Town Talk Church Point
Town Talk Church Point
We are addressing some of the rumors and online chatter about water in Church Point with facts from Mayor Spanky
Today's episode focuses on the challenges and necessary choices regarding the town's water infrastructure and funding through grants. Mayor Spanky discusses the impact of new technologies on water billing, the importance of community engagement, and the upcoming improvements to the water system.
• Crucial role of grants in revitalizing infrastructure
• Recent increase in water bills explained through new meter readings
• Transition to automatic meter readings and an upcoming app for monitoring usage
• Addressing social media misinformation and the need for transparency
• Interconnectedness of water, sewer, and road improvement projects
• Importance of community feedback and participation at town meetings
Here we are with another episode of the Town Talk podcast. It is Chris and Mayor Spanky. What's happening? Mayor, how are you?
Speaker 2:It's all great man Just making it through another day.
Speaker 1:That's it Now. Today, our topic will once again be water. Where do you want to start, mayor? Where do you want to start with today's podcast episode?
Speaker 2:The grants. Let's go with that, let's go into that and then we'll go into the whole process and go into that. When I was elected, the town said we got to get grants, we got to get grants. And what I did? I went after grants. And what I did, I went after grants. And it seems like every time we go after a grant and we get one and they start doing construction. It's an inconvenience, but that's how we progress.
Speaker 2:Our town is through grants. If you don't want grants, then the town will go down the drain. But I'm trying to get as much free money as I can, because the sewer plant was did in 1992 and the water plant was done in 2002. And minimal repairs were done in all those years and now it's showing its ugly head. So we have to have the grants, so we have to have the inconvenience. And that's where we're at right now and I'm getting a lot, a lot of complaints about getting those grants. The town absolutely needs it, but at the same time the state requires that you make a certain amount of money per customer in water and sewer and if you don't get that, they won't give you those grants. So we have to make a decision. So we have to make a decision. Do we want to pay cheap rates and let the whole infrastructure fall, or do we do what the state tells us and go after free money? That's a choice that we got to make, and I'm on the side of grants because that's what every single person in this town said they wanted. Now, if they don't want that, we need to come to the council meeting and tell us We'll stop. Our job gets so much easier if we don't do anything. That's why you see other mayors in other towns do nothing because of this exact issue right here. Nothing Because of this exact issue right here, because every time you fight to do something here comes a big old to do and we're going to go from here to the next step while we're sitting here talking.
Speaker 2:The thing of it is is, this month a lot of people have seen their water bills go up. Yep, it's true. That's because we went from manually reading the water meters, that's, by hand, which we were accused of not doing for so long. We're doing them. There's no way you can't read them, because you'd get a $. Takes three weeks for our guys to go to every single house and read those meters. Now it takes one press of a button. Well, guess what? Our guys read them in the middle of November. They would have read them again in the middle of December, but that button was to be pressed at the end of December to get it right, to get it all evened out.
Speaker 2:So some people got 50 days on their bills, which that would mean it'd be 20 more days than the 30 they're used to. So your bill's going to go up two-thirds because of that. That's what we're fighting Now this month. We've got it all corrected. Today they pressed the button for the meters, which is the 14th, and you're going to get the bill after the 1st. So you, from now on, will have 30 days on your bill every single month. But guess what? Now I know Facebook's not going to go crazy about this next month, but this coming month most people are going to be 15 to 20 days instead of 50. When that now, your bill's going to go down below what it normally is. I bet you Facebook's not going to flare up on that, though I'll be honest with you, right?
Speaker 1:Am I right? I'm pretty sure you're right there. I would agree with you there, Mayor.
Speaker 2:So I'm trying to do it as detailed and it might sound that I'm rude. I'm not trying to be rude, I'm trying to make the facts go. So that's what we're trying to do right here Now again, if y'all don't want to be inconvenienced, no more then come tell the council, come tell me stop going after grants. But if we go after grants we're going to have to be inconvenienced because we got to try to get that free money. But everybody wants free money. But they don't want to be inconvenienced and I can't do both.
