Town Talk Church Point
Town Talk Church Point
Transforming Our Water System: Unveiling New Meters, Tower Upgrades, and Financial Fixes with Mayor Spanky
Unlock the secrets to modernizing our town's water system with Mayor Spanky as he unveils the transformative changes underway. Learn how a $4.3 million grant will revolutionize our water meters, allowing for precise monitoring and leak detection that could save you both water and money. Mayor Spanky also provides a detailed look at the refurbishment of our aging water tower, explaining why temporary inconveniences like water discoloration and air in the lines are a small price to pay for long-term benefits. Pool owners, you won't want to miss his tips on using filtration to avoid issues with brown water during this crucial upgrade.
Mayor Spanky also sheds light on the historical financial and operational challenges that have plagued our water and sewer departments. Discover how past administrations' decisions to redirect funds to the police department led to deferred maintenance and the subsequent need for increased water rates. As we look to the future, hear about the exciting projects on the horizon, including a new water tower and essential upgrades to our water and sewer plants. For a deeper dive into these important issues, don't miss our previous episode with Miss Pam from McBain Engineering. Tune in and find out how these changes will pave the way for a brighter, more efficient future for our community.
It's Chris and Mayor Spanky. Back again another Town Talk podcast. It's a podcast where we discuss different issues and happenings around town. Mayor, I know today you wanted to discuss the W word and that is water.
Speaker 2:But not in a traditional way. No, okay, the water tower.
Speaker 1:Water tower is what we want to talk about, because are there improvements coming? Yes, you want to elaborate.
Speaker 2:Yes, okay, we've got a grant that we were awarded for $4.3 million. It's going to be new meters, it's going to be the ride-alongs to where you can. There's not going to be a person checking them, it's just going to be a person checking them, it's just going to ride. And the beauty of it and that's the point I cannot wait for is if you have a leak at your house, you'll be able to call city hall and they we will be able to print a report and it will tell you by the hour how much water you're using. Wow, so a lot of times and look, I know we get called a lot every time we say it, it's just advice. Most of your leaks come from a toilet, because it'll seal one time and won't seal the next. This will show you down to the minute when it started, when it stopped.
Speaker 1:That's crazy man when it started when it stopped.
Speaker 2:So then we will be able to say that's a toilet, 100%, you know, and it's always an argument, but that's understandable. But we have that coming. We have some upgrades on the water system coming, and the one that we want to talk about today is the water tower. We're getting it refurbished, sandblasted, painted all kind of improvements that we've been needing to do. The reason why I want this podcast is to go into a deep dive on what's going to happen. Okay, because what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to make sure that 4100 people don't call city hall on the same day because break the phone line it will happen.
Speaker 2:Okay, because what happens is to go into it. The water tower is what makes your pressure okay. There's a reason why there's a long tube and then a big bowl at the top. When it's that far up, that means that's how much pressure is distributed around town. Well, when we go to do this water tower, that is going to have to be closed off. So there will be four to six hydrants that are going to be open fully for three months. So there's going to be water shooting in probably six different areas that you're going to pass by for three months and it's going to be running water. What that's doing is that's trying to maintain the pressure, because if you do not flush the lines and you don't have the tower, you will not have any pressure. Okay, so we're going to. I'm trying to make sure. Tell your friends there's not a hydrant blown out. It's nothing like that. It's what we have to do to do it. Is this costing you? No, no, the hydrants are just going to run for three months. Now will we use more chemicals?
Speaker 1:Yeah, we will.
Speaker 2:Will we pump more at the plant? Yeah, we will, but it's not going through your meter, you know. But this is the only way to get pressure to your home. Now, the other unfortunate thing with it is when this thing is dumping water from the hydrant, that churns up the pipes, so you will see brown. You will see a lot of air. Which air is when your water is cloudy, when it's got that whitish cloud? Which air is when your water is cloudy? When it's got that whitish cloud? That means there's air in your lines. When it's brown, that means that the water pipes have like little coloration and it just pumps it through.
