Council - Regular Meeting

to do this once a year. Second item is for Keaton Electric coming in to recycle to work on an electric motor on the conveyor system, $565. Both of these have already been done.

Questions for me?

Nope. Thank you.

Thank you. Ms. McDuffer?

How are you all? I just have one item on the agenda, and it's 11C. And this is a contract with architect Robert Witten to work on a project we have going on at our warehouse to cut access from one side of it to the other. So any questions?

Okay.

Thank you. Ms. Bailey? Ms. Balch?

I have 11J. It's a resolution to approve for the Northwest Alabama RC&D grant for arts and museums for sun cells at Pope's Tavern. The amount of $14,761. Any questions? No match. Okay. Good deal. Thank you.

No match. Correct. Chief?

Good afternoon. I have one item. It's a resolution item I. And this is to apply for a grant through the FEMA assistance to firefighters grant. And this is a matching grant of 10%. The most that we're eligible to ask for based on population is $1 million. Although a fire apparatus, that's what we're asking for is a fire apparatus is going to be most likely above that price point a little bit, depending on exactly which truck we should end up going for. But the match by the city, whatever that is, is the most they will do is a million dollars and it's a 10% match. So if best case scenario, they come back and say, we're going to award you at full request price, you know, they would say it's a million dollar project, quote unquote, and they will give you the $900,000 and anything above that the city is responsible for coming up for. And once the grant period has just opened about a week and a half ago, and we've got about three more weeks before the grant application closes, we would not receive notice of who is going to be awarded this until well into next budget year. And then you'd have a two-year window to spend the funds on it. Any questions about that? Okay, thank you.

Thank you. Ms. Bailey?

I have three items tonight. One is the public hearing for Mr. Nichols or Nichols property. It came to the Planning Commission in March and received a unanimous recommendation. And so we're passing that along to you all, of course, and we'll hold a public hearing and then we'll have the vote under your regular agenda. And then the other item is our application to ADECA for our annual ESG program funds. We're going big this year for $499,000, which is our biggest application yet. So fingers and toes crossed and prayer set. Thank you. Any questions about either one of those items? No, ma'am. Okay, great. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Jordan?

We have two items. Item N, which was to replace the roof at the Diver Park gazebo. It sustained some wind damage several weeks ago. That is for Mid-American Roofing Company for $6,223.23. Any questions on that one?

I feel like Bill set you up, man. He did. Yeah. I do have a few questions on that. Were there any specs written to the bidders on what they, do they have flashing included in this estimate? believe there was in the in the mid-american i'll have to i'll have to dig into it all right was there a warranty given is there going to be a warranty given it was 20 i believe 20 20 years on material or workmanship i believe it was material okay and then my last question is uh how do they plan to mitigate getting debris into the water there wheelbarrow Oh, you're talking about tarps.

They're planning on using tarps. What are they going to do? He just told me they were going to use tarps. I really don't know specifically. Okay. All right. That's a tough roof to... Yeah, it's... Over water. Yeah. And then, any more questions? I'm sorry. No. Then out of man for $10,300 was to replace our 15-year-old five-ton unit at Diver Park, our central office. for Langston service group. Any questions on that one?

Thank y'all. Thank you, Mr. Lovejoy.

I HAVE ITEM 12B ON THE REGULAR AGENDA. IT'S THE FISCAL YEAR 27 GAS AND WATER BUDGETS. I CAN PRESENT ANYTHING YOU WANT OR JUST ANSWER QUESTIONS IF YOU HAVE ANY. I LIKE IT. THANK YOU.

THANK YOU. MR. MASON.

the chiller is working uh yes and so that brings us to our first two things invoice for something about rental for uh another month's rent for the temporary chiller and then the other invoices for the transformer that powers the chiller um any questions on those two which month is this this is the second month that we're paying for yes i have questions simmons yes sir

So we discussed at the last meeting, we had our setup cost with that first set of invoices. And yeah, the dates on this was the four weeks from 5-7 to 5-4. So once again, we know we got another invoice coming. So my question is, is this kind of a hard number now that we're looking at monthly, the combination of these two?

