The City of Clarendon is considering a seal coat program to protect and improve streets following last Tuesday’s meeting of the Board of Aldermen.
Roger Fields of Oller Engineering in Lubbock addressed the board and discussed the program that his company has. He said 21 cities currently operate under one contract and said the program has been around for about 15 years.
Fields said by having so many cities together on a program the unit cost to seat coat a street drops.
City Administrator John Webb favored the program and said he wants the city to start out small this year and then grow into the program.
“We’ve got to show the citizens that we’re putting seal coat down the right way and fixing potholes the right way,” Webb said.
Fields said his company would come in and train city workers on the proper way to patch streets, and it would be the city’s responsibility to prepare the streets for seal coating.
Mayor Chris Ford said the city needs to be mindful of the need to replace water lines before fixing the streets.
Alderman Will Thompson said he also favored the seal coat plan but that he would not support any plan that exceeded $10,000 this year, and the board agreed with that.
Fields said he believes that some of the federal stimulus money would be made available for street improvements, but board members had their doubts.
Fields and Webb were scheduled to meet following the city meeting to discuss which streets might be good candidates for seal coating.
In other business, aldermen discussed changing regular city meetings from the second and fourth Tuesdays of the month to one monthly meeting.
Mayor Ford said Webb was doing a good job and that two meetings a month were becoming unnecessary.
Changing the meeting dates will be discussed at a future meeting.
The board also discussed painting the interior of City Hall. It was decided that to save money, the board will do the painting themselves rather than hire someone.
In other comments, Alderman Terry Noble raised several issues. He questioned the city’s water deposit policy and said he wants the board to consider a policy that would allow a resident with excellent credit to be able to have water services with no deposit. Mayor Ford and Alderman Ann Huey said they would like more details at the next meeting.
Noble also questioned about when bricks would be replaced over a recent water repair on Kearney Street. Webb said as soon as the ground settles the bricks will be put back.
Alderman Noble also brought up the warranty on the city’s existing computers and said the vendor for those computers had questioned why the city was buying new computers when the current ones are still under a five-year warranty. They offered to upgrade the computers for a fee of $100 each. This will be looked into further before new computers are purchased.
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