Concerns raised over golf cart rental bid

The Janesville city council didn’t have many decisions to make at its Monday, Jan. 23 meeting. Other than approving the final pay estimate for the 2020 Street and Utility Improvement project, the only action concerned the lease of golf carts at Prairie Ridge Golf Course, an item that was added to the agenda at the last minute.

Historically, the golf course paid $2,200 a month to lease 15 carts through Yamaha. The bid brought to the council was for $2,368 a month for 16 golf carts.

The initial question brought up by council member Melissa Kopachek was if the council could even vote on such a last-minute item. “I don’t think we can legally do that,” she said.

The bigger issue to the other council members, however, is that there was not a second bid to compare with Yamaha’s offer. Council member Ivan Maas pointed out that the council asked Public Works Manager Joe Ziemke to get better bids on mowers after the two he presented to the council were deemed “not comparable.”

City Administrator Clinton Rogers said that the golf course and the city always accepted Yamaha’s bid in the past. But Maas once again pointed out that if the city wanted to keep transparency, especially on such a hot button issue as the golf course, the council needed to be vigilant on how they looked at certain items.

Council member Jim Mulcahey said he was indifferent about the issue. “It’s January. People won’t use golf carts until April anyway. We have time to get multiple bids on this to keep the precedent we have set as a council.”

The council ultimately tabled the issue to allow the golf course to find a comparable bid.

Rogers told the council that he wanted to keep the agenda small as the next few meetings were going to be packed with many things to vote on and review. One of those things was the moratorium on THC sales.

The council looked at an article from the League of Minnesota Cities which covered the latest news on the state legislature’s progress reviewing the adult use cannabis law. State House speaker Melissa Hortman claimed the process could take two legislative years to complete.

“The house committee met last week to brainstorm,” Rogers explained. “They haven’t had a second meeting, and the senate committee hasn’t even met yet.”

He’s asked various people in all levels of government what the city should do, and the general consensus was that Janesville should continue its moratorium. The council will have its first public reading of the proposed THC ordinance at the February 13 meeting. There will be a second reading of the ordinance and a public hearing in March.

“We plan on treating this like we treat the process of getting a liquor license in Janesville,” Rogers elaborated. “That includes the annual fee to keep the license up to date.”

He gave a heads up to the council on nine city code items that need to be updated in March. Initially, the list included only eight items; they concerned garbage policy, mobile food vendor operation, parking nuisance exceptions for corner lots, and THC.

However, the city’s park board wanted an amendment to an ordinance concerning use of golf carts in town, as right now it is technically illegal to have golf carts in public parks. “In the past, only golfers used golf carts; now non-golfers use them to get around,” Rogers pointed out.

Janesville police officer Mark Vanderwilt, who sat in on the meeting, said that the ordinance making golf cart usage in public parks illegal is rarely enforced anyway. “As long as they aren’t drawing attention toward themselves, we usually allow it,” he said.

Council member Ivan Maas gave a thorough report on the Economic Development Authority’s meeting. Details appear in a separate article in this week’s paper.

The meeting adjourned at 7:36 p.m.