2. Departmental Reports (Electric, Water, Sewer, Police,
Street, Reverse Osmosis Plant, SFRE Complex,
Economic Development Director and City Secretary.

Water/Wastewater Superintendent Greg Shumate:

Don’t know where to start, we have been real busy, last month and this month due to all the rain we have had, which caused a lot of problems. I had some solids wash out at the WWTP.
It couldn’t be helped, but it was due to getting too much rain too quick. We had by the Sagamar Inn out in that area some manholes fill up with water. A couple of them we could get to and put sand bags around them. I finally sand bagged the main line and stopped a lot of the flow. When it gets dry, I am going to go in there and do away with the manholes that are the old concrete manholes because when they fill up with water, which is not often it causes a lot of problems due to getting a lot of inflow through the manholes. So, we will dig them up and do away with them. It shouldn’t be a problem since all we have to do is put a pipe in there and it is a straight line shot. We worked 7 hours on the Sagamar pump to get it going, we pumped it down twice and had to get another pump going. We started one afternoon at 7:30 p.m., and finished about 3:30 a.m. the next morning. I told the guys we would not stop until we got it done. We have a good pump on there that pumps about 350 gallons a minute; the only problem is you have to put gas in it every hour. It was running night and day so we put the pump that was in there which is real hard to prime, but, once you get it primed and going it does real good. We have gotten since then another pump from Lubbock, it is a submersible pump and it’s a lot bigger also. It will pump more and as soon as it dries up we will go in there and fix it. The contractors are in and working on our sewer line project. We are trying to stay close to them as we can install the manholes. I had to check in Wichita and get a company to build us 4 concrete manholes. The ones Ken got us were made of fiberglass. We have 4 locations we can hardly get trucks in there. We had the contractors help us install one today. The problem we and the contractors run into is they were getting three to four hundred foot a day in which is good, but, we ran into some water and the place is real shallow. Right now they are getting about 20 feet a day. The contractors are going to build a trench box and drag it with them, which will slow them down and starting to cave in on them. It’s just so close to the creek and with all the rain we have had the water table is real shallow out there. To me it looks like another three hundred foot and they will be out of there. I’ve been doing some maintenance at the Sewer Plant, had a main bearing go out on a rotor. It weighed about one hundred pounds and it took all day to repair, got it back going and changed oil in the clarifiers, which took about
4 to 5 hours to change, but, it was long over due. I changed pumps at the lift stations that were giving us some problems. We’ve got everything going our way; hopefully we won’t get anymore rain right now.

Council Member Fest stated that the Council appreciated everything the water department did.

Chief of Seymour Police Department Tommy Duncan:

The City of Seymour Police Department answered 414 calls for service and investigated 3 minor traffic accidents. There were 22 felony and misdemeanor cases filed that included Assault, Criminal Trespass, Endangering a child, Theft, Burglary of a motor vehicle, Possession of Marijuana and possession of a controlled substance. There were 18 persons booked into the holding facility between the Police Department and DPS. There were 137 traffic tickets and warnings issued, 71 were for speeding over the posted speed limit. Officer Thornhill and Panther logged 31 hours of obedience and narcotics training for the month. Out of 14 narcotic hides, Panther hit 100% of the time. They will certify together in Amarillo on the 26th. Our code compliance officer abated 7 junk vehicles, and tagged another 6. He completed 210 property inspections and sent out 68 compliance request letters.

Economic Development Director John W. Studer:

Report submitted in writing:
July 20, 2007
Development Department
Monthly Report for July
From: John W. Studer, ED Director, City of Seymour

Dear Mayor and Council,

The projects that I have been working on this month are:

Rural Development RBEG:

I talked to Larry Clements in the Abilene office about the time frame as to when we can expect to start taking applications. He told me last week that it would be 60 to 90 days before that would happen. Even though we have been approved there are still guideline formalities (hoops) we have to go through. I have had several inquiries about this program. There was some wording that we had to change in the scope of work section of the grant; we got that change approved. This grant, which was written for the Seymour Community Development Corporation, is called a Rural Business Enterprise Grant. This grant was approved by the state Rural Development Board in Temple. We were allocated nearly $120,000 for the RBEG grant plus the Seymour Community Development Corp. will have to make a match contribution of $20,000. It is for expansion and retention of new and existing businesses in Baylor County.

