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Council approves study of bike, pedestrian access on Central Avenue, reappoints Ward 2 BOE member

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While new parking, sidewalks and crosswalks are planned on 18th Street South, the Homewood City Council plans to look at more options for pedestrians and cyclists between Central Avenue and Spring Park.

At its May 20 meeting, the council approved Volkert Engineering’s proposal to study Central Avenue and the possibility of reconnecting a former street along Griffin Brook as a greenway for people on bikes or on foot.

Ward 1 Councilor Andy Gwaltney said several companies submitted proposals, but he felt Volkert was the best choice because the company is already hired to do a citywide traffic study in Homewood, and those two projects could work together.

The issue was sent to the council’s finance committee to decide on funding for the study.

The city council will also have to re-sign its contract with Volkert for the citywide traffic study. City Clerk Melody Salter told councilors that the contract had been signed with an incorrect total amount of $82,000, rather than the $99,860 the city and Volkert had agreed on. The city will pay 20% of the study’s costs.

After interviewing four applicants on May 15, the council also decided to reappoint Jill Kimbrell to her second five-year term as the Ward 2 representative on the Homewood Board of Education. Kimbrell has served as both president and vice president of the board during her first term.

In a short series of committee meetings prior to the May 20 council meeting, special issues committee members also heard from lawyer Alton Parker, representing the owners of the SoHo retail and condo development, about an ongoing disagreement over parking in the deck under Rosewood Hall.

The city’s contract with MAM Investments, which is building a hotel and retail development on 18th Street South, includes a clause concerning employee parking for the development. Parker said his understanding of the contract is that employees of the hotel and retail will be required to park in the city deck rather than on-site, and they are concerned about the parking impact for SoHo’s tenants.

City attorney Mike Kendrick told the committee that the contract just permits employees of MAM Investments’ development to use the parking, but limits them to the underground deck rather than using the surface parking lot behind Rosewood Hall.

Parker asked that the city either remove the clause or make it clearer that it’s conditional, not required. However, special issues committee members chose to drop the issue with little further discussion.

“We don’t feel that it’s against the regulations and the zoning,” Ward 3 Councilor Patrick McClusky said.

Resident Liz Ellaby also came to the special issues committee to discuss open records policies for the city, especially as a bill is being discussed in the state Legislature that would strengthen open records rules and penalties for cities that don’t comply. Kendrick said Homewood follows all state codes related to open meetings and city records requests.

The bill in the state Legislature would include a five-day timeframe that municipalities must approve or deny a request for public documents, and they must include a reason and cite laws if a request is denied.

Cities can charge fees for copies of public documents, though citizens can view them at no charge. The bill would cap copy fees to around 10-15 cents for black and white pages and 50 cents for color, but no more than 1 cent for electronic records. Municipalities that improperly withhold documents could be fined for each day of noncompliance.

Ellaby said she intended to start the conversation on policies around open meetings and records. When asked about specific incidents of noncompliance, Ellaby referenced a task force, created in 2017 with a subset of council and Homewood City Schools officials, that made decisions on hiring a project manager for the school system, public safety and parks projects funded with a $110 million bond.

She also noted a sign code meeting in April where an employee of PlaceMakers, the firm hired to draft the sign code, tried to stop her from recording the meeting and asked to take her phone to confirm that the recording was deleted. After some discussion back and forth, Ellaby did not hand over her phone but was not allowed to continue recording.

Also on May 20, the council:

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