August 26, 2019

Smoking Downtown
The City sent out a survey regarding smoking downtown. There is a public/patron survey that went out via Facebook. Then, there is one just for merchants that was emailed out.

First Day
The Council and I were invited to the first day of the Four Rivers Charter School on Thursday. Mayor Hill, and Councilmen Palomo, Capron, and Justus were able to attend with myself.

Recreation District
I met with the new Recreation District Executive Director Andrew Maeda this week and enjoyed talking with him about the new opportunities.

Security Cameras
We had a conference call with the security camera vendor who won the bid. We are trying to skim down the cost to come in under budget. We should have a contract to award in September though. They gave us a great bid if we pay for cloud service upfront rather than monthly or annually. A five-year cloud service gets us a great rate and we are not paying for anything those five years and all cameras are under warranty. We were specifically looking for a cloud solution so that we can have access anywhere in the city.

Pungent Smell
We have been trying to find the source of the pungent smell that has penetrated the city’s air. We know it is not our lagoons. I drove around myself and checked out our lagoons. We will continue to investigate and see if we can do anything about the smell.  

HR and Public Affairs
Service Line Warranty Program
Cliff and Peter met to discuss a Service Line Warranty Program through the National League of Cities. They were both impressed with the program and the positive effect the partnership could have on community members. This is an insurance program for costly waterline breaks that would fall under the homeowners’ responsibility. They plan to present this to the Public Works Committee and then City Council.

City Hall Emergency Plan
The first draft of the Emergency Plan was reviewed this week. This is a plan prepared by the Safety Committee which covers emergency procedures for City Hall. The plan includes emergency action plans for a variety of situations.

CGI Videos
CGI Communications released their proofs for our community videos. Extra footage was collected this week in response to the proofs. They will now prepare a new set of proofs for our approval.

Community Development
Staff reviewed 17 applications for building permits this week. We have issued 17 permits the past two weeks. Staff finalized 4 land use actions this week and is continuing to work on 9 other land use applications. We are now at 56 Land Use Actions for this year.

Fire and Rescue
The crews went to the airport and practiced pumping and fire streams.
This week was a maintenance week, the staff repaired hose and reloaded it; they exercised the valves on the engines and there was two days of required pump testing on all of the engines.

This week was Christmas in August. We received numerous surplus items from the State Fire Marshal that will be put into good use on different apparatus of ours.

The crews responded to a mutual aid call in Payette County for a structure fire in a shop and extension into the house. There were many departments on scene with heavy damage to both structures. The temperatures were high and made for difficult work. This was a physically taxing fire.

The staff responded to Idaho power transformers sparking and the loss of power. An RV had caught a support wire and pulled down some power lines and caused the transformers to short out and spark. The power outage was for many square miles of coverage and for a couple of hours until it could be restored by Idaho Power. The crews remained on scene until Idaho Power was on location and the scene was safe.

Airport
Fence repair at the south end of the airport is underway.

The joint Capital Improvement Planning session for the airport ends at the end of this month and so time has been spent this week looking at the needs of the airport. One of the major needs is to maintain the runway surface in a preventative program before the deterioration becomes irreversible.

The TVCC fixed wing flight program will be in full force by the end of September. Preparations are underway to accommodate the increase in traffic.

The National Transportation Safety Board has utilized the airports camera system in an effort to help in the investigation of the fatal plane crash. Time has been spent this week meeting with investigators.

Just over 320 gallons of chemicals for a late application were applied this week to the late season noxious weeds that were not treatable earlier in the year.

Public Works
Field Service
A storm water line at TVCC was cleaned. Soil from irrigation run off had plugged the line and we proactively cleared it.

Our internet provider experienced a failure related to their system that caused the automatic monitoring of wastewater lift stations to be taken off line. This resulted in manual checks by staff for 2 nights this week. Staff did a good job of proactively addressing the problem.

Flashing crosswalk lights were installed at the high school this week.

Hot taping cross walks and painting sidewalks continues.

Water
We noted odor and taste issues in the water throughout the distribution system, chemical dosing rates were changed to oxidize additional organics in the raw water. While the problem was not instantly resolved it was much better by the end of the week and will continue to improve as water moves through the system. A news article was run in the local paper explaining the issue and resolution.

The power outage responded to by the fire department resulted in the water plant to be taken off line, generators restored power, but SCADA communication was impacted. The issue was addressed and rectified.

Parks and Cemetery
Vandalism was reported at Laxson and Lanterman Park. Sprinkler heads were broken and needed to be replaced.

​Engineering
We got a peek at some first re-designs of the bulb outs for South Oregon Street. We provided comments and they are back with the designer.