A thirty minute Carmi City Council meeting Tuesday resulted in passage of a TIF Agreement for a redevelopment project and multiple purchases. Holly Healy with City Administration and Economic Development explains the details on an agreement with DA Ingram Properties after their purchase of the former Reppert’s Office Supply storefront.
…owned by Ashley Ingram who’s a CPA with Botsch and Associates and her husband, they have purchased the old Reppert’s building. They’ve asked for a TIF agreement to do some various projects in that building. They’ve already purchased it so they do own it so we couldn’t include that cost in there. They’re estimating about $60,000 in repairs. I think they’re going to do some roofing work, interior and exterior work. The way this is structured is we would pay reimbursement up to 50% of eligible costs not to exceed $30,000. We would not reimburse that until they had a tenant in the building. And then the property has to remain occupied for a period of at least 5 years and if they have more than a 90 day lapse between tenants we can’t seek recourse.
Councilman Steve Winkleman said the TIF program had proven fruitful and suggested the council make the agreement.
I think this program has been a great program for our town. Our buildings downtown look good. I’m glad we’re doing this so I’ll make a motion we do this.
Council unanimously agreed.
From there, council then considered bids on a culvert for Bradshaw Park. A month ago, voted to accept bids with the hopes the culvert could be in prior to the Carmi Recreational Summer League Opening Day. Read more at Get Growing: Carmi City Council Approves Gift Garden Property Lease; Approves Saunders Avenue Money – WRUL-FM
Enlow Inc. out of Olney gave two proposals while local business Belford Coring provided a low bid of $27,320. Council agreed to move forward with Belford.
Next up, council members accepted a bid for Radio Read Water Meters. The city has been transitioning on their own dime to new water meters. City Supervisor Brad Attebury explains.
Right now we’re in the process of transitioning over from the old raise the meter lid, look at it style of water meter. We’re putting in radio reads that you drive around, it automatically picks it up. You can actually print reports; it tells your daily usage, hourly usage. So we were doing that out of our own pocket. Well, Brown and Roberts was able to get us a grant to I think 73% is that right (Healy: It was the IEPA loans that the council approved a few months back…76%)
Bids were received from Wiggs Excavating and Followell Construction. The Wiggs bid was lower at $1,300,910.00 while Followell came in at $1,309,777.00. The 76% forgiveness will also include the engineering fees. Attebury says city workers have already installed 1,200 meters; they began in 2018 and he estimates the cost was about $300 per meter. There are about 2,300 left to do.
Council also accepted a bid for the half million gallon elevated water tank painting. The cost on that is $729,750 though it’s funded by an IEPA loan with 76% forgiveness as well. Elevation Coatings won the bid.
Finally Tuesday night, council agreed to a quote from North American Substation Services for repairs to Transformer B at a cost of $76,250. Officials say if the current transformer were to go down, Carmi customers would quickly be in trouble.
If we lose that transformer, then we’re generating and we can only generating for what, realistically 3-4 days, that’s running hard. (David Coston: That’s about it…I mean as long as you keep filling it up with diesel fuel but those generators are not going to run full power.) And it’s the man power too. If we don’t fix B and something happens to A, we’re gonna be in a pickle.
The city of Carmi has $142,463.02 in it’s electric reserve. Council voted unanimously to approve the spending for repairs.
Council and the mayor had no individual reports and entered into an executive session with no action to follow at 6:01pm.
