Interim city manager Steve Hill's fate back on the council's October Agenda along with sidewalks and Wyatt Court land purchase

The majority of the city council's regular October agenda is mostly routine, but one item is anything but routine.  The meeting is Thursday October 13.

Councilman Pete Souza is proposing an item to hold “discussion and action on removal and replacement of interim city manager.” The current interim city manager Steve Hill has held the position since April when a majority of the council dismissed city manager David Rutherford and appointed retired parks and recreation director Hill as interim manager.

Interim city manager Steve Hill listens to discussion at a previous council meeting.

Hill has attracted a lot of attention with some of his actions including removing derogatory items from his personnel file from his time with the parks and recreation department. Those items have since been returned. Story on Hill and missing documents returned.

Councilman Souza has filed a number of ethics complaints against Hill including questions about what happened with some city property during his time with Parks and Recreation, several items related to the investigation of the incident between Mr. Souza and councilman Jesse Kerley and his father following a meeting June 2, and providing false information to the media on supposed investigations into actions by interim police chief Rod Shoap. Souza files ethics complaints story. 

The schedule for the evening's meetings starts with the audit committee meeting at 5:00 PM followed by a closed executive session at 5:30. The beer board meets at 5:45 PM and a public hearing on annexation of Orange Circle will be held at 5:50 PM

The council's regular agenda gets underway at 6 PM in the council chambers at city hall.

Council once again takes up the bid on the long delayed safe routes to school sidewalks on Fourth St and Myrtle Ave. The project has run into numerous problems and has passed two absolute deadlines that have been extended to try and complete the project. The low bid has been approved by TDOT and the project may finally get underway.

Additional bids and purchases by the city include cemetery record keeping software and a new playground for Meadow Park Lake. The cemetery software would tie into to GPS location of plots and allow for genealogical research.

The purchase of the final usable plot in the Wyatt Court industrial park to L. E. “Butch” Smith will be considered by the council. The cost of the property is 227,075 for the 9.09 acres just off of Woodlawn Road. Originally Mr. Smith was seeking a credit against the purchase price for the addition of jobs but that part of his request has been dropped. The public notice of the sale was published back in April and now only requires the approval of council. Smith previously said he planned to construct a 50,000 square foot speculative building on the property at an estimated cost of $2 million.

The vacant land in the foreground is the property proposed for purchase be Butch Smith.

The council will consider the final approval of the sale during the October council meeting.