Meadowlakes closes out unique fiscal year

BY SETH GREEN • Daily Tribune Staff

MEADOWLAKES - The city has issued its annual report summary, closing out a very busy, unusually long and unique fiscal year, especially for the Public Works Department.

The city this year annexed the Meadowlakes Municipal Utility District, establishing a Public Works Department and adding the MUD’s employees to the city’s payrolls. In doing so, Public Works Director Johnnie Thompson said, the city had to merge its own Oct. 1-Sept. 30 fiscal year with the MUD’s July 1-June 30 fiscal year.

“The MUD’s originally ran from July 1 through June 30,” Thompson said. “So when the city annexed the district, they kept our existing budget, which ran through June 30. And then we did an amended budget, which added the three months from July to September.”

The upshot was that the city’s Public Works Department had a 15-month fiscal year, Thompson said, and officials had to do some extra work work reconciling a 15-month fiscal year with budget software designed to handle a 12-month fiscal year.

But aside from the city-MUD merger, Thompson said, the public works department has seen very little unexpected activity.

“It was very smooth,” Thompson said of the city’s merger with the MUD. “I think it was mainly cooperation between the MUD board and the City Council. It went a lot smoother, I think, than anybody anticipated.”

Other than the logistical challenge of merging two government bodies, Thompson said, the department saw very few large-scale projects in the 2006-2007 fiscal year.

“The only major project, of course, was the raw water main, and then this drainage project we’re on right now,” he said.

The drainage project involves replacing a stormwater drainage culvert that runs from a street drain on Meadowlakes Drive to Lake Marble Falls. The drain includes two culverts, one of which failed, causing a sink hole between two homes along Meadowlakes Drive. He explained the city will continue using the 42-inch culvert, which remained intact, and replace the failed 36-inch culvert with a new 48-inch culvert.

The project, approved at an emergency City Council meeting Sept. 18, was slated to cost $48,000, but Thompson said he expected the project would probably outstrip that budget by about $10,000.

Aside from those projects, Thompson said, he saw mostly regular maintenance and repair projects.

“We had the normal amount of repair and maintenance, but that just goes with aging equipment,” he said. “Some of the stuff is 35 years old now.”

The new fiscal year also brings a new country club and owner to Meadowlakes, after Mike McClung, whose father owned the country club several years ago, purchased the Meadowlakes Country Club and re-christened it the Hidden Falls Country Club.

The city had an agreement with the country club and its former owner Rick Lohr, allowing the city to disperse its treated wastewater on the golf course. Due partly to heavy rains in recent months, the country club had not irrigated its golf course frequently enough to keep the Meadowlakes effluent pond at levels mandated by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

Since McClung took over, however, Thompson said the city’s effluent pond has maintained acceptable levels.

“They’ve been very cooperative,” Thompson said. “It’s at the lowest level it’s been at this calendar year.”

seth@thepicayune.com

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Meadowlakes closes out unique
fiscal year