Litchfield City Council Hears a Year-in-Review From City Administrator

The Litchfield City Council heard a year-in-review presentation Monday evening from City Administrator David Czoik. He went over many of the projects that have taken place in the past year including the completion of the Litchfield Area Recreation Center and the extension of Johnson Drive to 260th Street on the west side of Walmart.

Czoik also mentioned the Midtown Lofts project, which is not a city project, but will help address the need for housing in the community. He also spoke about the wastewater agreement with First District Association, the many ordinances that were approved in the past year, and some of the challenges and opportunities facing each city department.

Mayor Ron Dingmann says Czoik’s presentation was followed with a closed session in which the Council did Czoik’s performance evaluation. He says the results will be presented at the next meeting.

Mayor Dingmann says the Council had a visit from State Representative Scott Van Binsbergen on Monday evening as he gave them some information on his background and spoke about the 2025 Legislative Session. He says the Council approved of increasing the precondition amounts for grants in the Downtown Historic District as part of the State Historic Grant process as they received more applications than anticipated.

Mayor Dingmann says the State Historic Grant process will be on the Council agenda every two weeks for updates. He says the Council split 3-to-3 (as Councilman Eric Mathwig was absent) on a decision of whether to purchase an autonomous floor sweeper for $80,000 or a manual one for $16,000, so the item will come up again at the next meeting. Those in favor of the more expensive option argued that the manual one did not account for the labor costs to run it over the year, and the issue of trying to find someone to operate it, along with the fact that an autonomous machine could operate when the facility is not occupied.