News

City Council members grant EDC money to construct local day care

By Scott Wagar

07/10/2012

The Bottineau City Council members looked at a number of requests for economic development on July 2 during their July meeting, which brought a positive impact for the future of the local community.

Diane Olson, EDC director of Bottineau County, stated that she recently learned that the North Dakota Department of Commerce (NDDC) is offering oil impact areas the opportunity to receive grants for day care centers. The NDDC is offering $125,000 for a day care center in the oil impact areas, which must be applied for and then match dollar for dollar by the communities that receive the day care grant.

The EDC has been planning to construct a day care center for a period of time. The day care will enroll 42 kids with a staff of eight, and be located directly north of the Nelson Science Center on the campus of Dakota College at Bottineau. Bottineau’s EDC will also own and maintain the day care.

The difficulty the EDC is presently having is covering the cost of constructing for the day care, which will cost a total of $850,000. Olson requested that if the grant application is approved for the $125,000, would the council match the funding. The council carried the request with everyone voting yes.

Olson also requested a Gateway loan for Kristen Kersten for $22,640, at three percent interest, with 10 years to pay the loan back so she can purchase B&R Laundromat in Bottineau. The council voted unanimously to approve the loan.

From the Gateway loan, Olson explained that the USDA is offering free board training to North Dakota communities, which would allow the council to learn how to become better board members. She said that the council could request certain areas to be trained in and that the USDA would come to Bottineau and speak to them on those specific issues. The council agreed the training would be beneficial for them and agreed unanimously to move forward with the training.
Olson’s final order of business with the council was to tell them that another grant opportunity was available through the Center for Rural Health (CRH), which could assist funding for a new pool, which in turn would benefit the health of the community. Olson said that a city committee has been formed to discuss the CRH grant, and encouraged the council members to attend the committee’s meetings, which the council agreed upon. The next CRH meetings will take place July 19 and 26.

The 2012 seal coat project was to begin this month, but will now be delayed until August. The 2011 street project still has concrete work to be completed. The city will hold the funding for that work until the project is finished.

The county commissioners are requesting Bottineau’s city council to assist the county with co-sharing the cost of gravel and a culvert for the new Bottineau County Veterans Memorial Hall. It was decided to send the property committee (made up of Troy Marsden, Fred Kainz and Harley Getzlaff) to the July 3 county commissioners meeting to discuss the request. At the present time, Wold Engineering is conducting research on the issue and will get back to the two parties.

Bottineau Farmers Elevator made a request to the aldermen to purchase a piece of property the city is presently leasing to the Bottineau County’s veterans for their memorial hall. The council referred the issue to the property committee.

Councilman Tim Sanderson commented that he had two issues to speak on. The first matter included the poor quality of sound of the council meetings for the local residents who listen to the council meetings on the local television channel.

He stated that he has had numerous complaints from a number of local residents who have the inability to hear the council when they are on television.

Sanderson was told that Greg Bernstein was working on the issue. Bernstein stated that he was working on the audio problem, but that the difficulty with the sound wasn’t an easy solution to resolve. He stated that due to the room, itself, and the set-up of the chairs and tables, along with other issues, fixing the audio will be a rather intricate challenge; but, he felt he could resolve the problem.

Sanderson’s next question was why the former city council transferred city elections from a ward system to a city-wide city election. Marsden stated the county had to redistrict its lines for the June 2012 election, which the city would have to correspond with the county to make it fair and even. Marsden added that for the city to conduct redistricting in a ward system would be a difficult task, so it was decided by the council to go to an all city election.

Penny Nostdahl, city auditor of Bottineau, also stated that she had worked a number of elections over the years, and that by going to an all city election made it much easier in process in the ballots. Nostdahl said that elections by wards was a difficult task in finding the right ballot and ward for voters, but with an all city election, all that had to be done was to give out one ballot to the voters, instead of different ballots to the different wards, which could be confusing at times.   

With the information granted to Sanderson, he stated that his constituents were not happy; and, like the people he represents he would like to see it go back to voting by wards. Outside of the comment of having difficulty in getting residents to run when it was a ward system, no other response was made to Sanderson, and the council moved on to the rezoning issue with the State Bank of Bottineau.

When it came to rezoning the State Bank from a R1 and R2 to B-2 (residential to business) on lots 25-26 of Block 46 of Comstock’s First Addition (directly north of the State Bank’s branch on Highway 5.). The council moved to approve to have a protest hearing on the rezoning request on August 6. All the aldermen voted in approval of the State Bank’s request with Bernstein abstaining because he is an employee of the State Bank.

The Bottineau Fire Department requests an ordinance change. The firemen would like a code that states all new buildings, and renovated structures, would have to place sprinkler systems in the structures. The council referred the issue to the ordinance committee.

Alderman Bernstein, who sits on the pool committee, stated the work on the kiddy pool’s filtration system has started. He also stated the state pool inspector visited the pool and stated the hand rails on the diving boards would need additional pieces on the hand rails, because at the present moment there is enough space between the rails where a child could fall through, and onto, the cement below. The city is presently fixing the rails to bring them up to code.