By David Ball

david.ball@panews.com

Lots of people make New Year’s resolutions and community leaders are no different. They shared their thoughts to look forward what they would like to see happen in 2018.

 

City of Port Arthur

 

Mayor Derrick Freeman said the street repair program in the city is his No. 1 concern followed by meeting housing needs of residents, many of them displaced, following Tropical Storm Harvey.

“We need an ample dosing of abundant blessing of federal dollars (for housing). I think if we focus on those two things everything will be all right,” Freeman said.

 

Focus on our streets, avoiding disaster

 

Willie “Bae” Lewis Jr., District 5 councilman, had a score of ideas he would like to see implemented in the city of Port Arthur for 2018.

For instance, he wants the City Council to establish a $40 million bond issue for repairing city streets. To finance this, the city would set aside $6 million to $8 million per year for 10 years.

He would like to see a workshop scheduled on disaster planning. Lewis said the city staff did not receive a disaster plan for Tropical Storm Harvey until after the storm. He believes a new plan could avoid the loss of millions of dollars of equipment as happened at the operations center on Highway 73 following the tropical storm.

Lewis would like to seek Federal Emergency Management Agency grants and Texas General Land Office grants used to elevate homes in flood zones.

“The grants are free; they don’t have to be paid back,” he said. “People are selling their homes as is. That will impact and create more Section 8 rental properties (from the vacant houses). Section 8 is subsidized rental property. We’re already above average in Texas for Section 8. This will import more poverty to the city of Port Arthur from other cities. It will impact homeowner growth.”

 

Better infrastructure, housing eyed

 

Lewis also wants to see the city’s pump stations elevated to avoid future flooding as with Harvey.

He cited the pump stations in the Montrose and Vista Village additions that flooded and were down for 24 hours during the storm.

Lewis wants the city’s fuel tanker trucks to back up each station too.

“The city purchased fuel tankers after Hurricane Rita and they were not used,” Lewis said. “They all flooded at the operations center. They had time to move them and they didn’t. We can have them on location and pipe in the fuel.”

Also falling under homeowner issues, Lewis believes the city needs to aggressively expand the homebuyer’s program.

“We need to expand from Atlanta Avenue to Nashville Avenue and from Fifth Street to Eighth Street over by the university (Lamar State College- Port Arthur) to increase student attendance,” he said. “We need to increase the boundary line so people can qualify to buy a home and become a taxpayer.”

Another possibility is having interim City Manager Harvey Robinson implement a grant-writing department in the city to allocate funds.

Lastly, the city should continue to compete for GLO grants to develop the proposed waterfront park on Pleasure Island. The city already received a grant for planning the park.

Future plans are to develop the beach road at Pleasure Island with a grant already submitted and to develop the beach road at Sabine Pass later this year.

Larisa Carpenter, public information officer for the city, said Harvey Robinson, interim city manager, has declined any media requests at this time on his plans for the city in 2018.

 

Port Arthur Economic Development Corp.

 

Floyd Batiste, executive director for the PAEDC, said the most important thing to him was to get the various taxing entities — city, county, port, school district, navigation district, drainage district — to work closer together and to build consensus.

“I think in the long run the city will receive more because of collaborative efforts with a common vision to know where we’re going and by meeting objectives and goals,” he said.

Batiste said the governmental entities in South-County are worth nearly $1 billion, but the communities don’t see 10 percent of that money because they’re not working together.

“They get the money from the people and it would be a better return on their investment,” he said.

 

Revitalize gasping downtown

 

Another goal Batiste would like to see happen is downtown revitalization.

He said when he was hired to lead the PAEDC in 2005, the board of directors wanted downtown redevelopment. The city of Port Arthur spoke about it, but they put no money into the project unlike the PAEDC.

“To entice private investments here, we need public funding to make south of Highway 73 better,” he said. “We don’t want to diminish activities on FM 365 and north of 73. That’s how we survive. But we need to make the community more livable.”

Part of that livability is attracting more people to build homes here; not more apartments or duplexes.

“I’m a country boy. I believe it takes the whole village to make a city better,” Batiste said.

Greater Port Arthur Chamber of Commerce

 

Bill McCoy, president of the chamber, said goals for 2018 include gaining the Five Star U.S. Chamber of Commerce accreditation and continue grants from the Port Arthur Education Foundation to Lamar State College Port Arthur, Port Arthur ISD and Sabine Pass ISD students.

The chamber also wants to develop a comprehensive transportation plan with the Texas Department of Transportation for a grant to reduce the speed limit where Highway 73 meets with Highway 69 for safety, rebuild the cloverleaf exchange at Highway 73 and develop more north and south streets to tie together the city.

Last but not least, maintain recovery of homes and businesses from Harvey.

 

Nederland Chamber of Commerce

 

Diana LaBorde, president of the Nederland Chamber, said above all she would like to see residences and businesses back on their feet after Harvey and get life back to normal.

Furthermore, she would like to see business growth and new businesses open in the city.

“Kay with the EDC (economic development corporation) has done an excellent job with this,” LaBorde said. “The chamber is also partnering with other entities to put on an airshow in May 2019 at the (Jack Brooks Regional) airport. We’re looking forward to a good year.”

Though Harvey created some minor business interruptions, LaBorde thinks Nederland businesses did a great job.

“Things stayed on track,” she said. “The ridge the airport was built on protected us.”

LaBorde sees her role in heading the chamber as being there for businesses.

“It’s a scary thing opening a mom-and-pop business. They need help and for the community to shop local,” she said. “There’s a lot of great things here. We don’t have to go outside of our area.”

 

Nederland Economic Development Corp.

 

Kay Decuir, executive director of the NEDC, said businesses have been “really blessed.”

She and her board of directors would like to see construction started at The Landing, a shopping development at the Jack Brooks Regional Airport.

“Our local businesses thrive and grow and we would like to retain them and bring in new businesses,” Decuir said. “I would love to see more new single-family homes here because our school district is growing. We have a lack of homes to draw in more.”

She would also like to see more than one airline operating at the airport with flights to Houston and other cities. Decuir believes Jack Brooks can handle the excess traffic because there were several large jets taking off and landing after Harvey hit.

Nederland is largely landlocked, so Decuir would like to see the city annex territory outside the city limits for growing room.

Some areas in the city have been cleared and new houses brought in. Additionally, some developers have torn down older homes to make room for new ones.

A little known program, the Neighborhood Empowerment Zone, allows homeowners to get a tax abatement for a number of years if they make improvements to their properties.

“I would like to see more citizens use the Neighborhood Empowerment Zone. A lot of them could benefit from that,” she said. “It goes to the homeowner. Only six people in the past two years have applied for it. It lowers taxes and improves properties.”

 

Jefferson County: More recovery

 

County Judge Jeff Branick said he would like to see the continued recovery from Tropical Storm Harvey.

He added that he would like to see more expeditious help for housing residents, continuing the beach restoration program that could help prevent storm surge, expand the tax base with more industrial expansions and a collaboration between governmental entities to develop job skills for the high-paying jobs coming in the future.

“I want everyone back in their homes and to return back to normalcy,” he said.

Branick said the budget is somewhat of a wild card because all of the bills from Harvey haven’t come in yet. He said the county needs to track sales tax revenue and watch spending during the year.