Speaker 2:Now I can tell you from someone I know very well that went through this just now the one that you're probably not thinking about right now is a pool Pools. Once a week you pretty much have to put in an inch or two to fill it up. Well, guess what? If that water's brown and it goes in that pool, it's going to make you a Beverly Hillbillies pool. It will be brown, yeah, you know. So make sure that you understand this. Make sure you talk with fall seasonals in town or whoever you deal with on your pools. You're going to want to get some kind of water filtration on the hose that goes to your pool, because I know how much pool chemicals are and if you turn that pool brown, you're going to spend a lot of money on it and that's why I'm trying to hit it before you do it Now. We're going to keep you updated every step of the way, but I want to be prepared.
Speaker 1:When does this work begin?
Speaker 2:They're going through the contracts right now. So I'm thinking probably in the next two months, somewhere in that, and depending on when this airs, so you might be a month to three months somewhere in that area. But it will be an inconvenience. And look, when we put in the meters we're putting in 1800 new meters. It's gonna be an inconvenience and there's gonna be. You know, anytime you cut off water, the pipe goes dry. When you turn back on the water, it flushes through and it gets brown. You're gonna have coloration, like this whole process. You're gonna have a lot of that. It's not that the quality of the water is not good. We have a system. That is a plus. We haven't ranked and everything we've been ranked, but these things are unavoidable.
Speaker 1:It's just things that, for progress, we have to do yeah, so I'll try to use my words you know nicely nicely, because I don't not that I want to call anybody or any past administrations out, but am I right or wrong thinking that the water maybe not water department, but was a lot of band-aids put on and not enough work was done to what we have over the years and there's just age, to what we have in the infrastructure and now it just comes to head like, okay, we need to get this done.
Speaker 2:Okay, the best way I can say it is. What we're fighting is and I'm going to put it in a way that most people have a home Okay, you built a house. You built your house in 20 years ago, 2007. 2007. Okay, when you built it, your first three years, how much maintenance you had to do? Not much, not much. Okay, when do you start planning for that maintenance? The day you built it. So you have to have some money set aside. In a house, in a car, in anything, just like the, the town. You have to have money set aside for the day when it's not a year or two old. You gotta prepare for 2025. If you take a house and you build it today and you don't do any maintenance for 25 years, you'll be tearing down that house. Right, okay, but you're gonna have an air condition that goes out. You're gonna have this. You're going to have an air condition that goes out. You're going to have this, you're going to have that.
Speaker 2:And I'm not blaming any previous administration. They had struggles and with that came desperate situations. When I say that the police department was funded by the water department for a long time, 2012 is when they first received 1% sales tax for police. Before that it was a very small village, but that village went away and this sales tax took its place. But a lot of money from the water department was shifted to the police department to keep our town safe, which is very important.
Speaker 2:Correct? I'm not saying that it was the wrong thing to do. It was when you're desperate you have to do things and you have to make this thing run wide open, you know. So a lot of money was shifted from there that should have been being put towards the plant and I'm not going to say the kicking of the can has happened. But we're sitting on close to 25 years at the water department and we're sitting on close to 35 or 4 I think it was 1992 when the sewer was refurbished. So there's a lot of issues and there wasn't much savings from the beginning to hit those things like I mean. Right now they have one plant that's being done right now.
Speaker 2:I think it's in scott, 50 million, 50 million dollars. You know like it's crazy it is. But that's why the auditors are making us go up on rates and this and that, and people think that water is rates change by month. They do not, right. They have one meeting in September that the auditor comes and he makes his recommendations and all this stuff and we vote on it. And the auditor comes during the day and on a late September day every year and I don't know if anybody's ever attended that meeting every year and I don't know if anybody's ever attended that meeting, you know. But after the increase happens and the state makes us go up, then they're at the meeting every month, right, hollering and this and that and it's.
Speaker 2:We have no choice in it I wish I have to pay a water bill in town. I have to pay for my businesses and my house. You know like I don't want it to go up right, but when the state comes in and tells you what you got to do, or they're going to cancel all your grants and they're going to punish you and do all this stuff, well, you got a strong arm by the big brother. Yeah, I mean, we don't have money like other places with Walmarts and Sam's and McDonald's and Burger Kings and all these big sales tax.
