Palatka secures grant to establish storm shelter

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  • City commissioners discuss hardening the Price-Martin Community Center to become a hurricane shelter.
    City commissioners discuss hardening the Price-Martin Community Center to become a hurricane shelter.
  • The Price-Martin Community Center
    The Price-Martin Community Center
  • Positively Putnam FL
    Positively Putnam FL
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Near the end of Thursday night’s 45-minute Palatka City Commission meeting, officials announced a $1.1 million grant to improve the Price-Martin Community Center to emergency shelter standards.

Mayor Terrill Hill said the city has been working for years to get funding in place to shore up Price-Martin as a shelter. He said the city was setting the bar high in receiving grants for its buildings. 

The city has recently received a $3.5 million grant for the Platt-Drew Wastewater Treatment Plant and $385,000 for a wastewater resiliency plan.

Project manager and grants administrator Mandi Tucker said the state Community Development Block Grant to retrofit the center to serve as a shelter is $1,176,315. 

“We’ve set the bar high, but we keep meeting it. So that’s good,” Tucker said.

The Price-Martin Community Center, 220 N. 11th St., was regularly used for gatherings and events pre-pandemic, but it was used as a COVID-19 testing site in June.

City officials hope Price-Martin can function as a hurricane shelter when needed.

General Services Director Jonathan Griffith said the grant is for structural improvements to the building. 

“We have to make some improvements to the points of ingress and egress, and there will probably be some storm shutters put on and obviously backup power,” Griffith said. “(Those are) the major components.”

In other business, commissioners unanimously nominated Epic-Cure for funding from the Northeast Florida League of Cities. Epic-Cure Putnam County Advisory board member and volunteer Ed Killebrew addressed commissioners about the food distribution organization.

Killebrew said the nonprofit currently distributes food to about 783 families every Friday and has 18 distribution events in Putnam County. The mobile distributions consist of about 25,000 pounds of food, he said. 

“We serve the community as a whole,” Killebrew said. “There’s nobody turned away from us. Nobody.”

Hill said seeing the cars line up on U.S. 17 to receive food at the Epic-Cure warehouse shows the impact of the organization.

“When you hear about the success stories and the amount of people being fed, there’s not a whole lot more that needs to be said about the work they do in relation to this community,” Hill said.

Commissioner Rufus Borom is on the Northeast Florida League of Cities board of directors. The next Northeast Florida League of Cities meeting is Feb. 18, where Borom said he will nominate Epic-Cure for funding.

Hill was also unanimously appointed as the city commission’s liaison to the Palatka Municipal Airport Advisory Board, a role previously held by former City Commissioner Mary Lawson Brown.

 

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