Crockett Receives Millions to Improve Water
By Greg Ritchie
Messenger Reporter
CROCKETT – Crockett City Council approved funding tied to massive grants which will improve the city’s water situation at the recent council meeting Monday, Sept. 16.
The city is set to borrow about $4 million dollars, with most of it at zero-percent financing, while more than $7 million will come in from the Clean Water State Revolving Fund, through the Texas Water Development Board. The money will be used to make improvements to the city’s sanitary sewer system, including the planning, development and construction of improvements to the city’s North Wastewater Treatment plant and sanitary sewer system facilities. Another part of the money is for the planning, development and construction of a new water well, transmission main, and treatment facilities.
The grant means the city can make the massive improvements and upgrades to the city’s water infrastructure, borrowing a fraction of the total money needed and at least for now, keep city water rates the same.
Crockett Police Department (CPD) Chief Clayton Smith presented his department’s activities for the month of August. Smith reported, “a total of 15 officers, or 2755 hours, responded to 443 calls for service, investigated eight traffic accidents, made 48 arrests, issued 412 traffic citations and completed 101 reports.”
Crockett Fire Department (CFD) Chief Jason Frizzell was still under his numbers for the previous year, grateful for the summer rains which kept the fires lower than usual. He reported, “35 calls, 32 of those in the city, three of those in our county response area. We did have a structure fire inside the city limits.”
Crockett City Administrator John Angerstein told the council the company who does the street signs for the city would be able to make unique street signs, custom-made for Crockett, for the same price as existing signs. The usual street signs have white letters on a green background, but Angerstein showed the council a proposal for new signs, which would have white letters on a Bulldog-blue background, even containing the Crockett school mascot.
Angerstein wanted approval to either replace all signs in an area or in the city, or to use the new designs as old signs needed replacing, slowly but surely replacing all the street signs in the city, at the same cost.
The council members were excited by the new design, although were not sure which school logo to use. In the end, they opted to adopt a replacement plan as old signs are replaced, and consult with Crockett Independent School District to see which Bulldog design they would like best.
Greg Ritchie can be reached at [email protected]
