Meadville aldermen vote to fill fire chief's position

The Meadville Board of Aldermen accepted a recommendation from Mayor Lane B. Reed to name Harold Spring as the new chief for the town’s volunteer fire department during the panel’s Tuesday, March 14 monthly business meeting.

“I’ve spoken to the outgoing chief and a number of our firemen about this and we’re ready to move forward with this action,” Reed told the panel during personnel discussions.

Alderman Charles Calcote said he, too, had spoken with fire personnel and those he talked with believed Spring would be a good fit for the leadership role in moving forward.

“Everyone seems to agree that he’ll do a good job for us,” Calcote said.

Three aldermen were in attendance at the meeting with Calcote, Kay Scott and Bart Jones all voting in favor of the appointment. Aldermen Josh Scott and David Scarbrough were not in attendance for the gathering.

Thomas “Bo” Sullivan had publicly announced in December that he intended to leave the chief’s position and formally submitted a written resignation that was accepted during the board’s Tuesday, Feb. 14 meeting.

Reed indicated he would bring a recommendation forward as early as March to make certain the community fire service would have a leader in place.

In other business to come before the board, aldermen ratified a municipal loan from Bank of Franklin to allow the town to purchase a 1999 model, 105 horsepower John Deere tractor with a long-arm mower.

Reed pointed out the loan totaled $35,393 at an interest rate of 6.15 percent with monthly notes of $1,759.41 set to begin in April.

“We felt like the four-wheel drive tractor that we purchased was a good deal for the town because it was in great shape and we had not had a great deal of success in finding something we could afford and that was ready to put to work,” the mayor noted.

The recently purchased tractor and mower will play a key role in vegetative control at the town’s sewer lagoon.

Town leaders deemed the purchase a necessity because repairs to the town’s old tractor and grass-cutting gear were impractical due to the age of the equipment and overall costs.

Reed noted an existing loan tied to municipal sewer system improvements would be paid off soon and the resources allocated to paying off that debt would be shifted to cover the monthly indebtedness for the tractor during the current budget year.

In a related matter, the board authorized Reed to advertise several pieces of municipal public works equipment — a Ford tractor and long-arm mower, another Ford tractor attached to the town’s bushhog, a Farmtrac tractor and short arm and an extra boom mower — for sale as surplus.

“We’d like to see what we could get for these pieces of equipment with the idea being that we could generate some revenue to look at purchasing a 75 to 85 horsepower tractor off the state contract,” Reed added.

“We could utilize that tractor to pull the bushhog and use it in a variety of situations around town … ideally with a small scoop on it to help maintain ditches.”

Town Clerk Leslie Thompson indicated those bids would likely be taken through Tuesday, April 11, which coincides with the next monthly meeting for the board.

The panel voted 3-0 to move forward with the bid process on the public works equipment.

Also during the meeting, the board of aldermen took the following actions on several agenda items:

• Discussed the retrofitting of older light fixtures in municipal buildings, including town hall, the public works barn and the fire station, to LED lighting through a proposal provided by Small Business Solutions, which works in conjunction with local electrical service provider, Entergy Mississippi.

The cost of the project would be split with the town required to cover 25 percent of the transitional costs associated with the new lighting. The retrofit is projected to result in thousands of dollars in savings annually in terms of electrical usage.

The measure was approved by the board.

• Approved transitioning the town’s email domain to .gov suffixes from the .com designation.

Thompson said the .gov email addresses were a must in conducting business electronically for the town, for security reasons and in filing grant paperwork on behalf of the municipality.

The cost of the transition will be $35.88 per email ($179.40 total) in the first year and increases to $71.88 ($359.40 total) starting in the second year and includes 10GB of storage.

• Adopted formal recognition of “National Library Week” in Meadville and honoring the numerous valuable community services provided by the Lincoln-Lawrence-Franklin Library System along with Librarian Susan Adams and her staff.

• Authorized the use of municipal streets by the Franklin County Chamber of Commerce in hosting the annual Homochitto River Festival on Saturday, Oct. 28.

• Discussed the replacement of a non-working municipal street light on Wall Street.

• Thompson reported 12 past-due utility accounts for February.

The next meeting for the Meadville Board of Aldermen has been scheduled for 5:30 p.m., Tuesday, April 11 at town hall.