By V. Hugh Lewis II, publisher
Jefferson Mayor Charles “Bubba” Haggard gave JEDCO a “heads up” on possible upcoming requests from the City to help pay for additional water and sewer upgrades.
“I’ve got my hat in my hand so to speak,” said Haggard. “We had to start prioritizing with the money we had left [for this project]. We had to take things out. We’re still looking at Henderson from Walnut to Vale and we need to do Soda Street. The thing I was going to ask JEDCO to do, is to see if y’all couldn’t contribute like a $100,000, or something that like, into the infrastructure. I think the city has something like a million dollars in reserves and we’re going to have to use at least 3-400k of that.
“It’s all under contract for bid at a certain price right now,” said Haggard. “Once we let Lawler [the contractor] go and decide later on to do this, it’s going to be quite a bit more. The smaller the job the more they charge. I’m going to try and have more info on Tuesday night to city council on costs and what streets and what we’re going to try to do. You’re [JEDCO] getting in over a quarter of a million a year and I wanted y’all to think about that. I cant give you any figures right now [on cost] or what the city can contribute.”
“There’s going to be some problems – they’re already having some – with the forced sewer line that comes up in the manhole at Friou and Delta,” Haggard continued. “It’s all gravity fed after that and it’s easy to overflow it. There are serious issues involved in that and we’re already talking to Alan [Whatley] to see if they can get a line out from Alley street down to Broadway to help.
“It all used to go into the river, back in the 50s, and when Milton Jones was Mayor they built the water plant and the sewer plant” Haggard said. “But that’s why it looks like it all goes down this way [downtown] and then back to the sewer plant. Now that there’s a lot of a development out on US59 so we’ve got to deal with that. I was hoping we could get a sewer line finished on Walnut and come all the way down Bonham and hook up on the new line on Walnut. Now they’re all 6″ lines and they’re all almost being overloaded. The new lines are 8”. Somebody’s going to have to do that later on as I’ve only got 69 days left and as taxpayers we’re going to need help.
“At some point we’re going to have to veer that line off and let it go directly to the treatment plant,” said Haggard.
“When you’ve got a better handle on numbers, can you get me an email?” said JEDCO President Bob Avery. “I’m going to leave it on the agenda. Just keep me in the loop.”
“I don’t like to surprise anyone with a $2-300,000 request, so I just wanted to give you a heads up,” said Haggard. “Over $1.6 Million in those bonds was to close the old sewer plant and we couldn’t use that for replacing lines.”
The City sold bonds back in 2015-16 to fund this project. The bonds are on a 20-year repayment schedule.
Quarterly Report
JEDCO approved their Quarterly Report to City Council. This was also on last last month’s agenda, however, final fiscal report numbers were not available at the time so approval was tabled to this month.
Highlights of the report include
- November’s presentation from Dr. John Cooper from TA&MU on the benefits of comprehensive strategic planning for the City.
- Financially, JEDCO has $638,096.73 in account at First National Bank, an additional $91,096.83 from USDA funds, and $59,046.76 in TexPool. For total of $788,240.32.
- Last Quarter JEDCO received $72,526.55 in sales tax revenue
- A reminder that JEDCO is budgeted to incur a $79,905 deficit in fiscal year 2019-2020, “due primarily to incentives to be paid as a result of the Fikes project.” The shortfall is expected to be covered from cash reserves on hand.
- JEDCO has one outstanding loan to Richard and Karen Penner which was made in 2017. It’s a 5-year balloon note with a December 31, 2019, outstanding balance of $25,733.75.
In other business
- Approved leaving JEDCO deposits at First National Bank as long as the interest rate remains favorable and comparable to the rate at Vera Bank where the City deposits are located.
- Held an Executive Session on the Disposition of JEDCO property on Old Colony Road.
- Approved minutes from previous meeting and the financial reports [see packet below].
No action was taken after the Board’s Executive Session.