Office Depot/Sears

I have been asked before about the arrival of an Office Depot to the area. There has been one slated to arrive as the anchor store for the center where Corky's and Little Caesar's is currently located. Sears is also set to move in between the Office Depot and Little Caesar's and will remain the smaller hardware focused franchise (compared to the larger Sears located in Columbus). Office Depot is still supposed to arrive; however, due to national economic issues, they have slowed down their rate of growth and have their project here delayed until sometime this fall/winter. In the meantime they have floor plans submitted to our building department and have a hold on the property in question. To those still unsure, consider that if Office Depot weren't coming there would have already been a lease sign out there in an attempt to find a new tenant.

An Apology

I made the mistake of taking the fact that the new electric department website was up as a green light that the billpay feature was also active. As a result, a few people have been confused why they're unable to access their accounts online. While the website is up, it won't be until sometime in September until the billpay feature is active. I forgot the first rule of proper programming technique, always beta test first.

Starkville Mentioned in USA Today!

Please go to this link to read an USA Today story that mentions Starkville, MS.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/environment/2008-08-06-Buildgreen_N.htm?loc=interstitialskip

It regards the adopt of LEED standards for our public buildings. Our new city engineering, Ed Kemp, deserves the bulk of the credit for presenting the concept to us. I was glad to see unanimious support amongst the board in holding ourselves to a higher standard of development.

Starkville in Motion Meeting Tonight!

Tonight (August 11th) at 6:30 at the Bost Extension Center Starkville in Motion will have it's monthly meeting. This meeting is important to both the residents of Ward 4 and the city at large because it will deal primarily with the Cotton Mills development. From the Starkville in Motion Facebook group:

The focus this week will be on educating ourselves about the Cotton Mill development and TIF bond projects in Starkville, with special guests Chris Campany and Taze Fulford, landscape architects and local activists.

Blog Updates

I took a few days off blogging to visit my grandfather in Jackson, TN, who is 88 and not in the best of health. My grandmother had passed away years ago and it's sad to see him in this state.

In better news, a shoutout to my friend and constituent Wesley McGrew (Weasel as we call him) for discovering a major software security flaw. Wesley is a PhD candidate at MSU. Link to article.

We had our regular board meeting last night. It started at 4:30 and didn't get out until around 9pm. We first listened to a presentation from our courts and city clerks departments (which I'll post about individually like I have been for other departments). Then at 5 we heard a budget overview from Alderman Cox, who touched on the enterprise funds, which are seperate from our general fund. These are the funds generated by self-sustaining entities such as water, sewer, sanitation, and electric.

Finally the regular meeting started at 5:30 and lasted until 9pm. We scheduled two public hearings to talk about the upcoming fiscal budget and possibility of a millage increase. They're scheduled for August 18th, and Sept. 2nd. More information and a more in-depth overview of the meeting will be provided tomorrow.

Information Technology Report

Following a series of departmental reports I'm sharing with you all, our IT director, Al Quinn, shared his report regarding what is the city's smallest department. IT consists of Al and an on-call employee Chad, who also works in the engineering department. Together, they keep the city running by fixing any and all technical issues. Ask any department head and they can tell you how important these two guys are to keeping everything working.

I work closely with Al in the technology committee that I asked the city to form. We've worked with and updated the software at the electric department, which by the way will start allowing people to pay their electric bill online in about a month through the website http://www.starkvilleelectric.com (the website isn't up just yet, should be within a month)

We also made a major update to the software used by the police and courts. This is important because the old software would sometimes crash every other day, stopping court entirely and resulting in people having to wait and time lost. The new software also works with the computer units we're retrofitting our police cars with. They allow them to pull up information on vehicles and also records the events during the officer's time in his car. Video recordings are valuable because there have been incidents where a person may claim an officer treated them bad, but with the video evidence that can be proved or laid to rest conclusively and without the time, trouble, and potential legal proceeds that previously plagued the department.

Click here for a copy of Al's presentation if you're interested and please feel free to email me if you'd like to learn more about our committee or have any suggestions.

