The Belmond City Council advanced two major 2026 projects during a special meeting Monday, formally approving plans and construction contracts for the 3rd Street Northeast reconstruction project and a new aquatic center.
Public hearings for both projects drew no comments, and engineer Jason Petersburg provided updates before the council voted. Denver Underground was awarded the 3rd Street Northeast contract at $1.87 million, slightly above the engineer’s estimate.
For the aquatic center—approved by voters in November—the council adopted plans including recommended alternates such as a family slide and climbing wall. Sande Construction of Humboldt submitted the lowest responsible bid at $4.04 million, below the engineer’s estimate.
Belmond’s aquatic center closed after the 2023 season and City Manager Cody Nicholas tells RadioOnTheGo News after engineers found safety issues and deteriorating conditions at the pool it was time to consider replacing the facility.
“So we invited (Veenstra and Kimm) back to do a deeper dive into it and they went around and they found that there were some spots that were not up to federal codes and given those reasons and the cost to repair those, council made the decision to move forward with closing the pool and look at building a new facility. So those are the reasons why we closed the pool. It also was leaking a significant amount of water. So didn’t know exactly where that was coming from, but those were the reasons why.”
Nicholas adds the recently approved bond will not affect the taxes of Belmond’s residents.
“There’s a lot of factors that get played into it. So as part of this, this goes on our debt levy because it is a debt of the city that has to be repaid. So going forward, we will do a bond and sell bonds to obtain the funds for it. It will be on our debt levy and taxes will be paid to it. But council has made the decision to use some of our local option sales tax in order to help pay for the project so that our debt levy does not increase for these two projects. Noted that your house taxes, things like that could potentially go up, could potentially go down, but that’s part of that formula that plays into it that’s so confusing and people get confused about. But for the pool and 3rd Street Northeast, they will not increase the debt levy tax.”
During Monday’s meeting, it was noted that the Wright County Supervisors will pledge an additional $10,000 toward the aquatic center over the next two years.
Full minutes from the meeting below
12/08/2025 special meeting minutes
