If funding is approved, city may see health clinic by 2020
By Hayden Seder
Big changes are on the horizon for the City of Bellevue, most notably the potential for a new health clinic. Mayor Ned Burns has other plans to upgrade the city, including changes to streets, lighting, water metering and more.
Health Clinic
The City of Bellevue recently asked for funding to open a Family Health Services clinic, which would offer medical, dental and behavioral health on a sliding scale based on patients’ income and household size. Currently, the closest clinic offering all three of these services is in Jerome, which Family Health Services CEO Aaron Huston says is overrun, with up to 30 patients a day being turned away. Huston also said a large portion of the facility’s clientele are residents of Blaine and Custer counties.
“It’s a big cost-savings to people who are in need of affordable healthcare and I definitely think that if there is the ability for us to facilitate helping a company like this come in and save people time and money, it’s something we’d be all about,” said Ned Burns, Bellevue mayor.
Results of Bellevue’s grant application won’t be known until late fall, at which point Burns says the project will move rapidly forward, if approved. Huston agrees, saying that if the grant is received, a healthcare clinic in Bellevue should be up and running by the beginning of 2020.
“St. Luke’s is on board with Bellevue getting this clinic,” Burns said. “They have written letters of recommendation that we get the grant because they see a hole in the marketplace in terms of people getting the healthcare that they need and at a price they can afford.”
City Lights and Streets
Bringing attention to the problems of streets and lights is the pedestrian crossing light at Main and Oak streets (on the north side of the Oasis Stop and Go) that has yet to be fixed after a traffic accident that occurred several months ago.
Bellevue City Administrator Jim Spinelli explained that the parts are on order to replace the light but that the special parts take a little more time. Amplifying the danger of the crossing is a lack of the brightly colored pedestrian safety flags available there.
“We lost a number of street lights over the winter to plowing and accidents,” Burns said. “We’re getting bids together to go forward and get those all replaced and, at the same time, we had a man from a lighting company approach us at a city council meeting to propose replacing the street lights with bulbs that have a comfortable light spectrum for the eye. Right now we have teardrop lights that don’t have any sort of shielding, so we’re looking at something more downward casting and compliant with the Dark Sky Reserve ordination.”
Burns and his team at the city are also still figuring out temporary solutions for Bellevue streets until a time can be figured out to correctly pave city streets.
Water Metering and Flood Mitigation
For a number of years, the City of Bellevue has been working to get its water metered. According to Burns, the project is getting close to completion, with just a handful of vaults waiting to be installed in the summer, after which the project will go online.
Burns said he has also recently met with his public works director to discuss long-term sheet flooding mitigation in problem areas.
“We’re getting preliminary work done and engineering costs figured out,” Burns said. “If we can budget for it, we’ll get those projects done, hopefully in the next year, so we don’t have to continually send out public works, the fire department and the marshal’s department to work on sheet flooding mitigation.”