It wasn’t your typical Oregon City Council meeting held last Tuesday night. Only three Commissioners were present. Mayor Ken Williams was called away out of town and City Administrator Darin DaHaan and Commissioner Melanie Cozzi were in Springfield for a Community Development Institute. Both were able to join the meeting through Zoom technology.
Commissioner Terry Schuster who is Mayor Pro-Tem presided over the business at hand. A resolution was presented by Schuster in support for Rural Broadband. Ogle County has taken the lead in this initiative to try and provide Wi-Fi throughout the surrounding counties. Everyone involved realized the importance especially during the outbreak of covid. Many children weren’t able to communicate with their teachers and schools as a result, not to mention people who might need medical attention and were unable to contact medical personnel.
A $6,000 dollar ARPA expenditure was approved for the Oregon School District Sustainable Greenhouse Project. After sitting empty and unused for three years on the South end of the high school, with the help of teachers and Project Manager Victor Zaderej from HappyLeaf, the greenhouse is close to be up and running.
Chelsea Eden an Agriculture teacher at the high school hopes to incorporate the greenhouse into her horticulture class. Although small in size at 8×24, the greenhouse will be able to feed 50 people on a regular basis as a result of savvy vertical growing techniques. And one other item that was ratified was for the expenditure of $95,000 dollars to change Well #3 that currently has a shaft pump to a more efficient submersible pump.
