Marion City Council met Monday night, June 3, for its first scheduled meeting of June. Shortly after calling the meeting to order and the council voting to approve the minutes of its last meeting, Mayor Dexter Hinton asked for a motion to enter executive session.
The council’s last scheduled meeting, set for Monday, May 20, was canceled at the last minute due to lack of a quorum.
Minutes before that meeting was to come to order, after the council got word that Councilmember Leon Kennie would not be in attendance that night, Councilmembers Joe Pearson and Willie Jackson left the council chambers, leaving only Mayor Dexter Hinton and Councilmembers Arrington and Nail left in the chamber. State law requires a voting majority, or in Marion’s case at least three of the five-member council, to be in attendance to constitute a quorum for a legal meeting.
Pearson and Jackson were both in attendance for this week’s meeting on Monday night, June 3. Councilmember Jefferson Nail was the only member absent when Hinton called the meeting to order.
After the executive session, which lasted well over an hour, the council reconvened. Hinton asked the council to consider Item 5 from the night’s agenda, which dealt with Alabama Fiber Network’s request for land on which to construct internet infrastructure, including data servers.
Hinton said the infrastructure would be housed in a small building “like the little AT&T buildings,” which are familiar sights around towns and rural areas.
Hinton suggested the city open negotiations with a one-time $2500 payment. He said the company would also offer the use of server space for the city free of charge as part of the agreement. He said he had researched what other cities in the area were charging for the same arrangement, and he said it ranged “between zero and five thousand dollars.”
Hinton said this would be a benefit for Marion and its businesses, increasing broadband internet access throughout rural Alabama. He said there was no vote required that night, but that he would relay the $2500 number to Alabama Fiber Network and await their response.
The council voted to approve a memorandum of understanding between Marion Military Institute, which recently established its own police department, and the City of Marion, establishing a relationship between the two departments. The M.O.U. would allow Marion police to respond to calls on the M.M.I. campus. The council voted to accept the understanding with two modifications: the first draft of the M.O.U. included language that the Marion Police Department would “regularly patrol” the M.M.I. campus. The council’s approved version removed that stipulation. They also added language agreeing that the City of Marion would not be held liable for occurrences on the school’s campus.
Hinton said he had reached out to a company called Grasshopper which manufactures a line of diesel-powered zero-turn commercial mowers. He said they were priced similarly to the gasoline-powered ones the city had used in the past, but that because their engines ran on diesel fuel, they would be longerlived.
Hinton said the company would come to demonstrate their mowers on June 11 and invited the council to come to the demonstration. He said the city’s street and sanitation department was in need of a new mower.
Hinton asked for a motion that the city expend a total of $7800 toward repairing water line leaks on Dogwood Lane and near Marion Community Bank. The Dogwood Lane repairs would cost an estimated $1600, he said, and the MCB line would cost $6200. Arrington made the motion, which was seconded by Kennie and approved by unanimous voice vote.
The mayor then asked for an emergency resolution to repair culverts on Cornelia, Edwards, and Eutaw Streets, as well as in Cahaba Heights. Hinton said the city would seek USDA Emergency Community Water Assistance Grants to fund the work, but if that process took too long, the city would use funds out of its street budget to do the work, in light of the emergency situation.
The council approved a resolution naming Utility Engineering Consultants as the city’s engineering firm and the Alabama Tombigbee Regional Commission as grant writers for the city’s next three years of grant project applications, engineering, and administration.
“They are already our grant writers,” Hinton said. “We are just applying for more money. You name it, we’re applying for it.”
Hinton said the city was in the process of submitting for $4 million in funding under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law towards the repair and replacement of city infrastructure, including its water and sewer system. The council voted to approve the submission of that application.
The council also voted to approve granting Perry County a right-of-way on Davis Street, and to approve the city’s annual Municipal Water Pollution Prevention resolution.
Hinton said he had met with Alabama Department of Environmental Management last week and that the city needed to hire another Grade 3 operator for its water system. “We have to have one,” he said, “to check the boxes that they’re requiring of us.” He said the city would need to advertise the position soon. “We’ve got to have somebody suited and booted by August,” he said.
The council voted to set a work session for June 20 at 6:00 p.m. to review the coming year’s budget and discuss proposed ordinances.
Hinton asked the council members if they had any concerns from their district. Councilmember Pearson reported that the Marion Cemetery organization was in the process or repairing the gates to the cemetery so that they could be locked at night again. He said people had left garbage and animal carcasses in the cemetery overnight, and that people were possibly meeting there during the night.
He said it would be about a month before the gate repairs were done, and asked if the city’s police would patrol the area.
