Published: March 11, 2009 09:53 am      

Council votes to demolish building

The Tuttle City Council voted at its regular monthly meeting to award a bid to demolish the former M & M Building located at 213 W. Main St. rather than pursue a FEMA grant to salvage the building.

“If you are interested in getting the grant, I suggest holding off on the demolition, with the focus of trying to get more money into the city; the building is not posing an immediate threat,” said Tuttle City Manager Tim Young, who told the council the FEMA grant will be closed with the demolition of the building, which may affect future grants.

“I think we should cancel this thing (the grant) and tear the building down,” said Ward Three Councilman Taylor Henderson. “We don’t have anything ready for this grant. When did we ever get any money from FEMA? I think we should drop the FEMA thing and demolish the building.”

“I’m in damage control now, trying to figure out how we can back out of the grant,” said Young. “I have a gut feeling we’re probably going to lose it.”

The council originally wanted to turn the property into a saferoom for the community.

“To do it correctly, we’d have to build a $2 million building, with $1 million going into the saferoom,” said Young. “But we are not in a position to build a $2 million building.”

The council voted unanimously to demolish it.

The council recognized Seth Paxton, son of former Tuttle Mayor Lonnie Paxton and his wife Misti. Seth, an eighth-grader at Tuttle Middle School who recently placed third in the Oklahoma Municipal Leagues’ and Oklahoma Conference of Mayors’ “If I were Mayor, I would…” contest, read his essay to the council.

Next, Elijah Redden, brother of Malachi Redden who fell to his death after a scaffolding on the new water tower gave way last month, asked the council to place a monument near the water tower to honor his brother, who he said was a hero and a great man. Mayor Tom Wilson assured Redden the city will place a memorial at the tower.

“This is something we have discussed and we are going to do it,” said Wilson.

The council then voted to proclaim April as Fair Housing Month and the week of April 13-17 as national Telecommunicator Week in Tuttle.

Next, Young told the council he is working hard to complete the city budget for fiscal year 2009 and will have it finished this week. He also said he will try to get Vidia Communications to shape up and improve their performance.

“There are performance issues,” said Young, who gets a call a week wanting to get rid of Vidia. “Customer complaints are supposed to be resolved within 48 hours and that is definitely not happening.”

Streets were the next subject of discussion, with Young saying he is working on possibly getting some stimulus money for street repairs. Because the expected amount is around $225,000, it is not enough to use on the $1 million Cimarron Road project, but may be used on Silver City Ridge Road, which the council wants to engineer quickly so the project will be eligible for the funds.