howeenterprise.com
Monday, April 23, 2018
Page #5
City streets a topic at the city council meeting
Howe City Administrator Joe Shephard discusses street issues with the city council members on Tuesday. An agenda item on the monthly city council meeting on Tuesday was for the council to give direction to city staff on road repairs. Mayor Jeff Stanley opened the discussion stating that the city had a small budget for road repairs but if the council felt as if any roads needed greater attention this would be the forum. Councilman Sam Haigis said that all of the roads needed attention. He was followed by Councilman Jonathan Coleman who said that he thought the streets that border the schools needed more attention due to being the most visible by visitors to Howe.
"The council needs to keep in mind of the $1.5 million in Certificates of Obligations that were issued a few years ago," said Shephard to the council. "The final payment which is $125,000 more or less each year will not be retired until 2030. Also, the water take-or-pay contract will not expire until 2040 and that's over half a million dollars a year. We have other projects that we're looking into in the near future such as the sewer issue. We're going to have to issue bonds to help pay for our part of that sewer issue. I say that so the council doesn't get the idea to go out and issue another $2 million in bonds to fix the roads. We can't pay for it."
"We put our schools in those areas Shephard said the tax rate on the and we need to upkeep those areas," said Coleman. "That being existing $1.5 million bond is about said, Ponderosa (Road) and Duke $0.13. (Street) need priority attention." Haigis said he's had several members of the community ask him City Administrator Joe Shephard why not issue a bond to fix the said the Ponderosa and Duke are roads and thanked Shephard for almost the same in length and would cost over $80,000 to repair answering that question. each one. "That is the answer. We're not able to do that right now," said Haigis. "We don't have that kind of "But certainly we can have options money," said Shephard. "We've to go out and fix the potholes. You had some small work done in the didn't have any responsibility for past that didn't hold up. So the question is, 'Do we spend that small the rain that we had that tore up a amount of money to fix it up or do lot of stuff." we spend $80,000 to fix it up and Shephard then mentioned that the which one do we do first?'" city has contracted with the county Shephard suggested that the council to use their pothole machine and it would be available within a couple make a priority list and see what of weeks. It was already budgeted. can be funded out of that.
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