By Crystal McGough, Associate Editor
PINSON – The Pinson City Council has a longstanding tradition of holding one meeting each year at the Palmerdale Homestead Community Center. This year, the PHCC-based meeting took place on Thursday, Dec. 8, at noon, where the council announced the first, second and third place winners for the floats in the Pinson Christmas Parade, which took place on Dec. 1, 2022.
Photo credit: Matt McGough
The first-place winners were Howell Solutions and Denson’s Tree Service, who shared a float in the parade.
Bradford Sanctuary of Praise was named the second-place winner, and Barking Bee Coffee received third place.
“I, for one, thought it was a great parade,” Mayor Joe Cochran said. “We had a great turnout. … We appreciate all the participants and everyone that came out.”
Councilor Glenda Kirkland opened a discussion regarding the future of Pinson Trade Days on Main Street. Trade Days, started by the businesses of Main Street to help the local small business owners recover after the pandemic, celebrated its one-year anniversary in November.
“We all want to – our goal is to – help Main Street and bring Main Street up,” Kirkland said. “We’ve got some good vendors down there, and shops, and we want to help them. But … we’ve gave them a year, mostly every month, except for CityFest, Butterbean (and) certain months we couldn’t do it.”
Kirkland put a motion before the council to reduce the city’s financial support of Trade Days from monthly to quarterly in 2023.
“It cost us $18,000 last year to support them with the officers and port-a-johns that we furnished,” she said. “So, what we’re suggesting … the months that we think would be good would be March, June, September and November.”
Mayor Cochran clarified that if the businesses still wanted to hold an event monthly, they could, but the city would not be closing Main Street or providing other services except on the aforementioned months.
“I think it’s the right way to go,” he said, “sitting back at a sky-view after a full year of doing it.”
The mayor and council unanimously approved Kirkland’s motion to change their support of Trade Days to quarterly.
Photo credit: Crystal McGough
Additionally, Councilor Robbie Roberts opened a discussion between the council and City Attorney Shane Black regarding waste disposal service complaints.
“Our friends at Waste Management are spotty, at best,” Roberts said. “I know they had a major malfunction with recycling two weeks ago, so basically, we went an entire cycle between (recycling pickups). They’re supposed to be picking up every-other week and they completely skipped a large amount of the city. … I just didn’t know whether or not there was something that we could do as far as to get their attention and let them know that’s unacceptable. Personally, I feel like we should be entitled to some type of financial consideration for having basically no service for two weeks.”
Cochran said that individual citizens are able to call Waste Management and request a credit for missed services, but that would mean a large number of people having to take the initiative to do so.
“It’s a poor service,” Cochran said. “It’s been poorly operated since day-one.”
The city attorney said that, while there’s not an answer he can provide that is satisfactory, the city can put Waste Management on notice of the issues.
In other business, the council unanimously approved the following agenda items:
- Ordinance No. 2022-28, changing the zoning classification of real estate at 5455 and 5567 Country Road from Jefferson County to City of Pinson zoning
- Resolution No. 22-35, accepting Birmingham & Associates Inc. as the lowest bidder for the Rock School Center auditorium roof replacement, with a bid amount of $216,875
- Motion to approve Bicentennial Park parking lot paving proposal from Campbell’s Paving, Asphalt and Concrete L.L.C, in the amount of $5,000
Mayor Cochran said that all city-operated offices and facilities will be closed on Friday, Dec. 16, from 11 a.m. through 4 p.m., for a city employee training day.
The next meeting of the Pinson City Council will be Thursday, Dec. 15, 2022, at City Hall. The meeting will begin a 7 p.m., following a 6:15 p.m. work session.
Crystal McGough can be contacted at mcgoughcrystal@gmail.com
