WEST POINT — A selectman’s impassioned plea Tuesday to divert more money from the city’s road bond to pave streets in his own neighborhood did not seem to get far with his fellow board members, but support from vocal audience members at the meeting became rowdy enough that the mayor once had to gavel them down to keep order.
The city is borrowing $2.1 million in Fiscal Year 2021 to fund paving/street improvement projects throughout the city. Per Mayor Robbie Robinson’s recommendations — which selectmen have not yet approved — roughly $1.045 million would cover repaving and repair work on sections of major downtown thoroughfares (Main, Broad, Commerce and North Division). Another $429,000 would pay for engineering fees and other contingencies, while the remaining roughly $682,000 would be split evenly among the city’s five wards (about $136,000 each) for work selectmen earmark.
Ken Poole, who represents Ward 3, said Tuesday he needs about $280,000 to pave all the streets in the Deerfield subdivision in the west part of the city, where he told The Dispatch he’s lived for eight years. His proposed allotment from the bond would leave him $144,000 short.
He asked selectmen to consider diverting that amount from the planned Broad Street improvements, at one point referring to Robinson trying to take the lion’s share of the bond money for major thoroughfares as “a dictatorship.”
“Every other road on this list is a repave,” Poole said. “Deerfield has never had a paved road in 20 years.”
Originally developed as a rural subdivision with chip seal roads, West Point annexed the Deerfield subdivision in 1998. Since then, Poole said, property in the subdivision has generated about $55,000 per year in tax revenue for the city — well more than $1 million — but the area hasn’t seen “one major (infrastructure) improvement.”
“(Deerfield residents are) just asking for a small piece of that back,” said Poole, as about a dozen other Deerfield residents attending began voicing their agreement with “Amens.”
“… I’m asking for a major improvement, this one time, right now,” he later added. “You’ve taken a lot from this area and gave very little in return.”
Robinson’s recommendations, which he said he developed with help from City Engineer Stanley Spradling, earmark $433,000 to repave a mile of Broad Street downtown. Poole said reducing the scope of that project by $144,000 would fully fund a 2.1-mile project in Deerfield.
Robinson agreed there might be a way to save money on Broad Street, but he advised against moving all the money to one project.
“Whatever savings you take from Broad Street needs to be divided equally among the other wards,” Robinson said. “… That’s the way it’s always been done.”
Ward 2 Selectman William Binder said he wasn’t “prepared to vote on this tonight” and asked to table the matter and discuss it at a special-call meeting that has yet to be set. Ultimately other selectmen agreed, but not before Ward 1’s Leta Turner and Ward 5’s Jasper Pittman expressed displeasure with Robinson’s transparency, claiming they did not receive his list of street recommendations until Tuesday.
The board’s lack of action, however, drew murmurs and heckling from Deerfield residents in the audience — which ranged from calls for selectmen to vote immediately to an array of grievances about poor street conditions in the subdivision — and caused Robinson to call for order.
“We’re getting shafted,” resident Tom Morton told The Dispatch after he left the meeting room. “I’ve been living out there 20 years. It’s ridiculous.”
His wife Ouida Morton said the neighborhood streets are rife with potholes and other problems, including a dip in the road right in front of her driveway.
“We’ve got beautiful homes out there,” she told The Dispatch. “We pay too much taxes to get nothing.”
Robinson, after the meeting, told The Dispatch the only way Poole could get the extra $144,000 to pave all Deerfield streets is if he could convince selectmen to part with some of their designated share for their wards. There is a better way to handle the situation, though, he said.
“I think this project can be done in stages,” he said.
Poole declined to comment further on the record when reached by The Dispatch this morning.
In other business, selectmen set property tax mill rates for the city and school district for FY 2021, all of which are unchanged from this fiscal year. The city will again levy 29.4 mills for its general fund, 6.4 for debt service, 1.25 for the library, 54 mills for West Point Consolidated School District operations and 2.5 mills for school district debt service.
Zack Plair is the managing editor for The Dispatch.
You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 32 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.