| Cottonwood
City Council meets
The request to vacate a portion of Gilmore St. dominated the discussion at the October 12 meeting of the Cottonwood City Council. Apparently St. Mary’s Hospital thought this had been done back in the 1960’s when the hospital was built. It came to light during the city’s dealings with Pat and Cheri Holthaus regarding the addition they are looking to build on the condos that no such paperwork was ever filed at the Courthouse meaning the city still owned that right of way. An action was started to clean this up when a property owner stepped forward and pointed out to the planning and zoning committee that his property would be landlocked if Gilmore St. were closed. Pat Watkins, representing St. Mary’s Hospital, had concerns about their gravel access road and relocation of sewer and water lines to accommodate the condo addition. They are also rapidly running out of parking space on the campus. The City Council informed them that it is perfectly all right to locate sewer and water lines in a street right-of-way as it is one of their main purposes. They also had no problem with possible relocation of part of the gravel access road into the right of way. They just felt it was not in the best interest of the city and all property owners concerned to close the street. With this new information Watkins said that the Hospital would withdraw their request to vacate the street. In other business the council adopted a pair of ordinances. One deals with changing the school zone speed limits back to 20 mph between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. and those areas will be 25 mph the other 12 hours of each day. The other ordinance deals with banning of large trucks and any vehicles with trailers from Idaho St. between 2nd South and Main St. This was due to the damage those vehicles cause to the street. Those ordinances are located elsewhere in this week’s Chronicle. A catering permit for the library’s Brats & Brew event on Nov. 12 was approved. The council also passed a motion to raise the Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) inspection fees to $5 to match everyone else. In the water report it was noted that 5.15 million gallons of water were pumped with 4.84 million sold for a loss of just 6% which is much better than it had been. In the sewer/stormwater report Ron Grant said he had nothing to report on the sewer but that he is applying for approximately $73,000 in stormwater system grant funds from FEMA. To help with this grant he needs information on any street closures due to storm drainage from as far back as people can remember. In the street report Jack Duman said the handicapped sidewalk ramp is done at Front and Lewiston. They will be installing flashing crosswalk signs. He did a walk through with Idaho DOT personnel on the storm drain up King St. In the report from the West Camas Transportation group which is a consortium of local highway districts and city street departments, they reported bringing $2.2 million in grant money to the area with $726,000 of that going to Cottonwood which includes the $500,000 for the Lewiston St. project. In the Land and Buildings report Shelly Schumacher reported the new lights are up inside the hall. She is also looking into grant money to clean up the creek going through town. She has also applied for a grant to replace the outside doors on the hall. Grant reported the fire department had just 1 call in the past month when Cherie McDonough’s automatic alarm went off. He also reported that the Kamiah Fire Chief is serving as the grant writer for a FEMA grant to upgrade the communications for fire departments in all of Idaho County. Laurine Nightingale, representing the library, provided information to the council on a Smithsonian exhibit, “The Way We Worked” that the library is applying to hold in the lower hall of the Community Hall. There was an article in last week’s Chronicle from Donna Wassmuth asking for letters of support to be sent through her. The Monastery had a similar Smithsonian traveling exhibit on foods a couple years ago. Mayor Denis Duman said the city would be glad to support the library in this effort. The council adjourned at 9:07 p.m. The next regular meeting will be Monday, November 8 at 7 p.m.\ |
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