Lind Town Council approves Complete Street Program ordinance

The Lind Town Council held a meeting Tuesday, July 12, to discuss important issues regarding the progress on the Town’s maintenance.

The main purpose of the meeting included the discussion of progress on the Storm Water Project and the introduction of a new ordinance establishing a Complete Streets Program.

At the beginning of the meeting, Stantec Engineer Alan Gay presented a contract for a vector truck to clean the streets and culverts.

After presented, the contract received unanimous approval, which allowed for Gay to forward the contract to the state. Gay then presented the council with the Complete Streets Program ordinance.

The purpose of the program is to “ensure all users are planned for in the construction of all Town transportation improvement projects.”

Gay explained the Department of Ecology (Ecology) is pushing for the program to be adopted statewide. More specifically, the program asks communities to consider the functions of the entire street, curb to curb, before tearing it up to prevent the need of tearing it up a second time.

Gay also pointed out the program would allow the Town to manage the storm water in a more cost effective way. The Complete Streets Program also needs to be established in order to qualify for Transportation Improvement Board (TIB) funds.

Presently, Gay is applying for TIB grants for two projects to take place on Sixth Street, E-S, and on south Third Street. Both of these projects include replacing the pavement on these streets. Gay also mentioned he is preparing an application to the Department of Health to replace the water lines.

However, Gay expressed that the grant is competitive and it may not cover 100 percent of the funds needed to utilize project.

In this case, the Town may need to use some of a Capital Construction fund to match some money and prove to the department that the Town of Lind can finance some portion of the projects.

This raised some financial concerns with the council regarding the water well issues that have been taking place due to the fact they would rather have funding for the present water issues than a new project at this time.

Mayor Jamie Schmunk addressed this concern when she explained how the water levels in the wells have lowered due to the aquifer being depleted faster than it can recover. She said the wells are running lower than they were last winter and realistically they may never return to the winter level again.

Gay explained that the wells will rebound some but will not fully recover. However, he is taking steps to ensure the Town of Lind will not have to worry about water usage any longer.

This conversation concerned some of the citizens attending the meeting. One citizen asked Gay what he is doing to correct what is happening with the wells.

Gay addressed the concerns when he stated that correcting the issue is a long process that requires a predesigned study to be presented to Ecology in order to receive the funding to fix the issues in which the study will show.

Gay explained he believes the solution to fixing the water issue is to lower the pump in Well No. 8.

Even though the overall water table of the Odessa Aquifer will continue to drop, lowering of the pump will secure water for the Town of Lind for decades to come.

The public continued to express their concern with a water line leak on Van Marter, which has been occurring for a few months. Gay then stated the application he is in the process of preparing to replace the water lines is the answer to the problem.

However, replacing the pipes is not a simple task, Gay explained. He went on to describe how the pipes currently in use are very old and unusual material for water pipes. To replace them would require specially ordering an unusual two-inch galvanized pipe, which is not ideal.

Gay said the easier option would be, as he stated before, to replace the entirety of the water line, which requires time, money and patience.

After the discussion of the projects concluded, the council motioned to approve the ordinance. The decision to go forward with the application for the Complete Streets Program received approval by councilpersons Craig Cooper, Karissa Labes, Kathy White and opposed by Paula Bell.

Gay ended his presentation to the council with a pay request of $925.38. The amount included all of the work completed by Stantec up to June 30. The council unanimously approved the pay request.