The 75th Street redevelopment project has been approved at the last council meeting. With some interesting actions by the city council.
There were two versions of the bid. One was for the project itself, and the other was for the project plus a wall at Nieman and 75th Street to block the horrible looking wooden/barbed wire fence on the Southern Star Property.
The wall was priced at $600K, with $200K coming from Southern Star and $400K coming from city debt. That does not include future costs since the wall would be built in the city right of way and as such the city would be responsible for any repairs etc.
Now the wall itself would be approximately 10% of the cost of the entire project. With inflation going rampant right now and costs of other items spiraling upwards would that be an appropriate amount to spend at this time?
Seven members of the council used some common sense (something lacking with some members of the previous council). They approved the project without the wall, and then voted 7-1 to have staff dig a little deeper to see if a wall could be built for less. Was the original wall supposed to be one of those "art" type of projects? Or was it supposed to be something that looks good, hides the wooden abomination, at a reasonable cost?
The wall is not a dead issue (one is needed). The only thing that the council (at least 7 smart members) want is for staff to see if it can be done at a substantially lower price. Nothing wrong with that. The only council member voting against staff looking at an item that might cost less was Jill Chalfie of Ward IV. Just shows that this holdover from those who believed in just willy nilly spending has no common sense. Tell us Ms. Chalfie, what's wrong with staff looking into the possibility of saving some money?She won't answer me since I once told her in an email that I thought she was useless. As a matter of fact, even though I live in Ward IV she ignores my emails.
