it's time for another episode of council corner where we highlight some of the bigger items that were discussed during Tuesday's city council meeting and today we are joined by ward 3 councilwoman Linda Chapman thank you so much for being with us you're most welcome and I want to thank you also for doing Council corner I think it's very important for our citizens to have an opportunity to discuss some of the issues from our city council me meeting so thank you very much absolutely and um y'all are always so full of insight and wisdom so we certainly appreciate that so starting with one of the bigger items that was pulled from consent raising water rates for Republic paper board sounds like a really big win for the city tell us what that means it is a good win um our director of Public Utilities Rusty ween Hut presented a a a report basically that he and the city manager met with the people in Republic paper board they have had a water rate contract with the city since 1998 and they have never had any rates lifted raised since 1998 and I was very glad to see that they and the city came together to to collaborate sorry to collaborate this this Venture right now as I understand we're going to need to get about $470,000 increase in our first year so it's a win for both that the city and businesses can work together absolutely and another big item that uh was discussed was the Mike Community develop development and Resource Center coming forth and uh they're going to be able to continue with plans to build a homeless shelter right there in your ward so what is that what does that mean correct we have a very large number of homeless youth here in Lon uh as an elementary school teacher even I could see at that time that there were even young people who did not have a place to lay their head for the night this this particular program is going to give the opportunity for some kids to have some structure and security and also to see that someone really loves them and wants to prepare them to not become homeless adults so so I think this is a great opportunity for these 12 young boys yeah and Bernita Taylor there at M is doing this phenomenal things she is she is and she has such a success story yeah we love to definitely love to hear that so we also um got a report from engineering one of the Garver Associates came forth and said hey we're going to be working on our storm water master plan they're really needing input from the public to identify some of the drainage issues that we have with within the city um what does that mean for our citizens we have not had a storm water master plan since 2003 and as a result with the city growing in neighborhoods and housing additions on the east and west side and even on the south side of Lon we want to make sure that those drainage areas and those channels can have the the correct flow of water so there's not going to be flooding in those areas with the website from Garver they're asking for our input because we drive around town and we know where those drainage issues are and so they would like to have the input from the citizens and I understand that is going to be up about 3 months or 90 days something like that y absolutely so definitely encouraging our citizens who are out and about go on our website it's right there on the homepage really easy to get to and make sure that uh we get all of those submitted in the next 90 days uh is there anything else that you would like to I don't believe so I think hopefully I am very happy about this I think that we are moving forward so well especially in the last 6 to n months with so many different areas in the city absolutely and I know I've gotten a lot of compliments from citizens noticing what we're doing so love to hear that love to hear that and and for our citizens who want those updates they can they can get those anytime really anytime that our department is pushing something out you can subscribe to our new texting service it's called regroup you can do that by texting join lton j o i n l a w t o N2 31002 and we usually just push out text messages with the same information that we're uh giving to the media so just another really great way to stay apprised of all of the great things that we have going on and I know that we're running out a time so if you uh want to be at the next council meeting that's going to be April 23rd right here at lton City Hall we look forward to seeing you until then have a great couple of weeks