Banks, City Council, Government

Banks City Council approves budget, more at June 8 council meeting

Banks City Hall. Photo: Brenda Schaffer

The Banks City Council met Tuesday, June 8 for their regular monthly meeting and for a work session. During the meeting, councilors and the mayor discussed and took action on a fairly light number of agenda items, while did adopting the “Fiscal Year 2021-2022 Operating Budget & Capital Improvement Plan” during a public hearing covering it and a number of adjacent housekeeping-type budgetary measures.

 Other than the consent agenda, public comment, and a roundtable discussion, other business tackled during the city council business meeting was an update of the city’s water conservation plan and an item formerly in the consent agenda, an authorization to allow the city to begin an application with a developer, an early step in a potential development in the city of Banks. 

Read the agenda packet with detailed documentation of all of the items addressed in this story here.

Giving public testimony to the council at the beginning of the meeting was Jonathon Boyer, a member of the city’s Planning Commission and a candidate for mayor, who ran in 2020 against current Mayor Stephanie Jones. 

Boyer said he wished to address what he perceived as a general lack of trust by members of the Banks community in the city and the city council. 

Boyer noted that an email he sent earlier on the topic was not answered, prompting his talk to the city council. 

“I feel that this is because of a lack of communication,” Boyer said of the community’s trust issues in the city council and city as a whole. Boyer asked that the city engage more readily with the community. 

He also praised the council, saying “I think you’re all doing a wonderful job.”

No councilors responded in the meeting to Boyer. 

After a number of city reports on law enforcement, the library, and others, and adopting that month’s consent agenda, Mayor Jones opened a public hearing to adopt the upcoming years’ operating budget. The budget was approved unanimously, along with three other budgetary measures. 

An authorization to allow city staff to begin developing an application with Wolverine Financial LLC and Lone Oak Land and Investment Company, LLC in the early stages of developing land east of Main Street into at least 87 single family homes was passed unanimously after a short discussion of the timing of the project.

The project itself has yet to receive any authorization or move beyond the very early stages due to the city’s current development moratorium due to a water shortage. 

Finally, the council voted to approve an update to the city’s water conservation plan. Every ten years, the city is required to renew the plan. The next one will be due in November 2030. The measure was passed unanimously. 

Listen to the meeting, which lasted more than an hour, on the city of Banks website.

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Chas Hundley is the editor of the Banks Post and sister news publications the Gales Creek Journal and the Salmonberry Magazine. He grew up in Gales Creek and has a cat.

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