By Jennifer Shrader

Staff writer

Hogansville City Council will vote on a contract to pave Mountville-Hogansville Road, what city leaders call their greatest paving need, at its next regular meeting.

Council members learned of the contract with Hogansville-based Cato Contracting at a work session Friday. The work is expected to cost $110,000 and will come from special-purpose, local-option sales tax.

City Manager Bill Stankiewicz said he wanted to run the details of the project by council at a work session, which is rarely called, because of the contract’s size. The road will be repaved in its entirety from East Main Street south to the city limit, more than a mile.

The city also has bid out paving projects on East Boyd Road, Taliaferro Drive, and Marshall and Frederick streets.

Hogansville, along with West Point and LaGrange, had an agreement with Troup County to do some paving work after the last special tax was passed, in order to save the county and municipalities money. But Hogansville hasn’t been happy with the speed of the county’s work.

“People are asking, ‘Why hasn’t (the paving) started?’ ” said Councilman Thomas Pike. The city does have a contract with Troup County to pave Elm and Brazell streets, which should be done before this “paving season” ends in November.

The Mountville-Hogansville Road project, which Stankiewicz said is No. 1 on the city’s paving priority list because of its condition and amount of traffic, will start once council approves the contract Sept. 7.

“I told (the contractor) I would not recommend him unless he could start right away,” Stankiewicz said.

The city manager also will get permission from council at the Sept. 7 meeting to pay off some costs associated with improvements to the wastewater system – required by a consent order Hogansville is under with the state Environmental Protection Division. Council voted this month to authorize the mayor to sign documents letting the city borrow up to $10.3 million. About $380,000 of that includes an emergency loan from the Georgia Environmental Facilities Administration. The rest is a U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development Loan that would pay for construction of a new sewage plant.

With the consent order, however, the sewage plant has some immediate needs that could put Hogansville in a bigger financial bind if not paid off sooner. That includes, in part, a new $55,000 pump for the sprayfield, a cost Stankiewicz said the city can’t get around.

Two pumps at the sprayfield have gone out of service in the last 60 days. One of those is repaired but is not operating at its optimum level. Stankiewicz said the city’s new engineering firm, Ben Turnipseed, recently discovered that the pumps installed at the sprayfield in the early 1990s were not the right size for the project.

“The engineer said the sprayfield was designed improperly from the get-go,” Stankiewicz said.

The current pumps have the capacity to take in 40 percent more than is able to be pumped out. A new, larger, pump will be able to accommodate the proper flows and can be sold, earning the city some cash, when the sewage plant and sprayfield is replaced within the next several years.

What Stankiewicz will ask Hogansville to do on Sept. 7 is use $100,000 in SPLOST money to pay for the pump and other expenses, then pay back the SPLOST account with the GEFA loan when it comes in at the end of September. Engineers and attorneys have signed off on that plan.

Wastewater improvements – and road paving – were the city’s two priorities with the latest SPLOST money.

“It would get some of these bills paid now instead of using up our resources and stringing out these vendors,” Stankiewicz said. “The $55,000, in particular, would be a back breaker.”

Council also will vote at the same meeting on whether to spend $9,500 with Georgia Rural Water for a survey of the city’s water pipes to find out where leaks are. The city is losing 49,000 gallons a month through leaks around the city, some of which literally have been buried – and lost – through previous paving projects, time and no regular infrastructure improvements. Stankiewicz said workers recently found one of the city’s water mains was constructed with pipes that normally would be used to set up a water sprinkler system.

Lost water through leaks is water the city can’t sell.

“If we found 50 percent of the leaks we have, the survey would pay for itself in two months,” Stankiewicz said.

Jennifer Shrader may be reached at jshrader @lagrange news.com or at (706) 884-7311, Ext. 236.