Mill levy expected to help cover expenses
Canda Harbaugh | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 14 years, 11 months AGO
The Libby City Council expects to pass
a mill levy next week in order to help cover costs associated with
Monday’s flood, as well as to become eligible for state emergency
funding.
The city is allowed to pass a two-mill
levy for emergencies one time per year, Mayor Doug Roll said, which
he estimates will amount to $5,500-$6,000.
“You have to exhaust all your resources
as far as the emergency levy goes,” Roll said, “before you can ask
the state for more funding.”
It’s too soon to put a dollar amount
incurred by the city, but Roll believes the biggest costs will come
in the form of equipment – such as contractor excavators used to
break up the ice on Flower creek – and manpower.
Because the flood occurred on a federal
holiday, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, city workers will be paid
considerable amounts. Those who came into work – emergency
management officials and the city road crew – will receive holiday
pay, as well as over-time.
The city may incur some other costs,
said Vic White, director of Lincoln County Emergency Management
Agency, such as repairing damaged roads and street signs.
The last time the city passed an
emergency two-mill levy was three or four years ago, Roll said, to
pay for the cost of extra snow removal. The levy raised about
$5,200, he said.
ARTICLES BY CANDA HARBAUGH
Flood 1169
By early afternoon flood victims began pumping water out of their basements. Don Emery, whose rental home is pictured, also began packing his belongings into a moving truck.
Flood 0893
Rosie Roberts looks outside her window on West 10th Street before evacuating her home. Minutes later, a stronger current of water broke through, causing authorities to close the street.
Flood 0992
Workers travel Nevada Avenue by way of back hoe. City and county crews, as well as a few contractors, helped break up the stream's ice with excavators in order to prevent further ice jams.