Engineer chips away at Gentry street problems

Plans for 2011 projects presented to council

— Plans are in place and projects are being put out to bid for major street repair and maintenance projects in Gentry for the current year.

Ron Homeyer of Civil Engineering, Inc., Siloam Springs,presented plans for the 2011 street project to the city council on April 4. The plans include paving North Collins Avenue between Main Street and McKee Street and paving South Smith Street between Main Street and South Third (on the east side of the park).

Also included in plans is additional chip and seal work in the northwest quadrant of the city on streets which were not worked on in 2010. Streets slated for chip and seal include Hastings, Pleasant, Pine (north of W. Benton), Shaffer, part of W. Arkansas, Steele Ct., W. Eureka, W. Grant, a portion of W. Benton (to the west of Pine) and S. Second between S. Collins and S. Rust..

The street plans, according to Homeyer, with a 10 percent contingency fund included, are anticipated to cost approximately $133,258, which is within the city’s budget expenditures for the year.

According to Homeyer, thecity could do more if the bids come in lower. The proposed street plan is not the complete plan for the year because other smaller projects are also slated to be completed, he said.

The street improvements are necessary items to maintain the streets the city has, Homeyer said. The work will stabilize the streets in thenorthwest corner of the city, he said.

Bids are to be opened the last Tuesday of April and work could be underway by June 1 or possibly even by the middle of May, he said.

The hope in doing work earlier in the summer rather than late, as it was done last year, is for a better result with the chip and seal process on streets.

The city’s contract with Homeyer also includes the development of a long-range plan for street maintenance and improvements - something which Homeyer is yet working on with the city’s street and alley supervisor, David McNair.

In other business, the council, after much discussion, passed on its second reading an ordinance which would set parking limits on Gentry’s Main Street to four hours rather than the current two-hour limit and also restrict parking trucks with a licensed grossvehicle weight of 30,000 pounds or more on Nelson, Rust or Collins between Main Street and the alleys which run behind Main Street businesses except for short-term delivery parking. Current law already regulates truck parking in residential zones.

Passed on its second and third readings, with rules suspended, was an ordinance amending the city’s official zoning map and changing one property along East Third Street (899 E. Hwy. 12, owned by Steve and Virginia Still) from C-2 to R-O zoning.

An emergency clause was also attached and passed by the council.

An ordinance accepting a revised survey and plat of lots five and six of block 13 of the original town of Gentry (property at 205 N. Collins owned by Frank and Jean Long) passed on its first reading. The ordinance, if it passes on three readings, will dissolve a lot line between the two lots, a change necessary because a house is located on the current lot line.

Additional work continues on a number of issues, with the following committee meetings set this month at city hall:

◊Police Committee at 5:30 p.m., April 20, to discuss the feral cat issue;

◊Parks Committee at 5:30 p.m., April 25, to discuss park issues and a nature area along Flint Creek;

◊A brief meeting following the Parks Committee regarding grant money received by the Gentry Senior Activity Center;

◊A Street and AlleyCommittee meeting, April 25, following the previous two meetings to continue working on the city’s sign ordinance.

Also reported at the April 4 meeting was an Eagle Scout project of Nephi Wheeler in which he documented the graves located at the Flint Creek Cemetery and constructed an entryway at the cemetery for a directory.

Gentry Public Library received donations of eight desktop computers which are now up and running at the library for public access to the Internet. Prior to the donation, the library was down to between two and four working computers for public use.

News, Pages 1 on 04/13/2011