New streets

At the council meeting Monday night, the council gave the go ahead to start the process for an extension of Arthur Drive to Bryan Avenue, and then an extension of Bryan to Industrial Drive.

The council previously had some thoughts on streets to upgrade this year, namely Logan and Ash. However, after a community meeting, an overriding theme of the folks on Logan, was a wish to get another outlet for Logan, which would help decrease the traffic on their street.

So the council went back, and worked on a plan (not final, put a plan) of what streets they would like to see upgraded over the next few years, so the citizens could know that stuff wasn't just thrown together.

The council agreed with what came out of the citizen meeting, that another outlet for all the folks that use Logan was a good idea. By my guestimate, about 1/9 of the city's population lives down the dead end street of Logan. That's a lot of traffic, but also a public safety issue, if maybe one of those big trees fell over in a storm, and emergency workers had to get back to one of those houses.

So that is why the extension of Bryan to Industrial. That will give a 2nd way out for everybody. The Arthur extension is not needed now, but our engineer reports a substantial cost savings if we do this work, while they are already right there at Bryan. A road is needed into the new Britson Park, and the Arthur extension will be that road through the park, and to the parking area for the park. Then, connected to Bryan, will also provide some traffic relief to Logan, for the visitors to the new park.

Reports from various connected people indicate contractors are hungry for work, and this is a good time to do road projects. The initial estimate from the engineer, with 7 inch concrete is around $220,000 for all this.

Again, this is not a done deal, we need to work with the park board to nail down their plans for the park, and we need to see what the bids come in at. On another note, at some point, the city is obligated to extend Bryan, namely when X number of homes are built along Bryan. We are not to that point of obligation yet, but that is something we would need to do at some time in the future.

So stay tuned on all this.