The Hannibal City Council has heard much recently about the merits of asphalt and concrete as building materials for new or rebuilt streets in a city where street conditions are a key concern. Two representatives of the concrete industry threw their hat into the ring Tuesday night.

The city has raised concerns about using concrete instead of asphalt because it is more expensive up front, although City Engineer Mark Rees has acknowledged that it provides a higher-quality driving surface. However, David Bleigh of Bleigh Ready-Mix told the council he believes concrete streets are more economical in the long run because they last longer and require less frequent maintenance.

Bleigh pointed out that the Marion County Highway Department has been using concrete on newer roads because “they know the longevity of it and the payback will eventually be there.”

Concrete streets last decades, he added. “I guarantee you there’s no asphalt street that would hold up to that amount of time.”

Bleigh added that a move to concrete street construction would be an investment in a local business, Continental Cement.

A representative from that company, Stewart Parker, backed up Bleigh’s claims with talk of “design-life costing” — the idea that a cheaper project in the beginning could get much more expensive as it ages — but added a caveat that highlighted the importance of good street design in either case.

“If you’re going to compete, they’ve got to be equal designs,” Parker said.

The City Council took no action on any street projects Tuesday, but the debate undoubtedly will resurface at future meetings.

Hannibal Municipal Judge Frederich J. Cruse, center, swears in Fifth Ward Councilman Jim Hark, left, and Sixth Ward Councilman Richard Draper at Tuesday's Hannibal City Council meeting.

I have never seen a person as excited to attend a city council meeting as Richard Draper was Tuesday night, when he was sworn in as Hannibal’s new Sixth Ward Councilman.

Draper, a political newcomer, took a decisive victory from Jeff Lyng in last month’s election. The Hannibal Regional Medical Group medical director was gracious in all my interactions with him during the campaign, and he spent a lot of time surveying his would-be constituents in door-to-door stumping and online polls. A coworker who is well-connected in Hannibal has said Draper has a reputation as a great guy.

On Tuesday, his excitement to begin his public service as part of the council was almost palpable.

Draper personally introduced himself to every official he hadn’t yet met in the minutes before the meeting began. He also introduced his son, his daughter-in-law and especially his infant grandson, who had all come along for his big night; his wife already had taken a seat in the back of the council chambers.

His wife and kids took turns wielding a camera and camcorder as Municipal Judge Frederich J. Cruse swore him in alongside Jim Hark (elected to his first full term for the Fifth Ward). They had the three men pose for a grip-n’-grin photo before they took their seats. Draper’s son continued to train the camcorder on his father throughout the meeting.

The best part? When Draper offered a second to the first motion he heard as a seated councilman, he grinned like a kid in a candy store.

Deliberating the city’s business isn’t always the easiest job, but I hope Draper always remains this excited about his service on the council.

You can always count on Jeff Lyng to liven up a Hannibal City Council meeting. During Tuesday’s meeting, the outspoken Sixth Ward councilman revisited at length a couple of budget questions related to agenda items on which he’d dissented recently.

In opposing the trio of construction permit fee increases that passed Tuesday night, Lyng has said repeatedly that he isn’t sure the city’s financial situation warrants seeking additional revenue sources rather than making cuts. At one point during the debate, he told City Manager Jeff LaGarce he would rather see the city seek out revenue when it knows and can detail what sort of additional cuts the city might have to make rather than look for revenue in lieu of making cuts.

On Tuesday, Lyng reiterated that sentiment and requested a list of each city department’s requests from the capital sales tax fund, along with LaGarce’s “professional judgment of the importance of each.” When LaGarce said it would be impossible to document those decisions as they happen because they are made on a continuous basis, Lyng amended his request to each department’s budget, plus a version of the budget with 10 percent chopped off.

The discussion, Lyng said, turned on the idea that each department had further cuts to make before it reached the point of looking for additional revenue sources. But LaGarce said the city is already running on an almost painfully austere budget, and City Clerk Angel Vance chimed in, for her own part, that it was impossible to cut any more from her own office.

“(The budget is) bare-bones when we bring it to you,” Vance told Lyng.

“Even in bare bones, I bet we could cut 10 percent if we had to,” Lyng said.

“I could not cut 10 percent from my department,” Vance replied.

LaGarce ultimately agreed to present a budget to the council with an addendum featuring city department budgets with an inverse priority ranking of their line items. But he emphasized that the budget, as it stood, did not yet reflect the construction fee permit increases, which at that point in the meeting had yet to be voted upon.

“So we don’t even know if we need that money yet,” Lyng said before later voting against the fee increases.

It wasn’t the only budget question Lyng had Tuesday.

Readers may recall that in January, the council voted to abolish the vehicle stickers that accompany the city’s annual $5 vehicle license tax. Lyng had campaigned on repealing the tax as well and, at the time of the Jan. 18 vote, said he harbored a “difference of opinion” on the city’s financial situation. Opponents of the tax’s repeal had said the roughly $50,000 in revenue from that tax, which this year contributed to a $400,000 surplus in the city’s budget, was money the city could not afford to lose. First Ward Councilman Kevin Knickerbocker called the surplus “imaginary money” that is typically used to establish the following year’s opening balance.

Lyng said he had compared the opening balance with the city’s cash reserve and had found an average $900,000 shortfall in the city’s reserve. “Is this some of the ‘imaginary money’?” he asked the council.

Doug Warren, the city’s finance director, said the opening balance is a much more complicated figure than the city’s liquid cash reserve. However, he said he would work to develop an easier-to-read detailed report of what figures are used to calculate the opening balance.

The council also discussed snow removal policies, which Lyng said currently put smaller local vendors at a disadvantage. He suggested maintaining a list of snow removal vendors and splitting up snow removal contracts among them so as to avoid granting one large contract to an out-of-town contractor, as occurred following February’s record 18-inch snowfall, most of which Quincy-based R.L. Brink removed for $76,000. Other council members, however, said it was impossible to plan precisely for emergencies of that nature, and the subject dropped.

It’s worth noting that Lyng is up for re-election next month.