Kasson upgrades city council chambers

Kasson City Hall underwent a facelift, with the city using CARES money to upgrade its city council chambers that are used for city meetings.
The $105,000 price tag was covered by government CARES funding for COVID-19-related projects. The city used local contractors for the work, including Preferred Heating & Cooling, Ripley Electric and Kyle Stavlo as contractor.
“If we need to do Zoom meetings or remote meetings we’re able to do that now,” said City Clerk Linda Rappe, who oversaw the project. “We did it for social distancing and we upgraded our audio visual so that we can do Zoom meetings.”
The new city council chambers project was completed at the end of the year and has already hosted three meetings. “It seems to be going well,” Rappe said. “We’re still learning the audio visual. There’s always a little learning curve there.”
The new chambers formerly functioned as the police garage, with five cars parked inside. Expanding the chambers was necessary not just because of social distancing and COVID, Rappe reports, but also because the old space was too small.
Whereas previously the council chambers could fit two or three members of the public for meetings, now the chambers can fit 16 with social distancing factored in.
“We’re very happy about it,” Rappe said. “It should extend the life of this building. We really needed a bigger area. There were times, even before social distancing, when the council chambers got very full.”