Sunday, April 25, 2010

VOTE MAY 4th, 2010

Glenn R. Jurczyk
7 Years in the Community
Married 36 Years with One Son
Retired

The “Biggest Issues” facing our Community are the present Boundary Line Adjustment, the current Town debt and our infrastructure to include our ageing sewer plant.

The Town has now filed for a voluntary boundary adjustment with the County. This Town can not grow anymore within the current limits. We need to expand our boarders to accommodate future growth. There are two way this can be done. Either by voluntary boundary line adjustment or by forced annexation. The key words here are “voluntary” or “forced”. I do not know what the Council strategy is as this was never brought before the Planning Commission when I was Chairman. No public meetings have been held to inform the citizens or the property owners involved of the Councils’ intent. The Council has now had 3 closed meetings. If the voluntary boundary adjustment is not successful what is plan B? Or is there a plan B? How much more money is this Town ready to spend? Will the Town only authorize a voluntary adjustment or file for forced annexation, or will they only go after the two corridors (15/ 58) and the areas that promised they would not fight the adjustment in exchange for utilities? These are two very different processes. Remember you can file yearly for a voluntary adjustment but only once every 10 years for a forced annexation through the courts. The Town should have been filing for each section as they completed suppling utilities. It could become very costly if they choose the annexation over the voluntary adjustment. By State law the Clarksville Planning Commission has the last say on any residential development within a two mile radius of our current limit, but not on commercial development. The corridors are where any commercial development will more then likely develop as proven by our Comprehensive Plan.


The Current Town Debt sits at about $6,547,000.00. The Council still needs to be fiscally responsible on all new debt and not automatically approve all new financial requests. We need to look for any available grants. We need to have a long term Capital Improvement Plan and stick to it.


Everyone knows that the Town infrastructure needs a lot of work. It is old, just as every other town around here, and it needs to be replaced. You cannot go on forever doing patching. According to the local newspapers all the other towns are looking for monies to repair or replace there current infrastructure. The Council has now applied for monies to help, but other communities are much farther ahead of us in that area. The Council packet indicates the amount of daily water and waste usage. It’s great that our water plant is upgraded to 1,000,000 gals per day capacity and we are only running at quarter capacity of 202,000 gals per day. That gives us a lot of room to grow, but on the other end is the sewer plant. It is currently over 50% of its capacity or 284,000 gals per day. That’s over half of the rated 550,000 gals capacity per day. The sewer capacity needs to be increased as well as updated. Council should be looking into this now, not later. (Capital Improvement Plan?) The current sewer plant will limit the Towns potential growth down the line. We need to start dealing with this equation now.

You should also know the reason why I want to throw my hat into the ring. I truly believe that transparency and accountability are key words for our Community to grow and prosper. As I mentioned earlier, the Council needs to keep town business in the open. Please do not get me wrong as there are times that meetings should be closed, such as personnel hearings etc., etc. In all, I think the Community should be kept informed. The citizens are astute and smart and want to be part of town decisions. You can not get the public support unless they know they are included. Everyone needs to be accountable either for their actions or ignoring their lack of responsibility. No one is above the law or gets to receive a ‘free ride’ and not have to do their jobs.

Every place I have lived, I have either worked in Public Works or been appointed to a position to work towards the betterment of my Community. I have worked for the City of Chicago and the City of Concord. I have been a representative to a Marina Commission and served on a Mayors roundtable. I would appreciate your vote on May 4th.