HEARING SET: CHAFFEE BOND ISSUE DISCUSSED

CHAFFEE - Mayor Ron Moyers is urging Chaffee residents to attend a public hearing Wednesday on a proposed city bond issue for a waste water plant and sewer line improvements.

"If we have questions, we know the citizens of Chaffee have questions," Moyers said in reference to city officials at the Chaffee City Council meeting Monday evening. "We have to get this through. It's not a need-to ... we have to."

A representative of the firm the city hired as its financial adviser and project promoter, McLiney & Co. of Kansas City, is scheduled to attend the hearing, scheduled for 7 p.m. at Chaffee City Hall.

The $500,000 bond issue, to be voted on Nov. 5, would fund improvements to the city's waste water plant, the effluent of which is out of compliance with state guidelines, and a sewer line and lift station along North Frisco Street.

In front of some council members Monday lay stacks of light blue handbills encouraging city residents to vote for the bond issue. The mayor encouraged council members to circulate the handbills, with the exception of putting them in residents' mailboxes.

The handbill says the waste water plant is at the end of its useful life of 20 years. The improvements, it said, will have a useful life of another 20 years. The bill also notes no rate increase is anticipated to retire the bond issue.

The plant's discharge is out of compliance because of a high rate of algae growth. The city plans to correct the problem, according to the bill, by having the plant's fourth and final cell deepened from three to eight feet, implementing a treatment system to remove 95 percent of the algae found in the discharge, replacing necessary transfer structures and fluid valves and rebuilding levees.

City Administrator Reece Brown announced Monday that the overall cost for asphalting and sealing the city's streets came to just over $49,200. The work was done last week, said City Clerk Diane Eftink.

Brown said the figure is about $800 under the amount budgeted for the work.

The council approved the asphalt work at its Oct. 7 meeting for Main Street from Elliot to the housing bridge; Frates Street; a one-block blacktop portion of Hubbard Drive; and Black Street. Approval of the sealing work came after council members returned from a closed session.

The sealing work was done on South Third, North Second, Cook Street, and at the city cemetery, Eftink said.

Ward 2 Councilwoman Irmgard Chronister proposed Monday that the city have a metal building and fence built next to the city's firehouse to protect the city's emergency preparedness truck. She also asked that the emergency light on Second Street be moved to the firehouse.

Moyers sent Chronister's request for the building to the city's property and fire committees and asked the councilwoman to look into the cost of having the emergency light moved and whether the city could do it.

Support for the emergency preparedness truck building came from Ward 1 Councilman Jerry Wolsey.

"We're going to have to get the truck out of the weather because we've got a considerable amount of equipment inside the truck now," he said. "And the fire department is using it, and they have put in a lot of time and have a lot of pride in that truck."

Chronister said the proposal would cost about $3,500.