LEBANON — The Lebanon City Council updated its intergovernmental agreement with the city of Albany regarding the Santiam Canal Wednesday evening.
City Engineering Services Director Ron Whitlatch gave an update regarding the IGA, which was first signed in 2016.
"Really, all (the update) did was change some of the time frames on (the IGA)," Whitlatch said. "We're continuing along with our payments to the city of Albany. We're almost done with those."
Part of the IGA is an agreement to pay Albany for past improvements, and in return for Lebanon agreeing to those payments Albany will complete a few more projects to improve the canal.
Albany owns the canal, and Lebanon currently pulls its drinking water from it. When Lebanon's new water treatment plant is constructed, the city will get its drinking water directly from the Santiam River.
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Whitlatch said Lebanon and Albany staff met in December to discuss these issues and the meeting was a way to touch base on the progress of the agreement, he said.
Treatment plant updates
The project manager for Lebanon's water and wastewater treatment plants gave an update about the plants on on Wednesday evening to the council.
Jeff Houchin, of Jacobs formerly C2HM Hill, gave details about how much water and wastewater was treated, and said operations were running smoothly at the plants.
It's been more than 10 years since a safety incident has occured at either plant, he added.
"We also had a inspection from the health department this year and they did not find any violations or deficiencies," Houchin said.
In other business, the council:
• renewed the Lebanon Chamber of Commerce tourism services agreement, which uses the city transient room tax money to fund tourism promotion for the chamber, and for the operation of the visitors center. Other than minor changes, the agreement is now set to renew automatically each year, with a 90-day notice "opt out" clause.
• agreed to renew its intergovernmental agreement with the Lebanon Fire District to provide IT support to the fire district.
• voted unanimously to refinance two of its loans issued for water, sewer, storm water and street improvements. That will save the city $248,000 over the next 13 years, and will cost the city $4,500 for the refinancing.