Mayor Bill Barnet and Councilwoman Renee Cariveau were out of town Monday when City Council passed the final reading on a $33.65 million budget for the the next fiscal year over Councilman Joe Spigner’s lone dissenting vote. At Council’s last meeting, the budget caused conflict between Councilman Spigner–who was also the only council member to vote against the budget’s first reading– and the rest of City Council over it’s use of Federal stimulus funds.
Council awarded two new construction contracts at Monday’s meeting. Choate Construction, based in North Carolina, won the contract to build the parking garage for the new George Dean Johnson Jr. School of Business and Economics on St. John Street with a low bid of $7.13 million dollars. Cox and Floyd Grading, based in Reidville, was the low bidder, at $1.71 million, for a related plan to extend Liberty Street from St. John Street to Daniel Morgan Avenue, and construct a small extender drive from the Marriott at Renaissance Park to Liberty Street.
Council also unanimously approved the dissolution of the Festivals Advisory Committee. In her presentation on the resolution, City Attorney Cathy McCabe called the move a “house cleaning†measure, noting that the committee doesn’t have any sitting members.
Also at Monday’s meeting, a measure designating the Seay House at 106 Darby Road as a Local Historic Site passed it’s first reading. The Seay House, believed to have been built in the early 19th century, is the oldest house in the city of Spartanburg.
Christopher George
Excellent, Chris. These kinds of meetings can be tedium to cover, and even more difficult to write about, but they’re deeply important. Until now, the Spark had never covered City Council directly, so this is a humble-seeming but highly important first step. Well done!
Chris,
any chance you were able to jot down who got appointed to what boards? I heard they announced a few of the appointments but they weren’t in the paper.
Tammy: Your question only highlights my shame (sorry I’m watching Japanese TV shows). I was trying to write down the names, but they were going so fast, I couldn’t get them all down, and I didn’t want to write some without writing them all. That’ll be better in the future though. I just bought a netbook, and I intend to take it to council meetings so I can take notes faster, as I type much faster than I write.
Netbooks are the best. I’m a proud owner of an Asus 701, which I bought shortly after they became available. It’ll make it so much easier for you to report on the fly. Now, if we could only get free downtown WiFi …