The city of Kewanee won’t issue any more liquor licenses for a year, following City Council action Monday
The council voted to suspend the issuing of the licenses to give city officials time to assess the proliferation of businesses with gaming machines.
City records indicate that 47 bars, restaurants and package-liquor stores now hold liquor licenses. Of these, 24 have gaming machines.
At a previous meeting, council members suggested that there are enough places to gamble in the city. But Mayor Gary Moore said the gaming establishments are mostly regulated by the state, and the city has little power over them.
State law requires that businesses must hold a liquor license to have the gaming machines, and those are under the city’s control. The freeze on issuing liquor licenses is intended to give city officials time to assess the situation with gaming establishments and determine if any further action can be taken.
One factor in the council’s decision: The gaming machines are a money-maker for the city. A portion of the money raised by the machines goes to the city, and in the last fiscal year, that revenue totaled more than $300,000.
Also Monday:
The council approved the purchase of a new fire truck. Fire Chief Stephen Welgat said the truck will cost about $710,000; all but $59,000 will be paid with a grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
Welgat said FEMA doesn’t issue many fire truck grants. “It’s a highly competitive grant process, and we were lucky to get it,” he said.
The truck will be ordered from Alexis Fire Equipment in Alexis, Ill., and will take 550 days to build.
In other action Monday:
— The council voted to renew the contract with Lakeshore Recycling Systems to haul solid waste from the city’s transfer station to the landfill in Atkinson. They then voted to increase fees at the transfer station, to cover the increase in the cost of the Lakeshore contract.
The council last month discussed the possibility of hiring a private company to pick up garbage and recyclables from local residences, and Moore stressed that renewing the Lakeshore contract isn’t related to that discussion.
“This is not an agreement to privatize sanitation at this time,” he said. “Don’t anybody panic.”
— The council voted unanimously to disapprove a request from the newly-revived Henry County Tourism Bureau for a contribution to the county tourism budget.
Moore said the bureau wants Kewanee to pay 57 percent of its costs, but the council agreed with him that the city has not been getting enough attention from the bureau to warrant so large a contribution.
— A contract with MSI to install a new rooftop air-handling system at the City Hall complex was approved.
The $196,000 contract came in considerably lower than the $250,000 that had been budgeted for the project.
— The council welcomed Councilman Steve Faber back to the council chambers.
Faber had missed the last five months of meetings while he waited for, and then recuperated from, a double lung transplant at Northwestern Medical Center in Chicago.
“I’ve been out of the loop for quite a while,” Faber said, and he added, “I want to thank all of the people who helped me.”
Faber’s friends worked to raise money to help pay his medical bills, and stayed with him at the apartment in Chicago where he stayed following the transplant operation.
“If you want to lose weight, get a double lung transplant,” Faber joked. He said he has lost 80 pounds.
