Public restrooms will soon be available to visitors of downtown Broken Bow and the city square, as a lease agreement was approved during Tuesday night’s City Council meeting.
The lease is for 25 years, and will cost $60,000 in total covering protection and
costs. Half will be due when it is signed and the other half will be paid upon completion. The city will be in charge of upkeep and maintaining the restroom, located in the former Bow Tax & Accounting building, with a cleaning schedule that is yet to be fully determined. Security cameras and locks will be placed with a program schedule yet to be decided upon.
Larry Harbour bought the building that will be used during an estate sale, and has been trying to allocate the space effectively. The accepted lease is the last of many to be suggested over a span of several years.
Discussions regarding last Tuesday night’s storm and the resulting response also took place. The storm, which featured a short-lived tornado on the west end of town and several downbursts, had reported wind speeds over 100 MPH. One of the downbursts of air from the storm stripped the roof off of the local Culligan business and damaged several
surrounding buildings. With the damage, a transmission light by Culligan was impaired, and ended up causing an outage across town which was restored by 11:30 p.m. that night. The city put in a combined 86 man hours, which does not include any first responders or volunteer hours, to clear the debris.
City Administrator David Schmidt asked Fire Chief Dustin Watson to speak on the Fire Department’s policy for sounding the sirens. Watson, Schmidt and a few others have handheld radios that can set the sirens off from anywhere. Whenever there is a threat of a tornado, they go out and scout the area to determine the threat. The sirens are currently programmed to only go off for four minutes unless shut off sooner, which is something Schmidt would like to look into and update the length of in the future.
The council also approved to pay the amount of $277,573.05 to Myers Construction for the work they have so far completed for the Eagle Crest Subdivision project. This was described to the council members as the “dirt moving phase of the project,” by Schmidt.
Myers Construction requested an extension agreement for the Highway 2 Sanitary Sewer project by the Boneyard Museum, which was approved.
Before adjourning, Mayor Rod Sonnichsen and the council had a lot of thanks they wanted to send out including: Broken Bow Fire Department, Merna Fire Department, Water and Sewer, the Street Crews, Myer’s Construction, Black Hills Energy, Custer Emergency Management, the National Weather Service, the community of Broken Bow, Dave Schmidt and Dustin Watson. They thanked everyone for the quick recovery of Broken Bow and everyone’s eagerness to help out. Mayor Sonnichsen mentioned bringing in a designated public storm shelter for any future weather emergencies.
Mayor Sonnichsen adjourned the meeting at 6:31 p.m., and the next meeting is scheduled for August 13.
