Westminster’s Common Council was busy recognizing community members and contemplating a rainy day fund at Monday night’s meeting.

To start the meeting, Mayor Kevin Utz recognized the 2010 participants in the  Historic Holiday House Tour. Eight homeowners in the Belle Grove Square neighborhood extensively decorated their homes in traditional holiday fashion, and opened their doors to the community. This year’s event broke records in terms of the number of tickets sold and the amount of money raised.  Close to 1000 people attended this year’s event.

Two awards were presented for the best decorated home. Reverend Lucy Brady and Eddie Blue are the downstairs residents of 7 Park Avenue and they shared the first place award with the upstairs resident, Glenn Hansen. The runner up was Jaime and TJ Reilly of 44 Bond Street.

“Seeing this really brought home to me the importance of what the City is trying to do in terms of historic preservation,” Councilman Gregory Pecoraro said.

After presenting the awards, the Council got to business discussing Resolution No.10-9 – a proposal to establish a rainy day fund.

According to Pecoraro, the City used to have a larger unallocated surplus which operated very much as a rainy day fund but as the Council “has had to scrape during the past few budget cycles", those reserves were emptied.

“This is an important step, most governments do try to establish some sort of budget stabilization or rainy day fund to provide some cushion in tough times,” Pecoraro said.

In spite of tough economic times, Pecaroro said the Council has worked very hard over the past couple of years to stabilize the budget and managed to set aside some funds, which will allow for the start of the reserve fund. 

According to Council members, money will not be taken out of the general fund for the rainy day fund, but rather the money designated for the rainy day fund will come from a $1.5 million loan being repaid to the city.

“I think its prudent for us to do this at this time, it’s the smart thing to do,” Councilman Tony Chiavacci said,

In new business, the Director of Public Works Jeffrey Glass presented the Council with concerns over the parking payment system at the Longwell Garage.  He explained that the current system requires a software upgrade at a cost of $21,400. He added that implementing parking meters in the garage would not only reduce upfront and maintenance costs, but would also be more user friendly for garage patrons.

According to Glass, installing the parking meters would cost $17,495 and there would be additional costs such as the time a meter maid will have to spend monitoring the meters.

But Glass said that overall, installing the meters would be the most economical thing to do. He added that the meters can be programmed for any amount of time so that garage users do not have to return to feed the meter every couple of hours.

The Council also learned about the City’s new salt solution to treat roads during inclement weather. Glass explained that the City is using a liquid salt treatment that will save money and work better to keep the road clear of snow and ice.

The next Common Council Meeting is scheduled for Monday, January 24 at 7 p.m. at City Hall.