City Council Wrap Up
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A couple of hot topic issues were voted on at tonight’s city council meeting.
City leaders discussed the future of the Webber building, the latest on the Montgomery Mall and the proposed smoking ordinance.
A proposed smoking ordinance that would ban smoking in the city’s public restaurants and bars, was put back into committee at Tuesday night’s city council meeting.
“So many technical things,” said City Councilman Richard Bollinger. “We want to get it right.”
Changes to the current ordinance have been debated by city leaders and business owners since October and City Councilman C.C. Calhoun says it’s still a work in progress.
“We’re getting push back,” he said. “We’re getting pros and cons. We’re getting a lot of advertisement that’s about to hit the fan about non-smoking, the health portion of the non-smoking ordinance. And we all know that smoking is bad but I think it should be a choice of the owner whether he wants to be non-smoking.”
City funds will go to provide incentives to the Montgomery Mall project. Loveless Academic Magnet Program will move into the former Parisian building, while another technical high school is slated to move into the old J.C. Penney building.
“I’m very pleased because as a representative, as a council for district 6, and as a resident of south Montgomery, the mall has been vacant for way too long and this is a good opportunity to have some anchor entities there,” said City Councilman Jon Dow.
And the future of the Webber building will be decided soon. The historic building collapsed in June and while the council didn’t vote on what can be done with it Tuesday night, Montgomery Mayor Todd Strange says a plan of action is coming soon.
“I am suspecting at the end of this month, we’ll either have a decision to go forward or to then make a determination of just how best to bring that back to beneficial use,” he said. “The demolition of the Webber building is not out of the realm of possibility.”
