Council plans summer projects

The Waseca City Council had a very productive 40-minute meeting Tuesday, March 7. Council members awarded a bid for work to take place at Second Street and Second Ave SW, approved plans and authorized accepting bids for various sidewalk projects for this year, and amended the master fee schedule, something that hasn’t been done since 2018.

City finance director Alicia Fischer asked the council for direction on how to handle outstanding fire response bills. Currently, $43,000 out of $62,500 billed since the fire response charge was implemented in 2018 remain unpaid. The fee is only authorized for in-city fire calls, not for any responses outside of Waseca.

When city council member Stacey Schroeder asked Fischer if anything could be done to collect the outstanding charges, Fischer said that the city staff did consider looking at a state revenue recapture program as well as collection agencies. “We would have to collect additional information on fire calls, though,” she pointed out. “With collection agencies, we would have to get social security numbers, information that we don’t get when responding to a call.”

Fischer added that whenever anyone went to the city council to address a fire response fee, the members voted to write it off. “Not a single one that’s been presented to the council hasn’t been waived,” she said.

Schroeder felt that the past council members set enough precedent to write off the rest of the fees.

Council member Jeremy Conrath took a different angle to support waiving the $43,000 in outstanding charges. “These people have had a bad string of luck,” he said. “They got damage to their house. If we pursue collecting this money, we will not have pleasant public comment periods at the council meetings. We wouldn’t make their life any better, let’s put it that way.”

With that, the council approved to waive the charges and count them as a loss. Council member Mark Christiansen voted in opposition.

The council unanimously approved changes to the master fee schedule which included removing the fire response charges. Other items amended were the wetland delineation review fee — which would go to the developers of the land instead of the city engineering department — fees for renting out entire city parks, updating connections to visitation center to allow video connections, reducing waterpark admission prices, simplifying printing and copying fees, updating the title of the utility billing office to “utility office,” and adding a sewage dump fee.

Schroeder expressed energetic gratitude to city staff for looking at the reduction of the waterpark fee. “Where I work, I’ve heard people say it’s gotten too expensive,” she said. “It’s an amenity, and we shouldn’t out-price ourselves. We aren’t the same size as other area waterparks.”

The council accepted a bid from Dirt Merchant Inc. for the amount of $244,702.33 for work on the 2nd Street/2nd Avenue street project. The low bid was $6,700 above the engineer’s estimate of $237,957, according to city engineer Nate Willey. The project is still under the $250,000 budget set aside through the city’s capital improvement plan.

“State aid should cover $185,000 of the project,” Willey predicted. “Water utility will cover $50,000, and storm sewer will take care of the remaining $10,000 of the project cost.”

Willey then described the 2023 sidewalk improvements project. One of the main parts of the project is an Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) compliant sidewalk ramp along Sixth Street SW. “It’s ahead of some street enhancement we plan to do later this summer.”

The money budgeted for this year’s sidewalk improvements will take care of areas such as sidewalks along West Elm Avenue, curb and gutter on Third and Second Avenues NE, and other areas scattered around the city.

The cost of the sidewalk improvements will be $71,135, just under the $75,000 budgeted in the street capital portion of the city expenses. Willey says city staff will perform inspections throughout the project.

Bids will be opened March 30; city staff will provide the bids at the Apr. 4 council meeting. “We plan on completing the ADA ramp upgrades along Sixth Street by June 30, so the streets department can do the mill and overlay on that street,” Willey told the council. “The rest of the project will be completed on or before Sept. 15.”

Reports

Willey gave an update on the airport board, which looked at some bids for its four-unit hangar project. “Bids last year came high, so we rejected them,” he explained. “This year’s bids are lower than last year…not a lot lower. But they are still lower.”

What may help the board follow through with the project this year is the availability of more federal funding. “We will bring a recommendation to the council in April,” he said.

Council member James Ebertowski said that the Heritage Preservation Commission is moving forward with local schools to provide education and promote the downtown area to attract more people to it. “We also approved another sign in the downtown area,” he said.

Announcements

Conrath called the eventual closure of Itron “a bum deal. Our hearts go out to those affected,” he said. “It’s sure hard on the community. It flat out stinks. Hopefully, we can get through this, get people to stay in the community, and they can find other jobs.

“I think I can speak for the rest of the council when I say we’ll find something to relocate in that building and try to keep the community as strong as it can be. I’m thankful we have 18 months to work on things here. I can assure you I’m more focused than ever to get Waseca as strong as ever.”