Commerce council makes short work of March agenda

Meeting for the first time on a new schedule, the Commerce City Council made short work of its March agenda Monday night.

The meeting was the council’s first since it voted in February to change its regular meetings to the third Monday of each month at 6 p.m. — after decades of meeting on second Mondays at 6:30 p.m.

The council approved two ordinances. One requires that commercial water customers have backflow preventers to keep any fluids — water or otherwise — from being pulled into the city’s water system from a business or industry should there be a sudden pressure drop in the city system.

The devices will be installed and inspected at the customer’s expense under an ordinance required by the state.
The other ordinance changes how garbage is collected in the central business district. It effectively removes the green residential-style rollout containers picked up in front of the businesses and creates a system of centralized dumpsters behind the businesses.

“This is a recommendation of the DDA (Downtown Development Authority) from their town hall meeting a couple of years ago to centralize garbage collection in the central business district and to eliminate the hobos,” noted Mayor Clark Hill.
Responding to a question from Ward 3 councilman Mark Fitzpatrick, city manager Pete Pyrzenski said that only one business owner objected to the move and the city worked out a solution with that individual.

For the full story, see the March 20 edition of The Commerce News.