The Minden City Council covered a full agenda at its latest meeting, unanimously passing the annual city budget, adopting a new ordinance giving the public works director more authority over sidewalk repairs, and closed out the meeting by honoring the Minden 15U Softball and 9U Baseball Allstars for their standout seasons.
The annual Minden City Budget was passed unanimously by the council. Crafting the city’s budget each year is a task requiring the time and efforts of both the city employees and the council, seeing many revisions before the budget is finalized. “I want to thank you all for passing the budget. It would not be possible without the time and effort that you all put in there, so thank y’all,” said City Clerk Melaney Langford.
In turn, Minden Mayor Nick Cox also shared his appreciation, stating, “I would also like to thank you for all of your hard work, we know you only did about fifteen revisions of that budget. It’s a lot of hard work involved.”
The council also voted to adopt Ordinance No. 1171, which would essentially amend and reenact a part of the city’s Code of Ordinance to allow the public works directly to use more of their own discretion when it comes to repairing the city’s sidewalks.
“All it does is take our current ordinance and add the language to the ordinance that would say that the public works director could deem a sidewalk a public safety issue and go ahead and get it repaired when he feels like it’s necessary,” said Mayor Cox.
The City of Minden along with the Webster Parish Police Jury are hiring a consultant to take a general look at healthcare in the area. The council voted unanimously to let the mayor enter into a strategic advisory proposal between the city and Harris, Deville & Associates, Inc. “We are working with the police jury and kind of partnering up. We would like to hire a consultant just to take an overall look at healthcare in the Minden area and south Webster Parish and just kind of guide us along through that process,” said Mayor Cox.
Later in the meeting the council voted to turn the intersection of Lakeshore Drive and Berry Drive into a four-way stop. Councilman Michael Roy of District D explained, “I’m trying to keep the speed down in that area, keep children from being run over. We got a lot of young kids playing over there, so I’ve had a lot of homeowners say that they would ask that we make a four-way stop there.”
Lastly, the mayor and council gave out some well-deserved recognition to the Minden 15U Softball Allstars and Minden 9U Baseball Allstars for their performance in both the district tournaments and beyond. The softball allstars went undefeated throughout the run in the District tournament and was the runner-up at the World Series. The Baseball Allstars went undefeated in both the District tournament and State tournament.
Minden City Council meetings are held on the first Monday of each month at 6 PM at the Minden Civic Center. Meetings are open to the public and, for those who cannot attend in person, are also livestreamed on the City of Minden’s Facebook page and YouTube channel, both titled “City of Minden.”