(KLZA)--Falls City Council members approved, contingent on approval by the State Fire Marshall and safety measures being checked to allow the Falls City Volunteer Fire Department to conduct a controlled burn of a house at 824 McLean Street in Falls City when they met Monday night. The house currently is owned by the Southeast Nebraska Land Bank.
Falls City Volunteer Fire Department Public Information Officer Jon McQueen said that it would be good practice for the department and that other Richardson County fire departments as well as Hiawatha and Morrill would be invited to join in on the drill.
Once the practice burn is completely extinguished, it becomes the responsibility of the property owner to keep it safe and get cleaned up.
Other topics covered during the meeting included an update from EDGE Executive Director Lucas Froeschl. During his quarterly report, Froeschl provided information about the former Family Fare grocery story building in the 1900 block of Harlan Street, currently listed for sale for $600,000. He said while there is not a rush at the moment to purchase the building, if local investors might be interested, he feels it would be good to have the building under local control.
Froeschl said he has spoken with a grocery store chain about the building and that he is hopeful that proposed projects such as Citroniq and Nebraska Rural Generation could help persuade a company to purchase the building and bring it back to life.
An update on the Rural Workforce housing projects in Falls City was also presented. The first project, a home located at 1612 Fulton Street is listed for sale at $345,000 with a $50,000 down payment assistance program available on the 4-bedroom, 2 bath home.
The second project will be a house located at Champions Crossing and is listed for sale by Miller-Monroe.
Council members also approved an On-call Services Agreement with Miller & Associates of Kearney, Nebraska for engineering services and design work for the City on specific projects as recommended by the Board of Public Works.
