Star-Journbal Editor
Amid the flurry of activity in its meeting Feb.6, the Hillsboro City Council agreed to require all downtown businesses to clear their sidewalks within 12 hours after a snow.
After March 1, violators of the 12-hour rule could be fined as much as $50 and be forced to reimburse the city for the time it takes its workers to do the job.
The proposal was added to a revised snow ordinance that also extends the snow emergency plan by one month, and puts the city's new helipad at the very top of the snow-removal list. The ordinance should be ready for the Feb. 20 council meeting. Mayor Delores Dalke said the law, if approved, would go into effect March 1.
Downtown businesses that fail to shovel the cold, white stuff, will be forking over cold cash.
"Most of the time it's $50," Dalke said. "But we won't know until we have the meeting and it's decided."
Dalke said she got the idea for a 12-hour rule from a McPherson resident who works in downtown Hillsboro.
"In McPherson, you have 12 hours from the time the snow quits to get the snow removed off of the sidewalks," said Dalke, adding that the clock wouldn't start until the morning after a nighttime snow.
"At this particular business, this lady was out there shoveling her sidewalks, and both local owners on both sides hadn't cleaned theirs," Dalke said. "So it didn't do her a lot of good to clean hers because everybody had to walk through the deep snow to get to her place."
Instead of a new ordinance dealing only with sidewalks, the council agreed to rewrite the existing snow ordinance, one of the oldest on the city's books.
"It was done years ago, so there was a logical reason for the way they went about cleaning the streets," Dalke said. "The idea was to keep them from complaining that they clean Wilson Street, the mayor's street first. Well, they never do, by the way. But it was to stop that kind of stuff from happening."
The original plan was designed with emergency services in mind.
"The logic was, number one, to get out emergency vehicles, so that if an ambulance needed to leave downtown here, they'd be able to leave, or the fire trucks," Dalke said. "Then the police station, so that the police would be able to get out; and then getting the streets plowed that lead to the hospital."
The new ordinance would put the new helipad at the municipal airport at the top of the list, Dalke said, to make the helipad safe and visible for life-flight helicopters, and make sure local ambulance crews aren't trying to wheel critically-ill patients through the snow.
City workers made a new snow-removal plan that would help them clean the rest of the city as quickly as possible, Dalke added. The fastest way for the snowplows to clean, they suggest, is to plow a street as far as they can in one direction, and then as far as they can in the other.
Council member Matt Hiebert agreed the city needed a better plan to clear the streets of snow.
"Thank goodness it's melted, because there are some streets in Hillsboro that haven't even been touched," he said.
"I know," Dalke said.
In addition, the council agreed the emergency snow plan should be extended from March 1 to April 1.
Dalke said, "I think we all know, if we've lived around here for any amount of time, that we can have huge snow storms in March, with huge amounts of snow."
In other business,
— The council approved vouchers in the amount of $126,889.58.
— At the request of Flint Hills Industries, Inc., d/b/a Hillsboro Industries, the city canceled the public hearing scheduled for Feb. 6, and tabled, indefinitely, its request for a tax abatement.
— With the meter running toward an Oct. 1 electricity contract deadline with Westar Energy, the council heard a progress report from energy consultant, Scott Shreve from EMG, Inc. in Topeka.
Under the new contract, the amount Hillsboro pays for bulk electricity would increase by about $350,000 per year. In addition, Westar wants the city to sign a 20-year contract, with no limits to future rate increases.
In response, the council asked Shreve to find other sources for bulk electricity, and to present their proposals. After receiving bids from four companies, Shreve said the best way for the city to deal with Westar is to take advantage of the purchasing clout of the Kansas Power Pool.
Kansas Power Pool began May 1, when a group of cities, all facing similar increases from Westar, formed an alliance to make bulk purchases of power to meet electrical demands. About 35 towns and cities across the state have joined the pool.
"I really like this option so far," Shreve said. "It seems to be the best option for you."
Dalke asked Shreve to return in a few weeks for an update on his progress.
— Confident that its pending loan application for $150,000 in additional funds to pay for the project will be approved, the council voted to accept a bid from APAC-Kansas, Inc., paving the way for the Adams Street improvement project to begin as soon as weather permits.
Originally, the city borrowed $373,000 from KDOT for the project. But higher costs for asphalt, tree removal, and changes in the water main to accommodate the new Tabor College townhouses caused the cost of the project to jump by about $150,000.
The council had feared the additional funds would have to be taken from the city's capital improvement fund, forcing other projects to the back-burner. But after learning more money was available from KDOT, the city applied for another loan.
Grant consultant Rose Mary Saunders told the council Feb. 6 that there are no apparent roadblocks keeping the city from receiving the funds.
Dalke said even if the loan didn't go through, given its obligation to Tabor College, the city has no choice but to proceed.
"If we have to cut out some of the other capital improvement items that we'd thought we might do this year, we might have to do that," Dalke said. "Once we say we're going to do it, I think we have to go ahead."
— It appears as if the city soon will be asking the Department of Homeland Security for a grant to expand its cramped fire station, located at City Hall.
Saunders told the council that the city could apply after March 1 for an Assistance to Firefighters Grant (AFG), and that the application process would take 30-45 days to complete. The grant provides 90 percent of the funding, with 10 percent coming from the city.
With this in mind, the council will postpone the process of selecting an architect for the proposed addition.
— The council reviewed a list of construction and repair projects now underway by the public works department.
Council Member Byron McCarty said the item, "Repair numerous potholes all over the city" needed to be moved from the bottom to the top of the list.
Dalke agreed, but said, "One of the things with the potholes, is that whenever we do them, we have to do them correctly. If you just go dump some gravel or some material in them, it doesn't really do much good because it drives right back out.
"If those potholes aren't cleaned out and gotten ready before, then we're wasting time and wasting material. I think we need to make sure that whoever is doing them knows how to do them and is doing them correctly."
The mayor, in her expanded capacity in the absence of a city administrator, said she would be meeting with street workers the following day, and that McCarty would be joining her.
