Council - Regular Meeting

back to that chair.

5:00. 5:00. All right. Thanks uh everybody for being here. Uh we will move through the work session for our April 20th 10 a.m. meeting. Uh any issues with bills or minutes? Probably not. Uh on to public hearings. Resolution number 26083. Approve request for a special event retail liquor license by Wit LLC DBA JW Steakhouse for Decatur Morgan Foundation Dragon Boat Race on May 9th, 2026 located at 2901D Point Mard Southeast.

They've met all requirements unless y'all have questions. Anybody have any questions? Thank you, ma'am. Next, we have resolution number 26084, approve request for a special event retail liquor license by Wit LLC, DBA JW steakhouse for the Alabama Center for the Arts Foundation on April 23rd, 2026 for strolling at ACA located at 132nd Avenue Northeast Decar, Alabama.

Again, this is an annual event and unless y'all have questions, they've met all requirements. Anybody have any questions? Thank you, ma'am. Next, we have resolution number 26085. Declare surplus and approve donation of a 2008 Chevy Impala to Bridgelife, Inc. Jeremy Cheryl procurement. This is one of the uh list um of vehicles that we have replaced with our enterprise lease program and under mayor's leadership we are looking for approval to donate this one uh to bridge life. The next item jumping ahead is the same thing but it's going to Tennessee Valley Outreach.

And let me read the next two and you can kill them all with one stone. Uh 26086 declare surplus and approved donation of a 2006 Chevy Silverado to Tennessee Valley Outreach. Same thing. Yes, sir. And next we have resolution 26087. Declare surplus vehicles no longer needed by street and environmental department. Yeah, this are this is a list of five that we're not using and don't need in environmental and there's a piece of equipment at the end from the street department that we need to surplus. Okay. And those will just go on the regular way we surplus them. Yes. Alrighty. Thank you, sir. Uh so so just for those who don't know, can you tell us about Rich Life and Tennessee Valley Outreach?

Can I tell you about them? Well, why we're donating them to because they're nonprofits. They're nonprofits. Yes. Um I know that they've been in communication with the mayor. Um I did see some some uh correspondence with them uh seeking some help and this is an area that the mayor felt like we could be an assistant to those programs. And I did receive a letter from both those organizations requesting. Anything else? Thanks, sir. All right. Next, we have resolution 26088 approved Deerfoot Estates drainage design project increase by three notch group.

Yeah, this is uh one of the projects we had of funding that was approved. It was moved out to some of the ball fields. This is just reallocating some funds that were moved that we need to pay three notch with. Anybody have any questions? All right. Next is resolution number 26089 approve pite male proposal for Bunny Lane improvement C and I. Yeah, we open bids for Bunny Lane. We haven't got it here for a war, but this would allow P prat Mini to do inspections for us and also oversee materials testing and things like that for us. Okay. Does anybody have any questions? What we are going to

uh it'll be widening Bunny Lane. Currently, it's about a city width for about I don't know 100 200 feet. It narrows down to about a 15 foot road. Uh, and since this comes into the back side of the rec center, the Jack Allen soccer complex, and the new softball complex, we're widening it to a a a standard road width of pavement. It's not going to be curb and gutter, but it'll be 24 foot of asphalt through to the where the ball fields are and an additional sidewalk that would also take you there. Yeah, that it'll help with the ingress and egress out of that area. And let me say this, since you're the only one has a working mic up here, we might need to repeat her question. Ah.

Oh, these are not working at all. No, they're not working. We're in the middle of this remodeling. So, these are still not working. Okay. I can hear you here, but of course on the live stream extra loud. Okay. Sorry about that. Good point, Mayor. Uh, any well, nobody else can have questions because I have the microphone. Uh, resolution number 26091 approved Decator Park and Recre rec center change order number nine. I think we're going to like this one. Did you skip one? Oh, did I skip one? Oh, my bad. Well, you're up anyway. Approve new job classification of marketing specialist for parks and recck department.

