Abby enacts extraterritorial zoning ordinance
Abbotsford approved its extraterritorial zoning measure at its bi-monthly meeting on June 21. The ordinance shall be in effect for 18 months with an additional year available if the joint extraterritorial zoning committee recommends it.
“So we would be able to tell people outside of city limits what they can and cannot do?” council president Mason Rachu asked.
“Per our ordinance, yes,” city administrator Josh Soyk said.
The resolution was first approved, then a city ordinance and extraterritorial zoning map was approved and sent to both the Clark and Marathon County clerks as well as the townships of Colby, Mayville, Holton and Hull. The committee would include representatives from the four townships as well as the city.
The ordinance was approved with Rachu being the lone present council member against the resolution.
Soyk said the temporary ordinance would be in place until the committee containing all affected towns and the city could meet to come up with a permanent ordinance.
n The city of Abbotsford will be receiving an additional 20% in state aid this year which is the biggest increase since the 1970s. The $89,379 increase along with the city’s cell tower lease will bring in an additional $110,000 in revenue next year according to city administrator Josh Soyk.
n Public Works Director Craig Stuttgen said both the Cedar and Linden Street projects have had the curb and gutter poured. The catch basins need to be tied in yet.
n A bid was awarded to Switlick and Sons for the 2024 7th Street reconstruction project in the amount of $78,200. The bid was much less than the $181,000 quoted by the Francis Melvin Companies. Brian Chapman of Cedar Corp said his engineering estimate for the project came in around $80,000 so he’s not sure why the Melvin bid came in so much higher than the accepted bid of Switlick and Sons.
Chapman said no one else had pulled plans for the project prior to two days before the bids were to be in so he thought Melvin assumed they were the only company to place a bid and therefore submitted a much higher bid than the plans called for.
Chapman ultimately recommended the council go with the Switlick and Sons bid.
n A change order was approved in the amount of $2,842 because a contractor accidentally bored through a sewer line. The line was repaired by Switlick and Sons.
In addition, the top of the manhole had collapsed so they had to repair the top of the manhole.
Stuttgen said the problem was the diggers requested a new locate request an hour before the digging started. He said the team isn’t in the office waiting for faxes containing locate requests to come through so in the future he would like to have language in the permit application that fixes the problem.
“We resolved that situation. They will no longer do that,” Stuttgen said. “If you call in a locate request for the City of Abbotsford at 8:00 in the morning we are all out working when it comes across our fax machine. It’s probably something we should add to our excavation permits as well.”
Stuttgen said although the city was on the hook for the change order, he got the crew to do some other small projects which allowed the city to recoup about $1,500 in other costs.
n The city accepted a pay request of $212,954.85 to Switlick and Sons for their work on the Linden Street project. While discussing whether to approve the request or not, alderman Jeremiah Zeiset brought up the fact that some of the quantities laid out in the itemized pay request were over the budgeted amount. Chapman said he would like to revisit a specific item on the list that he felt was over the amount it should have been and discuss it with the contractor to ensure both entities are on the same page. If a deduction was agreed to by the contractor, the amount would be credited to the city on the project’s next pay application.
n The council also approved a pay application for the Cedar Street project to Haas Sons, Inc. The amount of $365,215.12 was paid to the contractor with $278,989.88 left to be paid on the contract. Stuttgen said the council can expect this project to go slightly over budget as the next pay request comes in.
He said the excavation crews ran into drain tile on Second Ave. that was not tied into any existing catch basin. He said it was stubbed out for future construction.
“It caused there to be two feet of water under the street because it wasn’t tied into a catch basin,” Stuttgen said. “I’ve never seen a street that wet in my life when removing concrete.”
The job was so soft that the contractor had to put extra materials in that the original estimate didn’t call for.
n Soyk said the water tower is currently being worked on and sandblasting was expected to start around June 23. He also said wells 25 and 27 have been successfully rehabbed and are currently online. They are producing 43 gallons per minute more than they were before the rehab process.
n The wastewater treatment plant needed an emergency repair as a non-submersible pump was used as a submersible pump and shorted out. Soyk said the motor for the pump worked fine while it was underwater but as soon as the water was pumped out, the motor failed.
Soyk said the plant is going to switch to a submersible pump and since he can only hold the sludge for 30 days, Soyk said they needed to get the ball rolling pretty quickly on getting a new, $14,000 - $15,000 motor. He said in the future, he would potentially use ARPA funds to fund the new pump but that will come back to the council at a future meeting.
