From Bob Schwartz, City Manager
→ MEAG Briefing – I attended a briefing by Bob Johnston, MEAG president, in Monroe on
Friday, November 1. Here are some of the issues he mentioned:
• MEAG is expecting a 6% cost increase in CY2014. This is caused by an increase in scheduled
debt repayments.
• Total kWh usage is down system wide by about 3% and this makes it harder to absorb cost
increases.
• The EPA has issued rules on carbon dioxide emissions for new coal fired power plants that
essentially prohibits the construction of new coal fired power plants.
• MEAG is concerned about the EPA ruling that will be issued in about eight months that will
regulate carbon dioxide emissions for existing coal fired power plants. Overall MEAG generates
about one-third of its power with coal fired plants (the Oxford percentage is closer to one-half).
No one knows what EPA is going to require.
→ Allcall – Sophicity has made the changes and now we can access our allcall feature from any
email address. If you send an email to allcall@oxfordgeorgia.org it will be automatically forwarded
to the Mayor and all councilmembers along with me, Lauran, Dave, and Jody.
→ Bus Parking for Oxford College– We solicited three, but only received two, bids for the parking
pad on Asbury. The low bid was from Designed Installations (Jim Williams) for $5,980. Since the
other bid was for $7,760, we issued the purchase order to Designed Installations.
→ Emory and Asbury Water Project – Our engineers, Carter and Sloope, are reviewing the bids we
received Thursday afternoon. They will have a recommendation on the lowest, responsive bid for
our November 18 work session. These have not yet been evaluated, but here is a list of the bids
received. We will have a full report of the total project cost including engineering and its impact on
our SPLOST budget at the meeting.
→ More Bids – We have received the bids for grounds maintenance. We will review this very carefully
and then discuss them during the work session November 18. We had talked about this with the
building and grounds committee, but now that we have bids in hand, we will review it with the entire
council. We have sent a copy of the RFP to Council. The proposed contract would service the grounds
at city hall, the public works barn, the Whatcoat Building, and George Street Park. It would also cut
the grass on the rights of way. We had a preliminary estimate from Holder Landscaping of $52,000 for
a one year contract. The bids that we received Wednesday were widely spread. The low bid is very much
lower than the others. Jody and I have already met with the owner, Dennis Tuley, on Friday and will
spend time next week carefully reviewing his bid.
→ City Council Retreat– We will receive copies of the notes from Mott and Jim soon. In the meantime,
I have attached a copy of the slides I used for the background information.
→ Franchise Fee Payment Compliance Review – We have asked GMA (see enclosed letter SKMBT)
to conduct a review of our franchise payments from Comcast. This is a service that GMA offers as part
of its telecommunications package which we subscribe to.
→ Oxford College Community Classroom – The third lecture in the series will be next week on Tuesday,
November 12 from 4 – 5 PM. Professor of Anthropology Bradd Shore from the Emory Atlanta campus
will discuss “A Midsummer Night’s Dream and the Anthropology of Love”.
→ Oxford Lion’s Club– I was the guest speaker for the Oxford Lions on Thursday, November 7, 2013.
I used the attached quiz to start our discussion. See how many answers you know.
→ Oxford Historical Society Fall Meeting – The next meeting is tonight - Friday, November 8 with speaker
Ken Thomas, a noted Georgia historian and author to talk about what surnames indicate about a family’s
heritage.
→ City of Oxford’s Storm Water Management Program (SWMP) – We have an annual requirement to
prepare a Storm Water Management Program. This is something Hoyt Oliver used to do. For the last two
years we have contracted with one of the engineers who works for Covington, Mr. Tres Thomas, to
prepare our report and help us work with the state Department of Natural Resources. You should know
that Tres did such a good job this year, that the state is using our Storm Water Management Program as
a model for other cities.
→ Police Department– Here are the graphs showing the totals for October.