Oh, I'm sorry. Hi. It's just a change of position. Uh, no change in headcount or grade. Okay, perfect. Does anybody have any questions on this one? Um if you can just describe for everybody what the job's going to be or what needs to do it either way. Okay. And before you do that repeat what she said. So uh Councilwoman Worler asked that the job description and what the new position is going to do. You want me to take that? Go ahead. You got enthusiasm for this. I should hope so.

All right. So, this is um for a marketing specialist position. Uh we had recently had a center supervisor um put in there two weeks and depart and uh we're repurposing that position uh for a marketing specialist role with the department. Perfect. You want more you want more information on the just kind of what they're going to Yeah. and what they're going to be doing. Yeah. I mean, continuing to to focus on I feel like a court I feel like a court reporter. You tell him, he tells me, and I tell him.

Um, just to give an idea, we've we've had other people in the department have to carry the burden of marketing over the last number of years. Um, we haven't had any true roles dedicated to to trying to recruit a a marketing specialist with our somebody with a marketing degree or background to come in and and assist. um us being somebody that is is very um citizen facing and um some somebody that is also we're host putting on programs sports sport leagues events all kind of things going on so trying to engage with this community engage with the citizens try to increase participation uh marketing is is probably one of the top you know pillars for us as far as how do we grow and increase our our numbers and our participation so we definitely see a need for the position And um we uh our most one of our more recent manager hires uh Lauren Deno is our activities well as an events manager. She has a very extensive marketing background. So this person will report to her. So it's also gives us the ability to kind of grow like a a team so to speak with uh Skyler Mills and um Nicole Belchure who work out at Point Mard. They've also been carrying that load for the last few years. So, kind of helps lessen the load on them, create some of somewhat of a marketing wing wing for the department.

Yeah, I think it's been since 2008 or 2012 since Park and Rack had a true marketing person if I'm not mistaken. All right. Thank you, Hunter. Uh, but wait, you're up again. Resolution number 26091, approve Decar Park and Recreation Rec Center change order number nine. Uh, change order number nine. If you look at the dollar amount, we are getting money back in this change order. Uh this is mainly an adjustment to the audiovisisual um plan. So we just got some money back based off what was originally budgeted and we're needing this approved so we can uh proceed with the subcontractor on AV work. Okay. Does anybody have any questions?

Thank you. All right. Next is resolution number 26092. Approveou with Decater City Schools for DY activities, use of school facilities. Good afternoon. So, this is just for the alumni basketball game and for summer camp at Decator Middle. Okay. Anybody have any questions? That's something we've done for years and years and years and years and years. Uh, next we have resolution number 26093. Approve SBLI project agreement updated with new exhibit C1 and exhibit C2. Oh, okay. Herman, you're gonna have to come up here. You don't have a microphone.

Dang. You know it's bad when they took Herman's mic away. Coming up there. Basically, this is And of course, Kyle knows about we're just switching. It's It's the Decatur Country Club that that former property bought by Cooks and now going to be developed by SLI. And what they're asking is to switch around the the sequence of some improvements and that's all it does does not in any wise change the budget amount that we've committed to but it it basically moves the cater utilities to meet their schedule. That's what they're asking this to accomplish. Kind of a change timeline change the timeline of events. Yes. Perfect.

And then it it also changes where some of the improvements are being made. Yeah. But Okay. But it does not impact in any wise what we have budgeted. Kyle is comfortable with that. You might as well stay here. Mayor, you want He's got the next one, too. Yes, I can handle it, though. I'd be happy to do it. All right. Next. Next ordinance. Ordinance number 264642. Approve franchise agreement for 3M force main pipe to discharge pre-treated wastewater. What happened to my What happened to my I'm just trying to skip some today. Well, that's all right. But see, you messed up my mind.

You got the next two. All right. First reading. Ordinance number 264643. Approve annual ad valorum tax levy for FY27.

