With the big Danville City Council vote on the new budget scheduled for next week, the City Council Public Works Committee took care of some plans for the new year during their Tuesday night meeting. A big chunk of good news is plans to acquire a new sewer televising truck for $257,000; when Public Works had budgeted $300,000 for it. As Public Works’ Dave Ruwe explains, this robot camera on wheels will be busy pretty much every day, doing some important investigative camera work, manhole by manhole.
AUDIO: We use it for mapping of a lot of our system. A lot of our maps are old and out of date, so we use it for that. And then we also use it for inspections of different issues that we have around town of sewer backups, or clogs or collapses. So we use it to locate those collapses and investigate to see what real issues are going on.
Meanwhile, plans were approved for engineering services for scheduled bridge inspections for 2023. Danville City Engineer Sam Cole says the city owns and maintains about 30 bridges, some due for inspection every year, some every other year. But besides the annual inspections, Cole says the city always has its eyes on the next ones that need major work. Cole says right now there are three top priorities.
AUDIO: We’ve already received notification of funding for replacement of two out on East Voorhees Street. And then the next one we’re targeting is actually the bridge; South Street over Stoney Creek. We’ve been applying for funding on that one and hope to replace it in the coming years. It’s not been load rated or any imminent danger; anything like that.
The two on East Voorhees are both east of Michigan Avenue; one over Lick Creek, and the other over the East Fork of Lick Creek right before Lynch Road.
Next Tuesday evening, December 20th, the Danville City Council will be voting on the proposed Fiscal year 2023-24 $102.6 million budget, along with the city’s new tax levy.
