Three Rivers Mayor James Liska introduced Lisa Kelley, area specialist with the Texas USDA Rural Development State Office. Kelley began by saying, “I am here today to issue a letter of conditions for a loan and grant to the city of Three Rivers. The city placed an application with the USDA several months ago for the purchase of emergency generators and the funding has become available. I think you got a pretty good deal. You have been approved for a loan of $68,117 and a grant of $83,254.”
The letter of conditions stipulates what is required of the city to take advantage of the funding. Security for the loan will be for one year at 4% interest rate (fixed rate) and begins at next fiscal year. “The city has a year from that point to pay it back and, of course, the grant is a grant. So do you want me to go through this whole letter?” asked Kelley. Liska turned to City Administrator Rosie Forehand and asked if she had gone through the letter. Forehand answered in the affirmative and said there was nothing out of the ordinary with the conditions.
Liska asked Kelley if the city had to accept the loan to take advantage of the grant. Kelley said yes, that was one of the stipulations. “But this is not stimulus money it comes from our general fund. If the council decides to go with funding, I have some forms you need to sign today but does not in any way encumber you to do anything. All it is going to do is finalize the obligation of funds and keep the funds at a set interest rate until the time you want to exercise the funding,” Kelley added.
Following acceptance of the USDA funding, the city council went on to discussion of the wording of Resolution 6081 with regards to the Diamond Shamrock’s Texas Enterprise project application. According to Caitlin Glenn with Ryan & Company, the word “substantially” needs to be removed from the first paragraph so that the wording is exactly the same as it was before. “The resolution was rejected because there was one word that was different than it was before. The word is going to be removed from the resolution; that way it will be the same as before,” said Liska.
The agenda item to repair the swimming pool at the Three Rivers Municipal Park was tabled following a brief presentation by Public Works Director Rocky Mendez. “About a year ago we talked to Chavez Pools. If you remember they did some work to the deck. At that time that was all we were able to do. Eventually, we knew we would have to do some more repair to that deck; since then it has gotten worse on the end where the diving board is. There was a section that Salazar had replaced and since that has been replaced it has already settled quite a bit. That end of the pool has quite a few cracks in the concrete. Back in January of last year, we received an estimate of $16,328 plus another $4,940 for repairs. But this is not current; he sent another quote on Feb. 4 of this year to redo the whole deck for $86,794 and then there is the seal around the pool that is leaking, causing concrete to crack, and to redo that seal would be an additional $4,000 for a total of $90,794.”
Mayor Liska asked if there were any other quotes and he said he had a verbal quote from Ryan Cantu. “Basically he is saying we should redo the whole thing because the pool is not level. He said to solve that problem we would have to lower the skimmers and expose all the plumbing.” Cantu’s estimate came to $101,500. Upon hearing the verbal bids, aldermen decided to table the agenda item to repair the pool and wait for written bids.
The city council ordered a general election for municipal officers to be held on May 8, 2010, to elect the following city officers: place one alderman, place two alderman and place three alderman. Candidates for the three offices may file their applications with Forehand until March 8.
The agenda item to discuss personnel matters was held in closed session from 6:01 p.m. until 7:48 p.m. When the council emerged from closed session, they went straight to item nine of the agenda relating to employee personnel policy. A motion was made to clarify personnel policy, stating there will be no more “light duty.” In other personnel matters, seven sick days were reinstated for one employee.
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