Hutchinson, Belden sworn in as new city commissioners

Ashley Hutchinson and Ragena Belden were sworn in as new members of the Concordia city commission during a regular meeting on Wednesday night.
Hutchinson and Belden were elected in November to fill the seats being vacated by Mark Matthew and Keaton Snavely.
Matthew and Snavely, both of whom did not seek re-election, each served one three-year term on the commission.
Hutchinson received 1,670 votes in the general election and Belden received 1,270.
As part of the commission reorganization, Chuck Lambertz was elected mayor and Christy Hasch was elected mayor pro tem.
Lambertz, as mayor, was designated to serve on the Frank Carlson Library board.
Hutchinson, the former CloudCorp executive director, was chosen to serve in the commission position on the CloudCorp board of directors.
With the new commissioners seated, the ordinance that passed on November 18 to help slow the spread of COVID-19, that includes mandating the wearing of face coverings in public spaces and the enforcement of isolation and quarantine orders, was reviewed by the commission.
When the ordinance was passed, it was determined that it would be reviewed during each commission meeting using the gating criteria as well as local and regional hospital capacity.
The gating criteria looks at the county’s two-week positivity rate and cumulative incidence rate of new cases using four levels, green, yellow, orange and red.
City manager Amy Lange reported that the county remains in the red for positivity rate and is now in the orange for cumulative incidence rate.
“The graph we have for the positivity rate shows that we are increasing in positivity, but as you can see, the number of positive cases are actually going down. So what that tells us is that of the people being tested, more people are testing positive, but the total number testing is decreasing,” Lange said.
There were 12 new COVID-19 cases reported in Cloud County on Thursday, bringing the total for the month of December to 197. There have been 802 cases reported since March with 19 deaths.
Cloud County had 14 new COVID-19 cases reported on Wednesday, out of 18 test results.
The positivity rate in the county for December is around 40 percent.
The recommended positivity rate for removing restrictions is 9.9 percent.
Cloud County Health Center administrator David Garnas told the commissioners he had good news and bad news.
Garnas said that the number of COVID-19 swab tests being done has decreased and the number of positive cases has declined.
“The bad news is we have definitely seen a death toll rise, which may or may not be proportionate with that,” Garnas said.
Garnas said that the medical staff at the hospital believes that the masking is helping, but the hospital is experiencing its highest rate of positive cases among hospital employees.
“Keep in mind they have been taking care of a tremendous number of inpatients as well people coming into the clinic and people going through drive-through. So they have a lot of exposure. So we have seen those numbers go up,” Garnas said. “Half of those numbers are our nursing staff.”
Garnas also said that it continues to be difficult for the hospital to find facilities to which to transfer those patients who need a higher level of care.
“It is almost impossible to continue to find beds. Those issues continue to be at the forefront when we need to transfer people out,” Garnas said.
The commission took no action on the ordinance, and it will remain in effect until at least the next commission meeting on January 6.
In action taken during the meeting, the commission approved the low bid from Walters-Morgan Construction, Inc., in the amount of $3,038,064, for phase two of the improvements the wastewater treatment plant.
The city received two bids on the project, with the winning bid being 12 percent below the engineer’s estimate.
Design work for the project was completed earlier this fall, and the bid letting was on December 10.
In August, the commission approved authorizing the issuance of public sale of bonds for the wastewater treatment plant improvements in the amount of $4,045,000.
The city received an A+ “Strong” rating from Standard and Poor for the bonds, and accepted a bid from First Bankers’ Banc Securities, Inc., Overland Park, with an interest rate of 1.6 percent and maturity of 20 years.
Funding for the project began in 2014 with a $10 per month/meter charge for city water customers. The commission authorized an additional $3 per month charge beginning in January, after the $2 per month charge for the swimming pool improvements ends. That is a net increase of $1 per month.
Sarah Unruh, professional engineer with Professional Engineering Consultants, P.A., informed the commission that the construction time in the contract is about a year, and that is because it will take 28-34 weeks for the sludge-handling equipment to be available.
The commission also approved authorizing Lange to sign a work authorization from Alfred Benesch & Company for a taxiway pavement maintenance project at Blosser Municipal Airport, at a cost of $30,433, plus a time and material fee not to exceed $14,431.
The estimated cost of the project is $168,758.
Federal entitlement funds from the Federal Aviation Administration will fund 90 percent of the project ($158,883). The city’s matching 10 percent ($16,875) will be paid from the 2021 capital improvement fund.
With the construction of the new Runway 18/36 at the airport, Runway 17/35 is being converted into a taxiway.
Lange informed the commissioners that the runway pavement was milled and overlaid in the fall of 2016. Filling the cracks and sealing it prior to taxiway striping will minimize re-work in the future and will preserve the life of the pavement.
The work on the taxiway will be performed simultaneously with the runway project in an effort to minimize pavement closure time and the need for re-work.
Brad Waller, vice president for Alfred Benesch & Company, reported to the commission that most of the dirt work is done on the Runway 18/36 project.
The project will be shutting down for the winter, and will resume in the spring of 2021 with the paving of the runway.
The commission approved authorizing Lange to sign an addendum to continue the 2010 annual on-call engineering consulting agreement with Campbell & Johnson Engineers, P.A. for 2021, in the amount of $17,400. It will be paid from the general fund in monthly installments.
A request from the Downtown Beautification Committee for $10,000 to purchase flowers, to replace those that are placed in the downtown area, was approved.
Cost of the pots is $832.77 per set, for 18 sets, for a total of $14,989.86.
A grant from the Community Foundation for Cloud County covered $5,000 of the cost.
The $10,000 from the city will complete the purchase this winter so the pots will arrive before placement the spring.
The committee selected groupings of multi-height blue flower pots from Terracast Products, LLC. They are placed along Sixth Street from Lincoln Street to State Street and extend to settings to Cedar Street, to include the Brown Grand Theatre and the Police Department.
Julie Willoughby, Vickie Conn and Kim Wiesner and Michelle Hardacre were appointed to the House Authority board.
Following the regular meeting, the board met in a study session to discuss classified employee pay scale adjustments.
Recommendations were made to the commission for consideration at a later date.