TOWER— The city council approved a 2019 city operating budget with little discussion during its regular meeting on Dec. 10. The budget includes mostly minor changes from the prior year’s spending outline, with a few exceptions. The city will levy a total of $370,520, a half-percent increase over last year.

The city’s ambulance budget will see the biggest change for next year, with expenditures expected to increase from last year’s budgeted amount of $286,110, to $439,800 next year. That increase reflects the added expense of the service’s new paid on-call service. The higher spending does not include the cost of paying for a new ambulance. The city council approved that purchase, at a total of $243,994, on Dec. 10 and is expected to take delivery sometime in late winter or early spring.

The purchase of new turnout gear for the fire department will boost spending in that department by about $9,000, while the debt service for the sewer extension and related sewer reconstruction at the Hoodoo Point Campground, at $36,910 a year, was the largest factor in a $54,600 anticipated increase in campground expenditures.

Total general fund spending for 2019 is set at $672,830, a $5,000 increase over the adopted 2018 budget.

In other business, the council voted to rename Tower’s civic center to the Herbert R. Lamppa Civic Center. Lamppa, who died Nov. 14 of this year, was an influential former Mayor of Tower, a long-time St. Louis County Commissioner, a beloved math instructor, and a successful inventor and businessman.

The city council unanimously approved the renaming of the facility with no discussion.

In economic development action, the council approved a new plat for the Tower harbor area, extending from the industrial park on the west side of Hwy. 135 to the harbor itself. Approval of the plat could clear the way to begin sales of town homes at the harbor, but the council’s Dec. 10 changes to a tax abatement plan have put that project, and an uncompleted development agreement, in some doubt.

The council also approved two pay estimates to Lenci Enterprises for ongoing work on the TEDA building in the industrial park, half of which will soon serve as the new home of Lamppa Manufacturing. The pay estimates totaled $132,430.

The council also approved a resolution in support of a broadband initiative being led by TEDA in conjunction with the Blandin Foundation.