The Town of Decatur may soon be shining a bit brighter as the Board of Aldermen considers swapping out some of the town’s fluorescent lights with energy-efficient LED lighting.
In a regularly scheduled meeting Tuesday, Mayor David Marshall told the board Mississippi Power was offering the LED lighting at no upfront cost to the town.
“Basically, it’s upfront no cost to the town,” he said. “However, the lowest rate fixture that we have now versus the lowest rate LED fixture, the lowest rate models are about $5 difference per month.”
That means, Marshall said, the cost for electricity for the small lights around town would be more expensive with the LED lights. With the larger lights, the cost for LEDs would be less.
“We can kind of pick and choose which ones we do, or we can do just the main thoroughfares through town and leave the others alone” he said. “Mississippi Power will work with us in any direction that they want to.”
Over the next few weeks, Marshall said, he planned to sit down with a map and calculate which lights the town could replace and what the cost would be. He said he hoped to have a better analysis of cost and savings for the Board of Aldermen to consider by their August meeting.
Additionally, Marshall said, Mississippi Power has started offering security cameras as part of their services to the town. The cameras are also provided with no upfront cost, but he said he had not received monthly pricing on the service by Tuesday’s meeting.
In other business, City Clerk Brenda Harper informed the board they had received pre-award paperwork for a Flood Control Grant the town had applied for in December 2018.
“The Emergency Watershed Protection Assistance Request was submitted in December of 2018 when we had a lot of water over there around North Decatur that did a lot of damage,” she said. “We applied for this Flood Control Grant from the USDA, and we have received the pre-award documents.”
Marshall said the damage was caused by a sewer line break that caused significant erosion to the bank of the drainage ditch along Highway 15, behind where Added Touch is located today.
“The bank really just washed away due to the amount of water flow,” he said.
Harper said the repair project outlined in the grant paperwork would cost $44,000 of which the town would be responsible for about $10,000.
The town has 200 days to fill out the pre-award paperwork and submit them to the USDA for final approval. If approved, the project would be bid out and controlled by USDA.
