Budget, sewer project reviewed

CREEDE— During the monthly meeting of the City of Creede on Tuesday, Sept. 3 board members discussed some regular business on the agenda including where the town was in the yearly budget which is on track.
City Manager Louis Fineburg began his presentation stating that the highlighted areas on the documents are under review. “The red highlighted areas on the report are under review as potential issues. We are better off than I initially thought for the 2019 budget. It is possible that we will be over budget by the end of the year, but it will not be as bad as it looked to begin with. Most of the overage is due to the sewer and water work that has needed to be done,” explained Fineburg.
Next on the agenda was an update on the current work being done on the sewer project from RG and Associates, LLC. According to the report provided by the engineering company, “We continue to work on activities to bring the city into compliance with its discharge permit. The current discharge permit expires on Feb. 29, 2020. Regulation 61 requires that CDPHE receive a discharge permit application 180 days prior to current permit expiration date. RGA prepared and submitted to the city the discharge permit application and a permit modification request for time extensions on compliance schedules for cadmium, zinc, and ammonia effluent limits and inflow/infiltration.
It continued to state, “The permit modification request was written in conjunction with Arcadis, whose services were retained to investigate the source of the elevated cadmium and zinc concentrations in the wastewater treatment facility. An updated schedule was included in both the permit application and the permit modification request for all projects addressing permit compliance items. The Collection System Improvement Project will address compliance schedules items for excess cadmium and zinc concentrations inflow/infiltration and be implemented in three phases, each phase requiring two summers for completion. The attached project schedules details the proposed schedules for all discharge permit compliance related projects.”
Next on the agenda was the approval of a liquor license for local restaurant and bar Kip’s Grill specifically for the Sky Lounge/M Lounge that has recently been under construction. During the meeting held in August, board members voted to table the approval of the liquor license until a building code inspector could review the work completed on the property.
The main concern for the board was that there needed to be work done on the current emergency exit, and possibly the addition of another egress for the upper portion of the building. Due to the high concern for public safety, the board opted to once again table the approval of the liquor license and requested that the lounge be shut down until all issues brought up by the building inspector were brought up to code.
“Under good conscience, we as a board are legally bound to follow the professional advice that we received. This is merely a public safety issue. If an emergency were to occur and people were hurt, I for one would not be able to sleep at night knowing I could have done something to stop it. We want you in business and I would make a motion that you can resume business as usual as soon as the building is brought up to code and the building inspector that we hired signs off on the paperwork,” said board member Lori Dooley.
The motion was carried in a three for and one against. The issue will be reviewed again as soon as city codes are met by owner Kip Nagy.