The Jefferson Public Works Committees met this past Tuesday in regular session.

The streets committee approved several items, some were recommended to the City Council for approval. The committee approved moving forward with installing a flashing light and signage, along with a crosswalk at the intersection of East Lincoln Way and Vine Street; between the library and recreation center. They also approved the city’s portion of sidewalk replacement in front of Greg and Shirley Hacker at 108 West State Street and passed along a request to Jefferson Matters for additional flower planters in front of A-1 Automotive Service to prevent semis from hopping the curb. 

Additionally, the streets committee approved purchasing a concrete screed to break up concrete when doing street repairs, and tabled a decision on making the speed limit 25 miles per hour from Westwood to West Lincoln Way pending further review, decided to do nothing about a request to put a street light in the middle of the 400 block of South Locust Street, due to having street lights on either end of the block. The other item that was tabled was the Iowa Department of Transportation proposal to convert Highway 4 from four lanes to three lanes.

The water committee was given an update on the lead service line inventory. There was 158 galvanized lines that were required to be replaced, nine lead lines, and 1,262 known connections, along with 630 connections left to be identified. 

The sewer committee recommended approval to the City Council for a high sewer bill that was left over from last month of $379 to be forgiven, due to a break in a line water in a crawl space of a residence. They also discussed the contractor requesting to add additional days to complete the renovations to the Wastewater Treatment Plant, due to delays from manufacturers on electrical equipment. The request was for 200 additional days. 

The sanitation and recycling committees discussed staffing. The sanitation department was going to have a retirement on April 30th and an employee indicated that they wanted to take the open position. The employee is currently in the street department, and the decision was to not fill the street position, but monitor and see if it would be needed later. Once single-stream recycling happened later this summer, the one employee’s time would be reduced on their routes and could potentially help with other departments.

The recycling committee reviewed ordinance changes. Some of those included each resident being issued a recycling cart with a bar code assigned, like the garbage containers were originally done. The ordinance also stipulates the location of where the recycling cart needed to be to be picked up, along with where commercial properties needed to put their cart, including the downtown area. The ordinance changes were recommended to the City Council for approval.