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NEWPORT — A new city Planning Commissioner was nominated at the Newport City Council’s meeting Monday, March 2.
Elizabeth Nelson was nominated to Position No. 5 by Mayor Keith Campbell and unanimously approved by the council. Nelson had been attending certain council meetings leading up to Campbell’s announcement.
“It’s good for the Planning Commission to get people that are interested,” Campbell said at the meeting.
Later in the meeting, the council unanimously agreed to contract with James A. Sewell and Associates for engineering and land surveying services.
“Land surveyors can be very hard to come by,” Gribi said. “And the historical knowledge that they have with the city is just nice to kind of keep an agreement ongoing.”
In other business, the council unanimously approved ordinances that cleaned up the code of previous ordinance related to the city Planning Commission, including increasing terms from five to six years and delegating secretary appoint- ments to staff rather than the Planning Commission itself.
Also unanimously approved was an agreement with the county for additional geographic information system services.
“They scoped it out in that way that it could be for either GIS or IT [information technology] services,” Gribi said. “The intent is just to use it for the GIS.”
Earlier, Gribi announced that she submitted plans for the 900,000-gallon water reservoir, for review by engineers at the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund, and riverbank stabilization at the wastewater plant to the Public Works Board.
After Campbell nominated Nelson to the Planning Commission, council members discussed their involvement in local event coordination.
Campbell and, as of March 2, all five council members will help organize local events. Council member Elizabeth Spring took on Halloween from council member Jami Sears; council member Nathan Weathers volunteered to assist with a couple events; and Campbell and council member Mark Zorica opted to keep their roles in National Night Out and Christmas, respectively.
