'Tis the season for road and street maintenance, repair and construction in Winnemucca.
The Winnemucca City Council recently awarded a bid for a large pavement project to Sierra Nevada Construction at its regular meeting on Aug. 8 with all members present.
The project will have alternating portions of streets closed at different times and will likely be occurring while the Hanson Street bridge is closed for a state-funded road construction project as well, which began Aug. 14.
According to City officials, the project will cost the City just under $1.2 million and will be funded through the Regional Transportation Commission. City Manager Alicia Heiser said that there is not an official start date for the project but the date will be finalized once the contractor receives the bid award.
The project will involve chip sealing and microsurfacing the roads in order to preserve them from residential areas in West Winnemucca through residential areas in East Winnemucca.
The Council was concerned that the road construction would be disruptive in the areas of where the Winnemucca Grammar School and the Winnemucca Junior High School lie, but Heiser explained that there is a special provision with contractors that the chipsealing and/or microsurfacing for those areas would be either be completed by Aug. 21 in those areas or done on an early release day or an afternoon when school is out to avoid major traffic hang ups and that the materials cure very quickly.
In other Council news:
• The Council approved a request by the Winnemucca Police Department to purchase software to manage police department record requests.
According to Police Chief Mike Rangel, the software will help cut down time that officers spend redacting information within reports which must be done before they are turned over to the public or other entities requesting the information.
Rangel said that officers have to do the redactions by hand every time the reports are requested and it is not very efficient or effective. The software will also be more user friendly and allow people and entities to request records information in a more timely and straightforward manner.
• The Council approved the submission of the annual City debt management policy, 5-year capital improvement plan, current and contemplated general obligation debt and special elective tax report, and chief financial officer information to the Department of Taxation, the County Debt Management Commission, and the Director of the Legislative Counsel Bureau.
• Discussion regarding developments in the construction of a new aquatics center took place and it was confirmed that geotechnical work is being conducted by the team that will be designing the pool and the City should be receiving a report of the findings any time. City Manager Heiser said that once the reports are complete, the design plans can be finalized for future construction.
• The Council approved two variance requests including a request to decrease the required front yard setback from 20 feet to 10 feet for a property located on Hanson Street and another to decrease the front yard setback from 20 feet to five feet for a property located on Royal Drive.
• The Council affirmed the reappointments of Betty Laurence and Dana Toth to the Historic Resources Commission with their terms beginning July 1, 2023 and ending June 30, 2025.
• A request by the Historic Resource Commission to attend a virtual training from the National Alliance of Preservation Commission Aug. 23 and 24 was approved.
The $50 fee per individual to participate in the training will be reimbursed by the Nevada State Historic Preservation Office and will fulfill requirements for the members of the Commission to attend training or participate in training on an annual basis, according to Humboldt Museum Director Dana Toth.
• Multiple public hearings were held for zone change requests and the Council approved ordinance adoptions to change the county zoning designation on a property located on Paiute Street from a rural ranchette to a city estates zoning and three properties on Water Canyon Road from rural ranchettes to city rural estates zoning.