Speaker 1:Let me ask you this and then you can move on to the second thing that you wanted to talk about. So the grants that we received was was part of the projects that were happening, like redoing the water tower. Correct, that was. That was. Could I call it? The first phase. Yes, that was the first phase.
Speaker 1:And then now our water meters are upgraded to the, to the 21st century I guess 22nd- century whatever we have an updated or we will all have updated meters to where they will not be manually read by a town employee. It will be an automatic deal that will be read and, like you said, with a push of a button once a month it's already done.
Speaker 2:Yep, and with that's going to come for tech savvy people, an app that you could go into and you could see your water rates by the day. So if you have a leak, it'll show you that it's got a leak. So all this, oh, I don't have a leak, I don't have a leak, I don't have a leak, and my guys have to go out and say, no, it's leaking, right there. That won't happen no more, because you can look it up yourself and see what times it's leaking, what times it's not leaking. Like we're going straight up into the technology from the Stone Age to modern times. So some people are not going to like that. And it is what it is. We got to come to that. But I mean, all these years, oh, they're not reading our meters. They're not reading our meters. They were.
Speaker 2:And at the same time, this month, one meter fell through the cracks and was read wrong. They got a bill and they went to Facebook. They said they got a $13,000 bill. That's what getting one number off of, or a few numbers off of, the meter happens. And her bill was $41. Did she say she paid $41? No, she said her bill was $13,000 and people ran with it. It's just what happens in this business. We're reading everyone, because if you miss one number, I've seen two numbers get missed, and it was $252,000. We caught it before it went out. But that's what happens when you oh they guess, and there's no way to guess Guess what. Those days are over, that's gone. Now we're going to be doing it the right way, so you're going to be able to see by the day how much water you use.
Speaker 1:So let me ask you that question real quick, mayor. So the, the app that people will be able to to put on their phone, their device, will be a real-time reading of of water usage once, once a day. Okay?
Speaker 2:and they will be able to see. Uh, and, like I said, this is all new to us, so I may be saying a couple of things wrong here and there, because we're just getting this information. Now we're starting to use it and we'll be able to see it, but I'm almost positive. It's per day. It might be real time, ok, but I don't know that 100 percent right now.
Speaker 1:Ok, OK, well, my apologies, I didn't. I didn't mean to put you on the spot.
Speaker 2:Oh no, that's what we're here for. Look, we are in uncharted territory and I'm fighting the waves with you.
Speaker 1:What else do we need to discuss on this topic?
Speaker 2:Let's just go into a few of the things that have been said. I'm kidding, just go into a few of the things that Ben said. One person put somebody from the water department said not to let us put new meters because they were going to charge more money, and there is a little truth to that. The thing of it is is they're brand new so they will read every single drop, every single gallon, down to the minute, and that is why it will charge you exactly what you use. The old meters, which are rockwells and some are 50 to 70 years old. They wouldn't read perfectly, so it might run show five gallons and it's actually putting 10 through because they were old and worn out. It was normally, or always, to the customer's benefit because they would get wore with age. The thing that spins aside would just not spin as fast and uh, so you might be regulating five gallons when you actually using 10. Well, these are going to be crisp. You use 10 gallons, it's going to show 10 gallons.
Speaker 2:So, with those houses with the older meters and may come up which would never, we never come across them because every month they were showing a minimum bill but it was still moving the needle to say they're using water. But once we caught it, we called them. It's going to be high, this, that and the other. Most of them came up and said yeah, I've been knowing about that toilet leaking and I just never fixed it because it never charged me nothing, which we're not going to see that on Facebook, because we already see those same people going on there and saying oh, our water bill's out of hand when you told the supervisor that you had a leak and you knew about it for a couple of years. That's what we're fighting, you know.
