Riverside History Center receives more city funds

    Iowa Township Trustee Jim Rose addressed the Riverside City Council on the township?s cemetery Monday night. Rose requested that the council increase its support for the cemetery from $3,000 to $5,000 a year. He said the cost of mowing the cemetery has increased in recent years. He said if the council did not agree to the raise, the township had the power to raise property taxes.

    Councilor Ralph Schnoebelen remarked, ?I think we need to put our fair share in. A good part of the cemetery is in the city limits, and a number of our residents are buried at that cemetery.?

    The council voted unanimously to award the cemetery $5,000.

    Four members of the Riverside History Center attended the meeting to speak up about future funding for the museum. The members of the history center requested between $5,000 and $7,000 to offset the cost of rent and utilities for the remainder of the 2010-2011 fiscal year. The vote to give the center $6,000 carried 4-1. Councilor Kevin Kiene was the only no vote while councilors Schnoebelen, Betty Kaalberg, Todd Yahnke and Rodney Waldschmidt voted in the affirmative.

    The history center is in the Kwik ?n? EZ store across from the Senior Village. The history center has just under $11,000 left in its budget for the fiscal year after beginning the year with $16,000 (about half of which was carried over from last year). The council had earlier awarded the history center $7,500 in its 2010-2011 budget. The history center received a Riverboat grant for $10,000 in 2010 which required matching funds and stipulated that the grant money could only be used to purchase museum displays and not to pay for rent or utilities.

    At the council?s previous meeting, history center representatives Phil Richman and Mary Jane Stumpf said they would like the money from the city to come in a single check. Currently, the history center must purchase supplies first and then turn in the receipts to the city to be reimbursed. If the city dropped the reimbursement requirement, it would need another mechanism to oversee the center?s purchases, said City Administrator Tina Thomas. The council asked Thomas to draw up an agreement between the city and history center whereby the center would periodically show the council how the center spent its money.

    Thomas presented the agreement to the council Monday, which grants city funds to the history center on a quarterly basis for each budget year after the current one. Before the funds are received, the history center presents financial statements of the prior quarter to the council.

For the full story, see the Jan. 4 edition of The Washington Evening Journal