CITY MANAGER’S OFFICE
WEEKLY MEMORANDUM
TO: Mayor MacLean, Councilors and Department Heads
FROM: Jeffrey Kobrock, City Manager
DATE: October 31, 2008
RE: Weekly Memo
UPCOMING MEETINGS
Next Week's City Council Meeting Agenda
Next Week's City Meetings are available on our Calendar
Early Voting
About 100 voters took advantage of early voting held at City Hall last Saturday morning and Tuesday evening. Before those two opportunities, we had exceeded the early voting activity for the last presidential race. By the end of the week 19% of the entire voter list had voted and 27% of the anticipated turnout had voted.
Due to the heavy interest in early voting, Dee Berglund has announced another opportunity in conjunction with the Early-Bird event organized by downtown merchants. City Hall will be open 6 am – 11 am on Saturday. Early voting is available during all regular business hours, but ballots cannot be mailed any longer due to the proximity to Election Day.
New Mills Bridge
MDOT has dramatically altered their plans with the recently posted New Mills Bridge. At the time of posting, the plans were to fix the bridge temporarily. Current plans are to close it and dramatically accelerate the replacement.
The bridge had been slated for replacement in the FY10/11 biennial budget. Preliminary design work had been underway for about a year. A public meeting to discuss the results of preliminary design had been scheduled for October 29. Then a routine inspection revealed serious deficiencies, which led to the immediate posting of a 10 ton weight limit.
MDOT now plans to locate two temporary one lane bridges, side-by-side on the old abutments next to the existing bridge. These temporary bridges will be placed in the next 4-6 weeks and open for traffic no later than December 31. The existing bridge will be closed. The temporary bridges will accommodate all traffic except for semi-trucks due to the tight turn onto West Street. Semi-trucks will be detoured for the duration the project. Construction of a new bridge is expected to begin in spring ‘09 and conclude December ‘09. During placement of the temporary bridges West Street will be limited to local traffic. During the entire project signage will mark West Street as not legal for through truck traffic.
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