City Council - Regular Meeting

We will call the September 1st, 2026 meeting of Andalusia City Council to order. You will stand and join Councilman Powell as he leads us in the prayer and the pledge of allegiance.

Join me as we pray. Almighty God, we come to you today. Thank you for the way that you have blessed our town, the way you have blessed our citizens, the way you have blessed our city and employees. Pray that you would give us wisdom as we make decisions that will improve the quality of life for not only our citizens, but for those who visit and for our business. Watch over us and care for us. In Jesus' name, amen. Attention, salute, pledge. I pledge allegiance.

Okay, welcome everyone to our first meeting of the month of September. Remind everyone that we meet on the first and third Tuesdays of each month. The workshop starting at 530 and the official meeting starting here in this these quarters at six o'clock unless otherwise notified. Okay. First item of business will be to approve the minutes of our regular meeting held August 18th. Mayor, I make the motion to approve the meeting minutes from August 18th. All right. Mr. Craig made motion to approve the minutes. Do we have a second? I second the motion, Mayor. Second by Mr. Mao. Any further discussion, questions, or comments concerning the minutes? Hearing none, all in favor of approving the minutes August 18th. 2026, please indicate by raising your right hand and saying aye. Aye. Any opposed to that? Okay, the minutes are approved. No unfinished business to consider. The first business, new business, will be ordinance number 2604, which is a real estate exchange with PowerSouth. This is kind of complicated and involved, but I'll explain it best I can. Power South owns some property that adjoins our new park that we're building on South Cotton Street. It's some old right-of-way and some buildings that they have down there that they have no use for anymore. The city owns some property out next door to Power South's offices on Highway 29. They need some property for some additional area for warehousing and storing of their equipment and all the stuff that they have to keep their power going. They have proposed an exchange of some property that we own, the city owns, with the property that they own going to the city that I previously described down near our new park. We had the properties appraised. The property that they want from us is about 24 acres, 25 acres, something like that. And the property that they are deeding to us is three or four acres, John, something like that. So we had them appraised and the value of our property that they will be receiving from us exceeds the value of the property that we were receiving from them by $61,000. 67. $67,000, excuse me. So what we are asking for tonight is this is a second reading on this, isn't it, John? Yes, sir. So we can act on this tonight. What I'm asking for the council to do tonight is to approve the ordinance to declare our property What's the word I'm looking for?

Surplus.

Surplus, excuse me. Declare the property that we will be transferring to PowerSouth to declare that acreage surplus from the city and to agree to accept the property from them along with $67,000. That's what this ordinance will do and will be followed up by an approved, we'll ask approval for an exchange agreement that will be a contractual thing that we'll ask for right after this. So now I'm asking for approval of the ordinance, 2026-04. Do we have a motion to approve or adopt that ordinance?

Mr. Mayor, I move that we approve ordinance 2026-04, replacing the 27 acres of the Snead Kennedy property adjoining Power South.

All right. We have a motion by Mr. Powell. Do we have a second?

Mr. Mayor, I'll second that.

We have a second by Mr. Boswell. Is there any further discussion, questions, or comments concerning the ordinance? Hearing none, all in favor of approval of the ordinance or adopting the ordinance, please indicate by raising your right hand and saying aye. Aye. Any opposed, the same sign. And that is approved. Thank you for that. The next thing I'll ask you to do is to approve an exchange agreement between the city For the property that we just declared surplus that we sell to Power South under the terms that I just described to you, and that will be done in an exchange agreement. We need a motion and a second to approve that agreement.

Mr. Mayor, I move that we approve the real estate exchange agreement between the city and Power South and that In that exchange, PowerSouth pay us an additional $67,000 for the property that they receive.

All right. We have a motion by Mr. Powell. Do we have a second?

Mr. Mayor, I second that motion.

Mr. Boswell seconds that motion for the exchange agreement. Any further discussion, questions, or comments? All in favor of approval, please indicate by raising your right hand saying aye. Aye. Any opposed, same sign. And that is approved, and I thank you for that. Next piece of business is we had a report from our auditing firm, Raven Odom Pearson Hayes, on our audit for fiscal year 2025, goes through the year 2024 to 2026. Is that right, John?

Yes, sir.

All right. They, no, that was not.

The fiscal year 2025. 2025, yes.

