The Record Newspapers - Hometown News For Orange County, Texas

Bridge City has come back strong after the devastation of Hurricane Ike. Businesses that were flooded have been repaired and reopened. Houses that were flooded have been repaired and remodeled and are once again homes. The City government is up and running with a new interior in the City Hall. There was only one thing left to replace at City Hall, the flower beds.

Councilwoman Lucy Fields took charge of the project and got things moving. Fields first decided that she would plant Pink and White Hawthorn plants. The Hawthorns are hardy and would do well in the existent beds. She got the materials assembled and then lined up some help. Her crew for cleaning the beds, making them ready for planting and helping her plant the Hawthorns would be a group that has been seen doing work for the city since the devastation of Ike. Fields crew would be six offenders from the Stiles Unit of the Texas Department of Corrections. The six men and two corrections officers arrived and were soon on the job following Field’s plans for the beds.

They prepared the beds, put down the ground cloth and started digging to plant the plants. When the job was completed the Hawthorn plants were placed evenly spaced and far enough back from the front edge so as to be able to grow and not impede anyone using the sidewalk.

“We put white rock against the building so as not to have any mulch contacting the wall.

It also makes a nice background.

I did a couple of other things the Master Gardeners told me to do.

I think it made for a nice job, Crews from the Stiles Unit have been working in the city since Ike.

They have done a great amount of work in the city and enabled a lot of work to be done faster than we had hoped it would have been done.

These guys today have been really helpful and good to work with.

They have been a courteous bunch.

The next thing we will do will be to erect the new sign for the front of City Hall.

We have the sign and will get some of our helpers from Stiles back to work on that job also.

After we get the posts in the ground, we have a brick mason lined up to build the brick surround for the sign.

When that is done we will get our Stiles guys back to build the bed around the new sign.

We have enough material left from these beds to install the new bed around the sign,” said Fields.

New flower beds are not all that has been done to improve things in the city. The asphalt parking areas around the City Library, Community Center and the Senior Citizens Center have been completely repaved and are in use. All that remains is to stripe the parking areas. Crews are also beginning to rework the parking areas at the baseball fields in preparation for the paving of those lots as well.