At the March 25 Prescott City Council meeting, Alderperson Pat Knox shared his hope for the future of Prescott.  

“I know we had talked about two meetings ago having Cedar Corp start thinking about a municipal facility, a larger one, a shared one. I would like to see us put together one that is just for a police facility,” Knox said. “My thoughts on the City of Prescott and the growth that it has going, I think that we are overshooting our target in thinking that the next phase is going that big. I think the next phase would be better served as getting something that needs to happen sooner, which is a police facility upgraded.”

Alderperson Bailey Ruona told Knox she thought they had ended on police and fire and then plan for growth. Knox asked City Administrator Matt Wolf for clarification and Wolf told him they had looked at a police and fire building that would be public safety orientated.

“Just to be clear, that was looking out towards like 2029,” Wolf said.

“So, we’re still looking at five years out,” Knox questioned. “In the meantime, because it just keeps coming back to my head, that we got snow blowing under a wall and we’ve got rodents getting in and things like that.”

He asked what they could do to in the short term to improve that situation. Ruona said they had done some upgrades to the police building, but Police Chief Eric Michaels interjected that “nothing structural” was done to that building.

“We’ve just been doing inside renovations to make it look better,” he said. “Nothing has been done structurally or to negate the rodents or the weather getting in or the flooding of the furnace rooms or anything like that.”

Wolf told the council they don’t want to invest a lot of money into the buildings if they aren’t going to keep them long-term.

“I’d like to see us come up with an immediate short-term plan to fix some of these, within reason,” Knox began. He added that it’s been bugging him and continued, “If people wonder why we have trouble retaining staff, if that’s the building that we’re showing them and this is the best we’ve got for them, I’m sure that’s not helping us at all either.”

Alderperson Maureen Otwell said some of those items could go on the shorter facilities list.

“I think we should consider them,” she agreed.

Stop signs

Otwell asked for an update on the request from the Prescott resident who wanted stop signs on Orange Street, asking, “Who makes the final decision?”

Wolf said in his experience stop signs don’t slow people down, but he explained that on Locust Street and Elm Street striping was put on the streets to narrow the lanes because it has been found to create a calming effect and reduce vehicle speed as drivers generally want to stay in between the lanes. He said when they receive requests of that nature, Michaels sets up the speed trailer to collect data on vehicle speed and vehicle count on the streets where residents are concerned to see if there is a need for a specific stop sign. Wolf informed the council that a speed trailer is currently on Orange Street. Michaels said it would be hard to put a stop sign at Orange and Elm because it stops vehicles on a hill, and he didn’t think that would work very well in the winter.

“At the end of the day whatever the data says is what we’ll do,” he saud.

The Gibbs Street resident who made the request said he saw the speed trailer out there the majority of last week which was Spring Break.

“The biggest thing is the school times; pickups up and drop offs seems to be the big traffic times there,” he said.

He added the safety of children walking to and from school or playing after school was his biggest concern. He said the speed trailer may need to be put out there again during normal school days to collect a broad spectrum of what the actual traffic is.

Junked vehicles

City Planner Carter Hayes said the junked vehicles and appliances ordinance is the most frequently violated ordinance in the city, and it is challenging to enforce. In order to “better retool the ordinance to enforce it,” Carter said they compiled a comparison across five municipalities to see what other cities are doing and how it works for them. The council will take up the second reading at the April 8 meeting.

Magee Park

Wolf gave a brief background on the contract for engineering services for Magee Park, explaining that in November 2022 the city entered into an agreement with Cedar Corporation to submit a Knowles-Nelson Stewardship grant application. Those items are all included in Phase 1 of the concept plan; the price estimation for Magee Park is $554,000 with $304,066 already budgeted.

The DNR awarded the $280,700 grant to the city and the contract has been drawn up for approval as the first round of funding has been received.

“I guess now we’re moving forward to look at the proposal for the design services to put that into motion,” Engineer Greg Adams said.

The fee charged by Cedar Corporation for those services comes to $72,100 and includes handling design, engineering, bidding, contract administration, and construction engineering.

“Very exciting,” Ruona said as she clapped.

“I didn’t realize this is going to be done in November,” Knox said. “It’s like wow! Going to be awesome.”

The council approved the agreement for topographic surveying services by Cedar Corporation, which is Phase 2 of the Riverfront Project, for $6,300. Adams said it’s the land surveying and the bathymetric surveying or surveying of the river for a potential marina dock system.