Water projects taking place in Summit are on time, on budget and nearing the finish line with ease, an engineer told town councilmen Tuesday.
Ryan Holmes of Dungan Engineering said work is going smoothly on the rehabilitation of the Martin Luther King Drive water tank.
“When we awarded the contract a couple of months ago we were concerned because it was an unfamiliar company.,” Holmes said, adding that those concerns have since been abated. “It is one of the best contractors for painting a tank ever.”
Utility Service Co. will start the final coat on the outside of the tank this week “as long as weather continues to cooperate,” Holmes said.
Holmes said the tank should come back online soon since the interior rehabilitation is complete.
Along Sid Nash Road, where new water lines and fire hydrants are being installed, Holmes said the project is about 75% complete.
Road bores and trenching are taking place along Highway 51.
The work is making a mess of some private property, which Holmes assured will be addressed once the job is done.
“The cleanup process is usually the one we get the most complaints about and we’ll come address it. The trenches usually settle. It’s usually a two- or three-step process to get the yards cleaned back up and they will,” Holmes said.
“Just the time of year it is, we’ll probably have to plant some rye grass,” he said, adding that “summer grass” will be planted as well. “We want people’s yards to look good.”
Dead without a vote
Councilmen let two motions die for a lack of a second in the meeting, including one to pay for help with the budget and town finances and another to hire street department employees to replace two who abruptly resigned.
The first motion to die for a lack of a second was the matter of paying Kimberly Vaughn $500 for her help with the budget.
Vaughn, who works in finances at McComb City Hall, helped new Town Clerk LaTunja Lewis craft the budget that took effect this month. She’s also helping Summit sort through a backlog of financial work.
As for the street department workers, superintendent Jessie Simmons said employees Stacey Tobias and Vincent Monley quit last weekend and he had applications for two suitable replacements.
“I’m going to try to see if we can get some employees as soon as possible,” Simmons said.
He told councilmen that Monley and Tobias gave no reason for resigning. Nash encouraged the town to give exit interviews for resigning employees.
After the motion died and the council wrapped up its agenda, officials met in executive session to discuss personnel matters for an hour before emerging with no action taken.
Simmons and Town Superintendent Tim Baylor were both called into the closed-door meeting.
Mobile home request denied
After weeks of discussion, councilmen denied a resident’s request to replace her dangerously old grandfathered-in mobile home with a new one.
Aquanetta Thompson had sought leeway in town zoning laws to move a new home she bought in Hattiesburg to her lot, which is zoned R-1, while mobile homes are only permitted in a small corner of town zoned for mixed use.
“My heart goes four to the owner. It really does,” Councilman Joe Lewis said in voting down the request.
He recommended revisiting the zoning map and possibly making changes.
“I don’t think the young lady and the family realized that all was involved,” Lewis said, asking if she was aware of building codes and zoning requirements regarding manufactured homes. She said she was not and Lewis said she should have been made aware.
“Right now it’s not a good ordinance and we want to review this and redo it,” Lewis said.
The old trailer was permitted because it was in place before zoning changed to forbid similar structures from being put there in the future.
Councilman Chris Daniels, who had previously thought it counterproductive to allow a dilapidated structure that poses a fire hazard stay while forbidding someone to replace it with something better, conceded that the law offers no wiggle room.
“Are we above the law?” he said noting the previous advice of board attorney Ben Gilbert, who warned of the potential for litigation over the matter if the council allowed what would amount to spot zoning in approving Thompson’s request.
“We can’t break our own laws. We’ll be setting a bad example for the town,” he said.
More meetings
Summit’s meetings, which have in the past lasted anywhere from 15 minutes to a little more than an hour, have routinely become a two-hour-plus marathon as new councilmen adjust to their roles, and now there will be even more of them.
Councilmen authorized holding a second work session on the third Thursday of each month to go over ordinances, policies and other minutia.
“There’s a lot of stuff we need to go over. We need to look at the handbook,” said Nash, who proposed the third monthly meeting. “There’s a lot of stuff that we don’t have that we should have.”
Nash said he didn’t foresee the meeting being permanent.
