From Bob Schwartz, City Manager
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→ Sewer Tap Letters – We mailed the attached letter to eighteen customers Tuesday afternoon. These are examples of the three types of letters depending on whether or not the tap fee had been paid and whether or not the customer was in the 2009 project and was notified in 2011. I’ve had conversations with three people who received the letter:
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One family said they thought they had paid the tap fee some time ago. We double (and triple checked) and found that they had. I sent them a corrected letter stating that the tap fee was paid and the deadline for connecting to the sewer system had not changed.
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One family said that the previous property owner had paid a tap fee in 1989. They also brought a copy of the receipt from the city from 1989. I let them know that they would not have to pay a tap fee but the deadline for connecting to the sewer remained the same.
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One family said that they agreed with our records that they had paid the tap fee in 2011 and realized that we could not put this off any longer.
We will probably hear from more of the 18 we sent letters to next week.
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Councilmember of the Month – Mayor Roseberry has appointed Ms. Vivian Harris as the honorary councilmember of the month for November. Her lunch and tour will be October 17. Here’s a picture of October’s councilmember of the month with Chief Harvey.
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WE FOUND IT!! Jody has been on vacation this week, but he has been staying in touch. On Thursday, he called to say that the contractor had found the valve that stopped the flow to the old Emory Street water line. So, now in the next two weeks the contractor will pump the old line full of concrete and we will be all done with the project except for planting the replacement trees in December.
This was a long and laborious process. First, the contractor disconnected all the known connections to the old line and made new connections for each customer to the new line. We also disconnected several lines that went under Emory Street to connect with the rest of the city system. We still had a small flow that we estimated was coming from a 1 ½” or 2” line. The contractor cut the line on Emory Street twice to isolate segments. We installed a valve to cut off another portion. We were left with the line between Clark and Hamill. We had Len Strozier, who has done the ground penetrating radar at the cemetery, come over for an afternoon. Len has a side business of locating underground utilities for cities. He located a bunch of lines. After Jody removed the lines that had already been cut from the list, we had 12 left. Jody and Scottie and the contractor put their heads together and dug out the most likely suspect – and that was it! There was an old valve connecting a line in front of the old city hall with the line under Emory. We turned it off and the old line under Emory is now dry.
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