Library bid awarded during Trussville City Council meeting

By Megan Miller, Editor

TRUSSVILLE – The long awaited library bid was approved during Tuesday’s Trussville City Council meeting.

Of the two bidders, the project was awarded to Blalock Building Company.

Councilman Buddy Choat, who is the liaison to the library, remembered being approached by library staff and the Friends of the Library when he first became the council’s liaison asking for an expansion.

“It is a pleasure to ask the council to approve the resolution and award our library bid to Blalock Construction,” Choat said.

The Trussville Public Library
file photo

Council President Anthony Montalto said he is glad to have awarded the project to a local contractor.

“We’re thrilled to have a local contractor working on this project,” Montalto said. “I know we’ll have a product at the end that we’ll be proud of for a very long time.”

Nearly 20 supporters of the library project attended the meeting to show their support.

Both Choat and Montalto expressed their thanks to the library staff, Friends of the Library and library patrons for their patience throughout the process.

Another item of importance on Tuesday’s agenda was awarding a bid for debris and recycling pickup for the city.

Councilman Perry Cook said there were four responses during the bid process, all of which were taken into account during discussions amongst council members. The council looked at figures with and without debris pickup so they could examine the cost from all perspectives. Debris pickup was included in the final bid.

The bid was awarded to Santek for a three-year contract.

“Our city attorney went through all of these bids and compared everything that was there, and the selection you made is in compliance with our laws,” Mayor Gene Melton said.

Additionally during the meeting a number of items from the Trussville Police Department were declared as surplus, including a 1999 Chevy Tahoe, 20 conference style office chairs, one non-working Smart Board, three non-working VHS players and one conference table that is chipped and damaged. All of the items were damaged beyond repair, making them surplus.

Finally the council declared that the city would turn gold for the month of September to raise awareness for childhood cancer, and pink on October 19 to raise awareness for breast cancer.

Choat said it’s estimated more than 15,000 children under the age of 19 will be diagnosed with cancer in 2016 alone, and those diagnoses will claim more than 1,300 lives.

“It’s making us all aware of how fortunate we are, since we’ve all ben affected by cancer in some way,” Choat said.

Trussville will turn pink on October 19 in support of Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

“Our city supports this in such a magnificent way, it’s fun to ride around and see everything and everybody,” Choat said.