Fort Oglethorpe adjusts City Council schedule, approves inmate work crew

Fort Oglethorpe officials have adjusted the City Council meeting schedule for May and approved a contract for inmate work detail with the city’s Parks and Recreation Department.

During the April 8 City Council meeting, City Manager Jennifer Payne-simpkins presented the board with an annual work detail agreement with Walker State Prison.

“This is an annual contract that the city of Fort Oglethorpe enters into for an offender work crew,” Payne-simpkins said. “Essentially this contract will go from July 1, 2019, through June 30, 2020. It will include one offender work detail with a maximum of 10 offenders and one fulltime correctional officer to supervise that crew.”

A number of municipalities engage in such agreements as a way of adding manpower to city staff.

“We rely on these work crews to help maintain our parks and other public spaces,” Payne-simpkins said. “The total cost of this oneyear agreement is $39,500.

The council unanimously approved the agreement as well as an invoice for the city’s annual audit in the amount of $15,000.

Memorial Day meeting

Before the meeting closed, Mayor Earl Gray pointed out that the second scheduled meeting in May actually falls on May 27, which is Memorial Day, and asked the board’s opinion when to reschedule or to cancel the meeting completely.

“We could cancel the whole thing, but we’ve got a whole lot of ordinances and resolutions that kind of need to stay on track,” Gray said. “We can move it to the week before or we can do whatever you guys want to do, but it’s pretty important that we have one either that week or the week prior.”

Ultimately, the board agreed to move the May 27 meeting to Monday, May 20.

“We we’ll have meetings on back-to-back Monday nights May 13 and 20,” Gray said.