City of Ozawkie

Lake Living at its Best!

Points to Ponder

October 1, 2014

Points to Ponder
by Council Woman Nancy Leek,

Our lift stations project is 81% complete. The past months Scott and I have met with our city engineer, Sam Johnson, from BG Consultants, to discuss how to proceed with our lift stations. After many discussions the decisions were made to have new lift stations at number 2 and 3. If you remember in one of my first Points to Ponder, I mentioned how terrible lift station 3 was and it needed to be replaced. It is finally going to happen. Our final drawings for the lift stations were sent to KRWA in Topeka and they were approved. We are now in the notification bid stage to vendors. This will take approximately 30 days and when the bids come in to Sam Johnson, he will review the bids and make a recommendation to City Council. Lift station 2 and 3 will be completely new. Lift station 1is in good shape and will be cleaned so it did not need to be replaced. When this project is complete, all three lift stations will be the same diameter and all the new pumps will be from the same company which will help the city maintenance people now and in the future. I asked if our lift stations would be pored on site and Sam said no, they will be made in a factory and be delivered as a complete unit. I hope to go to a concrete plant to see how our lifts stations will be made. I also asked Sam about the grade of concrete and he has assured me the standards are high. Once the bids are accepted, that company has 30 days to complete the project. This has and still is an interesting process, I am grateful to all the people I have worked with to make this a smooth process. As soon as the lift stations are near completion, then the work on our lagoons will begin.

In May, 2014, Mayer came and did a TV inspection of our sewer system. The final report is now complete. There will be a TOWN HALL MEETING OCTOBER 15 at 6:30pm at the Fire Station to discuss what was found and to discuss phase 2 for our city. Sam Johnson has a power point to show as well as pictures. It will be an open meeting to take questions and discussions.

I am happy to announce that our water tower is in good shape. The broken valve has been replaced and the inside of the water tower has been cleaned. Now our tower needs to be repainted. Also,we are looking for a licensed electrical person to move the existing electrical box inside the water tower.

It has come to my attention, that several citizen are concerned that they see the city truck at our maintenance man, Scott Gibson, house. Yes this is true, but did any of these citizen really want to know why? If Scott lived on the other side of town, would it even been noticed? I will tell you why the truck was and will be there at different times. Last week, Scott was in the pump house and got some chemicals on his clothes so he went home to change them. Before that, when one of our wells is not working, who get up in the middle of the night and see that we all have water. When you work at night do you get some sleep in the day? Scott is not as visible as Sam because Scott does a lot of necessary paper work and does all the water samples etc. Because being our city maintenance man is not a 8 to 5job, it may appear like he is not working, but let me assure you he is on 24 hour call 7 days a week. I would not have succeeded with our lift station project with out Scotts help. Our city engineers and Joe Augustine of Pump and Power are surprised at how good and knowledgeable Scott is. So is the maintenance truck at Scotts house at times. Yes. But remember, there is a good reason for it.

Ponder: Is it better to grow grapes that are sour or better to grow grapes that are sweet? Just like people’s attitudes. Which would you like to have?

Nancy Leek

Archived Points to Ponder

March 15 2014 Points to Ponder

February 2014 Points to Ponder

August 2013 Points to Ponder 