County Commission - Regular Meeting

between that and the I see some, I see a little green. We're good. That's what that little green thing. All right.

of course that's the bridge replacement in riverside and we have finally have that agreement and and i'll be bringing an agreement with the engineering firm before you uh by the end of the month we have discussed that that is the bridge replacement replacement project on depot street we also have a plan to address the bypass so the people will have to drive so far around during the construction correct okay once again how long do you expect the construction to last

After you stop traffic on it, I guess is what I'm wondering. How long will it be closed off to the regular traffic? Do you have an idea? Take three months to do that?

That is casting place cover? It is. Okay. Any more questions about that? Good. Okay.

I might mention too anytime that I've had people over the years mentioned it to me about I saw where y'all just about y'all paying for another study well believe it or not it's not just a study our studies so we can just gather more information. Many of these studies are required before we can apply for another project. So they're not just studies that we chose to do. It's required that we have a traffic study done at that interchange to help in the design phase and all that. And so it's a very important study. And the Regional Planning Commission is an entity that does a lot of our plans for

No, they had a rural planning commission at one time.

Is that Hardwick Road? Hardwick Road, yes. Old Coast City Road? Where's the Old Coast City Road to citizens, for instance, would be at the red light at the steakhouse all the way to Highway 144? The whole thing? Yes.

And at some point we did something that the Hardwick Road as it connects to, it was Golf Course Road as it connected to Hardwick. That's right.

The point there is that we assume a lot of the expenses of those roads, planning and everything else, because they're kind of hours, even though part of it's in city limits on some of them. Point that out. Part of that money is spent inside of city limits on roads.

I'd like to point out those are in the county transportation plan under the Rebuild Alabama Act. And not too many years ago, all the roads you just mentioned would be out of our local funds. And these are funds now that are done through the Rebuild Alabama Act. Yes. It gives us an idea of what that's actually worth to us, which is quite a bit. Rebuild has been good to St. Clair County anyway.

Very good. Any questions? Other questions for Clay? Very good report there, Clay. We appreciate it. And we'll know what to have on the agenda for your portion of it next Tuesday.

Okay. Moving on to Roddy Wolf. That's an equally important and elaborately presented plan with no map. They don't have a map or anything. Mine's invisible.

Are you still talking to them about things? See if it's okay if I use my gas stove and then pay later.

I'm not in favor of cutting them down. There's considerable people that still gather pecans out there. I do appreciate. I do know what's going to happen if they fall. I do appreciate staff checking to be sure if they see a dead limb, you know, trying to handle it before it falls. But sometimes it can cause the wind, et cetera. But I hate to cut it down. But if you do cut it down, I'd like some chunks out of it so I can turn some wooden bowls. I just want to lay a plane out there for some chunks out of it.

I would encourage all of you to get familiar with it. You can Google rotten pecan trees and get you an idea of what they look like. We'll go out. I'm going to look those up. That's right. That's right. Being a little bit facetious, but we hate to cut a tree. We just planted a tree over here, and we're going to put that in for replacement before that over there has a chance to grow. These pecan trees do have pretty good pecans. They're small. In the fall, I walk around out there, pick me up a few, bring them in.

Yeah. It just depends on which year it is. That's true. That's true. Okay. Any more questions about the concrete and the commissioners? Thank you. Moving along.

That's not too bad a maintenance thing, considering that hose has probably lasted several years now. Correct.

That's some of their punch list items that they had back.

Next step is, what is it? What do y'all want it to say? You know, we sort of went through this at the accident arena, what we want the sign to say. That does take on some specific legalities at some point. And I mean, it needs to say ALEA, or does it need, what does it need to say? ALEA, driver's license division, is kind of what I was thinking. Yeah, but are they going to pay for it? Probably not. So we're going to have to decide. Maybe you can get that to cover up where the holes were that we took off the New Sieges sign.

We could put it all on one sign and hang a sign over whatever area it was.

you might check with them and see that's the alia official state logo if it just had that out there and then underneath that driver's license division what do y'all think about that In the very back corner they did.

Thank you all. Okay. And thank you. And moving on to Ashley Hay, our asset manager. Updates on the Reno Gantt Center.

I bet those shiny cars really shine in there under those lights.

