street for longer than 24 hours ahead of time. 

A third ordinance regarding the new calendar parking ordinance during the winter months exempted county roadways, cul-de-sac or industrial zoned areas from needing to comply with the calendar parking. 

Since changes were made to the ordinances, the city council approved calling for a public hearing at its July meeting to seek public input regarding the three parking ordinances, before they could be implemented.

In other news

• Approved a request from the NY Mills Fire Department to withdraw $253,000 from its savings account and pay for the remaining $58,774 from next year’s capital contribution that has been budgeted in the past to complete the purchase of a new pumper tanker. The total purchase of the truck was $429,793. 

• Heard the combined gross sales for Mills Liquors was down three percent from the prior year. Net revenues for the month were down 21 percent as a percentage of sales from the previous year. 

• Heard the monthly call report from the NY Mills Police Department that showed 150 calls for service during the month of May, which included 12 citations, two parking citations and 34 warnings last month. 

• Heard the swimming pool has been cleaned and is operational. The city is currently waiting for the state inspection, but the hope was the swimming pool would be open in the near future. 

• Heard city clerk Julie Roberts has researched and received a quote from TextMyGov for text messages for city notifications. The system will send out automatic text messages for things like city notifications, emergency notifications, community events and more. The system would allow the city to notify residents by addresses and groups in the city. The cost for the system would be $3,000 for the first year and $2,000 for every year after that.