From Bob Schwartz, City Manager
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→ Criminal Justice Information System Certification - Dawn Towns has completed her fourth and final course to be certified to access portions of the GBI database. This will make preparing for court and assisting the police department much easier. It is not an easy or short course. Dawn spent a lot of time on the Internet taking the classes and passing the tests. Click here to view her certification. Congratulations to Dawn!
→ Bridge on the Trail - We have issued a Purchase Order to Designed Installations (Jim Williams) to repair the bridge at the southern end of the trail. The total is $1,950 and repairs will be made to the broken stringers, the broken deck, and the broken handrail. The work should be done soon.
 → Line Truck – In 2005 we spent $10,500 to buy a used line truck at an equipment auction. The line truck makes the heavy lifts of transformers to the top of poles. It drills (digs) the holes and sets new poles. It also removes poles when necessary. We don't use it every day but when we need it; we need it. It's not the sort of equipment we can borrow on a regular basis from Covington Electric. We have attached a picture of the line truck working with the bucket truck to remove a downed pole behind Palmer Stone. The line truck is on the left.
We found out Wednesday that the line truck needs some serious repairs. The main cylinder that extends the boom on the line truck is broken. It is leaking hydraulic fluid all over the place. The Snapping Shoals EMC repair shop often does work on our big electric trucks. They estimate the cost for rebuilding the cylinder at $4,000. On the other hand, if the cylinder cannot be rebuilt (and we won’t know until it is taken completely apart) we will need to install a new cylinder and new hoses. The total cost for this could be as much is $14,000. This approaches the cost for a replacement used truck. So that the City Council will have enough information to make a decision we are doing the following:
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- Jody is getting another price from a second shop for the necessary repairs.
- We are going to check on the cost for a replacement used truck. We will look at several recent auctions and see what is available.
- We will also look at what the cost would be for a new replacement truck.
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→ Georgia Trail Summit - On June 4th and 5th I attended the Georgia Trail Summit in Athens on behalf of the city. There were 178 participants. There is a lot of interest in building, expanding, using, and promoting trails in Georgia. This includes walking, biking, hiking, and water paddling trails. Many of the Power Point presentations and some of the other material are summarized on this website. Here is some other information I picked up during the conference:
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- Generally, the minimum trail is 10 feet wide with about 5 feet of flat surface on both sides of the trail.
- Runners prefer asphalt surfaces.
- Athens has made walking trails a part of every SPLOST referendum they have had.
- Dr. Richard Jackson of the UCLA Medical Center presented a part of the program. He has written Making Healthy Places and Designing Healthy Communities. He contends that a city should be built so that people get more exercise. And, he says the only way to get people to exercise is to create beautiful places.
- Often, sewer easements can be turned into trails.
- Eventually the Atlanta trail system will extend all the way east to Conyers.
- The PATH Foundation builds trails and helps design trails. They have an interesting website at www.pathfoundation.org
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→ Five Year History – State law requires that we place the attached ad in the newspaper and have a public hearing to discuss the millage rate for next year. The public hearing will be part of our July 20th work session.
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