Council - Regular Meeting

pre- council meeting of the city of Homewood for March the 23rd, 2026. Councelor Simmons is out. Councelor Simmons is out. Councelor Lane here. Councelor Armstead here. Mayor Andrew here. All right. So, we are hanging on to a quorum by a thread. So, everything will be the Lane Armstead show tonight. Take turns making motions and seconding.

Um, okay. Uh, let's see. So, we have no old business. And so, we are going to start with uh new business. Item 12326, request for consideration to permit a landscaping bid to extend into the city rightway adjacent to 3200 Whiteall Road. Brought to us by Mr. Pew. Is he here tonight? Not here tonight. Okay. Um Brian, you have any Oh, there we go. Is Are you here to speak for this? Here's for OD's. Okay. Um I should have looked your hat. Okay. All right. Anybody here to discuss 3200 white hall? Emma, are you here to discuss 3200 White Hall? Anyone know anything about this item?

No. What is Yeah. What is Should I text Wyatt? Let's see. Where's White Hall? I'm looking at I'm looking at That's by you. I know. I'm looking at Mayford Drive. White Hall is is where it connect. Is it connecting here somewhere? Oh, you know where it is. Sorry. I'm kind of confused with this drawing here. Let's see. Is White Hall to the right, to the left, or bottom? Hey, are you coming down to speak to 3200 Whiteall Road? There's not anyone here. Hang on.

This is the one that got torn down. Oh, okay. So, that's okay. Okay. He was earlier. Oh, Scott's here. He He can answer. Okay, he's hang on. He's He's seen my text address. I guess I've got the I see it. That house is I can Let me see which one that is. All right, let's Can we attorneys? Can we go on and come back to that? Yeah, you can carry it. Okay, we'll carry this over. Wait on. We'll come back to this item.

All right, let's go ahead and take 130326 request for consideration for OD's to use one of the parking spaces for a crawfish boil brought to us from Mr. Seagris. Um, and if you will sign in and come on up and um, do we have any documents for this or are you here just to present? I'm just here to They said they sent some notes. I was just here to answer any questions. Perfect. If you will sign in. What's your name? Ryan. Ryan. Burus B U R R U S. And this is going to be for every Thursday in April. Is that right? And we have assigned a parking space, y'all. Is that right? One park one parking space in front of the building. It'll be from 4 to 9:00 p.m. on those Thursdays. Okay.

And this is for to actually your your equipment's out there. Equipment out there. Can't put it on the patio. Fire hazard. So just looking to and don't want to do it offsite because it kind of takes away from the whole atmosphere and experience, you know, smelling seeing the crawfish cooking. So yeah, just hoping to use a little parking spot. Any questions as cars parked next to it? They got to handle all that. We're out of it. I'm sorry. I was I was questioning the liability end up with him as far as something happens to a car next to it. You know whether agree I don't know something. What's the answer? Good question. What's the answer? Contracted around it. That's the indemnity.

The identification agreement. Okay. Excellent. So he would sign that. Okay. Hey Wyatt. Um okay. Um this is going to get voted on tonight because we won't meet again until the first Monday in April which is April 14th or not. So um um yeah. So, any other questions? Because we will talk about this tonight. Okay. Okay. No, it's good. Good. Okay, Ryan, we are gonna talk about this tonight. So, we will vote on this at six o'clock. So, yeah. So, you can stick around if you want to. All right. I'll I'll email you guys if if you don't feel like hanging around. Yeah, I'll probably Thank you. Great. Okay.

Okay. All right. Moving on back to 120326. request for consideration to permit a landscaping bed to extend the city rideway adjacent to 3200 White Hall. Sorry, I left y'all hanging on that one. Um, yes. So, what they're proposing to do is to extend their landscape bed. This dotted line that you see here, that's their property line. There's a large rideway. Um, so they wanted to extend their landscaping bed out into the rideway. There's in fact already one there. Not this one, but there's already landscaping. Yeah, there's there's landscaping there from the old house

that's it. That's what their request is. Right. Did you ever did y'all ever do anything about the fencing around that? I mean, we just leaving it open like that. You know what I was talking about? Or do y'all just see any problem with that? Well, construction sites in general are inherently dangerous. I mean, there's really no requirement. There's no legal requirement for them to put up any kind of construction fencing on a situation like this. So, I did mention it to uh to twin.

Yeah. The point the point we're bringing is if you go there, the first part of it on the white side there, it's about 8 10ft drop off. Okay. And anybody at night time, a child, anybody coming through there, there's Go ahead. Were you laugh? I mean I I know No. No. Him and I have talked about it too, but that's why Huh. We talked about it. And but I mean, do you think there should be danger there at all of y'all? If y'all don't think so, I'm fine with it. I mean, but I just I think it's somebody coming off that side of the road, it could be bad.

Someone's walking around. Yeah. If someone's walking around on a construction site at night, I agree. There are lots of lots of ways to get hurt. Um but there's we don't have an ordinance that requires construction sites. Okay. Because I saw another house somewhere being built right now and it and they've got it fenced for for that purpose. Yeah. And I think it's a great idea, but we just don't have we don't have a guess it being landscaping is the reason why they would come for a permit not a variance for this into the rightway. Is that the reason why you wouldn't have Say that again. I'm sorry. Typically speaking, when you go, I guess into the rightway, right, you would have like a get a variance from the BCA, right? Is that because it's landscape?

