Aldermen will request streetlight at grocery store entrance

By John Howell
Aldermen during their December 6 meeting agreed to request that Tallahachie Valley Electric Power Association (TVEPA) place a streetlight near the entrance to the parking lot at the Piggly Wiggly shopping center on Highway 51 North.
“It’s dark there,” Alderman Bill Dugger said, citing difficulty in seeing the curbs of the drive entrance after sunset. “We need one.”
Streetlights in the city are installed and maintained by TVEPA which charges the city a fixed amount per pole. The bill for security lighting is paid from the police department’s budget.
The city officials also agreed to place additional markers and warnings at the new, raised pedestrian walkway at the Eureka Street entrance to the Public Square. A police car with its lights flashing has been parked near the raised walkway during heavy vehicle traffic from Polar Express riders.
In other city business during the First Tuesday meeting:
• Aldermen voted unanimously to accept the bid of Brocato Construction for bank stabilization work for Sand Creek. Brocato’s bid of $559,754.30 was determined to be low bid after the bid of Johnson Construction Company was determined not meeting the “very specific” requirements of the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) grant that will fund the work.
Bids were opened and read aloud during the November 15 meeting where the Johnson bid appeared to be lowest at $461,450.
“On our bid sheet we’re very specific about — and we do this in pre-bid — ‘write out all prices, total bid, total alternate bid and amounts and words, including numerical amounts,’“ Mendrop said. “If a discrepancy is determined, the written amount will govern.”
“In the case of Johnson Construction,” the engineer continued, “they wrote out the total amounts and not the unit prices as we always have in our bids, so that put them actually as the high bidder,” Mendrop said;
• The mayor and aldermen also acknowledged receipt of term bids and voted to take them under advisement for the engineer’s review;
• Aldermen voted unanimously to allow property owner Jerry Wayne Madison 30 days to show improvement and a plan to rehabilitate his property at 102 Hoskins Road.
The property was the focus of a demolition hearing during the December 6 meeting after Batesville Police Department Deputy Chief Jimmy McCloud told city officials in November that during an investigation into drug sales, officers reported that the house posed a “very serious hazard.”
“I would like to clarify that the property owner had nothing to do with our involvement,” McCloud said during last Tuesday’s public hearing.
“It was someone squatting in there,” said Madison, who lives in Memphis.
“That was my grandfather’s house, so that’s the reason I would like to hold on to it,” Madison added;
• City leaders will again request that the portion of Highway 35 North leading to the W. M. Harmon Industrial Complex be named in memory of the late State Representative Leonard Morris of Batesville. The mayor and aldermen adopted a resolution last year requesting the legislature to designate the roadway in Morris’ memory, but for reasons not explained it did not get named;
• Aldermen agreed to discuss at their next meeting a policy on the city-owned St. Stephens Episcopal Church building. Assistant City Attorney Colmon Mitchell has drafted a tentative policy for their approval that excludes allowing the facility to be used for regularly scheduled meetings of civic groups or other organizations.
The city officials have not yet acted on an earlier recommendation by Fire Chief Tim Taylor that a fire alarm or fire suppression system be installed in the wooden structure.