Next Meeting

The next College Terrace meeting will be held on July 16th at 7PM at Aggie's Beauty Salon on the corner of Franklin and Monument.
Chief of Police David Nye will be there to check in and to introduce our new liaison officer (Sgt Peterson has retired).
I also have a representative of the Regional R Board coming to answer recycling questions.
Look for flyers at your door in the next week or so.

canal clean up

I received an E mail from Anne Little looking for volunteers to help out with a canal clean up on Saturday June 27th at 8 AM. They already have committments from 4 folks and have three canoes involved. They are looking for four more people and at least one more canoe. If interested contact Jeff Jones at 540-899-8919.

meeting report

I thought we had a good meeting last night with about 14 in attendance (not counting the speakers). Of course with our City Council representative in attendance, much of the focus was on the current budget deliberations and how the City was going to address an approximately 5 million dollar shortfall this coming year.
The proposed 59 cent rate and the advertised 61 cent rate will mean a lot of cuts.
There was some confusion over the coming property assessment this spring (now every 2 years, instead of every 4 years), and how this would be reflected in the mil rate. My understanding is that even if we go with the 59 cent rate, if reassessments of the property within the city drop say 25%, the mil rate would automatically correct for this by going up 25 % (to 74 cents). In this way, the city receives the same inflow of tax money that was budgeted, and the home owner will be paying the same amount of money that they would have payed if the mil rate stayed at 59 cent and there had been no property reassessment.
One of the prominent changes in the proposed budget is the great reduction or elimination of funding to outside agencies. Mr. Solley requested input from citizens
as to which of these groups should take priority in the budgeting process.
We discussed the Cossey Botanic Garden - two obstacles have been encountered
since the last update. The first is the delay in the installation of a water line for
irrigation. This will need to be installed by the City before planting can be started. The second obstacle is the omission of funding of the Cooperative Extension in the proposed City budget. If the City does not make its annual contribution to the costs of running the local Extension office, the agent will not be able to participate in projects within the city, including the key role in
developing the Cossey Park. The minimum the City needs to kick in this year is $2500. This seems well worth it, especially given that the botanic garden supporters have already raised at least $4,000 (according to Extension) which is dedicated to
providing plants and materials, and is being held in a City account. I think Mr. Solley was supportive of the idea of continuing this worthwhile project, even in the face of budgetary constraints.
We also had an interesting discussion of public access television. According to the questioner, the City receives upwards of 140K a year as part of its licensing agreement with the cable company. The basic purpose of the money is for public access television. Of this money about 60K goes to VTS which televises the city council sessions. The rest of the money is being spent in general city operations (though it must be connected in some way to audiovisual services). I don't know if it's realistic in this time of tight budgets to expect the city to redirect this much
money out of what is basically general income, but the idea of having more public
access, citizen generated television in the future is certainly an intriguing one.
At the beginning of the meeting, Ann Little, spoke briefly about her Fredericksburg tree project. She has set up a nonprofit whose goal it is to restore
our urban canopy. If anyone in the city is interested in having a tree planted in their yard, contributing monetarily, or contributing time in helping to water planted trees or do administrative work for the group, please contact Ann at
TheGate@cox.net.

Back gate

I just got notice from the University that the back gate to the Sunken Road parking lot will be open on April 3rd for the inaguration ceremony of the new university president. We will probably be seeing an uptick in traffic there that afternoon.

Association Meeting

The College Terrace Association will have a meeting on Wednesday, April 1st
at 7 PM. The topic will be general city business and our featured speaker is
our ward city council representative, Mr George Solley. It should be a great
opportunity to get your questions answered and your views heard.
I will also turn the floor over for 15 minutes or so to Ann Little so she can tell us
about her ongoing project involving the City's trees.
Generally meetings are adjourned by 8:30, so it shouldn't be a late night.
As usual the meeting is to be held at Aggie's Beauty Salon at the corner of Franklin and Monument.

another warning

On Tuesday, 3/17, the University will be participating in a tornado drill.
This is scheduled to start at 9:20 AM. In addition to the loudspeakers this time, you may also see EMS and Fire personnel rehearsing a simulated tornado strike on the campus.

warning system

Just got an Email from the University. They will be testing the campus warning system tomorrow between 12 and 2 in the afternoon. This will involve tones and voices over a loudspeaker.
Don't worry - it's not the end of the world (despite what the tv news keeps telling us).