ROCKWELL CITY — A large general obligation bond was passed by the Rockwell City City Council on Monday night.

The $625,000 bond will fund the 2020 Brower Street reconstruction project, which is slated to get started this month.

“We were fortunate that two local banks in town bought the bond, so we got a really great interest rate,” said Rockwell City Mayor Phil Heinlen.

First Community Bank and United Bank of Iowa purchased the bond at 2% interest.

B & S Tiling, of Lake City, was awarded the contract for the project, which will give a facelift to two blocks of Brower Street, between Lake Street and Court Street, as well as about 200 feet of Main Street going west from Brower Street.

The project is much-needed, the mayor said, as the street has “certainly been really in a state of disrepair” for a long time. The council decided to put the project on hold while the South Central Calhoun Community School District completed its project at South Central Calhoun Elementary School, adding classrooms, a gymnasium and office space.

“When they started that, we decided to put the street project on hold because we knew there’d be a lot of heavy traffic in there,” Heinlen said. “So we just kind of put bandaids on it.”

With the SCC project nearly complete, the contractors are looking to start on the Brower Street project next Wednesday.

Another item on the council’s agenda on Monday was a request from the Rockwell City Fire Department to put any unused budget funding from fiscal year 2020 into the department’s capital improvement program. The council approved the request.

The Rockwell City City Council also approved permits for the Calhoun County Expo to hold a parade in town and to shoot fireworks off inside city limits. The parade and the fireworks show will both be on July 11.