The city is seeking a new buyer for its 66-acre property in West Brandywine, known as the Conti farm, because a $1.27 million deal to sell it to the township has fallen apart, Assistant City Manager Kirby Hudson said this week. From Friday's story:

Revenue from the sale of the Conti property was factored into this year’s $10.3 million budget passed by City Council in January.

In 2007, when the city adopted a budget balanced in part with a plan to sell real estate assets, it found itself facing a $1.9 million deficit in the middle of the year when officials were unable to complete those deals quickly enough.

The city fixed the shortage by laying off eight full-time employees and switching two other full-timers to part-time work. There was talk of additional cuts to the police department, but that never happened.

Hudson said he does not expect a repeat of last year’s financial woes.

Florida Power and Light -- the parent company of FPL Energy, one of the outfits that has proposed building a power plant in Coatesville -- had a rough day in its home state yesterday.

Maybe they really do
need that power plant in the city...

City Manager Harry Walker says the city's federal weed and seed grants are available. The feds say, nope, you can't have them yet.

UPDATE: Kristin Geiger, spokeswoman for the city of Coatesville, contacted me Wednesday afternoon to confirm that City Manager Harry Walker had been contacted by e-mail regarding the city's Weed and Seed money.

"However, we are still awaitng official notice from the Department of Justice," Geiger said. She added the city has resolved the issues raised in the audit and "we are hoping to hear from the Department of Justice in the very near future.”

Six new police officers will be sworn in at tonight's City Council meeting. Based on what Chief Matthews and other city officials said two weeks ago, the department is ahead of schedule.

Check out the complete agenda here.

UPDATE: Only four of the six police recruits were sworn in at Monday night's council meeting. Matthews said the other two individuals listed on the agenda, and possibly one more, likely will take the oath in March.