Panama Village Board Discusses Goals For 2024
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PANAMA -- Moving into the new year, the Panama Village Board is looking at focusing on streets, sidewalks, services provided, signage and banners.
When it comes to streets in the village, Mayor William Schnieder said the village has been doing pretty well.
"In our goals, we usually talk about streets, though our streets are pretty good except we know we have to talk about the Wesleyan project," Schneider said.
Discussion on the streets also centered on the state CHIPs (Consolidated Local Street and Highway Improvement Program) money in the budget, and adding more road maintenance to the budget for the year. The village officials then discussed whether they wanted to try and tackle more sidewalks this coming year. If they do, then Schneider said they have the right to contract with the same contractor they used in 2023 without having to go out to bid.
Some of the sidewalks the village will focus on include Wesleyan and School streets.
For services, the board will be looking at what they provide and what might need to change.
"Think about how are our services that we provide, is there anything we need to do differently; anything we can do without, anything we need to improve upon?" Schneider said. "I think we do pretty well with our services."
The main services the village provides is snow removal, garbage pickup, and taking care of the sidewalks and streets.
Signage and banners were also included in last year's goals, mainly replacing the entryway signs at each entrance to the village, which has been completed. A conversation that has been had with village residents for many years that Schneider said he expected to come up again this year, is the possibility of adding championship signs to or around the village signs.
"We haven't heard anything in a while, but I am sure it will come up again," Schneider said. "So, we need to look at, do we want to approach that, how do we want to do that, and where do we want it?"
It would be a permanent sign, so that when driving into Panama someone would see something that said "home of state champions" with the list of all of the wins underneath. Schneider said there are many municipalities with these types of signs already. The sign would include a list of state champions by Panama and also by the CSP Wolfpack. The main concerns addressed were how to make it look like the signs that are already at each entrance to the village and what the cost would be. The board plans to contact the same makers of the signs that they already have to get ideas for options and prices.
The board decided to keep the banners that hang on the poles in the village the same for now. The village also has a new bucket truck to help hang banners, along with helping with tree removal.
In other business:
-- the board reviewed its yearly celebrations, which consists of Memorial Day, Christmas in Panama, the lighting contest and the garage sale days.
-- Family Night Pizza, which neighbors the board's offices, is looking to add in a dining room that may lead to modifying both areas.
-- the board discussed looking into salting the sidewalks after receiving reports of them being very icy that day.
-- the lighting contest has wrapped up, and the board talked about expanding on it for next year.