by James Jordan, Sumner Newscow —Recently, Lyon City Manager John Sweet addressed the Wellington City Council at a recent work session concerning several programs the city should initiate to improve the quality of housing in Wellington.

The council took steps toward initiating some of his programs, Tuesday night. One of the moves, is to officially approve a group of local volunteers doing a housing assessment, and bringing it under the city umbrella. The group has been working towards obtaining a CBDG grant which will address several housing issues.

Wellington City Manager Roy Eckert said the state moved the deadline from June to May, so they are having to do things a little faster. The council will be in charge of the committee, and the report will be part of the application process.

This is related to material presented about a week ago by Lyons City Manager John Sweet, who told them about all the projects the city of Lyons has done with grants. Sweet gave them several recommendations including creating a land bank and having a consistent written system for code enforcement to get people to clean up their yards.

City officials were pleased with his presentation. They were already in the process of applying for this grant, but his presentation gave them some encouragement and specific direction.

Before the meeting Eckert told Sumner Newscow the city intends to follow most of the recommendations made by Sweet. He said the wheels are already in motion.

“We are looking at their enforcement model and what they are doing. It seems to be working there. It is not a slow process but it is a technical process,” he said, adding that they may have something to present to the council in the near future. Some things city officials may be able to implement, but if there are changes to ordinances those will have to be approved by the council.

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Things are getting better at SRMC

Sumner County Regional Medical Center board member Terry Deschaine gave his monthly progress report, and said things are looking good for the hospital. It was also decided he would start giving reports every two months. The city asked for monthly reports some time back when things were looking more bleak for the hospital, and the city was giving them sizable donations.

Deschaine said they are following recommendations made from the study they had done last fall, and it seems to be working.

For a couple of months this year the hospital has broken even and it has been able to pay some overdue vendors. There are still some to pay.

He said the first three months of this year are better than the first three months of the previous two years from a cash flow aspect.

“We are on an upswing, but I want to make sure you all know we are not there yet,” Deschaine said. “We are making progress, but don’t get comfortable yet.”

He said the hospital has agreed to treat prisoners held by the city police department without cost. This will save the city some money. This would be if someone needed emergency care or became very ill while in custody.

Deschaine said there seems to be a more positive outlook in the community toward the hospital.

“People seem to have a renewed confidence that it isn’t going to close,” he said.

For a few months last year there were questions about whether it would survive.

Deschaine cautioned that the hospital is not where it needs to be yet, but he thinks it is headed in the right direction.

The hospital is having a fund raiser event next week, 6 p.m. at the Memorial Auditorium. There will be food and drinks, and auctions.

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Quiet zones addressed

Also during the citizen participation segment, citizen Paul Webber brought up the issue of quiet zones for railroads. This was an issue the city discussed more than a year ago, but decided against it because of the cost involved.

Webber, and several other people, want the city to adopt quiet zones, which can mean the closer of an intersection so trains do not have to sound whistles when moving through the city. A lot of trains pass through the city, and while many are used to the sound, it is an aggravation for some – especially people who live close to the tracks.

Webber said he has been researching the issue for seven years, and he said the city keeps pushing the issue away.

He said he believes it would make Wellington a better place if they had quiet zones and could cut down on the noise trains create.

Council member Vince Wetta, a railroad retiree, said he has friends on both sides of the issue, but he believes there have been too many fatalities in areas where there are quiet zones. People still cross the tracks when they are not supposed to, and just because you close an intersection, that does not mean people won’t still cross. They may not hear the train if the whistle doesn’t blow.

He cited a town in Texas that has had two fatalities over the past few years.

If you put in quiet zones you also have to buy insurance, and that was going to be too great of a cost for the city, he said. Wetta added that if there was a fatality as a result of a quiet zone, the city could be sued and it might bankrupt the community.

Wetta feels the risk is too great in having trains come through town without blowing their whistles.

The city was close to having some quiet zones about two years ago, but decided not to at the last minute because of the cost of installing them and the cost of insurance.

Council member Kip Etter said he would be willing to look at the issue again at some point.

“We need to look at this and figure out what is a safe and positive way to move forward,” he said.

Etter noted that there has been two cases in recent years of people being hit by trains in Wellington, and nothing is ever 100 percent safe.

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No town hall meeting this month

There will be no town hall meeting this month. It was scheduled for April 12, but instead of that the city will participate in the Sumner County Town Hall meeting on underage drinking. The event is at 6 p.m., at Memorial Auditorium. There will be free food, prizes and there will be a guest speaker.

There will also be a work session at city hall on Monday, April 18 at 5:30 p.m.

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Humane Society land granted

The city gave a piece of land to the Wellington Humane Society for an animal shelter. The land is about 2.9 acres in the old Wellington Industrial Park. It was requested at the last work session meeting.

The city will give the land under the stipulation that it will return to the city if it is not built in three years.

The Humane Society had plans to build a shelter on Highway 81, and there is a sign on the property saying it is the future site. They do make a little money off that land, so they will probably keep it. Humane Society officials think the new location will be better, and they want to have a center for the entire county.

This is land that is not in use and not likely to be usable for anything else.

The city is also not pledging any money at this point to the project.

The Humane Society would eventually like to hire a full time director, and would like the city and county to help pay for that, but that would not be until the new shelter opens. It is still two or three years away.

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