August 12, 2019

Marijuana
We executed an Intergovernmental agreement with the State today. They will start programming their system to calculate and accept our payment. We are going to collect the revenue ourselves until January 1, 2020. We have a form ready for a payment voucher. We can reconcile our numbers with the state quarterly reports. Burnt River Farms, by Love’s Truck Stop, opened this week.

Tennis Court
I finished writing the bid document for the tennis courts. It’s under review and I hope to be able to let it out Monday.

RTP Grant
Wednesday was the deadline for getting amendments to the trail grant. After the technical review by staff, they allow us to make some changes for the committee’s review. We were able to upload the recorded deeds from the college and beef up some other sections. It sounds like I’ll make the cut for getting to present in person in the fall. The coordinator said she would be in contact in September to set up a presentation time.

Emergency Management Meeting
Chief Romero, Chief Leighton and I attended the County Emergency Management Meeting. I have to say that Lt. Harriman from the Sheriff’s Office has brought the group a long way. Having Chief Leighton and Romero will be a great asset as we continue our community preparedness.

OLCC Listening Tour
The OLCC hosted two listening sessions in Ontario. One intended for the marijuana industry and the second intended for government leaders. We had staff attend both. Councilor Rodriguez made it to the government session. It was informative.

Live After Five
I made it to Live After Five this week. It was good to visit with community members.

Time Changes
The City Council voted to move Council Work Sessions from noon to 6 PM starting in September. The session will remain on the first Thursday of each month. We have posted notification of the time change to the work session on our website and pushed it out through Facebook.

Planning
Dan hosted several PDAC’s this week. He’s working on a few more annexations, which is great news! He received our 8th Housing Incentive Fund application this week. It’s working!

Human Resources/Public Information
Peter launched a pilot Facebook Workplace team. This is a platform created to serve as a company’s intranet. In other words, it’s just for information sharing among employees. Most large companies have an intranet. This is a low/no- cost option for a small business like ours.

Website – After a month we are averaging 156 unique visitors a day during the week and 93 a day on weekends. Utility billing and jobs are the most frequented pages visited.

Fire & Rescue
The crew went through patient packaging and different ways to remove a patient from a scene. Some of the crew also did hose pulls. Chief Leighton was a judge at the fair on a couple of different events. The crew and chief prepared station 2 and assisted with the set up for the wrestling clinic. Some of the staff attended the MDA camp firefighter day. They drove to McCall and spent the day playing games and doing projects and activities with the campers. It was a very rewarding experience to see the fruits of the fill-the-boot campaign.

The staff responded to a few burning complaints and illegal burns. They responded to a couple of grass fires along I-84, one was in our area and the other was a mutual aid to Payette County. The staff also responded again to a fire in the area under the bridge on E. Idaho. Rescue-1 also responded a few times to false alarms at Heinz and ODOT’s office building.

Police
Chief Romero attended the “Athlete Mentorship Program” development meeting at TVCC of which he is a co-coordinator and instructor for this new community outreach program serving Ontario youth.
OPD attended the Sexual Abuse work group meeting.

Lt. Cooper and Chief Romero conducted an interview with Malheur Enterprise reporter Joe Siess on “Preparing for Active Shooter events.”

Chief Romero met with Lifeways & the Argus Observer to discuss the Chief’s strategic approach to expanding juvenile outreach program, homeless outreach, and response program for City of Ontario and surrounding communities.

The Department is working with the Fire Department to share the drone recently acquired by the City Fire Department. There is no reason to have two when it is very unlikely that it will be deployed at the same time by both departments.
Chief continued his second “Minute with the Chief” on Facebook.

​Airport
Hangar walk through inspections began to ensure the federal aviation administration‘s rules and regulations are being met at the airport.
 
Six fixed wing firefighting airplanes and two helicopters flew in and out of Ontario‘s airport in an effort to combat wildfires which made for a busy airport.
 
Public Works
Field Service
Hot taping cross walks started and will continue the next few weeks. Concrete curbs were installed at multiple locations throughout the community. We are also painting yellow curbs throughout town, on primary and secondary routes throughout town.

Water
We engaged in power conservation during peak electrical demand times, we shut off large users of electricity for short periods to provide more power back to the grid. The program is managed by Idaho Power and we get rebates for participation.

Wastewater
Aerator repairs are ongoing all week, this includes taking our work barge out onto the lagoons and replacing or repairing warn parts, we plan on focusing on this activity while the weather is warm.

Parks and Cemetery
Reseeding of grass in splash pad construction area began; this will be a work in progress to get the grass restored to pre-construction levels.

​Beck Park had a power transformer fail and we were not able to water for several days until the electrical service was restored and pumping could continue. If you see some yellow grass at Beck Park this is the most likely reason.
Parking lots in the downtown area were weeded.