$135,000 Allocated for Waterville Irrigation Piping
by Ashley Murphy

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Included in the packet for the Cleveland City Council meeting on March 22nd was a memo to Janice Casteel stating that a Traffipax representative was in discussions with another vendor who was potentially willing to accept the camera operations from Traffipax and continue running the red light cameras in Cleveland. However, due to the approval of a previous motion to decommission the red light cameras by March 31st, the red light cameras will cease to operate.

The City of Cleveland will still process those violations through March 31, 2010 and Traffipax will continue to mail the citations and accept payments for 60 to 90 days afterwards. The city's target date for Traffipax to stop receiving payments is June 30, 2010.

Parris Roofing and Sheetmetal Co. in Cleveland has won the bid to replace roofing at the Northeast Recreational Center. Parris Roofing placed the lowest bid of $38,803. A motion was also approved to allow Cleveland Mayor Tom Rowland to sign an agreement entering into a contract with Parris Roofing on this project.

A lengthy discussion then ensued regarding the Waterville Golf Course. Various piping is needed to install a new irrigation system at Waterville. The piping alone will cost up to $135,000.

Several councilmen had issues regarding how this money is being spent and why a new irrigation system was needed. Casteel stated that this money has already been allocated for use on the Waterville Golf Course, that there is a current irrigation system is in place, but it has not been functioning properly for some time.

Councilman George Poe requested that this vote be delayed until the next official council meeting. Others were in agreement as well, and also wished to wait until Councilman Bill Estes was present so that his vote would count. City Manager Janice Casteel said that Assistant City Manager Melinda Carroll worked very hard on these bids and that a vote needed to be taken now so that the project was not delayed. The golf course will be closed from April to June for work on widening Dalton Pike and the City Public Works Department plans to install the piping during this period, weather permitting.

A motion to delay the project was proposed over the original motion to approve the project. However, the motion failed and vote was directed back to the original motion which also failed. Both votes were a 3-3 tie.

Due to the motions failing, a recess was called for Carroll to obtain more information on this issue. After recess, a motion was made to accept the bids for the individual items at quantities needed, not to exceed the $135,000 total, and for  credit to be given for unused materials.

The motion passed with Poe voting against it.

A budget hearing will be held on Friday, April 9, 2010 from 8:30 a.m. until 5:00 p.m. in the City Council Room.

The next regular meeting of the City Council will not be until Monday, April 12th at 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. in the City Council Room.

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