Council acts again on property
Also talks use of LOST funds for community building
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FAIRMONT--The Fairmont City Council revisited conversation about a property at 1524 Albion Avenue during its meeting on Monday.
"This property was brought to my attention day one starting with the city of Fairmont as a concern," City Administrator Jason Baker said.
Previous council action dates back to April of 2025 when the council approved entering into a strategy consent agreement for the demolition of the house and commercial property. Then in July of that year council supported a strategy, per state statute, that allows a governing body to correct or remove the hazardous condition of any hazardous building or property, with the cost being placed as a lien on the property.
Then in September of 2025 council was told that all required notice had been served to the representative of the property and in November, council approved a demolition grant supported by the representative, contingent upon satisfaction of all outstanding eligibility requirements, except for payment of delinquent property taxes.
"As we've moved through this progress to date, to my knowledge, there has been no work done on that grant to get that moving forward. There's been no work brought to the city's attention as far as moving that process along," Baker said.
After continued talks with staff, council and legal, Baker said he was advised to bring back the resolution from 2025 to move forward and go back to what was originally planned.
"We need to reaffirm the resolution and then we can continue to take action as needed as a city," Baker said.
Council Member Jay Maynard said, "this has dragged on far too long. That building has been in its current condition for as long as I've been in Fairmont and that's 25 years."
He said it should have been dealt with last year and it needs to be dealt with now. He approved of the resolution to reaffirm the resolution. Council Member James Kotewa seconded it and the motion passed unanimously.
Moving to other matters, the council discussed a few items that Council Member Britney Kawecki had asked to move off of the consent agenda. One was approval of the minutes from the workshop held on July 16 and one was consideration of the Local Option Sales Tax (LOST) funds.
The topic of the workshop from the 16th was to discuss what council wanted to do with the LOST funds.
"I feel like when we're having the work sessions, and I try to review work sessions... we have a lot of discussion and there's very little in here regarding the discussion to go back and review," Kawecki said.
She asked if there could be more minutes posted from the workshop.
Kawecki also said, from her recollection, at the workshop the discussion was clear that council wanted to do a community building and then look at the lakes.
"I don't know if it's worth the effort to have staff dive in to all of the work looking into different projects if it's not something the council is even considering," Kawecki said.
She took issue with the fact that the minutes from the July 16 workshop read that "Baker stated staff would bring project alternatives, aligned with council's direction, and additional information back to the council for future consideration."
"It was basically a field house I feel that most of the council was leaning toward," Kawecki said. "And then it was suggested putting $2 million toward the lakes."
Council Member Wayne Hasek referenced someone who spoke earlier in the meeting during the public comment portion who said they did not want the council to consider a community center again.
"They don't want a field house. They want some pickleball courts and they want it outside. There were two people here tonight that stated that," Hasek said.
Maynard said that the purpose of the minutes are not to record what was said, but what was done.
"As for the direction, I agree that we were all pretty much of one mind about one facility and setting aside a million for the lakes but we didn't really nail down what would go in that facility so to me alternatives means what goes in there," Maynard said.
Kawecki said she didn't think that they needed to define what goes into the building, but that they needed to narrow it down and give staff direction on council's desire for a community building.
"I think that the stuff that goes in the building comes later," she said.
On the topic of pickleball courts, Kawecki said she would like the council to move forward with four outdoor pickleball courts and tennis courts.
"I think we should be moving forward with it right now," she said.
Council Member Randy Lubenow said that pickleball courts are needed and that he thought some could go indoors.
"I think if you start counting the amount of days you can play pickleball outside, you're going to be less than a third of the year," he said. "If we're going to spend $880,000 on outdoor pickleball courts, we could encompass it in a building when 10, 15, 20 years from now, people say 'hey, pickleball was like racquetball, we don't want to play it anymore,' then we can change the inside of the building."
Going back to her original request, Kawecki said she wanted to clarify the language. Baker said the purpose of the workshop was to define the scope of the funds.
Kawecki said her motion was going to be to reserve the funds for two projects, a community building and the lakes.
Mayor Lee Baarts said that they needed to approve the minutes form the meeting, which Kawecki was okay with and the motion passed unanimously.
Moving to consideration of the funds, Kawecki made her motion. When there was no immediate second, Public Works Director Matthew York asked if the council ever received confirmation that the lakes qualified as a recreational amenity.
The LOST funds can only be used for recreational amenities, trails and a community center.
"We did use it for Amber Lake," Lubenow said.
However York pointed out that was for a boat ramp rather than water quality.
"I'm not trying to stop this from happening, I just want to make sure that before we make a motion that we're bound to do something, that we know legally that we can do that," York said.
Baker asked if the motion could word it as lake projects for now until they can get more clarity, which Kawecki was okay with.
The motion to approve the Local Option Sales Tax funds for two projects, a community building and lake projects and seconded by Lubenow and in a roll call vote the motion passed 4-1 with Hasek opposed.