Well, BCA doesn't they don't get involved in right away. That's that's city property. So, it So, you wouldn't violate setback right there. It wouldn't be a setback issue. It would just be whether or not they can they can put that in the right way. And that requires an indemnification agreement and an agreement with the city because it's landscaping and not a structure that why Yeah, if I mean if they were going to put anything in the rightway, whether it be a retaining wall, which sometimes we talk about or something like that, it would still require city council um approval. Do you know whether they intend to run irrigation lines under the rightway? No, I don't. That's a good

Yeah, because if they do, I want to write that into the identification agreement because of the issues that are ongoing. I'll get clarity on that. Y and we won't put on this tonight. So you've got time on that. So it's like the next meeting in two weeks. Yeah. Okay. 13th. All right. Perfect. Thank you. Sure. Um next item 140326 request to declare miscellaneous vehicles and item surplus. Brought to us from Mr. Graves. Fleet maintenance. Hello. What you got for us? Uh just a bunch of uh miscellaneous stuff like you said from our department, some from the police, inspections, and the park and recreation. We just all combined into one. Okay. Vehicles.

The vehicles and just different equipment. Some trailers uh that was purchased in the early 2000s from the police department, desk, bookshelves, and some uh used tires that will be surplus from the old Crown Vicks and the Dodge Chargers. We used to have just cleaning out old question. What do you do with it? It goes to auction. Then the sur the surplus proceeds go back into general fund. Like we would take this up. Is it ever open to the public? I mean, when I say public, I don't mean I mean what if somebody in city want to purchase it before above the auction? I mean, yes, sir. Well, it goes to um

Does it have to go to auction? Yes, sir. It has to go to auction. goes to the highest bidder with will record to hold our auctions. And so Blake, we will take this up in two weeks. Is that okay? Okay. All right. We will do that. Thank you. Have a good day. You too. All right. Okay then. 150326 request for consideration for budget amendment for HVAC repairs. What's going on over HPD? Well, unfortunately, once again, that one particular unit has decided to do quit working. Quit working. and I both just settled out the last

um yeah I was talking to Ke I mean this one unit has been a polter guy you know it since you know as soon as they hit warranty this is the second time um so unfortunately we have the repair bill just to get it to try to get it running and get it going and limp through for a little bit but the repair itself is roughly $32,000 they will have to build two compressors which is 60 to 90 days out. So we that side of the building courts training part of the jail but the jail is air conditioning. It will be okay in the jail. Um

won't have air conditioning again another summer like we did two years ago. Right. So what's your turnaround? We vote on this tonight. How how

uh we need I mean we we need to we have we found the money to move we're just asking to move uh $42,813 um from contract contractual services into the building maintenance um line item fund and that should give us enough to pay that bill for trying to get it going and get the order in to get this started. Um and then have a little bit left in uh building maintenance or whatever else we need. Um and that's really it. But as soon as we can get it done, we know we need to

contact them and get it going because it's when they I was telling you when I when they say 60 to 90 days, it's probably 120. Uh just the way it goes. That whole building. No, just that one side. How many square foot as the building on that one side? We're talking Oh, I don't know. It It's generally half. So, I mean, we're a 52,000 foot building, so 26,000 square ft. It's an 80 ton. Yeah. Now, it's Or is that the 100 ton? It's either 80 or 100 ton unit. It It's huge. No warrant of this. Obviously, it did, but it ran out and it's been breaking down ever since.

Say they can put in there, you know. I mean it those compressors are so big they had to bring in cranes to to put them up there. So and unfortunately like two years ago the court and probably part of our training we'll have to bring in portable air conditioners just to try to make it through the summer. Um because we couldn't hold court. It was so bad in there. The cost of portable is sir curious what the cost of portables is.

I honestly cannot remember sir. No, I don't. I want I would I know we did not use them on our side. We just put a bunch we bought some box fans that we'll pull back out of the closet and but the courts down there where it got really bad um they did um do it. So you see it all the time even big places. Yeah. Well, it's just to get them through. I mean it's literally was a huge some sort of contraption in the middle. It had to have an evaporator and a where the, you know, the water condensation goes. I mean, it was a mess, but it kept them relatively cool down there.

You'd be lucky. And I'm Well, I I'm hoping, you know, that these at least many of these places, as you know, don't give you a long warranty no matter what. These two compressors will probably get a one-year warranty. I'm sure we could possibly buy maybe a long year longer warranty. I will check into that, see what we can find out. But once again, it's it's one of those things. But that's Do I need Does anybody need the amount again or whatever it is from from you guys, 13? Yes, sir. You guys have more and where it's going, where it's coming from, where it's going to transfer. And that was total the 42. That was your total. 51.

Yeah, basically 51. That we'll be transferring a bit more. We have those monies to do and that'll give us a factor of just in case. So, we're not asking for anything new. Just just moving it. Good. Well, we will take that up tonight. Thank you. Don't want you to wait. Yeah. And as soon as we we get the go-ahad from Bo, we will uh we'll get it going. Thanks. Thank you'all. You guys Thank you, Ben. Take care. All right. And the la last item for our pre- council agenda 160326 request for consideration to authorize the city manager to execute opioid settlements brought to us from city attorney Keith Jackson.

I can be brief on this one. This resolution um well I've represented Homewood since 2019 I think in opioid litigation. We've had a series of settlements. Um, so the council passed a resolution in 2022 authorizing the mayor at the time to sign current and future opioid settlement agreements. We have a candidly inconsequential settlement agreement for some regional retailers, most of whom did not do business in Alabama, but it was a good opportunity to revisit who has the authority to sign the documents. It seems we can leave it in place. It's up to you guys. or we can transfer that over to the city manager which seems appropriate given that he's the executive and all the resolution does is transfer the authority

question to change that over to city manager. Okay. Yep. That sounds great. So we will take this up tonight as well. You have to do that every time. We do it for current. Yeah. Okay. Good. All right. And without objection, we are adjourned and we will meet back together at 6:00 next