This week is always the unofficial start of summer, but it is also a holiday to remember the men and women of our armed forces who gave their lives in defense of our freedom and freedom around the world.
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In addition to the regular council meeting Wednesday, there are two special meetings happening prior to that on Wednesday.
Special Finance Committee Meeting
Wednesday 5:45 p.m. - This short meeting is to approve a contract to create a master plan for the Valley Transit transit center next to the library. The memo from city staff, hints at a new building with mixed uses. In addition to the transit facility, it would also have either commercial or residential spaces, or possibly both. The memo does say if the new transit center will be built in the same location or possibly elsewhere. This contract starts a long process working with the federal government to secure funds for this project.
Special Finance/Utilities Committees Meeting
Wednesday 6 p.m. - This meeting is to take up the resolution I proposed back in April to take $6 million of ARPA funding to use toward replacing existing 4" water mains in the city. I have written about this resolution on several occasions in this blog in April and May.
I strongly encourage community members who support us addressing this issue, to attend and speak in favor of this resolution. Also, send an email to all council members showing your support for it by using this form on the city website.
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| Watermain installation |
I am hopeful my colleagues will understand the growing problem we are facing with not only funding our roads and infrastructure, but to actually replace it. We are currently on a pace to replace our roads and associated underground infrastructure (water, sewer, storm water) every 200 years. Roads are built to last roughly 50 years, so you can see the dilemma we are facing that has been growing for years with little in the way of progress on turning that timeframe around.
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| My watermain resolution |
There are two critical services the city is charged to provide (infrastructure and public safety) and we are generally falling behind in both of them. It's not a lack of trying from those departments, but rather a lack of funding and manpower to adequately address the issues those departments handle. This resolution seeks to take some of this available one-time funding to help address a critical need in one of those areas.
Common Council Meeting
Wednesday 7 p.m. - Depending on how long the two prior meetings take, the regular council meeting for Wednesday will take up the items at those two special committee meetings as well as a few other things.
One is the Soldiers Square Resolution which was recommended for denial twice at the Municipal Services Committee meeting. The resolution itself is the problem, not the project it is advocating for. I fully support Soliders Square becoming more of a dedicated space to honor our veterans. However, the resolution before the committee and now council is one which does not contain an actual project or funding. Without those key elements there is nothing for the city to put into the capital improvement plan.
There is also a push from some community members to privately fundraise for this project, which will make it much more likely to win council approval, given the issues I described earlier in this post with keeping up with our core responsibilities.
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