Countywide & Sun
Wayne Trotter • Thu, Jan 13, 2011
The Shawnee City Commission will take another run at hammering out a priority list for almost $115 million in proposed capital improvements when it returns from “vacation” next week.
City Manager Brian McDougal sent commissioners a memorandum by e-mail Monday saying the grab bag of 81 potential projects will be discussed at the Jan. 18 commission meeting. That session, the first since the city’s governing body decided to take a holiday break that began Dec. 6, will be held on Tuesday night because of the Martin Luther King holiday on Monday, Jan. 17.
It won’t be the first time the seven commissioners have seen the list. Over the past six months, they have already held two special sessions in an attempt to set priorities and decide which projects will be done first.
This time, McDougal said, he will be offering recommendations and “looking for official ratification.” In previous sessions, staffers and commissioners have “ranked” the projects by need but now,
“The basic premise of why we’re putting it on the agenda is because we’ve talked all around this $114 million worth of projects and they haven’t officially, all seven of them, had a chance to actually vote on that,” McDougal said.
He said the staff needs input on what should be done and the order in which it should be done.
The 81 projects are for general city purposes and do not include improvements to Shawnee Municipal Authority facilities. Those are being financed by a series of loans from the Oklahoma Water Resources Board that will be retired by a series of annual increases in water and sewer rates. As a result, rates for 5,000 gallons of water (including sewer costs) could increase by as much as 70 percent by 2014... FULL ARTICLE
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Thu, January 13, 2011
by John Cox