Speaker 2:We just don't have it. So we need the government's help. And if we say, no, we're not going up on water, okay, well, we're not helping you no more. Well, that's not an option either. So it's kind of a Catch you over a barrel, yeah.
Speaker 1:And we also did a podcast about this. So, depending on how you listen to this podcast but if you go to churchpointorg, we have a player there that has all of our previous podcasts and you can go back and you can listen to the episode where you and Miss Pam from McBain Engineering talked about the whole water situation, why it went up, why the auditors and the state pretty much forced the town to go up because we were low on rates and we weren't the average of everyone else and it was just a very informative podcast and I know it was one of our most popular and most downloaded podcasts, which I'm glad that it was.
Speaker 1:But if you missed that one and you're listening to this one, please go back and check it out, yeah because that was a very informative uh deal. So, with the grants that are coming in that you mentioned, so is the water tower the first project in everything that's going to happen, like what's?
Speaker 2:the way, what's the layout? The way I'm told, and look when I say this, I've been in government for six years now it very seldom goes the way you anticipate. You know they could throw a red flag tomorrow and make it all. We gotta start the whole thing over again, you know but the ones that are chomping at the bit to start is the water tower contractors. So my opinion I think that that would be the first thing okay because when you,800 meters, there will be a backlog.
Speaker 2:They're going to have to order them in, maybe over a couple of months, or special order it or whatever. So you've got some time that you're going to have to wait on some things. So I would think that the water tile would be the first, but I'm not 100%.
Speaker 1:Okay, so that is a project that's coming. The new water meters is a project that's coming as well. Anything else you want to mention?
Speaker 2:It's going to be some different stuff that's in the plant itself.
Speaker 1:Okay, Stuff that people don't see, but there's going to be some upgrades to the water plant itself.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's not going to be a brand new water plant by any means, but it's going to get us in a better situation than we were.
Speaker 1:And I remember us talking about this and it also may have been brought up at a previous town council meeting. Is it at the water plant or at the sewer plant that has equipment that you can't even buy parts for anymore and then there's one person that can work on it because it's so old? Is that the water plant or sewer plant? Sewer plant.
Speaker 2:Now water is getting there too. We have some valves that would normally be just a few thousand dollars that we had to order for the water plant. They 52 weeks out of the year. Their weight on it was 42 weeks. Wow, because they had to manufacture them. They're so old because they had to manufacture them.
Speaker 1:They're so old they had to make them custom for what we have here in town price tag 160 or 170 000, and that would normally be just a few thousand.
Speaker 2:You know, like it's just when you, yeah, but what they call the albatross, you're right, man, it's uh, you know, and, and I mean the sewer plant, same thing we got a lot of issues that are so old that they don't make it.
Speaker 1:And when they don't make it, there is companies that make it but then just like the valves they gonna want to charge you because you gotta pay about 30 times what you would if they were still manufacturing Unreal man and they make the parts on this stuff.
Speaker 2:When you build a new plant, they guarantee that they'll have the parts for 10 years. Wow, where we passed that. We passed that 25?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and 35.
Speaker 2:35 on the suit. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean that's a long time. Yeah, I mean that's a long time, yeah, and it's crazy that that's coming to a head now.
Speaker 2:You know that's almost like the part where we're at.
Speaker 1:All that, the age on that is really coming to be a problem now.
Speaker 2:Well, and there's more problems than just that, like from a state level. There's more problems. You know, like five, ten years ago water systems weren't really looked at the same way they are now when that incident in Flint, michigan happened. Okay, and then that incident in Jackson Mississippi happened. I like to always say that states and politics at that level, they never let a good controversy go unnoticed.
Speaker 1:You got to take advantage of it.
Speaker 2:And when that happened, all this regulation came down and they, well, we need to do this and we need to do this and we need to do this, which we weren't doing before. Oh, but what we need to do is we need to hire more inspectors okay because that's going to help things.
