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If you have been putting off donating to the veterans’ memorial project at Wyoming’s Railroad Park, until groundbreaking was imminent— you can go ahead and send in your contribution.  The city council last week awarded a couple of bids and got the first phase of    the memorial project underway.  The site work went to Blackstone for $63,109 and the electric service installation went to Vinco for about $26,000.

Wyoming Mayor Lisa Iverson commented that this has been around 10 years in the making and she extended thanks to the many paver-purchasers,  donors, businesses and individuals, who have contributed for  this first phase. 

The memorial itself is phase one, the history walk is phase two and the final phase is planned to be  touch-up and trailhead work.

Council member Linda Nanko Yeager asked about maintaining park access while the work is being done on the site, which is across from city hall in the northwest corner of old 61 and Viking.  Staff said the access to the park will be possible during construction.

There have been 107 memorial bricks (pavers) purchased in addition to the outright donations. Local state legislators Anne Neu Brindley and Mark Koran were successful in getting Wyoming an approximately $100,000 appropriation in the omnibus measure that came out of legacy committee.  

For donor details or to learn more see the Railroad Park page on the city website, with the ‘to donate’ icon,  or mail a check to City of Wyoming, P.O. Box 188, Wyoming MN 55092 and mark the envelope and memo line for Railroad Park Veterans Memorial.

On the topic of city parks— an Eagle Scout project was given the green light by council last week.  The Scout wants to erect Free Little Libraries in Goodview and Lions Parks.

Robert Pundt will be the Eagle Scout candidate organizing and seeing the project to completion.  He said he expects to have the two done by the end of this summer.

An application for the Forest Lake Sportsmen's Club at the south end of Wyoming, to replace a structure, was approved 4-0 with Dennis Schilling absent and Brett Ohnstad participating on-line from northern Minnesota.  The conditional use allows a simple teardown and replacement, according to the building official.

The city is also applying for special funding through the 

Office of Management and Budget Capital Projects program and council needed to act on an official resolution of support for the Public Safety Facility.  Local legislators are also carrying bond- funding requests and council was advised the city could win one or the other but should not to hope for qualifying for both streams of money.

With nobody present for the public hearing, council proceeded to okay developing bids and specs for improvements to 264th and Fallbrook.  The city engineer said he should have some materials to be able to go out for bids if council approves the package in the June 20 meeting.  Mark Erichson added that contractors seem eager to line up their autumn jobs right about now, as few “rain delays” have been experienced with the recent weather pattern.

Benefitting property owners will be assessed for this work and there will be another opportunity to learn more and submit appeals later in the project schedule.  Erichson said he met on-site with the property owners affected and the assessment has been estimated about $31 per foot length of the lot line along the work zone.  This assessment process is different from a residential neighborhood; where costs can be spread over many small lots.  This area only has a handful of parcels to contribute to the 20 percent assessment formula.

And, regretfully, council accepted the assistant city administrator’s resignation. Alex Saxe’s last day will be June 26.  He is relocating to be closer to family and has a possible new position in the Wisconsin university system.

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