By Staff
Library roof and airport improvements among top objectives
By MIKE VOSS
Contributing Editor
Roof repairs to Brown Library, improvements to Warren Field Airport and a harbor-management plan are among priority projects or goals for the City of Washington’s departments.
Those departmental priorities, prepared by the city’s management team, were presented and discussed during the City Council’s planning session last month. From those priorities, the council cobbled a list of city-wide priorities. Lynn Lewis, the city’s tourism development director, and Mick Reed, the city’s police chief, reviewed the departments’ priorities with the council.
Many of the priorities address growth-related issues and economic-development matters. Some of the priorities include improving the city’s infrastructure, including but not limited to electric, water, sewer, stormwater and solid-waste services. Those improvements are needed for the city to grow and thrive, city officials said.
The city’s infrastructure must be able to meet demands that will be created by growth, Councilman Gil Davis said at the planning session.
Making the priorities happen will take money, city officials said. Because of budget constraints, the city can’t afford to implement all its priorities at the same time, they said, adding the city will have to address those priorities as money for them becomes available.
Councilman Archie Jennings said the city must find ways to help existing businesses and industries in and near the city grow. Improving the city’s infrastructure will help achieve that goal, he said.
Councilman Richard Brooks said the city’s investment in improving its infrastructure, especially when it comes to using that infrastructure to attract more businesses and industries, should pay off with the creation more jobs that pay decent wages instead of minimum-wage jobs.
Brown Library’s priorities include repair of the roof. A complete roof replacement would cost about $80,000, according to city officials. Other options to fix roof problems — but not a complete repair — range in cost from $10,000 to $12,500.
Another library priority calls for restoring the library’s professional staffing to its former level. Attrition has meant a decline in the number of professional staffers on board.
As for Warren Field Airport, fueling-system improvements that include self-service fuel pumps would make the airport more efficient and profitable, city officials have said. The city has been studying the feasibility of implementing those fueling-system improvements.
Initial estimates indicate it would cost about $50,000 to convert the airport’s existing fueling system into a self-service fueling system, according to city documents. It would take about three years for “that cost to be recovered via savings on fuel truck rental expenses,” according to those documents.
At the planning session, council members agreed the city should use the airport as an economic development tool.
The Parks and Recreation Department’s priorities include continuing efforts to implement a harbor-management plan. The department is receiving help from Downtown Washington on the Waterfront and Washington Planning Board on that priority. Other priorities include a second entrance-exit point for the McConnell sports complex, adoption of a master recreation plan, park-impact fees and the Jack’s Creek greenway project.
A draft harbor-management plan is under review by a panel.
Washington’s new land-use plan, required by the Coastal Area Management Act, calls for the city to develop a harbor-management plan and a water-use plan. The land-use plan also calls for the city to establish mooring fields in some of the city’s waterways.
City officials are reviewing the final draft of the city’s proposed parks and recreation master plan, with some expectations they will revise some information in it.
In January, City Council members and others received copies of the draft, prepared by Hayes, Seay, Mattern and Mattern, the consulting firm hired to develop the recreation master plan. At that time, Mayor Judy Meier Jennette and some council members expressed concerns the draft plan did not take into account people in areas outside the city limits who use the city’s park and recreation facilities. They are worried the draft plan, to some degree, focuses more on people in the city.
The mayor and council indicated they may tweak the draft so it better reflects the number of people the city’s parks and recreation facilities serve and how the demand of users from outside the city affect those facilities.
For more information about priorities of city departments, see future editions of the Daily News.