Aldermen Tweak Flood Ordinance

Mayor Larry Hart spent 40 minutes reading just the amendments to the City’s flood plain ordinance. The lengthy document satisfies federal flood insurance requirements.

By Jack Gurner
Reporter

WATER VALLEY – Aldermen met Monday and Tuesday of this week for the longest and the shortest City Board meetings of the year-old administration.

On Monday at 10 a.m. Aldermen met for what was supposed to be a quick session to open bids for overlay work at the Municipal Airport. That took eight minutes.

However, a required reading of amendments to the City’s flood plain ordinance took right at 40 minutes. The total time for the session was just under an hour.

During the meeting, Aldermen took under advisement three bids for the overlay work that varied from $207,673.82 to $297,610.00. The low bidder was Lehman-Roberts.

Luther Owens of the city’s engineering firm, Willis Engineering, was to evaluate the bids and report back to the Board on Tuesday morning.

After hearing the flood plain ordinance amendments, Board members voted unanimously to accept the amended version. The changes take effect 30 days after publication. The new flood plain map goes into effect Sept. 17.

“Sounds like you’re going to have to go down to the sports complex and put all the dugouts up on stilts,” commented Alderman Larry Bell.

Alderman Bobby Cox asked Board Attorney John Crow if the city ordinance was similar to the county’s version. Crow said that it was except that the county only requires structures to be 12 inches above the flood plain, while the city requires 18 inches.

Crow explained that the higher you build above the minimum, the better the insurance rate. “There is so little of the area inside the City affected because it is not in the plain.”

Since much of Town Creek has been declared “in the banks,” only areas around the 300 block of South Main Street are still in the flood plain.

On Tuesday morning at 8 a.m. the Board heard from Owens of Willis Engineering, who said that his firm recommended that the Lehman-Roberts low bid of $207,673.82 be accepted. The meeting lasted exactly 60 seconds.

The reason for holding the special sessions on the airport project was to beat a Federal Aviation Admini-stration grant deadline.

The next regular meeting of the City Board is scheduled for August 3.