Big Rapids City Manager Newsletter For January 22, 2010

Construction continues on schedule. This week the taps have been made to the City Utilities. Ferris reports that teaching in this building is expected one year from now.

The construction of the East Campus apartments are a little ahead of schedule. A tour is planned for the next meeting of the City-Ferris Staff.

The next big project at Ferris is the rebuilding of the Mechanical systems for the Star-Arts-Williams buildings.

Gary Trimarco presented the City with a check of just over $19,000 to cover the costs of the safety call boxes for Riverwalk III and for continuing maintenance on the overall safety system network.

Don Jones reports that enough donations have been collected to buy the computer program and software for the Big Rapids Firefighter Safety Project. Efforts are still continuing to raise funds to purchase laptops. The City administration/employees sponsored a noon potluck fundraiser for this event collecting $171.

The City has scheduled another lunch for sometime in February to support the Digital Mammography Project at the hospital.

The City review crew visited South Dakota as part of the construction of the Aerial Ladder to make sure that the vehicle was progressing according to plan and to confirm that there are no change orders or observable errors in the present construction status. The trip was successful. With recent orders for vehicles from the Federal Government, the delivery of the City Aerial is now projected to be in March.

T-Shirts, tote bags, pens, banners and other reminders of the census have arrived and are being distributed in the community and especially at Ferris. It is important that the message that students are census counted in Big Rapids and not at their parents’ home is vital to communicate. That message is being spread as best we can with the help of student government and various student groups.

The City received the reimbursement funds from the Bureau of elections for the two handicapped parking spaces constructed at the Community Library.

There were 13 violation notices distributed over the last week.

7-Illegal parking

5-Inoperable or disabled vehicle

1-Unsafe structure, porch is collapsing

A total of six parking tickets were issued.

Water was shut off at three residences. Once water is shut off, the premise becomes uninhabitable. We are required to serve notice and make sure no one is still living there. One of the properties was vacant, but the other two residences appeared to have someone living there.

A complaint was filed that someone was living in a garage. The garage did not have any doors on it and a mattress and canned food items were visible. A letter was sent to the owner of the property stating that no one could inhabit the garage.

Streets –

• Filled pot holes throughout the City
• Sanded gravel streets and alley after ice blade scraping
• Fabricating box for sand art in the City Hall lobby
• Cleaned storm drains for forecast weekend rain
• Made repairs to floor drain in the back room of garage
• Four employees from the public work staff attend a training class for underground excavation safety

Parks –

• Working on sign repairs

Sewer –

• Cleaning sewer lines and performing other daily scheduled duties
• Checked City and Township sewers and lift stations

Motor fleet –

• Performed safety inspections and serviced vehicles 901 and 905, Dial A Ride buses
• Vehicle 905, Dial A Ride bus, transmission fluid flush
• Fabricating a self contained hydraulic system on a used snow blower to be used for sidewalk snow removal
• Service vehicle 211, pick-up truck

Water, "Main Maintenance"-

• Rebuilt water meters
• Testing water meters
• Flow tested fire hydrants #’s 250 and 252 for engineering firm involved with the new University’s Optometry Building
• Read meters
• Checked water stack shut off damaged by private snow plow at residence

WWTP –

• Monthly operational report submitted with no violations for the month of December
• Switching over to the new SCADA system for a number of monitoring points in the Plant
• Screw pumps switched over to new controls and generator
• Aeration system tested for new aeration basin and equalization basin
• New blowers tested on line
• Effluent monitoring equipment replaced and tested as a project improvement
• Work continues on the administration building
  
  

  Stephen Sobers, City Manager