Last week, the Columbia Borough Planning Commission held its first meeting of the year; the agenda for that meeting and a few notes follow below.

Last night, the Columbia borough council held its first “meeting of the whole” – the council’s trial balloon of having two full council meetings each month in lieu of having separate meeting nights for each of the separate council committee meetings. At the January 3, 2012 organizational meeting, “The new Council voted to begin a revised meeting format for 2012. In an effort to save time, money and provide a consolidated forum for discussion of borough matters, the Council approved (on a trial basis) the plan to dismiss separate Council committee meetings in favor of a second full Council meeting (a meeting of the whole – ‘the whole membership of a legislative body sitting as a committee to consider the details of a proposal.’) each month. The meeting dates will be advertised in the publication of general distribution; tentatively, the meeting dates were set as the second and fourth Mondays of each month with the possible exceptions of November and December due to holiday schedules.”

Each of the councilors held reporting sessions on the committees on which they head and/or sit: finance, highway, public safety, public property, personnel, municipal legislation, community development and wastewater. Since the Market House is no longer operated by the borough, there has been no market house committee designated for 2012, at this time.

The meeting was convened by Borough Council president Mike Beury at 7:00 pm; in attendance were all the councilors, the mayor, the police chief, the borough manager, the assistant borough secretary, the public works director, the highway manager, the recorder and eight citizens. By 10:00 pm the number of citizens in the gallery had decreased to four.

The meeting was called to recess at 10:13 pm due to several lengthy discussions in certain areas; it will be continued this evening at 6:30 pm. [NOTE: Because of the length of the meeting, Columbia news, views & reviews has not had time to review notes from the meeting; accordingly we will have notes for this meeting later this week.

Tonight, the President of the United States will address the nation with the “State of the Union” address. The address is scheduled for 9:00 pm; the address will be carried on all of the major television networks and radio stations.

Planning Committee agenda and notes

The Planning Committee meeting was held on Tuesday evening, January 17. Chairperson Don Haines chaired the meeting; committee members Terry Sears, Tiffany Lynn and Jay Lewis were present. the other member Mary Abendschein was absent. The borough engineer was also present. There remain two vacancies on the Committee. Two citizens attended the meeting. The Committee re-elected the current officer slate. The Committee heard comments from the architect for The Cycle Den and gave the “go ahead” for the project which has been in discussion for several months. There was some discussion about the issue of speeding up the approval of minutes of previous meetings.

“Committee of the whole” council meeting agenda