Dr. Corbett will continue as Zoo Veterinarian
Apr. 18—The Great Bend City Council will meet at 6:30 p.m. Monday, April 21, at City Hall. The meeting will be livestreamed on the City Council Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/gbcitycouncil/.
The Council will be asked to close Main Street from 24th to 12 St. from 10-11:30 a.m. on June 7 for the Big Bend Bash Parade, and to close Lakin Ave. from Main to Williams St. from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. that day for the car show. During the meeting, Convention and Visitors Bureau Director Amanda Gaddis and Economic Development President Sara Arnberger will share more information about the Big Bend Bash.
Another festival on the agenda is Cinco de Mayo. Julia Marin has applied for a one-day cereal malt beverage license for the beer garden at the Cinco de Mayo celebration from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on May 3.
Dry Lake Brewery is also requesting a temporary premises extension on May 3 for their anniversary party.
Veterinary Contract
Dr. Jackie Corbett has been one of the zoo veterinarians with Dr. Mike Malone for several decades and has a specialized skill set for the exotic animals housed at the Great Bend Brit Spaugh Zoo. Animal Medical Center is purchasing Dr. Malone's clinic (Animal Care Hospital) and will be keeping Dr. Corbett as the zoo veterinarian with the addition of Dr. Ty Brunswig. According to the agenda for Monday's meeting, Dr. Corbett and the zoo staff have an extremely close working relationship and she has a thorough knowledge of the individual animals and their needs. Dr. Brunswig has assisted with procedures at the zoo.
"This is a highly specialized service, and though other veterinarians could likely handle the work, the relationships and trust with staff and animals cannot be easily replaced, nor the wealth of knowledge obtained over the years." Zoo Director Ashley Burdick will report and the administration recommends approving a three-year contract for vet services with Nels N. Lindberg, DVM LLC, doing business at Animal Medical Center.
In other business, the council will be asked to approve the equipment purchase for analyzing narcotics for the Police Department and a bid for electrical work at the Wastewater Treatment Facility.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Yahoo
Citi Bike agrees to curb e-bike speeds at 15 mph after service suspension threat from NYC Mayor Eric Adams admin
NEW YORK — Citi Bike has agreed to curb the speed at which its e-bikes can go at 15 miles per hour — a move that came in response to a service suspension threat from Mayor Eric Adams' administration. The electric Citi Bikes can currently ride at 18 miles per hour, a limit the service's operator, Lyft, previously set as part of an agreement with Adams' Department of Transportation. But late Thursday, Citi Bike general manager Patrick Knoth said that due to 'direction from City Hall,' the new speed cap will be 15 miles per hour. 'We're working to meet that mandate and best serve our riders,' Knoth added without offering a timeline for how soon the lower speed cap could be effective on the hundreds of e-bikes Lyft operates across the city. Knoth's announcement came after the Daily News first reported Wednesday that Adams, citing growing concern in neighborhoods over the dangers posed by e-bikes, would enact a 15 mph speed limit on all e-bikes in the city. In response to The News' report, Knoth said late Wednesday the mayor's office had not told Lyft of the policy shift and said he would 'express deep concern' about it. Randy Mastro, Adams' first deputy mayor, then sent a letter to Lyft late Thursday saying that due to its refusal to comply with the demand for a new 15 mph speed limit he was declaring the current 18 mph speed limit an 'emergency threat to life and property.' Under that declaration, Mastro's letter, which was also signed by Transportation Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez, said Lyft had to come into compliance with the new 15 mph speed limit within 15 days. If it didn't, Mastro suggested Adams' administration could invoke a provision of Lyft's contract that says the city government reserves the right to start 'removing, replacing, relocating, reinstalling or locking all or any portion' of Citi Bike's fleet if doesn't comply with rules set by the city in the event of a 'threat to life' emergency. Within hours of Mastro making that threat, Knoth announced Citi Bike was 'working' on complying with the new mandate. Mastro, a controversial attorney who served in the Giuliani administration, cited the need to invoke such a drastic emergency to the fact that 11 people have died on electric Citi Bikes since 2021. He also noted 1,170 have been injured in that stretch. Since becoming Adams' top deputy at City Hall in early April, Mastro has been at the center of several other controversial policy disputes, including signing a legally disputed order to let ICE back on Rikers, issuing a directive to freeze certain fines on landlords and pressuring a concert promoter to cancel a performance by a pro-Palestinian singer. Most private e-bikes can currently ride at 20 mph, a limit that would have to be lowered under the Adams administration's new regime. It remains unclear how exactly the administration will enforce the new speed limit, but Mastro acknowledged in the letter to Lyft that the matter still needs to go through a formal rulemaking process, meaning its official implementation is likely still over a month away. Since Adams took office in 2022, the Department of Transportation has fallen way short of bike lane construction targets set as part of a citywide master plan. In his letter to Lyft, Mastro argued the city's progress on bike lane construction is being inhibited by e-bike fatalities. 'The lack of action to address this issue is hindering the city's ability to advance bike lane and micro-mobility infrastructure and safety across the city,' he wrote. The mayor has recently portrayed cracking down on bike riding as a matter of public safety amid widespread concern. Last month, his NYPD started handing out criminal instead of civil summonses to bike riders for running red lights or otherwise riding recklessly, a drastic shift that has outraged transit advocates and City Council members who note car drivers do not face such penalties for similar infractions.
