Sunday, February 21, 2010

GBC bucks promotion starts taking shape
Monitor Staff Reports
GUN BARREL CITY–Members of the Gun Barrel City Economic Development Corporation welcomed news that the multiplex theater in Heritage Cove is ready for opening,with a ribbon cutting planned for Feb. 25.
The EDC is also finalizing plans to publically launch its Gun Barrel City bucks ad campaign to encourage Cedar Creek Lake residents to shop in Gun Barrel City.
Some 370 city businesses are being asked by letter to participate in honoring 20 percent discount coupons appearing as an insert in local newspapers in March, including The Monitor.
Ads drawing attention to the insert are expected to appear in newspapers the two weeks before the newspaper insert is delivered.
The coupons will be worth $5, $10 and $20 on purchases valued at $20, $50 and $100 at participating businesses.
Members also reviewed the design for a billboard, whose slogan was taken from one of the two winners of a recent billboard design contest held among Mabank High School art students.
The slogan is “There’s something for everyone. Gun Barrel City at the Heart of Cedar Creek Lake.”
The EDC is shooting for April 1 to mounting of the new slogan on a billboard along U.S. 175.
Members Richard Wendel highlighted some of the featured workshops at the recent 2010 Texas Economic Development Winter Conference.
Wendel plans to pursue one idea presented which makes fuller use of the Internet through Twittering, and links to social networking websites, such as Facebook, to call attention to the city and its businesses.
Wendel also said he met the director of the Texas Bank for Economic Devlopment, who can help the city leverage its money to install infrastructure on the 92-acre tract recently purchased by the EDC.

County ponders adding CodeRED
By Pearl Cantrell
Monitor Staff Writer
ATHENS–Henderson County Commissioners decided to wait a week to get some crucial questions answered before getting on the CodeRED bandwagon.
“This is a time-sensitive agreement,” Emergency Management Coordinator Joy Kimbrough told commissioners Tuesday. The East Texas Council of Governments has had it since January, she added.
CodeRED is a First Responder emergency notification system, in which one call is able to notify everyone in a given group, such as volunteer fire departments, EMS workers or SWAT. members, sheriff’s chief deputy Dan Parker explained.
Precinct 4 Commissioner Jerry West said he’s checked with other counties using the system. “It sounded good to me. I think it would be a big asset to the county,” he said.
It is being funded through a Homeland Security grant to the ETCOG. Henderson County’s grant match is $12,000 to participate in the program, Kimbrough explained.
Under the program, the county gets 50,000 system minutes, with 33 cents for each additional minte and 500 minutes for testing and training with free e-mailing and text messaging.
The agreement also specifies the cost of the initial database upload is waived. The sistem includes one distance training session on the system’s use.
Sheriff Ray Nutt weighed in with a question about “hidden costs.”
“I’m not against it,” Nutt said. “Basically, you’ll decide whether we use it or not, but if it has some hidden costs, I don’t want to go there,” he said, adding that the Sheriff’s Office didn’t have the hardware capability to implement the system.
Precinct 2 Commissioner Wade McKinney moved to table the matter for one week, to look into what was required to use the system and any costs that may be associated with setting it up.
“CodeRED is like First Call, there is no cost,” Kimbrough said. “I don’t know of any networking issue. It’s beyond what we do at the local level.”
In other business, commissioners:
• denied a request from the City of Seven Points to waive or reduce the fees to use the county’s elections equipment, in view of the city’s long-standing assistance to the state and county’s elections. The Seven Points City Hall has supplied the space for early voting for many years without cost to the state and county, a request letter pointed out.
Precinct 1 Commissioner Joe Hall acknowledged the service the city has given, but didn’t want to see granting a request like this “snowballing” into many requests from other polling places offering similar services. “Seven Points has done a lot for the county,” Judge David Holstein said.
Discussion of other locations, such as a church, followed, along with other polling sites that could make the same request. “In the past, we have paid churches to allow elections to be held there,” Holstein added.
Commissioners estimated the county would lose about $2,500 if it waived the rental fee. Seven Points secretary Debbie Mosley estimated the waiver at $145 per day for 10 days of early voting, plus election day at $1,600, not including the additional cost to install the software, estimated at another $2,000.
• reappointed Nelda F. Reynolds, Charles J. Oram and Kenneth Shaver to Emergency Service District No. 2, serving Payne Springs and Enchanted Oaks fire departments.
• granted a request from the City of Berryville for assistance with street repairs.
• approved certain property tax refunds as submitted by the Tax Assessor/Collector.
• adjusted a grant time period by an extension of 30 days to complete work on a mobile emergency management trailer. The grant comes from the Governor’s Division of Emergency Management. Commissioners agreed to apply for a 30-day extension on the performance period to March 31, after hearing a report on the progress of the trailer’s manufacture. The reimbursable grant award totals $234,043.
• vacated a portion of an easement along Starlight Drive in the Moonlight Bay subdivision, located in Precinct 1.
• paid 2009 bills totaling $42,153.38 and 2010 bills totaling $352,520.85.