Council slates agenda for Wednesday meeting

Published 12:00 am Tuesday, July 4, 2000

Because of the Fourth of July holiday, the Austin City Council will meet at 5:30 p.

Tuesday, July 04, 2000

Because of the Fourth of July holiday, the Austin City Council will meet at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday instead of today. Then the council will hold one public hearing – on the vacation of the street right-of-way for Third Street NE – and continue another on the business subsidy agreement with Cooperative Response Center.

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One of the first items on Wednesday’s agenda is the petition for referendum turned in two weeks ago, but it isn’t an action item. That’s because the petition is 208 signatures short of the 970 needed to put the issue of the annexation of 55 acres of land west of the J.C. Hormel Nature Center on the November ballot.

Nearly 300 of the 1,052 signatures on the petition for referendum turned in at City Hall in June were "disallowed" by City Clerk Lucy Johnson, because the names were not on the city’s registration roster. That’s not the end of the story.

With the shortage, the folks collecting signatures have another 30 days – or until July 30 – to turn in the additional signatures. No one from the group organizing the referendum drive could be reached for comment over the weekend.

Another delay to be addressed by the council is the agreement with CRC, which was continued from the last council meeting because the primary lending agency in Washington, D.C., and the attorneys at CRC requested more time to review the document. This time, according to a letter from City Administrator Pat McGarvey, the delay is because of some wording in the document and because the city may have to up its tax increment financing offer to pay for possible soil corrections to the building site. However, he added, it appears that there also will be a higher-than-anticipated tax revenue on the project.

"It also appears that this 13,400-square-foot facility will generate a higher tax increment than first estimated, which would allow the capacity of the seller (the Austin Port Authority) to include corrective action costs above the norm," he wrote to the mayor and council June 30.

Also on Wednesday, the council will:

n Consider a one-time sewer user rate adjustment. During normal years, the city bases its summer sewer rates on the average of a customer’s consumption of water from January through May, so that increased water used in the summer that doesn’t go down the drain isn’t reflected in the summer rates.

However, because of the dry conditions this spring, City Engineer Jon Erichson is recommending the rates be based on the customer’s average on the months of January through April.

n Vote on the annexation of Larry and Janet Sunderman’s property at 1903 16th Ave. SW.