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September in the Houston city government really focused on our infrastructure, the current status, working on getting items back into a rotation of replacement and catching back up on items that were never finished. Not only was infrastructure our main focus but September also brought a new face leading the day to day operations with the hiring of Lloyd Wells, a local resident, as our new city administrator.
Looking at the city’s infrastructure, several items had been started previously but had not been worked on in the last several years. We are looking back at finishing our pole replacement program for our electric department where we will be replacing bad poles and putting into a rotation of pole replacement. Currently, the city is looking at needing to replace at least 30 poles in the next few years. We are also contracting out with a company that is helping to clear the right-of-ways in the city’s electric easements. As of right now, they are working on our major three phase lines while our city electric crew is working on the single phase lines in town. We are hoping that this helps with outages during storms and winter weather that is coming.
The city is looking at working with TREK Design Group, a civil engineering firm, to start again with smoke testing on sewer lines to help locate issues with inflow and infiltration that is affecting our wastewater treatment plant. We had worked with TREK before in 2018, when this project was first started, and they helped us locate issues where the city was able to replace or line broken sewer lines in town. The city is able to continue this project by receiving the Clean Water Engineering Report Grant that is an 80/20 match.
Our fiber splicing is still continuing with the hopes that we will be able to get the south side of town up and running in the next month. We currently have roughly 100 customers waiting to be hooked up with most of them in the PON 3 area. We are all very excited to get this project fully functional for citizens.
The city’s asphalt program also was completed in September. We were able to use all of the tax money collected plus we used partial monies from the cemetery fund to help pave some roads in the cemetery as well. We are going to work on getting a scheduled rotation of our city streets back in so that we know which roads need to be done every year.
The City of Houston is also excited to announce that we will be bringing back the “City Christmas Lighting Contest” for both residential and commercial participants. Be looking at the city’s Facebook page, in the Houston Herald and around town for more information. We are also looking forward to hiring an economic developer back into the city in the next month to help with grants, events and to be a liaison in the community for business and industrial needs.
We look forward to another productive month in the City of Houston!
VIKI NARANCICH,
MAYOR,
CITY OF HOUSTON