Progress in the city’s strategic plan was the topic of conversation in the April 16 Hillsboro City Council meeting. The council discussed updates in the various sectors they have set goals in.
For the childcare center, City Administrator Matt Stiles told the Council that they now have three bids.
“They’re still over the budget but a little bit closer. So there’s still a gap in what’s been raised and what’s available through grant funds and what the project anticipated cost is. So the H4C group is now working to try to figure out how we’re going to close that gap,” said Stiles. “I would anticipate that we’ll probably still approve the bid move forward, but they’ll probably want to look at some USDA funding, some kind of gap to fill that gap and then try to raise money to repay that. So that’s kind of how it’s looking right now. It’s really interesting that we talked about this as a board from the time we started this one year, it ended up going up almost $600,000 in cost.”
The plan is to award the bid in May with a timeline of about a year for the construction to be completed.
“So we’d be looking at the middle part of next year,” said Stiles.
Housing has also had a good amount of progress.
There will be another public meeting for the Mennonite Housing Project on April 30 at City Hall. If that project is supported there will be 24 units, duplexes, two and three-bedroom models.
“There’s some income qualifications on that housing—up to 80% of the level for average income in the area. And then it’s based on the number of people in your household what that number actually is,” said Stiles.
Another housing project is the container homes on Third Street.
“We’ve finalized what the utilities are for that and we’ll wait for them to get back with us on what they want to do as far as how to proceed,” said Stiles.
After that, the container homes take six-eight weeks to produce.
306 West Grand is being worked on and made into a rental, and two single family lots on Willow Glen that were sold in the land bank will eventually have custom homes built on them.
“We’re moving forward in the housing area. We got a pretty good chunk there. There’d be 10 units on Third Street, 24 over in Mennonite Housing. So 34 there and then you know, we’ve put one back in service on West Grand, we’re gonna have another one there that’s converted on South Main and then potentially two more builds. We’ve got a pretty healthy handful of housing that’s got going on,” said Stiles.
For the workforce goal, Stiles told the council that he had a conversation with Dave Mullins from Hutch Community College (HCC) about setting up an internship program though the state and through HCC that would be for childcare.
“We’d tie that back to the childcare center so kind of working two goals on that at once on that,” said Stiles.
The group also discussed progress in the community development and financial stability development goals.
“The Strategic Plan for the last five years has been really successful in my opinion. I was a little skeptical, but it has far exceeded my expectations,” said Councilman Brent Driggers.
“Sometimes these things can end up just sitting on a shelf,” said Stiles.
“That’s what I was a little skeptical of,” said Driggers.
For more information, the meetings are available to view on YouTube.
In other business, the council:
*approved vouchers totaling $139,734.52.
*help a public hearing for Ordinance 1390 establishing City of Hillsboro Flood Plain Management. No one spoke at the hearing. Ordinance 1390 was approved.
*heard from Mike King, Republican Candidate for Kansas House District 74
*listened to an annual electric department report from Todd Helmer
*approved Municipal Policy 102 regarding Lightning Arrestors, approved Municipal Policy 103 regarding Vegetation Management and approved Municipal Policy 104 regarding Wildlife Protection
*heard from Stiles about the possibility of doing a city logo redesign.
*learned that Callie Arnold, the new Assistant to the City Administrator, has been hard at work
developing a grant proposal for street light upgrade. That grant is 100% funded and would replace
around 50 streetlights, though the city may look at a full change out which is closer to 300 streetlights. The SEED grant project to replace Dale’s Supermarket floor is moving forward; they plan on starting soon. The HEAL grant for 126 N Main is progressing and they should soon clear the final hurdle on their CDBG-CR. The daycare project is going to receive up to $50,000 from KDHE Brownfields to assist with asbestos tile removal.
The next Hillsboro City Council meeting will be at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, May 7.
