Sunbury council approves multiple items; police staffing, CDBG allocation and street projects draw most attention

Sunbury City Council voted on a range of routine and substantive items at its Aug. 19 meeting and heard multiple public comments pressing the council on police staffing and city transparency.

Several residents urged the council to preserve or increase police staffing ahead of consideration of Ordinance 35-1, which the agenda describes as reducing the number of police officers. At public comment, Frankie Weiser said, “As a citizen of the community, this is very disturbing to me. I think our police force actually should be more around 20 officers.” Victoria Rosenkranz, another speaker, urged regular updates to the public on operations and criticized the timing of an administrator’s public post, saying it left citizens insufficient time to review the agenda item about the ordinance.

Council members also heard a departmental report from the police chief, who summarized activity through August: “They've made 1,000 traffic stops. They've made 246 traffic citations and 308 warnings,” and reported “5,829 phone calls for service” along with patrol mileage and arrest counts presented to the council. After discussion the council approved placing candidates on an eligibility list for police hiring and authorized staffing steps tied to budgeted positions and possible grant funding; a motion to proceed with creating or using an eligibility list was seconded and approved.

The council spent extended time deciding how to spend its Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) allocation. Jamie (city staff) recommended placing $132,116 into curb cuts as “phase 1” and proposed $100,000 toward the fire…