City News

Tonight, we received notice of another $267,000+ in state grant money to finish our sidewalk and lighting project we've worked on over the last several years. The project will cover the area now used by the old Health Tex building. This stretch of sidewalk and lighting will finalize this phase of our downtown beautification project. We have two years to complete the project and will attempt to allow the on-going Brownsfield grant to run it's course before beginning work. Once the Brownsfield project is finalized, we should be able to remove the Health Tex building from it's foundation. When the sidewalk project is completed, sidewalks will encompass the entire downtown area giving pedestrians access to the High School on the north side, the city park, pool, and water slide on the west side, the railroad tracks on the south side, and 3M on the east side.

This beautification project has allowed more of our residents an opportunity to enjoy our downtown area and has made it more attractive to potential commercial development. Heather and I use the downtown sidewalks a few nights each week to exercise and are always joined by a number of residents who are using them for the same purposes or just out for an evening stroll.

In other news, we approved our portion of a matching grant the Marion County Drug Task Force uses each year for funding their operation. Unfortunately, we use their services more than we'd like, but they always do a great job and we are very willing to do our part. Also, in the coming weeks, look for one of our new fire trucks to be delivered and ready for use. Our volunteer fire department does an excellent job for our community and we are proud to finally bring in a new truck. And with the grant money we received several months ago, we were able to order a second new truck and new personal equipment for our firefighters.

And finally, in tonight's meeting, Mayor Segraves gave us and those in attendance a quick rundown of the sequence of events over the last two years which led us to the Magna announcement last week. Some of that's already been discussed, but I'm still amazed at how large this project was and how much work went into it. With local and state funding, there was over 50 million dollars tied up in this project. While we didn't land it, I feel confident the exposure received and the ground work we laid will ultimately payoff for this region in high paying jobs and increased revenue.