July has been a busy month in the Commissioner’s office. With the festivities of the Fourth of July, and The Annie Oakley Festival and the Gathering at Garst and others, this has been a one of our more fun months!
The office has been busy also with continuing projects. We have had meetings recently with our architect, App Architecture, on plans for more office space in the courthouse and evaluating the space utilization of the plaza on Wagner. We should have something on that soon. We also are looking at the Garst Avenue
building for upgrades and use of space.
We are continually looking to upgrade our airport, and we will be re-submitting for a grant for the new terminal building. The reason for the new building and changes is that the old terminal and the fuel farm are in the flight path of the runway. The new terminal will be moved back by the new taxiway, along with the new fuel farm.
We also have many CDBG (Community Development Block Grant) projects in process and the work on the Hollansburg-Palestine Sewer project continues. The jail is a continuing project and we have put in two new padded cells as a safety precaution to staff and incarcerated. The other jail upgrade project should start soon, and will include upgrades to electronics and to the doors in the jail, along with some other upgrades to improve the safety of our staff and jail operations.
