Mar. 1—Cleburne’s Johns Manville plant moved one step closer to investing $25 million in capital improvement projects over the next five years thanks to the Cleburne City Council.

Council members on Tuesday approved an ordinance authorizing participation in the Texas Enterprise Zone Program and nominating Johns Manville as a Texas Enterprise project.

“Johns Manville desires to submit an application to the Texas Enterprise Zone Program for consideration as a qualified project with plans to invest about $25 million over the next five years on capital improvement projects at the Cleburne plant aimed at improving productivity, reliability, quality and safety,” Cleburne Economic Development Manager Grady Easdon said.

Johns Manville’s Cleburne location opened in 1963 and has undergone numerous upgrades and improvement through the 60 years since to remain competitive and adapt to industry changes, Easdon said.

“Specifically, Johns Mansville will be upgrading and servicing its furnaces, fiber manufacturing lines and ovens in order to maintain production efficiency,” Easdon said of the latest planned upgrades. “In addition to mechanical upgrades, Johns Manville will be enhancing its electrical systems with improvements to ensure continued employee safety.”

That includes a planned $10 million to $12 million rebuild of one of the plant’s production lines, Easdon said.

City or country sponsorship of an application to the Texas Enterprise Zone is required for companies desiring consideration by the state, Easdon said, thus the necessity of Tuesday’s council vote on the matter.

“The Texas Enterprise Zone Program is an economic development tool for local communities to partner with the state to promote job creation and significant private investment that will assist economically distressed areas of the state,” according to the Texas Economic Development Bank.

Approved projects may apply for state sales and use tax refunds on qualified expenditures with the refund amount levels being determined by the capital investment amount and jobs created or maintained at the qualified business site in question, according to the same organization.

Johns Manville employs about 322 workers and anticipates maintaining that current level of employment throughout the planned five years worth of upgrades, Easdon said.

Should the state approve Johns Manville’s application for the projects, city revenues will not be affected, Easdon stressed.

“They will be eligible for refunds of sales and use taxes on qualified expenditures for the state’s portion of the sales tax,” Easdon said. “The city of Cleburne’s 2% portion of sales and use tax would not be impacted and would be retained by the city.”

Council members on Tuesday also voted to hire Sunbelt Pools to replace and install pump motors at Splash Station for an amount not to exceed $68,127.

“This project calls for the replacement of five pump motors and multiple control valves in the pump pit behind the slides at Splash Station,” Assistant Director of Parks and Recreation Brian Daly said.

Four of the motors are original to the 20-year-old facility and one was installed 10 years ago, Daly said, but all have reached their useful life.

The new equipment should last about 20 years with proper maintenance and comes with a 1-year warrant, Daly added.