From Bob Schwartz, City Manager
→ GMA Member Services Task Force – I’ve been asked to serve on the GMA Member Services
Task Force. Please see the attached letter.
→ Utility Stuffer – Our stuffer for the utility bills this month is two sided. One side covers four topics
and features a picture of our police department. The other side promotes the Oxford College
Community Classroom which starts October 22. Both sides are attached here and here. And, here’s an enlarged
version of the picture of the police department in the stuffer.
→ I-20 Pedestrian Bridge– After spending some time negotiating a price with the first engineering
firm they selected, Covington decided to select another firm. The firm they started with – Atkins
North America – wanted $576,000 or about 52% of the total project cost for the design work.
Now, it’s a DOT project with some additional requirements that take time and money to satisfy,
but this was just too high. Covington has now selected the URS Corporation of Atlanta at a cost
of $194,500 or about 14%. Covington will have their first planning meeting with the new firm on
Friday, September 27. We will get an update next week on the schedule and we will start meeting
with the URS Corporation engineers soon.
→ Newton Trails – I met Wednesday with Florian Pohl to talk about our walking trails. Before meeting
with him, I got copies of all the trail easements from David Strickland who was city attorney at the time.
With two exceptions all of the trail is constructed on city property – either on unused street right-of-way
or on property that was deeded to the city. The two exceptions are a portion of the fence at George Street
park that is on property owned by Teri Williams (she never signed the easement) and the trail behind
Oxford College which is on land owned by Emory University. At some point, we probably put the oral
agreement with the previous Dean at Oxford College in writing. Florian said he could help with that. We
also talked about the maintenance of the trails. Florian will work with me to develop an agreement between
Newton Trails and the City of Oxford. It will be similar to agreements Newton Trails has in place with other
cities in the county.