Meeting in regular session Wednesday evening, the Clarinda City Council held its first of what is expected to be multiple capital project planning workshops. The council holds the workshops every year in preparation for the next fiscal year's budget to identify and prioritize improvement projects throughout the community. City Manager Gary McClarnon began by highlighting projects completed in fiscal year 2025, which ended June 30th. McClarnon says the city ultimately made over $2 million worth of improvements in the past year.
"There's some good projects that got done," said McClarnon. "The water quality project which was actually the alley project back here (by city hall) and it was completed, phase three of the rec trail was completed, the mobile data terminals, the airport layout plan, and we did have to some storm sewer infrastructure."
He adds that another roughly $2.3 million worth of projects are also ongoing in the current fiscal year 2026. Looking ahead to the fiscal year 2027, which begins July 1st, 2026, McClarnon says they are eyeing several projects, including the development of the Hugh and Maxine Loudon Business Park along the Highway 2 bypass and the North 16th Street bridge replacement.
"I've got obviously the business park development construction and if we get the bid letting done here this spring, some of that expense would fall into 2026, but the lion's share is gonna fall in 2027--so it'd be about $3.5 million is what I'm estimating," said McClarnon. "The bridge replacement, it will actually go out for bid letting in the February or March time frame. So a lot of those expenditures are gonna fall in fiscal year 2027."
McClarnon adds that after receiving the engineer's estimate of around $900,000 for the next phase of the recreational project, he notes it might need to be split over multiple budget years. Meanwhile, McClarnon says he is also currently planning for up to $300,000 for water infrastructure repairs in fiscal '27, with another $100,000 going towards sewer improvements.
"We will have the water plant paid off in June of 2026, so I would like to start focusing some of that money on infrastructure improvements," said McClarnon. "Obviously, with some of the water main breaks we've had, we've got some lines that do need to be replaced. I have talked to the Peopleservice guys about this and our first three projects we'd really like to work on, where we've had the most water main breaks, are Garfield Street, Chestnut Street, and North 12th Street."
McClarnon says that with the water plant paid off, they will free up roughly $400,000 a year. Looking ahead to fiscal year 2028, McClarnon says they are planning on constructing new tennis courts. Additionally, McClarnon says another priority for fiscal '28 would be improvements to the low-head dam the city uses for its water supply along the Nodaway River.
"That dam was probably put in, I would say, in the 1970s, maybe, maybe even the 1960s and really hasn't had a ton of work done to it," McClarnon explained. "I did talk to an expert on low-head dams, and his suggestion was, right now it's dangerous, because if somebody goes off the end of it, they could drown very easily. They suggest that we put big boulders and rocks on there to make it a gradual decline and those boulders and rocks also hold the existing dam in place."
McClarnon says the dam repairs could be around $1.5 million, with state revolving funds likely available for the improvement. For fiscal year 2029, McClarnon says one highlight would be expansion and improvements to the fire department and public works buildings, while another $1 million is currently projected for street overlays in fiscal year 2030.
This story comes from our partners at KMA Radio.