The Demopolis City Council met Thursday and voted to move forward with repairs on the road and culvert on Herbert Street after accepting a bid.
The low bid belonged to Double Diamond Construction of Northport at a cost of $142,484.
While the council was enamored with the cost, the group agreed that the issue should be resolved.
“I think it’s a lot of money,” said Mayor Mike Grayson, “but we’ve sat on this for more than a year.”
While voting to accept the bid, the council also approved for Cedric Campbell and his firm to handle the inspection and oversight for the project. Campbell, who presented five different bids, is from the Goodwyn, Mills and Cawood engineering firm.
The council also voted to allow Christmas on the River (COTR) to use the old city courtroom on East Fulton Street.
COTR requested to use the building, because they are running out of room to do crafts for floats in the warehouse.
The request was approved for COTR to use the building under the condition to pay all utility bills while it is being used.
Future plans mentioned by the council call for the old courtroom to be converted into a new Fire Station No. 2 if the building can be declared surplus and the city is approved for a USDA loan.
COTR could then in turn use the old fire station as a workspace.
Demopolis Police Chief Tommie Reese presented a resolution to declare five unusable police cars as surplus and the council approved the resolution.
Grayson made two announcements during the meeting.
First was that the city received a Community Development Block Grant for $450,000 to use for drainage work.
The second announcement was that the sales tax revenue for the month of September 2015 was down 5.67 percent from the previous month.
However, the sales tax revenue for the 2015 fiscal year was up 5.67 percent. The year, which ended on Sept. 30, showed the city earned over $5 million.
The city council gave Demopolis airport director Jason Pendergrass permission to apply for an FAA grant to approve the taxiway lighting at the airport. Previously, the airport had been approved for a taxiway reconstruction grant, but lighting improvements were split into a separate project to cut costs.
According to Pendergrass, the reconstruction project is slated to begin in the spring of 2016, and if approved and funded the lighting project will be begin in the fall of 2016 or spring 2017. Pendergrass noted that the lights are low voltage and wattage and would only be used when a pilot needs them.