North Platte City Council members’ last 2022 meeting includes a request to approve a five-year lease option for a BMX bicycle motocross track north of the Dowhower Softball Complex.
It’s part of an eight-item “consent agenda” for the 5:30 p.m. meeting in the City Hall council chamber, 211 W. Third St.
Under its regular agenda, the council will elect its 2023 president and open debate on an ordinance taking advantage of state laws allowing a “design-build” option on city construction projects.
Ward 1 Councilman Jim Nisley, who won a third four-year term Nov. 8, has served as council president the past five years. He fills in for Mayor Brandon Kelliher when the mayor is out of town or absent from a council meeting.
Items on the city’s consent agenda are enacted with a single council vote unless a council member asks to remove one or more items for separate votes.
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The lease option would allow the 308 BMX bicycle motocross group, formed in 2016, to rent the site of the current Happy Hound Retreat Dog Park at West 18th and Sycamore streets if council members approve.
The group previously tried and failed to lease the city-owned South Park site near West Walker Road and Buffalo Bill Avenue. Then-Mayor Dwight Livingston broke a 4-4 council tie in September 2019 to reject a city license agreement.
Council members learned at an Oct. 17 work session about city officials’ suggestion that 308 BMX instead use the north-side dog park, which has been little-used in part because the city hasn’t been able to eradicate sandburs there.
Kelliher, who pitched the site to 308 BMX with City Administrator Layne Groseth, said the city could designate part of Cody Park — already used by many residents for walking dogs — as a dog park instead.
Brandon McCook, co-leader of 308 BMX, said in October that the group would first build a 1.1-acre looped “pump track” on the site’s south end.
It would be free to use and serve as a learning track for novice BMX riders, he said. A full-size BMX track, which would be rented for practices and meets, would be built to its north later.
The lease option agreement, available for viewing in Tuesday’s online agenda book, currently leaves blanks for fees to maintain the option or lease the site.
The “design-build” ordinance before the council Tuesday would let the city choose a single firm to both design and build a construction project, instead of choosing separate firms with separate contracts for each role.
State senators first authorized school districts to use the design-build concept in 2002. A 2008 law extended the option to all local governments, and Legislative Bill 414, enacted in 2021, allowed it to be used on water infrastructure projects.
If the council approves the ordinance, at least six of its eight members would have to approve using design-build on a given project, City Engineer Brent Burklund said in a memorandum.
The city also would have to rule that design-build would save money or time; the project requires “specialized or complex construction methods suitable” for having a single firm design and build it; or both.
As with most ordinances, council members must give the design-build ordinance three “yes” votes unless it decides to waive one or two of them.
In other business, the council will decide whether to appoint Mary Shimmin to a three-year North Platte Tree Board term as part of the consent agenda.
