City soon to be busy with big projects

A flurry of bid notices authorized by the City Council during their regular meeting last Thursday are harbingers of just how busy things will soon be around Clarendon.

The first notice calls for bids for renovations to City Hall to bring the municipal offices into compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) as required under the terms of USDA financing for upcoming water system improvements.

City Administrator David Dockery told aldermen this bid will be for the first of three phases of renovations and will include relocation of the after-hours payment box, removal and replacement of the handrails, changes to the handicapped ramping, and a bigger landing in front of the door. It will also include installation of a button to open the door to City Hall.
The cost of the Phase One ADA renovations will be about $25,000, Dockery said.

The USDA water infrastructure project itself is about six months behind schedule due to issues with surveying rights of way. Dockery told the council last week that the city’s engineer now says an additional $15,000 will be necessary to complete the certification of rights of way, but that money is available in a contingency line item in the USDA grant.

Mayor Sandy Skelton said the added expense was “frustrating” but said it was worth it to get the project moving forward.

“Otherwise we have another delay, and people still have red water,” the mayor said.

The city is also seeking bids for construction of a monofill near the Smiley Johnson Municipal Airport. A 100-foot by 300-foot site south of the airport hangers has been permitted by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) for the purpose of disposing of condemned structures. Dockery said a 50-foot wide by 80-foot long will be dug 15 feet deep and the entire site will be fenced and gated.

The administrator said the site will only be used for disposing debris from demolished structures that are city-owned. In other words, a condemned property would have to be deeded over to the city before the structure could be disposed of at this site. Each disposed structure would be covered by one foot of dirt to prevent any debris from blowing away, and TCEQ will periodically monitor the site. The estimated cost for this is $10,000.

The monofill plan goes hand-in-hand with the city’s increased efforts on code compliance, and a third bid notice is another indication of City Hall’s work to clean up properties in Clarendon. Dockery said the city wants to receive bids for the contract demolition of condemned structures on a per square foot basis.

This plan would allow the city greater flexibility in demolishing structures after they have gone through the proper condemnation process. Dockery said the bid price would be good for one year and said the contractor and a city representative will measure structures and agree to a size before demolition.

In other city business, aldermen authorized purchase of a utility service truck for the public works department, and Dockery reported that a grant application to the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department seeking $500,000 for the water recreation project has been submitted with a scoring response expected in March.

Dockery also reported on problems of pit bulls in the city. He said he had no problem with pit bulls in general, “but we have a lot of them and they are difficult to control.”