Public hearing set for Clear Lake budget amendment
CLEAR LAKE —This is the time of year where city and county governments are thinking about amendments to the current fiscal year’s budget to deal with a myriad of issues. For the city of Clear Lake, a budget amendment will be considered later this month according to City Administrator Scott Flory dealing with the possibility of the North 32nd Street construction project moving forward quicker than originally estimated.
Flory says, “We anticipate that more of that project will be completed prior to June 30th than what we had anticipated the last time we amended the budget, which of course would be during our Fiscal Year 2020 budget preparation. We kind of calculated what we think will be the case, so essentially we’re putting almost the entire project to be completed in this fiscal year. We don’t expect that will happen, but some of these things are just simply unpredictable as to how much work is going to be done.”
Flory says while the majority of the budget amendment deals with the North 32nd project, there are other things that will be covered. “We adjusted for the renovation of the former Park & Recreation House for the Historical Society, some additional costs for the North Shore Drive street light banner pole project. The roof at the city library had kind of a significant leak in it. We had worked with the contractor to bid out a roof replacement project, it’s been a number of years since that roof has been on there. Had we not been doing a budget amendment we were going to wait after July 1st and do it at that time, but since we’re going through a budget amendment, we will be able to do it prior to June 30th.”
Flory says a rough winter also means the street budget will be adjusted. “We’ve increased due to what was rather a brutal winter on our streets increased our street maintenance line item by an additional $50,000 to do some additional street patching work in particular. There’s spots all over, but a few on 12th Avenue South, South Lakeview that we’re not going to be able to let those go.”
A public hearing about the budget amendment will be held at the council’s May 20th meeting.
