By: Lydia Crawley
The Parsons Advocate
Carrie Wallis of Region VII and Eric Sherrard from the Thrasher Group informed the Parsons City Council that there had been issues with the payment system from the EPA. The issues stemmed from access still being assigned to a former employee no longer with the City.
“We have payout number one and payout number two approved by the EPA,” Wallis said. “Once they approve it, we can go into the federal drawdown system…and drawdown those funds. When we went to do that, we learned that a prior employee that is no longer here had that access.”
Wallis went on to say that Region VII went through the process of getting City Manager Mike Simmons assigned to the drawdown account, along with Carrie Wallis to the City of Parsons account. Wallis said she also had to edit the bank account because the prior bank account was closed, a process that takes 10-12 business days to add the new bank account.
Wallis said that, as of the meeting, it was “day 10” since the changes were made. Both she and Simmons were keeping a close track of the account for when the drawdown could be accessed and the contractor could be paid.
“We still can’t draw it down, but it should definitely be there in the next two business days,” Wallis said.
As a result of non payment, the contractor had “about a million into” the project, according to Sherrard. The non payment resulted in the contractor deciding to halt construction for a week, pending payment.
“I think they were in about a million dollars and they’d asked if they’d get punished if they sat tight until they at least got some of their payment,” Sherrard said.
Wallis said that a payment arrangement has been made to tide the contractor by until the EPA money is available. The City will transfer funds from savings to pay the first two invoices, which will allow the contractor to return to work on the sewer project the following week.
“In the meantime, since First Fruits took this week off because they haven’t been paid yet and this is payout number four that you’re looking at right now, I went ahead a paid them for payout number one and payout number two out of the Governor’s Fund,” Wallis said. “Mike is going to transfer those from savings to checking tomorrow. So at least they are paid on those two and they will just have three and four outstanding.”
The Governor’s Funds will be reimbursed once the EPA funds are available for drawdown, Wallis said. A motion for the payouts was made by Councilman Tim Turner and passed unanimously.
“We are trying to make sure they are ready and scheduled for next week,” Sherrard said.
