Fourth of July and marijuana topics at Vader City Council

The Vader City Council met the night of Thursday, June 25 to discuss the regular business. To start the regular city council meeting, City Mayor Kenneth Smith proceeded with the mayor's report. "As far as the mayor's report, I wanted to brief the council on the latest regarding the Fourth of July, which is coming up in just a week and a half. We're in the process of acquiring some barricades that will be utilized in closing off the streets," said Mayor Smith. "We're looking into the feasibility of sweeping our streets prior to our parade. I think everything is in place for our fireworks show."

The council then approved the council agenda, after which they proposed an ordinance designed to eliminate the possibility of starting a marijuana production or retail shop in the city limits, called Ordinance 2015-05. Ordinance 2015-05 is an extension of an existing Ordinance 2015-01 which imposed a six month prohibition on accepting marijuana related permits and business licenses. It will be taken into a public hearing on July 9 at 6pm during the city council meeting.
"I recommend that the date for a public hearing on the continued maintenance of the interim zoning ordinance be set for July 9, 2015," said Council Member Kevin Flynn. In the discussion of the topic, Flynn said: "We just went through a whole meeting on our sewer rate plans; and the conclusion was that we have to look for more people to live here. If we were to put a pot plant here, I would say that we're not going to gain people, but we're going to lose people. I'm tired of the wasting of time."

The next item on the council's agenda was a discussion on pay rates for local government positions in neighboring cities to see how the City of Vader compares. The council approved it, meaning that it will carry onward to the next meeting so that they can gather more information before making a decision.

Continuing with regular business, the council then discussed street repair grants that they've applied for, "A few weeks ago I went to the transportation improvement meeting board down in Vancouver, and met with our regional engineer who agreed to come to the city and look around to see what options we have to apply for grants," said Council Member Joe Schey, "He did come down, and also our city engineer showed up so we had our representative and the state's representative here. There are some streets that wont qualify, and it sounds kind of funny but if streets are too far gone; they wont help us fix them."
The Engineers had specific roads that they thought would qualify for grants, one of which was a stretch of A street in front of the post office, because they saw that it was sloping and starting to crack. They also listed B Street in front of the fire station, and the area of A street that sits in front of the Masonic lodge.

After discussion of the city's roads and grants that are available, the Mayor declared that the meeting was adjourned.

The next Vader City Council meeting will be held July 9, at the Vader city hall at 6pm.