Yes. Under Alabama State Code section 115142, each year in May, municipalities renew their advalorum assessment. We as a city of Decar have not changed this for decades. So it is no increase. It's just continuing what we've been doing. But in as a PS to that, in order to increase the advalorum tax, it will most likely require a vote of the people. So we're not going to surprise anybody. It'll vote to the people. So all right. So there no no new taxes. No new tax. No increase in taxes. No. Same old same old.

All right. Now last one. Ordinance number 264642. Approve franchise for 3M force main pipe to discharge pre-treated waste waters. Yeah, this is one we've discussed on several occasions. Uh it's this is nothing new. In fact, it is a continuation of their commitment to remediate uh seepage. It was basically to move it into the cater utilities system. It's going to be pre-treated by the way before it gets to the cater utilities. It's pre-treated. It's not sludge. It's a dedicated water line. And this is or a dedicated wastewater line. My apologies for that. There is a difference. Yes. Yes. This doesn't in any way get near our drinking water supply.

No. No. Decator Utilities and ADM and 3M and ADM city are in line with this, but this is continuing the remediation of those items. Okay. ADM inspects it. Do you want to Yes. And Councilwoman Worler asked if ADM inspects it. Yeah. Well, they you have to meet their standards. Yes. And they do monitor it. Sure. Do we have Yes. All right. Anything else while I'm up here? I I hope not. Uh does anybody else have anything before we get started with our fire presentation? Mayor, no, sir.

Council, anybody? All right, Chief. I think we've got a presentation from the fire department and I'll turn it over to you. All right. Thank you, sir. Good afternoon. How are y'all? Good. How are you?

Good. Good. Uh just want to take a few minutes today. Uh mayor's asked us to kind of come just give an update. I just want to provide just a foundational overview of our department, some things we've got going. Um, first thing I just want to uh just catch everybody up on. We have eight fire stations that are strategically located across the city. Uh, each shift is comprised and we're fully staffed of 35 department members. Uh, that includes two battalion chiefs. Uh, each station has a lieutenant, a driver engineer, and one to two firefighters. Uh, right now we're working the 4896 schedule. This is our third year we're doing that. uh that has proven to be a a great improvement uh for the the health and the well-being of our department members. Uh they're everyone is uh grateful that we've moved to that schedule. Um our fire administration uh we have several positions down there that include our community risk reduction which includes our fire marshall's office also our training EMS finance and then other administrative services. Uh we're a allhazardous department and I'll talk just a moment about what all that means. Uh so looking at at our instant response, a lot of places they they ask how many calls do y'all run? How many you run a day? So we typically look at things on on an annual basis. And so in 2025 we responded to 8,037 total incidents, but that can be a little bit misleading because a lot of those incidents are multi-unit responses. So, when you calculate all of our units that responded, we had over 10,550 unit responses. That's in a one-year one-year period. So, uh our department stays very busy uh just in emergency responses. And we'll talk a little bit more about some other things we do uh when we're not running emergency calls. So, uh all hazards department. What that means is we we are the fire department, but we also run an advanced life support, which is emergency medical response. uh we have paramedics assigned to each crew and uh we're constantly

