Sixth Avenue widening approved

The Airway Heights City Council unanimously approved a resolution Monday night to make street, water main and sewer improvements to various parts of the city with three different projects.

The Community Development Block Grant projects will include the widening of the road and the building of curbs and sidewalks on Sixth Avenue from King to Beeman streets. The project is tentatively set to cost $100,000, with the city to match $20,000.

“On the street, we have a situation where no development has developed and we’ve built the wider streets,” said City Planner Albert Tripp. “The older street (Sixth Avenue) is narrowed down to a bottleneck, so we’re trying to go back and the take the bottleneck from the point it starts and actually widen it up for at least a block. The next block will be (completed) the next year, and the next block the year after that. It will actually connect to the newer portion on the other side of town.”

The city will also improve the sewer main from Loffler to Ziegler streets in the coming months. That project is projected to cost $175,000, with a $35,000 match from the city.

“We’re taking a gap in our sewer system that has approximately two blocks, and it’s blank, and we’re actually connecting it with this proposed sewer improvement,” said Tripp.

The council also approved a measure that will improve the connections from two wells to the city reservoir. The project will cost $278,820 with a $55,964 match from the city.

The city also held its second public hearing on the new city budget for 2010. City Clerk-Treasurer Richard Cook presented the preliminary budget for the city based on figures from the end of October. In the preliminary budget, Cook showed revenues projected at $3,944,105, with expenditures projected at $3,994,942. Preliminary figures also showed a 3.9 percent decrease in revenue from 2008 based on the October figures, while expenditures had a 5.7 percent decrease from 2008.

The city will hold the third of three public hearings on the proposed city budget at its next council meeting on Nov. 16 at 6 p.m.

The council also approved an agreement with Moon Security to provide electronic home monitoring devices and related services to the Airway Heights Municipal Court. The contract with Moon would replace the previous agreement with Northwest Monitoring.

Airway Heights also unanimously passed a measure to hire Agnew Consulting to do public relations work for the city.

“We don’t have anyone per se on the city staff that does marketing or public relation type of activities, so the goal was to bring Agnew Consulting on and use them on a couple of projects we’re working on, and as stuff developed, we would go to them,” Tripp said.

Those projects would include bids for the privatization of utilities for the Fairchild Air Force Base and proposing a site for the Spokane County Jail.

In one other item, the council agreed to a public works contract with Dew Drop Sprinklers and Landscaping to complete work on Cleveland Park, the former Sunset Crossing Park site.