Dateline: December 4, 2003

City says disaster grant work nearing finish

By Roger Estlack, Clarendon Enterprise

Clarendon city officials are reporting that work is nearing completion on drainage and street improvements funded by two disaster grants.

City Administrator Sean Pate says contractor J. Lee Milligan is finished laying down the first course of two-course paving in a ten-block area in the southeast part of town. Workers still have some clean up work to do and will have to return in the spring when warmer weather will allow them to put down the final course.

The project, funded by the National Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and the Texas Office of Rural Community Affairs (ORCA), includes paving and curbing portions of Hawley, McClelland, Goodnight, and Montgomery streets and part of Wood Avenue.

“It’s been pretty smooth,” Pate said. “Obviously, we would have liked to have seen the project done rather than have to wait until next spring for the final course.”

Pate said gas and electric utilities did not move their lines in a timely fashion in the early stages of the project, which resulted in delays for the contractors.

Another part of the project, which is being done by L.A. Fuller & Sons, should be completed this week. That work includes drainage improvements that tie the new paving into the city’s main drainage system and street and drainage work on Thurman Avenue on the east city limits.

Pate said all the work on this project has been paid for by the NRCS and ORCA grants except for one block of Goodnight Street, which the Board of Aldermen authorized the city to pay for in order to help tie the drainage work together.

In other city news, the Board of Aldermen held its regular meeting last Tuesday, November 25, to address items on a short agenda.

The GreenLight Gas Franchise Agreement was discussed and approved. The only change was that the city will receive its franchise fees quarterly rather than annually.

The board approved a contract with the new Panhandle Revenue Recovery Association, which has been set up by the Panhandle Regional Planning Commission. The new association will be made up of a group of area towns to assist each other in collecting past due utility or waste disposal fees.

Once implemented, the association would set up a system to crack down on persons who leave one city with a past due account and move to another city. For example, if a person is overdue on their water bill in Clarendon and moves to Memphis, then Memphis would be authorized to add that overdue balance to their bill and collect the money. Clarendon would get 75 percent of the collected money, and Memphis would get to keep 25 percent.

Aldermen also heard a report from the city administrator in which he briefly discussed new technologies which are helping cities of all sizes read water meters more efficiently.

“If the city is to be run like a business – which it should be – then we need to make every minute count,” Pate said this week.

Currently, it takes four city employees about four days to read some 960 municipal water meters. That takes those workers away from their usual duties, and sometimes emergency jobs – waterline breakages or animal control calls – can delay getting the meters read.

There are several new methods of meter reading available, but each essentially attaches a device to monitor water usage and then transmits that information using radio waves that could be read with a handheld wand or by other means. Most of Clarendon’s water meters could be fitted with the new technology.

Pate said its possible such an improvement could be phased in over three to five years to allow one person to read the entire town, thus freeing up the other employees for other tasks.

“We have to modernize to a certain extent to become more effective and more efficient,” he said. “If we want to do more work with the same resources, this would be a way to accomplish that.”

No action has been taken on this topic by the board. Pate said he may attend a meeting in Canyon next week which would provide more details about new methods of meter reading.