This is a short week. City offices will be closed tomorrow, July 4th. All our departments spent a large part of Monday cleaning up after the TNT Fest. We received overwhelming positive feedback from the event. The flow of visitors was steady throughout the day, and when the band started at 8:00 PM the crowd definitely grew. Everyone enjoyed the fireworks, and we even received a lot of positive feedback from residents that watched from various parts of town as well as in the county.
The sand volleyball court was a huge success. People played volleyball until it was too dark to play anymore. We have to give kudos to Jesse Maxwell for his idea to use the sand to build a "Big Beautiful Beach" at the lake. People were enjoying the new beach area before we even finished smoothing out all the sand.
Council Members Joel Hood, Shawnea Smith and I attended the Community Assessment Workshop hosted by the EDC on Monday night. The intent of the meeting was to review and discuss the Community Assessment that was recently completed by Texas A&M in order to determine the needs of the City. There was some very good discussion and ideas generated from the meeting.
Frank Hefner, Jack County Emergency Management Coordinator, and I had several discussions with Oncor regarding the repeated power outages. Oncor has been doing a lot of work around town to harden the infrastructure. However, in an effort to avoid any additional power outages, they decided to stop that work until they complete work on the new relay on the south part of town.
I met with representatives from TXDOT, Judge Umphress, Sheriff Hauger and a Location Manager for the series Landman. Next week they will be filming several scenes in front of the Police Department. There will be some disruption of traffic on East Belknap on Monday and Tuesday as they prepare for the filming. On Wednesday, the day of filming, East Belknap between Main Street and Church Street will be completely closed.
The Animal Shelter continues to be full, however we have had success adopting several animals. Eighty percent (80%) of our dogs have come from the county where people continue to dump them on the road. The Friends of the Shelter submitted a grant request for funding to build the Community Dog Park and a Cat Habitat building. We also confirmed that the sun shades will be installed over the outdoor dog runs within the next few weeks.
The Distribution and Collection Crew, combined with the Building Inspector responded to thirty-nine (39) calls for service regarding water and wastewater issues, as well as inspections. The Code Enforcement Officer was also busy contacting residents regarding high grass and weeds.
The Sheriff's Department continued to patrol the City and issued over forty (40) citations so far. We will swear-in our new Chief of Police, Jerry Penny, on Monday, July 7th. We invite the community to meet him at City Hall at 8:30. Chief Penny is ready to get to work.
Leslie Jackson and Shalyn Burritt share our Employee Spotlight of the Week. These two were instrumental in planning and scheduling TNT Fest, and worked tirelessly all day to make sure it was a success. All of our employees worked hard to make sure the event was enjoyable for everyone. Thank You All.
Our next City Council meeting is Monday, July 14th. Have a Happy 4th of July.
Respectfully,
Mike S.
MICHAEL R. SMITH, Lt Col, USAF (ret)
City Manager