Yes, and so I have talked to Sunbelt, too, so our next one may be a little less, and we may get a little bit of a rebate off of this one, too, as well, because there's some stuff that I've talked to them about cutting off of that, and that is like insurance coverage for that. I've talked to Andy... Jones about the city's insurance would cover it and it would keep us from having to pay Sunbelt's insurance on that chiller. So that's a possibility we may cut some off of that cost.

And I'm going to ask you to look into the future and make a prediction. When do you think these realistically, I mean, are we going to pay these invoices until September, October, or are you hopeful that we get a permanent solution?

Yeah, so we have to pay them, of course, until we get through the hot season. But then we have to kind of – we can have them come get them during the winter. But then if we're not – we don't have a solution by when it starts warming up again, we have to pay full setup costs and everything else. So we can talk to Sunbelt about – I'm going to talk to somebody about if they are staying here and they're not in use during winter time, how that would look.

We won't charge them rent to store them here, right? Yes, yes.

Yeah, we won't do that.

And do we have, my last question is, do we have heat?

Yes, so the boiler runs the heat and it's perfectly fine. So the city's boiler is perfectly fine. Okay, that's all I have. Thank you.

Can you give a guess so everybody can kind of hear what are we spending a month to cool this building?

Are you talking about for the chiller?

For everything. Okay.

So, to cool the building, I mean, for right now, the temporary trailer that we're using right now is costing us around almost $11,000 a month to keep just this side of the building cool, which the other side of the building works off of a whole other system on the utility side, but on the short court side, it's costing us around $11,000 a month to cool the building.

Okay, and that's not including any other issues that we are seeing?

No, so we have other maintenance issues that I had seen that y'all are all aware of, but as far as cooling right now, because we have the temporary chiller in place, the cost of cooling is, and of course the utilities we're pulling from that, but that's $11,000 a month to cool based off of rental price. Thank you.

Any other questions on those?

No. Okay. So the next one I have is an invoice for crouching signs for water leaks in City Hall. So I think that's where three commodes were pulled because there was water leaks in the wall. There were sinks leaking. So they were to repair water leaks here at City Hall. Any questions on that one? The last thing I have on here, I think it was added last.

And what was that total of that?

For crock and sons?

It was $2,457.56. Okay. Okay. And then the last thing I think it was added at the very end is it says change order is not a change order. It is a we had a bill from Bagby Elevator where we had to replace a curtain wire and there was a problem with the door. So we pay that, and how Bagby bills us is half at a time or a percentage at a time. They pretty much do a down payment, and we pay that, and then they send us the rest of it later. The first part was paid late March, and that was approved through council for that payment, and then this is just the second half of that bill being paid. So the first part that I think we paid back in March was going to be – It was the 400 and the four, I believe is the 400 or the $660. And then we owe the $440 or, or vice versa. So we're just paying the other half of the bill that we owe is all that it is.

It says three threes, 26 to the six 60 is approved.

Yes. So that was approved then. So we're paying the rest of the bill. That's due. Any questions on that? All right. Thank you.

Thank you. MR. MUSGROVE.

GOOD AFTERNOON. I HAVE ONE ITEM ON THE AGENDA. 11 s on the consent agenda and this is the contract for the cleaning service for the municipal court that i asked if we could remove at the last meeting i just had some questions um i got all my questions answered primarily how many times a week was he cleaning which is two and what he does and i have a list of this the person services and also um The price is going to drop from $875 monthly to $685 monthly, which is what we're currently paying. So he agreed to keep the price the same rather than going up. So it still says $875 a month on the agenda, but the contract will be for $685 per month. Any questions? Thank you.

Thank you. Mayor Tyler?

