Council Holds Public Hearing on Changes

In photo, Sergeant Jerry Bohannan is presented with a Employee of the Month award by Mayor Carolyn Nuckolls at Thursday's Council Meeting.


Grove City Council members spent nearly half this week's council holding a public hearing on amendments to city ordinances dealing with changes in parking space sizes, changes in off-street parking requirements, and storage and parking of trailers and commercial vehicles. A 21-person committee has been discussing the changes for more than two years with subsequent approval by the Grove Planning & Zoning Board, yet several citizens and two councilors said they were opposed to some of the recommendations.

Larry Sadler said many people could not afford to park their boats and trailers elsewhere, or build a fence or screen to hide them. "We don't have to change everybody's life in Grove," he said. Mayor Carolyn Nuckolls agreed.

Bill Miller, a member of the P&Z board who has worked on the changes, said the proposed changes are less restrictive in many ways than the current ordinances.
For example, the new ordinance proposes to limit to three days the amount of time a motor home can be parked in a driveway; the current ordinance forbids it completely, he said. His neighbor, Gus Schaefer, said "I don't understand a damn thing that you have written." Dave Rieden, another Grove resident, said the new proposals were "too restrictive," tougher than Buffalo Shores South where he lives. Judith Read, a member of the P&Z board, said "I have a problem with this…we can't force the entire town to be like a gated community."

City Manager Bill Galletly said the existing parking space size requirements are "anti-business, making a lot of land unusable, citing the former Emerald Bay Restaurant as an example. "Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater," Galletly said. Council members seemed to approve the commercial side of the ordinances but had problems with the residential portion.

In the end, they voted 5-0 to continue the discussion at the next council meeting July 18 and then set a date for a joint Council-P&Z Board meeting to hammer out the issues. One P&Z Board member said it was like dragging people kicking and screaming into the 21'st century.

In other action, Council:
--voted 5-0 to deny payment of a Tort Claim from Pete Crow, publisher of the Grove Sun Daily, for water damage to an abandoned building adjacent to his newspaper office, but deferred the issue to GMSA.
--voted 4-1 to keep two payroll systems in place to handle city employee paychecks. Galletly said only three out of 87 employees had a problem with direct deposits of their paychecks and in a few years the bank would require all paychecks to be direct deposited.
Only Councilman Terry Ryan supported the issue. Mayor Nuckolls said "I have a problem forcing people to do what they don't want to do."
--removed the absolute requirement of a Master Degree from the advertisement for a new city manager, stating that a Bachelors Degree would be required, with a Masters Degree preferred.
--named Jerry Bohannan Employee of the Month. The Grove Police Department Sergeant began his career 21 years ago and this year coordinated the BASS Sooner Run event, responsible for establishing and coordinating all of the traffic control efforts within the city limits, and supervising the citizen volunteers in parking efforts at the North Beach site.
--approved 5-0 amendments to the city Personnel Policies and Procedures Manual relating to city employees, one regarding a clothing allowance to reflect the uniform allowance to be "adjusted as approved in the annual budget", the other regarding workers compensation not paying the first three days off resulting from injury on the job. New rules approved by Council now allow for the employee to use accumulated sick and vacation leave benefits to offset salary losses during the period for which no benefits are due.
--approved 5-0 authorization to apply for a REAP grant from Grand Gateway to build an irrigation system for Lendonwood Gardens, using Grand Lake water, with Lendonwood being responsible for all engineering work, approvals, etc.
--approved 5-0 going to bids for the Downtown Revitalization and Storm Drainage project.
--approved 5-0 to go to bids for the City Hall Parking lot project.
--went into Executive Session at 4:30 p.m. to discuss ongoing negotiations with the Grove Fraternal Order of Police Lodge #171, and to discuss issues regarding the City Treasurer.

After coming out of executive session Council reported that the city had entered into a two year contract with FOP #171 giving cost of living increases up to 3.8% for '06'07 and 2% not to exceed 3.5% increase for '07-'08, and increased the clothing allowance by $300 a year.

They also voted to increase the salary of City Treasurer Lisa Allred to $42,294 effective July 1 but removed an item in her contract which gave her the ability to hire people in her department.