Clarksville seeks to restructure infrastructure plan
Published: Mon, 11/27/23
Clarksville seeks to restructure infrastructure plan
The Paris NewsBy David Money
Updated
CLARKSVILLE — City leaders battled to a compromise during a council meeting dealing with getting water to residents and making money on the water going to customers.
It all started when city engineer David Williams told the council that the prices for improvements the city had planned to do involving the industrial tower, water lines around the city and new water meters had mushroomed. Therefore all the projects could not be tackled with the current USDA funds that had already been bid out.
The cost for the total project was around $6.8 million, but there was only around $5 million available.
“We had to make some choices,” he said. “We tried to evaluate the biggest needs for the city,”
He said, noting it was up to the council to decide, the most pressing needs for the city were to refurbish the industrial tower and replace many of the water lines in the city.
That is where the disagreement came in.
Councilman Gary Gray was stunned that that plan included no new water meters.
Some of the other council members argued that fixing the water lines, which they said was an almost constant problem because of numerous leaks, big and small, is a greater need than new water meters.
Still, Gray protested that the city had spent so much time talking about how the new water meters would save money by being more efficient in the amount of water residents were charged for. He was not ready to let them just disappear.
But starting all over with new bids that would change the city’s priorities would simply lengthen the process and costs would likely rise again, others stated.
So the council reached an agreement.
The council directed Williams to go back to the contractors and the USDA to see if they would still authorize the contract pending a revision of adding the water meters and reducing the percentage of water lines to be replaced. Williams will return with his finding at a later meeting.
The council also awarded a new contract to Sanitation Solutions at an increase of a little over 6% which is lower than last year’s 8% increase.
Carolyn Finley was sworn in as the new council member. She replaces Lyntrevion Scott who resigned earlier this year when he moved out of Ward II that he had represented.