Progress in the city’s strategic plan was the topic of conversation in the April 16 Hillsboro City Council meeting. The council discussed updates in the various sectors they have set goals in. For the childcare center, City Administrator Matt Stiles told the Council that they now have three bids. “They’re still over the budget but a little bit closer. So there’s still a gap in what’s been raised and what’s available through grant funds and what the project anticipated cost is. So the H4C group is now working to try to figure out how we’re going to close that gap,” said Stiles. “I would anticipate that we’ll probably still approve the bid move forward, but they’ll probably want to look at some USDA funding, some kind of gap to fill that gap and then try to raise money to repay that. So that’s kind of how it’s looking right now. It’s really interesting that we talked about this as a board from the time we started this one year, it ended up going up almost $600,000 in cost.” The plan is to award the bid in May with a timeline of about a year for the construction to be completed. “So we’d be looking at the middle part of next year,” said Stiles. Housing has also had a good amount of progress. There will be another public meeting for the Mennonite Housing Project on April 30 at City Hall. If that project is supported there will be 24 units, duplexes, two and three-bedroom models.
Source: Hillsboro Free Press
