The?West Industrial Park in Blue Earth is going to get new street surfacing this summer. The cost of $367,125 will be shared between the city of Blue Earth and Faribault County.

The West Industrial Park in Blue Earth will be receiving new street surfacing this summer, according to information presented during a public hearing at last Monday night’s Blue Earth City Council meeting.

All three streets which comprise the area of the industrial area located along Highway 16 just west of Blue Earth will be resurfaced. Those include Welk, Industrial and Commerce drives.

The resurfacing is a joint project between Faribault County and the city of Blue Earth. Industrial and Commerce drives are also known as County State Aid Highway 63.

Blue Earth city engineer Wes Brown presented the information at the public hearing, which dealt with the streets receiving a mill and overlay of about three inches of bituminous. There will be no underground utility work involved in the project.

Total cost of the work is estimated to be $367,125. Of that amount, the city of Blue Earth will be responsible for $57,640 and the county and state will cover $309,485.

Local property owners in the project area will be responsible for $125,524 in assessments for the work. Blue Earth’s assessment policy calls for the city to fund 70 percent of the work while the property owners are assessed for 30 percent.

Brown said driveway access will be cutoff at times during the work and street parking will be restricted, but most restrictions will generally be for less than a day.

Bids for the work are expected to be received in April with the work to continue during the summer and be completed by October.

In other business at last night’s meeting, the City Council:

Heard a presentation on how to make Blue Earth a Dementia Friendly Community.

Dan Woodring of Interfaith Caregivers met with the council during their 4:30 p.m. work session before their regular meeting Monday night to discuss things his group can do to help make Blue Earth an official Dementia Friendly Community.

The council discussed having city staff and police, ambulance and fire department personnel take the one-hour dementia friendly classes offered by Interfaith. Cindy Lyon of the Blue Earth Chamber of Commerce also offered to host some of the Interfaith sessions that would be held for business owners in the city.

Heard annual reports covering 2018 from both the Blue Earth Fire Department and the Blue Earth Police Department. The fire department had 99 calls, while the police department had 3,460 calls for service.

Fire chief Roger Davis gave the report and said the department is down to 28 members with the recent resignations of a couple members. He added he has another resignation on his desk which would drop the total to 27.

“We are planning a membership drive in April,” Davis said. “We would like to get back to between 30 and 32 members if we could.”

Voted to accept a bid from Horizon Commercial Pool Supply for a new slide at the pool at a cost of $84,945.

The council had previously looked at the bids, but the low bid seemed too low and wanted it investigated further.

Pool manager Michele Hall reported there were some issues with that bid, and it would take time to get it corrected and would cause a delay in getting a slide for this year.

The council voted to accept the next lowest bid instead and have the slide installed for the pool season this year.

They also accepted a quote of $19,100 for repair of hail damage on the roof at the pool building. The quote was from Priority Construction Services and was the lowest of three received. All three bids were from out of town contractors which were in town to reshingle roofs.

Said OK to a request to hold a wedding in June at the Faribault County Fairgrounds, which is a Blue Earth City Park.

Joe Franta was present at the meeting to present his request to have his wedding on June 22 in the tent camping area of the city owned campground. The wedding reception is going to be held in the 4-H building at the fairgrounds.

Franta also wanted to have access to some of the other full campsites. After some discussion and some compromise, the council granted the request.

They allowed Franta to reserve several of the campsites while still keeping some open for other campers.

The council briefly discussed changes in the sales agreement for the sale of the Three Sisters buildings to Rural Renaissance Project but took no action. City attorney David Frundt did say he expected the closing to still happen in March.

Discussed a request from a citizen to have a water/sewer bill reduced, which had some very high usage for a period of time.

The council decided they did not have enough information as to the cause of the high bills and will take up the matter at the next meeting.

Learned the investigation into police officer Chad Bonin should be completed by the end of this week.

The council set a special closed meeting for this Monday, Jan. 28, to study the results of the investigation.