KIMBALL -- Several city projects are making headway this month including the City Park, the power plant project, and adjusting the water meter system. 

The City Park equipment has been removed, and the installation of the new playground started this week, said City Administrator Annette Brower. The whole project will be completed within a few weeks. The installation will take about a week, then the concrete pour will take about 10 days, and the finishing touch will be installing the tiles. 

The City of Kimball is also building a new power plant building with new generators since the old plant became too outdated to use.

“Once it is up and running, it will give the city of Kimball the ability to run our own generation should we need backup power due to a power outage,” Brower said.

As long as the lines are clear, the city can power up the generator to provide power to the citizens and businesses.

“It’s a good economic draw because businesses can stay open regardless,” Brower said.

If there is a big storm in the winter and the power goes down or for any other need that the city needs to power its own electricity, they can. The last time Kimball had to generate its own power was four years ago.

The city is also able to sell their power generation back to generate for other towns or for the grid. For example, two years ago, an ice storm on the eastside couldn’t generate power, so the City of Kimball was able to power up the generator and it fed back into the system. 

“Just to have the generation open and on standby, we generate 192,000 per year, then they pay us to generate as well,” Brower said. “This will be a great thing for the town.” 

The new building should be up in November and is expected to be running in June 2025. 

The old site is at 100 S. Howard St., and the new building will go up between there and the electric shop on the other end of the block.

In the next two months, the city expects to have an improvement made to how the city workers can read residents’ water meters. The google-based system is called Sidewalks, and it will allow a higher frequency with more reliability, Brower said.

The issue the city runs into when reading meters in town is that a lot of the old homes have the meters in the basement.

 “We want to find a way to get the old meters swapped out in order for it to be easier to read,” Brower said.

Some of them are manually read, so with an adjustment to the system, the reading will be more reliable.