The monthly Minden City Council Meeting started with an attempt to add the item of a new police hire to the evening’s agenda. The item was motioned in by Councilman Keith Beard of Dist. D and seconded by Councilman Pam Bloxom of Dist E.
When it came time to vote, all Councilmen were in favor except for Councilman Herbert Taylor of Dist. A. There has to be unanimous approval by the Council to add an item to the agenda, so the motion failed.
Next up was the adoption of the previous month’s meeting minutes, those being the monthly City Council Meeting and a Special Session they held to adopt the alcohol ordinance.
After the item was motioned in, Bradford stated, “There was nothing on the minutes about what Minifield spoke.” “I don’t think it’s complete,” said Bradford.
Councilman Terika Williams-Walker of Dist. B. added, “When we look at the minutes for the special session, I don’t think this is how this happens. When you look in the last paragraph, because after the discussion we brought the motion up again, but it wasn’t, well, it wasn’t voted on at the end.”
There was still some confusion surrounding the minutes, so Councilman Taylor motioned to table the item, to which the Council unanimously agreed.
The next topic of note was that of road repairs and the item on the agenda was to advertise for bids for street improvement projects.
The proposed improvements would be a mill and overlay for Fincher Road, starting at Highway 80 going all the way to Homer Road. There will be another mill and overlay at the intersection of Gleason and along Pine Street all the way to Goodwill Street. And lastly, there would be a mill and overlay of Horton Street starting at Shreveport Road going to Middle Landing Road.
“It’s very important that we don’t linger on this,” said Terry Cones, Street Department Manager. “When the base begins to deteriorate, it gets really expensive. When the base is still in pretty good shape, you can sometimes go in and just mill and overlay and it’s not very expensive. So I just want to put this on your mind.”
After clearing up the minor mistake of one of the proposed streets not being in his district, Councilman Beard said, “Wherever these streets are it doesn’t matter to me they are in the city, and they need to be fixed. Especially before they get too bad. Like he said, then we have a real big problem.”
On the same note, the Council also voted unanimously to obtain a cost estimate for a possible street overlay project on Country Club Circle and Longleaf Drive.
After the items had been taken care of and it was time for Council Comments, Councilman Beard used his time to ask Councilman Taylor about his earlier decision to not add the new police hire to the agenda. “I did want to ask Mr. Taylor, if you don’t mind, I just wanted to know why you didn’t want to add this police officer to the agenda, if you didn’t mind just share that with us,” said Beard.
“Because in the past we haven’t added items to the agenda so why start now,” said Taylor. “In the past when I wanted items to be amended and added to the agenda they were voted down.”
“Ok so your pouting, and we’re not hiring a policeman because you’re pouting,” said Beard. “I read the information about this hire, he’s from Minden born and raised here went to school here and has good credentials and I’m just disappointed we didn’t hire him.”
“I didn’t say we weren’t going to hire him, I just wasn’t going to add an item to the agenda,” said Taylor.
The Minden City Council Meetings take place on the first Monday of every month at Minden City hall starting at 5:30 p.m.