Paving work on two state roads in Petersburg is scheduled to wrap up for the winter at the end of this month.
The Juneau contracting company Secon was planning to pave Haugen Drive this month and patch a few other holes on local streets before taking a break for the colder months.
“We’re continuing to hear from Secon that the project will shut down on the 30th,” borough manager Steve Giesbrecht told the borough assembly Thursday. “I’m not sure how that will swing. Then they’ll come back and return in March-April to finish up the rest of it. And that includes the remaining sidewalk replacing on Nordic, paving of Nordic Drive including the bridge and paving of the new Haugen Drive bike path which will all be done in 2016.”
The state is paying for the eight point three million dollar project on the two state-owned roadways that’s scheduled to be finished next year.
In other news, the assembly approved the purchase of a Ford Explorer sport utility vehicle for just under 46,000 dollars. Giesbrecht told the assembly he wanted the police department to change back to SUV patrol vehicles instead of the smaller sedans currently in use. “It’s not an everyday occurrence that we need that extra ground clearance and kind of rough and tumble approach to vehicles, it happens and more and more we’re asked to respond for either the troopers or the forest service where we’re driving on roads that those chargers cant handle.”
The vote was 5-0 on that purchase. Another purchase approved Thursday was a new records management system for the police department and other emergency services. The price tag on that software system from a Salt Lake City, Utah company called Spillman is over 242,000 dollars.
Chief Kelly Swihart explained the advantages of the new records system. “When we get a 911 call or a call coming in for assistance, the dispatcher has to write all that information down. They then have to relay that to the officer and enter that into our system. Then the officer may need to re-enter that information in a report, charging documents. Then we have separate jail records. We have separate property and evidence systems and Spillman will tie all that together and let us easily retrieve that, the information we needed.”
The Spillman software replaces the borough existing system used since 2010. The purchase can be paid for with a state grant the borough has for remodeling the police department along with the revenue from a monthly E-911 surcharge on local phone bills. The assembly voted 4-1 to approve the new software system with Bob Lynn voting no.
