I saw a photo on Next Door of a City street sweeper being filled with water. If you’re asking everyone to conserve water, shouldn’t the City be conserving, too?
The answer is yes, they should be. And they are — except in cases where safety could be an issue as a result of water restriction.
For instance, City water use for several purposes — including training for the fire department, hydrant flushing/testing and car washing — has been discontinued due to drought conditions throughout the region.
Exceptions to this are the washing of sanitation trucks, which could create a sanitation problem of their own if not cleaned regularly, and street sweepers, which remove sand and other debris from City streets and keep it out of the storm drainage system, where it would most often end up otherwise.
But even with the benefits street sweeping provides, City staff recognize the importance of water conservation and, in an attempt to conserve as much as possible, plan to discontinue sweeping once the salt-sand mixture left on the roads from recent snow and ice storms has been removed. This is a safety precaution, as this type of debris on the roadway can cause hazards for motorists. Staff estimates the trucks will no longer be needed for that purpose around mid-March.
For more information, see www.cityofbartlesville.org.
When is that happening?
When is the gravel parking lot at Jo Allyn Lowe Park going to be paved? It was approved in the 2020 General Obligation Bond Election.
The Jo Allyn Lowe Park parking lot paving project is one of several park projects included in a contract approved by the City Council during its Feb. 6 meeting.
The contract, with BKL Inc., is for design services and also includes the ring roads and parking lots at Johnstone Park, Sooner Park, and Lyon Park. The projects were combined to form a single engineering project. Funding for the combined project is provided through the 2020 G.O. Bond ($822,000) and the 2018 G.O. Bond ($358,000), for a combined total of $1,180,000. The cost of the design services is $106,250.
The combined project should go out for bids for construction in late summer and construction should start by fall of this year. However, it is not yet known where, exactly, Jo Allyn Lowe will be in that line-up. But even without that information, it’s fairly safe to say construction on the Jo Allyn Lowe parking lot should be be underway sometime between fall and the end of the year.
Wondering why it takes so long between voter approval of a project and the start of construction? This might help explain.