• The Record • Week of Wednesday, April 29, 2020
County business presentation opened Tuesday’s meeting, which was again limited to 10 people in the courtroom and streamed live via Facebook Live. Bookending the hour-long meeting was a 20-minute closed session that featured, in addition to the five commissioners and Denise Gremillion, the court’s legal counsel, appearances by Jessica Hill, director of Orange County Economic Development Corporation; Pennee Schmitt, the county auditor; and Karen Fisher, county tax assessor-collector. The meeting was to look for small business funding to help with the financial impact of the Covid shutdown. “We’re restarting [the local economy] and we had a conversation about potential ways we can help small business when we come out of this,” County Judge John Gothia said. After Hurricane Harvey, the OCEDC redirected $200,000 of its budget to first-come, first-served grants of $5,000 each. “Something like that,” Gothia said about the Tuesday discussion. “We’re just trying to see what we can do as the businesses come back. The Coastal Spine project, which grew out of or paralleled a long-ago Rice University proposal for an “Ike Dike” to protect the Gulf Coast from a storm surge event like Hurricane Ike, which devastated Bridge City in 2008. Under the leadership of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Texas General Land Office, current plans call for spending more than $30 billion for a string of levees and storm gates from south of Galveston to the
Lester Daigle, board chairman with the Triangle Area Network, addresses Orange County Commissioners Court Tuesday as TAN’s Misty Thibodeaux and Dena Gray Hughes look on. RECORD PHOTO: Dave Rogers
Louisiana state line. Originally, Orange County was being asked to pay as much as $800 million over 30 years for its matching part of the cost for the 26 miles of barriers built or improved in Orange County. The commissioners’ stance, going back to a court led by Judge Brint Carlton, was there was no way the county, with an annual budget of $40-something million, could afford that. But the three judges since Carlton resigned in 2016 and all the commissioners have continued to attend meetings and sign off whatever papers would a) keep Orange County in the project; and b) not obligate them to spend any money. Tuesday, an agreement to start the project between the GLO, the Corps of Engineers, the Orange County Drainage District and Orange County that would cost Orange County nothing was on the agenda. “This is why you stay engaged until the very end and don’t walk out,” Trahan, a court member since 2016,
OC covid testing that’s just one out of every 1,200 residents that has tested positive. But of the 718 who have been tested from Orange County, nearly 1 percent have tested positive. “There are like 330 million people in the U.S. and there’s no way to test them all,” said Gothia, whose job also makes him Orange County Emergency Management Director. “People who don’t have symptoms don’t want to be tested. They want to be able to go to work, as opposed to having to go to a 14-day quarantine. “What percent are we at with the population?” he asked about the testing. “What percent are we at of the people who are not sick. “What we’ve been testing were people we thought were sick, as opposed to a random pool of 100 people. The bigger that pool number is, the lower that percent should be.” Of concern is the belief that people can have covid-19 without showing symptoms. “If you’re asymptomatic, you don’t know you have the disease,” Gothia said. “But even with no symptoms of the disease, some can have it.”
said, anticipating the signing. But it didn’t happen. Yet. “There was a last-minute language change by one of the state’s lawyers,” Gothia said. “We need time to look it over and make sure we agree with the change.” So no action was taken, awaiting a future agenda, perhaps when the court meets again in two weeks. “This has been a long project and a long time coming,” Gothia said. “There are a lot of moving parts and the Drainage District has been real, real fantastic to work with. They really went out of the way to get the project. “Everybody’s very aware we cannot pay for it locally, and there’s been a lot of talk about who’s going to cover the cost. I think we’re just about to the point where the state will cover the cost.” The commissioners agreed on $80,871 bills paid from the week of April 21 and to a total of $463,855 in bills dated April 28. Additionally, the county passed on $235,126 it has collected for the state from criminal costs and fees.
Its main tenants have for years been two companies that build and outfit barges there. “The reason these ships are here,” Taylor said, “is to lay up. When the economy is great, they’ve got jobs all over. They’re missing out on jobs with the pandemic. “They came here to get some needed maintenance done. It’s good business for the port. From what I understand, they’ve got a lot of repairs scheduled.” The US-flagged ships berthed at the Alabama Street Terminal are each about 500 to 600 feet long and the port is reportedly charging about $3 per day per foot for dock space. Ad-
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ditionally, the port sells them electricity and security services. The ships’ stay here is open-ended. “They are waiting on cargo,” Taylor said. “No one knows when things will open up. It’s the economy. No one knows for sure. “We don’t have a minimum [stay] or maximum. Some ports say, ‘You have to be out by a certain date,’ One nice thing about our port is we don’t do that.” Taylor said the port even helps connect the ships with repair crews.
Friends of the Orange Depot postpones event Because of the pandemic, the Friends of the Orange Depot has postponed the date of their fundraiser/ community fun day, Depot Day, which was scheduled for Saturday, May 2. The event committee, headed by Rose Simar and Alicia Booker, had planned a carnival atmosphere on the grounds of the Orange Train Depot, with rides and activities for families in the Orange County area. Also a new model train system is in the works for all to enjoy inside the reception area of the Depot. The committee is looking at a fall date, as soon as it is safe to hold the event.
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Results of Tuesday’s testing by the Texas Military Mobile Health group aren’t expected back for two to three days, which is now the case for most of the nasal swabs that are sent off to labs. “With the swab test, if you don’t have it at that spot in time, you’re going to be negative,” Gothia said. “The antigen test, as it becomes more and available, I think it’ll be the best as we move down the road.” Antigen tests, not yet widely available, look for proteins that are part of the coronavirus cell’s surface. “It can tell if you had the virus, or if you still have it, or can become a donor [for vaccines],” the judge said. “Five-hundred people have tested positive in our sixcounty area (499 as of Tuesday, with 25 deaths). A lot more have it than that. But you know, it’s not until people get the worst of the worst [sick] that they go see a doctor at any point.” Orange County has had one person die because of the covid-19 virus, an elderly woman in the Vidor area, according to public health officials. But the most promising statistic for Orange County
City set to reopen that has been noted in previous annual reports. In other action, council approved on second and final readings its denial of a rate hike sought by electric company Entergy Texas and approved a total increase of $787,000 to the 2020 budget in a semi-annual adjustment based on the difference between expected and actual revenues and expenses. Change orders sought by Jim Wolf, public works director, and approved by council included $3,000 more and 30 days time for a new City Hall generator originally planned to cost $50,000; and $5,000
Orange port silver lining
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is the number of recoveries. The county now shows 41, meaning it has only 29 active cases. Among those who have been declared “recovered” are Bridge City couple Phillip and Janice Todora. They were released nearly two weeks ago and are scheduled to be tested Wednesday to see if they have the antibodies and, if so, donate plasma to help others.
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and 70 more days to add stormwater piping underneath the Riverside Pavilion. The project had been bid well under the $800,000 budget at $695,000. Its completion has been delayed by bad weather, but the May Bassmaster Elite fishing tournament it was expected to debut at has been pushed back to November by the Covid-19 closures. Council voted to maintain its 20% homestead exemption for another year. Seniors 65 and over and disabled will again receive an exemption of 20%, or $15,000, whichever is greater.
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“We have a local tenant [Blodsworth Marine] that does a lot of repair work,” she said. “We have a lot of services in the area that do good work and they [shipping companies] like that.” Wallace has been a longtime member of various Orange economic development groups. “Besides hiring Blodsworth Marine, all the crew members are staying at the Holiday Inn,” Wallace said. “The port does bring a big pile of impact when it does come.”
