(Atlantic, Iowa) – The City Council in Atlantic held a very short meeting Wednesday evening, during which they passed two resolutions. The first was “Approving the transfer of funds for the second quarter of Fiscal Year 2023-24.”  In his agenda notes, City Administrator John Lund said the City Clerk (Barb Barrick) makes budgeted transfers and Local Option Sales Tax (LOST) allocations on a quarterly basis. The money is allocated to various funds and recommended by the City auditor’s to be approved by resolution.

A breakdown of the funds is shown below:

The second Resolution approved by the Atlantic City Council was with regard to”Resetting the salary for Police Sergeants effective January 1, 2024 through June 30, 2024.” On January 4th, the City’s Personnel and Finance Committee met to discuss new business. It was decided at that time, to increase the Sergeant pay based on the recent MOU (Memorandum Of Understanding) regarding longevity for patrol officers. The resolution proposes compensation for a Sergeant to be $35.90 per hour/$73,989.90 annually.
Speaking of police officers, Atlantic Police Chief Devin Hogue provided a report on P-D activities. He said officers: responded to 639 Calls for service; Conducted 94 traffic stops; issued 32 citations; issued 15 written warnings; conducted 20 arrests; filed 39 charges; completed 23 incident reports, and covered 10 accidents.

In her written report to the Council that was included in Council members’ packets, Atlantic Public Library Director Michelle Andersen mentioned the Friends of the Library held their annual meeting and approved giving the library $4,600. The funds will be used for summer programming, other programming, the Community Shred Day in April, sponsoring of the Imagination Library, and other purposes.

Michelle said the elevator project should begin before February. Schumacher Elevator estimates it will take about one and a-half weeks to complete the installation, once work gets underway. The Atlantic Public Library received a $20,000 grant from the American Library Association (ALA) to modernize the elevator. The cost of the library second floor updates is covered by grants amounting to $28,500 (combined USDA and Cass County Community Foundation grants), and private donations from the library’s gift account.

Andersen reported the Library had “Major computer issues” in December. The issues essentially boiled down to expired client licenses. Another reason was the age of the servers, which are more than five-years old. Andersen said she is looking into replacing the servers later this year. She said also, in the past couple of months, the library received memorial gifts from Janeille Kenworthy, Judy Overton and Carol Hensley, as well as a $3,834.35 disbursement from the Frederick Hansen Trust. The Atlantic Public Library has also received State funds for the fiscal year amounting to $5,353.39, and County funds of $30,700.

At the conclusion of regular business, the Atlantic City Council entered into a Closed Session pertaining to personnel matter, where that individual requested the closed session.