Americus City Council meeting discusses repairs to sink hole

The Americus City Council met on July 11th. Public works director George Allen addressed the Council with a request to purchase a service truck for the storm water department at $36,798. He mentioned the funding would be covered by the stormwater fund.

Allen then asked for approval to pay the Hofstadter invoice for the inspection of $45,000 and the True Pani invoice of $21,000. The invoices pay for lead and copper inspections of the waterlines. The item was moved to consent.

Allen then brought a request to approve the invoice for the Bessie Mays Circle storm drain repairs totaling $57,241.96 to Hofstadter for engineering work.

Council member Nelson Brown questioned progress on the project. Allen replied; “staff went out and found two repairs that needed to be made, one in the pipe and one in the catch basin. They actually made those repairs. . .so the problem of the sink hole actually reoccurring has been, has been satisfied as of now.” He told how they were currently in the process of backfilling the hole and planned to replace the pavement. The item was moved to consent.

Allen also submitted a request to pay Hofstadter for engineering work on the Russell Street sink hole water and sewer line, totaling $55,177.60. The item was moved to consent.

Allen brought up lawn maintenance. “This is a request to move forward with contracts for the lowest bidders for the lawn maintenance contract from the City. The bid opening is tomorrow, and I’d like to put it on next week’s agenda to have the lowest responsible bidders approved.”

Council member Daryl Dowdell asked for streets to be swept by the streetsweeper in district 6. Council member Terence Clemmons commented; “also my district wasn’t on the list as well.” Allen cited limitations on manpower and the requirement for a CDL driver for the streetsweeper; “when you look at the manpower, and you have an organized schedule, it’s not there right now.” Allen mentioned the list submitted included swept streets.

City Manager Diadra Powell commented; “We do recognize that the street sweeper is one of those things that we do need to do better on and part of that is that one of the sweepers requires a CDL.” She mentioned to her knowledge only one person had a CDL in the department. She mentioned Allen had proposed a solution; “one of the things that he’s also talked about is possibly having some type of program where we put individuals through CDL training, and then require them to do specific things, because they may leave once they get a CDL. But if we put some things in place, that [keep] them here for an extended period of time, then that may work as well.”

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