City Council - Regular Meeting

Jason. So I've been getting in the tunnel. How'd you know, little mayor? Al? How are I you thought you were angling me up.

I'd like to call the order the 02/19/2026 meeting of mayor and council. I'd like to call on minister Jason Davenport with Park Avenue Church to lead us in prayer. Please remain standing for the pledge.

Thank you, mister mayor. We're gonna start this prayer a little bit differently today in honor of the young Heyhara police officer that was killed in the line of duty last night. If you will join me in just a few moments of silence in his honor. Father, thank you for allowing us to meet. Thank you for giving us the opportunity to come together with peace and in a place we can honor those that have given their lives in a way that was so tragic.

We ask that you would have mercy on that officer. Father, you would help his family in particular and those that were closest to him, that you would help the city of Hayhaver through this very difficult time. Ultimately, please let there be blessings to honor those who have helped to give us the ability to be here. And let that extend to those that are fighting for us and protecting us as we speak. Father, in this current season of transition for the city, please help lead and guide the council.

Please help the city manager and staff to stabilize, reset, and lift up the truth. Father, if there is fraud, waste, or abuse, please thwart it and bring it to light so that this city, the council, and the staff can shine like the noonday sun. We ask for wisdom, diligence, discernment, proper judgment, especially when there are strong competing factors. We ask for scales that weigh true. We ask for the ability to agree, to disagree with respect. But ultimately, father, we say thank you. We ask for your help. We ask for your will to be done. Through Christ our lord, we pray. Amen. Amen.

Jason, thank you very much. Alright. We're gonna move on to awards and presentations. But before we do, would the members of the Leadership Lounge class of twenty twenty six that are in attendance tonight, please stand. One of the requirements of their program year is to attend a city council meeting. You can check that off. That picture we took at the beginning is your proof. And then they have to go over to a very boring Lowndes County Commission meeting. Oh, sorry. Enjoy.

And then check the box to which your favorite was. It's a prerequisite of graduation. Awards and presentations. I ask that Doctor. David Nelson and his students come forward for the presentation of the BSU Social Media Awards, if you'll join me up front.

And Doctor. Crow, if you'd join us as well. This very talented bunch fought long and hard. And students before them real world experience and thought experience and a great service. So as they fought it out, as they got creative, the cream rose to the top.

She worked with Jesse Roth, communications coordinator, Jayson Kirkland, media coordinator. The winning team is here, Jonathan Martin, Yvonne Flowers, and I believe in Japan, her counterpart, Messiah, Herkami as well. So congratulations all. Hold on. The city invites the community to join us in celebrating the success of these talented students and the continued collaboration Yep.

Would you please? Bob Flowers, congratulations. Which places? With the big fellow? Feel safer already?

Jonathan Martin. Yes. If you haven't met doctor Crow, he's the interim president at the Valdosta State University and doing a fantastic job in guiding that that university until they find a permanent replacement, and they're being very intentional about that. So be patient, and we'll have the next great president permanent president of Valdosta State. Move on to bids, contracts, agreements, expenditures.

Consideration of bids for quick response vehicles for our fire department, John Burton. He's excited about this one.

Thank you.

Fire department needs to purchase a purchase two quick response vehicles. These QRVs will respond to emergency medical calls throughout the city, reducing the call volume. The fire engines are answering and reducing operational wear on frontline engines. One of these new vehicles will replace a 30 year old truck and the second will be an addition to the fleet. One new truck is a council approved budget item for the current fiscal year budget and the second truck is a congressionally designated grant funded vehicle.

That grant is $328,000 Sealed bids were received on January 20 last month and I recommend the council approved low bid meeting specifications submitted by Cass Birch in the amount of $649,374.

Council, any questions for John on this? John, I just have one comment and it's thank you to our senator and his staff for their hard work. This was our congressional ask.

Mhmm.

And it has come through and we get to now purchase those two new rapid response vehicles.

Yes. I'd like to add one more thing. Please. With that grant that we got, these two vehicles are only going to cost the city $160,687 once the grant is applied.

Fantastic. That'll be each.

150,000.

Alright. John, thank you very much. Council, it's yours for action.

May I like to make a motion that we approve the bid as presented? Second.

Motion and a second. All in favor? Show of hands. Council, thank you. John, thank you. Senator Alsop, thank you. On local funding request, consideration request to approve an amendment to the fiscal year twenty twenty six budget for the city of Valdosta. I imagine imagine the two are related. Darquita, how are you doing?

Good. Good afternoon. The EPD has issued the city a violation order requiring the closure of Valdosta Mulch Yard. EPD has ordered us to condense and bury the waste materials that are currently on on-site. In order to comply with the EPD requirements, we do need to rent a excavator, a bulldozer, pay a monetary settlement, and also purchase some grass to condense the area.

