By Michael A. Cummings
The Cullman Times
March 29, 2008 07:50 pm
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Residents of the town of West Point should be expecting a few major changes around their community in the coming years.
That’s because the town, nestled cozily off State Highway 157 in the western part of Cullman County, will be changing the layout of the town’s roads and sidewalks this year. And, if all goes according to plan, some longer-term changes could show themselves in the next three to four years.
The first order of business? The town’s sidewalks, or, to be more correct, the lack thereof. But that’s all about to change this year, when construction workers will install over a mile of sidewalk through the main thoroughfares of town.
“The sidewalk project is a federal grant that we started about three years ago,” said West Point Mayor Kenneth Kilgo. “We finally broke ground on the 8th of January. It’s a $237,000 project that we’ll run from the middle school all the way up to County Road 1141. And on the south side of 1141, all the way to where the corner of 1242 crosses over, down to town hall entrance. Then it’ll run back up toward 1242 all the way up to Highway 157.
“The total project will be about a mile of sidewalks.”
Kilgo explained that, although West Point’s schools are fairly close together, County Road 1141 bisects the entire school system campus. So the proposed sidewalk would “connect a walkway from the middle school to the athletic facilities, and then crossover to go into the high school part.”
When the sidewalk project is finished later this year, West Point kids will be able to walk from school to the town’s ball fields.
“It’s an upgrade in the infrastructure of the community,” Kilgo explained. “We had decided to go ahead because we are widening County Road 1141 also.”
That widening project, which will significantly expand the width of lanes and the quality of the driving surface along 1141, began last year, but was put on indefinite hiatus due to the drought of the century. During the drought, workers were forced to stop paving, so Kilgo said they decided to go ahead and work on the sidewalks.
“Once we get the sidewalks in there, they’ll come back and asphalt and do the three lane striping then,” said the mayor.
“That’s a joint venture between the Cullman County Commission, the Cullman County School Board, and the town of West Point,” continued Kilgo about the road widening project. “The county commission has been great supporting us.”
Part of that support, Kilgo said, was when Commissioner Wayne Willingham secured $100,000 in Montgomery to support the project.
“The Board of Education paid about $18,000 for pipe to support the expansion also,” Kilgo added. “We paid whatever we had available in our gas and road tax funds. And it’s went real well.”
Kilgo said West Point had safety and congestion relief in mind when considering reasons for widening 1141.
“During school mornings, especially at the first part of the year, traffic will back up and loop around the school because you have the senior high and the elementary school on the north side of county road 1141,” Kilgo explained. “But then a few hundred feet up the road on the south side you’ve got the intermediate school and the middle school. So you’ve got this massive amount of bus traffic that’s making two stops in the morning.”
And that is not the only congestion issue. The West Point volunteer fire department’s main building lies on 1141, near West Point High. During morning and afternoon school rush, fire engines are unable to leave the station due to the congestion.
“The fire department can’t get out,” Kilgo said.
Kilgo said the sidewalk project is a 120-day working contract. Workers from Powe Contracting started pouring concrete Jan. 8, and plan to finish sometime this spring.
“We plan to be finished not later than June 1st,” Kilgo predicted. “We’ll probably get in there ahead of that if the weather supports us.”
As for the road widening project, which is being administered by the county’s West Side Road Department, the actual addition of road is already complete.
“The widening is done,” Kilgo said. “It’s just not marked at all.” Once the sidewalk project is finished, workers will complete the road’s striping.
West Point’s long-term goals are centered around a proposed addition of a new town hall complex along Highway 157. The town recently received just under an acre of land along the highway from the state, with which officials plan to proceed with the new complex.
“I asked the state to give that property back to the town and they gave it,” said Kilgo of the land across the highway from the bulk of West Point.
“Our plan is to look at that as a long-term project for a new location for the town hall,” Kilgo explained. “The back half of the property we’d give the fire department.”
