Whitfield addresses host of issues
Walker County Commissioner Shannon Whitfield held his second regularly scheduled meeting Thursday eveing Jan. 26, in front of another packed crowd at the commissioner’s office in LaFayette.
Venue
Whitfield started the meeting with discussing moving the venue of the meeting to the LaFayette-Walker County Library.
“It’s exciting to see community involvement and I’ve very much encouraged everyone to attend these meetings and — hopefully — this great showing will also help us get us to a larger venue,” Whitfield told a packed crowd that was spilling out into the lobby of the commissioner’s office.
Whitfield said a letter has been sent to the attorney general’s office in Georgia trying to get approval to move the meetings to the library, which is only three doors down from the office on Duke Street, all the while remaining in compliance with Georgia law.
There were around 60 people in attendance. Some had to sit on the floor as others peered into the meeting from the lobby.
Surplus equipment
Whitfield first conducted a business meeting where a resolution declaring property of the Walker County Sheriff’s Department as unserviceable surplus and remove the county inventory which includes a variety of equipment like monitors and printers.
Public meeting
Whitfield approved a conditional-use variance on property located at 1834 Old LaFayette Road in Rock Spring, where a man made a request to continue to conducing lawn mower repairs as a business.
Questions, comments
Jim Pope, a concerned citizen, asked the commissioner if the total debt facing Walker County was known in full at this time.
“Unfortunately not,” Whitfield said. “I get surprises every day. We are working on that and hopefully, here within the next week, we will be able to close out business through Dec. 31 and we will be releasing financial reports through Dec. 31., real soon.”
The citizen asked if the debt was around $10 million or $80 million, to which Whitfield responded by saying it was substantially more than $10 million.
“We’ve got one bond that’s $15.3 million. There was $3.5 million worth of invoices left here (on) day one, so we are way north of that, but we’ve been so busy working on the audit that is underway right now for FY2016. We were doing projections for how much cash flow we were going to need just to survive and have cash flow through the rest of this calendar year. We also have been working on a computer conversion over to new software to try to get the last component over to that new system, which is the payroll system. So, the payroll that is being done this week, that will be issued tomorrow (Friday, Jan. 27), is the last pay cycle on the very old, antiquated system,” Whitfield said.
Other topics included chemicals used when spraying of rights of way, gun safety, and direct deposit being set up for county employees.
Move to a board
The question of moving to a board of county commissioners was also asked about, to which Walker County GOP’s Dean Kelley said he has spoken to state senators Jeff Mullis and Steve Tarvin about the matter and said that legislation would be introduced probably around the middle of February and be on the ballot in 2018.
“What we are working on now, is just the final draft of the legislation and also the maps on how the district will be divided, because it will be based on population. I think it is going to be about 17,000 people in each district,” Kelley said.
Red light at Saddle Ridge School
Whitfield brought up a recent accident on U.S. Highway 27 at Saddle Ridge School in Rock Spring and said there have been a lot of requests for a red light placed in that area.
“I have been in contact with Senator Mullis, also with Dale Wilson, the Walker County school system’s board chairman, and we have been working together to try to move that process forward in order to have a red light installed there in front of Saddle Ridge on Highway 27. It’s a state highway, so the state DOT has to be involved and approve that, but we hope our senator will be able to help expedite that process as well and help make that happen as quick as possible,” Whitfield said.
One citizen said the red light would be a bad idea and said it would not solve the problem at the school and that the back entrance should allow for parents to enter one end and exit the other end.
This led to discussion over the pros and cons of adding a red light.