The City of Pinehurst is a few steps closer to using $6.8 million to rehabilitate the community that was flooded during Harvey two years ago. The City Council on Tuesday approved contracting with Schaumburg and Polk for engineering services and with David J. Waxman for administration services on a Community Development Block Grant to cover disaster recovery from Harvey.
City Administrator Robbie Hood stated this grant from the Texas General Land Office will go into effect shortly. Mayor Dan Mohon commented, “With this of course we can get on with our infrastructure repair, street repair, and whatever else that was damaged with Harvey, and that’s great.”
Hood will have a conference call in the next few weeks to get the ball really rolling on the project. Improvements will include moving the city’s waste-water plant to higher ground, bursting of sewer lines to eliminate infiltration in them, and resurfacing many of the streets that were inundated because of Harvey.
The Pinehurst Police Department will be applying for three grants to receive funds to purchase new radios and a server for the information systems at the police department. The radios themselves are valued at $5,000 each. The three grants total about $30,000.
Police Chief Fred Hanauer told how important these grants will be for his department. “We have to replace these radios. By allowing us to do the grants it’s really better for us, and it doesn’t cost our taxpayers directly,” Hanauer expressed to the council.
Hanauer presented the City Council the 2019 Racial Profiling Report for the Pinehurst Police. He said there were no grievances filed against the department for racial profiling in the last year from the 1,069 total contacts made by the police in Pinehurst.
The City Council saw a PowerPoint presentation from Code Enforcement Officer Harry Vine and his technical advisor Justin Trahan. Ten properties were shown that are considered dilapidated. Vine wants to demolish these structures if they are not repaired to code standards.
Vine explained the problem with dilapidated structures in the city is they tend to lead to more trashy properties. “Crime and grime, they go together. If you’ve got grime, you’re going to have crime, one breeds the other. The more that we get things cleaned up the better, safer, cleaner city we’re going to have,” Vine stipulated.
Next month Vine indicated he plans to bring requests to the council to demolish at least three of the properties that were shown in the presentation Tuesday night. The next meeting will be March 10.
-Dan Perrine, KOGT-
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