SMITHFIELD—City Council members voted Wednesday to allot $90,920 to begin construction on the east entrance of the Smithfield Civic Center. The contract was awarded to Landmark Construction.

“Landmark Construction is by far our cheapest option here,” said Councilwoman Kris Monson. “The next cheapest bid we got is almost $20,000 more.”

Though there was concern as to why Landmark Construction was so much cheaper than any other option, City Manager James Gass did not think it was an issue. " We’ve done business with Landmark before and they did a good job," Gass said.

In other business, Jeremy Jensen, an employee at Sunrise Engineering, presented the council with another area for improvement within the city—Smithfield’s sewer system. Sunrise Engineering had been asked to complete an assessment of the current system; Jensen relayed their findings to the council.

“We saw very few deficiencies,” Jensen said. “You’ve got a pretty good sewer system.” However, he said, because Smithfield’s system is over 20 years old and the population is growing at an estimated yearly rate of 2.65 percent, changes to the pipes need to be made within the next 20 years.

“Our total estimate for the cost of these repairs is $1.26 million,” Jensen said. “The nice thing is we’re addressing this early so you’ll have plenty of time to plan for it.”

Because many of Smithfield’s sewer lines are shared with Hyde Park, this total will be split between the two cities.

The council also heard a presentation from the state CERT representative, Sandy Spendlove, to consider incorporating a city-wide Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) program into their current emergency response plan.

“What we want to do is utilize individual citizens to augment the professional emergency responders’ efforts,” said Rick Williams, emergency manager for Cache County. “They can’t do everything on their own, and that’s where CERT comes in. We want to establish a program of neighbors helping neighbors.”

Mayor Darrell Simmons suggested a team be put together to form a plan for bringing together the three main emergency response plans in the city.

“We want to homogenize the efforts of our professional emergency responders, our faith-based emergency response plans and the CERT groups,” Simmons said. “If we can bring all of these together our neighborhoods can become strong.” Simmons asked Smithfield Fire Chief Jay Downs to head up these efforts.

“We need to find what’s best for the community,” Simmons said. “Let’s homogenize our efforts so in an emergency we’ll run like a well-oiled machine.”

Published in cooperation with the Hard News Cafe. Original story is here.