The excavator rental for thirty days is $12,480 The bulldozer rental for thirty days is $6,420 The monetary settlement to EPD is 3,000 and the grass that we need to purchase is $3,100 for a total of $25,000. I'm I'm requesting a budget amendment because this was not a budgeted item and we do have limited amount of time to get this done. So my request is to amend the budget for $25,000 coming out of the contingency fund to handle these calls.

Duckweed, thank you, counsel. Any questions for Duckweed?

I do. The is it mulch? That's our free mulch yard that we've operated for decades. So I guess my question is, I I kinda grew up on a farm, and I'm trying to figure out how an excavator's gonna, I mean, 12,000 for 30 it's gonna take us thirty days to dig

a hole.

And this is from Yancey.

I think we can add some more to that. Yep. EPD is going around. They're inspecting after all the debris cleanup. We used it as a debris lay down in yard. They want all of them closed. This was a non permitted, what they'd call an inert landfill, and they want it covered with a two foot dirt cap so we can close it and officially get it out of the and then it grassed. They're not allowed trees or anything else to grow on it. But it's a part of it. Was not a permitted site and so this is our way of getting that resolved.

How big of an area is it? Four acres. Oh, so we gotta do four acres.

Yes. We don't have to do the complete mulch field. We only have to do the area of the mulch field that we use for the lay down yard from the storm debris from hailing.

How how big is that?

Estimate, we roughly max six acres. So what

gonna take us 30. Okay.

But what it is, some of the older debris that was placed out there, the tree stumps, the larger pine trees, and everything. Our equipment just cannot move that. So EPD said we can actually bury it on-site. But we're allowed to bury some of the larger stuff up. Like I said, our equipment just cannot move the larger pieces of

the I was thinking it was just our mulch yard, and I was like, it's gonna take thirty days to do, like, a 30 feet, you know, 30 feet of an area?

No. We we are actually in the process of moving

acres. Okay.

Yeah. Moving some dirt from our cypress field from the cemetery. So we're moving dirt from different locations throughout the city so we would not have to purchase any additional dirt. We may still have to come back and amend the budget again for the purchase of the dirt because they want that two foot cap. But we're using all the free resources that we can to relocate that dirt to cover it.

Okay. Thank you. Larry, before you leave, are we not gonna have any free mulch for the citizens anymore? That would just mean?

That is correct. Okay. The after speaking with EPD, this started back in December. The most landfills, Inner Flame Fields was closed in the early eighties. And Valdosta was one of those land fields that was closed. And we never did partition them to try to keep it open. So the paperwork has not been located. It's been sent to the archive division. So we cannot locate it. And the EPD just said, hey, there's only like six of them in the whole state that was re permitted to allow them to continue to use it, but we're not one of them.

Can can we make sure that when Shar put something on social media that she highlights that this is EPD that's doing this and not us closing down the

mulch? Yes.

I mean, in big letters.

Yes. We just had a sign made that the mulch

Come out

where nobody has

to have reading glasses on.

We can make the sign as large and we can also give a PIO to make sure that this information. There's many moving parts with this. Actually, mister Turner has to get involved because we have to do a new plant and make sure it's labeled as not for use. So, there's many moving parts to this situation. So, we're trying to move as quickly as possible because the original letter that came back in December, EPD could have fined us a thousand dollars a day from that point. So, that's why we're trying to move quickly to make sure we meet this one hundred and twenty day deadline with this year so we can close it. We can only pay the $3,000 fine. Perfect.

Awesome. Council, any other questions? Alright. Thank you both. Council, yours for action.

Mayor, I make a motion that we go with the budget amendment as presented.

Second. Motion and second. All in favor, show of hands. Council, thank you. Larry. Taquita, thank you. Now move on to citizens to be heard. It's a portion of the meeting that we ask you to come forward. State your name and address so we can have it for the record. Our policy requires you stay under three minutes so all have time to be heard. Please direct all comments to council as a whole. Do not attempt to engage individual members of council in debate. It is our council policy to follow through with you on your concern. Additionally, we ask that any groups designate a spokesperson for that same reason. Having said that, are there any citizens wishing to be heard at this time? Please come forward. State your name, Blaine.

Absolutely. My name is Dwayne Johnson. I'm the president and CEO for the Southern Georgia Black Chambers here in Valdosta, GA. 3867 Island Creek Road is where I live. Good evening, mayor, city manager, and members of the council. First, I wanted to just say thank you. On February 7, couple of weekends ago, we conducted our chamber's second annual Black History Month parade. I want to formally say thank you for your support and partnership in that as being a a huge advocate for what we were able to do for the second year. Looking forward to the third year as well. I stand before you this evening with an exciting update.

