Othello City Council authorizes funds to ease grant application

The Othello City Council approved a match of up to $83,000 from city funds in order to ease the city’s $550,000 grant application to the state’s Transportation Improvement Board (TIB) for repairs on Lee Road from Seventh to 14th Street during its last regular meeting Aug.14.

“We’re trying to keep this work under $600,000,” said Kurt Holland of Varela & Associates Engineers, which is heading up the project for Othello.

Holland told council members that the work on Lee Road will involve pulverizing the current asphalt and raising the road bed. But it won’t include widening the road. That work is slated for future development.

“(Board) projects tend to run for two years,” Holland said. “But we’re going to push to get this done in the next year.”

The TIB funds “high priority transportation projects in communities throughout the state to enhance the movement of people, goods and services,” according to the board’s web site. The source of the funds come for a 3-cent tax per gallon gasoline tax.

Washington has the second-highest gasoline taxes in the nation, at about 49 cents per gallon.

Holland said that while board-funded projects only require a 10 percent match, the city’s chances to obtain the grant will improve significantly if it can provide a 15 percent match.

Lee Road is the truck route into the northern part of town where several of Othello’s largest employers — including potato processor McCain Foods and agribusiness conglomerate J. R. Simplot — are located.

“Lee Road is in terrible shape,” said Othello City Administrator Wade Farris.

For council member John Lallas, it was important that a section of town that contributes so much to the city is also a priority for the city.

Next week, work is slated to begin on the city’s long-awaited First Avenue reconstruction project, which will involve tearing the street up and redoing it from SR 26 to Spruce Avenue. According to Holland, the work is supposed take about seven weeks.

The city council also approved spending $27,000 — $3,000 a month for nine months beginning on Oct. 1 — to hire Gordon Thomas Honeywell Government Affairs to lobby for the city both in Olympia and in Washington, D.C.

“This will make us more effective, especially with the other side of aisle, in dealing with Democrats in Olympia,” Farris said.