Thank you very much, Ms. Simmons. I have four items on the agenda. The first is consent agenda item 11H. This is a contract with commercial industrial renovators. So we are actually under contract with, I guess it's someone in Washington, D.C., perhaps the Pentagon. to have possession of the jet and rocket that's there at Veterans Memorial Park to maintain it, keep it clean. And the annual maintenance, we did not spend any money in 2025 on the annual maintenance. So this is to, you know, to clean and repaint the jet and the rocket. Combined total of both of those is $6,200. And we do have budgeted funds allotted for that. Any questions there? The next item is 11I on the consent agenda. 11I and 11K are both sponsorships, ongoing sponsorships that the city has done for a long time. 11I is... We are into an agreement with the Shoals Chamber for the annual city sponsorship of Keep the Shoals Beautiful program, and that is $2,500 split between the council and the mayor's budgeted funds. to sponsor that particular program for our community. 11K, likewise, is a contract with the Kennedy Douglas Volunteers to sponsor Arts Alive. We are, I guess you would consider a corporate sponsor of Arts Alive to be paid from budgeted funds, and that amount is also $2,500. Both of those are... have been long-term sponsorships that the city has had. Any questions there?

There's an interest later, right, with us?

Yes, yes. And that item 12C is a resolution for the city hall project, and really this is the city hall, the resolution that we are passing is the next necessary step for the city hall this is uh in order for us to do a needs assessment to determine space requirements to determine office needs and the size of it all we'll do an assessment and then we we will begin working with the architect to draw and design what the new city hall will look like. There was really no need until we had a confirmation of our intention to move forward and have the architect spend time, energy, and effort working on that until we had met and had a chance to pass this particular resolution stating our intention to move forward. And we had Lee Burchall here, which was probably 10 or 12 weeks ago now. I don't remember how long he was, and he could have been longer than that. He was wanting us to move forward quickly with a resolution such as this. And let me say this. When we design this new city hall, it's going to be very different than what the original one was. I want to reflect back very quickly. The original plan was, I think it was a 98,000-square-foot city hall.

Mm-hmm.

It had a 300-seat city auditorium with tiered-level movie theater-style seating that was in there. Made it a... Practical only for one purpose. We're not going to have a 300-seat auditorium with movie theater-style seating on a tiered level. There was classroom in there for particular training. If we come in and have a multi-purpose city hall auditorium, which is the kind of thing that I'm going to be making sure we have, we'll be able to use that city auditorium for receptions we'll be able to use it for training it'll be a multi-use room to include a city hall auditorium we don't have to have separate and distinct spaces for those things When I went back and looked at the original plans, there were multiple conference rooms on each floor, multiple break rooms on each floor, multiple separate bathrooms on each floor, multiple undesignated spare offices on each floor, and it simply was just awful. oversized, in far excess of what our needs were. Those are the kinds of things that I'm going to be looking for and identifying, and we're going to do the actual needs assessment, figure out how we can spend the money to meet our current needs. We don't want to plan on going up high 25 years from now, 30 years from now, building code may change. And if we wanted to add on to it, it's very difficult to go up, but we do want to design it in such a way if 30 years down the road, if there needs to be additional expansion, then they'll be able to go out and account for future growth. We need to be mindful of future needs today, but I think we need to build for today's needs, meet our needs now. um perhaps there's room to account for hey in in the next year's budget or two years from now we may want to add a code enforcement officer you know i should get on justin because the air is a little warm in here today should pick a different department to add but we may want to account for hey there's a need for somebody like that but those will be some things that we work through but having multiple unaccounted for or undesignated offices built into it's just not going to happen i mean we're going to be very wise on how we do this and um and and deliberate on how we move forward but there is no reason to take the next step at all to do any type of needs assessment or do any type of drawing until we get this resolution passed you've heard justin and i've tried to share information with you about the needs that this building has everyone can feel it in here and there's lots of issues here parts of this building are in excess of 90 years old and i think it is time it's We all know we need a city hall. Now let's work towards what that's going to look like. I also will recognize that we're going to displace some employees. I'll use EMA as an example. They'll no longer be in this building. So the current number of people who are in here now are not going to be the same number of people who will be in the future ones. So we'll be able to – it'll be scalable is what we'll do. So meet our needs. It'll be scalable, and we're going to be very – We're going to spend our taxpayer dollars as carefully and wisely as possible as we move forward with this.

