WILMINGTON — A new council member and a new budget for 2017 were on the agenda of the special city council meeting on Wednesday night.
At the beginning of the meeting, Bill Liermann was sworn in as the newest council member by Municipal Court Judge Mike Daugherty. Liermann was appointed by the Clinton County Republican Central Committee on Dec. 5 after Randi Milburn recently resigned from her seat on council.
Liermann gave a short speech during which he recalled being part of council meetings in the old location just before the city building opened. He also gave thanks to the friends, colleagues and family in attendance.
Council president Randy Riley acknowledged Milburn, who was in attendance, and thanked her for her hard work on council.
After Liermann was sworn in, Mayor John Stanforth spoke about the city’s proposed budget, stating it is a bit higher than he would want, but “in the same sense the taxpayers are gracious in approving our tax increase, so they expect us to spend some of that money and make sure we spend it judiciously.”
Stanforth also noted that only a few areas saw an increase, mainly in streets maintenance, which he believes is what the people want.
The rest of meeting was spent discussing and looking over parts of the 2017 budget.
“It’s a pleasure to able to present and discuss this budget that a lot of people have worked real hard on,” said council member Mark McKay. “I also want to say I appreciate everybody trying to keep this as low as they could, but yet do what we need to do to keep the city operating in the way we want it.”
Marian Miller, Executive Assistant to the Mayor, brought up to council the budget for data processing services — $30,000 for software in the building department which is expired and obsolete, she said.
The funds will also be going toward updating the City of Wilmington’s website. “This is for two reasons,” she said. “One, we’re overpaying our annual costs for what we’re getting, especially since it’s not a mobile-friendly website.” She said about 56 percent of the website’s visitors are trying to access it page with a mobile device.
But the most important thing, according to Miller, was an ADA compliance from the federal government saying that they must have certain coding written into the website that speaks to translation software.
“So, if I’m a visually-impaired person and I hover over a link or a photo, it will actually describe it to me,” said Miller.
After some further discussion, council approved the first reading of the 2017 budget as it was presented.
“I went through this line by line and every question I had was answered,” said Randy Riley.
Council was expected to further discuss the budget at last night’s (Thursday’s) regular meeting, with the possibility of a final vote on the proposed budget.
