By T. Scott Boatright
Completing a move that began last month was the only action made by the Grambling City Council Thursday night as it held its monthly meeting for September inside the Community Room at City Hall.
Grambling’s City Council ended the night by going into an executive session that lasted 22 minutes before the alderman returned to the main room and adjourned the night’s meeting.
“That was concerning litigation about a personnel matter,” said Mayor Alvin Bradley. “Because it’s ongoing litigation, that’s all I can really say about it right now.
As far as the lone motion acted on Thursday night, during last month’s meeting Grambling’s City Council discussed amending grass cutting regulations.
But apparently the City Council didn’t make an official vote on the matter last month.
“We did talk about the grass ordinance during last month’s Council meeting, however, it was brought to my attention that we need to approve the ordinance,” Bradley told the City Council. We did everything — went over it and discussed everything — but now I need a motion to approve the ordinance.”
The motion to approve the ordinance amendments was made by Councilwoman Delores Wilkerson Smith and seconded by Councilman Jerry Lewis before unanimously being approved in a 5-0 vote.
Under the old ordinance, the city of Grambling notified property owners with out-of-control grass growth and if those property owners don’t cut their yards within a specified amount of time, the city’s Public Works department will cut it and charge the homeowners for those services.
“That ordinance has been around for years and hasn’t been changed even though the costs of those services have increased significantly,” Councilman John Brown said when introducing the ordinance in July. “This will bring it all into alignment with the costs of doing so these days and specify who will perform those services.”
The approved amendments increase the cost for the city to cut a resident’s yard if the property owner doesn’t act on a request to do so and also changes a couple of job titles to better specify roles involved with duties by Public Works employees.
“It’s a good ordinance,” Brown said during the August meeting. “We just changed a couple of job titles and some responsibilities. We also added some language, like vines and bush, to let people know we’re not going to cut their trees for them. We’re going to make sure we execute it and make sure we can take care of these problems moving forward.”
Brown said the job title changes in the amendments changes the title of Public Works Foreman to Public Works Director and City Clerk is now Administrative Assistant for Public Works. As far as the language, vines and bush were added to clean-up the city will do at a charge to the property owner and replaces the term “other growths” to keep such from being interpreted as trees.
The rest of Thursday’s City Council included an update from Mt. Olive Water District Commissioner David Ponton as well as reports from city departments.
Ponton told the aldermen he was there to inform them that the Mt. Olive Water District is looking at a tract of land owned by the city of Grambling.
“It’s the property adjacent to RWE Jones Drive and North Pine Tree Road,” Ponton said. “We were contacted by Police Jury President Greg “Big Coach” Williams, who I would like to publicly thank. He has been working with us for the Police Jury as we look at ways to try and make things better for the Mt. Olive Water District. One of the improvements we’re trying to make is a new water tower, and we’re looking for areas to do water testing.
“So, basically, my reason for being here today is to put that in front of the Council to see if that would even be a viable ask because I know you all have some things going on involving that property, but through a Police Juror we’re trying to find those available over there where we have a current tower now. So I’m asking as it moves along that you consider that and maybe look at it as a possible site for water testing for our new water tower.”
During his report, Grambling Police Chief Tommy Clark spoke about school buses and bus drivers as well as crosswalks.
“We had to deal with parents upset and going after bus drivers,” Clark said. “What we need is for parents that have an issue to contact the school, either the principal or someone at the school. We had two incidents this month with parents waiting at the bus stop to chastise the bus driver, and we can’t have that when there are other kids on the bus. That can create a problem.
“So, we just want to put that out there. If anyone has a problem with a bus driver, the parent needs to go to the school. If it’s a parish (school) case, we’ll figure out where the parent needs to go, to the School Board or whatever. Each school has a transportation director. Lincoln Prep has one, and it’s an assistant principal and transportation director that needs to take care of problems there.”
Clark also stressed the importance of understanding and obeying crosswalk rules, or drivers in violation of those regulations can face receiving a ticket.
“If anyone steps off a sidewalk onto the crosswalk on the roadway, all vehicles should be stopped,” Clark said. “You don’t inch up and try to get across if they aren’t on your side of the road. If they are anywhere within the crosswalk, all vehicles should come to a stop because in this case, pedestrians do have the right of way.
“So, please be mindful of that and we’ll be fine.”
