Council votes for airport improvement
The Atlanta City Council convened last Monday to discuss four agenda items including the application of grant money designated for improvements to the Hall-Miller Airport and resuming water account disconnections for delinquent customers.
The council voted to move forward with applying for a $30,000 CARES Act Grant to fund the installation of Automated Weather Observing Station (AWOS) for the airport.
The Texas Department of Transportation is awarding the city $150,000—a grant that accounts for 75% of the instrument’s cost. The City of Atlanta is required to fund 25% of the project to receive the TxDOT funds.
The Atlanta Economic Development Corporation awarded $20,000 to assist the city with its requirement to attain funding through TxDOT.
In April, Sen. John Cornyn announced that Hall-Miller Municipal Airport was awarded a federal grant of $30,000 as economic relief following the economic distress caused by the outbreak of the novel coronavirus. The funding, which was appropriated by Congress in March as part of the CARES Act, comes through the U.S. Department of Transportation.
The Automated Weather Observing System (AWOS) is an airport weather system that provides continuous, real-time information and reports on airport weather conditions. AWOS stations are mostly operated, maintained and controlled by aviation service providers.
The system measures barometric pressure, altimeter setting and density altitude, wind speed and wind gusts, wind direction and variable wind direction, temperature, dew point, visibility, precipitation accumulation, precipitation type, thunderstorm detection, freezing rain and runway surface conditions.
“One of the drivers in a community of economic development is a good robust healthy airport. This obviously will increase the infrastructure capacity at the airport. This talks to pilots over a designated frequency and gives them all the information that they need to be able to do landing and take-off maneuvers from our specific airport. There are a lot of aircraft that do not and for insurance purposes would not do a take-off or landing in an airport that didn’t have an AWOS”, Cockrell said.
Projected maintenance costs for the unit, according to Cockrell, are between $6000 and $7200, annually. The source of that funding has not yet been confirmed.
Utility customer disconnections will resume June 20 for delinquent customers as voted by the council. Disconnections have been halted since March due to the financial impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
According to city secretary Danica Porter, there are 137 delinquent water accounts as of May 20. Eighty accounts are 30 days delinquent, 42 are sixty days delinquent, 13 are 90 days delinquent and two are 120 days delinquent. The total cost for those 137 accounts is $19,425.
The council discussed a prospective nominee to fill the vacancy on the Cass County Appraisal Board due to Bryan Baggett’s resignation last month.
There was no motion for nomination.
The council approved to contract ditch work on both sides of Glass Street from Allday Street to Miller Street and north ditch line on Ellington Street from Glass Street to Carney Street at a cost of $3,300.
Atlanta City Council meetings convene the first and third Mondays of each month at 5:30 p.m. at City Hall, 315 N. Buckner.