Tecumseh residents can expect to see the streets of their town filled with superheroes, anime characters, vampires, and other Halloween costume-wearing children the evening of Friday, Oct. 29, 2021.
At their regular monthly meeting, Oct. 4, The City of Tecumseh declared 6-9 pm, Oct. 29, as townwide trick-ortreating and 3:30-5 pm for the Chamber of Commerce’s downtown trick-or-treating event.
“We have businesses that want to participate in the Halloween handing out candy to the kiddos, but since it falls on a weekend they want to do it on Friday and then when they shut their doors at five, go ahead and go home and not worry about it,” Tecumseh Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Leslie Merritt said.
After some discussion about possible dates, times, and whether setting a citywide date and time was necessary, the city approved the motion by a unanimous vote.
City Manager Jimmy Stokes said the purpose of having the city set a time and date for trick-or-treating was to limit it so that older residents would not be bothered by strangers ringing their doorbells for the entire holiday weekend.
“It’s a courtesy thing,” he said. “We set a time and a date, and that way, and after that it’s harassment.”
The city meeting also included two public hearings for rezonings, holding the first public hearing before granting a hardship conditional use permit to 604 Turtle Creek, Tecumseh, OK, allowing the property owners to place a travel trailer on the property during the reconstruction of their previously existing residence that had burned downed.
During the public hearing, Donald Deardorff told the City Commissioners that the process of obtaining the necessary paperwork and then applying for the hardship conditional use permit had cost more than $700.
“If it’s a natural disaster, fire, tornado, flood, whatever, that the resident owner shouldn’t have to come and pay a price to live on his own property, as long as he has a plan in place to come and build a new home,” Deardorff said.
He asked the city to consider making changes to reduce costs for future individuals in similar situations.
Warwick said that the process is tied to state statutes that the city is unable to change.
Then, the rezoning of real property at 19008 Rangeline Rd. Tecumseh, OK, from A-1 (Agriculture) to R-1 (Residential) was approved after the second public hearing.
The proposed City Ordinances relating to both rezonings (Ordinances 842 and 843) passed, as well as the emergency clause for ordinance 842. These Ordinances can be found printed in the Legal Notices of this issue.
The Tecumseh City Commissioners accepted a total bid of $397,425 for clearing/ tree trimming easements/alleyways/ roadways by all City of Tecumseh primary and secondary electric lines throughout the city limits.
The trimming is planned to help prevent winter storms from pulling down tree limbs, damaging electrical lines and causing outages.
“That’s really a good price that they gave us,” Stokes said. He recommended that the City Council accept the bid.
“Either spend it now or spend it later,” Ward 2 City Commissioner Sharon Stewart said.
“Even more if the poles come down and the lines come down,” Mayor Eddy Parker said.
Stewart also asked if the city had done trimming like this before.
“I’ve been here 36 years, and we’ve never done it. We’ve always just [...] mainly, when we had ice storms, we’d cut trees,” Stokes said.
The city approved the bid by unanimous vote.
Stokes also told the City Council that the tree trimming would mean needing to open up easements.
“People who have fenced off the easements, the fences have got to go,” Stokes said.
Otherwise, utility companies and tree trimmers won’t have the access to the lines and trees that they need in order to do their work.
“Usually the rule is if you, if I put something across the easement it’s my responsibility to move it and I can’t put something permanent there,” City Attorney Mike Warwick said.
Stokes said that it is likely the city will receive complaints about this, but that a lot of moving fencing off of the easements has already been done.
“I want y’all to be aware, so that y’all don’t have a 5-0 vote to fire me when this all comes down,” Stokes said.
Other actions taken by the City of Tecumseh at the meeting included:
-Approving Tecumseh City Attorney Mike Warwick’s 2022 Contract
-Discussing and approving the Tecumseh Housing Authority 2020-2023 Capital Fund Program CFP Environmental Review and the Tecumseh Housing Authority 2020 Emergency Safety and Security Grant (ESSG) Capital Fund Program (CFP) Environmental Review
-Accepting USW Utility Group agreement to operate the City of Tecumseh Waste Water Treatment Plant in the amount of $323,537.16 per year
-Accepting a request to give VEOLA a 30-day extension of their contract
