Council Scraps Cleanup Days
Oskaloosa, Iowa – The Oskaloosa City Council met in regular session on Monday evening, where they dealt with not only spring cleanup but also moving several projects forward.
Oskaloosa City Manager Michael Schrock spoke with Oskaloosa News about the decisions made at Monday’s meeting.
In regards to spring cleanup, Schrock said that the council voted on a recommendation made by him not to have the annual cleanup days. “I made a recommendation to city council based off some input from our staff and reviewing the data, that we would stop the program going forward. I think this year was really an opportunity for us to take a step back, look at that information and say why are we providing this program to the community? Is it really being effective, and is now the right time in a sense of how we spend the resources for our public works department? Should they be doing something different? We obviously had a harsh winter. A late start for spring. The roads are in terrible condition, and so we really need to be out there hitting those potholes and getting ourselves ready for the rest of summer work rather than taking the resources, which is essentially a full week, of our entire team, plus additional help from the water department to get that job done.”
For the City of Oskaloosa, Schrock explained that it costs a little over $15,000 a year to do. “That includes the staff time. That includes our fuel use. So $15,000 a year.”
Oskaloosa News asked Schrock about how the winter weather impacted the city budget for repairs.
“It’s a struggle. Between the amount of salt we had to use this year because of the number of events, that put the biggest stress on our budget,” explained Schrock. “And clearly, trying to get enough rock material and cold patch, which no one likes cold patch, but it’s an essential part of what we do. We’ll make it work, don’t worry about that. We have room in the budget for it.”
The early childhood development center was also a major topic of the meeting, and the council authorized Schrock to keep moving that project forward.
“We are in the process of selecting an architect to design the building,” said Schrock. “Obviously we’ve talked about this a couple of years ago. [We] had some initial concepts put together on what the building might look like, but those were just used for informational purposes and to provide an initial concept estimate, so a construction cost estimate. We need to now really move into more than just the concept and actually design the building. The council has given me direction to negotiate a contract with a firm called SVPA. They are the same architectural firm that designed and helped construct the YMCA in Waukee and the YMCA in Indianola. So that’s the next step, to get them onboard April 15th, present a contract to the council, and then the project will start. And that’s something I didn’t get into a lot of detail tonight, but the idea is that by this time next year, we’ll have the project, the building design, so people will see what it looks like, and then we’ll be getting construction bids. If all goes well, construction could start as soon as spring or summer.”
The total cost for the architect, which will include the design and constriction administration, will be approximately 1.1 million dollars. “We expect the project itself to be about 19.65 million dollars. That’s all in. So that includes the construction cost, and the architects work,” added Schrock.
Other projects the city is working on include the sanitary sewer system, and the continual improvements that have been underway after mandates from the Iowa Department of Natural Resources were placed on the city.
“The council authorized about 2.6, or about 3.1 million dollars if you include the engineering fees of sewer maintenance work; an essential part of what we’re doing,” Schrock said of the decision made Monday night. “We’re required to do it under a plan that we agreed to with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, so it’s not like we can just defer this. We had to do that work. So we’re doing the preventative maintenance, and I mentioned to the council, we approach sewer work just like we do road work, always trying to keep the sewer and the roads in a condition before they fail. That’s because it’s cheaper to keep them running and operating if they are not failed. If we have to reconstruct, we have to spend a lot more money. So this portion of the work [that] council authorized tonight, for about 2.65 million dollars, will be maintenance only. So It’s just to get in there and line the sewer pipes. The council also rejected a bid for reconstruction, those portions that have failed. They rejected the bid because it was 35 percent over the engineer’s estimate, and that engineer’s estimate was high to begin with. We didn’t feel good about that. Didn’t recommend that it go forward. That portion of the work will be reevaluated. We’ll divide it up into smaller projects and rebid it later this spring and summer.”
