City Manager addresses Chamber

On Thursday, El Dorado Springs City Manager Bruce Rogers was the speaker at the monthly meeting of the El Dorado Springs Chamber of Commerce.

Rogers gave a run down on the city’s accomplishments in 2018.

He said, “I’m going to go back in time a little bit. We’ve done quite a few things that are larger projects. We recently painted the water tower, the one right here by the nursing home. The project cost $178, 300. We did the inside as well as the outside. We put the Bulldog logo on it. It’s not as big as I hoped it would be. That one cost about $12,000.”

“We drilled a new well and built a well house. We had several bad tests on the water from the old well by the bowling alley. We had an engineering firm come in and put a camera down in the hole. They could never really tell where the problem was. The steel casing was over 50 years old. There wasn’t much point in trying to salvage that well so we drilled a new one by the ballfield near one of the existing towers so we won’t have an additional pumping cost. The well and and the well house were $361, 075.”

“Both those projects came out of the water/sewer fund.” He said the city borrowed the money out of a government program and will be making payments for a while.

He said the city built a new electrical substation behind the police department to replace the one that burned. “The cost to rebuild that substation was $709,613. We received over a million from the insurance company which is kind of unusual because usually the insurance company just restores you to where you were. But our substation was covered under our property policy.” He said that under Missouri law if you have a fire loss the insurance company has to pay the scheduled amount if it is a total loss.

“We had a sidewalk project that was completed a couple of years ago but we have another one in progress. I know this one has taken longer to get to the point where we are actually doing any construction work.”

He said it is taking longer because the city had to get construction easements and permit easements from about 15 property owners. It will start on Hwy. 32 by the carwash, come back to Park Street by the nursing home and the hospital then go north to about four blocks north of the school.

“That little culvert just north of the school on Park Street where the kids have to go into the street, to improve safety, we are going to add an extension onto the concrete culvert and give them a route so they don’t have to walk into traffic. There will be a pedestrian activated signal at Hwy. 54 and Park St.”

“That  project as been bid out. We just got permission from MoDOT to award the project for $245,587. It is something over 4,000 feet. It will be 5 ft. wide instead of 6 ft like the first sidewalk.. The Chamber raised $44,000 and the city will pay $44,000.”

“We will have a pre-construction meeting toward the end of this month. I’m hoping the contractor will get to work on it maybe in March depending on weather.”

“We are also going out for engineering services for the airport.”

He said the last day for proposals is Jan. 30.

“We have some projects at the airport if we can get funding. The last project at the airport was in 1999 when we redid the runways. We have done a cut and patch and several seal coats since then. The asphalt is getting old and tired. There are a couple of cracks out there I can actually put my foot in the crack.”

He said, “We’d like to go to concrete, but concrete is expensive. The cost of asphalt depends on the distance to the plant.”

“We don’t qualify for federal money because of the size of the airport. We do qualify for state money. The state has  some money. We are going to try to make application for that. A concrete runway is somewhere around $1.2 million depending on what you do with the old surface – if you grind it up and reuse the asphalt as a base for the concrete.  There are a lot of variables there and we are a ways away from that.”

He said there is a grant program where the city could have to come up with a 10% match. He said the Missouri Department of Aviation has a program where they will loan you the match money and you pay it back over 10 years.

“That would be a significant improvement to the airport. Even though we have a small airport we have a very well maintained and operated airport. We have a lot of positive comments from the aviation community. We do want to keep that.”

“We do have a new city clerk. Lisa Allison retired after 26 years. Kandi Baldwin was selected as the new city clerk. Monday was her first full day. She spent several months working alongside Lisa training before she left.”

“Her father, Jerry Baldwin, was on the council. He did not participate in the interviews. He resigned from the council after Kandi was hired do so as not to have any kind of conflict of interest.”