Speaker 2:But at the end of the day, these new meetings are going to read every single gallon down to the minute, so we won't be having that issue. And that's not on every issue, that's not on every instance, but there is a grain of truth to that and I'm gonna call it like it is. I think, with the moves that we made, we have but about 250 uh, mostly one inch and two inches left, um, so probably about 1600 are done at this point and we have about 1,850 altogether, and so it's going real good the project. But the first month of bills was quite a shock to people because it went 50 days, but the next one should be very, very. It should be 20 days, or maybe even less than that.
Speaker 1:So the amount's going to be made up on the next bill. The next bills are going to be lower because it's a shorter amount of days.
Speaker 2:Exactly, but from their own it's going to be done on the 14th of every month and then we'll have we get a report that shows us high usage. We go and we check those just to make sure that something didn't read right or something like that. That normally takes us about three days or something like that. That normally takes us about three days. So from the 14th to the 18th we should have all the meters read ready to go and we'll have it ready to go to where, on the 31st or the 30th we can send it off to bills and we're not late, no more, because the past couple months we've been four or five days late, because we're trying to gather all this new information and old information and we're trying to make sense of it. But we've went through that hurdle, we're going through the hurdle of the 50 days, and now we should come to greener pastures. And now we should come to greener pastures.
Speaker 2:And when I say that, very soon, when you call and complain that there's a high leak you could even go to the website, say it We'll be able to send you a report showing you day by day how much is going on, how much is happening. I mean, this thing reads to the tenth of a 10th of a gallon a minute. You know like it shows you, like a drip on your faucet it'll show you. So they got some big new things coming. It's gonna be probably a lot to understand at first, but in this day and age, with everybody on apps, I don't think we're going to have much problems. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I think that'll be a great thing having the app and being able to see it for yourself and if there is an issue or if there is a leak, you'll be able to see the usage or the gallons going up on your app and you'll be able to see that something's not right.
Speaker 2:It'll put that to bed, that that something's not right.
Speaker 1:It'll put that to bed, you know yeah, this is something that we've talked about on previous podcasts and we've talked about grants and water and projects coming up and it's it's so hard and I, I know you and the administration, you know, try to do their best to get information out right, like we. We have been doing, and putting out more information over the past what five or so years, than what's been done many times before that. We try to update the Facebook page, update the website. We have the tech system now newspaper, when you know there really wasn't that much information years back. We're trying to get that out, you know, but but still, coming to a town council meeting, uh, getting an understanding about what's going on also helps as well, because we can try all those other avenues to get you information and sometimes just coming to a council meeting will really put you in the know, that's where you're taken seriously, because I mean and I hate to say it because I keep on beating up on it and I always have Facebook.
Speaker 2:That's not real. I had one today saying that they were going to come hunt me, you know, down and all this stuff. I called them. They were like hey, how are you doing today? Oh, it's good, you know, you were just saying you were going to hunt me down and now you're oh, thank you so much for calling me. This is so nice. But you said on Facebook that you were going to hunt me down. Wow, that's what we deal with. If you really want to help, you need to come through the channels, through the town. There's a website, there's a complaint site, there's the people at City Hall, there's all kind of ways.
Speaker 1:Who, I'm sure, will be more than happy to explain what's going on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we have the supervisor, marty. That's been excellent on that. He's been going every complaint. He goes to their door, talks to them, figures out the problem and nine times out of 10, when they leave, they're thanking each other. It's a good, positive situation, yeah, but going on Facebook, yeah, you might get a, you know. Yeah, you might get a few clicks and you might get a few laughs and you might, you know, but that's not real, yeah, you know. That's just what it is and and coming back.
Speaker 1:You know what I just mentioned about our previous podcast and and trying to get out information. You know there was there was again a lot of social media talk when you were doing the parks or redoing this or skate park, all that stuff. Well, what about the infrastructure? What about this, what about that? And that again, as we've previously discussed, was always in your plans, right, but to get grants and to get that money.
