The College Station city council changes direction on how to spend a $500,000 dollar grant from the Texas General Land Office (GLO) to benefit low and moderate income neighborhoods.
College Station mayor John Nichols thanked city staff and the Texas GLO for granting additional time to change the application.
The changes include adding an emergency generator at the Meyer senior and community center. The application previously included a generator for the Lincoln center. Two generators were supported by College Station’s emergency management coordinator, Tradd Mills, who says that will mean not having to rely on Texas A&M to shelter people during extreme cold or heat.
There was no council opposition that was expressed during their meeting on April 27 to the changes.
During the council’s April 13 meeting, the vote was four to three. The divided vote was due to spending grant money on flood warning alarm systems at 20 locations. The revised grant application calls for flood alarms at three locations.
And the state grant will partially pay for a study to assess flood hazard areas in College Station.
Click below to hear comments from the April 27, 2023 College Station city council meeting.
Original story, April 18, 2023:
Last October, the College Station city council accepted a $500,000 dollar grant from the Texas General Land Office (GLO) to be spent in low and moderate income areas of the city.
Six months later, on April 13, the council voted four to three accepting staff recommendations on how to spend the money.
What divided the council was spending $354.500 dollars on a flood alert system.
Councilman Dennis Maloney was the swing vote. Maloney wanted the money for the flood alert system to go towards sidewalks or another generator. But changing the staff recommendation would have required another 14 day public comment period, which would have run past the grant deadline.
That led Maloney to approve the staff recommendation, noting “Our back is against the wall. You either do this or risk losing it (the $500,000 dollar grant)”.
Maloney said he did not find flooding in College Station “as a great problem”, adding “we’ll have a very nice flood warning system and maybe we won’t have to clean out our drainage (system) anymore.”
Councilman William Wright voted for the flood alert system after getting confirmation that was the expectation from the GLO.
Also voting for the flood alert system were mayor John Nichols and councilman Mark Wright.
No one on the council opposed spending the remaining $145,500 dollars towards an emergency generator at the Lincoln recreation center.
Click HERE to read and download background information on the grant funded projects.
Click below to hear comments from the April 13, 2023 College Station city council meeting.