Thanks to the foundational CDBG funding support provided by the city of Valdosta next Tuesday, February 24. We will be officially launching the two thousand twenty six Small Business Academy here in Valdosta, Georgia. We are moving Valdosta forward beyond traditional networking and lectures through a land park partnership with the Valdosta State University land excuse me, Langdell College of Business. We are hosting a fingertips to keyboard eleven week technical residency. They're from now and through through the month of March or excuse me, the month of May that is, all business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs through a no charge registration.

We have the opportunity to register and work with regional experts, subject matter experts through our chambers small business academy to build tangible, bank ready, contract ready assets. I'm also proud to report that because of your initial investment, we are able to garner additional partnership agreements with Georgia Power, with Ace South Georgia, and with the Velosta Latino Association committing to further the chamber's ongoing inclusivity. These partnerships allow us to implement project Fuente is what we call it. A groundbreaking initiative utilizing AI translation translation to ensure Vadasta's Spanish speaking and other foreign language speaking small business owners have 100% access to the training instruction. Again, the first session will take place on Tuesday, February 24, 05:30PM in VSU's business administration and health services building on North Campus.

That will be in Room 3126. And the address is 2525 North Patterson Street, Valdosta. Tuesday's business fundamental session as we start will be led by the UGA Small Business Development Center at VSU and includes some of the city's department heads. So thank you again for that partnership who will be leading topics related to business licensing, zoning, and as well as code enforcement for entrepreneurs. On behalf of the chamber's board of directors, I thank you for choosing to invest formally in the infrastructure of our small businesses locally here, and we invite and look forward to seeing our local small business owners here at the university over the next few months starting Tuesday.

Duane, thank you. Alright. Thank you. We'll see you Tuesday. Alright. Are there any other citizens wishing to be heard at this time? Seeing none, we'll wrap up this portion of the evening and turn it over to Al Crayce, our very intentional interim city manager for the city manager's report.

Yes, sir. The one of the interesting things, we have the math count competition at the Valdosta State University in the Magnolia Room. It'll be on Friday, February 20. So we wanna encourage those that are interested to please join. The Georgia Arbor Day celebration will be on February 20 at 10:00 at Dalewood Circle.

And the chief is having both fire chief and police chief, Leslie Monahan, and acting chief Marcus Haynes at GUD, G U D, coffee shop downtown. I'm not quite acquainted with all these things. But anyway but we do have an open applications for citizens that are interested in the police academy. April up till April 16, you can apply at the police department, and it'll be a nine week at every Thursday night. And then also, applications for open government one zero one is now open also, filed at the city hall, call the manager's office, and that'll begin the sixteenth program, April 13.

I wanna report that we did receive two grants from congressional designation. One, of course, was that first response vehicle for about $328,000, but then the Fire Burn Building, which we've waited for a long time and is vital to our service and council will be invited to go visit the existing facility in the near future. That was $845,000, and that they've it's quite a training operation out there. And all the other is the all our FEMA checks have been delivered and we've paid all our bills on all that. And so there's a balance left, so we'll start the next phase with getting the roofs fixed on a number of these buildings.

And then the final phase will be go inside and start repairing the damage from all the water damage that got inside once we get the buildings dried out. The police are gonna have their promotion award ceremony, 03:00 Wednesday the eleventh. And there's also that same day, the Rotary Law Enforcement Appreciation Luncheon will occur. They'll have promotions for two sergeants and also their graduating class. And then finally, the fire, they're gonna have a major graduation program for 14 new recruits and also nine possible officers for promotion when they finish taking all their tests. That'll be

at 03:00 Thursday, March 19. Al, thank you. That the graduation and award ceremony for the fire department will be at the Performing Arts Center at the old Bella Vista High School campus as well. That's how big it will be. We need the need an auditorium. Yep. Sure is. At the pack. Alright. Council comments? Eric?

I have one, please. Our community has a lot of great nonprofits this past Friday. Casa of Lowndes and Echols County. They had a gala. Well, the Mardi Gras Committee, which is put on by miss Denise Peters.

She did a wonderful job that that event raised over $30,000 for that for for that cause and causes a great organization along with some of our other. Organizations. She also followed up Saturday with a community event where we had food trucks and vendors down at the county's green space there. Those events brought people to our community, and I'd like to thank Denise personally for sticking her neck out and working so hard to make that event possible in our community. Now look, and I think she's already outgrown the gala, the Patterson for next year, so she's probably gonna have to start looking for a bigger place.

And I wanna encourage her to continue to do continue doing what you're doing, and we look forward to. Seeing this thing even bigger and better next year.

Denise and Sonya, would you please stand up? Well done. Andy? None. Nick? Miss Cody? Good. Alright. Who's the senior member now? We stand adjourned. Thank you all.

Turn and u-turn.