It’s time to catch up with Elmo City Mayor James Winn, who took time from his busy schedule to speak over the telephone with Castle Country Radio about the city’s budget, and city beautification projects.

The council met last night to finalize their budget and it went very well. “We went through a couple of weeks ago and had a public hearing. We talked about different things, we’re doing some projects in our park and cemetery, as well as, we’re having to address the issues with, because of the House Bill 242 coming about, it’s increased costs for secondary water and that kind of thing so we’ve had to change up how we spend our money a little bit,” stated Mayor Winn.

The public hearing shared with residents the different beautification projects that would be taking place. “We’re wanting to get the sprinkling system going and there’s a part of our park that has sand that we’re going to fill in with some lawn and put a sprinkler system in there so that’s making our park look a little nicer. Also, our playground equipment, looking to update that, so those kinds of things,” explained Mayor Winn. There will be a few projects taking place at the city’s cemetery that residents will notice too.

The city recently remodeled their Towne Hall and they now rent out a portion of the building for residents to host parties/gatherings. “When we did our remodel, we added a kitchen and so it’s made it so that people using it more. We just had some times where it’s been rented and its hasn’t been cleaned up after very well. So, we just addressed the agreement, we’re making it more official and something that people will sign that says that they will clean up after,” stated Mayor Winn. City officials had to implement a new rental agreement to protect the city and those that rent the hall.

There have been a few outside projects being conducted at Town Hall and those will be finished soon. “We have a part where we’re going to replace where there’s a bunch of rocks for landscaping that we had. We need to fill in some of it with cement and some of it we’re going to put some lawn in and just make it look nice. Hopefully, we’re going to start this coming month, we’ll have somebody there taking care of things,” said Mayor Winn.

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