Council to vote on correcting 1959 mistake

Hershel Thrasher, Executive Director of the Shelbyville Housing Authority, left, explains the need to convey land containing the flume back to the City of Shelbyville. Mayor Wallace Cartwright is at right. (T-G Photo by Brian Mosely) [Click to enlarge] [Order this photo]

Fifty years after signing an agreement with the city, the Shelbyville Housing Authority wants to give back property which contains Shelbyville's underground flume system.

Hershel Thrasher, executive director, told the council that it recently came to SHA's attention that the flume, also known as pressure tubes A, B and C, was still legally titled to the Housing Authority.

"Do we want to take this?" Mayor Wallace Cartwright said to some laughter from the council.

Thrasher replied that while the Authority does the best job it can to take care of housing in Shelbyville, "we don't know nothing about no flume."

Thrasher presented copies of the April 24, 1959 agreement between the Authority and the city which approved the Urban Renewal Plan that contained the storm water flume used to control flooding that was so prevalent in those years.

According to Section Five of the 50-year-old agreement, "The Authority agrees that it will convey to the City free of charge any land acquired by the Authority and required for street and for flood control facility purposes under the Urban Renewal Plan."

However, that was apparently never done.

Thrasher then presented a photocopy of the quitclaim deed to the flume, as well as a second deed "conveying whatever right, title and interest the Housing Authority may have in the basin and levy, together with the pumps."

The quitclaim deed says that "through mistake and inadvertence" the easement and the flume was never conveyed to the city. The document says for the sum of $10, the Authority conveys all the rights to the easement and tube to the city.

Another $10 conveys the basin, levy, and the pumps to the city.

The city council will vote next Thursday whether to accept the quitclaim from the Housing Authority.