On “Real News with Rick Outzen” this morning, Mayor D.C. Reeves gave updates on several outstanding projects.
PORTLAND LOOS
Early this past summer, Mayor Reeves reported that the installatioo for outdoor restrooms – “Portland Loos” – would be delayed because the installation bids come back at $140,000 each.
“We had just put one in at Bruce Beach for maybe it was $50,000 or $60,000, and that was just a few weeks before that,” he said. “So we kind of hit the pause button and then what we said was, ‘You know what? We’ll probably get even better pricing if we go ahead and wait on the third one, which we’re putting in Museum Plaza.’… Our thought was we were so close to getting that third one and getting the agreement done that we would’ve kind of felt silly to go rebid the two and then go rebid one. So we just said, ‘All right, well let’s clump ’em all together.”
The mayor added, “We’ve got a bid out there to install all three with the hopes that we were somewhere in the stratosphere of a reasonable cost to put ’em in.”
BRUCE BEACH
The grand opening of Bruce Beach’s second phase was delayed because of fecal matter found in a nearby stormwater outfall. Mayor Reeves hopes to hold the ceremony on Friday, Nov. 8, bearing any more bad test results.
“Right now, the good news is we’ve now had multiple weeks of consistent lower testing. So that is good,” he said. “I’m in the city hall parking lot right now. I’m supposed to get a report when I walk in between now and the press conference at 10 on whatever the latest is. If it continues on that trend, we’re shooting for November 8th, that Friday afternoon.”
STOP LIGHT CAMERAS
On the mayor’s to-do list has been installing cameras at the city’s busiest intersections. The project was supposed to be completed in August.
“We have the first couple of intersections under construction. We’ve been kind of micromanaging this from our office…The State road is a third party company installing it. So we’ve been very trying to be on top of, but I know at Ninth and Bayou Construction is underway.”
