During the March 4, Hastings City Council meeting, Dr. Tammy Champa, Hastings School District Superintendent, expressed gratitude for the partnership with the city. She highlighted school achievements and plans and how the district has been implementing programs that support goals and needs identified by the community.
“Earlier this fall, we took a survey of our parents and our staff and all were asked what should the priorities of our district be in alignment with our strategic plan and they told us five things and those five things clearly communicated were: school safety and security, recruit and retain high quality staff, student behavior, discipline, mental health services, and career and technical education.”
Champa describes the steps taken, “The school board has already approved the professional development for all of our teachers starting July 1 of this year. And then at the next school board meeting they'll also be approving the curriculum. The state of Minnesota has approved five curriculum options that are eligible for reimbursement and funding, and we are moving forward with that. The science of reading has been a new conversation in a way that we're looking at literacy.”
“We have an innovation team going on right now which is looking at career and technical readiness and what we also heard from our parents, so we've been looking at other systems. We are listening to our student voices and really our industry partners.”
Education and safety grants were secured for the district to aid in reaching those goals. Champa further explained, “We've been fortunate to be awarded a couple of grants just recently. One for non-exclusionary discipline, so right now that's an area that we also set some legislation in, and we were just awarded a grant of $254,000 to continue our work there. And then also for Tears of Support for Our Students, we were awarded a grant and for $200,000 in that area.”
Dr. Champa highlighted recent school safety efforts including expanded camera system and how the partnership with the city has been a big part of making the district a safer place for students and staff. Following Champa’s presentation, the city council reciprocated gratitude for all her accomplishments and that of the district.
“Thank you, Dr. Champa,” Council Member Fox began, “We are so fortunate to have you here. Our district is going to thrive because of you. You are such a gift. We are very excited. As you well know I work with our Hastings show choir as one of the directors for Riverside Company. I just want to share this little story. You came to our preseason show without being invited. And you sent us a note to thank us for our performance and you are such a special gift to our district. We have a lot of challenges ahead of us. And we as a community are here to step up and support you in your work and our teachers and their work. And we appreciate you for supporting them. Thank you.”
Street construction
Principal Engineer Cody Mathison spoke next about the summer construction projects. He stated the neighborhood improvement plan will address failing pavements, utilities and pedestrian trails.
“The streets usually trigger an area getting on our capital improvement plan,” said Mathison. “We look to address our failing pavement or curb and gutters, and the drainage of the overall area needs to be improved. It's also an opportunity when we have the street surface ripped up to look at our aging utilities. In this neighborhood we've got everything from utilities that need to be replaced right now to utilities that have some useful life. And while we're in here working on the streets, it's also a great time to look at our pedestrian facilities, enhance them as needed and improve connectivity of our trail, trail and sidewalk facilities.”
The streets slated for reconstruction are 17th Street, Brittany Road and that northernmost block of Highland Drive. The streets slated for reclamation would include Highland Drive, the southerly two thirds of 21st Street, Brook Lane and Brook Court.
“Reclamation improvement would include recycling of the existing aggregate base and the existing pavement largely leaving the existing curb in place where there is the full reconstruction,” Mathison added. “The curb and gutter would come out, street surface comes out and we'd be doing a full reconstruction of the underground utilities.”
One project of importance he mentioned was to narrow or “right-size” Brittany Road and 17th Street to promote safety as speeding is most likely to occur on wider streets. After surveying the impact of narrowing Brittany Road from 36’ to 32’ would be to the integrity of the properties and the proximity of walking trails, the staff disregarded plans for sidewalks.
Mathison explained how the narrowing would occur, “It will be a little more a little less at places, but on average, it'll be about two feet on each side. On Highland Drive we would apply the same logic but since we're only reconstructing one block of it, instead of having an awkward geometric shift and just that one block, we decided it would make more sense to leave that alone for the time being. It does have a little more traffic on it as well. So, we're going to go ahead and leave that at 36 feet.”
“From a pedestrian standpoint, when we look into a neighborhood project area, we look to our People Movement Plan as our guiding document. Since Brittany Road is L shaped, what the PMP is recommending is there would be a new sidewalk as well as a short segment on 21st Street. Staff looked into that and what we found when you look down a street like Brittany Road is a lot of conflicts. This is a nicely developed street, a lot of landscaping, a lot of mature trees, retaining walls, things like that. We analyzed each side, looked at what those impacts would be and even with those four feet of narrowing, we would need to go about six to eight feet behind where the curb is today to get a five-foot boulevard and a five-foot sidewalk and to tie in that grading. And that would just be impactful no matter what side of the street you look down.”
The breakdown for project costs is: Net Bonded Debt (streets) $1,185,350, Assessments (streets) $1,114,650, Sanitary Sewer $575,000, Stormwater $525,000 and Water $810,000. The total project cost estimate is $4,210,000, total private assessments $41,114,650 and percentage of Project Paid by Assessments is 26%. Mathisen indicated that the public hearing regarding assessments will be addressed at the April 1, 2024, Council meeting.
After closing the Public Hearing, Mayor Fasbender and council member Fox stated appreciation for the thoughtful work done in planning for the summer project. 2024 Neighborhood Infrastructure Improvements were approved and will be sent out for bids. For updates and more information on this project, call the Engineering Department at 651-480-2334. Weekly construction updates will be sent via text/email to those who would like to subscribe, and printed copies can be made available near project areas.
