A special meeting of the Board of Aldermen was held Monday, April 30, 2018, at 7:00 p.m. in the
Aldermanic Chamber.
President Brian S. McCarthy presided; City Clerk Patricia D. Piecuch recorded.
Prayer was offered by City Clerk Patricia D. Piecuch; Alderman-at-Large Lori Wilshire led in the Pledge to the
Flag.
The roll call was taken with 14 members of the Board of Aldermen present; Alderwoman Melizza-Golja was
recorded absent, attending the Ward meeting in her Ward.
After roll call was taken, President McCarthy stepped down and Alderman Richard A. Dowd, Chairman of the
Budget Review Committee, conducted the public hearing on R-18-022.
PUBLIC HEARING
R-18-022
AUTHORIZING THE MAYOR AND CITY TREASURER TO ISSUE BONDS NOT TO
EXCEED THE AMOUNT OF TWO MILLION FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS
($2,500,000) FOR THE FISCAL YEAR 2018 SEWER INFRASTRUCTURE PROGRAM
As provided for in NRO 5-28, Steve Dookran, City Engineer gave a brief explanation on Resolution
R-18-022 prior to hearing testimony from the public.
Steve Dookran, City Engineer
Thank you Mr. Chair. | am Steve Dookran, City Engineer. We weren't prepared for this tonight, but we are
here for the Budget Meeting, so we will give it a shot. Our plan for Fiscal Year 18 is to spend $3-something
million dollars in sewer replacing and repairing our sewer infrastructure. We have an amount that has been
repurposed from other bonds and the difference is $2.5. The reason why we have to request this kind of
funding, is the age and condition of our sewers, especially inner city, a lot of our sewers, the network are in a
deteriorated condition simply because of the time that has passed and the fact that over the years we have not
really given the attention to the sewer network.
We have to spend an increasing amount as we go into the future, just in order to keep up with trying to get our
sewers back into working condition that they should be. This is not unlike the paving program. The paving
program is easy to understand because we all drive the streets and we can see that. However, the
underground infrastructure is difficult to perceive the condition. We have to do a full inventory of the network
and get the condition and put some priorities. We have just started the program and hopefully we can have
something in place in the next few years. In the meantime, we have to address the known sewers that are
known to be bad. So that is why we have this request for the funding. The reason | am going for the bond type
of funding is because the life of the sewers would be in excess of 50 years. We replace our old sewers with
PVC and PVC, although we don’t have 100 years of experience with PVC, studies have shown that we can
expect at least 100 years on that new material.
Chairman Dowd
Since this is not on the budget agenda, before we open up to public comment, questions, is there anybody
from the Board of Aldermen that would have a question on this to Engineer Dookran?
