Council - Special Meeting

about 45 minutes southwest.

It is 10 o'clock. We call the meeting to order. James Shaw will lead us our invitation for the Let us pray. Father, we are grateful for another day to come as leaders of your city, Father, to make decisions for the city. We ask for your wisdom and your strength and your guidance. And we thank you for this time, this week ahead in Jesus name. Amen. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Roll call. Here

all right, thank you everybody for being here. Um, we do have one signed in for uh public comment. So, uh, Mr. Freaky, at this time, if you'd like to come forward, um, I believe you're fully aware of the of the rules. So, three minutes and, uh, address the council and the mayor in a respectful, productive way. Thank you. I do that, sir. Um, first, the public hearing. Uh, can I wait for my comments until that comes up on the agenda? Yeah, the public hearing is open to anybody that would like to speak. Fantastic. Uh, the resolutions I'd like to have a little bit of concern about. um the process for how this got to be on a special counsel called meeting. How did that happen?

Um it was at the uh request a conversation with myself, Herman, and the mayor um to move this process along. Um the college system is looking to move forward and the first phase of this is this agenda item. Why would not the first phase of this be an open hearing in terms of the the um uh planning commission taking a look at this first? This does not fall under the planning commission's peer review. Why not? Never has. It probably never will.

Why not? Because it could be argued that the planning commission would have a role in determining whether the one decator plan is in fact being followed or not followed terms of residential versus district zoning, etc. um and doesn't meet the standards that are in that plan because that's their role. That's their job. In fact, Mr. Bowler, you've been to several of them. You know, that that's one of the questions or one of the statements that's made up front. Uh whether or not we're going to have a another set of ball fields that we have to pay $3 more million for might be something that one indicator might have a role in playing. Does anybody see that possibility? You just nodded yes, Kyle.

No, not not nodding yes to I was just nodding you along. There's not a yes to your question. Does anybody see that as feasible that that would be an issue for the planning commission to take a look at? Mr. Bullard? No. Well, I'll just ask No. The planning commission should not look at this resolution. No. Okay. So, what's the next step from this? Well, this will authorize the mayor to go out and negotiate um the items listed within the resolution pertaining to the property. um the temporary facilities and power line relocation.

Okay. And so the determination that Decar needs x number of more ball fields is who's who's making that? These are not the city's fields. So there will be Calhoun's fields. So we are spending $3 million to seed a bunch of fields to Calhoun for their use. Okay. So again, I would go back to the city should have some sort of functionary to ask the question of whether that is in the best interest or not. Right now, your legislative body who should be countering the executive's authority is blanket approvaling that this is what needs to happen because you made that comment with the mayor and the lawyer. We are an elected body by the people's elected legislative body. Yes, sir. You are.

Yes. To represent the people's interest and that is what we're going to do today. Okay. I can't wait to hear it. Thank you. Yeah. All right. Uh that is the only uh general related public comments. Uh we have now got a public hearing ordinance number 264638. Approve reszoning requests 1444 26 to resone 1319 Pisco Road Southeast to RSE residential single family estate. Public hearing was set February 25th, 2026. Mr. B.

Yes. This is for reszoning of a property from um CC to RSC. The property owner would like to of course make that his residence and the surrounding property abuing his property is also his property which is owned already CC and he just wants to use that property for his home. All right. Thank you. This is a public hearing. So if there's anybody from the public that would like to speak to this matter, you may speak now. Now, this did go before the planning commission and did get approved. Um, and I think you were at that meeting, were you not?

True.

