QUINCY — Accommodating growth and upgrading infrastructure were the big challenges facing the city of Quincy in 2024, and they’re the challenges going into 2025. Quincy City Administrator Pat Haley said the city’s water and wastewater treatment facilities have been and will continue to be, at the top of the agenda.  

“(Evaluating) what’s required in terms of growth and upgrades. Our facilities are aged, or at capacity, and that’s probably true for those cities of our size or communities that are growing,” Haley said. “So, we’re still pretty aggressively working on those things.” 

The use of the city’s sewer treatment facility has reached the level where the city is required to study expanding it. 

“It’s going through an engineering review now – what is that going to be? How much is that going to cost? New treatment techniques are now available now so that you can do things more efficiently,” Haley said. 

Whatever the solution, Quincy will have to pay for it. 

“It’s going to involve an assessment of the rates and how pay for it. The nature of growth is that the citizens who pay the rates have to be a part of that growth process,” Haley said “We don’t know what that (possible rate increase) is, because we don’t know what the costs are going to be. There will be a rate study, and those studies look at rates over time, so we can have kind of a progressive rate structure, so you don’t get them all at once. They give you a bunch of options. And of course, there will be council meetings where they’ll talk about those options.” 

Quincy hired a lobbyist to help city officials find opportunities for grants or federal or state allocations for a potential sewer project, Haley said. 

“If we can get some grant funds or if we can get some allocations that brings down the cost,” he said. 

Not all wastewater is the same, and Quincy has an unusual agreement with three of its industrial customers that use a different system to treat the wastewater they produce. Some changes are required to that system. 

“Some of that, particularly the industrial component, isn’t all the city’s responsibility. We own it, the permit is issued to us, but we don’t use taxpayer resources for private business; they must use their own. So if we do something it’s with the intended purpose of paying it back, which is most often done through rates,” Haley said.  

The customers are on a timeline, Haley said, with some deadlines in 2025. 

Upgrades will be coming to A Street Northeast in 2025, Haley said. The city repaved and added sidewalks on B Street Northeast in 2023, a project that caused some controversy when the redesign narrowed two blocks. That resulted in less room for trucks that used the street. 

Haley said the work on B Street Northeast was the first phase of a multi-phase project, with the intention of shifting truck traffic to A Street Northeast. Work on A Street Northeast is scheduled for 2025. 

“You want to separate pedestrians from industrial trucks,” Haley said. “(Trucks) were using B Street as that industrial truck route. And we had a two-part plan in our mind, and that was to, first, fix B Street, and later fix A Street. We couldn’t do both at the same time.” 

The northeast section of town will get a new park in 2025, in a spot that’s now a vacant lot. A splash pad will be among its features. The project was stopped in 2024 due to delays in getting the permits from the Washington Department of Health, Haley said.  

“We expect that permit is going to be approved, so we can finish it,” he said. “I think it has some playground equipment. It was intended to be just a splash pad, but whatever space that we can use for other things, we’ll certainly add to it.” 

Construction might begin this summer on a new Quincy Aquatic Center, which will stay in East Park. But a new pool will mean a new softball field in a different park. 

Quincy Parks and Recreation Director Russ Harrington said the pool will be built on the site of the existing softball field, which will mean moving the field to Lauzier Park on 13th Avenue Southwest. It's the only softball field in Quincy with lights.  

“We have to move that ball field, and that means moving the lights and installing them in Lauzier Park. People use that field because it’s lit,” Haley said. 

Harrington said the goal is to limit the amount of time the field is closed. 

Planning will start in 2025 to improve access to Lauzier Park, which will be the home of the new indoor sports arena called the Q-Plex. With more development planned in the park, Haley said city officials want to add some east-west access.