Warden council approves $7.1 million budget for 2023
Warden City Hall on Wednesday morning. The city budgeted $13,000 for snow removal in 2022, and has spent about half of that, according to City Administrator Kristine Shuler.
Charles H. Featherstone
WARDEN — So far in 2022, the city of Warden has spent around half of the $13,000 it budgeted this year for snow removal, according to City Administrator and Clerk/Treasurer Kristine Shuler.
“The city had three snow removal days in January 2022, and three this month,” Shuler wrote in an email to the Columbia Basin Herald.
According to the $7.1 million 2023 budget passed by the city council in late November, Warden had set aside $18,500 for snow and ice control in 2023, of which $10,000 will cover regular and overtime wages for city snow crews.
In the city’s regular total budget, the council approved a general fund of $1.8 million, including $742,000 for law enforcement, as well as $2.6 million for water and sewer service citywide, and $713,000 to maintain and upgrade the city’s roads and streets. In addition, the city is receiving roughly $786,000 in American Rescue Plan Act monies as part of the federal government’s COVID-19 relief package passed by Congress in 2021.
Among the capital improvements approved by the council in the 2023 budget is $827,000 to upgrade the city’s oldest sewer lift stations, with roughly $333,000 of that provided by the Department of Ecology as a low-interest loan, according to the city’s 2023 budget documents.
Shuler wrote the city has four lift stations to help pump sewage to its treatment plant. The oldest, Lift Station No. 1, serves most of Warden west of South County Road and has not received any upgrades since it was first installed in 1988.
Finally, the city budgeted $115,000 to create a campsite at Port Park, the stretch of green field at the corner of Main Street and Railroad Avenue just east of the Warden Community Center.
“The city is looking at putting three tent sites with a fee station and possible toilet facility,” Shuler wrote. “This is to accommodate a number of travelers that come to town for the Palouse to Cascades Trail. We have many bicyclists travel through, some hikers, and, of course, the annual John Wayne horse riders each year.”
Warden has a trailhead on East First Street near Pine Avenue for the walking, biking and riding path that stretches 289 miles from Cedar Falls near Snoqualmie all the way to Tekoa near the Idaho state line, Shuler wrote.
Charles H. Featherstone can be reached at cfeatherstone@columbiabasinherald.com.