City Council Briefs
City sees water bill rise
The City of Wichita Falls will hike the price the City of Olney pays for raw water from Lake Kickapoo from 0.6441 cents per thousand gallons to 0.6924 cents per thousand gallons, City Administrator Arpegea Pagsuberon said.
Mrs. Pagsuberon told the Council at its July 10 meeting that the City buys all its water from Wichita Falls – about 12 million gallons per month at a cost of about $8,000 per month.
The increase adds up to approximately a seven percent increase. The City of Olney has a contract with the City of Wichita Falls to purchase 1 million gallons per day of water from Lake Kickapoo when Lake Cooper drops below 65 percent of capacity.
In severe drought conditions, the contract states that Wichita Falls can cap Olney from drawing more than 80 percent of its average usage for previous years.
For this reason, Mayor Rogers instructed the city public works department
BY GINA KEATING | EDITOR
to draw the maximum amount of water from Lake Kickapoo as soon as the contract allowed Olney to do so.
Busy June for code enforcement Olney Police Corporal Joe Logan is “staying really busy” in his new duties as a full-time code enforcement officer as the City goes into high gear to clean up derelict properties and tear down condemned structures.
Cpl. Logan delivered 35 door hangers and 46 letters warning owners about structural code violations, as well as 37 letters warning of grass-height violations in June, Chief Dan Birbeck told the City Council on July 10.
He also issued 23 permits and responded to 18 calls for service last month, Chief Birbeck said.
Cpl. Logan first made a sweep of code violations on city-owned properties before turning to residential cleanup projects and code violations, Chief Birbeck said.
Civic Center roof leaking
The Olney Civic Center’s roof is leaking and the City’s insurers have refused to pay for repairs, City Administrator Arpegea Pagsuberon told the Council at their July 10 meeting. “The insurance declined the claim - they are not going to help pay for it so I’m looking through companies to get roofing [quotes],” she said. The insurance company apparently paid out on a claim for the building’s roof several years ago but the money was not used to make the repairs, she said. “They told me we have tried this multiple times,” she said. “This is our second or third attempt and they told me the roof was [in] disrepair because we needed to take care of it the first, second or third time.”
Mrs. Pagsuberon said she has put out a request for proposals through a government bidding site “that will give us choices. We don’t necessarily have to replace the whole roof, they could just coat it.”
City considers billing for OVFD The City is considering billing property insurance for the costs associated with fighting wildfires to help raise money for a new fire truck. The Council discussed the idea at its July 10 meeting, after Councilmember Harrison Wellman brought up “using the insurance side of the business to apply some kind of formal charge when our city department gets called out to assist with a fire.” Mayor Pro Tem Tom Parker noted that the City “should be billing for water and tires … we are staring a fire truck in the face so we better find a way to get some money.” City Administrator Arpegea Pagsuberon said the City recouped more than $18,000 from a claim she filed for reimbursement, but added that she needs to get consistent information about the callouts to make the claims. “The citizens are paying for something they aren’t getting back and that’s the problem,” Mr. Parker said.
Mr. Wellman urged the City to “take the lead on this.”