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Council gets briefing, Mayor not happy over trash |
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Wednesday, 16 July 2008 |
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Page 1 of 2 By Buck Traxler, I-O Editor
At the last regular council meeting, aldermen received a presentation projection from Harry Whalen on the funding of the upcoming wastewater project.
Whalen is a Circuit Rider for the Montana Rural Water Systems, Inc. (MRWS). He has worked for 20 years, figuring out funding scenarios for rural water projects.
He spoke a lot in terms of EDU, Equivalent Drilling Unit(s), referring to the cost according to the pipe size of the water user.
Currently Conrad has 1,204 water connections; 1,138 on ¾- inch, 35 on 1-inch, 14 on 1-1/2 inch, 13 on 2-inch, 2 on 3-inch and 2 on 4-inch pipes.
As presented, councilman Gary Brown commented, “I see this as a terrible thing to the people. We need to keep the rates as reasonable as possible.”
There were two sample-funding options presented (key word being sample) by Whalen to the council, one for $4.6 million and the other for $4.1 million. These figures are only a starting point and give council numbers to work with.
Before it becomes final a resolution needs to be passed and a public hearing held for citizen input and comment.
The city already has a grant from the federal government for $500,000 that Rep. Denny Rehberg worked on ($477,00 actually, due to administrative costs) and two others from the state.
In a public comment portion of the meeting, where no action was taken, Mayor John Shevlin commented that he was disappointed in the condition of the ball park over the amount of trash scattered about and the fact that someone had done brodies in the parking lot and taken the millings right down to the dirt.
“It was not a pretty site,” he said. City crews were pulled off other jobs to clean up the parking lots and ball fields. Future use of the facility to shoot off fireworks may come up at another meeting.
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