Speaker 1:You cannot do that overnight. So we are now moving to a part where a lot of your park plans and stuff going on around town that was taken care of. Now the grants are starting to roll in. We redid the water tower. Now we're getting all new technology technology based water meters. Um, because again, you know, like, like you mentioned that was, that was also a problem for some people. Now we're moving into the future with that. Um, you know, I know another thing always being complained about. We talk about this a lot roads, roads. That's another thing that's in your plans. Obviously, with sewer and water work that's coming, you don't want to have to overlay some streets and then you mess them all up If there's meters that need to come out, pipes that need to be changed.
Speaker 1:There is a process in what you're doing.
Speaker 2:And the thing of it is is, when you're talking about the past few years, okay, you're talking Marie Street, broadway, delahousie, st Jude, all brand new water pipes. That was our worst. We did all those at a tune of in the millions, okay, that's done. All those at a tune of in the millions, okay, that's done. We're trying to get roads. We did asphalt project last year. We're doing everything, but it doesn't happen all at once.
Speaker 2:And the parks? The parks cost absolutely zero of the water and sewer budget Absolutely zero. It was paid through the general fund and the street department and places like that and other funding sources federally. But people, every time they want to talk about the water bill, they want to talk about the park. One has nothing to do with the other. Oh, the splash pad uses water? Yes, it does. And the water that we drill underground is free, yep, but it costs a lot and a lot of machinery to produce that water. That's what you're paying for every month.
Speaker 2:And then the people that say, oh, the sewer? That's ridiculous, that the sewer is the same amount as the water. Well, it is the same amount because most places sewer is more expensive than water, because sewer has so many state codes on it that it needs more infrastructure and more mechanical situations. That's what you're paying for. You're not paying for the water in the sewer to go flush your toilet to go and the water to run on a drain toilet to go and the water to run down the drain. You're paying for all those moving parts to get you that water to take that sewer away from your house. That's what you're paying for. Just like gasoline in your car is not taken directly out the ground and put in your car, it goes to a refinery. You're paying for that refinery to run to make that gas to go in that car. I understand that water goes through the water plant but I guarantee the electric company is not paying for their own electricity. Where they're at, they produce it.
Speaker 1:You bring up the splash pad, which again, this was discussed on another previous podcast or two posted on Facebook had videos. Everything that was paid for 100% by a citizen, a donor. Ms Evelyn paid for that. Evelyn Filipinas. Yes, that's public knowledge. And some people say well, the water bill is going high because you've got to pay for the splash pad. Having a splash pad at a park is like having bathrooms at a park or having drinking fountains at a park or something, the park doesn't get a water bill.
Speaker 2:Are we supposed to say no, ms Evelyn, we don't want you $100,000. Right, we don't want better for our town. We don't want your $100,000. Right, we don't want better for our town. We don't want better for it. If that's what the people want, come and tell us, because this is a whole lot of work to get these grants. Yeah, we're working on a $5 million grant for the sewer right now. We're going to be inconvenienced when that happens. We're working on a bunch of money for the roads. Hey, when we're going to do them roads, y'all driveways is not going to be as accessible as it was before. If y'all don't want that inconvenience, come Tell us Don't do it. Hey, convenience, come Tell us Don't do it. It makes our lives a lot easier, but we do this job because it's hard. That's why I like to do that side, not because it's hard. Just like JFK said, we don't do it because it's easy, we do it because it's hard. And you know why most places don't do it because it's easy. We do it because it's hard.
Speaker 1:And you know why most places don't get grants like we're getting Because it's hard, that's why the work that's going on now with the water is beginning of your next phase of projects and still upgrading the town.
Speaker 2:We're about to start a $3 million detention pond project. The thing about it is those things are going to stop places from flooding. We're trying to hit every check and I've been at it six years and I'm trying as fast as I can to do it, as I can to do it, but it wasn't torn down in six years. It was torn down in 60 years and we're picking up the pieces. That's what we're doing. But I have an annexed area going outside of town that's never had water and they are loving every bit of it because they're about to get water. They're not. They're not going to have to prime their. They're not going to prime their water softeners with pool water anymore. They would have to go and borrow water from neighbors pools to prime their water. So they're loving that we're coming.
