GIRARD, Kan. — The Girard City Council received updates on various projects in a relatively short meeting Monday night.

Up first was Public Works Director Jackie Messer, who talked first about the city’s water plant revitalization project, using funds initially intended to build a brand-new plant. He also touched on the city’s waterline project, which is scheduled to begin soon.

“We have a water plant that’s going to be about a $2.5 million rebuild,” he said. “It’s not got much done on it because I haven’t had time to put the time into it ... It will require some engineering because it’s going to require KDOT (Kansas Department of Transportation) approval on some things. I’ve got some scopes written but I haven’t finished them. But now I should have some more time to do it.

“The water distribution, they are promising they are going to start doing locates next week so theoretically, there should be a shovel in the ground the week after, but we’ve been promised that before. I think this time they are pretty close. There’s going to be a tremendous amount of material coming in over the week or two. Then I would say the third week of June we’ll be off and running on that project, finally.”

Another topic of discussion was the golf course pump house, which Messer noted is going to be improved. A concrete slab is to be added in order to build a new small building to house the pump house. Messer said that the public works crew is “finally back to full staff,” which makes it possible to jump back on its project of replacing the street signs around town.

“I bet we’ve only done 35 percent of the signs, but we are talking about working in one day a week to have almost everybody working on it for one day and maybe the second day of the week we’ll do the pump house and put everybody on it for a day,” he said. “The problem is right now we have so many priorities at once just jumping from one fire to the next.”

Messer added that the crew has also been fixing culverts and patching holes in the roadways.

Girard Electric Director Clifford Scales followed Messer, highlighting activity in his department, primarily focusing on the city’s solar farm project on the west side of town.

“We had 19 callouts after hours on power outages,” he said. “We set 13 poles around town and five transformers and (are) running a gas line for a new CAT generator. We finished up on the highway project, setting all those poles and new lines and got everything done. So, I’ve got to turn all that into the state so we can get reimbursed for all that. The new projects that we’re going to start is we got the solar (farm), it’s going to start in June and the CAT generators in October.

“Challenger Construction is going to be a subcontractor for the mowing for the solar. That’s going to start tomorrow (Tuesday) on the mowing and the 18th (of June), they are going to start putting the piles in the ground and then on the 24th (of June), the electrical is going to start coming in and we are going to set the poles for it. The racking is going to start on the 25th (of June) and be done by October, hopefully.”

In other business, the council approved hiring Cody Zook as a public works laborer at $20 an hour upon successful completion of pre-employment paperwork. The council also accepted the resignation of Michael Clark and reclassified Scottie Thomas as clubhouse manager of Girard Municipal Golf Course.

At the Girard Municipal Pool, the city approved the hirings of Rylan Herlocker, Miley Murphy, and Aubrey Humble as lifeguards at $9 an hour along with Aydin Sisney, Harrison Burke, and Brook Stafford as head lifeguards at $9.50 an hour.

The next Girard City Council meeting is scheduled for 5:30 p.m. Monday, June 15, at the Girard City Hall on the southeast side of the building, located at 120 N. Ozark St. Council meetings may also be viewed on YouTube by searching for “City of Girard, Kansas.” For more information, contact Girard City Hall at 620-724-8918.

This reporting is made possible, in part, by the Support Local Journalism Project Fund. Learn more at: southeastkansas.org/Localnews.