LAWTON – In other business, the Lawton City Council:
- Authorized the Lawton Water Authority to issue $78 million in promissory notes
to the Oklahoma Water Resources Board and the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality.
The city is applying for a $45 million loan package from the Water Resources Board and a $33 million DEQ loan. Approximately $40 million of the OWRB loan would be used to modernize the city’s wastewater treatment plant, and the remaining $5 million would be used to replace about 10,000 Automatic Meter Reading water meters.
The city obtained a $47 million OWRB loan for wastewater treatment plant upgrades in 2021, but rising construction costs and other expenses have pushed the cost of the project to about $60 million.
If DEQ approves the $33 million loan, the city would use part of those funds to pay for installing new water lines along Cache Road from Northwest 67th Street to Fort Sill Boulevard. The remaining money would be used to put in a new computer-operated Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition program, which controls the city’s water distribution system.
- Tapped the Texas-based engineering firm Halff Associates to develop a conceptual
plan for Elmer Thomas Park.
The city will pay Halff Associates $75,000 for its work, which will include analyzing the site, hosting a series of public meetings and drawing up a conceptual plan for the park.
- Authorized the city to replace an inoperable mobile breathing air
compressor on the Lawton Fire Department’s heavy rescue unit, at a cost of $65,436.
The council also authorized the purchase of new self-contained breathing apparatuses for the fire department, as well as equipment to bring existing SCBAs up to the current standard. Those purchases will cost about $476,931.
Funding for the purchases will come from the city’s share of American Rescue Plan Act funds.
- Authorized the city to settle its claim against Stantec Architecture Inc. for
$84,999, in exchange for the REVIT building information modeling model and a final discharge of the city’s debt. The vote came after a closed session to discuss the city’s pending claim against Stantec.
A BIM is a graphical three-dimensional model of a building generated by data entries into a special type of engineering software. In this case, it would be a model of Lawton’s indoor youth sports complex.
REVIT is a type of software used to view BIM models.
The council voted in March to end the city’s contract with Stantec, which had prepared a conceptual design for a youth sports complex in Elmer Thomas Park. Contract negotiations had stalled due to disagreements over a variety of issues, including the potential cost of the complex.