WAYNE – Mayor Gale Giese and City Administrator Wes Blecke joined the “View from Wayne America” earlier this week following the second regularly scheduled Wayne City Council meeting Tuesday night.
As council ended with power issues on the agenda, both addressed most of their time on air about City of Wayne power.
The City of Wayne has their own generating capacity, according to Giese
“What we have the ability to do is go off or on the grid is what we like to call it,” said Giese. “So, when we’re off the grid, we’re using just those diesel generators that we have downtown to power the city.”
Typically, the City of Wayne is on the grid the majority of time purchasing power since it is expensive for the diesel generators to generate. Throughout the week the power has gone from expensive to cheap in a manner of minutes. The City of Wayne is in a 10-year contract with Big Rivers Electric who notifies the City of Wayne when to run and not to run.
Blecke also added the Wayne Community Activity Center was opening up for those that live outside the city limits who will be without power.
“If people are without power, we would like for you to have the opportunity to come to Activity Center for a warm place to again relax, sleep, if you need to charge your cell phones,” Blecke added. “After hours, what we’re doing is leaving a sign on the door saying to call dispatch.”
Heather Headley, Library Director gave her library report Tuesday night during the city council meeting. An audit presentation also took place as the financial strength of the City of Wayne is very strong.
Anthony Cantrell approached the board on behalf of the Wayne High in conjunction with EVERON (Electric Vehicle Energy Research of Nebraska). Council approved to close off East 10th Street from 200’ east of Angel Avenue to Hillside Dive on Saturday, May 1 from 8 a.m. until 5 p.m. This will allow for the Power Drive State Championship to be held in town and to have the City of Wayne provide portable restrooms.
Councilmembers also directed staff to begin advertising for bids on the “Greenwood Cemetery – West Driveway Project”.
More discussion also took place to prepare engineering services for the “Shovel Ready – Centennial Road/21st Street Project”. Councilmembers were split (3-3) of either using the city engineer of JEO or go out for proposals as the final vote came to Mayor Giese chose to remain with JEO as he didn’t want to slow the process.
The agenda item of adopting the City of Wayne employee personnel manual was also tabled at the of the meeting.
The next regularly scheduled Wayne City Council meeting will be on Tuesday, March 2.