Council members vote down bid for renovation plans
Despite a short agenda, a lot of surprises exploded at Monday night’s Greensboro City Council meeting.
A motion proposed by city council member Jontavius Smith to ask City Manager Jarvis Sims to resign was seconded by Mayor Pro-tem David Neal, but it never came to a vote. Mayor Corey Williams ruled the motion out of order, saying he would not ask Sims to resign. City attorney Adam Nelson confirmed that the mayor has the right to rule a motion out of order.
Sims was hired earlier this year to replace retiring City Manager Larry Postell.
“I just think a lot is going on in the city, and we need change,” Smith told the Lake Oconee News after the meeting. “A lot of things we had talked about doing, we’re just not getting done. I’m just not satisfied.”
Smith said that employees and citizens have found Sims unavailable to talk. Others have had similar complaints, even before Sims started working from home a couple of months ago for medical reasons.
Sims attended Monday’s meeting on the telephone. In an email response to the newspaper’s request for comment on Tuesday, Sims wrote, “I have no comment on this matter.”
However, Williams was effusive in his support for Sims in an email to the Lake Oconee News Tuesday.
“Mr. Sims has only been in office for only about four months and has made tremendous changes to our city, a city that was unorganized,” Williams wrote.
He credited Sims for many changes so far, including hiring a new city clerk, and a financial specialist, raising the employee starting pay rate ($12.50 to $15.00 hourly), putting in place a succession plan that the city does not have, upgrading an aging software and phone system and current discussions with local legislators to help fix the city’s aging infrastructure.
“We hired him to manage a city that was not in compliance and understaffed,” Williams continued in his email, “Mr. Sims has shown passion, determination, and dedication to this city. It is disappointing that even after being told by legal having a conversation with the mayor and being made aware of where I stand on the situation, a certain council member would try to hijack a council meeting with a bogus motion. It’s confusion at its best. There is no way to move forward if you keep looking backward.”
Smith said he was frustrated.
“I’ll be talking to the attorney about what we can do because we need it. A lot is going on in the community. We’ve got business and stuff that is coming in. Work itself. Life itself is going on,” he said.
City Hall denial
In another surprise at the city council Monday night, Councilmembers Smith, Neal, and Cynthia Rivers voted to not sign a contract with the lowest bidder on a project to create a design and construction estimate for renovating a proposed new city hall building.
In 2018, the city purchased the old BB&T Bank building at Main and South Streets with a plan to modify the structure to create a new city hall. The cost was $385,000, but Postell told the Lake Oconee News in March that it was shortly deeded in a sale to the Georgia Municipal Association (GMA) and refinanced through their “Bricks and Mortar” program for roughly $1.4 million.
There was a preliminary design developed that estimated construction costs closer to $2 million. The city decided to not move forward earlier this year, but the city paid almost $60,000 to repair the roof and continues to pay $30,926 a quarter on the loan.
Consultant Jeff Prine was hired this summer to put together a request for proposals to renovate the bank building. Two companies submitted bids earlier this month.
At Monday night’s meeting, Prine presented bids from Sunbelt Builders ($58,060) and RW Allen ($134,750) to develop a new design plan and construction cost estimate.
He said both bids were from reputable companies, but he recommended the city approve the contract with Sunbelt.
There was discussion about the wide disparity of costs between the two proposals, then the council voted 3-2 to not approve the Sunbelt contract. Williams asked the dissenting council members whether they preferred the other contract or just did not want the work to be done. Neal and Smith said the work should not be done.
“It’s my understanding they already have a design somewhere,” added Rivers, “I don’t know why we just can’t use that design.”
Prine said the old design was not complete. It was unclear what happens now.
Other actions
A $70,000 grant from Family Connections was approved by the city in September to help low-income residents pay their delinquent water and electric bills.
The terms of the grant became controversial Monday when many councilmembers said they thought the program was only for help with water bills. Delinquent payments to the city water system have developed into a problem, forcing some customers to be cut off.
However, more residents have applied for help with power bills causing the council to wonder if the grant should be changed to limit aid to water bills. No action was taken.
Four parcels of land along Veazy and MLK Drive were approved for annexation into the city. The action allows Capstone Land Development to proceed with its plan to build 140 single-family homes ranging from 2,000-2,400 square feet and 42 townhomes with 1,500-1,900 square feet in a new middle-income development called Hilltop Trace.
Councilmembers rejected a rezoning request by BPIV Development LLC that would allow the construction of an 11-acre parking lot for trucks, boats, and recreational vehicles at Town Creek Boulevard and Old Eatonton Road.