Othello — The Othello Planning Commission gave its final recommendations on the new zoning changes to the Othello city council on Monday, Sept. 9. The commission has been working on these changes for the past two years.

“I think the planning commission resolved a large share of the issues here,” said Othello Mayor Shawn Logan, referring to issues that the council had raised to some of the changes during a July meeting.

There are a few issues in the recommendations that the council will have to work through before a public hearing can be scheduled to adopt the zoning changes.

“In order to do this right, we should do further discussion,” said Councilman John Lallas. “This is going to affect a lot of people.”

Lallas and Logan both commended the planning commission for its work.

“We have one of the best planning commissions we’ve had in the history of this city,” Lallas said. “I’m happy to have these people working on behalf of us.”

In other business, the city council accepted a grant in the amount of $6,900 to organize the records filing room. They will also take an inventory of the records and destroy anything that is passed its retention date. The grant will pay for the destruction of outdated records and the purchase of record boxes and other needed supplies.

The council voted to reject a proposal to pay the Adams County Othello District Court an additional $92,000 in addition to the $92,000 that the city already pays for municipal court services.

The city contracts with the court to provide municipal court services. Currently, they are in negotiations, with the hope of coming to a three-year agreement. Adams County Commissioner Roger Hartwig, who was present at the meeting, and Logan agreed that they wanted to resolve this issue quickly. Logan hopes to come to some kind of agreement by the end of October. He would also like to have a formula created for future negotiations.

Rachal Pinkerton may be reached via email at [email protected].