Griffith Street to be discussion topic at council meeting

The El Dorado City Council is expected to resume discussions about the condition of a portion of Griffith Street during a regular meeting at 5:30 p.m. today in the Council Chamber of City Hall.

At the top of the council’s agenda is the multi-layered issue regarding the poor state of Griffith between North West and Jefferson avenues, just north of the Mellor Park Mall.

Large, deep potholes near the Griffith/ North West Avenue intersection have been the source of ongoing complaints from residents and city officials have said the street is a private drive that has never been deeded to the city, posing a roadblock to the question of who is for maintaining the street — the city or the mall owner.

The issue prompted mall owners Dr. Surendra Agarwal and son Sajal, who own Mellor

Park Mall through holding companies Multi-State and Tri-State, based in Effingham, Illinois, to file a lawsuit against the city last May.

The lawsuit was filed under Multi-State Holdings and contends that the city has an “apparent, implied easement traversing Mellor Park’s property for the purpose of public storm water drainage and should therefore be responsible for and undertake immediately the repair and maintenance of the storm drainage pipe.”

In January, council members authorized Smith-Creer and Kinslow to take a proposal to Multi-State and Tri-State that would call for the city and the mall property owners to team up to repair that section of Griffith.

The property owners would build a sub-base for the street and replace a storm water drainage pipe that extends east from a drop inlet, just west of Hobby Lobby and after the work has been completed and the city conducts and approves an inspection, the property owners would turn over the right-of-way — 25 feet in both directions from the center line of the street — to the city.

The city would then repair and overlay the street and accept it into its street inventory for future maintenance.

Further complicating matters, Union County has since patched the potholes on Griffith, with County Judge Mike Loftin citing safety and economic development concerns.

Mayor Veronica Smith-Creer said the work was done without any prior communication with her.

Also on the council’s agenda today are proposed ordinances to increase water and wastewater rates, per a recommendation from a comprehensive rate and operations study that was recently completed for the El Dorado Water Utilities.

The study was conducted by Raftelis, a utility and public-sector consulting firm that focuses on finance, organization and technology, including water and wastewater rate studies, cost analyses and financial and strategic planning.

On Jan. 23, Rocky Craley and Seth Garrison, both senior managers of Raftelis, presented the results of the study to city council members.

Part of their findings included a recommendation of a rate increase to pick up the pace for needed repairs to city’s the aging water and wastewater infrastructure, including an annual 2 percent increase on the water side and 12 percent on the wastewater side.

Garrison said the average customer would see a rate increase of 7 percent on their monthly water bill.

City officials are also expected to hear an update on an Arkansas Department of Transportation project to widen and improve U.S. 82-B/Hillsboro through El Dorado.

A public meeting regarding the project was held Jan. 30 in the Fellowship Hall of the First Assembly of God Church.