Menu
Bronaugh aldermen: street and culvert work
Tuesday’s 90-minute meeting of the Bronaugh Board of Aldermen discussed street and culvert repairs, mutual supply of water between Bronaugh and Moundville, a loan payoff and giving hands-on experience for the incoming water system operator.
Upon opening the meeting, Mayor Sherry Brown turned to the lone citizen present and asked if he wanted to raise a particular matter. Said resident Charlie Williams, “I’m just here to listen to when you start talking about street and culvert repairs.”
With nods of approval all around, the mayor moved that issue to first on the agenda.
Brown opened and read the two sealed bids received for street pothole repair. The first, from George Logan, would clean out and cut the sides of each pothole and fill in with cold mix asphalt. The bid was “$4,800 to $6,000 depending on how much cold mix was needed.”
The other bid, from Atnip Enterprises of Jasper, would apply one ton of cold mix as far as it would go with no clean out of potholes, at a bid $1,235.
Williams thought the material used last year amounted to a dump truck load of cold mix which would be considerably more than one ton. Discussion led the board to a unanimous vote which rejected both bids and directed new and more specific ads be placed with a bid due date of June 30.
Mayor Brown then opened bids for repair of a culvert along a stretch of Cherry St. which, as noted at last month’s meeting by Williams and Alderman Harry Pitts, has an underground spring under it.
“It’s not just the spring under it, it’s the original culvert wasn’t put in right, in the first place,” said Williams. “It’s got to be redone so it will act as a French drain.”
In a French drain, water enters a sloped trench which consists of a gravel filled base, a perforated pipe on top which is itself covered with further rock. While some water will percolate into the soil below, most will flow through the pipe and into the desired area for runoff.
The name comes from Henry Flagg French (1813-1885) of Concord, Mass., a lawyer and an Assistant US Treasury Secretary, who described such a system in his 1859 book, “Farm Drainage.”
The first bid, from Tom Gordon, would clean out the ditch, provide a base of larger stone, perforated pipe with smaller stone covering the pipe at a cost of $2,900.
The other bid, from Atnip Enterprises, would grade the ditch, create a base of larger stone, replace the culvert and top with road rock at a cost of $1,985. The bid did not specify the use of perforated pipe and Alderman Terry Fleener and Williams both said this was necessary.
Upon a motion by Fleener, the board voted to accept Gordon’s bid.
In a report of financial matters separate from her monthly financial report, city treasurer, Ann Loudermilk informed the board, “The city was on Moundville water while the tower was being cleaned out; we used about 6,000 gallons.”
While that May event was not news to the board, her next statement was.
“Later in the month, Moundville had a leak in their city system and contacted Gary [Loudermilk] and so we opened the connection between our systems and supplied them with water,” said Loudermilk.
Moundville used a total of 23,100 gallons with Loudermilk billing Moundville for the difference of 17,100 gallons. The existing agreement calls for mutual aid at a rate of $2.25 per thousand gallons and so the bill to Moundville totaled $3,847.50.
At this, Gary Loudermilk added, “That agreement is old and the amounts are below our production costs. With the Moundville water district now part of Consolidated [Public Water Supply District No. 1], we’ll need to negotiate a new deal with them.”
As part of her regular report, the city’s treasurer reported the payoff of the loan from the Missouri Development Finance Board.
Said Loudermilk, “We took out a $55,000 loan last year and one year later we sent them $56,650 and paid it off. To do this, we had to borrow from ourselves and we’ll have to pay that back but we’ll do it a little bit each month over 20 years, at no interest. This gives us more credit if we have an emergency and need to borrow for something, and it means we can also put more money on other debts and start paying them down faster too.”
Due to the progress of Derek Brown in obtaining licensure, the mayor and board urged Gary Loudermilk to let Brown take the lead on work done managing the city water system over the next three months. At that point, Brown should be ready to take over day-to-day management of the system.
Loudermilk, who is looking forward to retirement, heartily agreed even as he said he looks forward to completion of the next step, which is for Brown to obtain needed licenses and experience in order to manage the septic system as well.