By Bonnie Culverhouse

During a special council meeting Monday afternoon, not only did attending councilpersons vote to issue bonds to pay for Recreation Complex enhancement, they also voted unanimously to amend the 2025-2026 budget in order to begin building a 2 million gallon water tank for the City of Minden.

“We’re ready to build the thing,” Minden Mayor Nick Cox said. “This amendment allocates the funds – we didn’t put it in our budget at all because we didn’t know about the timing.”

In April, 2025, Minden City Council agreed unanimously to advertise for bids to build the tank, which will be around 35-feet tall, round and built on-site. Bids should come in around $3.4M.

“We are going out for bids soon,” Cox said. “I would like for us to start construction in December.”

“It’s about a year-long project,” Public Works Director Tyler Wallace said in a previous interview.

He explained citizens use about 2.5 to 3 million gallons of water per day. “If something catastrophic happens, we could last a day with this new tank. If something happened today, we’d last a half a day.”

Cox said the project will not cost the residents any money.

“It is a state capital outlay project,” he said. “We were awarded 100 percent of the funds.”

(Editor’s Note: In a capital outlay project or a state grant, funds can only be used on the project for which they were approved. The money first comes from the City’s budget and is reimbursed by the State.)