With its grant deadline looming, the city council approved a $4,937,000 waste water treatment project as well as a street closing at the June 30 regular meeting.
Concrete barriers will soon block the intersection of West and Fourth streets to safeguard pavement that trucks continually damage, according to Mayor Bill Baker.
Other items discussed included the Yorktown Chamber of Commerce contribution and budgeting as well as an update on the clearing of dilapidated housing.
Baker said the city’s sewer was “low hanging fruit” for Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) because the system was so old. The electronics in the control room date from the 1970s, he said.
Both Baker and City Manager Michelle Warwas received re- ports from TCEQ on June 27 that they had not yet read, but they indicated future meetings would include that discussion.
Meritt Preis, a representative of Hanson Professional Services Inc., reviewed the proposal of the J.S. Haren Company for the sewer system renovation. The project had been scaled down from an initial proposal from a different contractor. The previous proposal exceeded the $6.2 million grant from the General Land Office, so city staff went back to see what could be renovated rather than replaced. The grant requires that the project be completed by January 2027.
“If there's something down there that we have that we can work with, we're working with it,” Baker said. “In a perfect world, obviously we could have went the way it was done initially, but that wouldn’t work for us.”
Preis described the process going forward.
“As soon as the contractor is given a contract and it's executed, he can provide a schedule,” Preis said.
Once shovels hit the ground, the company has 600 days to complete the project.
Merritt emphasized that the sewer system will be continuously operational throughout the update.
“There's definitely things buried in the ground that they might find,” he said. “Some changes may happen. But these are all normal things.”
Council voted unanimously to approve the new waste water treatment system.
STREET CLOSING On the street closing the mayor said trucks from The Texan “go down West and they jackknife and come back into that parking lot, and then they tear up all the road.”
He said within a day of it being repaved, it’s torn up again. Baker said the goal is to keep the trucks off of the road to begin with.
Council discussed who uses the road which leads to the nursing home, but emergency responders use a different route getting there. They voted unanimously to approve the closing.
In other action items, the mayor and council members Crystal Hurta and Connie Hall took their oaths of office. Afterward, council voted for Hall to continue as mayor pro tem.
Other items approved were the city electric provider and employee health benefits package.
CHAMBER: NEW STREET SIGNS AND MARQUEE Katie Newman, the executive director of the Yorktown Chamber of Commerce, reviewed the activities completed and underway to promote local businesses, including all new street signs in the near future. The previous director had started the research for the new street sign project and Newman recently completed that research.
She said the new digital marquee, which will be placed at the fire station, is currently being built.
Newman said she took an online course to learn about entering content.
“The system updates itself every 15 to 20 minutes,” she said. “So if we need something put on it, like some emergency, depending on what the circumstances are, we should be able to do that as well.”
Baker said another person will also be trained on entering sign information and that a policy regarding operation and content of the sign is being developed. The total cost of the marquee, he said, is $50,000.
Newman shared about attending a Site Selectors Conference in February on a national scholarship and learning about the network that companies use to research development opportunities. She also mentioned the recent Area Roundtable with Congressman Mike Cloud where various issues like infrastructure, population decline, and business losses were discussed.
DISCUSSION: WATER BILLS, BUDGET,
DRAINAGE
There was a hiccup in the May utility billing because the company that handles it for the city went out of business.
Warwas said the CEO emailed the following, on May 9: “After much consideration, we’ve made the difficult decision to close effective immediately, May 9, 2025. This isn’t the outcome we’ve been working towards. Any jobs currently in our system that don’t show as mail completed have not, and will not be fulfilled.”
Warwas said another company was found and the bills went out one week late. She said late fees, which are usually added on the 16th, were extended for an additional week for May only.
In preparation for the upcoming budget workshop, the mayor reviewed the city’s contribution to the chamber and the Economic Development Corporation. The council will be deciding the percentages of Hotel Occupancy Tax (HOTS) between the Yorktown Historical Museum and the Chamber of Commerce.
He discussed various street and city projects and said the downpour of 4 inches in two hours on June 28 showed where drainage was working and also where it isn’t. He said it appeared that water is not flowing into the creek from 111, so it will need drainage work in the future.
The next regular meeting of city council will be Monday, July 28 at 6 p.m.