That helps in some places and it doesn't help in others. Yeah.

Has any of the commissioners had a chance to talk to her about the calls? I think everybody got a call. They're worried about cannibalizing vendors that the same ones use. If you have events of the same kind out there, and we basically had one vendor that was doing a couple of two or three events, and they call around and get contributions for whatever that event may be and then we plug in another one that's actually now caught the same people it's going to affect the first one and that is a call we have some concern if you had that discussion with anybody yeah I mean I don't know I know which

And it might be that we look at the particular one that Calvary is, I think, a local vendor. It might be if it's a local vendor, give them first shot, and if we have somebody coming in with the same item, we already have somebody doing that. And I think the comparison that I use, we ran into this with Block Party years ago at You can't let, it's just common sense, you can't let five people sell ice cream or nobody makes any ice cream money. So you have to restrict it to two people selling ice cream. So we may have to have a plan there to take care of that. Because you're right, they all get hi

We have something in the code that alludes to local vendors having some preference.

It would be tied into that. Well, if we choose to bid it. uh because that only because it used to be three percent i believe now it's five uh i'm not sure we have to be at this but it might be if it's a if it's a person running an event that is from this county and they will give us satisfaction it's up to us up to a point before we have to beat it then we we just keep using them we tell the others no if they're actually we feel like they're going to be drawing from the same well on their contributions uh And then we'll have to even think about our own things, our fair. But go through some of

You had a truck show, didn't you? Yeah. Two within a month. Did you learn anything?

At least wash your truck or decorate it or something.

Anyway, you know the dynamics of running a facility like this and that has now been brought up. It was a local vendor that called me. Everybody's aware of him. Thank you, Ashley. Thank you. Very good. All righty. Next item, Captain Matt Morris, Operations Administrator. Let's take that trainee off of there. He's been around too long. Take that. Cory, what have you got against him to put that on there like that? Oh, gosh. Do you remember not making the first one? operation administrator uh wait a minute what's the thing where you go uh where you go and you're working at an industry to get your

He may be a trainee when he gets to the legislature.

It ain't worth all that just for that little bit. When you're using your handhelds in the jail and you call they don't work, they're not just inside the jail communications, are they? Are they also the ones that call centrals if they need something, same handheld? But they can't get to the control room to let... So those radios are not transparent. for instance if you have an emergency the reason i bring that up is that may be problematic then it may not be being allowable to use 9-1-1 funds if you're not communicating outside that facility it's probably going to be a jail maintenance deal thing instead of taking it out now and we can make it go to central well that's what i'm saying if you can if it's going to

I'll be in favor of saying we take it out of the funds because I don't think it should come out tonight. Either way, I just want it fixed. Yes, sir. We do, too. Anything else for Matt? Two minutes.

It can yield his time to the coroner. Anything you want to talk about? Anything you want to talk to us about? We're going to get Matt to yield his time to you. We're going to get Matt to yield his time to you. I can yield it to you, Chairman. And I'll yield it to you. I'll yield Matt's time to Jeff. You good right now? Yeah. Okay. Budget stuff? Yeah. This is something new. Nothing that, nothing you ought to know. Okay. All right. Moving on our list here then, Tina Morgan, County Administrator.

You've got a list of things in here for us to look at that you've prepared for us.

Any questions for the administrator? She also attached a pending list. Those are items that we just sort of carry over for us to keep on our plate and look over to see if we want to bring those up. If you ever do, just give those to Tina and she'll put them in her report and bring them up to discuss at the next gathering. And no further questions for County Administrator. Moving on now to the County Attorney, Kirk Walker, County Attorney.

And if we do that, I'd like for us to look, I don't know whether the semantics will help from a legal standpoint or not, but we're talking about P-Card procurement card. Yes, sir. I just got a couple of letters in the last year, last two years, about federal procurement processes. And the word there from your semantics is procurement. The state of Alabama, do you know this lady? The state of Alabama actually has an official and uh so when these people are asking questions it probably would be a help for those questions to be answered by somebody we designate as a cpo and i think right now the

Thank you. There's one other... when we go when we tried to give money to a particular uh program or we kind of bogged down for this when we first started the fair till we learned what what can we can we not spend county money on uh the easiest answer is no you can't you can't use it for that when we found out later on well sometimes you can uh I had a request this week for us. We've got some folks that are retiring that have been in the county courthouse for many years, for instance, in different positions. And to give them a retirement party, I don't know where I'm going with this now, to gi

909 or 509. I'll send it to you. It's real broad if you did it that way. I'm not advocating that. I'm just advocating on the smaller level. Otherwise, we'll pay for them ourselves or we'll depend on businesses or we'll be short money to do that. I don't know where y'all had any requests for something. They're coming up now on some retirements.

