Here’s a quick update from last week’s City Council meeting (all votes on these items were 5-0):
- For the buildings on Cason Street and Wilkinson Blvd facing potential demolition, City Council opted to grant another extension to the Wilkinson Blvd property as the property owners are continuing to make good-faith efforts to rehabilitate that building. For the Cason Street property, City Council granted a 15-day extension, with the option to obtain another 15 days if a fence is installed around the property. As you may recall, one of the asks we made of this particular property back in December was erecting some sort of fencing around the building as a safety measure given its proximity to Linford Park. As of last week, there was still no fence (although there was some evidence that the property owner had begun clearing out debris that afternoon). We will receive another update on this property at our March meeting.
- City Council also decided to maintain our existing policy regarding consumption of alcoholic beverages in our parks (which means that the prohibition will remain in place). I think it is important to protect the family-friendly nature of our parks (particularly important to me as the father of a one-year-old), so I was happy to support the existing policy.
- We also passed a resolution supporting the list of Belmont road projects to be considered in the next round of transportation funding, which will be submitted as an official comment to the MPO (a map of one of the projects is attached to this post). The MPO will continue to solicit public feedback on the list of projects through March 1. For more information go to https://gclmpo.org/how-to-get-involved/public-involvement/.
- City Council has also decided to consolidate what have been a series of committee meetings into a monthly workshop on the third Monday of each month, beginning in March. These workshops will also give us an opportunity to spend a little more time working through more complicated issues before they are presented in the regular business meeting (on the first Monday of the month). I think this a great enhancement to our process and will help drive more fruitful conversation about the topics before us while being a more efficient use of everyone’s time.