Palmer changes ice fees

PALMER — The Palmer City Council unanimously passed two resolutions at their regular meeting on Aug. 24. City Manager John Moosey also brought up a need for the city to purchase a new truck for plowing as the winter plow season quickly approaches.

“I am short a vehicle and we have the winter season coming up for plowing is very important. Here’s our challenge, if we wanted to get a vehicle, that is not budgeted by the way we did not anticipate this in the budget, the state contract which would normally buy and get great deals is going to be pretty much out eight months and as you know the supply chain is broken, but there are vehicles coming in ones and twos. The issue that we have is I am limited to $15,000 expenditure as Manager,” said Moosey. “One of the things that the city council has been very concerned with is the plowing issues especially in downtown areas during the winter, so that’s the challenge I have.”

With the promotion of John Prevost in the Palmer Fire Department, who had previously served double duty on Public Works, Moosey said that either $25,000 in equipment would need to be moved to a new truck for Public Works, or a new truck would need to be purchased for Public Works for the purposes of plowing.

“It’s going to cost maybe $25,000 to move all the equipment off the public works truck and put it on a fire vehicle, or we allow that vehicle to go to fire and we replace it with a truck for public works really because we really don’t have a choice. We just have to look at what is our opportunity to grab something, that’s where I think the decision is going to lie,” said Moosey. “This is an unusual situation and I don’t know if anybody’s bought a vehicle lately but unless it’s a minivan I think you can get a good deal on a minivan, but I think work trucks, work vehicles, trucks, vehicles are difficult to acquire.”

The Council unanimously passed Resolution 21-030 to change the fee schedule at the MTA Events Center. The resolution increased prime ice hour rentals, non prime ice hour rentals, the paid gate per hour and the curling ice time per hour, as well as the rate for birthday parties. Resolution 21-030 also decreased teh per hour and per day dry floor rental.

“Mr. Hanson has a goal to try to have the use of the MTA center pay for itself. We’re not there yet, it’s going to take us quite a few steps but we are working toward that,” said Moosey.

The council also unanimously approved Resolution 21-032, which approves ARPA funds. Palmer will receive $1,799,829.57 total in ARPA funds in two separate payments that are intended to be used at the wastewater treatment plant phase two engineering project.