The Milton City Council is expected to vote on whether or not to allocate city funding for the purpose of financing the repaving of Alabama and Dixon Streets at Tuesday’s regular council meeting. With one opposing vote from Council member Alan Lowery, the council will decide if the two city street will receive funding for repaving as a separate item from consent agenda.
The item was brought before the council, during the executive committee meeting on Monday. As chairman of the finance committee, Council member Jimmy Messick presented the committee’s financing proposal to the council.
“In accordance with the instructions given by the council last time to have the finance committee look for funding of the repaving and improvements of Alabama and Dixon Streets,” Messick said. “The committee recommends approval to reallocate $ 152,820 budgeted item from the Marina Balloon payment scheduled for this fiscal year and to take an additional $97,180 out of general fund reserves to provide $250,000 for the repaving of Alabama Street and Dixon Street.”
In addition to explaining how the committee reached their financing proposal to the council, Messick also answered Marilyn Jones’s inquiry as to how the council came to list Dixon Street as the second street to be repaired.
Messick said the council agreed on Alabama and Dixon in previous council meetings and council meetings and he added the amount to repair Dixon would be significantly less compared to Alabama.
“Dixon crossing and being part of the street that faces the city hall here is only like $25,000 (or) $26,000; it’s a small amount,” Messick said. It was suggested that at the same time we were doing Alabama into that and there was different opinions back and forth, but the general consensus was to tie the Alabama and Dixon Streets together,” Messick said to Jones’s inquiry.
Council member Mary Ellen Johnson added Dixon also sees a lot of traffic. In a previous meeting, fellow council member Patsy Lunsford said repairing Dixon would benefit citizen’s visiting the city hall building to pay their utility bills, while setting a positive image for those visiting the city.
Although Mayor Wesley Meiss agreed with the council selection of Alabama Street, Meiss, like Lowery was not in favor of Dixon Street. However, the mayor supported the council’s decision.
“I disagree with the Dixon Street repaving, because I think that there is some other streets in the City of Milton, that I would personally pick over Dixon Street, but I understand that is the wish of the council,” Meiss said. “We said we are going to do something and now we are doing it.”
Before the council took the vote, Lowery said although he was in favor of repaving Alabama Street, he was not in favor of doing the same for Dixon Street.
“I can’t vote for Dixon, when there are other streets in the condition they are in,” he said.
This article originally appeared on Santa Rosa Press Gazette: Milton Council votes to repairs Alabama and Dixon Streets next week