Monticello Live

I would like to address a couple of reports given in our Tuesday, November 19, 2019 City Council meeting. Two different reports stated that an Event Center was being discussed. A local news forum reported “Event Center Discussed Twice In Council Meeting”. This headline led citizens and others to believe we are discussing this issue. An Event Center may be discussed in separate commission meetings but I would like to inform the citizens of Monticello that an Event Center is not on the table.

Click below to read more of the Mayor’s statement.

The commissions are discussing this topic only as a very long range goal. The A&P Commission will eventually look for funding sources outside our community. I believe many of our citizens and your Council would be in favor of an Event Center if we do not use 1 cent sales tax or create another general sales tax to fund it. Their discussions are public and our citizens are encouraged to attend their meetings. Both of the commissions understand the immediate needs of our city, and they are only planning based on a public survey taken in 2015 and in terms of preparing us geographically.

The city has several extremely important issues to deal with before an Event Center is considered. We have a lake levee that needs extensive repair, some city buildings that have flooding and wiring issues, sewer capacity, infrastructure, and equipment problems, a new building for our police department, potable water and well considerations, streets that need considerable repair and overlay, drainage challenges, and revenue generating issues. Some of these “projects” will be completed in 1 or 2 years, some will require much more time, energy, and money. The Council and I will do our very best to find grant monies, and federal and state aid monies to help us fund these “projects”. Until we are able to depend on our infrastructure to provide our citizens with the necessary services to live, we will not be considering an Event Center.

Several years ago my husband and my father were involved in considering the possibility and tried without a positive outcome to make this dream of an Event Center come true. I was excited about the possibilities our children and our adults would have by adding such a facility to our city and I hope someday we can do something similar. However, this is not on the table at this time.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 27th, 2019 at 12:43 am and is filed under City. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.