City Council - Regular Meeting

committee reports and appointments. So, we'll start tonight with Mayor Pro Tim Neil Grimes. I have submitted a copy of my report to the clerk and I will let that stand. Thank you. Uh, Council Member Payton Williams. I have also submitted a copy of my activities. I want to congratulate the police department on winning the battle of the badges. I think they raised almost raised, collected, they got almost 70 units of blood which is really remarkable and uh I'm really proud of that effort every year. Okay, Council Member Jo Johnson. Thank you so much, Mayor York. I have submitted a copy of my activities to our clerk. Uh it was a very eventful month. Uh got the chance to attend the church treat schools class reunion and that was an amazing opportunity uh for our community to really see some of that living history um right here in Thomasville. So big thanks to our founder uh who made that possible but also the organizers who make sure that event happens every single year. I will let that stand as my report. Thank you Council Member Hunter Thr. Thank you mayor. Uh I have submitted a copy of my activities to the clerk. I don't think I was first this this month, so Scott probably beat me, but I'll let that stand as my report. Thank you, Council Member Scott Styers. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Um, I wasn't going to brag about that, Hunter, but my goal is to never be one of those people that has to sit up there and wse and say, I will give to the clerk, so I try to get mine in when I think of it, which is usually fairly early. I Well, I've done it. I've done it. I just prefer not to do it. Uh I don't really have anything more to add. I I do want to say I hate David Bovener's not in the room, but uh like to add my wishes to his wellw wishes for his birthday. Dave is one of those people that knows I'm an unaffiliated voter and there have been years when he's told me he was going to vote for me even though I wasn't a Republican. There's been

other years he's told me he's not going to vote for me because I'm not a Republican. But either way, I like him pretty much. That's my report. Thanks. Thank you, Council Member Lisa Shell. I have not submitted the copy, but I will get it to you. Um, and I just want to say congratulations to our police department. Job well done on the blood. I do want to remind everybody, breast cancer awareness, please, everybody, go get them screenings. Men and women, go get them screenings. and I will let that stand as my report. Thank you very much. I've got just a few things that uh I'll bring up tonight. Uh the I guess the most important thing that I did over the last month was the state of the city address. I gave it at Ballpark Road and in conjunction with the Chamber of Commerce event that they have each year for that and the state of the county. Um, so, uh, I was able to do it there. And then the next day I, uh, gave it to the Rotary Club. So, I was real happy that I was able to do it twice. It's seemed like a lot of pres, uh, preparation just to do something one time. So, we got we doubled our time this this year. So, that's a good thing. Um, I attended a back to school funday down on MLK last month. So, a lot of good folks down there and uh a lot of people helping out with the uh with the school supplies for those in the different neighborhoods around and different organizations. So, h happy to participate in that. Uh spoke to the retired school personnel uh this last week. Uh met with them. Good good group of uh of retirees there. Uh, one one of the ones there was a teacher at

Thomasville High School when I was in high school. So, uh, she, uh, her name's Loretta Martin. She had she did the office, uh, uh, job, you know, office job, shorthand, typing, that type thing. And, uh, and I'm I've known Loretta for for years and been a close friend for the last probably 15 years. To piggy back on what Jqu said, I attended my Thomasville High School 60th high school reunion. Yes. Yeah. The woman's club last Saturday. All right. And Martin was there. That's good. Yeah. She's She's struggling now, but Yeah, she's struggling, but she was there. Yeah. Always. Always. So, that was that was a highlight of my of my month. Uh also did a ribbon cutting at First Impression Barberh Shop uh and congratulate them on their 15th anniversary here in Thomasville in the city of Thomasville. So uh they do a great job down there. Got a got a real nice place and and and looks great. Uh and I attended the fundraiser for CIS last Friday night. The boogie bingo fundraiser. Bingo fundraiser. Yeah. And I didn't win, but Wanita did. So So that that was a that was a good fun time there and and raise good money hopefully for CIS. And then our uh our golf tournament will be coming up the 30th of this month and it will also be for CIS. So we're trying to bolster their uh funds there for them. So that's uh the end of my report. So, I'll go now to our city manager, Michael Brandt. Thank you, mayor. Um, just want to remind everyone, of course, that everybody's night and everybody's day is

coming up at the end of this month. And, um, to prepare for that, the city staff spends an awful lot of down time uh, trimming up the trees, putting out new mulch, uh, and taking care of downtown to make it look good. Uh there's uh lots of signage that's already gone up that'll become the detour routes around the this the downtown core of the city. So please uh make sure that you follow those signage detours when they go into effect on the on Friday uh before the event. Um this is our biggest event. We attract somewhere between 10 and 15,000 uh folks and my word coming out of the chamber is that they are expecting at least as many vendors this year as they've had in previous years. Uh and I think last year was their most amount of vendors ever. Uh so I hope everyone can come down and make it. Uh I will unfortunately be out of town that weekend so I will not be there but uh I will be there in spirit with you all. Yes. Very very convenient. have a dunking booth. No donkey booth. No dunking booth. That's that's that's the uh the party in the park that's coming up that I also conveniently will not be here for. I think you scheduled that on purpose. All right. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Uh city attorney Miss Whitmore. Good evening. I just wanted to um bring something to everybody's attention that um we've had a little bit of an issue with lately and I just want to make sure people are aware. If you purchase a piece of property, hopefully you have an attorney search your title and the attorney will tell you any um restrictions or easements or rightways that are on your property. Sometimes we have folks that the city has a rightaway on their property for various easements for sewer, for water, for various things. And sometimes folks don't understand that and they don't understand that they can't build things on it. They can't block those easements.

So, I just encourage everybody to take a moment to take a look at your deed to your property to see if there's language on there and to understand what that really means because it puts the city in a difficult situation whenever we have to enforce those things and make people move their property. So, something doesn't come up a lot, but we've been faced with it quite a bit here lately. So, I would just encourage everybody to take a look at that. And that's all I'm going to add this evening. Okay. Thank you very much. Uh, Deputy City Manager Eddie Bowling. Thank you again, Mr. Mayor. The only thing I'd like to add is um again a special shout out to our IT department. Um as we know we you know underwent a cyber threat um and we're still recovering from that and when they said it would be a marathon we didn't realize it would actually be a marathon and we fully anticipate this to take a year's worth of recovery. And so when you have two staff members that work around the clock to support 300 people and probably 600 devices um it's a lot. and it says a lot about them to kind of just keep powering through every single day and just taking the repeated abuse from everybody around the clock needing something. And so I'm thankful for our two staff members and hopefully we can get some other help hired for them. So just want to recognize those two. Okay. Thank you. And yeah, we really appreciate the great job that they're doing and they have done. So if you would let them know that and we can let them know as we see them. Yes. All right. Uh, we're now down to additions and or updates. Are there any? Not hearing any. Not hearing anything. We'll take take a motion to adjurnn. So moved. Is there a second? Second. All in favor say I. I. Oppos? No. We'rejourn.

I noticed halfway through. I started to call you Chuck one time.