By Karen Gleason
The 830 Times
City Manager John Sheedy recently gave city council members an update on the resumption of state busing of migrants out of the city.
Sheedy made his comments about the state busing of migrants during his “city manager’s update” to Del Rio City Council members during their Dec. 12 meeting.
“I want to first say, I’m sure the community has seen that we’ve had
more migrants than usual in the streets. I think everybody understands that this is a problem that’s pretty much wholly beyond our control. We’re just trying to do the best we can, and our priority is to keep our community safe and then to facilitate the movement of migrants out of our community,” Sheedy told the council.
He said the Texas Department of Emergency Management (TDEM) buses are once again transporting migrants out of Del Rio.
“That should alleviate the migrants on the streets a little bit, and we’ll continue to work with that,” the city manager added.
“We are aware of the old car wash across from the migrant center that has been kind of a haven for people that are camping out and sheltering there, and we’ve been working to get that cleared up. Our neighborhood services division is working with (county) Commissioner Pct. 4 Flores, and I think we’re cleaning all that out tomorrow and we’ll be putting a fence around that, so we’ll have a little bit more security down there,” Sheedy said.
After reviewing several other projects, the city manager returned to the issue of the migrants, noting he receives a daily update on the TDEM busing operation from the city’s emergency management coordinator.
“We now have six TDEM representatives at the (Chihuahua Neighborhood) facility, and we have our emergency management coordinator who’s been down there pretty much every day. On Thursday (Nov. 30) we sent out four buses with 184 migrants. On Friday (Dec. 1) we sent out five buses with 233 migrants. On Saturday (Dec. 2), we sent out four buses with 197 migrants.
“On Monday (Dec. 4), we sent out three buses with 132 migrants, and on Tuesday (Dec. 6), we sent out three buses with 114 migrants, so as of today (Dec. 12), we have put 860 migrants on state buses. So again, that’s helping alleviate the migrant issue, so we seem to be in good shape,” Sheedy said.
The city manager then briefed council members on other city projects in progress.
“Regarding our boards and commissions, we’re very excited, because this is something we’ve been working on for a very long, long time. Our Assistant City Manager Manuel Chavez has been working on an updated ordinance for our boards and commissions, and we’ll be bringing the first ordinance back to council on the 19th, so, the policy that we put together is going to, I think, once and for all, make it much easier for us to keep our boards and commissions current,” Sheedy said.
“Our new Hernandez Street property, we’ve received requests for qualifications from engineering firms and we’re in the process of evaluating the submissions, utilizing a committee of city employees. The firms have submitted responses for our request for the property to be converted to a recreation center and additional gym,” Sheedy told the council.
“On 801 S. Main St., our future City Hall, things are going good down there. We’re scheduling a walk-through this week with council and staff, anybody that would like to go, but we’ve been advised that the architects should be down next week and we’ll be meeting with them.
“Finally, we’ve received our 2023A certificates of obligations. These are the $13 million that we’ve moved on, and this is going to fund our new City Hall project, the Paul Poag renovation and some of these other projects we’ve been talking about.
“Finally, we had our employee appreciation party on Saturday, and it was very well attended. I want to thank everybody for joining us. We want to thank all of our council members that showed up and participated, and I especially want to thank our employee appreciation event planning committee. They did a wonderful job, so we want to thank them for their efforts,” Sheedy said.
The writer can be reached at delriomagnolifan@gmail.com .
