WM Public Works catching up on old business

WM Public Works catching up on old business

Southland Drive extension coming along, tire dumping remains an issue

news@theeveningtimes.com

The West Memphis public works committee assembled for its January meeting without a quorum. The Mayor assigned five city councilors to the panel one from each ward. The two longest serving city councilors were there, Chairwoman Ramona Taylor and Ward 2 Councilman James Pulliaum. Councilors James Holt, Lorraine Robinson and Willis Mondy missed the meeting.

No business was conducted but the pair of councilman heard December reports from the City Engineer Phillip Sorrell. Sorrell changed hats in January and is now the Director for Economic Development.

He gave the recap for his last exclusive month in Public Works. Traffic patterns, road construction status and street cleaning highlighted his review.

With the fast paced construction of the Family Dollar store on Avalon at Jackson, Sorrell noted the retailer will change traffic flow at the corner.

“It will be best to make a determination and will get a better feel for what traffic will look like after the store is actually open,” said Sorrell. “Traffic patterns will change and we can better assess it after the business is open.”

“Southland Drive con- struction had some concrete issues,” said Sorrell. “We ended up removing several hundred feet of deficient pavement. It has now been all replaced.”

Sorrell said some strength testing and five days of warm weather to build asphalt shoulders and apply taped striping are all that remain before the new road between North Seventh Street and Ingram Boulevard

can open.

“We finished the concrete last week,” said Sorrell. “It has to cure 28 days before you can run tests on it. Assuming all the tests are met it will quickly be completed after that. The asphalt and the striping are temperature sensitive so it all depends on the weather we get in January.”

Advertising for letters of interest will soon go to engineers for the South Loop project.

“I am waiting to get final agreement back from the highway department,” said Sorrell. “We still have some final routing issues.

Right now we have a preliminary route. We’ll have a public hearing to get all that worked out with federal requirements. Those are the steps we have to go through.”

Councilman James Pulliaum and Willis Mondy wondered during the December meeting what happened to the city street sweeper. They expressed concern for keeping Broadway cleaned up and making a good impression for tourists especially now that the Big River Crossing is driving cycling traffic up on the east end of the Gateway City. Sorrell looked into it.

“We do still have it,” said Sorrell. “It hasn’t been used in several years. We think it is still operational. It will need a good run through.

We got away from it because

you have to schedule

during the middle of the night. We did it two or three times a month. Once we get it operational we will schedule for it.”

The city doesn’t offer tire disposal, but was forced to pick up loads of junk tires anyway.

“We have illegal dumping and we occasionally pick those tires up,” said administrative assistant Rhonda Standridge. “We disposed of 350 passenger tires and 150 truck tires in December.”

By John Rech