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As work on Osceola’s city budget rolls along, the second work session of the city council held Feb. 25 focused largely on project planning, cemetery funds and wages.
Projects
Leading the bulk of the conversations was Osceola City Administrator Ty Wheeler, who said the city is in the middle of some big capital improvement projects, including the downtown streetscape project and the wastewater treatment plant, both of which remain on the budget but are getting closer to the finish line.
Wheeler explained he keeps an ongoing funding plan of various project ideas without being tied to any specific one by way of the budget, but as a way to guide conversations and help prioritize different projects. The list is adjusted to remove projects that don’t have a known time frame - such as the airport parallel taxiway project - and to show which ones are ongoing or have dollars coming out of the current budget.
He noted one former project included a rework of Warren Avenue, which Wheeler said will need attention at some point, but a way to re-route the heavily traveled dead-end road had not yet been determined. Wheeler mentioned it could be a good project to work with the Iowa DOT on, as the intersection of Warren Avenue and Highway 34 was identified as an area for improvement in the DOT’s ‘Super Two Corridor Study’ published fall 2023. The study identified the need for offset left turn lanes at the intersection and new right turn lanes in both directions.
“I’m sure we’re several years out yet, but this would be kind of a great companion project,” Wheeler said. As the city owns the traffic lights at that intersection, he said there would have to be cooperation with the DOT on the project.
In the city’s street department, Wheeler said the goal in the next year or two is to treat asphalt overlays as local maintenance projects versus capital projects requiring an engineer. He said the ability to do in-house projects has been demonstrated through concrete work done using local concrete contractors.
“We can do a lot of these minor… less-complicated reconstruction projects on our own and it is a considerable cost-savings,” Wheeler said.
He noted such undertakings are feasible when the road doesn’t need completely redone, but just pulled up and put back the same as it was before. This drew into consideration the city doesn’t have an asphalt machine, so the city cannot mill and re-fill. He noted asphalt can be tricky in intersections, but if the city can cut the intersection out, re-pour with concrete and then have an asphalt company mill and fill street runs, that makes the whole process even easier.
Once the downtown project is completed, an area to look at for in-house maintenance work would be Fillmore Street, repaving intersections and continuing north on the street to other intersections. One caveat is the city would only be able to take smaller “bites” of such maintenance projects - only three or four blocks at a time - as opposed to a projects hired-out that could cover many more blocks at a time.
Other in-house maintenance projects for consideration discussed was asphalt in the Country Club Circle area, which could lead to needing to upgrade stormwater sewer systems, as lack of stormwater sewers in the area lead to deterioration of the asphalt.
Discussion was had about different sidewalk projects needed in various parts of town, including what Wheeler called the high-demand for a sidewalk down Kossuth Street.
“We just do not have a lot of right-of-way room to work within,” Wheeler said.
Prior ideas to route a sidewalk from an existing section to Seminole Park and on to the golf course were thought to be non-feasible as that would still require pedestrians to exit the sidewalk onto the road for a short span before re-entering the sidewalk.
Several other areas of town were pointed out as needing sidewalks.
“I always recommend look where your kids are at,” Osceola Mayor Thomas Kedley said. “There’s a huge influx in the East View Area of kids… trying to see where we have a lot of students and student walkers.”
Kedley mentioned the large number of walkers from the new Kading Properties development on Truman Road as an area to look at for sidewalks. Council noted the appeal of sidewalks to people visiting or considering moving to Osceola.
Some sidewalk plans are in the budget, such as the sidewalk that will go over Interstate 35 on West Clay Street. Wheeler cautioned that with more sidewalks comes the need for maintenance, such as with snow removal.
Council and staff discussed the need for various water main projects, the building for the chloride removal and safe room projects. Also discussed were road projects to Arbor Valley and possible alternate routes for truck traffic to NEW Cooperative. Both were addressed in a transportation study that was discussed further at the March 3 regular council meeting; an article about those will appear in an upcoming issue.
Maple Hill Cemetery
At the Feb. 11 work session, Wheeler had touched on the city’s cemetery perpetual care fund, a permanent fund that puts 20% of sales from cemetery lots into a separate, standalone account each year to accrues interest to then be used for cemetery maintenance.
“It was just never a thing that was part of any major budget discussion because we were only talking, $500 to $1,500 a year, depending on what interest they were,” Wheeler said.
That, however, may be changing as House File 2634 passed out of the first funnel week. The bill seeks to change cemetery regulations, meaning government-owned cemeteries would no longer have to follow the perpetual care trust fund requirements that private cemeteries would - the government entity would be guaranteeing the care of the cemetery. That means Osceola would no longer be required to have a reserve fund set for Maple Hill Cemetery, opening up the monies currently in the fund for cemetery projects.
“I would love to see some of the – at least the higher travel – lanes through the cemetery surfaced,” Wheeler said, restating his previous suggestion of what the funds could be used towards.
By having the lanes asphalted, the city would save money with not needing to re-gravel, and aid in snow removal and maintenance. Kedley inquired if that could be lumped into an asphalt project with streets in town. Wheeler said it would be possible, but the asphalt crews for a cemetery would likely be different than those who would asphalt a road.
Wheeler also mentioned tree removal funds that are in the cemetery budget that could be shifted over the perpetual funds.
Wages
Following up on a request from the mayor for comparables for wages, Wheeler presented his findings. For the police department, he said in the past he’s tried to use the sheriff’s department wages against the police’s, but due to the Clarke County Sheriff’s Office’s recent de-unionization, all deputies are now being paid at the top wage as opposed to years of service.
“As a comparison, our top wage is more competitive than the [sheriff’s office’s] top wage, but our starting wage is now lower because they pay everybody at the top,” Wheeler said. He noted the sheriff and chief deputy make much more than the police chief and captain, attributing that to the 2021 Back the Blue Act.
Using a 2.5% wage increase to be conservative, Wheeler said most city staff would be between 94% to 100% of median wage, for overall to be within 95% of median wage.
“We need to make sure we’re being competitive so we retain people and we take care of our staff,” Kedley said, citing the need to increase wages to keep on track with inflation.
Wheeler said there would be no health insurance rate increase for employees. Discussion about amending council pay was had, but any changes in pay would not take effect until after the next city election. The percentage of pay for the city administrator was noted by council as being low, but Wheeler requested waiting until his contract renewal time to discuss further. Kedley said he would not take a raise.