|
The DeLeon City Council met in a called
session, Friday, September 8, 2006, and addressed a short agenda.
Although primarily a budget workshop, there were two other items on
the agenda -- “Citizen’s Presentation” and “Discuss and Consider
Action on Activities with the Texas Parks and Wildlife grant #
5000312.” Councilman Johnnye Howell was absent, as were Karen
Wilkerson, city secretary, and Jamie Welch, assistant city secretary.
 |
|
SWORN-IN.
Karen Wilkerson, DeLeon's city secretary, is shown administering
the oath of office to DeLeon's new police chief, John McDaniel,
Jr. Wednesday, September 6. |
During the Citizen’s Presentation portion
of the meeting, LaJoyce Johnson said she appreciated the pot hole in
the alley behind her business “being fixed without her having to ask”
and Jack Pilcher expressed concern about the sanitation truck leaving
“big greasy spots,” and other waste when they stop in front of his
house and in other areas. Pilcher noted that he was reporting this
“more as information, instead of a complaint.” Barbara Helberg
reported that plans for the circus’ DeLeon appearance in October were
“coming along” and that a clown would be making advance appearances at
the DeLeon Elementary School, DeLeon Head Start and Wee Care to drum
up business.
Mayor Owen then opened the discussion on
the parks project.
“The rain has caused a little bit of a
problem on working out there,” Owen said. “They’re trying to get some
more concrete poured...and we’re trying to get somethings initiated
for the RV park. So we’ve got things working, but it’s a slow process
on that part.”
Mayor Owen then announced that a
financial advisor from First Southwest Company would attend the
council meeting scheduled for September 11, to “discuss some financial
assistance to the city that wouldn’t be such a hardship on the
budget.” Adding that maybe the financial advisor would be able to help
the city obtain a “longer term loan so that we won’t have to show so
much in the budget. This is not going to keep us from doing business
with our local banks.”
Although the council voted, some weeks
ago, to obtain a loan from Farmers and Merchants Bank to help finance
the park project, budget restraints have made such a transaction
difficult. Mayor Owen explained that “you can’t borrow money against
something you don’t have budgeted.”
“I wanted to discuss the park project,
but not necessarily on the financing part of it,” Councilman Howard
Gifford said. “I’ve got to express that I’m very concerned. We’re
about 10 months away, we have winter coming up and they’re predicting
a wetter than normal winter for us. You take the cold weather, and
winter weather, and we’re down to about six months maybe. If we have a
wet spring, it may take it down to five months or even four months.
I’m going to read the description here on the paper work, as to what
the Festival Gardens Community Park is supposed to include. Besides
the 13 acre open space, there’s a .59 mile multi-purpose trail with
five exercise stations and five benches. A multi-purpose field, a
pavilion with four picnic tables, playground, tractor pull/rodeo
arena, two picnic stations with grills, sand volleyball court, three
horse shoe pits, two game tables, two shuffleboard courts,
amphitheater, 10 R.V. campsites, five cultural interpretive signs,
restroom/concession building, R.V. dump station, utilities and
landscaping, and such and such. We’ve got the amphitheater and
concession/restroom buildings on the way. But the way I read this, the
majority of these items are not items that we’re going to have to
contract out. This is stuff that’s going to be done either by city
hands, the in-kind stuff, and volunteer labor and donated material. My
concern is, if we don’t get started on this stuff, we’re going to be
putting the city in an extremely difficult situation, because we’re
not going have it completed by the deadline. I’m not going to be for
approving any kind of outside financing to get this done if we don’t
get this thing started, because we’re just going to be burying the
city.
“Without the assistance of this
financing...there is no way we will be able to complete it,” Mayor
Owen said.
“But we have to get somebody who’s going
to head up this deal,” Gifford said. “Because I’ve been told we’ve got
lists of people who back then volunteered time and volunteered labor
and materials. I don’t know if any of these people have been
contacted. We need to contact them and make sure they’re still there,
and still willing to donate time or money.”
