City Transportation Administrator Blythe Bailey said Tuesday he hopes to be ready to proceed soon with another portion of the Riverwalk project.
City Councilman Chip Henderson asked about the status of the project, which is proceeding toward St. Elmo.
“That project is funded through federal grants, and any project funded that way is required to get concurrence from TDOT before we can award the bid,” Mr.
Bailey said. “We’ve bid this project a couple of times and had to do some re-dos.”
“I just wanted to have that one ready as soon as we get that concurrence. Because we didn’t get concurrence today, it won’t be ready for the 23rd. But we’re shooting for the March 2nd meeting.”
Councilman Erskine Oglesby noted that the Council will not meet on March 2 due to the mayoral election. However, he said Mr. Bailey can speak at the March 9 meeting if everything goes as planned.
Mr. Bailey also gave props to everyone in Transportation, saying that they have done paving work they usually would not do this time of year.
“We usually don’t do paving in the winter months, but we’ve had some agreeable weather so I wanted to spend the money sooner rather than later,” Mr. Bailey said, “as long as we’re comfortable without affecting long-term durability.”
Also Tuesday afternoon, Brent Messer had a very short report from the city’s IT department.
“In IT, in any organization, IT has one product, which is value,” Mr. Messer said. “Value comes from many places and forms, such as keeping our platforms safe from attacks is value. As you know, we work with the city to adapt and change the value we bring.”
He told the council that Information Technologies saves the city $3.3 million per year, which is where the department derives much of its value.
“We’re constantly looking, and it’s not just us. It’s in collaboration with others,” Mr. Messer said. “We use data to organize things in a way it makes sense, and analyze it to see how we can do it better and make it more efficient, and save money.”