Published: January 12, 2009 10:44 pm      

Oak Hill council welcomes ’09 with focus on new

OAK HILL — Oak Hill city council focused its first meeting of the new year on welcoming a couple of new faces and discussing a new police station Monday evening.

“It really is great. I went through the building today, and I was really impressed,” Mayor Anna Lou Holt said of the police station that is currently under construction on Virginia Street.

“It really is nice. I wish they could move in right now,” she added.

“I wish we could too, mayor,” police chief Mike Whisman concurred.

City and state officials, along with engineers involved with the project, converged on the 4.5-acre plot of land last Aug. 26 and broke ground for the station. Pentree Engineering is doing the engineering work.

Council members officially transferred land for the station to the city building commission Aug. 20.

The land, purchased for $269,000, will eventually be leased back to the city after the building commission receives a deed of trust from the associated bonds.

City officials said the new station will give the police department a little more breathing room than the current office in city hall on Kelly Avenue.

The new facility will offer easier access to calls on U.S. 19 and in town, and it will present a safer, more stable environment for officers, the public and prisoners.

The city has borrowed $1.25 million to pay for the project. BB&T will purchase lease revenue bonds for that amount, for which the city will be responsible at a 4.31 percent fixed rate over a 20-year period. The city is facing a monthly payment of $7,780.49.

Then-city manager Tom Oxley said in August that the city budgeted $75,000 in its most recent budget cycle and will continue to do so in coming years to meet debt service of $1 million. The rest of the money will come from the police department’s equipment fund.

A bid to build the station was awarded to Flint Construction of Gassaway. The cost is not to exceed $1.3 million, but the final figure will be reduced by a change order once the contracts are signed, keeping it under the amount of the loan, Oxley said.

Oxley estimated construction completion by February or March of this year, depending on the weather.

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Oxley and Bill Hannabass took oaths of office Monday as the new councilman-at-large and city manager respectively of Oak Hill. Council members voted 4-0 on Dec. 8 to tap Oxley for that position.

Council members voted unanimously Nov. 10 to name Holt as mayor, and she assumed that position effective Dec. 1.

Hannabass, who resigned as mayor at council’s Oct. 13 meeting, became city manager when Oxley formally left that post at the end of December. Oxley tendered his letter of resignation as city manager in September.

Hannabass won the June 2007 mayoral election unopposed. Hannabass has previously served as a council member and a councilman-at-large.

Hannabass became a regular city employee Dec. 1 and worked alongside Oxley in an administrative position until the end of 2008.

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In other business, council members:

- Voted 6-0 to reject the adoption of an abandoned-property fee. Councilman Bruce Coleman was absent from Monday’s meeting.

- Unanimously approved a franchise agreement with nTelos for fiber optic cable in the city. The company, under the terms of the agreement, will pay the city an annual fee of 25 cents per foot of cable.

n Applauded as Holt named Sue Plumley as Oak Hill’s citizen of the month for January. Holt referred to Plumley’s tireless environmental efforts as the impetus behind her nomination.

— E-mail: mhill@register-herald.com