statewide.”

“This disease is getting closer,” the commenter went on, noting that they saw people “in obvious uniform, from the prison” getting dinner at lunchtime and noon from the local deli counter. “No mask,” they said. If the City wanted to stop the disease they needed to come up with some type of plan the commenter said, predicting there would be a federal mandate before the end of January.

“Right now we are following the county authority,” alderman Kevin Hendrickson said of the next level in local government, while Kent Barby motioned to continue.

“Go right ahead,” he told the frequent attendee. With the floor later being yielded to ordinary business, the next topic was the new police addition: what to do in regards to the A/C units on site, reaching the end of their service life. With each side of the combination police station-city hall controlled by its own A/C unit, the two would be replaced by one new unit when the addition was built, with the police department effectively pushed into the addition space and getting its own new unit. So what did the council think?

“I don’t think we need to pay Cedar $850 to size it,” Haas said of the new unit meant to replace two now on site at the combination police department and city hall building. Holly Kitchell, who gave the update, agreed. Not all did.

“You can’t just do that on what we think,” alderman Kevin Hendrickson said, adding, “I think it’s a necessary expense Holly.” The council as a whole differed, opting not to have Cedar re-size the units. But there was still pay dirt. A sewer dig-in on east 10th Avenue was outside of city limits, meaning that it was also outside the ordinary service area for City services. Alderwoman Holly Kitchell put it simply.

“So this is my input,” she said. “Some of us who live in the city do not have utilities, so I don’t know that I like the idea of people who aren’t in the city receiving services,” Kitchell said.

“If we do one without ramifications it’s going to happen again,” alderman Mark Fitzsimmons said of branching utility services outside the city and people’s behavior. Although a city employee had done the dig-in, they assumed at the time that the property was within the city limits. So far there were only partial utilities on site, with no electrical or water hookup. But on a side note, there was a notable quote to report.

“She said it much nicer-ly,” one council member (not Fitzsimmons) said of their colleague’s explanation of a point of business that night. And then it was time to talk about the Street Sweeper.