by Kathy Foster
In a 5-0 vote at their meeting Tuesday evening, members of the Chipley City Council set an Aug. 6th Election, with qualifying set for June 10th – 14th. The seats for Wards 2 and 3 will be open.
The overall appearence of Chipley in general and the Historic Downtown area in particular, was also discussed at the meeting, with council members wanting to see property owners in several areas of the city forced to clean up their property.
In a move to get more property owners involved, council members are discussing filing multiple lawsuits against individual property owners, thus allowing the Court to issue orders for needed cleanup work.
Discussing the downtown area in particular, council members discussed developing a plan to make that area more ADA compliant. They decided an overall plan needs to be developed to allow them to seek Community Development Block Grant funding to make some major changes.
City Administrator Dan Miner informed council members that the lot on the southwest corner of Highways 90 and 77 is now cleaned up and he suggested that area be included in the overall plan for the downtown area.
Dealing with other agenda items the Chipley City Council took the following action:
* Approved the FDOT Supplemental Agreement on the 5th Street Drainage Improvement Project that ios now estimated to cost over $545,000.
* Approved submitting a FDACS Florida Forest Service Volunteer Fire Assistance Grant to the State for eight sets of bunker gear.
* Approved a Special Event Application for the Panhandle Watermelon Festival to be held June 29th.
* Approved the reappointment of Randall Truette to the Chipley Housing Authority.
* Approved the recent committee ranking of David Melvin, No. 1, and Fred Fox Enterprises, No. 2, in their search for a grant writer. They will now negotiate with both firms.
Council members were also informed that May 23rd will be the last day for pick up of Hurricane Michael debris, and that until now the City has expended over $400,000 in city funds for the debris pickup costs, with no reimbursements from FEMA to date.