Pictured at a recent meeting of the Paris-Lamar County Board of Health are, clockwise from bottom left, mayor AJ Hashmi, Bill Strathern, city finance director Gene Anderson, board president Wally Kraft, former administrator Anthony Bethel, Dr. Gordon B. Strom, and Lamar County Judge Chuck Superville. (eParisExtra.com photo by Charles Richards)
By CHARLES RICHARDS
eParisExtra.com
The Paris-Lamar County Board of Health will meet at 6 p.m. Tuesday to discuss and possibly adopt a document whose purpose is to shield Lamar County and the City of Paris from lawsuits concerning the Paris-Lamar County Health Department.
The board also is scheduled to go behind closed doors to review applications and/or resumes for the position of public health administrator.
Anthony Bethel retired on Jan. 1, and the board subsequently named Dr. Amanda Green as temporary administrator.
Tuesday is the health board’s regular meeting. In addition, a special meeting has been scheduled for 6 p.m. Thursday for the board to again go into executive session to deliberate and possibly act on the administrator position.
The health board has been looking at an “inter-local cooperative agreement” patterned after one from Williamson County that would spell out the relationship between the city and the health board, and the county and the health board.
Gene Anderson, finance director for the City of Paris, informed health department officials in July of last year that the city would stop doing the health department’s billing and bookkeeping effective Oct. 1, 2011, the beginning of the next fiscal year.
He also said that health department employees would no longer be treated like city employees.
Because the city was treating health department employees like city employees – including carrying them on the city’s pension and insurance plans – the city has been named in two lawsuits against the health department in recent years,
Anderson said.
An uproar grew out of Anderson’s announcement, and he agreed to put off any action until the city council and health board could consider the best way to handle the issue.
The health board is looking into ways for the health department to handle its own bookkeeping, as well as ways to put health department employees under their own health and/or pension plans.
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By CHARLES RICHARDS
eParisExtra.com
The mayor’s Task Force on Substandard Structures has scheduled a work session for 11 a.m. Monday to discuss funding opportunities that might be made available to help residents pay for repairs on their property.
John Wright
The meeting will be at the city council chambers, 107 E. Kaufman St.
The task force is nearing the end of its work. When Mayor AJ Hashmi created the task force in response to the collapse of a downtown building in mid-January, he said he envisioned the 11-member group wrapping up its work in six weeks.
One result of the task force was the resurrection of the city’s Building and Standards Commission, which hadn’t met since last summer.
The commission last month reinstituted its schedule of meeting on the third Monday of each month.
That board will have its March meeting at 4 p.m. Monday, at which time code enforcement supervisor Robert Talley will present a list of 15 structures considered substandard or dangerous.
Another result of the task force was to change the focus of the commission to buildings that need repair, rather than demolition.
John Wright, chairman of the task force, said he would like more attention to buildings before they reach the point they have to be torn down. Wright said buildings need to be renovated and brought back on the tax rolls.
Owners of the 15 properties up for discussion on Monday have been given notice of a violation of Article III of Chapter 7 of the Code of Ordinances of the City of Paris, entitled “Substandard and Dangerous Buildings and Structures.” They will be allowed to visit with the board regarding their properties.
Here are the 15 structures that will come before the Building and Standards Commission on Monday:
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By CHARLES RICHARDS
eParisExtra.com
The man to whom the Paris City Council has offered the city manager’s job has accepted “nearly all” of a counter-offer made him, and the Paris City Council will meet in special session Tuesday to finalize his contract, Mayor AJ Hashmi says.
John Godwin
The council will meet at 5:30 p.m., and the mayor said he thinks the council will approve the contract that council members John Wright, Matt Frierson and Dr. Richard Grossnickle, finance director Gene Anderson and city attorney Kent McIlyer negotiated with Fairfield town manager John Godwin.
Grossnickle said last week, even as Godwin proposed a package that exceeded $200,000, that the council never anticipated it would pay him less than the $159,000 plus benefits that he now receives at Fairfield, a fast-growing community that sits between McKinney and Allen.
The council indicated it was unwilling to pay that much and made a counter-proposal. Hashmi said he has not seen the numbers, “but my understanding is that whatever the council members suggested, he pretty much accepted.”
At the time that the council offered Godwin the job on March 5, he said he would be able to report for work “in four to six weeks.”
Hashmi said that should be four to six weeks from March 5 – not four to six weeks from now.
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TUG OF WAR — Children from the Boys and Girls Club of the Red River Valley are shown in a tug of war Friday afternoon with an elephant from the Carson & Barnes Circus, which opened its 2012 tour on Saturday with a performance at the Red River Valley Fairgrounds in Paris. (eParisExtra.com photo by Charles Richards)
Henry Shaw, left, director of the Boys and Girls Club of the Red River Valley shows former Hugo city manager David Rawls, now a consultant for Carson and Barnes Circus, photos on his cell phone of the $1.7 million Hugo Boys and Girls Club that opened Monday in Hugo. Rawls said “we wouldn’t have been able to get it done” without Shaw’s help. The circus previewed it opening Saturday in Paris of the circus’ 2012 tour by having about 15 children from the Boys and Girls Club in Paris engage in a tug-of-war with one of the circus’ elephants. (eParisExtra.com photo by Charles Richards)
A baby hippopotamus is in one pen, adjacent to camels in another, on the Red River Valley Fairgrounds on Friday, the day before the Carson and Barnes Circus opened its 2012 tour with performances in Paris. (eParisExtra.com photo by Charles Richards)
Shown here are more of the animals used in the Carson and Barnes’ circus performances Saturday in Paris. (eParisExtra.com photo by Charles Richards)
And still more animals … a pen of horses. (eParisExtra.com photo by Charles Richards)
Mayors AJ Hashmi of Paris, left, and Stan Payne of Hugo, Okla., were among the spectators for Friday’s tug-of-war between children of the Boys and Girls Club of the Red River Valley and a Carson and Barnes elephant at the Red River Valley Fairgrounds in Paris. The circus opened its 2012 tour on Saturday with performances at the fairgrounds. (eParisExtra.com photo by Charles Richards)
BYWATERS PARK PERISTYLE — More work on the peristyle at Bywaters Park has been under way over the past couple of weeks. First was the restoration because of pillars that had weakened over the years. More recently, workmen have been putting down a new concrete floor. The peristyle is the focal point for the park, which itself is due for a facelift as the Paris City Council seeks to add new trees, new grass, a sprinkler system, new lighting, new seating — provided at minimal cost to the city thanks to contributions and voluntary labor. (eParisExtra.com photo by Charles Richards)
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