Kensington Town Council Approves Budget Ordinance

After amending the budget ordinance, Kensington's town council voted unanimously to adopt the ordinance as amended.

Councilmember Mackie Barch suggested two amendments to the ordinance, including setting funds aside for more extensive design guidelines and lighting Kensington signs.

The town has been working toward getting a sector plan passed to revitalize Kensington, while preserving its historic nature, and Barch said that the town should start setting money aside to be used to create better design guidelines.

This will "show people we are ready to invest in the plan," Barch said.

Councilmembers threw around numbers of how much should be set aside, but ended up settling on taking $5,000 out of contingency to be designated for future design guideline work (reducing the contingency from $10,000 to $5,000).

The council agreed that more money will need to be invested for design guidelines in the future, but that $5,000 is a good start. The funds set aside will be added to the budget ordinance as a line item under the commercial revitalization category.

An amendment to add lighting to the town signs was also suggested by Barch. At night, it is difficult to tell you're in Kensington, Barch said. He added that lighting the signs will also help brand Kensington and that "not a ton of illumination" is necessary. He suggested looking in to solar panels as an option.

Money in the budget is designated for streetlight upgrades, according to councilmember Sean McMullen. He said that perhaps this money could be used for lighting the signs, since the streetlight upgrades might not happen for awhile.

The council voted in favor of the ordinance as amended.

Councilmembers McMullen and Lydia Sullivan also suggested that periodic reviews be held for third parties that work for the town.

Sullivan said that she has not been pleased with some of the work the public relations firm that works for the town has done. Since that is her career field, she said that she thinks "people in town could probably do it for free" or that the council should review the firm's work to make sure the town is being represented properly.

Similar to that, McMullen also expressed some disappointment in third party vendors.

"We have a lot of areas where we spend money on third parties and we're not getting reports from them anymore," McMullen said. "I recognize there are some limitations, but I would like to see more accounting of some of what we are spending on these third parties."

The mayor encouraged the councilmembers and community to give more feedback like this—either positive or negative—so that the town can get a certain level of result for the amount of money they are spending, and make changes where necessary.

In addition to the budget discussion, town manager . A set decision has not yet been made, but a moderated candidate's forum might take place at the next meeting on Monday, May 23.

Check back to Kensington Patch for details as they are announced.