Yesterday's Budget Meeting

I was discouraged by a few things regarding yesterday's budget meeting. First off, there was no press notification. I published it in my blog, but assumed any notification would be properly handled by our Chief Administrative Officer as usual. Having the entire board at a meeting without press notification is not only unethical but illegal. I'm meeting with Bryan Hawkings from the Starkville Daily News today to give him an update on what was discussed at the meeting.

The purpose of the meeting was to give a preliminary outline of the upcoming fiscal budget. The good news was that so far this year we had budgeted for a 3% increase in our sales tax revenue and we ended up with 3.9% which amounted to around $50,000 extra. The bad news is that our ad valorem taxes came up shorter than expected. Budget committee chairman Matt Cox stated he believed the housing issues affecting the nation could be affecting us locally. Regardless, so far we projected a shortcoming of roughly $200,000 for the next budget year without considering any outside contributions (Red Cross, Boy Scouts, etc) except for the ones we have a legal or emergency obligation to, which include the library, Heritage Museum (because we own the building), Humane Society, and ambulance services for our police/fire departments. Given this budget year isn't over, these numbers could change over the new 2 months; however, there is a chance the board may have to make some difficult decisions for the upcoming year.

I'll scan and provide some of the documents given in a follow up post.

Next Up: Sanitation Department

I wanted to share the progress each department has made and so today I wanted to touch on our sanitation department. Sharon Boyd is our department head, appointed during our first year of this board. Previously sanitation was under the public works department.

Sharon recently presented her goals for the upcoming year in a power point presentation to the board. Click here for a copy of the presentation.

The biggest change out of the department this year was the Solid Waste ordinance. This cleaned up some of the confusion with the previous ordinance as well as requiring that garbage be both bagged and in a can and got rid of the unsightly open corral's where people would collectively dump their garbage.

Although it was done earlier in our term, you may also recall the change of the city dumpsters to maroon with dog prints on it. That was Sharon's idea and one that I think made the dumpsters look a lot better and very little cost.

One purchase that the sanitation department is requesting is a new rideable device for collecting litter. Our street sweeper is limited to the street and therefore is unable to get around to where garbage is left after the many numerous events held around the city. Sharon was able to figure the cost of the device into her budget without requiring any sort of cost increases, which I think is admirable. This device would make it much easier to clean up after our big-name events.

It was previously called the MadVac 101; however, it's recently had a design change and is now called the LR50. Click here for a pdf showing the device. Also, you can go to http://picasaweb.google.com/apollmueller/LR50Final?authkey=keuS2xnt-ic if they would like to see additional pictures of the device.

In closing I would like to thank both Sharon and her department for the work they've done this year. They've done an outstanding job.

Preliminary Budget Meeting Scheduled

It's getting to be that time of year again where the board of aldermen are tasked with compiling the budget for the '08-'09 year. The budget is due in mid-September and goes into effect on October 1st. A preliminary meeting to discuss some of the aspects of this year's budget has been scheduled for the conference room of city hall at 8:30am on Monday, July 23rd.

Park Amenities

Back at the Mississippi Municipal League conference down in Biloxi, MS, I met a representative of Playworld Systems. They were demoing their line of products for parks. Of particular interest to me were two amenities they sell: equipment for skateparks and exercise stations that can be placed along walking paths.

I think the exercise stations could be a great addition to our parks. One idea would be to have a walking path around the Sportsplex and provide the stations for parents to use while their children are playing at the fields.



The other product line, concerning skateparks, could be of help in getting one off the ground in the area. There have been some who would like to see a skatepark. I remember that some people were going to try to start one in Caledonia, but I'm not sure if they were successful or not. They also recommend some communities do it in phases so it's not such a financial burden to purchase all of that equipment at once. Here is a link to a pdf of one of the skateparks they did. The outline shows how the skatepark was assembled in three phases.



My next step is to facilitate a meeting between the park commission and a representative from their company to see if there is interest in pursuing either of these ideas and whether they would be feasible in light of the park's budget.