Speaker 2:And then they make the water certification test so hard that you really hardly can pass it. And this is no lie and I'm probably not supposed to put it in public, but I don't care. We sent some guys to the water school. The teachers are not allowed to know what's on the test, so the teachers don't know what's on the test and they don't know what to teach, so they just read out of a book and hopefully you pass it. And I went to the school myself just to see how hard it was. I passed. It was tough, oh, it's very tough. And when your teachers the teachers actually was willing to take the test, but if they didn't pass the test they would automatically lose their job. So they weren't allowed to take it. They aren't allowed to look at it and these guys are grandfathered in from 20, 30 years ago. So how do you teach a class?
Speaker 1:when you don't know what you're supposed to teach. They want you to teach.
Speaker 2:That's our good old state right there. I probably got in trouble for that, but you know I'm sorry If I offended. I'm sorry.
Speaker 1:Is there anything else you want to add, mayor? No, and obviously there's some things about you that you were never a politician. You know you were not a politician, you know. So those things, or maybe saying some things, might be different than other people who consider themselves politicians or who have have positions yeah, I'm not as polished as those guys and look, ain't nothing wrong, you know what it is, you know I.
Speaker 2:I like the work side of things, the supper club, that that's.
Speaker 1:That's not my.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's not my repertoire right well, well, mayor, thank you so much and again, this is something that's happening down the road. Yeah, is also going to be something that, when these projects are getting close, we will have more information on, and obviously it's something that I think you want to try to cover as much as possible. It would be a podcast, or in the paper or who knows what, because we could probably say it a ton of times and not everybody is going to know. Would there be any like any direct mail with this?
Speaker 2:We're going to try every avenue we can to do it the biggest thing. And look, you know yourself, you're in business. The biggest thing that works is word of mouth. You know when I say this pool will be brown, it will, yeah. So if you know somebody with a pool, hey I heard spanish say something by.
Speaker 2:I was listening to the podcast you need to go to fall seasonals and get a filter or something, because something's about to happen and I don't want you to have to pay for $1,000, $2,000 worth of chemicals to get this brown water cleared. And I don't know if it'll cost $1,000 or $2,000.
Speaker 2:I'm just saying it's going to be an inconvenience and for the people they they're gonna see brown water yeah there's no way around it, you know, and they're gonna call, but maybe five out of ten people will be like, hey, there's gonna be some brown water around. They already said it on the podcast and this, that and the other. And, like I said, I want to be very direct with it because, again, rumors and things like that go crazy. You know it. We'll try to combat them as best we can, but fighting the public's opinions is not always an easy thing. I mean, you know that better than anybody.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know yeah, and the state knows we're doing it. The state's paying for it, right? So you don't have to call me and say that you're going to call the epa or the deq and all this is all approved by them they the ones told us to do it and then so, and then again.
Speaker 1:This is a project through mcbade engineering yeah, this is not something that the water department's putting together.
Speaker 2:Mcbade engineering is overseeing the project, as they have an engineering firm for the town everything and like that's what they do and I mean, uh, we've done it before, not from a water situation of this magnitude, but they're very accomplished. They've done it in many towns before and basically we're just trying to get ahead of the curve and get people to understand that cloudy water is air in the lines. That means they shut off your area to change out some water meters. When they opened it up, the air went through the lines and it's going to be cloudy for a while. You got to let it roll through. If it's brown, that means you've got some old pipes in the ground that the outside's got a little bit of copper, look, and it's going to come through. I mean, there's just nothing we can do about it. But that's what I can say.
Speaker 1:Yes, and we'll have more information definitely coming about this as we're getting closer.
Speaker 2:Any progress in a town or a municipality, you're going to have inconvenience Because to get progress you've going to have inconvenience because to get progress you got to shut some things down. You're going to have to block some driveways. You're going to have. You know it's called it. Any improvement comes with inconvenience, so just be aware of it, okay.
Speaker 1:All right, mayor. So that'll wrap it up for this episode, and we will have more concerning this as more information becomes available and we get closer to these projects and all what's going to happen, timelines, all that stuff. We'll keep you updated here. And then don't forget the Town of Church Point Facebook page. So, as always, mayor, thank you so much.
Speaker 2:Thank you, y'all have a great one.