Warden city council complimented at meeting

WARDEN — The Warden Public Works department received a compliment during the regular city council meeting on Tuesday, May 28. Warden resident Vicki Durham told the city council that the area where she lives looks nice.

“I want to let Donny and his crew know how nice they’ve made the area where I live,” said Durham. “It’s nice. The roads are fixed. The ditches are done. All the water is gone. Day after day, his crew was down there working. It’s great.”

Don Edson, the Public Works director, said that their next small project will include doing some landscaping at the Warden Community Center.

“With the amount of use that we’ve been getting at the community center, we’re going to do a little bit of grass and some other landscaping in the front to make it a little nicer,” said Edson.

Some maintenance items will also be addressed.

Kriss Shuler, Warden’s city administrator, told the council that the city has reached a tentative agreement with the police union. She also said that the bathroom renovations in the police station are underway. A security wall is also being installed at the main entrance of the police department.

“That should be looking a lot sharper in the next couple of weeks,” said Shuler.

Warden Police Chief Rick Martin attended the Washington Association of Police Chiefs in Spokane. He told the council about a few different laws that will be going into effect on July 1st.

“There are 38 pages of them,” said Martin. “Honestly I’m glad I’m not the one who has to figure out how that’s supposed to look.”

Martin said that some of the bills haven’t been completely fleshed out yet. During the meeting in Spokane, they told the police chiefs about the new laws, but not how to implement them.

“They just talk about what’s going on,” Martin said. “They don’t tell us how to solve them. The legal advice was to have your legal advisor direct you on how we are going to proceed on these things.”

Martin also said that uncertainty about the implementation of new laws happens every year about this time.

Shuler told the council that the city had received an updated grant approval letter from the Transportation Improvement Board to match the low bid on the upcoming road construction projects on Weir Way and West 8th Street.

During the last meeting, the council voted to conditionally award the project to Tommer Construction of Ephrata. They bid $494,310.52 for the project. The project will include a new base and road surface for Weir Way and a new surface, curb and sidewalk for West Eighth Street. A water line will also be installed under West Eighth Street to avoid having to tear up the road later when the line needs to be replaced.

Rachal Pinkerton may be reached via email at rpinkerton@suntribunenews.com.