Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

By JOYANNA LOVE/ Managing Editor

The Clanton City Council will consider declaring 16 properties its own as surplus on Sept. 27 in preparation for selling them.

At a work session on Sept. 23, Mayor Jeff Mims explained a committee had reviewed the properties that the city owned against its potential importance to the city in the future.

Alan Childress has served as chair of the committee.

“The city owns 106 … some of these are essential to the city that you will l never want to get rid of, and some have been deemed as potential for economic development on down the line and some were associated with the Farm Center, which you all have already taken care of with the warranty deed , but these particular 16 are things we don’t think the city needs or will need and they can generate some revenue for the city that the city could do something else with,” Childers said.

Council member Billy Singleton thanked the committee for all its work.

Further work on how the city-owned properties will be used will likely be completed by the industrial development board.

“The city of Clanton has funds in an account for the economic development board … we want to reform the board,” Mims said. “We are forming this board with non-elected officials and non-city paid officials … This is something that I think is really going to benefit us.”

These board members will be considered at the Sept. 27 meeting.

Council member Mary Mell Smith asked for clarification on whether it would be an economic development board or an industrial development board.

Mims said it would be considered an industrial development board.

The city recently pulled out of the countywide Industrial Development Authority. This new board would be focused solely on Clanton.

Also to be considered at the voting session on Sept. 27 is an assistance program for employees to make counseling and life coaches available at no cost to employees. City Clerk Jonathan Seale said the cost for the program to the city would be $10,000.