City Manager Says City Gym 82% Complete
By John Earp
At the December 22nd meeting of the Jal City Council, City Manager Wes Cooper gave his report. He began by stating that January 13th and 14th an orientation for newly elected officials would take place in Santa Fe. He also mentioned that any officials who needed a refresher should contact City Clerk Molly Sanchez to get them signed up with a room reserved for them. He continued by stating that “directly following that is the MOLI, Municipal Official Leadership Institute, Level 1 orientation, which is January 14th and 15th,” adding, “It’s a really good training. And our ordinance does specify that we really like officials to attend that training.”
Hooper said that, on the “EMS building we’re about 79% complete on the construction there. Getting really excited to get into that building. It really will be nice to be able to provide a lot better services to the public, having sleeping quarters and kitchen and stuff like that in there. The gym, over here, we’re 82% complete. We hired a part-time person last week. to help kind of start getting the policies and procedures together. Once we get all those policies and procedures together, we’ll present those, it will be a draft, right? And then we’ll present them to a committee. We’ll have some possible district people on that committee also to review those, make any changes, and then we will bring it up to the council for their approval. It’s coming along. If any of you would like to go see it, it’s going to be really nice. I think the public will really enjoy it. The Community Services Building, the slab is poured for it. We hope to start construction on it in probably 30 to 45 days once the contractor receives the permitting to start erecting that building.”
On grant funding, Hooper said, “And then, the 2024 GPF grants, grant funding. We started to work on that last week, and that’s to construct 8th and Colorado. That street, Colorado, so, that’s really bad. There’s a house down there, and every time it rains, the water is running down, finally, and then it makes that turn back south, hits Colorado and then it shoots all that water down Colorado, that house down there. So, the roads were in bad shape anyway, so we needed to fix those roads, and in the meantime, fix that drainage so that, hopefully, it will help with the flooding down there at that house,” adding, “With that project they’ll also get new sewer water.”
Hooper noted a new hire of a code enforcement animal patrol officer, Keaton Humber, saying he will be starting January 5th with training.