By Karen Gleason
The 830 Times
A proposed second international bridge will be the focus of a public meeting June 8, City Manager John Sheedy has announced.
Sheedy made the announcement during an update on city projects to the Del Rio City Council during its May 23 regular meeting.
“We have our second public meeting for our second international bridge scheduled for June 8 at 5:30 p.m. at the Del Rio Civic Center,” Sheedy told the council.
“We’re very excited. Of course we’re working very hard to eliminate or lessen the impact (construction of the bridge may have on) residents. We’re very excited to share this with the community, so we just ask anybody that’s interested to make sure and attend that meeting,” the city manager added.
Sheedy also spoke to the council about other ongoing city projects.
“We’re still working on our combined dispatch center. We had started that about eight months ago, and we’re currently doing prep and training to go live, which we’re anticipating on June 8 . . . so we’re getting very close to our combined dispatch, and we’re very excited to bring that on board for the community,” Sheedy said.
Sheedy also referenced a thick document that had been left on the council dais for each council member.
“The council will find our newly delivered comprehensive financial report. I want to thank our finance department for working with our auditors out of San Antonio to prepare this report,” he said.
Sheedy also spoke about a series of new traffic speed monitors being placed along streets throughout the city.
“We’ve acquired 10 of our ‘slow-down’ traffic speed signs. Those have been deployed, and we’re going to put in mounts for other locations. The idea is that we can mobilize these signs around town and use them in different areas,” Sheedy said.
“We’re still getting a lot of requests (for) speed bumps, and I can say that that’s the next step of traffic control that we’re undertaking. We do have a traffic study out right now, and as soon as we can get that traffic study back, that’s going to tell us a lot, a comprehensive report about what do we need to do for our community, where do we need to add signs, where do we need to remove signs, street lights, everything, but as far as the physical barriers, speed bumps, we are looking at, probably, the speed humps, which are a little more gradual and some traffic calming devices, little rumble strips, things like this,” he said.
“We are prepared to enter into the next phase some of these ‘speed humps’ in some of these areas where we can begin deploying those,” Sheedy added.
The city manager told the council the city is still working to restore commercial air service at Del Rio International Airport.
“On our airline, we successfully submitted our SCASD (Small Communities Air Service Development) grant, and Mr. Ramon (City Economic Development Director Jorge Ramon) is taking our agreement with the coalition of communities that have also lost their airlines to the economic development corporation so we can fund that,” Sheedy said.
Finally, Sheedy gave an update on the ongoing reconstruction of Brown Plaza.
“Plaza Brown, the sidewalks and concrete work are complete. The light posts and flagpoles have been reinstalled. We’re waiting on the electric for the gazebo and the AEP service loop. We expect those to be done in a week, possibly two weeks,” Sheedy said.
“The fountain foundations have begun. Everything is going good over there. I visited the site on Friday and found a few concerns and reported those and they’re being addressed,” the city manager added.
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