By Bonita Wilborn
At the April 10 meeting of the DeKalb County Commission the meeting was called to order and after the invocation by District IV Commissioner Dewitt Jackson, the Pledge of Allegiance led by District III Commissioner Chris Kuykendall, and approval of the minutes from the previous meeting other business proceeded.
Commission President, Ricky Harcrow, addressed the issue of training for Emily’s Law. “I feel like we need to send some of our personnel to training, to familiarize themselves with the intricate relations this law provides, what we can do, what we can’t do, and there’s always some kind of training that needs to be initiated when anything is newly enacted,” he said. He then referred to County Administrator, Matt Sharp, for further explanation.
Sharp, stated, “Leslie at the Animal Shelter sent the request and a copy of the law that was passed after a 24-year-old female was killed by dogs in Jackson County. It is a dangerous situation. When this was passed it does put some liability on the county so some training is needed. We have Roger Byrd and Clayburn Simpson back there. They wear many hats, but one is investigating animal cruelty.” Sharp requested that one of the afore mentioned men address the situation and further explained what they actually do.
Clayburn Simpson, DeKalb County’s Revenue Enforcement Officer came forward to address the training as well as specific aspects of Emily’s Law. Simpson said, “We get called quite a bit about animal cruelty, but most turn out to be neighbors mad at other neighbors or family mad at other family members. We do occasionally have cases where the animal has been neglected because people don’t know what they’ve got or how to take care of them. We get complaints quite a bit about roaming dogs and dangerous dogs. DeKalb County has no leash law, which most counties don’t. It’s a touchy subject with the general public, some are for it and some against. But we go out and talk with people, try to get them to keep their dog up, confine it, but there’s not a whole lot we can do. Alabama does have a law that if a dog comes onto your property bothering livestock or tearing something up, you have the right to shoot it, to kill not to wound.”
Concerning Emily’s Law, Simpson said, “Roger and I have both looked at the statute. It’s mostly going to be law enforcement such the Sheriff’s Office and the City Police. Stanley is the one that will be picking up the dogs, and more involved than we are. The company that’s doing this training is out of Florida so I don’t know how intense they’re going to be with the Alabama statute.”
President Harcrow entertained a motion allowing himself and Sharp to make the determination of which county employees they deemed necessary to be approved for the training. Commission approved.
In other business:
DeKalb County Road Department Director, Tom Broyles, gave his regular maintenance update, “We’re still hauling chert into District II today and part of the crew is working on the new bridge going into the landfill. We had started building those approaches last week. We have experienced some trouble getting stable ground to build the road on. We’ve undercut the east side of it to probably more than three feet and we’ve still not gotten down to any stable ground yet. It’s still very wet. We might have to just pull off of this and allow time for it to dry out. I’m not real sure how this is going to work out. I think we need to make every effort to make sure we have the road to the level it needs to be before we open it up because if we open it and then start to have trouble we’ll be fighting traffic, which on that stretch of road is excessive. It may mean that we just have to pull off of it until a little bit later on and come back to it when it dries out. But we’re going to do what we can and at least get it to a point where it won’t have any water standing on the sides. Dry warm weather will probably help more than anything, but I can’t control that.
We’re going to get started at the end of this month with our first round of herbicide application and at the first of next month we’ll start mowing crews going around. We still have all of our patch trucks running and still have some of the District Crews doing some hand patching.”
Broyles then addressed the following personnel issue. He said, “We’ve had a job posted, forever it seems like, but I finally got an application and he’s actually going to take the job, how long he’ll last, I don’t know. I recommend that we hire William Cole. Commission approved.
Broyles then addressed his last item on the approved agenda; new dump trucks. “We normally order our new trucks in July, but the salesman called me week before last and alerted me that they had order 900 trucks in a single week, so he recommended that we go ahead and get ours ordered. Commission approved.
Broyles then recommended beginning the process of cycling out the pickup trucks, as had been discussed previously. After some discussion about cost and availability, Broyles recommended the purchase of six pickup trucks from Donohoo Chevrolet, who holds the state bid, at a cost of $33,407.50 each. Commission approved.
County Engineer, Ben Luther, then addressed the Commission with a number of items. He recommended that the Annual Surface Treatment Bid be award to Charlie Watts. Commission approved.
Luther then recommended that the Striping Proposal Bid be awarded to J.C. Cheek. Commission approved.
Finally Luther recommended awarding the Guardrail Proposal. Commission approved.
DeKalb County Sheriff’s Office Chief Deputy, Michael Edmondson recommended the following personnel changes/additions: hire Daniel Jordan as a Corrections Officer, accept the resignation of Justin Langston, and hire Greg Nelson to replace Thomas Sanders. Commission approved.
Emily McCamy, from the Council on Aging then addressed the Commission and recommended permission to sell two busses. Commission approved.
McCamy then recommended the following hires: Marie Garza, Sharon Culpepper, and Judson Davidson. Commission approved.
The next meeting will be held on Tuesday, April 24 at 10:00am.