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Resident urges Mills council to preserve public-comment access, suggests park expansion and restoring historic water tower
Summary
At the Mills Town Council meeting, resident Scott Clamp urged the council to keep open discussion accessible, pressed for clearer ordinance descriptions, suggested acquiring a vacant parcel to expand Service Sacrifice Park and proposed restoring a historic water tower; the council said it would try again to contact owners.
Scott Clamp, a Mills resident, told the Town Council that moving the public "open discussion" earlier in the meeting helps residents speak before votes and urged the council to make agenda items easier to understand.
"Open discussion used to be towards the end of the meeting, and I understand some of the reasons for it," Clamp said. "But sometimes things present itself at the meetings that we'd like to chat about, but we can't chat about them." He said many citizens do not attend the earlier work session and asked for more descriptive information about ordinances so the public knows what the council is voting on.
Clamp also urged the council to explore acquiring a vacant parcel across Plat Street to expand the town's Service Sacrifice Park, and to pursue returning a historic water tower to the park as a local focal point. He recounted that the parcel had been vacant for years and referenced earlier town efforts to buy contaminated trucking property nearby; he said those contamination concerns had previously discouraged the town from purchasing the site.
The presiding council member responded that the council had intentionally moved open discussion to the front of the agenda so residents could comment before votes, described a public work session held an hour before the meeting where council members do their deliberative work, and noted that meeting materials are available online and can be printed for those without internet access. On the proposed park expansion, the presiding member said the town had reached out to the property owners early and received "a hard no," but that the council would try again.
Clamp also described past efforts to relocate a post office to improve traffic safety near Taco John's and said his family had once offered land for that purpose. The presiding council member acknowledged the difficulty in getting changes such as ZIP code recognition and thanked Clamp for his input.
The council did not take formal action on the park proposal during the meeting but recorded the public comment and the council's stated intent to follow up.