Chicago Tribune
2 days ago
- Chicago Tribune
Andy Shaw: Public officials must cut the fat before begging for taxpayer bailouts
As Yankees baseball legend and iconic quipster Yogi Berra is famously quoted as saying, 'It's deja vu all over again.' Once again the perennially and preternaturally cash-strapped city of Chicago, State of Illinois, Chicago Transit Authority, Metra and Chicago Public Schools are pointing at Washington, D.C., with their hands out, shaking their tin cups and blaming the federal government for letting the COVID cash faucet run dry. The message they're sending Washington, and local taxpayers, is as audacious as it is absurd: 'We're broke because you stopped giving us free money.' Not a word about decades of mismanagement. Not a whisper about institutional waste and inefficiency. And no sign that anyone in Springfield, City Hall, or the transit and CPS boardrooms is willing to make the hard choices that real leaders are supposed to make when times get tough. I watched this sad scenario play out for 37 years as a local journalist and 10 more as a good government watchdog, and nothing has changed. The pandemic didn't break their budgets — it merely exposed how broken they already were. The CTA is projecting a $600 million shortfall next year as federal pandemic aid evaporates. But instead of tackling excessive operating costs, administrative bloat and outdated labor rules, executives are spending their time lobbying for a federal or state bailout — one they know won't fix a single structural problem. Anyone who's taken the Red Line after dark knows the CTA doesn't just need more money — it needs more competence. Meanwhile, transit leadership continues to drive or be driven to work instead of riding, top managers cash six-plus figure paychecks and union contracts are treated like sacred texts instead of the fungible documents they need to be in the post-COVID era. Then there's City Hall, where Mayor Brandon Johnson is asking for hundreds of millions in new federal and state funds to prevent drastic service cuts while also rolling out feel-good programs with questionable funding sources. The migrant crisis, pension time bombs and public safety concerns are real. But rather than prioritize, consolidate and streamline, Johnson's team is cobbling together budget Band-Aids and sending invoices to D.C. or Springfield hoping Uncle Sam or Uncle J.B.— more accurately, taxpayers — will foot the bill. As for the state, the other bailout target of local governments, the picture's not much better. Gov. JB Pritzker proudly touted Illinois' temporary budget surpluses during the pandemic, but those were largely a mirage — the result of federal stimulus funds and delayed spending. Now that the spigot's shut off, the state's back to deficit projections and renewed calls for 'revenue enhancements' — political code for higher taxes on the very companies and people that are already exiting Illinois in record numbers. Finally, few local institutions are as financially fragile, and equally shameless, as CPS, which is projecting a $391 million budget gap next year; and like its sister agencies, pointing fingers at Washington and Springfield instead of looking in the mirror. 'The cliff is coming,' CPS officials say, referring to the end of federal COVID relief funding. But what they don't say is they built their post-pandemic budget on a sandcastle of temporary dollars with no plan for how to sustain expanded staffing and programs once that tide inevitably went out. Rather than using the federal windfall to right-size operations or address glaring long-term issues like special education, building maintenance, union overreach and enrollment-based reallocations, CPS went on a hiring spree, expanded programs without metrics, approved generous union contracts and padded administrative overhead. The real outrage? CPS is bleeding students — enrollment is down by more than 85,000 since 2010, but the budget keeps ballooning. We're paying more to educate fewer children, with less to show for it. Nobody seems willing to talk about the elephant in every government room: Waste, in its multiple iterations; there's enough fat in these budgets to make a butcher weep. But trimming it would require the kind of political courage we haven't seen in decades. It would mean saying no to special interests, rethinking sacred cows and upsetting the apple cart of status quo politics — a cart too many of our leaders are riding in comfortably. Instead, our politicians are taking the easy way out: Blame Washington, Springfield or the allegedly undertaxed wealthy, ask for more money and cross their fingers that voters won't notice the hypocrisy. It's fiscal malpractice dressed up as righteous indignation. And let's be clear about one thing: The federal government doesn't owe them another dime. COVID relief was meant to be temporary — a bridge over troubled waters — not a permanent subsidy for governments