By Chad Koenen

Publisher

For the second time in as many months the New York Mills City Council held a public hearing regarding three parking ordinances within the city limits.

During its regularly scheduled meeting on Tuesday night, the city council held a public hearing and later approved three parking ordinances including 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 ordinances and overall lack of knowledge of the limits in parking vehicles on the streets for long periods of time. 

The city council also held a public hearing regarding the three ordinances last month, but made a few minor changes to the ordinances after hearing feedback from the public and wanted to give the public another chance to weigh in on the changes. The public in attendance did not have any additional comments and the ordinances were adopted as presented.

In other news

• Acknowledged the following donations: $500 from the NY Mills Lions Club to the City of NY Mills for a stationary bike in the fitness center and $2,500 from Arvig for the Day Care project.

• Heard the monthly liquor store report from Mills Liquors that showed the combined gross sales for the month were down 12 percent from the pervious year and net revenues were down 1.5 percent as a percentage of sales from the prior year.

• Heard the monthly report from the NY Mills Police Chief Bobby Berndt which showed 133 calls for service during the month of June. There were seven citations and 27 warnings issued. The city council also discussed an uptick in feral cats in the community of late. Berndt said short of trapping the cats and bringing them to the humane society there wasn’t much he was able to do to humanely combat feral cats. 

• Heard the monthly report from Public Works Supervisor Kyle Mattson who stated that utility locating and gas line inspections continue to be a priority for the department. There have been 270 utility locate tickets this year, compared to 148 tickets at this point last year. There have also been 120 gas line inspections due to the Midco project going through town.  

• Heard the park board discussed the need for safety netting at Lund Park, as well as the lawn sprinkling system that has been used this summer. A question arose over who was responsible for the water used on the fields. The park board is proposing splitting the water used for irrigation three ways between the softball association, park board and school, while Smith Park would be split three ways between the baseball association, school and park board.