Yellow Pages
BURLINGTON — The City Council will be asked Thursday to provide sanitary sewer service to a farmworker housing project that would be located outside both city limits and Burlington’s urban growth area.
An urban growth area is land set aside for future urban development, and under state law, cities are allowed to provide sewer services to properties in those areas.
But City Planning Director Margaret Fleek has said it is still unclear whether Burlington could legally provide a sewer hookup to the old farmworker housing project on Pulver Road north of Gages Lake because it does not reside within any of the city’s boundaries.
The Heart 2 Home Foundation originally proposed building a new 44-unit farmworker housing site elsewhere, according to a memo from Fleek, but scrapped that idea for the Pulver Road property.
Fleek is recommending the council provide the sewer service if the state confirms it’s legal to do so.
In other business:
Public Works Director Chal Martin will ask the council to hire Sullivan Grading, LLC for on-call snow removal services. Under a draft contract with Sullivan Grading, the city would pay a $1,000 per snow removal season retainer and up to $45,000 total through 2011.
Martin said the contractor “really saved our bacon last year” when the city got what he speculates was a once-in-every-50-years snow event.
Following last winter’s snow storm, Martin advocated buying more equipment and implementing other preparedness measures. However, much of the equipment purchases have been put off due to budget woes.
The city did buy a new truck for the Sewer Department and equipment to remove sand from sidewalks once snow clears, he said Tuesday.
Martin will also seek approval of a six-year transportation improvement plan, on which a public hearing will also be held.
The plan includes 13 projects, but Martin said he expects only a handful to be completed in the next six years.
“I am already quite pessimistic that we have any chance of coming close to our six-year plan,” he said. “… I would like to get one significant residential project done in the next six-year period, and I would like to get one or perhaps two significant traffic ... capacity projects completed in the next six years.”
The plan includes three residential projects — reconstructing portions of Section Street, East Rio Vista Street and Orange Avenue. It also includes a new roundabout near Railroad Park on East Fairhaven Street and a major overhaul of the George Hopper Road and Interstate 5 interchange.
The council is scheduled to consider Fred Meyer’s request to build a gas station in the parking lot of its South Burlington Boulevard store.
Elliott Wilson can be reached at 360-416-2147 or at .
