City of Lanett news: Town Hall notes, council recap

BY JOHN BRICE

FOR THE LAFAYETTE SUN

Town Hall Notes

LANETT — Community leaders and local residents gathered together for a town hall meeting hosted by Lanett City Council Member for District 3 Brad Lynn at the Jane K. Farrar Event Center on Aug. 13. Lynn started by welcoming the attendees and setting expectations for the meeting where they had the opportunity to join with their fellow neighbors to listen, voice concerns and ask questions about their city government.

“When we started out, the No. 1 priority for me when I ran for city council was the safety and protection of our citizens,” Lynn said. “I am here to say after nine months of being with them, watching them, observing them and meeting with them, I can tell you that Lanett, as small as a town as we are, we have a top notch fire department and police department. We are very proud of our police and firemen and the job they do every day.” 

Lynn described his vision for moving Lanett forward into the future. 

“Our No. 2 was to try to have a clean and affordable place to live and obviously better housing in Lanett,” he said. “We want to get it cleaned up and make it attractive because it will then bring us to our next goal which is to bring new businesses and better jobs to Lanett so that our citizens will prosper. We have had some progress in that direction, and we are hoping to make a lot more progress.” 

Lynn also addressed concerns about the city’s financial condition. 

“The next goal was to be financially secure for the city. We have had several finance committee meetings now and we are working on the budget for next year,” Lynn said. “We just want to say that we are making progress in that direction, but the city is very fortunate to have its own utilities. Of course, they have to be maintained, and we are doing some infrastructure now.”

Maintaining the city’s infrastructure was a particular subject in focus for Thursday night’s meeting. 

“We are not by ourselves in this regard. A lot of small towns throughout America, their infrastructure was put in 50, 60 years ago,” Lynn said. “Right now, we have a grant to replace the gas lines throughout the city, so that is where you see the guys digging them up. We hope to get a grant to pave our streets. We are doing some paving now, but we hope to get a big grant to really pave some streets and build some curbs like we did for the downtown project to make it more attractive.”

Government grants and the budgetary solutions they offer were another priority that Lynn discussed. 

“We are really working on the budget as far as where our priorities need to be,” he said. “We have been, and we will continue to be successful by getting grants through being a small town in a rural area. We have gotten a lot of grants, and we will get more, we hope. We have also got to maintain our infrastructure, especially the utilities that produce the most revenue for our city.”

Lanett City Council Recap

Operational challenges being faced by the water department were a topic of discussion at the Lanett City Council meeting on Monday, Aug. 17. Mike Sides spoke on behalf of Water Superintendent Richard Chapman, who was not at the meeting.

Sides said the department has been focusing more on replacing aging infrastructure than repeatedly patching problem areas.

“We have been doing a lot more replacement than patching,” he said. “Unless there is a main we have got put in the budget to replace. Service lines we are replacing. We have been blessed that we were able to get a new machine for our department.”

Sides also addressed ongoing problems involving recently installed water meters, including missed installations, incorrect addresses and incorrect meter numbers.

“We have done a lot more water and sewer taps here lately. We are adding more people to the system. I have got a representative here, Katie Hill, that has been helping us with some of this water loss issue.”

Sides said the department is still correcting problems left from the meter installation project.

“If you all don’t mind her speaking on our behalf on some of the things we have gone over, meters,” he said. “I will say the contractors that came in, as far as our department, we are still changing meters they didn’t do. Missed them, put them in wrong, wrong addresses, wrong numbers. It was kind of a mess there for a little while.”

He said Hill of ClearWater Solutions, had also completed a report comparing the amount of water the city is purchasing with the amount being sold.

“She has done a full report on what we are purchasing, what we are selling,” Sides said.

ClearWater Solutions,  provides support services to the city’s water system. Hill told the council she reviewed one month of customer billing records as part of an effort to identify possible water-loss and meter issues.

“As Mike mentioned, I did a study of a month’s worth of bills of all the customers,” she said. “I looked at how many customers you have. I looked at how many meter readings were zero usage.”

Hill said the review identified 278 accounts that showed no water usage for the month, indicating the city needs to determine whether the readings are accurate or whether problems exist with the meters or account information.

“There were 278 accounts that had zero usage for one month. That right there tells me that there is a problem somewhere.”

Hill said the department is now working to determine how long those accounts have been showing zero usage and whether the issue is with the meters themselves.

“I made some suggestions of what we need to look at,” she said. “How long have those meters been reading zero? Is this something that just happened or has it been for a while? We also need to look at all of those accounts once they have been checked to make sure there is not a problem with the meter itself. So, those are just some things that they are working on now.”

In other business the council:

• Read a proclamation in recognition of members from the Lanett Senior Center who participated in the Masters Game hosted by Masters Games of Alabama.

• Approved a resolution on a nuisance abatement for a property owned by Oscar Davis at 912 North 8th St. for an amount of  $6,000.

• Approved a resolution on the surplus status of a refrigerator at the cemetery office.

• Approved a motion approved for the hazard mitigation plan.

• Approved a motion for a lease agreement with Aspire Aviation LLC.