By Sam Parsons
The Ottumwa city council met last night and held a public hearing for the city’s 2023 Justice Assistance Grant. The city receives a Justice Assistance Grant from the Bureau of Justice Assistance annually to assist law enforcement, particularly for violent crime. This year, the grant totaled $26,628, and was approved unanimously by the council.
In other business, the council passed the second reading of an ordinance increasing the compensation for the mayor and city council members. City Administrator Philip Rath said that the numbers had been the same since 1999. The mayor’s annual compensation changed from $9,000 to $10,200, while council members received a bump from $4,000 to $6,000.
The council also heard an update from the city’s director of human resources, Barb Codjoe, about the staffing situation with the city’s fire department. Codjoe said the city was down 6 positions at the fire department but that they had recently made a new hire and appointed Pat Short as interim Fire Chief.
And the council heard from Ottumwa Community Schools superintendent Mike McGrory on the district’s tennis courts project. The school board discussed the project at their regular meeting on Monday, where McGrory said that the district had committed $750,000 to the project with the hope that the council would approve $750,000 of city funding for it. The project carries an estimated $2.2 million price tag. with the remainder of the funding to come from community fundraising. Councilmember Mark Roe said that he didn’t think the council had enough information to make a sound decision based on the uncertainty of community fundraising and the city’s nearby sewer separation project potentially causing issues, but city engineer Philip Burgmeier said that the two parties had done their due diligence and that the two projects wouldn’t present a conflict. The funding for the tennis courts project was ultimately approved by the council unanimously.
The next regular meeting with the Ottumwa City Council will be held on September 5.
