City Manager's Weekend Update

August 10, 2018

Welcome to the weekly City Manager update. In an effort to be transparent and make more information available to the general public, I will be attempting to share weekly updates of projects and activities going on with the City of Ontario. I hope you find this informative and helpful.

Buddy Bench
I received a call from the donor who purchased the Buddy Bench at Lion's Park. He was very appreciative that it was installed so nicely. I expressed our gratitude for his donation to pay for the bench.

Tennis Courts
The City Engineer, Betsy Roberts, set me up for a visit with a tennis court contractor. We have a partner interested in helping us fundraise so we need to pull together some costs. I had a good meeting with the contractor today and should have some idea next week.

Fiber Network
I reached out to CableOne to see about fiber costs out to the airport. I had a good meeting with them today. We may be able to work with them to get fiber to strategic economic development sites. They will be getting back to me next week; I'll continue to work with them on the project.

SRCI
Negotiations continue with Snake River Correctional Institution (SRCI) for water and wastewater services. We will be having several conversations with them next week.

HR Manager
We had one interview today (Friday) for the HR Manager. We have one more on Monday. We hope to make a decision shortly afterwards.

SREDA
SREDA held their monthly meeting this week. We are working on putting together a proposal for an economic development project.

Splash Pad
Equipment for the splash pad came in today; two truckloads as I understand. We are storing them temporarily at the public works shop until the site is ready to come together. We will be submitting a proposal to award the contract for the bathrooms on Tuesday the 21st.

Community & Economic Development
I know Dan has been super busy on a lot of different fronts. We have a few economic development prospects we are working on. One we are working on is a rail site with 50 acres.

Dan will be putting together a timeline of the earliest possible week that we can get a marijuana ordinance put together.

Fire & Rescue
Chief Leighton also attended the monthly Malheur Emergency Management Team meeting where we worked on updating the natural hazard mitigation plan.

The crews did business inspections at the Main Event Barber Shop, Ashley Furniture, Albertsons, and Jackson's fuel stop.

This week's training was on communications and the capabilities of our "I Am Responding" program.

There were a couple of small grass fires and our standard medical calls.

Recreation
Arts and Crafts had their last week of classes. We had two days of cooking (the building smelled amazing), and then had a fun day where kids built back to school crafts. Today (Friday) we had a walking field trip to the Plaza Inn Restaurant - the kids were treated with a cinnamon roll and a tour of the kitchen.

Debbie Jeffries taught the Pickleball class this week - should have picked a cooler week!

NFL Flag Football play their games on Tuesday evening, but due to the extreme heat warning on Thursday, games were canceled.

Debbie is working with the Ontario Elementary Schools so we can attend all of the school open houses next week.

Debbie is putting together the Fall flyer for programming.

The Recreation Department is currently taking registration for fall soccer and tackle football.

Police
Officers used overtime grant funds to conduct a traffic enforcement operation for a 4-hour block of time. There were 19 citations issued (5 of those were for distracted driving) and 43 warnings were issued.

We were able to fill our reserve officer position vacated by Officer Castro who found full-time employment with Fruitland PD. Officer Bil Carter will be joining our reserve forces. Officer Carter has extensive experience in law enforcement and will be a great addition to the team.

Our K9 Officer Buster completed his training this week. He did very well and we anticipate he will be able to pass his certification test that will be held later this month.

Public Works - Jacobs

Field Service

The first round of street sweeping throughout the community has begun; this is the first of three events for the year intermingled with primary and secondary sweeping done quarterly and other areas on an as needed basis.

Yearly crackfill project has been delayed due to the extreme hot weather. We will continue later this fall when temperatures have abated.

Painting crews continue with cross walk painting throughout the community.

Water

River raw water supply is variable due to changes in river chemistry as result of higher temperatures. We are making frequent chemical changes to optimize performance to match conditions.

Well 4 had to be shut down on Augusut 1, 2018; it looks like we will have to rehab the well and install new casing. We will review what it is going to take to bring this well back into service. This well has been in service for several years.

Wastewater

Crews continue with regularly scheduled maintenance as tracked by our maintenance management system.

Engineering

Ongoing projects include the Splash Pad, SRCI contract, baffle wall at WTP, rock rip rap at WWTP lagoon, storm water improvements, and well 4 rehab.

Adam J. Brown

City Manager