The Riverside City Council opened its regular meeting on Monday night, Feb. 1, with comments from Highland Community School Board President Nate Robinson, and Highland and Lone Tree Superintendent Ken Crawford.

Crawford currently splits his time between Lone Tree and Highland schools, but starting July 1 will be the full-time superintendent of Highland.

The school officials asked for support in opposing Senate File 159, a piece of state legislation that, if enacted, would fund vouchers for students seeking private education. Crawford said the vouchers would trade off with already dwindling state aid to public education.

“Over the last decade they’ve done nothing but give us an average of 1.8%, barely the cost of living… When it comes to giving it to a private school, they all of a sudden have that money,” Crawford said during the public forum. “If they’d given us just 3% over the last 5 years, that would’ve totaled about $225,000 more dollars into our budget. When you talk about that going into the salaries and the curriculum and the supplies, I think you’d be surprised.”

City council members voiced widespread support for the public schools and planned to add discussion and possible action on the issue to its regular meeting agenda for Feb. 15.

The council moved on to renew a listing of commercial property, discuss sidewalk winter maintenance, discuss Reason for Proposal guidelines and hold a brief public hearing with no comments, before passing a resolution to maintain its property tax rate of $8.10 per $1,000 of property value. The motion was moved by councilperson Jeanine Redlinger and seconded by councilperson Edgar McGuire.

The council discussed a selection process for the community center committee, the yearly Riverboat Municipal Grant application and the possibility of establishing a tree committee before adjourning at 7:13 p.m.