Maquoketa City weekly summary, November 18th-22nd, 2024

Maquoketa City weekly summary from November 18th- 22nd, 2024.

Josh Boldt–City Manager office

The week in one word: budget.  This week several Department Heads met with Andrea White and I to discuss Department finances and their respective Capital Improvement Plans.  This time of year is typically the early stages before multiple Budget recommendations are made to the Finance and Personnel Committee and the City Council.

The Iowa League of Cities hosted a Budget training on Thursday, which I attended.  The State assigned Residential n rollback for the following year is 47.43%, up very slightly from this current year which would lead one to believe the State believes market values for property/assessments are flat.

Community Development

This week the Maquoketa Betterment Corporation hosted a final design meeting with Stickley Morton Architects and WHKS for the Green Space Redevelopment.      

To our surprise, they really did make the property seem more appealing.  It was a wonderful two hour meeting to discuss design and donor insignia. We expect a finished design in January, 2025.

Police Department

Last year, during the week of Thanksgiving, 34 people were killed or seriously injured in traffic crashes on Iowa roads, 40% were not properly restrained.  The Maquoketa Police Department is partnering with the Governor’s Traffic Safety Bureau-GTSB- to promote road safety during the holiday season.  We want to remind people to remember: Buckle Up. Every Trip. Every Time.   Seatbelts are not only the law, but they are your best defense against serious injury or death in a traffic crash.

Water-Wastewater

This week was busy with construction.  On Monday they installed our massive storm water bypass pumps.  These pumps take over in a large rain event and pump our raw sewage to the bypass lagoon and stores it there until we bring it back through the plant to treat. 

We had a major shut down at the WWTP for the project so they could take all the old wiring out of our control room and feed new.  This lasted about seven hours, but all went well.

We had the meter/endpoint company in to go over some issues we have been this would last a whole day, but had everything fixed and answered in about an hour.

Fire Department

This week for training we brought in PRI- Professional Rescue Innovations- for our confined space training.  A confined space is generally an area that has one way in and one way out and is not designed for continuous occupancy.

We started the night with some classroom discussion and then moved to the truck bays for some hands on training.  This was  paid through the fire service training bureau so there was not any expense to the city. 

This week calls included a smell of gas  which nothing was found, and a couple car fires.  One of the car fires was caused from a car/ deer collision.

Just a reminder we are getting into cold weather season, never plug space heaters into power strips, and also make sure your wood stove/ fireplace chimneys have been cleaned out for the year.

Public Works Department

This week we finished our last project before the winter season starts up. The intersection of Maple and Niagara turned out great.  This will be a nice improvement of what was there. We also finished up on asphalt this week.  We did some edges along Pershing Toad and some parking lot work behind the Police Station.

Leaf pick up is still going on, and will finish up on the West side of town.  Birch Drive will remain open for city residents to finish up any yard work, which was left behind.