May 19th Council Update

A couple quick items from the last Council meeting.

The first item is another business will be opening in downtown. Recreational vehicle repair facility will be opening in the old Miller Automotive building. One more piece to our economic puzzle.

We approved our City Flag purchase. The public will be able to purchase city flags of all sizes as well. If you have questions please contact me at 763-444-7158, 763-442-8749 or george@georgewimmer.com

The Council approved moving forward with the 3rd Avenue paving project. This is the road by the soccer complex. I think everyone is ready for this road to be paved.

The Council also approved a project especially important to me - the Capital Improvement Plan. This plan, when complete, will give us a road map of our infrastructure needs. Isanti has grown rapidly the last few years and a great many roads and miles of water/sewer pipes and storm water ponds and on and on have been added to the City. One problem with that is no long term maintenance or replacement plan has been created.

This becomes a ticking time bomb if not properly planned for. Many cities that went through their growth spurts 20 to 30 years ago are struggling to replace failing infrastructure. They either take on crushing debt or use massive tax increases to rebuild. I want Isanti to plan and start reserving for the needed maintenance and replacement of all this new infrastructure. I believe it would be a monumental failure to leave this to future generations to solve. It is great having new roads, parks and our new water treatment, plant coming online in a few months, but we must also do our share to make them long term assets not long term liabilities to those that come after us.

The last item I want to touch on is the outsourcing of the mowing of nuisance and foreclosed property. We accepted the low bid of $16.25 per property which compares to City cost of $90 per lawn, a savings of 82%. Doing a 100 lawns the real dollar savings is $7375. In committee I had the stipulation placed in that if the contractor does not fulfill their obligations the next lowest bid would be awarded the contract. This ensure that the service promised is delivered.