The new town hall would go a long way toward relieving congestion in the heart of the town, something that would be beneficial to everyone — though most notably the fire department and high school.
Town officials don’t plan on abandoning the current town hall, which lies next to some of the town’s ball fields.
“What we’d like to do is keep this building and use it strictly as a senior center,” Kilgo said of plans for the current town hall after the proposed renovation of the new one. “That’s probably four or five years down the road but we want to start working on it.”
Kilgo said funding for town hall project will depend on population estimates in the coming years. With more residents in town, West Point town leaders would have more dollars with which to work on future projects.
“A lot of what we’re planning right now is driven on the 2010 census, on the increased revenues in the town,” Kilgo said. “The amount of tax revenue that we get is driven strictly by the census.”
According to the 2000 census, West Point had 295 residents, but Kilgo said that number doesn’t reflect the community’s true size. “We’ve just got the small incorporated limits. But our community is more like 10,000 people.”
Kilgo said the United States Census Bureau conducted a population estimate for West Point in 2005, concluding that the town had about 450 residents. Since then, Kilgo said the town has added to its ranks via annexation.
“We’ve annexed more folks since then,” said Kilgo, who added that the town will conduct its own population survey this year. “We think we’re probably closer to about 600, 700 actually within the town.”
Perhaps surprisingly, county residents around the West Point town limits have been fairly receptive to the idea of annexation, according to Kilgo.
“We’ve had a good response,” he said. “There are some folks that just have lived in the country all their life and don’t want to be attached to a town of any town. And that’s fine. We ask them, but if they don’t want to, nobody gets mad. The more folks we get in, the more tax revenue that we can bring right back to this community.”
And where has all the extra money from increased population gone the past few years? Kilgo said the town has had two main objectives.
“The last few years, most any extra money we’ve had has been sent to the school and the fire department,” he said.
Kilgo added West Point’s increasing population warrants plenty of infrastructure development — specifically in the area of the town’s sewers. With that in mind, town officials have been working toward taking over control of the community’s sewage system from the county school board.
“We’ve got an agreement in principal that 1 October we would take control of the sewage system in a 99 year lease from the board of education,” Kilgo said. The system is rated for 45,000 gallons a day. Of that total, West Point’s schools average 12,000 gallons a day.”
With the appropriate infrastructure is in place, West Point could be in position for significant economic development — though Kilgo said the town would not go overboard, calling the town’s plans “just a little economic development.”
“When we started our drive for a little economic development, other folks that we talked to would love to come out here, but (we have) no sewage,” Kilgo lamented. “So we realized that any growth past what we had wasn’t possible without a sewer system.”
Kilgo said West Point officials want their community to know they will not make any drastic changes to the landscape along Highway 157.
“We’re not trying to change anything out here,” he said. “We’re not going to make anyone connect (to the sewer) that doesn’t want to — nobody will be charged anything if they’re not being provided any service. This is strictly all volunteer.”
Back in the center of town, Kilgo said the town council was happy to lend its support to its schools in the past year. That meant donating $4,000 to the intermediate school to build new pavilion.
“It’s an outdoor pavilion that’s set in between the intermediate school and middle school,” Kilgo explained about the facility, which was completed last fall. “It’s used also as an outdoor classroom for environmental stuff. And it’s also available for rent to the community.”
Kilgo, who has served as mayor since November 2006 — when he was appointed by the town council while after Willlingham won a seat on the county commission— said West Point’s future will have its share of change.
“This is the most growth at one time that this town has ever went under,” Kilgo said. “I mean it’s pretty dynamic. You’ve always got a few that are going to be are reluctant to change. Sometimes they just don’t understand it, but change is inevitable. But we have the vast majority of support from the community.”
On the town’s growth, Kilgo said West Point will increase its numbers much the same way the rest of the county will.
“We’ll have some added growth on the corner of 157 just because of the sewage system out there,” he said. “Other than that, I think the growth trend will be the same as it is with the rest of the population.”
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