A Minute With the Mayor

A Minute with the Mayor

October 2017

By Lyons Mayor Andy Fuston

Here it is October already.  It always seems to come around so fast for some reason!  The big box stores will be putting out Christmas decorations soon if they haven’t started already.  We’ll wait a couple of months still for the city’s decorations if that’s ok with everybody!  The October council meeting was dominated by a discussion regarding health insurance.  Our current insurance carrier informed us that they were no longer going to offer health insurance so we’ve been narrowing down our options.  We were able to choose a policy through United Health Care that I feel balances the needs of the city and the employees who will receive it.  We will actually be paying $8,000.00 less per year than we were paying for premiums while keeping deductibles extremely reasonable.  We also had to change our insurance plans for life insurance and long term disability.  So we think we have that taken care of until it all changes again next year.

The council also approved a user agreement that will be used for the rental of the Store Front Theater.  All the parties involved with the theater felt it was important to allow the Store Front Theater to be used by the public but needed a formal user agreement for people to sign off on to use it.  We are looking at getting rid of our concrete pile out at the dump.  We contacted a company who will grind it down into a 3” product or smaller.  It won’t be good enough to use on alleys but we will be able to use some of it to say put rock down at the dump.  EAI is still telling us we’re on the list for the water tower maintenance work – weather permitting of course.  Our fingers are crossed that they can get it done still this fall but we’ll see.  October is the start of the city’s fiscal year.

We ended last year financially sound.  Both the General and Utility areas expended less than what was budgeted.  The pool had another good year bringing in over $20,000 for the season which was almost $1,400 higher than what we budgeted.  Recycling sales were also higher than expected.  Overall it was a good year for the city.  We are going to be advertising for cleaning help for the Community Center.  Rick has decided to retire from doing it.  If you are interested be looking in the paper for when we are accepting bids.  You will want to stop into the city office and get a copy of the duties and requirements so you know exactly what is expected of the position.  We have also been asked to look into changing our city auditor.  We are exploring the idea at this time.

Finally we have applied for a couple of grants.  One is through the state for downtown revitalization and the other, actually two grants, is for a new forklift for the recycling center.  If we get both those grants, the city’s cost for a new forklift will be less than $2,000.  Not a bad deal if you ask me!  That’s all I have for now.  Enjoy the cooler weather.  We’ll talk to you soon.

Mayor Andy Fuston