sending send sending folks to uh to paramedic school to advanced EMT school. Uh so that helps us continue providing that service to our citizens. Also we have a full complement of special operations uh which is our hazardous materials response uh you know with all the industries along the river. We have a lot of things going up and down the railways and the interstates. Uh there's a there's a lot of products and things that move throughout our city and this is a a very important uh part of what we do. Uh vehicle extrication, high angle rope rescue, structural collapse, confined space and water rescue are the other components of those special operations. So we have uh we we generally as we train, we're going to talk about training in just a moment. We're training on all of these things which keeps us keeps us going. The fire service has really progressed through the years. Used to it was just the fire department. you in and put out fires. And now more departments are moving to being all hazardous department. So, uh we uh we stay very busy with that here. Okay. What's next? Uh we're uh still awaiting the addition of our new pumper to our fleet, which we're excited about. We're very grateful for this council approving that. We also are in the planning phase of the Rock the South event which is a it's taken a lot of a lot of hours a lot of collaboration amongst a lot of partners and so we're in the middle of of working on preparing for that event. We're also uh preparing to meet with Miss Farmer this week u to collaborate with our human resources department to fill some current vacancies through promotions and through hiring. Uh we're also looking to implement a new career development plan. And what that is is that will be a training and educational pathway that will provide a career growth plan for each department and each member of our department. No matter what rank they're in, they they know there's there's a map that's laid out that kind of shows them the things they need to do to prepare for the next level. And then and then also um we'll be moving to our all hazards vessel. It'll be in service later this spring. We've been begin

training on that again this week. and actually they responded to a call on the river while they were out training earlier today. So, it's they're already putting it to good use. We got a couple of pictures here. Um, excuse me. You can see here, this is up by the railroad bridge. This was the first day that we took delivery of the boat. And, uh, go to the next one. Got it lettered up. So, this is with it sitting down at the training center. And we've got a a slip now at the Riverwalk Marina that it was, uh, put in today. And so we will be responding from that location for now on a temporary basis until we have a more permanent plan moving forward.

I guess the station two respond.

Yes sir. That that will be the station two and then station one which houses our rescue truck. They will be the backup if station two were to be out of house or they needed additional manpower. And that being an allhazards vessel, we'll we'll do everything from firefighting to hazardous materials mitigation if someone has a medical emergency on the river. Um so we will be able to respond anywhere uh here in the river city uh with that vessel. Just a brief overview of our training. Um just to get into the fire service, just to go from the street to the fire truck, it's over 700 hours of training. And that's just entry level firefighter one and two, EMT basic, hazardous materials technician, and then our rope rescue awareness and operations class. Those are no matter where you come from, no matter if you come from another department, we ensure that you have this training within the first year of your employment with us. We also have a lot of uh training requirements through our continuing education process. Uh we have a lot of very high professional standard training standards. Uh many of these are accreditated through the Alabama Fire College. They they carry a heavy stamp with IFSAC and Proboard which brings people from all over the world um to our state because they want that accreditation to be stamped on their on their certifications. So uh a lot of a lot of the classes we take do have that accreditation. We also utilize practical fire training scenarios to meet NFPA and ISO hourly standards. Those are those are third party uh professional standard agencies that that basically tell us how many hours we need to be training on. So we'll take and take practical scenarios and complete that training. We also uh with the heavy EMS call volume we have uh and the par the requirement to have paramedics uh those each level of EMS requires a different number of training hours. So that's anywhere between 40 to 60 hours every two years just to

maintain your lensure. Uh we also have ongoing leadership training and then as the fire profession progresses we have to stay caught up with that and it's always given us new opportunities to send folks to different training all over the country. Okay. Our public safety training center. Uh this our public safety training center serves as a regional training center of the Alabama Fire College. What this does, this allows us to host multiple certification classes throughout the year and this brings students from all over the globe. We have a lot of DoD uh students that come in. Uh that's again back to that accreditation. They seek that out. So they'll come uh right here to Decatur to obtain that training. Our uh training center also facilitates a drill field classroom. We have a lot of training props we use down there with a lot of our industry partners. Uh so we've got a great opportunity uh down there to to open up to outside agencies to to bring them in to train them. We also use that facility as a training and a meeting site for federal, state, regional seating and counterpart county partnering agencies. Recently our Morgan County EMA used it as their EOC while the courthouse was going under renovations. And so we actually did have to stand it up one night when some severe weather was coming through. So, uh, we're working always work with our partnering agencies to try to to, uh, provide that facility as they need it. Okay, last one. Community risk reduction. This is the important one. Uh, when you start talking about preventing the fire before it before it ever begins. Uh, Benjamin Franklin once said, "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." And, uh, we we take that approach and we take our community risk reduction very serious. That's where public safety begins in the planning phase. Uh early on, we uh Lieutenant Sibly does a great job of our community support through the public education and