“Some of them are deceased,” Owen said.
“We can’t just keep putting this off,”
Gifford said. “This is not stuff that’s going to take money. It’s
going to take picking up the phone and making a call. It’s going to
take putting some organization together and getting some plans in
front of some people so they can get started on these projects. The
majority of this stuff is not going to cost the city any money. We
don’t need a loan to do a lot of it. And if we do it, then we can
submit that for reimbursement to the state, and that’s going to help
with the cash flow. I understand that we’re going to have to borrow
something to get finished with it. But borrowing money to finish stuff
we’re going to have the contractors do, is not going to help the city
if we don’t get all this other stuff done before the deadline gets
here.”
After discussing that work at the tractor
pull area was among potentially the most costly of the projects, Mayor
Owen said, “That involves a lot of concrete work, a lot of fencing,
and we’re going to have to have that money to accomplish it. The
walking trails, playground equipment and stuff like that, I don’t know
if we have people who are going to donate money toward the playground
equipment or not.”
“That’s my point,” Gifford said. “We’re
still sitting here, months from the deadline, and we don’t know. And I
understand that Jamie (Welch) is really busy with a lot of stuff, not
just this, but other projects too, so if she doesn’t have time, lets
see if we can find some citizens who are interested. There are a lot
of citizens who are interested who have the time, and can take our
lists and make some phone calls (and ask) can you still donate time,
can you still donate money...and try and get some information together
so we can start getting some of this stuff done.”
Mayor Owen then noted that with the HOME
grant project completed, it should lessen some of Welch’s
responsibilities. “I don’t know if she’s had time to go through the
list and see if they’re people capable of helping or not.”
“I know she’s busy, and has got a lot of
things to do,” Gifford said again.
After a bit more discussion, Gifford and
Owen agreed that more “input” was necessary, and discussed several
ways of accomplishing this. Owen also discussed his concern about
properly placed survey stakes for each of the areas at the park. “If
it’s not put in the appropriate place and you go do all this, you may
have to move it. We need to make sure before we start these projects
that they are in the correct location.”
“That drives home the need for having
somebody overseeing this thing,” Gifford said. “I know we started out
with somebody who was going to do that, and that fell through. And the
city got set up to be their own contractor on this deal, and I know
Jim (Adams) had a little more time that he could spend overseeing this
stuff, but we need somebody who can get on the phone, with the
surveyors and get the stakes put up so we know where this stuff
goes...and we can have multiple things going on at once here.”
“You’re preaching to the choir here,”
Owen said. “I think everyone of us are on board with you here, but
it’s easier said than done. I think council’s well aware of what needs
to be done, we just haven’t accomplished it.”
Still more discussion resulted in the
name of a former council member being suggested, by an audience
member, as a “leader” for the project, and many of the council members
seemed to agree. Gifford also suggested that some of the people who
had originally volunteered time might be interested in making phone
calls soliciting other volunteers and donations. “We could even set
them up here (council chambers) with some phones,” Gifford said.
Although there was still more discussion,
Mayor Owen noted, “We are definitely going to have some financial
assistance. There’s no way to get around it.” Owen noted that the
financial advisor scheduled for Monday’s meeting might have ideas. “We
don’t have the operating capital to do this without a loan,” Owen
said. “And I know a lot of people in town are struggling for money,
because of various reasons, including the cost of utilities, so the
money that might have been here four years ago, may not be here at
this day and time. And we have to go on the theory that the city may
have to pick up the full tab...to ever make this park exist. If we
start losing our contractors, we will not accomplish this in time.”
Owen also noted that some of the survey
stakes were in place at the park, but that they may have been moved
because of “shredding, erosion or whatever.”
At one point, Owen noted, “Howard is
exactly right, if we don’t start some more on this, we’re going to be
behind the eight ball.”
“I’ve been in on this part for about two
and a half years,” Gifford said, “and we always have something we’re
waiting on, something’s always holding us up. And we’re just about out
of time.”
After the park discussion, the council
immediately went into a budget workshop. |
