The Trenton City Commission, from left, City Clerk Russanna Jenkins, Mayor Alex Case, Parks/Rec Commissioner Terry Powell, Streets Commissioner Monda Wooten, Police Commissioner Kirk Forshee and Fire/Utility Commissioner Lucretia Houts.
The Trenton City Commission didn't get much actual business done at its Monday meeting. But what it didn't get done it didn't do in such a way as to make for entertaining watching.
Specifically, it decided not to, as previously discussed, extend the city sewer to the Memorial Drive area near Lake Hills to accommodate one household. The affected homeowners, realtor and recent commission candidate Careyee Bell and her husband, Patrick, were willing to pay half the cost of extending the sewer to their new home and had pointed out it would open the way to adding other houses to the sewer. They had also requested that their home be annexed by the city in aid of this, a process that is still ongoing.
But Lucretia Houts--who won the fire/utility commission seat over Ms. Bell in the November municipal election--objected at last month's commission meeting that the existing city sewer needed lots of expensive upgrade work and said she couldn't justify spending money for extending to it to accommodate just one house.
This month, the Bells attended the meeting and Commissioner Houts reiterated her position, adding: “If we’re going to spend that kind of money, it needs to be spent somewhere where people have been in the city for years and years and paid taxes and don’t have sewer and have asked for sewer.” She said households on 136 West were in that situation.
Whereupon Streets Commissioner Monda Wooten leapt in like a tigress. “You can’t sit there and act like Honest Joe to me, like you’re worried about the taxpayers’ dollars,” she told Commissioner Houts. “After what I know and you know that I know, don’t even get me started. You know this is nothing but political."
"Guys, we’ve got to be cordial here,” soothed Mayor Alex Case. “This is not the place to do it, in public here.”
But Commissioner Wooten raged on, interestingly: "We have set here and just foolishly spent money on things before, a whole lot more than that," she said. "Hey, you was the clerk for years.”
Ms. Houts was the elected city clerk for, in fact, decades, until the mayor and other commissioners in a series of closed-door executive sessions in 2016 eliminated her elected office by petition to the Georgia Legislature. The city clerk job was changed to serve at the pleasure of her former compeers. Ms. Houts stayed on in that humbled position until February of last year before retiring, then stayed away from City Hall only a few months before returning as a candidate for the fire/utility position. She won easily, garnering more votes than both Ms. Bell and a third candidate put together, and assumed her seat at the commission table in January without drama--until this issue of extending the sewer.
Careyee Bell spoke on behalf of herself and her husband. In building their $300,000 home, she said, they had been led to believe they'd be allowed to tie onto the sewer. "The plan was to do it," she said. "That’s what Jerry Henegar told us.”
Henegar, Trenton's previous fire/utility commissioner, stepped down last year in favor of his current run for the Dade County Commission.
Monda Wooten continued championing the Bells. "We are talking about $22,000,” she said. The Bells were threatening to sue, she warned. “It’s going to end up costing us a whole bunch more.”
But the mayor, who had seemed inclined in favor of the extension when he brought it up, without naming names, last fall, now offered only lukewarm support: “You’re also looking at the future of the city through that area," he said. He identified the costs involved: The city had already paid about $9000 for engineering and permitting, and the remaining work would cost an estimated $46,000, of which the Bells would pay half.
Mayor Case said he'd talked with the out-of-town city attorney, who'd advised him to put the issue to a vote.
New Police Commissioner Kirk Forshee agreed that such matters should be put to a vote rather than be decided by “one or two people.” Parks/Recreation Commissioner Terry Powell also came out against it, and Commissioner Wooten's motion to accommodate the Bells died for lack of a second. "We'll have to take what comes to us," concluded the mayor of a possible lawsuit.
The only other business of the March 9 meeting was expanding the price cap on the city spending policy so that department heads could authorize expenditures up to $1500 without getting a commissioner to sign off. City Clerk Russanna Jenkins specified the money still had to be budgeted and that larger purchases would continue to require the endorsement of an elected commissioner.
Also brought up for discussion was formalizing the city's special events policy. Assistant Fire/Permits Chief Ansel Smith presented suggestions: a fee to reimburse the city for its costs, a map of which streets need to be closed and 60 days' minimum notification so that residents could find alternate routes.
Commissioner Wooten objected to the fee. “The park is already funded by taxpayers, and the policemen and everybody else," she said. "It’s normally a community event.”
But Smith said not all events were just in the park. "It’s for anywhere in the city they want to hold an event," he said. Commissioner Forshee said events might ential more police officers who would have to be paid.
Mayor Case said he and the commissioners would review the suggestions and discuss them again next month.
For all its small agenda, the meeting was well attended by "the men in red"--firefighters who had turned out in force to see their chief and his father and predecessor honored by the commission.
Trenton Fire Chief Jerry Kyzer, flanked by fellow firefighters including the mayor, shows off proclamations in honor of himself and his father, Trenton's first fire chief, Clarion Kyzer.
Former Trenton Mayor Gene Carter had suggested late last year that the city fund a permanent plaque of some kind for Clarion Kyzer, who founded Trenton's first fire department in the 1950s after a devastating downtown fire impressed on him the need. At the March 9 meeting, present Trenton Mayor Case--who as 911 boss for the county is heavily involved in firefighting, and has a red shirt of his own--responded.
Commissioner Houts read a proclamation honoring the first Chief Kyzer, who died in 1990, and Mayor Case read a second one in honor of current Chief Jerry Kyzer, who had taken up the task begun by his father. This year marks the 30th anniversary of the younger Kyzer's tenure as Trenton's fire chief, said Case. “I don’t think you’ve slowed down one bit," he said. "We can’t keep you out of a fire.”
Both Kyzers were presented with statuettes. Jerry Kyzer in accepting for himself and his late father said the fire department planned to erect a concrete statue in the circular garden just north of the town square in honor of firefighters, with the firefighter's prayer inscribed on an accompanying plaque.
In regular busines, Commissioner Forshee reported police fines of $10,119 last month for a year-to-date total of $24,046. He commended city Police Officer Steve Beaudoin. "We had a break-in at Price Pharmacy," he said. “He was there in less than a minute." As a result, the would-be robbers broke in but didn’t manage to steal anything, said Forshee.
Dade County Public Library manager Marshana Sharp reminded all that this Thursday at 6 p.m. the library will host Kiss the Ground, an eco-series program about soil replenishment. Please RSVP. (706-657-3857) so the library can have enough snacks, she said.
Read to Lead, the library's popular annual event at which local leaders read to children, is 10 a.m.-1 p.m. on Saturday, March 21, said Ms. Sharp, and the annual child abuse awareness Glow Run is in April but interested parties should sign up now at Runsignup.com.
She also reminded all that the library can furnish free family passes to the Chattanooga Zoo, the Atlanta Zoo and any state park in Georgia. “We’re getting new ones all the time,” she said.
And she took the occasion to announce a grant that had allowed the library to partner with the sheriff’s office to host jail inmates in for a meal and storytime with their small children. “A lot of crying went on,” she said. “But it went really well.” She stressed how much work the inmates put in helping the library prepare for its other events.
Local historian Donna Street (standing, left, beside Marshana Sharp) announced a luncheon at the Trenton United Methodist Church at noon on Friday, March 27, in honor of firefighters. She also said the Dade Historical Society had gotten a $20,000 grant and had finished the first part of a historical survey of Trenton. A bound book would be at City Hall by August depicting every home in Trenton over 40 years old, she said.
The city commission meets at 6 p.m. the second Monday of most months.
