City Council Meeting Sep 13

Been a busy week for me, so haven't had a chance to make any comments about the city council meeting last Monday. The meeting was a stem winder. About 2.5 hours.

First up we approved the funding for the Arthur and Bryan street projects. We got a good interest rate. 2.85% I believe. That is nice for the taxpayers to borrow at that low of rate. It will be a 10 year payoff. We are just finishing up paying off a previous water project. So we continue to only use a small amount of our total bonding capacity. So that is good.

We talked a little about a LED sign that the Roland Area Development Corp(RADC) wants to put up in Roland, maybe by Caseys. That will be a nice thing to have if that gets off the ground. It will be a community message board, touting events in the city.

We authorized some initial grading in Britson Park. Along with the road construction through the park area, that will be really be the start of the park.

We also approved the purchase of software for a GIS for city infrastructure. It should be a nice thing going forward, when we can start to track manholes, and water shutoffs, and other stuff like that. Just in this meeting, we had discussions about pipes that we did not know existed where they did.

I made the proclamation for Constitution Week. Tis nice to remember what a great document we have the opportunity to live with.

We passed the 2nd reading of the "Chicken Ordinance". I'm expecting it to have final approval at the next meeting. Last chance, if you don't want to see "urban chickens" come to the meeting at let your voice heard.

However the biggie of the meeting was the discussion and report on effort to limit flood water in our city. Our city engineer Neil Guess was present to discuss his findings. He looked at 3 key areas.

(Below is my express commentary on the discussion, and what was in the report. I linked the report below)

The first was Ryan Circle. Mostly we just need some maintenance there, without a lot of cost. Part of it would be improved draining around the rail trail. This week, a new culvert was installed there, and that should help matters.

Next is around North Cottonwood. Same thing there. With the addition of some culverts, and a ditch cleanout, we think water flow would be improved there.

Lastly is at Britson Circle. That one is not so easy. It appears the street draining was "under-engineered" from the street's construction 40 years ago. And there is no easy way to get the water away from there and to the creek. We are looking at some options, but that may involve getting easements on the most direct route to the creek, or the very expensive route of taking it up along Maple. We are also pondering a route to the south. More to come on that. It is not an easy maintenance fix.

For those of you at the meeting, you know our engineer Neil was distracted by a couple texts about a medical issue in his family. I found out his father passed away on Tuesday. So he has been away from the office this week.

HERE is a link of the DRAFT Storm Sewer report.