City Council resumes normal business

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Room rates for the Caliente depot have been discussed over the last few City Council meetings. Councilman Victor Jones, who oversees the City Hall, Depot and Box Car Heritage Museum, feels the rates should be lowered as an incentive to get businesses in the depot. However, the Council also did not want to undermine the other business with rental buildings in Caliente.

Some ideas were to have rooms with HVAC at one price, and rooms without HVAC a little lower.

With different room sizes for every office, City Attorney John Brown said, ?there are pros and cons to doing it on a case-by-case basis.?

Councilwoman JoLyn Cardinal told the Council, ?this revenue has been approved already for the fiscal year,? and that decreases to the depot rent could affect their revenue this year.

Questions were presented that left the council needing to talk to Dan MacArthur, so the item was tabled until further information could be provided to the Council.

Mayor Stana Hurlburt said applying for a grant from the Nevada State Historic Preservation Office is not something the City of Caliente will pursue this year. Working with Sunrise Engineering, she said there are limited grant funds available, only $500,000. The money involved in pursuing the grant didn?t seem beneficial since there was a good chance the City wouldn?t get the grant funding.

A preliminary meeting was held in March for those entities who were interested in applying for the grant funds. No members of the Caliente City Council were available to attend the meetings. Councilman Cody Christensen said that after the needs were ranked for the communities wanting to apply, ?we [Caliente] weren?t in the top 12.?

Mayor Hurlburt informed the council there is $37,000 in their budget for depot restoration. The money is set aside and intended to be a grant match fund for a grant to restores the depot, and if the Council wasn?t going to apply for the grant, they could use those funds instead for some important restoration work.

The end reports of the meeting announced the Caliente Elementary PTO has submitted all the necessary paperwork to hold a Halloween Carnival at Dixon Park, rather than the school gym. All plans are set for the Halloween Carnival on Oct. 31, and lots will be offered to the children this year.

The Beautification Committee reported they were getting ready for the annual tree-lighting ceremony, set for Dec. 7. The Committee will be selling Christmas signs to raise money for their projects.

Mayor Hurlburt announced that the renovation of the pool building has stopped due to the government shutdown, as that part of the project is funded by SNPLMA. She said as soon as they hear back from the BLM, the building will continue to be worked on.