Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

City to repair 13 miles of streets with tax hike

After raising city sales tax by .75 percent to accomplish much needed street repair in Gurdon, many are curious as to when the $664,300 is projected to become available to do the work.

Gurdon Mayor Clayton Franklin said Wednesday, "We are talking about a total project that will include nearly 13 miles of asphalting, with two inches of asphalt being applied to each street.

"We hope to do five streets this fall before the weather gets bad, and the rest we will do in the spring."

Jim Caldwell, street superintendent, said some of the preliminary ditching work started two weeks ago on 10th and Walnut, and Red Springs. This includes culvert work, replacing drainage ditch pipe and more. On Thursday morning, the street crew replaced a ditch pipe on Front Street.

Franklin will sign the papers on the bond issue Sept. 14 at Stephens Inc. at Little Rock. He said the money will be available in bulk sum for street repair shortly there after.

"We will get $740,000 before costs, and we plan to spend every penny of our $664,300 met for streets on streets," Franklin said. "As soon as funds are available, our first step is to take bids on projects to determine how many projects we can actually do."

Franklin said a rough cost per foot for asphalting two-inches thick is approximately $10. He said the entire repair projects will probably be spread over a year or more.

"We are set up to have a nine-year bond issue, which means we plan to be done paying it back by 2013," Franklin said. "The tax collections will stop when the bonds are paid off. We have until Sept. 1, 2017 in case anything goes wrong with our tax collections."

Franklin said $43,000 will be laid aside in debt service with interest. First National Bank of Hope will be the trustee, with Elkhorn Bank buying $475,000 of long bonds. The mayor said Elkhorn's purchase kept the project below a 4 percent cap in interest. The rest of the bonds were bought by various investors through Stephens Inc.

The .75 percent tax hike made the total for Gurdon 2.25 percent, with county tax being 1 percent more and state tax being 6 percent, meaning that total sales tax here will be 9.25 percent as of Sept. 1.

Caldwell and the mayor revealed the order of streets to be improved.

Franklin said, "We will go down Go Devil Road on Front Street, from the County Line down to Miller Street, and Red Springs Road from the County Line to Highway 53. Then we'll pave our way from Kansas Road from the County Line to Highway 53.

"Then we will go down Bowen Road from the County Line to 10th Street and 10th Street from the County Line to Cherry Street. After that, we will have completed our first phase."

Campbell said 13 culverts have already been replaced, as preliminary work continues. This includes four on Red Springs, six on Walnut Street, two on 10th Street and one on Front Street.

Franklin said, "We will asphalt them and stripe them. Clark County Judge Ron Daniell and his crew are helping, and have already assisted us on a couple of the culvert jobs."