May 22, 2024 – The City Council declared this week, from May 19th to the 25th, “National Public Works Week”. Throughout the week, the city will be recognizing the employees who work in Public Utilities, Planning and Development Services, and General Services. These employees collect garbage, maintain the roads and lights, design and maintain the parks, and more.
This Friday, May 24th, the Public Works department will bring some of their large equipment out to the Friday Night Farmers Market, like construction vehicles and water trucks, and host giveaways. They can be found at Pollasky between Bullard and Seventh street.
The presentation of the city budgets for 2024 and 2025 were finished out by police and fire, who are looking for more funding from the General Fund to lower response times, provide better service, and decrease the individual workload on officers.
The budgets for all departments have not yet been approved by the council, and will be seen again in June meetings and will be approved before the end of June.
As a part of the developments by Wilson Homes, there is another development being proposed south of Behymer, east of Minnewawa. Neighbors nearby to the development commended the city and Wilson Homes for hearing their concerns and addressing them amicably, though there were some concerns about the cost of public utilities in the annexation of their neighborhood. One neighbor said that the cost of city water will be considerable on his property, as he maintains a small golf course.
Another neighbor said, “None of us are really happy that this finger of development is coming our way, but it’s the way of the world and we recognize that,” before commending the city for good work.
After neighborhood meetings, Wilson homes changed their plans in order to not disrupt their Behymer neighbors to the east of the proposed development. Instead of building a road between the development and the existing homes, the project will include a road on the west side of the development, along Minnewawa avenue.
The plans for the development were approved, and Mayor Ashbeck said, “May you be a model for how this is supposed to go.”
A rezone was approved for a property at 488 N. Armstrong Avenue, just north of the Herndon-Armstrong professional center. The property is being sold by Dale and Mary De Geode to Scott Butler, the current developer for the medical offices located on that block.
The rezone will allow the development of two new office buildings to “square off” the professional center, and enhance the city’s general plan for that area.
The final item on the agenda was to revisit the Ashlan and De Wolf proposed high-density residential development, near the Reagan Educational Center. This item was last seen on April 15th and was not unanimously approved by the council.
The three items related to this development, pertaining to the rezone and redesignation from single family, low-density residential to high-density residential, were also not unanimously approved by the council.