The Mayor’s Corner 09/20/2017

The weather has certainly taken a turn. The cooler temperatures have helped with the fires in the Columbia Gorge and in the mountain areas of the northwest. It’s amazing to go from 100 degrees to 60 in a couple of weeks.

With the change in the weather, comes a change in some of our schedules. The Street crew will continue to work on ADA ramps as weather permits. They are also still trying to get asphalt to complete projects around town that have been waiting for the final layer.

The Electric Department is working on replacing some poles around the Westside Apartments and will again work as weather permits, Residents will be notified if scheduled outages will occur. We appreciate your patience.

All of the departments are looking at any repairs and improvements needed along W. 9th Street so the work can be done before the major street and bridge project takes place in 2019. Plans are progressing to complete the W. 9th project in coordination with LHTAC (Local Highway Technical Assistance Council) which oversees the spending of state and federal money for large projects along with our engineers from Keller and Associates. It will be great to see the street and bridge replaced as well as have sidewalk all the way up W. 9th on the east side.

Snow in the mountains of Idaho and Montana have us planning ahead even more so than usual. There are varying predictions of what our winter will be but we are preparing for worse case scenario. The City has already purchased some additional equipment and is demo-ing skid steers this weeks for possible purchase. The priority list has been reviewed and streets around the hospital have been added. The maps on the website should be updated this week. Our sander will have a plow blade attached so as soon as snow falls, we will begin sanding and plowing on the priority streets and intersections. Please remember priority streets will be plowed first and if we receive more snow, those priority streets may be re-plowed before second and third priority streets get plowed. We appreciate the cooperation and patience of so many of our residents last winter and will work to make this winter smoother but can’t control to amount of frequency of storms.

Our Ordinance officer will be reminding residents to remove all unlicensed and disabled vehicles. This year all vehicles that are unlicensed and or disabled and need to be moved will be towed and stored at the owner’s expense. Arrangements are being made with the local towing companies to remove the vehicles and store them on their property. Trailers need to be moved off streets and into off street parking.

City ordinances require residences and businesses to store snow on their own property, not push it into the City streets. Sidewalks are the responsibility of the homeowner. Fire hydrants should be kept uncovered for emergency use. Any damage to hydrants or property is the responsibility of the homeowner. Hopefully, if we begin to educate before the snow falls, we will have less misunderstandings when the snow comes. We will continue to looks at ways to improve the procedures currently in place.

If you are scheduling appointments for the winter months, please keep in mind the possible weather conditions in and out of town. We want all out residents to be safe.

Lyle Hillism: There are only four words in the English language which end in “dous””; tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous according to my sheet. Let’s hope they don’t describe our winter this year.