• Groton's downtown parking restrictions were the main topic of discussion at the city council meeting on Monday. The topic was raised with the new apartments downtown and the need for more parking.
• Council member Michelle Muilenburg asked if some kind of permit could be issued for residents of the apartments allowing them to park on Main Street.
• "By having the permits," Muilenburg said. "We would have current up to date information to notify owners when the streets were being plowed or swept."
• The current policy is that landlords must provide at least one off street parking space for each apartment. This policy has been enforced in the past.
• While some of the council members agreed that more parking space may need to be provided to continue development of the downtown area, the current policy is in place for a reason and should stay in place. Many of the downtown businesses want to encourage walk in traffic and in order to do that parking spaces need to be available to potential customers.
• The other issue to receive discussion was the guidelines for allowing split pot fundraisers at baseball games. The city had received a request to have a split pot for a group of sophomore students. In the past the only fundraisers allowed at ball games were ones benefiting baseball or other community projects like the swimming pool.
• The final decision was to deny the request based on the precedent the opening of the policy would set. There are so many worthy fundraisers that every ball game could soon be hit with some form of fundraiser. It was decided that the current policy was the best, to use the ball games for large community projects such as new playground equipment or the baseball program itself.
• Malt beverage licenses renewals were approved for both Ken's and Duane's. There have been no reported problems with either business according to a report by Chief of Police Stacy Mayou
• A first reading was given to an update on the personnel ordinance. The update cleans up the language of the policy to fit current policies with one addition. The council also changed the policy of giving employees two weeks of vacation after one year of employment. The old policy was only a week's vacation.
• Approval was given to offer employees the option of have a Roth IRA that was pre or post taxed. Groton already offered the pre-tax IRA to employees but the state decided that both options should be offered.
• Muilenburg volunteered to attend the NECOG meeting in Aberdeen on May 29 as the Groton representative. No one was available to attend the Playground risk management workshop or the Heartland Power summer meeting.