Speaker 1:Anything we missed. Anything else you wanted to discuss or mention. Did we cover everything? I know right now this is a very hot topic and I know you wanted to clear a lot of air on this. I think we hit the most parts.
Speaker 2:I mean there was a lot said and I mean it's not the most positive of subjects, but it never will be. You know, I think going from now on, after this bill, that should be lighter. Every bill is going to be 30 days and you shouldn't get it later than you, you should get it at the same time in a month, almost every month. So a lot of our problems are going to be our recurring problems. Um is going to be done, because before, again, we were hand readings and that depended on, you know, weather and, like we have, they're going to be 26 degrees, I think Monday or Tuesday. That would be days that we wouldn't be able to read meters because they'd be frozen, you know. So those are things we don't have to worry about anymore. So we should be able to be more in line with everything. And it is what it is.
Speaker 2:And look, I'm hard on Facebook, I'm hard on social media. They throw things in there just to see if it sticks, and that's the society we're in right now. I'm not trying to be negative and most of the time, chris, I think I'm pretty positive. All we're trying to do is get this town running in the right direction to where we can welcome people to move on the outskirts inside of town, shop in town, and just do the things that a town needs to sustain itself. Or do the things that a town needs to sustain itself and, like I said, this job that I have, if you do nothing, it's very easy, very, because you're not doing nothing. But I mean the day that I don't want to do anything or the day that I just don't want any better for this town is the day that I just won't run. You know, I'm not made to not get better. Yeah, I'm not made like that.
Speaker 1:Yep. So, mayor, before we wrap up, also want to say this I want to remind people about this, too, and about getting information. Obviously, we have the podcast, which we record. It's every once in a while, depending. If you have information on We've got stuff to talk about, we'll release it and put it on our Facebook page, the official Town of Church.
Speaker 1:Point Facebook page is Town of Church Point. If you ever want to go back and listen to other podcasts, we have the list of podcasts and they're all there on our website, churchpointorg. The website updated information, as you mentioned previously in the podcast. There's also a complaint form. It's a button that you go and you hit on the website Again, churchpointorg. If you have an issue streets, you see a pothole, you see a leak, whatever long grass right, whatever it is you go and you hit that complaint button Fill it out.
Speaker 2:That has been working phenomenally, because not all the time can I answer the phone right away. Not all the time, you know, we might play phone tag on that. It comes directly to my phone in an email. It goes to the uh, to the utility clerk's email and literally a pothole down. I had one today, pothole down this street. Took a picture of it. Send it to the street department. They were there within 15 minutes. That's how you get it done. Yep, you know cause not all the time I might have meetings or something. I may not be able to get that call in the next two, three days you know yeah.
Speaker 2:Whereas I get that complaint, it's immediate. I could be in the meeting. I take a screenshot of it. I send it to the street department to get it done.
Speaker 1:Done, yep. And then something else too our text notification. That's our emergency text notification If there's anything going on weather-wise. You know, maybe youwise let's not put the cart before the horse next week with the freezing weather that's coming, but if we have any information that we need to get out, you can become a member of our texting notification club. It's very easy. If you want, you just go to churchpointorg and we have information on the homepage there you can join and it's free. So that's another option. Town of Churchpoint Facebook page. We keep it updated with information there. Churchpointorg, and I mean you put stuff in the paper every once in a while. Mayor. And then also the town council meeting on the first Monday of every month at 6 o'clock.
Speaker 2:I appreciate everybody listening. I know that was a long podcast and it sounded negative, but it's not. It's positive. We got positive things coming up, real positive.
Speaker 1:Very good Well, mayor. Thanks for jumping on another podcast. I'm sure we will do another one soon with another update. Thank you for checking out the town talk podcast with mayor spanky.