Airport Appreciation Day- We couldn’t have had better weather for Airport Appreciation Day. It was great to see the number of people who came out to the event. We are excited to see this event return to Ontario and look forward to seeing it grow over the coming years.

Housing Incentive Program – The Housing Incentive Program is really picking up this year. We have received seven applications as of today.

​Public Works Committee – On Monday the committee discussed the rate structure and recommended the conceptual plan to the council who addressed it on Tuesday.

SRCI – We met with the State on Friday and it was a very productive meeting. We have another scheduled the first week of August.

Council Meeting – Last Tuesday’s meeting was very good. We worked through a lot of issues. New land annexed into our city is wonderful, particularly new buildable lots that will be available in the near future.

Citizens Coalition Meeting – We held another public forum on Wednesday. The online presence was pretty significant.

Police - Chief Romero hosted a meeting with Director of Field Development, Kristi Kraft from the Special Olympics-Idaho to discuss future activities for Ontario and Eastern Oregon region.

Officer Elizondo conducted a crime prevention and leadership session with middle school students from the Discovery Program at OHS.

Chief Romero and Police Reserve Officer Brockett attended the Aiken Elementary Pre-K Summer School event in partnership with the Ontario Fire and Rescue. School staff and children got Police and Fire swag and looked at Police / Fire equipment.

Chief Romero has also been heavily involved in Airport Appreciation Day. His wrestling students from OHS assisted airport staff with venue set-up.

Airport - Dan Beaubien was hard at work with the preparation for the Airport Appreciation Day. The single engine air tanker planes will be able to use their new tie-downs Friday morning for the first time. Thank you Jacobs for helping making that possible as well as providing cones, barricades, a sweeper, and a water truck.
The coordinated effort and willingness of our Police, Fire, City Council, Chamber of Commerce and many others in the community has been greatly appreciated.

Fire & Rescue - Crews responded to a trash fire, a hay stack fire in Vale, a smoldering fire on E. Island Road, and a serious motor vehicle accident.
The crews also responded to numerous other burning complaints; most of them were illegal burns.

Public Works
Field Service
Crews swept the taxi way, provided barricades, cones, and a water truck in preparation for Airport Appreciation Day. The new concrete tie downs at the airport were also completed.
Crack-fill operation and continues in multiple locations throughout town.

Water
Interior painting was completed for hallways and a new floor installed on the main section of the operations building; this work was all done in house.

Wastewater
All wastewater effluent flows are being sent to the skyline farms for irrigation use.
We switched chlorine contact chambers. The chamber that was in use will be cleaned and ready for use when needed.

​Parks and Cemetery
Repairs were made to the old city shop’s irrigation system.

Website – We seamlessly launched our website last Monday morning. Our Human Resources Manager and Assistant to the City Manager, Peter Hall, re-designed and created the new website in-house, producing a quality website and saving us thousands of dollars. Also, the new website is html 5 compliant which means it adapts to all your smart devices automatically.

Downtown Businesses – We will be scheduling a listening session for business owners downtown to talk with them about their concerns.

Security Camera – We reviewed the first proposals for security cameras. We decided to do a follow up proposal to the top vendors to get a tighter budget number.

Strategic Plan Impact – City staff will now address the City Council’s strategic priorities on all staff reports. This is a system change to ensure that staff is thinking about everything we do through the City Council’s strategic plan.

Snake River Correctional Institute (SRCI) – We have a meeting set up for Friday July 19th at 2 pm with the Department of Justice to go over our first proposal for water rate changes to our contract.

Fiber – I reached out to CableOne who already responded back to get started on the fiber project at the Airport. That will have to include connection at City Hall which will be much needed.

Street Lights – Idaho Power is ready to go ahead with our street light conversion to LED. Since phase 2 of our downtown renovation is for lighting downtown, I want to talk to them about trying to coordinate that effort, so they are not replacing something that might be replaced quickly thereafter. If we can use whatever their cost is toward getting decorative lighting; that would be a good partnership.

Snake River Economic Development Alliance (SREDA) – Mayor Hill, Dan Cummings, and I attended the SREDA meeting Tuesday morning.

Recreation District – The Ontario Recreation District launched for their first full week on their own. We wish them great success and will continue to partner with them to keep Ontario moving forward. The city gave up the phone numbers to the recreation district so the general public doesn’t experience any change. You can still reach the main line at 541-881-3260 or 541-881-3261.

Community Development
Dan’s working on a lot of land use applications. The planning commission will meet on Monday to discuss several.

Police Department
Chief Romero led a newly created Multi-Discipline Community Grant Acquisition Team at TVCC.  He reported back that after reviewing several Grants, TVCC and the group will pursue funding for TVCC’s new Athlete-Mentor Program (AMP). Other grant possibilities will continue to be reviewed and considered for potential funding of future, city-wide, and Regional Public Safety and Community Programs. Great start for the new area-wide team.
A review panel reviewed applications for the lateral police officer hires. The applicants appear to be strong candidates for the position. Testing and selection is expected to begin by Mid-July with final interviews and selection in early August.

We finalized City-O.P.D policy and protocol for marijuana retailer background checks. We anticipate the first ones coming in next week.

O.P.D staff responded to a variety of service calls during the 4th of July Holiday; fortunately, no significant events took place or were reported to O.P.D.

Chief Romero made contact with various business owners in the Downtown area regarding various concerns.

Public Works
Field Service
The second round of City-Wide street sweeping is complete. Additional sweeping will be done as needed for the downtown and underpass.

Flooding in one of the City residential areas appeared at 3 PM on July 4th. The irrigation company turned water down 3 times and finally diverted a bunch to the north away from the issue.

Staff supported the construction of new tie downs at the airport. The holes are excavated and concrete will be poured next Monday.

Crack fill operation begins and continues throughout the summer.

Water
River levels have started to fall; this is directly related to dam regulation on the Snake.

Parks and Cemetery
Repairs were made to the old city shops irrigation system for the new tenant.