Wellman, seeking grants, needs survey responses

WELLMAN — The city of Wellman is asking a little over half its households to respond to brief surveys as municipal officials gather data to qualify for $500,000 to $1 million in grant money for water infrastructure improvements.

City Administrator Kelly Litwiller said the city had two projects in its sights: one to replace and upsize 13,500 feet of water main — about a quarter of the city’s distribution system — and another to connect with a backup water source before the current well runs dry. Each project is potentially eligible for an Iowa Community Development Block Grant of $500,000.

Those grants, however, rely on detailed information about the city’s ethnic demographics and residents’ household income. An information packet from the Iowa Economic Development Authority says at least 51% of recipient project beneficiaries must be low-to-moderate income households.

Litwiller said city staff, with help from the East Central Iowa Council of Governments, would mail out surveys to random addresses in town to gather that information. The local government can only move forward once it receives around 300 responses to said surveys, which means non-responses can delay the entire project timeline.

“If they choose to ignore it, then we will call them. If we get no response, we will door-knock them. If we get no response, we will door-knock them again,” she said. “If no response, then I have to go to the list and I have to have ECICOG generate another random address for me to then turn around and start the process over … it is very important that people fill these out. Otherwise, we are going to continue to go down the process until we get what we need.”

That’s just over half the town which, according to city records, has 570 residential water hookups.

In sum, the city’s water infrastructure plans come in at a cool $5.1 million estimated price. While CDBG grants wouldn’t offset all of that, Litwiller said they would make a major dent.

“It reduces the amount of debt load the city would have to take on for this project,” she said. “If you can get $500,000 or a million, that’s way better … we want to keep it down as much as we can for the patrons and taxpayers, so being able to get this money will obviously help reduce some of that.”

The rest of that money would come from a mix of borrowing, as well as potentially higher taxes, according to Litwiller. The city has already raised its water rates once to start building up the funds, and is working with a financial consultant to figure out other budget details.

The water supply half of the project is preventive. Litwiller said the city’s water quality was perfectly safe for the moment. That can’t stay true forever, though, as the municipal source runs low.

“Our current well that we have now is pretty much at its life,” Litwiller said. “Before it goes bad, we need to have a backup source so when it does, we either have another well put in place so we can flip the switch … or put (Wapello’s supply of) rural water in. The price of the two are basically about the same.”

The latter option — connecting to Wapello’s water supply — is the preference of the Wellman City Council according to Litwiller, who said doing so would require less future maintenance but take Wapello’s approval to go through.

As for infrastructure, Litwiller said fixing the antiquated system would save taxpayer dollars down the road. With a yearslong history of water main breaks — seven so far in 2023 — the expensive incidents are a drain on municipal accounts, with a city flyer saying the cost of a break could “easily eclipse $10,000 in combined costs.”

“You’ll have a water main break, you go, you fix it, and two days later down the line, it’s popped another part of the line because the pressure built up,” she said. “You’re putting Band-Aids on everything. We just want to go through and fix as much of it as we can so in the future, a lot of this is taken care of.”

Iowa EDA says its application cycles have due dates on Jan. 1, April 1, July 1 and Oct. 1 with award announcements two months later. Litwiller said the city hoped to have enough data to meet the January deadline.

“We probably won’t hit the October one just because we’re starting it in September,” she said. “We’ve gotten these community development block grants on other sewer projects that we’ve done, it’s something that obviously has helped us in the past and been a great thing for us.”

Comments: Kalen.McCain@southeastiowaunion.com