New Business Prospects:

We have been in negotiations with Mr. Harish Patel on the building of the new chain type hotel on the Hwy 277 re-route. He has numerous chain type hotels currently being built. He was interested in the connection of a local bank which financed some hotels in the Quanah and Childress. I talked to the local bank which said he was very solid and would like to work with Mr. Patel on this project. Mr. Patel said he would get all his financial information together and send it to me to take to the bank. If they approved the loan, He would start building. In the mean time, I talked to Jim McMorries, who said he had worked with him on several motels, and was presently working with Harish Patel on two hotels being built east of the Market Street United store on Kell. He has located financing for Mr. Patel’s hotels on several occasions. Mr. McMorries said Mr. Patel was one of the best and most sound individual he had ever worked with. I have also made a real good contact for the owner of the Taylor Convenience / Truck Stops. I want to lock in the hotel as the anchor for this new area before I actively pursue some of the other businesses. 

Sidewalks Grant:

The grant proposal has been sent to the Texas Department of Agriculture in Austin from Grant Works Inc., who wrote the grant. I am personally very pleased with them. They said they had a grant specialist for each of the various type grants. After working with Martha Drake of Grant Works, that proved to be the case with this particular grant. This is a Capital Fund program grant and is very difficult to obtain. The City submitted a proposal under this same program in 05, and was not successful. Our chances are much better with Grant Works. I spent most of my time for a week and a half working with this firm and Jacob and Martin on this project. In order to get 10 critical point needed for the grant we had to have support letters for the sidewalks project from 75% of the business property owners in the downtown business district.

District:

This district was reduced, but still included 71 businesses. We were able to get letters from 83% of those businesses in a very short time. The business owners were really great and ready to help (after being reminded a few times). Their letters indicate they really want new sidewalks. It also was a good opportunity to connect and involve the business community. They need more “one on one” information / involvement time. It took a lot of follow up time. We ended up with a preliminary score of 80 points, which Grants Works thinks will get us funded. They found out that there are 12 cities applying for 8 grant awards. I have a copy of the proposal in my office. We were not furnished copies in the past. You should have a copy or picture of the new Downtown Business District which also shows the location of the proposed sidewalks.

Annexation:

I did not get enough property information back or put together, because of the rushed up schedule on the sidewalk grant, to have this placed on the agenda. 

Ranch Country Organization:

This is the group that is being organized with Foard, Knox, and Baylor Counties. This is going to be a great organization to grow our community. In order for it to be successful, it has to have community involvement. The first formal meeting of these three counties will be August 23rd in Seymour at the Portwood Pavilion from 6:30 to 8:00 or 8:30 p.m. The topic to be discussed will be on how to set up a Community Foundation. This is very timely since there is a group who is very interested in setting up such an organization. There will also be a community type assessment forum by this organization for our county to establish a base line. A time for this evening meeting has not been set.

Beautification Meeting:

This meeting will be July the 26th during the noon lunch hour. Karen Logan of the Making Munday Proud committee will be the speaker. She is president of the beautification organization that has made so much progress in neighboring Munday. One of the topics she will talk on will be the TXDOT sidewalk program. She also commented that the City of Munday was not out any money for those sidewalks.

Electra & Iowa Park Meeting:

This involved their partnerships to create job for rural communities. They are applying for a large grant to fund this program through the Sirolli Institute. There are tapes of their meetings being circulated to inform the council of what they are trying to accomplish. I believe they want the City to join them in financing the grant match, which is due in early September.

City Secretary Conchita Torrez:

Submitted her report (s) in writing.

Street, Electric, SFRE and
Reverse Osmosis Supervisors were not available.

Mayor Craighead asked if CA Shephard
or CS Torrez had any comments:

CA Shephard stated that all the city crews were out during the rain and hail storms.
I say this every month and I tell them on a regular basis, and I don’t want to minimize
what I’m saying this too often, but, we really do have a good crew and when I talk to other city managers the same size as Seymour or as large as Wichita Falls, or even bigger, they have problems continually with their employees and that is just not the case here, and I want to thank all the city employees for the fine job they do. Situations like this arise, they are out there immediately taking care of things. It’s just good to know they are going to do what they
have to do and get the job done. I thank you guys for that.

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