NEDERLAND — City of Nederland officials will hold a budget meeting to discuss how public money will be spent in the near future.

City Manager Chris Duque said individual city departments would present the first draft to the city council.

“We have the department heads do a PowerPoint presentation,” Duque said. They will go over some of the things that they are ask for, programs that they are planning to do and things like that. After that, we’ll go over their numbers.”

Duque said they would prepare for a big project for next year.

“We have a big project that got delayed because of Harvey,” he said. It’s a big $10 million project. Now it’s finally moving forward. That debt has to be issued this fall and that debt is going to affect our sewer rates. We’ve known this and this has been going. We just want to talk about this. We want to say this is how much additional revenue we have to make to make the debt payment for the next 20 years.”

Duque said the sewer project is going to be the main focus next year.

“It’s not just replacing old pipes with new ones,” he said. “We’re putting pipe into pipe. It’s more specialized work. Hopefully, that’s next year.

“We’re waiting to get the permits to cross the railroad company’s property and TxDOT because we’re crossing the railroads and state highway. We’ve submitted everything and we’re just waiting for it to get approved. That is the first priority.”

Duque said that the Nederland Police Department will present a PowerPoint making a pitch for new vehicles and for more school resource officers.

“That’s something we’ve been talking about with the school district,” Duque said. “They’ll also talk about staffing issues that are going on and remodeling in the dispatch office space.”

Duque said that the school district has had a school resource officer for nearly 10 years.

“The PD is looking to see where the demand for services are,” he said. “I think they’re starting to see that more at the middle schools. The school district and the police department are working together. If the officer had an issue at Central Middle School, then he’d have to leave the high school to go do this and that. They know where he’s having to go and where the demand for his time is. They know that’s pulling him away from something going on at the high school. I think they are starting to see more of a demand for that service than they originally anticipated.”

Duque said that the school district would pay 75 percent of the salary and benefits and the city would pay the remainder because the officer would spend nine months of the year working for the district.

Duque said the city would also pick up the tab officer’s supplies, uniform and vehicle.

“A lot of the big stuff we want to do is tied into those Hazard Mitigation grants,” he said. “Public Works always has the most because they are public-capital driven.”

The budget meeting is open to the public and will begin at 8:20 a.m. Monday at City Hall.