Manti considers status of major

city projects at council meeting

 

By Suzanne Dean

Publisher

Jan. 11, 2018

 

MANTI—Manti City probably will not apply for Utah Community Impact Board (CIB) support for new projects during 2018, Kent Barton, the city administrator, suggested during a city council meeting last week.

However, at the first meeting of the year on Wednesday, Jan. 3, the council discussed putting a number of projects on the city’s CIB priority list in a category labeled, “Medium Term, 2018-2022.”

The meeting started with officials elected last November taking their oaths of office. Korry Soper, who ran unopposed, was sworn in for his second term as mayor. Jason Maylett, an incumbent, and Mary L. Wintch, a newcomer, who were elected to two seats on the council in a four-person race, also took their oaths.

Each January, cities in Sanpete County are required to submit a list of potential CIB projects, as well as project proposed for Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funding to the Six County Association of Governments (AOG).

Barton said he and Mayor Korry Soper would be meeting the next week with Six-County officials to finalize the Manti list.

Two projects that were on Manti’s “A” list for 2018 had already been taken care of. One was the $4 million recreation complex on the north end of the city, which already received CIB funding and is now under construction.

The other was a $150,000 curb, gutter and road project on Union Street, the street on the north side of Manti Elementary School. The project has been mostly completed with funds from the South Sanpete School District and the city itself.

Additional work on the road, including creating a child drop-off site, will be finished in the spring or summer.

Three other projects, on the list as “A” projects for 2018, needed to be moved to the medium-term list, Barton indicated.

One was a wastewater management system for sewer lagoons. Barton described the project as “probably the most urgent priority.” But he said the city isn’t ready to move ahead with it quite yet.

In order to increase the capacity of sewer lagoons and thereby extend their life, Manti wants to start “land application” of treated lagoon water. Ephraim City started doing the same thing a couple of years ago.

Water would be pumped out of one or more lagoons and sprayed across open land with a sprinkler system. Once irrigated with the treated water, the land could be farmed.

In an interview, Barton said the city is “still formulating a plan” for land application. The city must also buy, or acquire rights, to land where the lagoon water would be applied.

The CIB list shows the cost estimate for the project as $750,000, with $500,000 projected to come from the CIB.

Another project being moved from the 2018 “A” list to the medium-term list is demolition of the “parachute building.” The sprawling building, located on 100 East between Union Street and 100 North, was used for making parachutes during World War II.

Later it was owned by the Manti Improvement Business Association (MIBA), which tried to use it for economic development.

The building has reached a point where it isn’t salvageable, and the city is trying to figure out “how to take care of it most efficiently,” Barton said. The demolition cost is listed as $200,000, with all of it projected to come from a CIB loan.

The third project originally listed as a top priority for 2018 but now proposed for movement to the medium-term list is purchase of a bucket truck for the Power Department for $100,000.

One project on the medium-term CIB list is paving gravel roads in the industrial park in the southwest section of the city. The projected cost is $650,000.

Councilman Darren Dyreng asked if road surfacing could be broken into phases. “If we could try to take down a couple of blocks each year for several years,” the city might be able to get the work done itself without waiting for CIB funding, he suggested.