Residents who live in subdivisions off Country Club Lane returned to the Waterloo City Council on June 7 to follow-up on concerns expressed about the condition of that roadway last month.

These residents received promising news. 

“There is going to be something done,” Waterloo Mayor Tom Smith told residents Tim Holmes and Jordon Riley at the meeting. “We are in negotiations.”

They were speaking on behalf of city residents who live in subdivisions off Country Club Lane, which is a county roadway maintained by Road District 2 and not in city limits.

Smith told the residents he talked to Waterloo Public Works Director Tim Birk, who spoke with Monroe County Engineer Aaron Metzger on the issue. 

“They’re waiting for the wheat harvest to get out,” Smith said. “They are going to do some work and we have offered our trucks and material and employees also.”

Metzger told the Republic-Times on Monday that the county has applied for federal Highway Safety Improvement Program funds for the realignment of Country Club Lane and the extension of Rogers Street.  

“This would eliminate the three 90-degree curves,” Metzger said.

The grant award announcement is supposed to happen around the end of July or early August, Metzger said.

“These are 2023 dollars,” Metzger added.

Birk said the city has pledged its support for these funds.

“Of course,  the city supports the roadway improvement application and hopes the county receives the funds,” he said.

Residents said at the May council meeting that the issue is the condition of Country Club Lane east of Waterloo Country Club.

“That road right now is built as a very rural road. It is a tar-and-chip road that can’t hold up to heavy traffic – much less heavy equipment that’s coming out there for new house building or out to the water treatment plant,” Holmes said then. 

Also at the June 7 meeting, the council approved an amended transportation service agreement for a rate schedule contract with Enable Mississippi River Transmission – the system that delivers natural gas to Waterloo – that expires July 31, 2024.

“MRT is changing the point of acquisition, nothing else,” Alderman Steve Notheisen said, adding that this measure does not have anything to do with efforts to address an exorbitant natural gas rate charged to the city as a result of a mid-February deep freeze that wreaked havoc in parts of the Midwest.

The council also approved the purchase of 20 stack chairs from KI in the amount of $5,985.

The next council meeting is 7:30 p.m. Monday, June 21 at City Hall.