John Coffelt, Editor

One hundred of Manchester’s fire hydrants will soon be bright, shiny and bearing the correct color code through a project that will refinish about one-tenth of the city’s hydrants and cost $8,000.

According to a report to the Manchester Safety Commission by Fire Chief George Chambers, Rogers Hydrant Service will begin work this week.

The hydrants will have the old paint removed as needed, then painted red with specialized hydrant paint and color coded by their water flow rate.

“It’s a very hard job to do,” Chambers said. “You have to remove all that old paint, put new paint on there, the proper kind of paint. It’s very labor intensive.”

Incoming Safety Committee Chairman Donny Parsley voiced opposition to the project.

“We used to paint them,” he said. “Why can’t we paint them ourselves. I want us to go back to doing that. Eighty dollars apiece seems like a lot of money.”

Chambers said about 10 years ago the fire department attempted to resume painting hydrants, but that the department had difficulty.

Fire hydrants are coded by color. Blue designates 1500 GPM available at 20 psi residual, green is 1000- 1499 GPM, orange is 500-999 GPM and red is below 500 GPM.   

The Board of Mayor and Alderman has previously approved the expense and included it in this year’s budget.

Sign ordinance enforcement questioned

Vice Mayor Mark Messick asked during the meeting if the Codes Department would double its efforts enforcing the city’s sign ordinance related to auction signs.

Messick said that while the city limits the time that auction signage can be posted to 10 days before the event and three days after, some out-of-town relators are abusing that ordinance.

He said the Manchester auctioneers generally abide by the regulations, but that he has seen some out-of-town companies’ advertisements go up weeks before the event.

Codes Director Brittany Fiske said the city’s enforcement is to simply take illegal signs down.

“They look terrible,” Messick said. “The corners of 41 and 55, there’s six, seven or eight – it’s awful.”

“You can take mine down too, if I leave them,” Messick said. “And once you have a sale that’s over with, and you stick a sold sign on them, that’s just bragging. There is no need to leave them up more than a day or two.”       

City to lower speed limit near Rec. Complex

The Safety Committee unanimously approved posting 5 MPH speed limit signs on McGuire Street and Campbell Lane near the Manchester Recreation Complex.

Chief Bill Sipe requested the change to match posted speed limits at the city’s two parks. He said that Manchester Parks and Rec. Director A.J. Fox has witnessed motorists driving too fast along those roads and putting pedestrians in danger.   

John has been with the Manchester Times since May 2011. John has won Tennessee Press Association awards for Best News Photo and placed in numerous other categories. John is a 1994 graduate of Tullahoma High School, a graduate of Motlow State Community College and earned a Bachelor of Arts in English from Middle Tennessee State University. He lives in Tullahoma, enjoys painting, dancing and exploring the outdoors.