May 17, 2016 - Appreciation was given to former Council member Lee Vern Stotts-Gilliam at the beginning of the Joaquin City Council on Monday, May 16, 2016. Mayor Bill Baker along with Council members Joe Long and Pat Gray presented Mrs. Stotts-Gilliam with a plaque for her years of service as a Council Member in the City of Joaquin. She expressed her appreciation to the council for the many years of working together and ended saying lightheartedly, "I want to say thank y'all for putting up with me."
Mrs. Stotts-Gilliam led the prayer at the start of the meeting one more time. The first item on the agenda was the swearing in of the council's newest member Frankie Cooper and incumbent Pat Gray. Ben Brittain was unable to attend and will be sworn in at a later date. Donna Pugh performed the swearing in. Mayor Baker welcomed Cooper to the council saying congratulations and, "I'm sure you will be an asset to the council and your community."
Council discussed new procedures concerning open forum. Anyone can sign up when they come in and state what they are there to address. They will be allowed 3 minutes to speak and the council will not interact with the citizen speaking during the meeting. If they are not on the list, they will not be allowed to speak. Mayor Baker said, "Not that we have been doing anything wrong but I just think that we need just a little more order as far as some of the things that have gone on here [in] the past." No one was signed up to speak for this meeting.
Council approved the previous month's minutes and City Secretary Amanda Willey gave her monthly report. Willey updated the council concerning a grant which Perry Pugh, Public Work Manager, and herself had written. "Mr. Perry and I wrote a grant to the Sabine River Authority to contribute some money to the city in order to help defer some of the cost repair to our clarifier. We've been awarded $10,000."
The Public Works Manager, Barbara Pridgen, gave this months utility report, "This month's total that we billed out was $55,432.24. As of today, we have collected $39,681.43, that leaves a little over $15,000." Pridgen went on to explain, although the uncollected amount is high, it is still early in the month with cutoff date being the 21st. The uncollected amount should decrease to about $3,000.
Perry Pugh gave a Public Works update. "The third train on the wastewater treatment plant is back online. It's been down, that's one of the TCEQ, part of the problem of their investigation, I got it back, it's in operation now. So, I'm taking another train down, I've got three trains, I'm taking another train down to do repairs on it that they requested. Train three turned out to be more than what we thought it was going to be to start with, train one and two seem like their going to be easier to take care of," reported Pugh.
Council approved at the previous meeting the purchase of an excavator. Pugh reported, "We did get our new excavator and I've put some hours on it already too so, I'm working it. I've got Darryl Alford building a ditch bucket for it so we can clean ditches." Discussion was then held concerning an area prone to flooding near Saddle Street which Pugh reported FEMA has looked at the area and plans on helping to fix the area. "It's an ongoing process. We have the money allocated."
Last item Pugh spoke about was a leak survey performed on the system last week which came back with only two leaks which were fixed. The public work's employees, full and part-time, got recertified on pipe fusion.
No fire department report was given.
Council approved payment of bills excluding two bills one of which was to the City of Logansport. The city is negotiating with the City of Logansport concerning a water bill which was the result of having to change over to Logansport water supply for one day.
The final action taken by the council before adjourning was to reschedule next meeting from Monday to Tuesday, June 21st.
