Congratulations to all the newly elected officials. I hope we can strive to work together to help the City of Italy be a better place to live.

This letter will serve as the first of monthly news updates to be published in the Italy Neotribune and on the City of Italy Facebook page.

The ESD#3/ Italy Fire Department will be having a grand opening and plaque dedication ceremony for a local hero Greg Pickard on May the 20th at 10:00am, this would be a great opportunity for the community to tour the new fire station and visit with the firemen. Hope to see everyone there.

In the next few months we will be working on getting the council meetings live streamed and then archived so the citizens who can’t make the meeting can still be involved. A member of this community has volunteered to help us with this. (Thanks Mike South)

The construction of the new McDonald’s has started with the dirt work, this will be a great addition to the Community.

We will be supplying water/sewer to this development through a agreement with South Ellis County Water for at least the next 3 years as this is in their (CCN) or water rights area.

This summer we will be chip sealing several streets with the Counties help. Those streets are Waco(all), Richards(all),Sims(partial), Travis(partial) and Stafford(all).

We also have a grant application to repair Clark, Harris and portions of Dilworth this would be a asphalt overlay, so hopefully we will receive this grant.

We have also applied for another grant for infrastructure, this could also be used for streets or water line replacement. This could be up to a million dollar grant so hopefully we can get this grant also.

We will be looking for community members to assist in the development of a 5,10,20 year plan.

The heads of each department will begin work on this, once they complete their portion we will ask the citizens to get involved as we make this a complete plan for the whole community.

I would ask that you pray for the City council members and myself as we try to make decisions to move this community forward

May God bless Italy Texas
Jackie D Cate
Mayor