The Piedmont City Council held a brief meeting on Tuesday evening.
In its work session, the council heard reports from Piedmont Arts and Entertainment committee members Terry Batey and Ashley Jones. At a previous meeting, Batey passed out copies of planned dates for upcoming events. The duo sought input from the council about those events.
“We try to work our dates around the city’s calendar and other calendars we have,” Batey said. “You can have too many events too close and they’re not successful. We don’t want to clutter events up, but we’d like to make sure we have something going on, monthly would be nice.
“We’re still exploring and still learning. We’re just trying to keep people looking downtown. The more they look, the more they want to get involved.”
Mayor Bill Baker said the city council has been “very pleased” with what the arts and entertainment committee has done so far. He also made a suggestion for something he’d like to see downtown in the future.
“I’d like to see us pull off arts and crafts downtown. I think the women especially would like that sort of thing,” Baker said. “The one we had downtown several years ago was really, really good. I think we had some food vendors downtown along with the arts and crafts. We had numerous vendors participating. It was very successful. I’d like to see that because I know there’s a clientele that likes that sort of thing.”
Jones reminded the council of the first family movie night of the year at the Piedmont Civic Center on March 12. She said the featured film will be Disney’s “Encanto”. Jones also mentioned “The Sandlot” as the featured movie on April 23.
In its regular meeting, Baker informed the council of the upcoming Alabama League of Municipalities Convention, to be held May 11-14 in Tuscaloosa. He encouraged all council members to attend and planned on booking rooms at the convention’s host hotel before the April 27 deadline.
The council also approved a price increase from $4,400 to $4,900 per month for M&T Lawn Care on the maintenance of Highland Cemetery and the Chief Ladiga Trail. The increase was requested from M&T owner Mark Hedgepath.
“He met with me and the mayor and would like to increase his price $500 a month due to the price of gas and price of chemicals,” City Clerk Carl Hinton said. “With a $500 increase, he’d still be lower than the least bid that was submitted last year. I think the lowest bid was $5,000.”
Bills for payment in the amount of $580,502.48 were also approved, as were minutes from the previous meeting.
In council reports, District 1 representative John Lawrence encouraged Batey and Jones to get his district more involved in the arts and entertainment process.
District 7 representative Terry Kiser informed the council of free smoke detectors available for the community. He also gave a phone number to call for more information. The number is 256-447-3364.
“You can call this department and they’ll be glad to come out,” Kiser said. “I think everybody needs a smoke detector, and it’s free. They can show you where to put it. This is a free service. It doesn’t cost anything. Call them up and say ‘Hey, I need a smoke detector.’ They’ll come out and put it up for you. They’ve got plenty, so why not? Nobody in town should not have one.”
In his closing comments, Baker reminded the council of a health fair on March 8-9 at the Piedmont Civic Center from 11 a.m. until 3 p.m. Baker said the health fair includes screenings for blood pressure, sugar and cholesterol.
Baker also suggested the council’s next meeting on March 15 be held at the civic center. Following that meeting, Baker said they could tour the facility and see the work that needs to be done on “some of the more pressing problems we have down there.” He also suggested taking a tour of the Bethune Center afterward.
