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I I I Council Meeting Minutes January 23, 1990 Page 6 Special Order of Business, continued I think we need to provide a home for our senior citizen program, and all the services that are located at Edgewood Community Center or are provided at other locations and are scattered. I think we need it as a community gathering place where we can relax, enjoy, and learn with each other. And, I think too, that we need a home to provide stabil ity for all the projects and programs that we provide in the Parks and Recreation Department, and along with all the other activities and the various civic groups that need a place to meet. Tonight we will start to address a major issue regarding what we are going to do with our liquor operation. Over the last year we have been lookin~ at numbers and looking at alternatives. Those numbers suggest that our liquor operation is either going to have a major overhaul and reinvestment, or, perhaps as an alternative, it is time to get out of the 1 i quor busi ness. The profits are not what we want. Perhaps we can make a better return on our investment by privatizing the operation and getting the city out of the business of selling liquor, There are options and there are costs. There are human and financial costs. There are impacts on just about every other program that we run. Now we must answer those questions. Later this evening we will begin the process of deciding. We also need to address some very seri ous servi ce issues. For example, we still need to add to our water supply and that process has begun with the request to the Army. We have more street work to do, especially now focusing next on the Sunnyside area and the process that the County started on S i 1 ver Lake Road. Fi nanci ng continues to be, year after year, an unpredictable issue that we will apparently never be rid of. Having just come through a budget session and the special budget session at the Legislation, we know that the budgeted revenues are goi ng to be short of what they anticipated. And we are looking at a cutback in the state budget. Most of us who know the people involved, and listen to what's going on, quickly come to the conclusion that they are going to be looking at our State aid as a source to fund the shortfall. That means we need to be making some tough budget choices, perhaps fairly quickly, either eliminating expenditures Of deferring expenditures as alternatives. I think it is unrealistic to expect that in this political election year real tough choices are going to get made at the State. We most likely will have to make some choices locally. Special Order of Business Mayor's State of the City Address