LINDEN-The Linden City Council had mostly good news at their Tuesday meeting with councilmember Butch King delivering some of the best new of all.

“Mayor Pat Vice went up to Birmingham and the doctors said he was cancer free,” King said.

The council also took the time to honor the Linden nine and 10 year old softball All Stars who traveled to Montgomery in July and finished second in the state while competing against teams from cities much larger than Linden. The girls were asked to lead the council in the pledge of allegiance and were then presented with a resolution honoring their accomplishments.

Police Chief Jeff Laduron delivered even more good news announcing several criminals had been removed from the streets in the last week. Laduron said his officers had been very busy investigating some problem areas and doing their best to clean up these issues.

“This past weekend was a busy one for us,” Laduron said. “We talked about some of our problem areas and were able to make two drug arrests, and four arrests on noise ordinance violations.”

Altogether, Laduron said there had been 15 arrests made in the last week. Laduron said they planned to continue their hard work to keep Linden safe.

In order to do so the council approved Laduron to begin looking at prices for a new patrol car. Some of the department’s vehicles are as many as seven years old and are not able to serve the department as well as they once had. Laduron was given permission by the council to begin searching for a car to replace one of the oldest units they had in use.

A fully equipped new patrol car would likely cost about $23,000, however, the old car could be used in a trade off.

For the last year, the city has also struggled to get money from FEMA to help with the cost of the damages taken from Hurricane Ivan last September. City Administrator Cheryl Hall said some of the funds had recently come in and more should be on the way.

“I talked to the FEMA representative and he told me the check was in the mail,” Hall said. “It came two days later for $28,326.92. We still should have about $20,000 still due and in the meantime I will be working with them on helping out with Hurricane Dennis.”

The council will hold their next meeting on Tuesday Sept. 6 at 6 p.m.