The Fayette Citizen-News Page
Friday, November 13, 1998
Tyrone still uncertain on buying school's sewer plant

By JOHN THOMPSON
Staff Writer

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A surprise discussion of the town's efforts in obtaining a sewerage system for two large developments at last Thursday night's meeting left many Tyrone residents wondering what direction the city was heading.

At the start of the meeting, town manager Barry Amos was asked to brief the council on the town's efforts in obtaining sewer capacity or the sewerage system on Jenkins Road from the Fayette County Board of Education.

The town is looking at the school's facility to provide a sewerage system for the massive Richard Bowers office park on Ga. Highway 74 and also supplement the system currently being planned for the John Wieland PUD planned for the town.

Councilman Bill Stone said he had asked for the sewer discussion to be brought back at Thursday's meeting. Stone said he had questions about Amos' recently completed sewer study for the town.

Amos told the council he had recently met with school board chairman Woody Shelnutt and Superintendent of Education Dave Brotherton. The school system and Tyrone are waiting for an appraisal on the value of the system. The appraisal fee is being paid by Bowers.

"The school board has a lot of excess capacity at the plant, but we found out we can't purchase the capacity. The only option in the near term is purchasing the plant for the Bowers project," Amos said.

While the council seems to be in favor of the taxes Bowers project could bring to town, the group is not quite sure if running a sewerage system is in the best interests of the town.

"One spill could destroy and maybe endanger the standing of the town," said Mayor Richard Santiago.

Santiago added that sewerage systems don't make money in the long term, or the school board would not consider selling the system.

The council also discussed the fact that if everybody in the town was hooked up to a new sewerage system, the total tab could reach $19 million. The low estimates for just connecting the two large projects proposed for the town range from $2-5 million.

Santiago emphasized the town would not be making any rash decisions and the public would be informed before any final decisions were made.

After the council discussed the sewage idea for over an hour, Santiago asked the residents for their opinion on a sewerage system for the town.

Janet Smola took the town to task for waiting so long to get an appraisal on the school board's septic system and said the town needed to look at who would benefit from buying the plant.

"This would benefit the new people to the community who aren't even here yet," she said.


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