The Centralia City Council has set its priority projects for the coming year during a three hour work session where all needs and concerns were placed on the table.
The 13 areas of concern making the cut where at least three members of the council and mayor agreed they were a priority will now be addressed.
Those receiving top ratings from the entire council and mayor are a forensic audit to determine why the city is in its current financial condition, a new recreation complex contract, construction of a new water treatment plant and investments of cash reserves.
Councilman Spanky Smith feels the city has lost 70-percent of its recreational programming under the current contract with the Centralia Foundation and they are not getting a bang for their buck. The future of the Fairview Park Pool that is currently not operational is another concern. Four of the five councilmen rated Assistant City Manager and Economic Development Director Derek Sherman’s long term economic development plan, increasing lateral transfers to the police department to help fill openings in the department, annexation to grow the size of the city and replacement of the Carlyle Lake water line as major concerns.
Three of the council members or Mayor rated development of a new city website, a new personnel manual, additional code enforcement help, improvements to the sewage treatment plant, and privatization of city owned land at Centralia Lake as important issues.
With the priorities now in place, Centralia City Manager Scott Randall says he and the city staff will go to work.
“We’ll take the boards highest priority projects, staff will be developing a work program. How to implement each of those that received 3 or more votes. That will be presented at one of the next upcoming city council meetings. The proposed work program. The board would approve it then and that would be our final marching orders. We will then take the goals from the work program that was developed and that will be our action plan for the next year that staff will be working on.”
Randall says most of the priorities are not a surprise, but he’s happy to have agreement among the council on the important projects for the city in the coming year.
