The Dalles City Council last night covered several subjects in a short meeting last night. Councilors voted to accept a half-million dollar grant to continue a long-running project to locate and clean up contamination in the city. Dan Spatz, the city’s economic development director, explained the process this way:
“We’ve got a lot of old gas stations, for instance, in The Dalles. Those gas stations have a lot of underground tanks that have not yet been treated. My job with the city is to find the sites, track ’em down, and then, once we have something located, let the environmental professional take over, bringing things like ground-penetrating radar to locate a rough idea of where the tanks are. Then you bring in a contractor, subcontractor, dig down, see what’s under there. Also, asbestos in old buildings.”
Councilors also approved a contract as part of the upgrading of controls at the Wicks water treatment plant and adopted a downtown parking management plan.
One discussion item on the agenda concerned a plan to upgrade the computer aided dispatch system in conjunction with Wasco County and Mid-Columbia Fire & Rescue, and an integrated record management system with the county. Police Chief Tom Worthy said the old system is increasingly unreliable and had rebooted without warning several times in the past week:
“Our software is really antiquated and old. We are essentially playing Pac-Man, and all the other agencies are playing Call of Duty. It’s about that bad.”
The city, county and fire district will be coming back for approvals once they have firm bids.
And Mayor Rich Mays announced he’s resuming a tradition he started soon after he was elected, only to have to suspend it due to the Covid pandemic:
“I’ll be picking up Saturdays with the Mayor again on Saturday, March 29 at the Azure Café at 10 o’clock in the morning. My special guest will be Ben Wring, who is our newest City Council member. And also to celebrate and go over some of the accomplishments of the beautification and tree committee over the past couple of years.”
That would be at the café in Azure Standard’s Farm Stand store in the old Chronicle building.
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