Tuscumbia Council talks improvements to city

Efforts to revitalize the city were the main items on the agenda for the July 6 meeting of the Tuscumbia City Council.

Resident Susan Bentley, who lives on the east end of Tuscumbia, brought a proposal before the Council to put in some work to spruce up the area.

“The proposal is about investing in one of Tuscumbia’s historic neighborhoods,” Bentley said. “Not simply improving the property, but strengthening the community, creating opportunities and demonstrating every neighborhood matters. The east end of Tuscumbia is rich in history and heritage. As a member of the east end community, I am asking for an endorsement of the project.”

Bentley said a number of grants and partnerships are available that could help the city with the proposed effort.

Another item on the agenda dealt with the ongoing discussion of how to move forward with paving city streets, many of which are in dire need of improvement.

Council member Len Gregory hosted engineer David Palmer of Russellville during a previous meeting to discuss how his city purchased its own road paving equipment, taught city employees to use it and began paving many more miles of roads in a year than previously bid out to contractors.

Gregory, with the help of Council member Krista Stanley, put together a proposal to have Tuscumbia make a similar undertaking.

He proposed buying the necessary equipment, hiring three new employees, having city workers taught how to run the machines and begin paving.

He estimated the city could begin paving roads in this manner around next March.

However, feelings on the proposal were mixed.

The Council made a special-called meeting on July 2 for the sole purpose of discussing the plan ahead of the July 6 regular meeting.

The proposed road paving project was discussed for an hour, with no full consensus reached.

“We would be able to pave our cemeteries. We could help the school pave their parking lots and roads. There are multiple things we could do with this,” Gregory said.

Stanley said other cities might even pay Tuscumbia’s workers for help with their own paving projects in the future.

Gregory said his proposal would not only save the city money per mile of paving done, but doing the work in house would allow more miles of road to be paved each year.

“If we contract all this work out it will cost more, and we will be at their (contractors) mercy,” Stanley said.

Mayor T.W. Billings said he would prefer the city put out bids for an exclusive contractor to pave city roads and see what that would cost.

“We can still buy the equipment somewhere down the road, but my proposal would be to bid out an exclusive contractor, pave some roads this year, and then we will have a lot better feel about what it will take to do that,” Billings said.

According to Gregory’s proposal, around 35 percent of the paving would have to be done by contractors anyway.

Council member Sidney Nall proposed starting with those streets, bidding out the work and going forward the Council could look at moving paving to in house in the future.

The solicitation of bids for an exclusive contractor was on the July 6 agenda, but Billings was unable to attend the meeting, and the item was tabled.

In other business, the Council reviewed the request by Interim Police Chief Steven Higginbotham and Fire Chief J.T. Fox to upgrade the pay scale for city employees.

For years the police and fire departments have dealt with issues retaining trained employees due to higher paying jobs elsewhere.

As if to highlight the issue, the Council voted to declare another vacancy in the fire department as part of the July 6 agenda.

The department heads gave the Council a proposal for increased pay with multiple options on how to proceed.

Council member and pro tem Roderick Metcalf, who ran the meeting with Billings unable to attend, said the members of the Council understood the importance of the request and the proposal would be considered when the next fiscal year’s budget is being made.