VFW Hall Dispute Continues – Commander: ‘What are you doing to either maintain the building or move us to something else?’

Monday’s brief La Grange City Council meeting lasted only about 30 minutes, with much of that time spent hearing comments from the public. Four local residents signed in to speak during the citizen participation period.

Charlie Murray of the Texas Heroes Museum had signed in to ask about the status of the tourism grants. He said all of his questions were answered earlier in the meeting and had nothing further to speak about with the Council.

La Grange resident Theresa Von Rosenberg asked City Manager Jack Thompson for an update on the City’s drainage improvements.

“We’re still working on a grant,” Thompson said. “BEFCO (Engineering) is working on the engineering part of that. We’re also wrapping up the stormwater master plan.”

Von Rosenberg also praised the library and its staff, saying she recently visited and greatly enjoyed herself.

VFW Post 5254 Commander Richard Gray addressed the Council about much-needed repairs at the City-owned VFW Hall. He brought along members of the Colorado Valley Detachment of the Marine Corps League, who share the building along with the VFW, American Legion and their Auxiliaries.

“We are five organizations represented under the lease agreement,” Gray said. “They’re all affected by this. We all are 501(c)19 organizations. We all have charters from the United States Congress to perform our duties – to support veterans and their families, to teach kids in school about Americanism, to help the Boy Scouts, to assist widows, and to continue to honor our dead, to put out markers – it’s an enormous task. It’s not suited for the common person. So my question is, what are you doing under the lease to either maintain the building or move us to something else? It’s getting harder and harder to conduct our business.”

Gray said the air conditioning system is not working.

“We need to know our path forward,” he said. “It’s hard to hold meetings right now because our A/C is broke again.”

Gray asked how much the City has spent on maintenance at the building in the past three years. Thompson said he did not know that figure off the top of his head.

“Now that the budget has been approved, we have more money in the budget for facility maintenance,” Thompson said. “We have a little bit clearer path with how much money we have. But yeah, we’re going to have to talk about your building. There are a lot of issues.”

“I would like to point out that most of those issues have been there since you purchased the building nine years ago,” Gray said. “You bought it as-is. It’s not that we’re trying to be a pain in yall’s rear about this. We’ve lived with this for a long time. We just need to be able to conduct our business.”

Lastly, Jennifer Lane of the La Grange Chamber of Commerce spoke to the council about upcoming events at the Chamber. She invited the mayor and council members to participate in a survey being conducted by the Chamber to identify topics elected leaders want to focus on in the area.

“Your feedback will be invaluable to us as we move forward with designing and implement our leadership program,” she said.

She invited everyone to attend the Chamber mixer which took place Tuesday evening at Las Fuentes. She also invited the Council to attend the Chamber-sponsored Lunch-and-Learns on Sept. 30 about board governance and on Oct. 7 sponsored by Edward Jones.

Lane said the Chamber office will participate in Trickor- Treat on the Square on Oct. 30. She said the annual Chamber banquet will take place on Jan. 30, and the Chamber Golf Tournament will take place in March.

“These events are important to our fundraising and community engagement efforts,” Lane said. “We hope to see many of you there.”