6 hours Ago By TODD VON KAMPEN [email protected]
The last North Platte City Council meeting with its current lineup will discuss whether to offer the Golden Spike Tower & Visitor Center a city loan to pay off its 17-year-old U.S. Department of Agriculture loan.
Tuesday’s 5:30 p.m. meeting in the City Hall council chamber, 211 W.
Third St., falls 20 years and one day after the city dedicated proceeds from its 2% hotel-motel “occupation tax” to help build the Bailey Yard tourist attraction. The meeting may be viewed on Allo Communications channel 1 and the city’s YouTube channel.
For access to the livestream and the meeting’s agenda book, visit northplattene.gov/watch . It’ll be the last full council session for members Donna Tryon and Mark Woods, both elected in 2020.
Mayor Brandon Kelliher and newly elected or re-elected council members will take their oaths of office Dec. 3, after a brief last meeting of the present council. Woods, who declined to seek a second Ward 4 term, will be succeeded by Nick McNew.
Rod Dye defeated Tryon for her Ward 1 seat in the Nov. 5 election. After an opening five-item consent agenda, the council will consider whether to authorize Kelliher to negotiate with the nonprofit Golden Spike board to replace its original $3.
728 million USDA loan with a city loan. The eight-story tower overlooking the world’s largest rail classification yard rode an often bumpy 11-year track to its opening next to the Union Pacific Railroad’s diesel shop on June 16, 2008. Efforts began in 1997 to replace a short observation deck near South Buffalo Bill Avenue with a permanent tourist vantage point of the yard.
Its proposed height soared and shrank before the tower’s design was settled. The council in 1999 approved a 2% tax on hotel and motel rooms to help pay for the tower. It’s separate from the 4% Lincoln County and 1% state lodging taxes for tourism promotion.
Council members voted 6-2 on Nov. 18, 2004, to devote city occupation tax proceeds to repaying the USDA loan through Feb. 17, 2029, in exchange for an exclusive option to buy the Spike.
Proceeds after that date will go to the city’s general fund, Kelliher said Friday. The tower’s construction was delayed three years after Leonard Hiatt and three other residents sued in February 2005, objecting to the legality of the 2004 deal and the city occupation tax itself. Hiatt, who lost in Lincoln County District Court, dropped a Nebraska Supreme Court appeal less than 48 hours before oral arguments would have been heard on June 1, 2006.
In a council memorandum for Tuesday’s meeting, City Attorney Bill Troshynski wrote that the Spike’s USDA loan requires it “to apply for and accept a loan in a sufficient amount to repay the USDA, if such a loan is available at reasonable rates and terms.” Just under $1 million remained to be paid on the USDA loan as of June 28, according to city records. The Spike’s 2007 promissory note set monthly loan payments at $22,853.
Kelliher said little about the reasons for offering a city loan to the tower’s board. But “the city has a number of various sources of funds that could be available for this purpose,” he said. Tuesday’s council agenda also includes first-round debate on a trio of ordinances that would reorganize but not substantially change city codes on lodging and retail occupation taxes.
Council members also will return to an idea it tabled in December 2022 to use Newburn Fund interest to help buy a second open-air shelter for Cody Park. The 40-foot by 60-foot “Poligon” steel shelter would be installed on the park’s east end near where playground equipment was updated two years ago, Parks and Recreation Superintendent Lyle Minshull said in a council memo. It’s about the size of the existing shelter near Cody Park Rides, and it’s made by the same company that manufactured the park’s carousel shelter and the shelter in Memorial Park, Minshull added A $4,700 Mid-Nebraska Community Foundation grant would be applied to the $269,287 bid by Crouch Recreation of Omaha for the shelter and needed concrete and fencing.
Newburn funds would supply the remaining $264,587. The late John Newburn left land to the city upon his 1987 death on condition it be used for parks and recreation projects. Voters in 1990 limited Newburn Fund spending to interest from the land’s $2.
5 million sale in 1989. In other business, the council will: • Vote on a proposed one-year renewal of Ryan Kuhlman’s contract to haul yard and tree waste from the city’s transfer station near Lake Maloney. • Decide, as part of the consent agenda, whether to ratify Kelliher’s appointment of Lauren Sheard to the city’s Library Advisory Board.
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