Community leaders speak at luncheon

The Graham Chamber of Commerce hosted its first State of the Community luncheon this week and gathered representatives from local taxing entities to provide updates regarding current and upcoming projects, accomplishments and goals.

The event was hosted Tuesday, March 19 as one of the chamber’s quarterly luncheons at North Central Texas College.
Speakers were Mayor Alex Heartfield, City Manager Eric Garretty, Graham Regional Medical Center CEO Shane Kernell, Graham ISD Superintendent Sonny Cruse and NCTC Director Dr. Magen Bunyard.

Mayor Alex Heartfield

Graham Mayor Alex Heartfield spoke on initiatives the city has in place with its boards such as the Charter Review Working Group which is working to revise the City of Graham Charter and place those revisions on the election ballot in November.

“Our charter has not been updated since 1992 and so there's some items that we're going to put up for election to try to update our charter and try to get it current,” Heartfield said. “Most of these changes are mainly just updated to conform with recently changed state laws regarding fines, election qualifications for council members (and) updated rules for annexation.”

An important city goal is to continue to support local businesses and make the city a friendly place for new businesses, the mayor said.

“Local businesses generate over $3 million a year in sales taxes. We simply couldn't provide the city services that we provide without those dollars,” Heartfield said. “It's you, our economic agents in our community, that are pushing that. So we appreciate that and our council and I are committed to create an environment where business and commerce can thrive in our community.”

Several new boards were formed in the last year, such as the Downtown Development District, which is focused on preserving and improving downtown Graham. The Graham Economic Improvement Corporation is continuing its work with a portion of sales taxes to spur economic growth in the city, most recently speaking about providing housing incentives for developers.

Assistant City Manager Grant Ingram has been focused on the Facade Improvement Program and Local Incentive Programs to boost new and existing businesses in Graham.

The city, through the direction of the Parks Department Board of Directors, received a new playground at Firemen’s Park and lighting/parking improvements are also upcoming for the playground. Construction of a large and small dog park is underway in Firemen’s Park and the board is also working on a new disc golf course.

New trails are on the way for Firemen’s Park but are on hold due to a hiccup with the archaeological survey which was required.

“That project is currently in a holding pattern as we evaluate a historical site that was discovered during our archaeological survey,” Heartfield said. “So that's kind of put that on hold but that will happen, it just may change the course of what we plan for that hiking trail to go. We're waiting on the Texas Historical Commission to get back with us on that.”

Salt Creek Park, which is an upcoming park on West St., is still being planned with the parks board currently reevaluating projects for a Texas Parks and Wildlife grant after being denied in the last two budget cycles.

“We think we have some key features that we can add to that grant that will help us get in a better place,” Heartfield said, “We've been really close to getting that, but in the scoring system we just fell a little bit short. So we think with these improvements we can get to the next level of that grant.”

Visit Graham, formerly known as the Graham Convention and Visitors Bureau, partnered with the nonprofit organization Graham Concert Association for the Summer Concert Series on the square. The series will have five free concerts on the downtown square.

The city is budgeting for the repair of the streets and with the city Transportation Improvements Committee working on traffic flow to provide a safe environment.

A proper cost of living adjustment for city employee salaries is also one of the city's goals.

“I would like to ask you to please consider showing appreciation for what our professional and hardworking city employees do,” Heartfield said. “Though small in number, only 98 employees, their contribution to maintaining, preserving and building our city is needed for our very existence. Our city staff makes great things happen every day and I'm continually impressed by their dedication, professionalism and commitment.”

City Manager Eric Garretty

Graham City Manager Eric Garretty provided a number of topics for those in the audience to discuss, with the Graham Municipal Airport being the first topic of discussion.

Jon Delamarter was recently promoted from part-time to full-time manager of the airport. Since tracking data from mid-January through last week, 2,000 takeoffs and landings have occurred at the airport in that time.

Another municipal facility, the Graham Municipal Swimming Pool, will be receiving a $50,000 project to resurface decking around the pool. The city also is looking into replacing the water fountain and has installed a camera system at the facility.

One of the upcoming goals of the Graham City Council is to address the aging sewer plant which processes around 600,000 gallons of wastewater a day.

With no rehabilitation since the 1980s, the city is currently having to make custom parts and will be conducting a water and sewer rate study to see how those rates should be adjusted, if needed.

“What I proposed to the council is a full sewer plant rehabilitation done in two phases. (We're) looking at about $12 million. That's just to keep the sewer plant operating. We'll rehab it at a little bit of additional capacity that will help during break down of certain things, but that's a big thing that we're looking at in our overall capital improvement plan,” Garretty said. “If we don't do something about the sewer plant, we've got nowhere else to go. We've looked around, even if we can afford to build a new one, there's not really a new place where we could do it that would even be reasonably affordable.”

The alternate waterline on FM 61 has been completed and will provide an avenue for the city to have water if the 24-inch waterline to the city is down for a period of time.

“What (city) council did was they established a project to put a... 20-inch parallel line to that. We've got it from the water treatment plant all the way down to about halfway down Hwy. 61. That was as far as we could go,” Garretty said. “In the next phase we will go all the way down to the park and it will fully tie into the system. That new water line (for) about $3.1 million, if the main 24-inch line ever goes out, we can simply switch to that and y'all won't know the difference.”

The other waterline project on Hwy. 67 and up FM 209 is a separate project for a reclaimed waterline for the Plug Power hydrogen plant.

“It's chlorinated water, it's treated water, but they want to use it for the hydrogen plant and then hopefully there will be some folks along that line that can actually use it for irrigation,” Garretty said. “That's reclaimed water that we were just putting in the creek. And hopefully that will go to offset some of the sewer costs.”

The city has recently had discussions about allowing food trucks on the square and created a draft policy and wants community input. A public hearing will be held at 6 p.m. Monday, April 8 regarding the draft policy which suggests three spaces at Oak and Second St. and only allowing the trucks on Sundays.

Another project the city manager said needed to be done in the future is regarding Standpipe Mountain. While it is not on the list of priorities for the city right now, there are aspects of the location that will require attention in the future.

“The one thing that I did run into is with the old actual storage tank up there. It's starting to get to the point where we're going to have to do something to either stabilize it or remove it and that's another one that's on the horizon that we're monitoring,” he said.

Garretty said both he and the Graham City Council are working to be transparent so that citizens can be engaged with their local government.

“In addition to how we spend your tax dollars, we make the budgeting process and the spending process very open. We have multiple meetings on the budget, we have multiple meetings on the tax rate, we would make sure that when it's required projects are put out for bid, the projects are advertised and local businesses have the opportunity to bid on those projects,” he said. “We want you to feel like even if you're not happy with everything that goes on, that you're knowledgeable of what's going on and that you have an opportunity to have input into the process.”

Editor’s Note: This is part one of a two-part story about the State of the Community luncheon hosted by the Graham Chamber of Commerce.