There was standing room only at last night’s Vincennes City Council meeting as council members were scheduled to vote on the city transferring ownership of Kimmel Park and Coopers Woods to VU.
The University has pledged to keep Kimmel a public park and invest around 2.5 million dollars to renovate it.
However, despite the support of the mayor and several council members, the resolution was tabled.
The biggest concern of council was the Vincennes Boat Club. With the transfer of ownership, and VU’s plan to renovate the park, the clubhouse would be torn down. The council wants to make sure boat club members are happy with the agreement the mayor drew up for them. In that agreement, the Mayor says the Boat Club we be re-located to Pearl City. Yochum said a loan provided from the Revolving Loan Fund to build a new clubhouse.
Once the clubhouse is built, V-U has pledged to give the boat club $20,000 towards whatever loan they owe for the building.
Mayor Joe Yochum says he has no doubt the resolution will be passed in 2 weeks.
The final vote on the resolution will take place December 28th.
The Vincennes City Council voted to lower the price of the inspection fee for the rental housing program.
Under state law land lords must now pay to separate fees for registration and inspection.
Previously they were required to pay $20 every year for each unit. That fee covered both the inspection and registration.
According to the City Inspector Phil Cooper’s numbers, to fund his office land lords would be required to pay $5 every year for a registration fee per building, and $50 for the inspection of every unit every 4 years for complexes and every 2-3 for conversion units.
After listening to the concerns of property owners, the council voted 5 to 2 to change the inspection fee to $40, both councilman Ryan Clark and Duane Chattin voted to keep it at $50.
Mayor Joe Yochum says the reduction in the rental inspection fee could have an effect on city funding.
Cooper says by cutting the fee to $40 his office will lose a little more than $26,000 in funding