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City plans to repair Felling Field Parking Lot
The city will spend about $15,000 next year repairing the parking lot at Felling Field.
Parking at Felling field is tight and is almost becoming hazardous for parents and spectators of the little league baseball games, Public Works Director Kyle Potthoff told the council at the budget workshop Monday night. The funds will come from the $30,000 from ballpark reserves.
The city is working with Peace Lutheran Church, who owns the parking lot, to fix the problem and will use some of the reserves to fund that.
The Ballpark Department is budgeted for 2008-09 at $138,471, a $57,000 increase from last year at $81,305. Next years' budget also includes $120,000 to replace the walkways at the Jaycee Ball Complex.
This will be funded at $60,000 from capital outlay and $60,000 from city sales tax money, if approved by the council.
The $60,000 for the sidewalks is the only capital outlay project budgeted for next year in the Ballpark Department, an increase from $7, 500 budgeted last year.
These sidewalks are becoming hazardous for use, Potthoff said, and are not your regular sidewalks. Instead, the sidewalks must be able to support heavy equipment like the bucket trucks that fix the lights at the ball field and so must be a minimum of six inches thick.
Other city department budgets discussed at Monday's meeting were:
* pool: $93,400 budgeted for 2008-09, almost the exact amount budgeted last year at $93,350. A project that is up for city council approval, using city sales tax revenue, will be $30,000 to repaint the pool. A WPA project built in the 1930s, the pool is unique in that water is filtered through four sand beds, said Dob Neuhaus of the Public Works Department. But two of the beds are not working efficiently and in the future will have to be cleaned out as the sand hardens with use and must be broken up for the system to work properly. The last time this was done was about 10 years ago, Potthoff estimated.
* airport: $132,063 for 2008-09, down $16,000 from $148,300 budgeted last
year. No capital outlay projects but $150,000 is expected in grants from the Federal Aviation Administration. This amount will be put in reserves to fund a new eight-plex hangar at the airport in the future, projected at $500,000
* cemetery: total budget for next year is $143,000, down from $146,000 in 2007-08. In next year's budget, there is a $1,500 increase in fertilizer and $1,200 in fuels cost for mowers. But a $5,000 decrease will be seen in water and sewer, Potthoff said. A total of $15,000 is included for purchases, a decrease of $3,000 from last year. Improvements and purchases planned include an upgrade to sprinklers at Riverview Cemetery, at $8,000 and a snow blade for a pickup at $7,000. The snow blade makes it easier to clean streets than the large trucks, he said.