by Geoff Fox
Town officials got an update on where things stand with three projects engineering firm RK&K are working on for the town.
Those three projects are the Pennsylvania Avenue pump station, the wastewater treatment plant, and collection system.
RK&K Manager John Cole started with the pump station, telling town officials that bids were opened and “we were over budget.”
In September, a request was made for a Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) for the gap funding, Cole said.
One of the action items for the town should CDBG not be able to fund the entire $700,000, Cole said there would have to be additional funding from the town.
A minimum would be $11,000 all the way to the full $700,000, Cole told officials.
Cole said there’s an urgency to the project, so there were a few follow ups that were to go out before a scheduled meeting with CDBG for further justification.
“Very positive some money is going to be available. To what extent, I’m not sure,” Cole said.
Moving to the wastewater treatment plant, Cole said his previous update was getting a line from the Rayloc plant to the water plant as they need potable water at the wastewater facility for operational purposes.
He also said they had discussed the decommission of the lagoon system the town uses and it’s currently listed as a dam, so there’s dam safety that has to be taken into account.
There was also a discussion about reforestation with trees needing to be replanted.
Cole is now asking town officials for approval to move forward with that work.
He added they’re still finding the funds for that, but that will be part of the collection system funding.
Right now, RK&K is waiting to submit funding requests to the USDA until the project on Pennsylvania Avenue is completed.
With the collection system, Cole said RK&K has been working with ARC, who is very interested in getting the work started on the collection system. The funding for ARC is a 50% match.
The question, Cole said, is whether the town is willing to meet that match, which $261,000.
That is the design effort, he added, to get the project started.
The reason the town hasn’t been hitting very high in the priority list with the MDE is because there’s been no start on the design of the system.
“We have been reporting the spills, which is good because that was one of the caveats that they wanted, whenever we have a spill, we report that,” Cole said.
To position Hancock to be more competitive with the other towns to get up in the priority list, Cole said it is recommended from the MDE that the system design has to be started to show the town is committed to the project.
That project is bringing LanCo sewer over to the new treatment plant.
Mayor Roland Lanehart was surprised at the half-million dollar price tag on the collection system engineering.
Cole told him it’s a large system in the town and the entire project runs $12 million.
“It seems to me, it’s up to the council, but it seems to me like we’re spending hundreds of thousands of dollars and we ain’t moved a shovel of dirt yet nowhere,” Lanehart said.
Town Manager Michael Faith suggested having a workshop to go over the finances so there’s more time to discuss them.
Lanehart said they also need to find out how much the town has already paid out of pocket as well.
The meeting is scheduled for Thursday, October 29.
Cole said schedule-wise, the advertising for the collection plant bidding would begin in May 2027.
