Nahunta will apply for CDBG grant for roads

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The city of Nahunta came one step closer to its road paving goals when the coun­cil voted to approve a res­o­lu­tion that would allow the city to sub­mit its appli­ca­tion for the 2013 Com­mu­nity Devel­op­ment Block Grant at Mon­day night’s reg­u­lar meeting.

The city first applied for the grant late last year and were advised which roads would be allowed under the grant based on road pop­u­la­tion and income level.

Roads for the project will include First Street off of Can­non Street, Allen Road Exten­sion, Elouise Street, Apri­cot Street and Irv­ing Street.

In addi­tion to paving the project will include drainage work on each of the roads.

Those a major under­tak­ing for the city, offi­cials told the Enter­prise that it wasn’t quite as far as much as they had hoped.

Angela Wirth said that the city had orig­i­nally attempted to lump these roads into a larger over­all project that would have also included Read Street, Jacob Street, Miche­lizzi Street, Burch Street, Coy­ote Trail, Velie Street, Jason Street, Rozier Street, Peach Street, Plum Street, Cherry Street, Williams Street and Dykes Road.

How­ever, because of income and pop­u­la­tion restric­tions, the roads were not allowed to be a part of the over­all project under CDBG regulations.

After review­ing that coun­cil mem­bers had no con­flicts of inter­est in approv­ing indi­vid­ual roads such as fam­ily on them, Richard Johns voted to sub­mit the appli­ca­tion with Alan Mor­gan seconding.

But road projects don’t end there for the city.  With a com­bi­na­tion of SPLOST funds and Local Main­te­nance and Improve­ment Grant (LMIG) funds, city man­ager Tom Wirth said that the city plans to resur­face Avalon Street, Laura Street and Bouncer Dowl­ing Street and improve drainage at the loca­tion for a total project cost of about $59,000.

Wirth said the money was already ready for the project.

The city also con­tin­ued with dis­cus­sions on defin­ing exactly how many hours should be con­sid­ered part-time in the city.

City offi­cially orig­i­nally tack­led the issue last month at the request of police chief Gene Solano.  City attor­ney Nathan Williams returned this week with more infor­ma­tion from the depart­ment of labor on the item.

Williams said that he was told that 24 hours a week was con­sid­ered full time.  But both the city clerk and the police chief heard differently.

Wirth said she was told that up to 29 hours was part time but that the cities had lee­way in set­ting their own part or full-time hour lim­its.  Wirth said that up to 35 hours could even be pos­si­ble depend­ing on a city’s exist­ing policies.

Solano said that he was told much the same thing by the attor­ney for the Chiefs of Police Asso­ci­a­tion in that the city could set part-time require­ments as high as they like as long as they don’t sur­pass the hour limit at which city employ­ees begin receiv­ing ben­e­fits as full-timers.

Coun­cil mem­bers seemed con­tent with push­ing the hours up to 32 as they had pre­vi­ously dis­cussed, how­ever, the attor­ney adviced that the chief not work his employ­ees over 23 hours until the DOL could pro­vided an answer in writ­ing which he said had already been requested.

Fur­ther dis­cus­sion on the item was tabled for the night.

The city also began dis­cus­sion of hir­ing a human resources firm to aide in rewrit­ing the employee hand­book – just one part of an ongo­ing larger project to mod­ify sev­eral of the city’s gov­ern­ing doc­u­ments so that they agree with one enough.  The project was started over a year ago and the city attor­ney brought his sug­gested changes to the coun­cil in Jan­u­ary for the employee hand­book the city char­ter and the ordi­nance book.

Mayor Jef­frey Lee sug­gested the city look at a HR firm to help sort through the morass of legal issues with chang­ing the document.

In other busi­ness, the council:

• Lis­tened to con­cerns from res­i­dent Lydia Burch.  Burch said that a smell was com­ing from a man­hole near one of  her prop­er­ties and had been a prob­lem since Christ­mas.  The city man­ager said he would look into the issue.  Burch also said she was promised by the late Rev. Robert Thomas dur­ing his time as a coun­cil­man that her road would be paved.  Coun­cil mem­bers, how­ever, explained that he, alone, could not make the deci­sion and that the coun­cil had to vote on paving a road given the mon­u­men­tal costs.

Mean­while the road didn’t qual­ify for the CDBG grant because of both income level and pop­u­la­tion.  How­ever the road was orig­i­nally sug­gested as part of the grant proposal.