A special meeting of Broken Bow’s City Council took place at noon on Thursday (April 10). Only two items were on the agenda: consideration of a $62,500 commitment from the city toward a $250,000 hazard mitigation grant project and moving budgeted funds for roof repairs to the library.
Councilmen Wamsley, Kleeb, and Smith approved unanimously the city’s pursuit of a $250,000 hazard mitigation grant that will be used to conduct a floodplain scoping project. The approval includes the necessary 25% financial commitment toward the project ($62,500).
Jacob Holcomb, Deputy Clerk of Broken Bow, said the project would work toward saving citizens and business owners money.
“We would use these funds to look at potential projects in the community and from a cost-benefit analysis determine what would be the most beneficial project in our community in an effort, again a multi-year effort, to hopefully remove some properties from the flood plain allowing people to have homes and businesses without having to pay a bunch of extra flood insurance on top of what they’re already doing,” Holcomb explained.
The roof of the Broken Bow library is leaking in several spots that were not part of the new construction portion of the building. To address the issue, council approved reallocating budgeted funds that were to be used on municipal building improvements to the library for repairs.
One area of main concern is the portion of the roof with shake shingles, followed by the original ballasted roof above the center part of the building. Based on assessments to the roof, the shingled portion of the roof was deemed to be ‘requiring immediate repair’ according to the resolution.
City Administrator David Schmidt said that the funds moved from the municipal buildings line item to the library repair were for mostly cosmetic repairs, as the roof of the municipal building is strong. He added he believes that those projects can still be completed in addition to the library repairs.
“I feel that the repairs that we were going to make in this building, the ceilings right here in this room were targeted for renovation, and while that is a needed thing to do and I would still like to do that in the future I feel like that is a ‘nice to have’ item and this (the library roof) is very much a ‘need to have’ item.”
WeatherCraft’s Troy Gavin suggested a very detailed inspection to the roof to ensure a complete and effective repair while telling council that unexpected issues are always a possibility.
The resolution states that the complete roof project is not expected to exceed a $40,000 price tag, knowledge the city will use beginning the bid process.
