By Crystal McGough, copy editor
PINSON — The Pinson City Council met at 2 p.m. on Wednesday, July 3, at Pinson City Hall, after the council previously voted to move the original first Thursday meeting, which would have fallen on the Fourth of July.
During the meeting, the council approved a motion to renew its $20,000 principal supplement with the Jefferson Board of Education for Pinson Valley High School. The board uses the money to supplement the principal’s salary.
“This helps us — several cities do this in Jefferson County — to attract good administrators, and we appreciate the job that’s been done at Pinson Valley,” Mayor Hoyt Sanders said. “This simply renews the grant that we’ve done the last two or three years.”
The motion passed with four yeses and one abstain from Councilor Shannon Galamore, who works at the high school.
The council unanimously passed a motion to approve an estimate from T-N-T to remove, haul off and dispose of excess material from around the Main Street bridge. The estimate is for $1,800 per day for five to seven days, with an expected total of $9,000 to $12,600.
“Periodically, we use some of our road money to extract the chert and cobble that tends to collect at the Main Street bridge,” Sanders said. “We’ve used T-N-T to do that several times before…Again, it’s just an estimate. They go down in there, extract all they can. You never really know how long it takes or how much is there until they get going.”
Additionally, the council approved an amended resolution concerning a donation of $30,000 from Vulcan Materials to the city of Pinson in support of a new classroom pavilion project at Turkey Creek Nature Preserve.
The original resolution, which passed in a previous meeting, was amended by City Attorney Shane Black. According to Sanders, the amendment was necessary due to Vulcan Materials donating the funds through a global charitable fund called DonationXchange.
“(Vulcan) contacted Mr. Black and the amendment, strictly, all it does is add that their donation may come part of in whole through DonationXchange,” Sanders said.
Sanders wished to remind the community about the state of Alabama’s laws concerning fireworks.
“State law does prohibit the discharge of fireworks within 600 feet of any structure,” Sanders said. “That’s of course applicable in Pinson and any other part of the state at large, so just be aware of that if you are utilizing that. One of our requirements on sales here in the city is that the vendors do give that excerpt from the code to try to help remind everyone. We do want you to be safe, but that is the state law.”
Upcoming events in Pinson:
July 18 – Pinson City Council meeting at 7 p.m.; pre-council at 6:30 p.m.
July 20 — Beat The Heat at Turkey Creek
Aug. 6 – National Night Out at Bicentennial Park