More Mozingo decisions before council
In the News
The Maryville City Council on Tuesday will resume discussion on whether to approve partial funding for a proposed new “welcome center” at Mozingo Lake Recreation Park during the current fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.
No funds are currently budgeted for the center, which would replace a small check-in stand near the park’s main entrance. However, municipal staff has suggested allocating about $30,000 so that the Northwest Technical School building trades program can proceed with drawings, permit reviews, lot preparation, and other tasks that must be completed before work on the facility can begin after classes resume in August.
As it did with the lake’s newest rental cabin, the city has proposed furnishing construction materials for the project with building trades students providing the labor.
The total estimated project cost for the center is between $160,000 and $220,000, depending on whether the city uses a modified floor plan based on the new rental cabin or a more complex design proposed by SFS Architecture of Kansas City.
At the council’s last regular session three weeks ago, a couple of members, while voicing support for the project, balked at the unbudgeted expenditure, which would obligate the city for at least $130,000 in spending next year prior to formal budget discussions this summer.
Councilman Jerry Riggs said at the time he recognized sufficient reserves were available to begin the project, but added that he was hesitant to commit dollars for a budget year “that we haven’t even talked about yet.”
That view was seconded during a May 16 meeting of the Mozingo Lake Advisory Board, which recommended scrapping the project for this year but including welcome center funding in next year’s budget so the project can move forward in 2017.
The council is not required to abide by the board’s findings but usually does do.
In another Mozingo-related issue on Tuesday’s agenda, the council will consider allocating an additional $85,000 for a sanitary sewer system expansion at the 3,000-acre park approved by the governing board in 2015. The expansion was proposed in order to meet stricter Missouri Department of Natural Resources regulations and to accommodate an anticipated need for more capacity.
According to a written report prepared by City Manager Greg McDanel, the new spending is required for wastewater infrastructure that will serve a new privately financed 40-unit hotel at the lake along with an adjoining public conference center and golf course clubhouse approved by voters in April.
The additional installations will include underground gravity lines running from the hotel/conference center to a new 20,000-gallon aerated tank designed for sludge removal. McDanel said the tank will serve to store increased effluent flows generated by crowds attending large events.
The tank, in turn, will be connected to a timed pump and a 6,000-gallon septic tank, which will discharge effluent into an existing force main for transport to the park’s “zero discharge” treatment area, where heavily filtered and disinfected effluent is to be spread across a 1-acre disposal field.
Installing the gravity lines, storage tank, and other hardware will raise the cost of the city’s contract with White Cloud Engineering & Construction from $104,444 to $189,444. The add-on will be covered by $112,000 remaining out of an original $380,000 in Mozingo funds set aside by the council for infrastructure upgrades related to conference center and hotel construction.
In other business Tuesday, the council will consider:
• A rezoning application from Ron Decker, who is seeking reclassification of property in the 200 block of West 16th Street from R-2 Single Family to R-2M Single Family Modified. The change would allow construction of a proposed duplex and has been recommended for approval by the Planning & Zoning Commission.
• A zoning confirmation for a 1.12-acre tract of land at 1715 N. College Drive owned by Dennis and Jennifer Nelson that was annexed into the city last August. The property contains three fourplex and one sixplex apartment buildings and is to be zoned R-4, a designation that permits high-density residential use.
• A proposed contract with General Code LLC for ordinance-driven changes to the city’s Municipal Code book that have accumulated since recodification in 2010. Estimated cost for the revision is just over $5,000, most of which has been budgeted.
