Public hearing dates chosen for Vidalia hydro royalty spending

VIDALIA, La. — Public hearings on how the Town of Vidalia should spend excess hydroelectric royalties are scheduled for 5 p.m. on Aug. 20 and 22.

At these meetings, town residents and organizations are invited to come to offer their input on how the town should spend millions in revenue from power sold by the Sidney A. Murray Jr. Hydroelectric Station.

The preliminary meeting dates were approved during the July 9 meeting of the Vidalia Mayor and Board of Aldermen.

“It’s a new year and it’s time now to consider what to spend our surplus hydro revenues on and set dates (to discuss it),” Mayor Buz Craft said.

In previous years, Town town officials used approximately $12 million of the fund to pay off all municipal debts and continued spending between $2 million and $3 million each year to rebate utility customers.

Other visions that officials approved in 2023 include new recreational improvements, including $1.6 million for the expansion of Polk Park, new playgrounds and a splash pad among other projects.

Later plans are to add a disc golf course, skate park, dog park, new pavilions, pickleball courts, exercise equipment and bicycle and walking trails.

The town also approved the cutting of trees that are hazardous to utility lines; construction of a turnaround for North Spruce, Magnolia and Walnut streets; an afterschool tutoring program for Vidalia school children with the Concordia Parish School Board; town welcome signs, flower beds, lighting of the riverfront gazebo; decorative riverwalk banners to hang on poles along the riverfront and outdoor electrical outlets at the old Vidalia courthouse; renovation of the Concordia Council on Aging building and to purchase a safety net for the baseball fields of the recreation complex.

Another $30,000 to $50,000 was allocated to build a sidewalk along South Oak Street and $40,000 for the down payment on a veterans’ memorial wall in the Riverfront R.V. Park, an estimated $360,000 project according to Jeff McClure, one of its sponsors.

The memorial itself would be an 80 percent scale replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall in Washington, D.C. and would include the names of fallen soldiers from Iraq, Gulf Wars, Afghanistan, 9/11, World War I and World War II and Korean wars.

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