Liquor store to remain liquor store

It turns out the liquor store building is going to be a liquor store after all.

At the Aug. 23 special meeting of the Custer City Council, the council unanimously approved the bid proposals from Bobbie Alexander that will see Alexander pay the city $1,000 a month for the 15-month lease of its off sale liquor operating agreement it was using when it ran the municipal liquor store, and another $500 a month for a 15-month lease of the building.

Alexander was present at the meeting, and said she planned to operate the facility as a liquor store once again. Under the terms of the lease, either Alexander or the city can negotiate to get out of the lease before the 15 months are up, and the city can still sell the building at any time. The building will be open as a liquor store once again around Oct. 1.

The majority of the special meeting centered around the city’s budget situation and the deficit it faces. Initially faced with a $600,000 projected shortfall, the council cut it to $300,000 with a series of cuts, some of which were protested at the meeting, including the cutting of the $15,000-a-year payment to help fund the school district liaison officer position.

Although it had not been cut out of the budget, even the mention of the possible closing of the municipal pool was enough to bring Custer YMCA director Rex Jorgenson to the meeting. He said he knows the pool can be costly to run, but asked the council what an acceptable dollar figure would be to keep the pool operating.

“Why the pool? If we take the pool away from the kids in the summer time, what do we have,” he asked.

Jorgenson said he and public works director Bob Morrison discussed how the YMCA staff and city maintenance staff could work together to make the pool less of a financial burden on the city. He also presented the council with a document showing pool usage for the year, and said the YMCA is looking to revamp things at the pool next year to make it more efficient.

Jorgenson said his main concern is that even if the intent is to only close the pool for a year, the pool will never be reopened. He said such a case could cause the momentum and interest in building the new indoor pool facility to collapse. Some on the council have said closing the pool might have the opposite effect—forcing those who really care about the pool into action to get a new one built.

Morrison said if the pool is closed for a year, it may not even be physically possible for it to reopen because equipment in the pool may fail due to inactivity.

Jorgenson said many parents who have contacted him after learning of the situation were concerned about what their kids would do in the summer without a pool. However, alderman Ed Starr pointed out that the YMCA does have a day camp and other activities available to children. He also said if the pool is left in it could mean another cut somewhere else.

“Then someone else is unhappy,” he said.

Some of the cuts may not be necessary at all, however, after the council voted later in the meeting to move $300,000 with no designation out of its liquor store fund into the general fund to balance the budget for 2011. The fund has around $600,000 in it, and will have to be closed out in the near future anyway, since the city no longer operates the liquor store. The money transfer would balance the budget with the current cuts—including the liaison officer, but does not mean the city is done making cuts or has the budget finalized.

Morrison also mentioned the possibility of receiving a grant, or at the very least, a low-interest loan to help cover most of the $500,000 earmarked for a much-needed drainage project for next year. He said he has to investigate the loan further, but felt it was nearly a slam dunk the city could get the loan. A grant would be less likely, however, because the city’s water and sewer rates are too low to receive grants. That prompted a discussion that it may be time to raise rates.

Not all were instantly on board with the idea of taking out a loan to pay for the drainage project, including alderman Duane Murphey.

“I don’t know that it makes any sense to borrow against our future when we have other capital improvement projects coming up,” he said.

The city must finalize its budget by the end of September.