Woodville City Hall to get new roof

By Mollie LaSalle
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WOODVILLE – Woodville City Council met Monday evening and considered approving the architects recommendation to award a bid for the City Hall Re-roof/Exterior Masonry Clean and Reseal Project.

According to City Manager Mandy Risinger, “$200K was budgeted for this project; in the end, it was recommended to take everything off and go all the way down to the deck, a complete re-deck and roofing project. When the bids were opened, the low bid came in at $240K, and that company wanted additional money to include a $5 million umbrella insurance policy”.

The second lowest bid was for slightly more than $240K but included the insurance policy. Merit Roofing was the second low bidder. They stated that if additional cleaning is needed, they won’t know until they tear the old roof off.

Risinger said that the city has plenty of money in the general fund to cover the extra $40K. The city will have a pre-construction meeting with the company to approve a start date for the project. Council voted to approve and award the contract to Merit Roofing.

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Also up for consideration was approval of a resolution authorizing the submission of an application for the Project Safe Neighborhood to the office of the Governor, Criminal Justice for the In-Car Video System upgrade. Risinger said, “there is a grant for $65K to cover the updates. We applied and have been approved for a grant of 39K for the body cams, and this is the second part of the upgrade. Chief McCulley has spoken to council about the need for new equipment and has been diligent enough to apply for the grants. Alderman Lee Mann asked about the age of the current equipment.

“We are at the life expectancy threshold now, probably 10 years,” said Risinger.

Council approved the resolution to purchase the next phase of the equipment for the police department.

Council next considered a resolution supporting the Alabama Coushatta Tribe of Texas in support of the Tribes of Texas Equal and Fair Opportunity Act to clarify the Tribe can enjoy the opportunity for Tribal Economic Development on terms that are equal, fair, and to protect jobs. Basically, they just want to continue to operate as they have been doing, to protect 825 jobs. The casino brings in 212 million a year in revenue, and when they had to shut down three years ago due to Covid, they continued to pay their employees wages and benefits. They want the opportunity for future expansion at the casino also. Council approved the resolution in short order.

Former mayor Paula Jones spoke before council and just wanted to say “thank you and how appreciative I am of everyone’s hard work, both the city the city administrators, mayor, police and fire department. When last week’s storm came through, it took out one of my trees, and I am sitting there worrying about how I am going to get this tree moved. All of a sudden, the city shows up and moves it out of the way. That’s a lovely thing, God answered my prayer before I even asked.”