We heard about the pool. Still having issues getting the contractor here. For now, looking like a June 11 opening, but that is all dependent on the contractor doing what he says he is going to do. We had a brief discussion about the official city photo. We had a few to choose from. The council all agreed with one that was taken from west of Roland, looking to the east over the city. There were two basically the same, so the City Clerk and I will make the final pick.
The council agreed to hire Mackey Harris Architects for making the initial plans/wish list for our new City Hall. This will simply be to put something together so we can get bids. We then approved a resolution setting the wages for city employees for the 2013-14 year. All employees were give a 3% raise effective July 1.
We then had a discussion regarding the sewer trunk line. The council again reviewed the options that were proposed by our "2nd opinion" engineering firm of Veenstra and Kimm. The council decided to first make an effort to go forward with the lowest cost option. And that was with an open cut near the creek. However to do so would require acquiring a utility easement from the property owners in that area. So the council voted to formally ask those property owners for the permission to do so.
Based on conversations with some of those property owners at the meeting, I'm guessing that is unlikely. However I think it important to ask, because if we could do so, we could potentially save Roland taxpayers $150,000 to $200,000.
If we are unable to acquire the permission, the council decided to go forth with a plan to directional bore a new trunk line under Samson Street. This will obviously cost more, but will get the new line to the sewer plant. In either case, a new lift station will need to be built at the sewer plant to handle a higher load, and because the new sewer trunk will be deeper than now.
Also, in either case, the council expressed an interest to follow up with a new sewer line down Elm Street. Currently all sewer in the neighborhood of the school, down to Homestead Housing, and all in there, travels north of Maple, up to the bank and around down to the pool. If we can get a new line in down Elm, it will hopefully help sewer back ups in the northeast side of the city, as sewage from the south side doesn't have to pass thru there, and would more directly get to the sewer plant.
I think the plan is solid, and helps a lot of people in Roland. It is going to cost a boatload of money tho. And that is why I think it important to find out if the neighbors along the west side of Sampson would be interested in helping the city taxpayers save $150 to 200 thousand bucks.
We then had a discussion about our engineering firm. It devolved into something I was not expecting. We had a simple discussion, or so I thought, as an agenda item about interactions with our engineering firm, Bolton & Menk. I thought it might work around using Veenstra and Kimm for the potential sewer project. It ended up with our city engineer offering his resignation as our official city engineer. From my observation, there is a range of opinion on how well his and his company's tenure as engineer worked for Roland from the council. I've had some irritation regarding some billing and communication. But I am happy with how several of our engineered projects have turned out. I think the drainage issues in the Britson neighborhood have been a success, along with North Cottonwood. I think the ideas presented regarding the trunk sewer have been solid, and were pretty much confirmed with our 2nd opinion from V&K. I'm really disappointed how that portion of the meeting went. If we were going to have a parting of ways, that isn't how I wanted it to go down. We will continue to use B&M for ongoing projects in the city, but we will have to find another city engineer it appears.
We closed out the meeting with a discussion of communication with the Sheriff's Department and the cases of abduction around our area.
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