City of Whiteville issued the following announcement.
Whiteville City Council Tuesday night approved a $44,200 USDA grant to complete the Master Plan for the City of Whiteville and heard citizen concerns about stormwater and drainage.
The city plans to revitalize downtown Whiteville with improvements to sidewalks, lighting, parking, amenities, and appearances in the business district. The area includes the historic Vineland Village through South Madison to the new city hall. Several small businesses downtown anticipate hiring/keeping 68 employees as a result of the Downtown Master Plan.
Planning Director Robert Lewis will oversee the project. The development of the Downtown Master Plan will be completed through the contracted services of WithersRavenel and, upon its completion, will be owned by the City of Whiteville.
The first component will be to hold a planning kick-off meeting with city staff and public officials. The second aspect of the plan will be review of data, particularly documentation of previous plans and inventory of assets in the project area. The third component of this study will be development of alternative concepts that incorporate priorities for improvements. The fourth piece to the plan’s development will involve public input meetings and presentations to the city council. The fifth and final component of the plan will be completed with the presentation of the Final Master Plan that outlines resources to finance its implementation.
Participating by telephone in the “public comments” portion of the meeting, Jody Taylor voiced concerns about drainage and flooding in the Edgewood Circle area and Barbareen McAllister expressed similar concerns about Columbus Street. City Manager Darren Currie told Taylor that flooding in the Edgewood Circle area is the next project to be undertaken and advised McAllister that additional grant funding will be sought to initiate a project for Columbus Street. Currie told McAllister that city staff would be in touch with her in the next day or two to discuss more specifics.
In other business, Council approved an amendment to the city’s schedule of fees by addition an industrial bulk rate for sewer services, although the amount of the fee was reduced from the staff recommendation of $6.50 per thousand gallons to $6 per thousand.
Councilman Justin Smith asked to be excused from voting because his employer, Les High – in his role as head of the Columbus Jobs Foundation – asked the city to consider a $6 rate instead of $6.50. Smith’s recusal was accepted and the adoption of the new fee passed with Kevin Williamson, Jimmy Clarida, Tim Collier, Robert Leder and Mayor Terry Mann voting favorably. Not voting besides Smith was Councilman Tim Blackmon, who was not in attendance.
The new fee category was added at the request of Columbus County, which owns the industrial park. Both county and city staff believe economic development officials can pursue large industrial clients, creating jobs and large scale economic growth in the region. The new fee would be a $20 monthly base rate plus $6 per thousand gallons (with a minimum of 20,000 gallons of flow billed).
In a housekeeping matter that was at the same time both major and routine, Council unanimously adopted a capital project ordinance for phase 1 of the previously-approved Mollies Branch sewer improvement project. The ordinance included $975,359 for construction, $98,910 for engineering planning, $81,740 for construction administration, $20,200 for surveying, $12,000 for bidding assistance and $22,312 for loan closing fees. The project will be financed with $94,946 in local funds and a State Reserve Program Loan of $1,115,575 will fund the $1,210,521.54 project.
The city plans to revitalize downtown Whiteville with improvements to sidewalks, lighting, parking, amenities, and appearances in the business district.
Original source can be found here.
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