February 2014 Update

The project continues to move forward but at a slower pace than we would like, so it goes with design and land acquisition.  Several things are happening, behind the scenes if you will, here is a quick update on what is occurring.

The project engineer, Bolton & Menk, continues to work on developing the plans and specifications for the project and dealing with the changes that we throw at them.  The plan is still based on the preliminary concept for the most part but with some minor changes.  

Staff is busy trying to put together the pieces on the land and easement acquisition parts of the puzzle in anticipation of a quick determination from the State of Iowa Historical Office who is conducting a historical and environmental review.  Their review time is up in the next few days and we are hopefully that we can then get notice to proceed with a 30 day public comment period at the end of which (provided we don't have any findings) we can proceed with finalizing the land and easement acquisitions.  Getting those completed will allow us to finalize the plans and specifications as we will know exactly where things need to be located.

Some good news as well, yesterday in the mail the signed copies of the State of Iowa Homeland Security funding program (Flood Mitigation Funds) agreement showed up!  We are excited to be one of the first communities in the State of Iowa to participate in this program and we look forward to having a couple of great projects as representative projects for the program (the North Central Project being one and the Expansion Blvd. Project and East Central Project being the others).

Finally this morning I uploaded the preliminary project concept map to the project web page and a map showing the drainage area for the project.  Take a minute to check those out.