Fiscal year, the year we just finished. Yes. We'll have, we had a report from them and I'm going to read just some notes from their report to put in the record that they made at the upstairs and workshop. The auditor said that the city of Andalusia ended the fiscal year in extremely sound financial condition. The city's cash balance at September 30, 2025, was $25.96 million, practically $26 million, and approximately 53% of that is unrestricted money. The cash balance was maintained with the $6.2 million capital outlays in fiscal year 2025, including the Andalusia High School sidewalk project, street paving, Heritage Park construction, and equipment for the Andalusia Police Department and Public Works. The city sales taxes continued to grow and represented a 14% increase over the past five years. We expect, they expect, this trend to continue with two major retailers opening this quarter. The city made payments of $2.6 million to its long-term debt. The city's debt-to-income ratio was approximately 16.7%, which is well below the government standards. And when I say below, that is a good thing. The standards are 30%. ratio. Ours is 16.7, just slightly, almost half of what the government requires you to have. The bottom line is that the conservative approaches to financial management taken by the council administration, coupled with our continued efforts to build our economy, continue to pay off. We will have They presented those budgets, excuse me, presented those, a copy of those audits to each council member and to me, and we will have a couple of weeks to study those, and if any questions that council members have between now and then, get back to me or John or directly with the auditors, and they'll be happy to try to answer your question. Okay, next question. Next item is a resolution number 2026-24 for the fiscal year 2027 budget, fiscal year beginning September the 1st. Our proposed budget of $29.5 million reflects a 4.3% increase in actual operating expenses. The increase is on par with the annual inflation rate, which was 3.4% percent as of August. The budget includes a five percent cost of living pay increase for city employees. Our council members have indicated it is important to them that we take this step which we believe will help us retain our current employees and help us recruit employees especially first responders. So I think this uh this budget is excellent uh as as auditors have said This is very similar to the budgets of recent years with exceptions of increasing employees pay and some other things. So again, it's a conservative budget, one that we expect will be balanced at the end of the year. So resolution number 2026-24 will adopt that 2027 budget. I would entertain a motion to approve the budget.

Mayor, I make a motion that we approve our budget year for the year 2027.

Resolution 2026-24. Yes. All right. We have a motion by Mr. Mount. Do we have a second? Second. Second by Mr. Powell. Any further discussion, questions, or comments from the council? Hearing none, all in favor of adopting the resolution approving the budget for 2027, please indicate by raising your right hand and saying aye. Aye. Any opposed, no. And the ayes have it. Thank you for that. The next item is approval of the Andalusia City School System's education tax request for 2026-2027 academic year. Let me find that amount. here it is. The new money that they're asking for is $1,630,000, and that comes from the 1.5% sales tax that goes, that money is created by that sales tax. We had already approved some other items previously that they will maintain on their books in the future, but for this year they're asking for additional amount of one million six hundred and thirty thousand dollars I Recommend to you the superintendent was here a couple of meetings ago and went through with this in detail with us.

I recommend that you approve it Mayor I make a recommendation to approve that Andalusia City Schools education sales tax request All right.

We have a motion to approve by mr. Craig. Do we have a second? Mr. Mayor I second that have a second by mr. Boswell Is there any further discussion, questions, or comments from the council? All in favor of approval, please indicate by raising your right hand and saying aye. Aye. Any opposed, no. And it is approved. Thank you for that. Next item is the first reading of ordinance number 26-05. This ordinance will increase our garbage pickup, residential garbage pickup costs by $2.50 a month. In other words, $2.50 over what's being paid now, which is $25 a month. So starting, if you adopt this ordinance at our next meeting, starting September the 1st, garbage pickup rates will go to $27.50, which is $2.50 more than what we have been paying, $25. You might be interested to know that the county fee is, $30, I think, so we're under the county. The other change that this ordinance will make is we will stop charging the large pickup stuff that people put out on the side of the road in front of their residences. That's not for businesses, it's for residents. If it's a contractor that puts it out there, and work of a contract on residential property, the contractor will be charged for that pickup, but the resident will not. So this is the first reading for that ordinance, and we will take it up at our next meeting for a vote. Next item on our agenda is an electrical reliability I can't say this word, resiliency. Yeah. Electric reliability and resiliency project. I don't know why I can't say that word. I can say resilient and just put a Y on the end of it. That makes it right. I'm going to ask Mr. Powell if he will to, he's been involved in this from the standpoint of sitting on the utility board. I'm going to ask him if he will to walk us through this explanation of what's been asked here.

