[00:00:01] Hey, let's talk Gillette what's happening in Gillette? Next week on January 20th is a Gillette City Council meeting. Before we get to the agenda, let's take a look at some other City of Gillette happenings in the next week or two.
[00:00:17] Next Monday, January 19, is Equality Day and city offices will be closed.
[00:00:24] If you, like me, have your regular trash day on Monday, you may put your can out on Monday morning for it to be picked up.
[00:00:31] However, if you did that it would be because you like me. Last time this happened, completely forgot that trash pickup is postponed when city offices are closed and it won't be picked up until Tuesday instead.
[00:00:43] Speaking of trash pickup, you probably shouldn't try to put the formerly live Christmas tree you still have for some reason into your trash rollout. What you should do with it is take all the decorations off of it and bring it to the Christmas tree drop off site in the parking lot at the Gillette College Tech Center. The next agenda review podcast after this one will probably come out on Friday, January 30th and the drop off site is only open through January, so this is probably the last reminder about it you'll get from me this year. After the site closes at the end of January, all the trees are taken and turned into mulch for the community gardens.
[00:01:18] Here's what's on the January 20th city council agenda.
[00:01:22] There's two optional 1% supported projects for this meeting.
[00:01:26] The first one is a bid award for the Sutherland Subdivision resurfacing project, which is a mill and overlay type street repair where they grind down the road a bit and then take the ground stuff and mix some other stuff in and lay it back down, creating a new road surface for the Sutherland subdivision.
[00:01:43] The other optional 1% supported project is council acceptance of the Gurley Overpass study, which will provide the council with three recommended options for what to do with the aging overpass going forward, which leads neatly into another item which is council consideration of a resolution to grant city staff permission permission to negotiate on behalf of the city for a professional services agreement to proceed with option three new build for the Gurley overpass project.
[00:02:12] Options one and two were, if you were curious, repair, which is what I believe we've been doing every year, and full deck replacement and widening.
[00:02:22] Council will also consider a professional services agreement for design services for the Red Hills Tank project, which is not to build some sort of armored war vehicle, but a bigger water tank to support development in the Red Hills area. The current tank is 100,000 gallons, but a new Tank could be much larger, potentially according to the agenda, up to 1 million gallons.
[00:02:47] A million gallon tank, according to some quick googling, would be about 75ft wide and 30ft high.
[00:02:55] Council will consider a replacement for one of the police Department's vehicles that was involved in an incident in January when they vote on the purchase of a used 2024 Ford Expedition Max.
[00:03:06] At this meeting, the City Council will appoint their City Council president, which is the council member who fills in as mayor if the Mayor is absent, as well as assigning the council board liaisons, which members of the council will attend the meetings for a number of local organizations as representatives of the city.
[00:03:22] Remember last time I reviewed the agenda when I was talking about the city purchasing that land across the street from Dalby park and I said that I thought that the local Alcoholics Anonymous group would be able to keep choosing the building there. In order for them to do that, they need a lease for the building and the lease agreement is in front of the council for them to consider at this meeting.
[00:03:42] In a similar vein, remember not the last agenda review, but I think the one before that when there was a public hearing about transferring Tanner Village and Inspiration hall to the college. There's another step for that. Council must authorize the Mayor to execute a quitclaim deed between the city and Gillette College.
[00:04:01] There's actually also another quitclaim deed, this one for the transfer of a little under 2/3 of an acre of empty land near the Energy Capital Economic Development offices to Energy Capital Economic Development.
[00:04:14] Council will also vote on authorizing the Mayor to execute the fourth amended and restated Generation Dispatch and Energy Management agreement with Black Hills Power. The city contracts with Black Hills Power to plan, forecast, schedule and dispatch energy produced at city owned facilities.
[00:04:31] To boil it down the chain, changes to the GDEMA are that the city will withdraw from the Southwest Power Pools WEIS to participate in BHP's Weim. There are a lot of acronyms there and they don't save any time unless you already know what they mean.
[00:04:47] So to rephrase, the changes to the Generation Dispatch and Energy Management agreement are that the city will withdraw from the Southwest Power Pool's Western Energy Imbalance Service and participate in Black Hills Power's Western Energy Imbalance Market.
[00:05:02] All that should mean some savings from the difference in the WEIS and the WEIM markets and some revenue from being able to sell unused potential generation from the city's natural gas turbine.
[00:05:14] For more fun acronyms from Black Hills Power, there's also a service agreement with them for NITs or network integration Transmission Service, which is how we connect to Black Hills Power's network.
[00:05:25] The NITS also requires a NOAA or Network Operating Agreement to connect to the BESS or Bulk Electric System. Man, they sure do love their acronyms.
[00:05:36] There will be another amendment to the Telecommunications Raceway lease agreement, the 23rd Amendment. In fact, with visionary communications, there's two city planning type items Council will consider approving the final plat of Pronghorn Ranch Phase 3 and the Myers subdivision.
[00:05:54] That's a brief look at the January 20th meeting. You can find the agenda on the city website gillettewy.gov and click on any item in these agenda to get a deeper explanation of the topic and see any supporting documentation. Sign up to receive meeting notices by clicking on the Email Updates link in the description of this episode. City Council meetings are broadcast live on GPA TV cable channel 192, as well as streaming
[email protected] GPA, where you can also find past meetings archived let's Talk Gillette is a production of Gillette Public Access Television and the City of Gillette. For more information on city operations, visit the city's website gillettewy.gov or follow the City of Gillette on Facebook or Instagram.
