Two meetings, Aug 14, 2017

The Board of Public Works had four items on the agenda on Monday night. The first three were to approve bills and the fourth was to approve awarding a contract (or rather a couple contracts) to Titan Builders for remodeling the old fire station into a police station. There were two proposals for this task, and the state had detailed rules for how the contract is to be awarded. It sounded as if the two proposals were quite competitive.

The City Council approved a gas tracker decrease of nine cents per hundred cubic feet for August and a grant administration contact with KIRPC for the OCRA grant that the City obtained in June to connect new water well #8 on Sparling to the water treatment plant.

There was then a long presentation from Republic First National, which is a broker service, not a bank, about the advantages of funding equipment purchases with something called lease-buy. It seems to be pretty much the same as a loan, but there are some legal differences that I do not understand. Several counties had been using this to finance new snowplows and other expensive vehicles. The Council approved considering this as an option going forward.

The City will be seeking almost $1 million of Community Crossings Grants to fund street improvements this year. The Council approved a contact with First Group to monitor the work done on the streets.

The Police Chief expressed interest in exploring the purchase of items from the SJC sale that would be of use to the Department and the Council gave him permission to spend from the Department budget. A committee was established to investigate financing via lease-purchase. The State is doing something called wedge and leveling on SR 114. The City will be altering drainage on Elm Street between Scott and Rachel. The Fire Department requested permission to do some kind of memorial for John Amsler, the Marion Township Trustee who helped fund some of the equipment the department has. Finally, someone noted that construction of the new substation on Bunkum was progressing.