City Council to seek contractors for power pole replacement grant work

The Yoakum City Council will soon be awarding contracts for electrical power pole replacements and several other associated agreements during its regular monthly meeting Tuesday, Aug. 8.

“We just got grants that will take care of the downtown electrical lines, redoing electrical poles. It is a big grant,” Yoakum Mayor Carl O’Neil said. “These grants will take care of a lot of our infrastructure. Our system is old and needs many improvements.”

The city received two grants, one for an estimated $1.3 million and another for about $2.5 million, for electric power pole replacements— one for surrounding the city and one in the historic downtown area. The city is required to chip in a fraction of the amount in local tax dollars, typically about 10% of the overall grant amount.

The funds came to the city as part of the federal government’s Hurricane Harvey mitigation funds, given to cities, counties, and other governmental bodies that were impacted by that storm so they may curb some of the problems those entities faced in the Harvey’s wake.

Originally, the downtown lines were set to be replaced with all steel posts, Mayor O’Neill said, but the wait and costs for those made them a near impossibility in this post-COVID, disrupted-supplychain world.

They will be using hurricane-rated wooden poles instead, he said, far beefier versions than the ones currently in use. Their aim is to keep the city’s main emergency centers—places like the firehouse/EMS station, the police station and local dispatch, and the local community center which would likely serve as an emergency shelter for the public, if needed during such an emergency—all up and fully operational during even the worst weather conditions

In a related item, City Council also signed off on a pole attachment agreement for Vero Fiber.

The agreement will allow the company to make use of existing poles, once in place, to run its fiberoptic lines and provide high-speed broadband services between the various Yoakum ISD campuses.

Hopefully, as Mayor O’Neill mentioned, the city will also gain access to some of the same services as well in the process.

Finally, the council also approved a service contract with Motorola Solutions for the police department’s car and body camera secure storage system, allowing for more cloud storage.Both the car and body cams shoot video footage whenever an officer interacts with a member of the public. The videos are then stored for several months afterward, with some winding up as actual court evidence, such as when an officer pulls over someone for suspected drunk driving or contacts someone who is part of a larger criminal case.

Everything from crossing lane lines prior to the stop and the officer spotting open containers through the car’s windows to roadside sobriety tests and any other interactions between the officer and the suspect can be captured on those videos, which may then be introduced in court later by either side in the case.

Similarly, most departments now tape most officer interactions so if any complaints should arise later, they have video to either support or discredit any allegations raised.The problem is raw video footage can take up vast amounts of computer storage space. Saving it securely, in a manner that is then admissible in court later, may prove an even more space-consuming venture.

Motorola provides cloud storage for the secure servers law enforcement needs for case-sensitive files, and the company will keep tabs on new items as well as get rid of older files no longer needed as part of their software management platforms.

Officers can then focus on enforcing the law, not managing the department’s technological resources. The five-year contract was approved at a cost of $87,175.

Other items approved at the Tuesday meeting included:

• Personnel changes at the Municipal Transfer Station were approved, allowing for four full-time employees versus the current limit of three employees.

• The council also held a public hearing to review the list of junked vehicle ordinance violators in the city. A total of 20 junked vehicles at various locations have been scheduled for removal by the city.