The Smackover City Council met on Monday, September 14 at 6 p.m. Business included the third and final readings of a pair of alley closure ordinances, an annual resolution to implement a 5-mill corporate tax and discussion surrounding the acquisition of new lighting structures for the city baseball field.
The first item of old business were the final readings for the alley closure ordinances. A reading of each ordinance has been done monthly since the ordinances were first introduced in July.
The first alley runs north and south between lots 6 and 12 and lies between lot 5 and 242’ southwest in block 7 of the Rogerson Addition and the other runs east and west and lies between block 16, lots 1 and 6 and block 16, lots 7 and 12 in the Pershing Heights Addition in Smackover.
Each ordinance was read for the third and final time and adopted during the meeting.
In new business, the city council voted on and passed a resolution to implement 5-mill corporate tax resolution.
The resolution was presented as follows: “A resolution to implement a 5-mill corporate tax on all taxable property both real and personal within the corporate limits of the City of Smackover for the year 2020.” The resolution unanimously passed.
Next, the council discussed potentially replacing and upgrading lighting and lighting structures at the city baseball field.
The baseball field is located at Smackover High School. Mayor Bobby Neal led the discussion by commenting on the current state of the lighting poles and structures.
“The lighting is in poor condition. [Some of] the poles are rotten at the ground, I don’t know how they are still standing,” Neal said.
Neal explained that the city had an electrician survey the field and produce a schematic showing a potential lighting layout with a focus on replacing the poles and adding new LED lights.
“It would take six poles, and one pole would have two lights on it to light up the parking lot on both ends,” Neal said.
The poles are currently wooden and would be replaced with metal poles.
“What we need to do is decide whether we want to go with it. The school uses it the biggest part of the time, and they start playing [baseball] around the first part of February. In order to get it completed by then we would need to act now to advertise for bids… We have the money to fix it with and already spent a bunch of money on the concession stand and bleachers about three years ago,” Neal told the council.
Council member Paul Givens asked Neal if the Smackover-Norphlet School District would be able to contribute to the project.
“The way [SNSD superintendent Jason Black] talked, they would be able to help out some, yes,” Neal said.
Council member Chris Long then said he would like to see the council move forward with advertising for bids due to the amount of money the city has already invested in the ball field.
A motion to move forward with the bid process was submitted, seconded and unanimously passed.
No further resolutions were passed during the meeting but several council members did bring issues before the council, including the possibility of purchasing a generator for the city library and the possibility of replacing several high-mileage police vehicles.
The next regular Smackover City Council meeting will be on Monday, October 12 at 6 p.m.