Gladewater employees tackle initial tasks from July town hall

There was a lot of ‘long-term’ in talks at Gladewater’s July 25 Town Hall meeting, but there were plenty of immediate to-dos added to the city’s task list – a number of them have already been checked off.
Granted, even the simplest requires a degree of ongoing care and maintenance, and those plans are in the works, too.
For example, the pothole problem.
There are plenty waiting to be fixed and more that’ll reveal themselves soon enough. Some, though, have been dealt with and more are being added to the list every day alongside water leak repairs and other projects.
“That’s something we’ve been working on religiously here in the last week,” said Gladewater City Manager Charlie Smith. “All over town, the Red Rock area and beyond.”
Seven days out from the Mayor’s Town Hall at the Gladewater Former Students Association Building, there are fewer pothole problem spots than before, and the push is to keep making progress while actively identifying new weaknesses.
Likewise, Smith said, one community member called out the state of the downtown public restrooms during the public talkback late last month. Public Works employees got to work ASAP on initial repairs and more are planned.
“They may still be deplorable to some people, but they did go in and clean them,” Smith said. “We’ve got some plate metal ordered to go on the walls in there to cover the existing holes that were made because of the repairs.”
The Hendricks Street road project also got the spotlight July 25.
“I know that’s been an eyesore and a pain in the tail,” Smith said, but recent pours ensured it could be opened up ahead of the start of school. New asphalt will follow once back-to-school traffic dies down. “I’m so ready to get that done, but that is what it is.”
An abandoned church property has been mowed, and a plan’s in place for ongoing TLC until a long-term solution can be found.
“Cleaning the curbs, that’s another thing. They’ve been doing that also, especially down on Martin Luther King (Drive). Our goal is to get all over town and get the curbs cleaned, hopefully get the grass from growing over them.”
With budget season underway, Smith’s eager to see what other tasks the city’s able to tackle in the coming Fiscal Year 2025.
“The thing about it is that a lot of the repairs that needed to be made we did this year,” he said. “We got a lot of that done – water, wastewater, things out in the city.
“Hopefully in next year’s budget, we won’t be using the same kind of money to make repairs on stuff.”
The Gladewater City Council’s next regular monthly meeting is set for 6 p.m. Aug. 15 at City Hall. It will include a public hearing on the proposed tax rate for Fiscal Year 2024-2025 as well as a public hearing on the proposed budget. Both hearings include opportunities for community members to weigh in.