public relations. Uh he has the hands-on CPR initiative. We also do many fire prevention activities in the schools and different community events. The second part of this is the building's plans reviews and the life safety code enforcement. Uh this is through our fire marshall's office. uh as an extension and an assistant to the state fire marshall uh we're delegated to execute the duties and obligations of the state administrative code and uh as an extension of that state fire marshall. So there's a lot of lot of responsibility that goes when we when we sit down to look at plans reviews and we look at things because of the the importance of life safety. Last thing I want to say I just want to thank Mayor Lawrence and our city council and I also want to thank our city partners. Uh there's nothing that we can do without the help of everyone here. I know a lot of times we're out in the public and and the public is very gracious with telling us thank you, but I need the public to understand that we couldn't do this without your support and without the support of our of our partners. Everything we do requires a team and nothing just happens. And so I just want to tell you I'm grateful for the things and the support that y'all give us.

Yeah, Chief, thank you for for this update. I I think it's important and you touched on it. A lot of the times the public may not know what you do. I mean like a week or so ago, you probably replied to a slip and fall from an elderly person who lived at home and then a bell rings and you're in an apartment fire and there's another fire before that and then you're working a wreck for a medical call. There's tons of things you guys do on a daily basis that I don't know if everybody completely wraps their head around and and you guys are really appreciated and you do a great job doing it. So, thank you. Thank you, sir.

Chief, I just want to say that it's very evident that you have a wealth of knowledge in in your field and we appreciate you for that and we appreciate the positive and professional attitude that you lead the department with. Thank you very much. Thank you, sir. Appreciate it. Well, thank you.

Yeah. And and I agree with what the mayor was saying and I just also wanted to compliment you on your presentation skills. I've seen you do this do this before. So I you do it very well. Um I also want to say this career development thing that is great. I really like that. And I have another question on the regional training center. You people or students come outside of the city. How is that do we charge for that? How does that work?

So we have a partnership through the Alabama Fire College. It's it's a cost shared where we we provide the facility and then we get a a certain percentage of each student's tuition and then we we we just we provide the instructor or they provide the instructor. It's all an agreement each class we teach kind of looks a little different and so if we have a like a lot of times we'll teach a fire officer three and four which not a lot of places teach. which is highly soughta. So we'll get a lot of DoD folks from all over the country, all over the world that come in to take that class and it's a it's a you know can be a pretty pricey class. So we we kind of offer up the instructor, we pay our our people to work and then we get a cost sharing through the fire college with that.

That's great. And that's that's another way the city's generating some some uh income so that we can provide for our citizens. So that's great. I didn't even realize that. Yes, ma'am.

I was just um thank you for the presentation. Um I was just wondering um how could we get like a pipeline of DCS students into um fire training and into those types of fields so that we can you know expand our homegrown um firefighters and and department from inside the city. Do you have any plans for that?

We we uh attend a lot of the the job fairs. We we go to we get into all the schools every chance we get to just talk to the kids. A lot of times we'll go to the tech school and and and talk there. Uh there was a program a few years ago uh through the fire college that we taught uh a firefighter program at the tech school when it first opened and uh we just kind of they're kind of lost interest in that. So that's always an option if we have those students that that are interested and we always welcome like Lieutenant Civa he does a summer cadet camp for those students in the junior senior year of their high school. And so he'll bring them in and put them on the drill field and kind of show them what our our career is about to give them that that real world experience to see if that's something they want to do. Okay.

So, yes, sir. Thank you. All right. Thank you'all very much. Thank you, Chief. Uh, anything else from council or mayor? All right. We'll see y'all next week. Thank you.