that refuse to adapt. If local and state leaders treated those funds as lifelines rather than blank checks, they would've used the past three years to modernize, trim and right-size their operations. Instead, they papered over the cracks, kicked the cans down the road and now expect Washington and wealthy taxpayers to refill the punch bowl. Chicagoans, and all Illinoisans, deserve much better. They deserve transit systems that work, budgets that balance and leaders who don't use crises as a cover for failure. They deserve governments that take responsibility for their own finances before asking others to bail them out. There's a concept in the private sector called accountability. When companies run out of money, they cut costs, restructure or go bankrupt. They don't send letters to Washington or Springfield demanding a lifeline because their customers stopped coming. But in the public sector, failure is rewarded with more funding and fewer questions. That needs to change. And it starts with us — the voters, the taxpayers and the residents. We need to stop accepting the tired narrative that more money will fix everything, and stop rewarding the elected and appointed leaders who espouse that canard. We need to demand audits, zero-based budgeting and creative, humane staff and agency cutbacks. We need to demand efficiency, and call out the bureaucratic inertia that keeps our governments stuck in a cycle of dysfunction. So the next time a city, state or transit agency asks for a bailout, the first question we should ask is simple: What have you cut from your own budget? If their answer is 'nothing,' or obfuscation, our answer to their request should be just as simple: 'No!' And many of those doing the asking should be pointed to the exit door.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Yahoo
St. Paul weighs consolidating some downtown offices at Osborn 370 building
The city of St. Paul plans to lease more than 10,000 square feet within the Osborn 370 building on Wabasha Street, covering the building's entire ninth floor, for eight years. What will that square footage be used for? Therein lies the question. The lease at 9 Fifth St. E., approved Wednesday by the St. Paul City Council, allows for flexible move-in dates and below-market rates, with the first 12 months rent-free. That gives the city some time to complete a 'space use' study with the help of real estate consultants, who will attempt to determine which city offices will make best use of the new floor and in what manner. It might become collaborative work space for the city to engage with private sector partners, or it may support departments with space shortages, such as the city attorney's office. It also may be used as upgraded space for staff committed to working downtown more than three days per week, said Bruce Engelbrekt, the city's real estate manager, addressing the city council on Wednesday. With many office staff on a hybrid work schedule, St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter floated the idea last year of clearing out the downtown City Hall Annex building on Fourth Street and converting the property into residences, which remains a possibility. 'We're trying to think strategically about how to use our purchasing power and people power to help be part of the solution,' said Council President Rebecca Noecker. City offices are largely but not exclusively spread throughout the City Hall/Ramsey County Courthouse building at 15 West Kellogg Blvd. and the annex building directly across the street. The city's Department of Safety and Inspections works out of a building on Jackson Street, which is owned by Madison Equities, an embattled downtown property owner that has recently lost control of some of its buildings to foreclosure and receivership. The study likely will at least touch on library staff based at the downtown George Latimer Central Library. 'We have a question into (the consultants) whether the mayor's office and the city council offices should be part of the study, because of your need to be located in this building,' Engelbrekt said. 'We need to specifically look at those (offices) that have some space needs.' Council Member Cheniqua Johnson noted Osborn 370 has developed a positive reputation downtown, drawing notable tenants such as the St. Paul and Minnesota Foundation. The Osborn 370 floor is partially furnished, allowing 'minimal up-front investment to move and establish operations,' according to the council resolution approved Wednesday. St. Paul's Maxfield Elementary breaks ground on 'community schoolyard' Ex-teacher of Hmong College Prep Academy in St. Paul sentenced for criminal sexual conduct with student Four candidates file for Ward 4 seat on the St. Paul City Council Canadian wildfire smoke causes 'very unhealthy' conditions in American Midwest and reaches Europe 40 St. Paul street lights stripped of copper wiring, though reports are down overall
