Melrose Select Board Approves Grant Push for Rock Arts Rapids Restoration

MELROSE — January 18, 2018 — Melrose Select Board approves grant writing, road projects, and a small park land purchase at its January meeting. The board voted unanimously to hire WSB for $4,300 to write a Legislative-Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources grant application for the Rock Arts Rapids project, contingent on endorsement from the Sauk River Watershed District, and also approved submitting a separate state bonding request for the same project. A $115,000 seal coat and micro-seal road program was authorized for bidding, coming in just above the $106,000 budget line. The board approved spending roughly $3,000 from park funds to acquire a small right-of-way parcel adjacent to existing park land. On the $1.2 million Northeast Project, the board reached consensus that a $9,500 new sidewalk component would be treated as a public safety improvement and not assessed to abutting property owners, with one member noting it would cost roughly $5,000 in administrative work to collect the $9,500. A parcel northwest of the city limits was declined as future park space after both the Planning Commission and Parks Board recommended against it, citing the cost of extending infrastructure more than a quarter mile to the site.