Thank you.

Sure.

Do you have any questions for the mayor in regards to this? No. Thank you, Mayor Tyler. Okay. We have some upcoming board vacancies and reappointments. The building and the property of appeals, we have two alternates that we're looking for. Do we have any nominations for that?

Yes, for the building and property board, I would like to nominate Magali Moyers.

Second.

Magali Moyers. Okay, we have a nomination in second. And this would be for an alternate. For an alternate, okay. do we have another or do you want to vote approve this one for us we need two alternates are there any more nominees nomination for that okay all in favor for miss Moyers okay thank you so we'll take care of the next one at the next meeting so we got one okay tree commission we have two vacancies for that one I have a nomination for Lisa Watley Lisa Whatley. Okay, we've got two. Are there any more nominations for that one? Okay. Did we get a second for Ms. Whatley?

It's a nomination. I don't think we need a second. We just vote.

Okay.

Is that right, Julian?

Mr. Musgrove.

Yes.

We don't need a second on our nomination.

What is it?

for a tree commission, because it's a nomination, not a, yeah.

All right. All in favor for Ms. Wiley? Okay, so we have one more vacancy for tree commission. Okay, board of zoning and adjustments. We have two reappointments for that one. Was anyone eligible, Kathy, to be reappointed for the zoning?

They've been on there a while. They're okay with being re-employed or not. Yeah. Okay.

Council Member said they would rather wait to further review that when they shall have.

Yeah. Okay.

So we're going to, I'm sorry, we're going to hold off on zoning.

That has been the request.

Okay.

Okay, I think that's it for right now, then. So we have the building, we still have one building and property Board of Appeals, and then one tree commission, and then we'll take a look at the vote of zoning, the Board of zoning and adjustments at the next meeting. Okay, that's up. We don't any council members have anything else?

Yes. As far as the city clerk, I'd like to make a nomination for city clerk.

Well, we need to add it to the agenda.

Okay.

It's not on the agenda, I don't think. So it would need to be added to the agenda.

Added to the agenda? Okay. Can I add to the agenda a nomination for city clerk? What we need to do is add... A nomination process of a city clerk.

There you go.

There we go.

Okay.

Do we get a second for that to add the... Second. Okay. So that would become to add the city clerk... to the agenda it will become what all in favor nobody opposes with that okay so Kathy make it reflect it would be in Bob it will be 12 D that's the city clerk for the city clerk

Can we also add a treasurer appointment to the agenda?

It's also requested that we add the appointment of the city clerk. And the reason these are happening, we have had, let me explain this so people don't think we're just throwing this in here. I'm going to. Did you get something to say? Okay. We have been looking for a city clerk position. As everybody knows, it's been posted. And we've had interview process on last Thursday and Friday. And we did talk to five different candidates in regards to that. And we could not come to a consensus of one. The vote kept being a 3-3. So therefore, we were not able to move forward. And so it was... discussed by the city council and agreed by the council to bring it forth up again today. So the agenda, everything had already been sent out on Friday afternoon before we came to the 3-3 tie. And so that's why the agenda had already been sent out to the media and everything. So that's why it's being added. It's not that nobody's trying to slide anything in. The agenda was already out, posted and everything. Instead of doing just an addendum to it, We just decided to add it, as you see the council just approved, to add it to the meeting for today. So that is what happened, the reason this is happening. So all in favor of adding the appointment of the city treasurer to the agenda. And that will be 12D-E. And it both goes to the original agenda. If there's nothing else, we will take a break and start back up at 5 o'clock. Thank you.