City discusses Oglesby bridge, a crosswalk at Castle Manor, going paperless and improving the sound system in council chambers

[July 13, 2013]  At the Tuesday evening workshop, five members of the Lincoln City Council were present. Those in attendance were Melody Anderson, Jeff Hoinacki, Kathy Horn, Tom O'Donohue and Jonie Tibbs.

Oglesby bridge project hits another bump in the road

City administrator Sue McLaughlin told the council Tuesday evening that bids had been received and opened for the Oglesby bridge demolition project. She then asked city engineer Darren Forgy to discuss the bids with the council.

Forgy said he was surprised and shocked by the dollar figures in the bids. All the bids came in substantially higher than he feels they should have. Forgy explained that as city engineer, he has estimated what the cost should be for the project. At other meetings Forgy has explained that engineering estimates are done using a database of information from the Illinois Department of Transportation.

He said he didn't know why the bids had all come in too high, but because of this he could not recommend to the city that they accept any of them.

Forgy said he did not believe it would be out of line for the council to instruct him to contact the low bidder, discuss their pricing and possibly negotiate the price down to a reasonable amount.

He said other options the city might look at are rejecting all the bids and rebidding the project as part of a "bundle." He said, for example, that if the Oglesby bridge project would be bundled with the Pulaski Street project, bidders might come down on the price so as not to lose the bigger Pulaski Street project.

Anderson asked what that would do to the timeline for the project. She expressed some frustration that this has been an ongoing issue for years now, and she wants to see it finished and over with.

Forgy said he felt they could still target a September completion date.

O'Donohue asked if bundling the project would guarantee a lower price; and Forgy said it would not.

In the end, McLaughlin asked Forgy to go ahead and investigate the city's options, which right now appear to be either proceeding with the current bids, rebidding the project or bundling it in with something else.

City rejects request for crosswalk at Castle Manor

Mayor Keith Snyder introduced a request from Tim Searby of Castle Manor for a crosswalk from Castle Manor to the Wal-Mart parking lot.

McLaughlin told the council she had discussed this with the appropriate department heads, and they had concluded that to grant this request would leave the city open to liability suits.

It was explained that the crosswalk would not be accompanied with a traffic control device such as a stop sign or light. The city would have no means of controlling the traffic.

In that case, the crosswalk could do more harm than good because pedestrians might have a false sense of security and safety when entering the walk.

Discussion included the possibility of putting the crosswalk farther to the south, beyond the second entry into the Wal-Mart parking lot.

Snyder mentioned that perhaps when Brinshore Development builds the Plowfield Square housing development, they would put in a sidewalk south of Castle Manor.

John Lebegue, building and zoning officer, was asked if he knew anything about this, and he responded that he recalled there will be a sidewalk connecting to the existing walk at Castle Manor.

It was then discussed that the pedestrian crossing could be incorporated into the Brinshore project. The result would be that residents of Castle Manor would have to walk farther to cross the street, but they would be in a safer location.

For the time being, the request by Searby was set aside and will not be considered in the immediate future, though new options may make it possible for the city to accommodate the request sometime down the road.

City to go paperless

McLaughlin and Susan Gehlbach, city clerk, talked briefly Tuesday evening about taking the city paperless for their meetings.

Currently, the city runs copies of all talking points for meetings of the committee of the whole as well as creating a Monday meeting packet with numerous pages. McLaughlin said that considering that all the aldermen have been provided laptops by the city, perhaps the documents could be transmitted to the laptops, and aldermen could review the materials via their laptops.

Gehlbach told the council that this would reduce the workload on her and her staff as they prepare for weekly meetings, and it would save money.

O'Donohue expressed that it was a good idea, but that some aldermen might need a tutorial on how to access the documents and how to work paperless.

It was decided that this is something the city does want to try and will work toward that end in the future.

O'Donohue will explore option for new sound system

The city has been having a great deal of trouble with the sound system they use in council chambers. On Tuesday evening during the committee of the whole, it was not working at all.

It had been mentioned in a previous meeting that the system was also used by Comcast in recording the Monday night meetings. Because of this, the city was hoping that Comcast would pitch in on the bill for a new system.

However, McLaughlin told the council Tuesday night that Comcast has done all they are going to do. She said that according to their contract with the city, the company is only required to assure that their system is working properly.

She said the connection from the video and audio recording equipment to the city's system is in good working order, and that is all Comcast has to worry about.

O'Donohue shared with the aldermen some research he had done on the subject. He qualified his statements by saying he was not recommending anything, but he had come up with an alternative that would cost a great deal less than the wireless microphone system that had been mentioned at previous meetings.

O'Donohue passed out information regarding a system that would do both audio and video recording and save it to a computer hard drive.

He said it would involve a machine sitting in the center of the council floor. The machine would be voice-sensitive so that when a person is talking, the camera would rotate to focus on that person for video. He said it would voice-record all the conversations going on, but when multiple people were speaking, the camera would probably focus in on whoever was talking the loudest.

While the machine O'Donohue spoke about would be more than adequate for making a record of the meetings, it was also mentioned that there is a need for some type of speakers so that guests in the gallery could also hear the conversations.

In the end, O'Donohue was asked to continue investigating what he had brought to the council and get back to them with more details.

[By NILA SMITH]