Yeah. Okay. Um, the at that hearing, the questions I had, which are really city-wide questions, how do we do public notification? This particular city's notification was a billboard placard small about this size that was actually placed on Pisgga Road. Now, Pisgar Road does ab up to where this gentleman wants his property. I have no problem this gentleman doing what he wants to do. He should uh but I do have a problem with the process for how this city does that in the planning commission because 31 there's a huge flag pole off of 31. Granted, no post office mailbox, but a huge flag pole uh that has a small dirt road that leads right to the front of this gentleman's house. There was no notification for that property for anyone on 31 who travels that road. In fact, you do, mayor, probably coming to city council or this building every single day. You passed by that road. Had you passed that road, you would never know that that was in fact up for discussion whether that was should be reszoned or not. And that is an issue that we have citywide that we ought to take a look at in terms of how public gets notified. and for bigger properties and bigger issues that the planning commission deals with having an understanding on public notification and neighborhood meetings so that people can discuss again I have no problem with this particular property but the process for how this is being done is insufficient seeing there's nobody else from the public to speak we'll close the public hearing we have a motion by Mr. Masters

second. Second by Miss Porcel. Any discussion? Roll call. I I All right. Ordinance number 264638 is approve of the vote of 4 to zero. Resolutions. Resolution number 26066 authorize mayor to negotiate an agreement with Alabama Community College System for project assistance commitment with Calhoun.

Yes, of course. We already just discussed some of it. uh this we'll come back with an agreement uh to provide to the council, but the mayor and uh the attorneys for the community college system and Decator Utilities and the city of Decar will come back and prepare an agreement, bring it back for y'all's approval. But it basically what it will do, uh Calhoun, I'm going to call it Calhoun for brevity sake, that the college system has already bought some of this land. uh and this will we will buy some additional land and the project uh will be put together uh and it'll be public notice of all that of the design and all that. So what this does is authorize up to $3 million. What what the college system is looking for is a commitment from the city uh to for the three million up to three million to make sure that the project can go forward but it will come back at to the council for final approval. But that it's going to involve the purch uh and uh some utilities being moved and of course cater utilities will have to uh migrate from this property and find other locations temporarily and then of course permanently and this will also cover some of that cost also. So that's what that's what this does.

Thank you Herman. So motion by Mr. Masters by Miss Worler. Any discussion? Roll call. I resolution number 26066 is approved with a vote of 4 to 0. Um we do have one club signed in for public comment. Mr. Ruby. Uh, when is the city going to have that searchable database for these YouTube videos or these council meetings?

We have a date on that yet. We're working on it now. We're waiting on a cable to come in. Correct. A cable? Yes, sir. Um, okay. I was told when you approved it as a council it was going to take three weeks and that was well over 6 weeks ago plus. Um, so that's a concern because I went on YouTube today to find the last council meeting and the earliest one I could find was 5 months ago. I actually watched the last one this week. I'm just telling you how the system works in terms of whether it's going to be improved or not, but when I went in hit latest, it had the earliest one is 5 months ago. Um, so for lack of transparency, that's probably an area where there's need for improvement. Um,

and that's exactly why we involved that system. Yeah, but we said also, or I shouldn't say, yeah, we said it was going to be done in three weeks. We said it would be tested our new website is up and running. No, that was never said in any of these council meetings. Uh, that may have been knowledge and that may be why we now may have post your council meeting or your staff meetings an update which might give us that information on a more routine basis. council. I am when that happens. Actually looking at last week's meeting if Well, I appreciate that. I'm just telling you this morning when I went to look at it, the earliest one I could see was 5 months ago. If you click the live button, you can see it's pretty easy.

Okay. Well, the average citizen, if I am at least an average citizen, I would say the average citizen going to look and see these things cannot do it or would not have been able to find it as easily as Kyle Pike was able to give me almost 10 seconds. Excuse me. No, please. You you said what? It did not take me but a few seconds and I've never had any issue with anybody finding the videos.

Okay. Then I'm an anomaly. Um, All right, your 3 minutes is up. Did the buzzer go off? Move on.

Did the timer go off? I got my own timer. I guess it didn't. So, thank you for your comment. Uh, let's see. Announcements. So, we do have a district 3 meeting tomorrow afternoon, March 24th, 6 p.m. Burn Tree Country Club, uh 2521 Burning Tree Drive. The next council work session will be March 30th, 2026 at 5:00 p.m. The next regular council meeting will be held on April 6, 2026 at 6:00 p.m. Anything else from council? I guess here. Good. All right, we're return. Thank you.