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A $750,000 project will install a new sewer main for Saputo, and Maxwell said the recent $50 million expansion and cooperation from the company enabled the amount to be funded through the Texas Department of Agriculture. File photo
City to consider water account payments in future
A $750,000 sewer project at Saputo is the next big step in Sulphur Springs’ capital improvement plan and is totally grant-funded by the Texas Department of Agriculture, reported city manager Marc Maxwell to the city council Tuesday night.
“Saputo’s $50 million expansion and their cooperation with us and the Department of Agriculture makes this possible,” Maxwell said. “The department can be fairly obtrusive and understandably so. Seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars is a lot of money.”
A new, larger sewer main will be installed to supplement an older main and will run under the interstate and continue south until it connects to an existing trunk line, the manager’s report read.
“We’d like to extend a heartfelt thankyou to Saputo for helping us get this grant,” Maxwell said. “It wouldn’t have been possible without them.”
The next capital improvement project will be a complete rebuild of College Street, Maxwell said, but it is currently in the design phase.
The city is currently not shutting off water for non-payment due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but as the vaccine becomes more widely available, Maxwell said he wanted to bring the delinquent accounts up to a current status. Currently, the total owed is $152,037.68 on 584 accounts, which is 8.71% of all accounts.
“I will likely propose requiring residents to pay their current bill along with one-sixth or one-twelfth of their arrearage [what’s owed] to avoid being cut off,” Maxwell wrote in his report. “In this way, their accounts would be brought current in either six months or 12 months.”
According to the Department of State Health Services, about 329 doses of the vaccine have been administered in Hopkins County as of press time. That is equivalent to .9% of the county’s population.
The steel work has been completed on the Grays Building, and wooden framing has begun, the manager’s report read.
“You can walk through the building and get a sense of what it will look like,” Maxwell said.
The Senior Citizens Center is still in its drawing stages with REES Associates, and according to the manager’s report, Tandem Consulting, the same company overseeing the Grays Building construction, has been hired for the project as well.
McCann Street is complete, according to reports, and portions of curb and gutter are being replaced on Woodlawn before it is stabilized and paved.
Finance director Lesa Smith reported sales tax and hotel tax were more than 3% each over last year, a surprise due to an earlier prediction of a loss. She also said a little over $600,000 of the $891,000 requested has been reimbursed to the city through the CARES Act.