Perhaps the most significant aspect of the March 20, 2017 Jersey Village City Council meeting was something not reflected in the agenda for the meeting – the introduction of our new city manager, Austin Bleess. Austin comes to Jersey Village from the town of Caribou, Maine where he also served as their city manager for the last 4+ years. Although he doesn’t come to us from another Texas city, he does come with an impressive resume, having served in various city governments in Minnesota, as well previous posts as an intern in The White House and a communications specialist in the Minnesota House of Representatives. Based on his experience and my limited interaction with him, I believe he will do well as our city manager.
Here is the audio for this month’s meeting of the Jersey Village City Council:
The meeting was relatively routine in nature, but there were some notable items on the agenda:
Backup Pump Station
Ordinarily, a request from the Department of Public Works to purchase a backup pump station would not be a terribly notable item on the agenda, but Public Works Director Kevin T. Hagerich noted a particularly interesting aspect of this request. The backup pump station, which is a trailer mounted diesel powered station, has the primary purpose of allowing the city to continue to operate its lift stations during a power failure.
The backup pump station, however, could also be used to pump existing water out of the detention pond into the bayou ahead of anticipated heavy rains. This would be helpful in ensuring that the detention pond has the maximum available capacity to take on new water ahead of a major storm. While it may be a small measure toward managing flood waters, solutions to such problems are usually the sum of a variety of smaller solutions. I applaud Kevin for such strategic thinking about the use of our city’s resources.
Miscellaneous
The rest of the meeting primarily dealt with routine matters, which you can find detailed in the meeting agenda and discussed in the audio file above.
