Since being selected for another FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Administration) grant in 2018 following the hazard mitigation grant in 2016 and the grant for the Pinedale Wash in 2017, the town of Taylor has entered into the final phase before receiving funding from the FEMA for the ongoing project of the Business Park Floodplain.
“The town has been incredibly successful in its applications,” said Robert Toy, engineering consultant for Taylor. “Towns and cities must compete nationally for a relatively small amount of funds where only a fraction of the applications from across the country get selected each year.”
Direction was given at the January town council meeting to complete a nine-step action plan to purchase a second parcel of the land at the business park that is in the floodplain. As of the Feb. 11 Taylor Town Council meeting, five of the nine steps have been completed and the rest of the steps are expected to be completed by the March meeting.
Further discussed at the meeting was a report given by Navajo County Sherriff David Clouse, which discussed the cooperation between the Navajo County Sheriff’s Office and the Snowflake-Taylor Police Department.
“I pulled one of the most significant cases that most recently happened showing the partnership between the Sheriff’s Office and the Snowflake-Taylor Police Department that was on Jan. 9, 2020. A Snowflake-Taylor officer had made a traffic stop on Main Street and had contacted two individuals that were in possession of two handguns, one of them being stolen, over $2,700 worth of US currency and a half a gram of heroin. Through that stop and that interrogation with those two led to further evidence to serve a search warrant, which was east of Snowflake in our jurisdiction,” said Clouse.
“That information was passed on to us and with that, we recovered a stolen Yamaha Rhino, stolen Indian artifacts, 20 firearms, 9.5 grams of heroin, 62.1 grams of methamphetamine and a quarter pound of marijuana, which was very significant. Those are the kinds of things that we’re looking for and always trying to keep that good relationship going because a lot of incidents that do happen, they cross jurisdictional lines a lot and that cooperation has to be there.”
In other business, resident Rusty Tingey requested a zoning change at the southeast corner of Papermill Road and Foothills Blvd., where he originally wanted to put a duplex complex. Tingey now aims to put storage units in that location. The council voted unanimously to rezone the area so that storage units could be built after expressing concerns on how storage units would affect the image of one of the main roads entering town.