Okay. Utilities has had to take some people off the Antioch substation. Over on 29, one of those businesses is piggly-wiggly in those areas because there was not enough power available through that substation to serve the industrial park. In order to have adequate power there, have adequate power to our citizens and business owners in that neighborhood, they are building a new transmission line coming out of the Shaw substation. Power South has invested over a million dollars of their own money, giving us the ability to come out and run the line down Sutton Road to the industrial park. If someone came today to go to the industrial park, with a business, we would not have power to serve them. So the utilities are doing that, and they are asking the city to share the cost of the materials half and half to do that project.

To make that a little bit clearer, the utility board is asking. Utility board. Andalusia Utility Board is asking for that.

Asking the city to help with that.

That amounts to $585,633. which is half of the cost of the materials for that project. I would add one other thing. This not only puts us back in business at our industrial park as far as having necessary power out there for a new project that may come along, It also beefs up the entire substation area on this side of town, on the east side of town and the north side of town. Not only for businesses, but for residential service, too.

Right.

So that we'll have reliability. If we lose coverage in one of those substations, this work would mean that it would get backed up by another substation. So it cuts down a lot on power outages where you've just got a problem in one substation.

So this, Mayor, this will... also be we will be in a position where only one more step will be required to have total redundancy within the system right and we're applying for a grant to fund that right so this money would come from the city's capital account transferred to the city's general account

and then paid out to the utility board from the general account. And then it will become a part of the utility board's capital. We're just moving money out of the city and making it a capital account. for the utility board, but the city owns the utility board. So it's like taking money out of one pocket and putting it in the other if you want to look at it like that. I recommend to you that we do it. Right now we're out of business at our industrial park. We had a new consumer come out there and want to build. So we need to do that for that reason alone, but we also will get more benefit than just that. So I recommend to you that we approve this Request for $585,633.60.

Mr. Mayor, I move that we approve the electrical reliability and resiliency project. I can say that word. I went up on you here. And that the money be taken from the capital account of the city, transferred to the general fund, and then to the utility board.

All right, we have a motion by Mr. Powell to do this. Do we have a second?

Mr. Mayor, I will second that.

Have a second by Mr. Boswell. Any further discussion, questions, or comments from the council? All in favor of this recommendation, please indicate by raising your right hand and saying aye. Aye. Any opposed by the same sign? And it is approved, and I surely thank you for that. We had a report from Chad Taylor, who runs our golf course out at LBW, and he had lost his pumping system that keeps that golf course irrigated. Primarily, that pumper is out, and it needs to be replaced, or we will lose the golf course as far as being able to keep a turf alive on it. He has done some work on this and has an offer from a pump supplier, an installer, someone that he has worked with out there for a long, long time. He has a lot of confidence in. The price on that pump installed would be $93,996. That is a public works project. and it's under $100,000 so it doesn't have to be bid. So I recommend to you that we move forward and get this done because if we don't get it done pretty soon, we will lose a lot of money to replace sod that will be gone in our golf course. That money would come from our capital account.

Do we have a motion to approve that? Mr. Mayor, I will make the motion for the irrigation pump at Evanborn.

All right. We have a motion by Mr. Boswell. Do we have a second? I'll second that motion. Second by Mr. Craig. Any further discussion, questions, or comments concerning this issue? Hearing none, all in favor of the motion, please indicate by raising your right hand and saying aye. Aye. Any opposed, no. And that is approved, and thank you for that. Our last piece of business is to join in the appointment of a member of the airport authority. As you know, the airport authority is a legal entity that is, the members are appointed by the city of Andalusia, the city of Up, and the county commission. Each city and the county make a single appointment to the commission. and then the three entities together appoint a fourth one. And that person that has been appointed by the three entities for many years now has served in a very excellent way and primarily has served as the chairman of that commission, excuse me, authority for at least a dozen years, maybe longer. And that's Gary Smith, who is the recently retired from PowerSouth, uh as the ceo of powersouth but he has been contacted and has affirmed that he would like to be reappointed and continue in that position for some time so i recommend that we join with the city of op and the county commission in approving gary smith for the fourth seat on the andalusia excuse me on the south alabama regional airport authority

Mr. Mayor, I make the motion that we appoint Gary to the authority. All right.

Do we have a motion? We have a motion to approve him. Do we have a second? Mr. Mayor, I'll second that. All right. We have a motion and a second. Any further discussion, questions, or comments concerning this appointment? Hearing none, all in favor of approving Gary Smith as the member of the South Alabama Regional Airport Authority now. Please indicate by raising your right hand saying aye. Aye. Any opposed, no. And Gary is appointed, and I appreciate Gary's hard work and his attendance to those responsibilities out there because that airport is an extremely important asset for this community. Is there anything else from the council tonight? Okay, we will declare the council adjourned.

I wait.