Laurens City Council convened a special called meeting thursday morning at 9am in Council Chambers to vote on three ordinances.
The first, Ordinance 02-14-01, needed a second reading vote before the regular scheduled monthly meeting due to the buyer’s time constraints for the sale of timber on the city property located between Fleming Street Extension and Exchange Drive.
Seventy acres of the two hundred thirty four acre tract contains trees that W.W. Logging has offered to cut and will pay forty five thousand dollars for the hardwood trees and nineteen thousand seven hundred forty dollars for the softwood. This second reading was approved unanimously.
The second ordinance, which had been approved on first reading earlier, was Ordinance 02-14-02 which also involves the sale of city property.
The ordinance authorizes the sale of point thirteen acres land to Central Electric Power Cooperation for two thousand five hundred dollars.
The city had already sold a small amount of land adjacent to the property for a switching station, but Central Electric needs this in additional space. This second reading was approved unanimously.
A first reading approval of Revised Ordinance 8-11-02, which will now allow the city to use the most qualified and reputable bidder for professional services, and not be forced to go for the lowest bid.
“When we did this the first time, we did not have a sophisticated ordinance, and when talking to other agencies, like Newberry, concerning our upcoming building demolition, we realized that if we did not reinvent the wheel on this, we would be forced to take the low bid for professional services,” said City Attorney Tommy Thompson.
Thompson gave credit for this new ordinance to City Administrator Gary Coleman who saw this as the right direction to go concerning quality and reputation for professional services, and not just on price.
Mayor Sharon Brownlee agreed with the ordinance and said, “This is not a blanket thing, but we will go on a case by case basis. This reinforces our ability to refuse a lowest bid that we do not even know, we want to deal with reputation and quality and it will also allow us flexibility in keeping our current suppliers,” said Mayor Sharon Brownlee.
“We want quality work done in Laurens,” agreed Council Member Sylvia Douglas.
Councilman Martin Lowry said that we will come up with a more detailed description of the revised ordinance on next vote.
Our thanks to WLBG reporter Iva Cadmus for her coverage of this Council meeting.