But we didn't have to, and we might have had a bigger gift for Dan if we'd have been allowed to pay for certain parts of it. We paid for Dan's gift, for instance. We paid all out of our pocket. Yep. And I don't mind continuing it, but some other people that are also being asked to contribute would like for the organization that these folks worked for for 30 years to share in the expense and the organization. legally we can if we adopt that portion of amendment 909 or whatever and like i said the way i read the amendment 909 is you can specifically say what you're approving to spend it on you'l

I've been to all of them. We had one last week. Yeah. And the commission chambers. Commission chambers, and you have Jerry leaving. So there's a way, and I'd like to see us being able to address that. I think we owe that to them, from the standpoint especially of sending people off. Yeah, if we'd like to give you a party after all. There you go.

So instead of renting the place, could you just send me the cash? Yeah.

But it's so simple. I'm saying it's been done by some counties already. And the question is, can we do that? The answer is yes. answer is not no unless we make up all the reasons why we can't because the answer is yes we can if we choose to and there are some things in there that i think would would be safe i know we don't want to open the door completely but we could set a limit on a plaque for instance but it wouldn't be a part of the came up because we gave out these little certificates and uh and and i had to say cory and tina and susie's really stepped up the game on the uh a 79 cent walm

As the door hits me in the rear on the way out the door, I want to make sure. Yes, you can. All right. I just left you that one little bird in there to take care of.

Oh, okay. I mean, I don't know who gave that price. It's Motorola. It's from Motorola. Matt, talk to them. Matt.

Right. Okay. That'll give us something to look into between now and Tuesday. We might have some answers by the time we get here. Moving on now to our regular agenda items here to address. Be sure we're ready or not ready to put those on the agenda for Tuesday. Item number one, discuss ratifying Chairman Bateman's signature of a letter of support request from the city of Argo for the development of zip code and post offices. And they asked me for a letter, and they needed it now for a little package they were sending in. We've done these before, but I did sign it. Y'all need to ratify my signat

I'm not sure everybody understands countywide how many there are. If you live south of Bell City, down past Rapid Branch, you're in Vinson. Yeah, I have a Vinson address. It's an entire Vinson route. So it's level to tell the postal people to change it. But that letter is signed and it gets sent in and if you will, put a copy of that in the file so they can read it. So y'all know what it says. Item two, discuss renewing the proto-track agreement for ankle monitoring services effective October 1st, 2026. The service is under a safety and security clause of the bid law. So it can be done without

Pending review of the county attorney. All right. We got that covered. We're good. Ready to do it. Item 10, discuss 2027-28 wet county license fees. You got some information in there about wet county license fees. Ms. Administrator, would you like to elaborate that?

Those are newly answered ones that we don't necessarily have right now. And the ones that we approved last year are already maxed out. Is that where we are? And we're just approving the same thing as last year's. But we are adding some.

Stilleries. Is that like we've got the still in the basement making craft beer? A still would be, you know...

I think if the states added them and we end up with something like that, I think it's like Gatlinburg. When you go in and you get a hamburger at some of those places, they got literally a big steel set up in the window that they run off their own craft brew. Exactly. It's best to go ahead. So if y'all are ready to put those on there after the list, we'll put ours as equal to the allowance by the state.

Pendon County Attorney Review. I need to review more stuff. All right. That'll be on there. uh item 11 discuss travel request you've got a copy of the travel request in your files uh put those on there for approval we'll have time to look at them discuss board appointments we discussed those at the last meeting you did some board appointments so how many do you want to put on there for this week That is the entire agenda for the work session. Excellent. And I'd like to apologize for letting us out 30 minutes early. But it's thunder out there, so we're going to do that. Anything else that anybo