WMVO Good Times Great Oldies
New business, new location.
When the Mount Vernon City Council met on Monday night, it was the introduction to an entirely new home.
The council, mayor, various city employees and many more guests than usual – including a small group of Kenyon students – all met for the first time in the newly-finished municipal complex on the corner of South Main Street and Ohio Ave.
The building was previously owned by COTC and called Ariel Hall before the city purchased it and relocated public works, engineering, the Auditor’s office, human resources and code enforcement along with the mayor and Safety Service Director and the cemetery administrative staff, among others, to the new location.
During the meeting, the council welcomed all the new visitors and heard several citizens voice concerns on several issues.
The most emphatic guest was a concerned mother who spoke about the annual senior prank of water gun tag that has apparently already started this year in the city.
Water gun tag is an involved game where senior boys and girls play tag with water guns where they sometimes playfully stalk, follow and otherwise harass classmates, spraying them with water when they are able. The parent’s concerns were with the optics of young adults sneaking around houses with toy water guns that could be mistaken for real weapons. She wanted to make the point that these were kids and water guns having fun, not legitimate firearms.
Her thoughts were then echoed by Councilwoman Amber Keener, who has a high school senior in her family herself and who also mentioned that her house had been playfully surrounded by teens earlier in the day.
The resolutions and ordinances followed the speakers.
Resolutions were passed to pay outstanding bills; apply for grants for road construction in several places including the road split at Route 13 and Upper Fredericktown Road in the northern part of the city and part of Route 13 south and enter into contracts to demolish three older buildings located behind the City Hall building on the square.
Many of the resolutions and ordinances were on their second or first readings (out of three) and most of those were requested to have the rules suspended so they could be passed immediately.
Each time it was requested to have an ordinance or resolution suspend the rules to get passed right now (which is perfectly fine to do), Councilman Taylor Jacklin asked why they wanted them passed immediately. Each time he asked, the councilperson who spearheaded the resolution or ordinance explained the accelerated timeline to everyone present – many times it was because of a time constraint – and then it was passed immediately.
In the general comment section at the end of the meeting, Jacklin explained why he asked almost every single time.
He said that he requested it each time so the council was more transparent with the public and to get the answer of why some things had to move quicker than others.
The next council meeting is on April 27th at 7:30pm.