During their first meeting of the new year, the Tullos Town Council decided to no longer host religious holiday events, including the Easter and Christmas festivals.

“We have a lot of festivals and events in town, and I am proposing that we let the local churches host the Easter and Christmas events,” Mayor Karla Cockerham. “This was done many years ago and at some point, the town took it over. Since these are the two religious holiday events, I would like to give those back to the local churches to host.”

Mayor Cockerham informed the Council that she has already reached out to the pastor of Tullos First Baptist Church, and he expressed his interest in the idea. Mayor Cockerham asked Alderman Floyd Temple to reach out to his pastor at the Tullos United Pentecostal Church and see if he would also be interested in hosting the events, perhaps partnering with FBC’s pastor Scott Smith.

“The town will still host the Halloween Trunk or Treat, the Christmas Senior Citizen Supper and the Fire Department banquets and events like that,” Mayor Cockerham explained. “I know that when the churches hosted these events, they held candlelight events and live nativities, and with the churches working together, I would love to see these events become more focused on what these holidays are about.”

The Council expressed their support of the change, agreeing that the pastors and churches in the area work well together and have the potential to make these events even bigger than they already are.

Also during the meeting, the Council approved of several department reports.

Chief Harvey Boyette was in attendance to provide the fire department report. For the month of December, the department responded to two structure fires in Tullos and assisted Olla with an additional fire.

“There was a major structure fire on Sumrall Road,” Chief Boyette stated. “We had a large turnout from several departments, including Olla, Urania, Summerville, Jena and Whitehall. I want to extend a special thanks to those guys for their assistance.”

Chief Boyette said that a lot of water was used at the fire, so the water loss for the month totaled 65,000 gallons. Unfortunately, there will be quite the water loss coming up soon this year, due to mandatory hydrant testing.

“Just a reminder that we will start testing hydrants this year, as this is our rating year,” Chief Boyette explained. “Everything has to be up to date.”

According to the water and wastewater report provided by Caleb Black with JCP Management, they are still looking for the source of the large amount of water loss that the town has experienced for years.

“We are currently performing flow meter testing on our main line going down Highway 165,” Black updated. “We are getting a battery that will last longer, through the night. By next month, we will have a more specific area narrowed down so that we can correct the problem.”

Just for the month of December, the town of Tullos lost over 1.8M gallons of water due to this mysterious leak.

“That is a lot of water lost,” Aderman Tina Murphrey-Tullos stated. “And this water loss has been going on for a long time?”

“Yes. For years,” Black responded. “We have reports going back as far back as 2019.”

Mayor Cockerham expressed her frustration and confusion over the issue. She also expressed her thanks to Black for his work in trying to locate where the loss is coming from.

Also present at the meeting was the town’s engineer Jim Verzwyvelt with Pan American Engineers. Verzwyvelt presented the bids that were received for the sewer repair project.

“Since last meeting, we took bids on the sewer collection inflow/ infiltration project, which is a CDBG (Community Development Block Grant) project,” Verzwyvelt explained. “We received three bids and luckily we had a bid as low as we did.”

According to Verzwyvelt, the town received a bid from E.B. Feucht & Sons, LLC out of Eunice, a company with a good reputation, in the amount of $1,141,511.00. Since the project is itemized, the town will just cut back some of the projects, as the grant is for the amount of $1 million.

The Council then approved of a resolution to award the bid to E.B. Feucht & Sons, contingent upon subsequent deductive change orders.

For the repairs that will be cut from the work covered by the CDBG program, these will hopefully be covered by the Letlow Appropriations Grant that the town applied for last year.

Chief Scott Cockerham then provided the police report. For the month of December, the department wrote 86 citations and a total of $32,258.84 was collected in fines and fees. There were five calls, with one arrest, two public assists, two dog calls and one dog impounded.

The department also received resignations of two of its part-time officers, Chase Jenkins and Terry Bradshaw. The Council then approved of the hiring of two new part-time officers to take the place of those vacancies – Damian Moore, who also works full time for the Olla Police Department, and Mario Thomas, who has worked for the Tullos Police Department in the past.

During the Mayor’s comments, Mayor Cockerham expressed her thanks to the Council, businesses and churches that helped make the recent Christmas events a success.

“I just want to thank everybody who attended the events we hosted because there were a lot of options in our parish,” Mayor Cockerham stated. “Thank you for letting your children spend time here in Tullos, here in our community. And for the Senior Citizen Supper, the majority of those who attended said they wouldn’t change a thing about the event, so I want to say thank you to the businesses and people who made donations for that event.”