I and I was back in the public eye last night with our first group of home owners who are going to be affected by the first stage of the project.

There were over 50 people in the basement of city hall to get updated information and learn the process to have work done around and in their homes.

We had a little bit of everything at last night’s meeting.

The big item was the process and meeting the contractors.

L& H Plumbing
Steve’s Plumbing and Heating
Waldorf & Sons, Inc.

All three contractors were at the meeting and discussed their qualifications, experience, and general information with homeowners.

One of the big questions was “how and when do I make an appointment with the contractor to come look at my house?”

Do to the fact that the contractor as well as a DPW representative and someone from Rowe, Inc. (our city engineers) will be on these initial inspections, all appointments are being run through our DPW offices at 653-6452. People can start calling for this first round on Monday July 2nd.

We did have one resident who stated they are not going to participate. What happens then? As it stands right now, our Ordinance states that anytime there is improvements done the system will have to come up to today’s codes and standards. This would include disconnecting weep tiles from the sanitary sewer system. This is done at the home owners expense and would not be a part of this tax funded project.

The City Council has discussed amending or adding stricter language to the ordinance to ensure we keep removing these non-compliant systems from our sanitary sewer system. We have not come up with the wording of this, nor has City Council decided which way to go with the Ordinance. There are a few ideas out there and council is looking at them all. Items such as systems must be up to code at time of sale extending to a arbitrary date, say by 2020 all homes weep tiles must be disconnected.

Whatever City Council decides on for future Ordinance language, this initial project is off to a great start.

We did have a few homeowners looking forward and starting to think about removing their old sewer leads while the contractors are on site. This is fine and these arrangements should be made with the individual contractors (and the homeowner is responsible for these added costs).

After speaking with the contractors and some homeowners after the meeting, most concur that the meeting was very valuable.

We look forward to the work starting in July.