Council approves first reading of equipment lease purchase agreement
The Manitou Springs City Council approved the first reading of an ordinance approving a $708,732 lease purchase agreement with Clayton Holdings, LLC. The agreement will provide a variety of new equipment for the Manitou Springs Police Department, including five new radios, a Polaris UTV, a new police car, and the newly-approved speed monitor camera. The city will also receive a jackhammer attachment for the Polaris UTV, four new pickup trucks, a dump truck, five new parking kiosks and a retrofit sewer CCTV camera van. There will be a public hearing for the second reading of the agreement on Feb. 18.
Funding options for Dillon and Hiawatha Gardens projects
City Council also unanimously approved a $1.3 million loan for the ongoing Dillon Mobility and Parking Enterprise. “We have a very healthy fund balance and we should keep that at this time for the unexpected,” said Manitou Springs Financial Director Rebecca Davis. “Right now, for these capital projects, we have some options. We could borrow from the general fund, or we could from a bank. We have options here, but we could, in the future, encounter situations where we don’t really have any options and all we can do is use the cash in our fund balance, so if we have a disaster and we get the FEMA grants again, they only give 80%, and we’re we’re expected to provide a 20% match to those to those FEMA grants. All those FEMA grants we have had, the city was providing a 20% match for them. It’s not like we could go out and get a loan for that. We had to have that cash on hand, and of course the national economic uncertainty, we might even need to end up using it to help out with operating costs. At this time I don’t recommend borrowing from the general fund.”
Parking woes
Councilor Julie Wolfe expressed continued frustration over changes to the residential parking program (RPP). “I had more complaints about the RPP,” she said. “What’s going on? It looks like it’s not being enforced. Everybody was told that oh there’ll be a magic solution by Feb. 15.”
Library re-opening
City Administrator Denise Howell noted that the Manitou Springs Library will hold an open house on Feb. 7 at 4:30 p.m. “It looks like this project is coming under budget which is always good to hear,” said Howell of the library renovation.
