Council Confirms Morris as Attorney, Deals with Bellingrath Street Problems

 By Dave Freneaux

    Mayor Mac Watts has appointed Sheri Morris to continue as Central's City Attorney.  On Tuesday night the City Council met and confirmed the appointment of Ms. Morris by a 3-2 vote.  Council Members DeJohn, Messina and Moak voted to confirm the Mayor's appointment while LoBue and Washington voted against.  In the first meeting of this Council in June, the Council failed to confirm the appointment.  Council Member Messina changing and voting in favor this week provided the needed margin for confirmation.

    In the discussion Council Member LoBue moved to delay the confirmation until January in order to review legal bills related to the massive public records request handled by the City of Central earlier this year.  His motion failed to receive a second and therefore was not considered.  Additionally, LoBue requested that the City Council go into "Executive Session" to discuss the matter.  This would have caused the public to be dismissed from the meeting and allowed the Council to discuss the matter of appointing the City Attorney behind closed doors.  It was pointed out that an Executive Session would have had to have been on the agenda and properly advertised, which it was not.

    The entirety of this discussion, as well as the discussion of the Bellingrath Lakes street problems can be seen on-line at CentralSpeaks.com.

     The other major item for the night was a lengthy discussion of the problems being encountered as the City attempts to repair streets in Bellingrath Lakes subdivision.  The essence is that the water level of the lakes seems to be causing some of the streets to deteriorate prematurely.  The Council has asked that the engineering firm on the project determine a cost to study the extent of the problem, and to only complete repairs on streets already under construction at this time.