Demand is high for city of Medford room tax funds

The Medford City Council met on Feb. 24 and heard from Billie Hartwig of the Chamber regarding the 2024 Hotel/Motel Room Tax commission report. According to Hartwig, the fund saw more requests than it could support in 2024.

“We are getting a lot more asks than what we have money to give out,” said Hartwig.

She reported that $72,350 was requested from the fund with $54,700 actually being awarded.

“It is hard to turn people down,” Hartwig continued.

The council adjourned and met for Committee of the Whole. The committee heard from Bob Christensen, Building Inspector/Planner, who reported that they discovered the Title VI verbiage was out-of-date for the Shared Ride Taxi program during an audit last October. He reported that the taxi program has had a telephone line where staff can call in for assistance with translations as well as a digital translator for quite some time, but the language in the act may not have necessarily reflected those options. The committee voted to send the revisions to the council for approval in two weeks.

The committee also discussed raising their own pay to $90 from $60 a meeting since they took steps to streamline the meeting schedule by gathering every other week rather than every week. The raise would only go into effect as each council member was re-elected for a new term. Evenings where the group gathered for city council and committee of the whole would count as one meeting as far as the pay schedule. The last alderperson pay raise was approved in August of 2021 and was due to be reviewed this year. Laura Holmes, Dave J. Brandner, Peggy Kraschnewski, Ken Coyer, Christine Weix, Randy Haynes, and Clem Johnson voted in favor of sending the raise to council while Mike Bub and Mayor Mike Wellner voted against. It will be brought back for final action in early March.

In other action:

• The council voted unanimously to award an amount not to exceed giving $50,000 to the all-inclusive playground plan. The community committee has raised about $230,000 of the approximately $278,500 needed for the playground.

• The council accepted the lowest bid for the Musky Court sidewalk project in addition to the installation of a sanitary sewer for a subdivision off Pep’s Drive. The lowest bid came from Francis Melvin Inc. in the amount of $476,257.67. The remainder of the funds ($96,400.12) will come from Tax Incremental District 14 (TID) revenue.

• The committee of the whole heard from City Coordinator Joe Harris who reported that the land parcel that the city was planning to sell to Hope Hospice was somehow included in the covenants of the Simek subdivision. The covenants were drafted to include lots 1-31 rather than lots 1-30 as originally planned. The covenants do not allow commercial lots within the subdivision. There is a clause which states that the city can remove the land from the covenant if all landowners are in agreement; however, all landowners have signed with the exception of the Blumes who own two lots.

“I think we should just keep it as it is and turn it into one big park,” said Harris in the interest of moving forward with Hope Hospice. The committee voted to send to council splitting the commercial lot in two with Hope Hospice purchasing the east lot and Mike Grunwald purchasing the west for a new location for his plumbing and heating business.

• The committee of the whole voted to send to council a $3,900 bid from Ayres to inspect the Medford Millpond Dam, which must be inspected every 10 years per state code. The last time the millpond dam was inspected was when the city learned that the gates had failed.