MILTON — At Tuesday’s Executive Committee meeting, Mayor Wesley Meiss reassigned some council committees' chairs and provided alternates for various committees and boards.
Many of the committee chairs remained the same, but Milton’s newest council member, Heather Hathaway, was added to the list.
The committee assignments are as follows:
- Stormwater Committee: Sharon Holley
- Administration Committee: Heather Hathaway
- Growth, Development and Annexation Committee: Peggi Smith
- Finance Committee: Casey Powell
- LEAP Committee: Mary Ellen Johnson
- Public Works Committee: Alan Lowery
- Parks and Recreation Committee: Jeff Snow
- Public Safety Committee: Pat Lunsford
- Tourism Development Council: Alan Lowery
- Bay Area Resource Council: Alan Lowery
- Transportation Planning Organization: Wesley Meiss, with Peggi Smith as an alternate
- West Florida Regional Planning Council: Jeff Snow, with Mary Ellen Johnson as an alternate
- Riverfront Redevelopment Team: Peggi Smith
- Restore Council: City Manager Brian Watkins
Each committee oversees the topics and decisions that fall under their corresponding city department.
The Florida-Alabama Transportation Planning Organization is the local, intergovernmental transportation policy board for Santa Rosa and Escambia counties in Florida and part of Baldwin County in Alabama, according to the TPO website. The board comprises local government officials who make decisions regarding transportation at the regional level.
The West Florida Regional Planning Council serves as staff to the Bay Area Resource Council with the chief objective of helping improve the community’s quality of life and improving the waters of the Pensacola Bay System, according to the BARC website.
The Riverfront Redevelopment Team examines issues of importance to the Community Redevelopment Agency as assigned, according to the city of Milton’s website. The RRT is also responsible for ensuring development activity is consistent with CRA plans and complies with the community’s character. All RRT records are filed with the Planning and Development Department.
The Restore Council chooses projects to be submitted for funding consideration through the RESTORE Act, which allocates 80 percent of the amount of any Clean Water Act fines from the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
Under the act, the fines are divided into several sources of funding, with different permissible uses and various methods for approving projects, according to the RESTORE Act’s website. Seventy-five percent of Florida's allocation will come directly to the eight disproportionately impacted panhandle counties. These include Santa Rosa, Escambia, Okaloosa, Walton, Bay, Gulf, Franklin and Wakulla counties.
Approximately $4 million is currently available to Santa Rosa County. An additional $24 million will be made available to Santa Rosa County over the next 15 years.
This article originally appeared on Santa Rosa Press Gazette: City committee chairs assigned