Sean C. Morgan
The Sweet Home City Council is essentially continuing forward with last year’s goals, while adding an action plan to create a downtown streetscape plan.
The council met with City Manager Ray Towry and department heads in an annual three-day work session Feb. 7-9 to review and update the city’s goals.
Last year, “we made progress on all of the goals,” Towry said. Some of it was a “hurry up and wait,” like updating the city’s development codes.
Another community, “with deeper pockets,” started redoing its development codes, Towry said. Sweet Home stepped back with the intent of using it as a template.
The consultants working on that project met with the City Council Feb. 12 to initiate the process here.
During the year, “the first thing we focused on was kind of getting our house in order,” Towry said. “Our infrastructure is falling apart.”
So the city’s focus has been on infrastructure, he said, with strong efforts in locating and repairing leaks in the water distribution system and work on rehabilitating the Wastewater Treatment Plant.
The city made a lot of progress, Towry said, but it’s not finished. The Wastewater Treatment Plant design is at about 60 percent, and the project will take multiple years.
The city has secured substantial financing for the project, Towry said, including $9 million in appropriations from the state government. He anticipates another $3 million in federal appropriations and $1.5 million in state appropriations, bringing a total of $13.5 million in external funding to the $28.5 million project.
Based on rate increases in recent years, utility rates will provide about $7 million in funding by the end of the project, leaving the city to find just $7 million to full fund the project, Towry said. A new debt to cover the project would overlap with existing debt by a year and then it will be a wash in terms of debt payments.
At this point, “sewer rates will be stable for the better part of a decade,” Towry said. “Doing it this way, we’re not saddling ourselves 10 years down the road.”
In the water distribution system, the city has stopped leaks throughout the city, Towry said. It didn’t decrease the amount of unaccounted water usage as much as city officials had hoped. More than 40 percent of water produced is not counted through water meters, and the city is continuing a leak repair program and considering how to replace old meters in order to get a handle on the lost water.
During the work session, the council recognized other wins, including the opening of the new City Hall; upgrades at most parks; reorganizing multiple departments, including the Police Department and adding a detective position; the work of the Health Committee, a major reduction in the crime rate; and increased services at the library.
The city is “doing a better job of communicating with the public,” Towry said, although it still do better.
The city also took steps at the Water Treatment Plant to identify and mitigate deficiencies found in an audit of the facility early last year. The plant is operated by Jacobs Engineering, and the council decided earlier this month to part ways with the company.
Going forward, the council modified its goals, primarily wording changes, and simplified its vision statement. The draft will go to the council for review and approval in March.
“The main thing they want to work on is developing a downtown streetscape plan,” Towry said. The councilors do not want to add to the stack of plans already around. He and the councilors think people are “visioned out.”
“We have plans on top of plans on top of plans,” Towry said. Community and Economic Development Director Blair Larsen is, instead, gathering action items from all of the plans of the past and compiling them into a single document.
The city will celebrate the projects that have been completed and then start ticking items off the remainder of the list, Towry said. The city is starting outreach to community groups and leaders to start that process.
In the process, the city will revamp its Commercial Exterior Improvement Program, which provides grants to businesses that improve their exterior facades and grounds, to make it more effective, Towry said. The city will work with downtown businesses and property owners to develop the streetscape plan.
The big items for the city this year will be the Wastewater Treatment Plant project; rewriting development codes; continued improvements at Sankey Park, including new playgrounds; and continuing to repair water lines, Towry said. “And we’re really going to try to get some roads fixed.”
Some repairs and improvements at the Water Treatment Plant will go to the top of the list of projects in the city’s Capital Improvement Plan.
City staff members are researching new ways of repairing roads through maintenance rather than grinding and rebuilding them, he said. Once the homework is out of the way, he expects to see street projects starting.
With the library, “we’ll move forward at this point with some design work,” Towry said. FFA Architects will come back with costs and scenarios for a new building. FFA recommended replacement of the building with a new building on the site of the old City Hall, 1140 12th Ave.
City staff members are attempting to locate as much external funding as possible, Towry said.
In programs and services, Police Chief Jeff Lynn is working hard spearheading efforts to help match people to resources through a new community court, Towry said. He is working with the Street Outreach Team, which works with the homeless, while CHANCE is becoming a major partner.
Mayor Greg Mahler is continuing to spearhead efforts to improve health care in Sweet Home, Towry said. The Community and Economic Development Department is beginning a systems analysis to improve efficiency. Its work will help shape the new development codes, allowing the city to expedite land use plans and building while ensuring safety and following codes.