Starting in June, the town of Kilmichael will move to once per week garbage pickup. Currently, the town has garbage pick-up on both Tuesdays and Thursdays. Public Works Superintendent Johnny Pearson proposed the town move to once per week pick-up.
The change is due to the town preparing for a much-needed street paving job, and Pearson said it would be a waste to overlay the streets and the garbage trucks damage them later. He felt that the town would re-do the work unless they made the change.
Kilmichael will overlay Binford Street, Money Avenue, Main Street, Ridge Road, a portion of Pine and Stone Streets and Greensboro Street. The town received $200,000 from the Mississippi Legislature and will match that with $50,000 in bond money. The town will prepare the streets, and Murphree Paving in Tupelo will lay the asphalt.
“They can’t say ‘other towns do it,’ because not a lot of towns do it. A lot of them have gone to once a week pick-up,” Pearson said. The aldermen agreed that it made sense to go to once per week pickup.
In other business, board attorney Lane Greenlee shared a few things he learned from a conference he attended on websites, social media and the Open Meetings Act.
Greenlee said if there’s not a way for those are hearing impaired or sight impaired to access the town’s website, they can be sued for a violation of the American Disabilities Act.
He also said that if a person says something derogatory about an alderman or the mayor on the website or Facebook they can’t take it down, it has to stay up.
Howell said the Facebook page doesn’t belong to the Town of Kilmichael but it was started by a Friends of Kilmichael group. City Clerk Pauline Hall said the website was started by the Extension Service.
Greenlee also warned them to be mindful of what they post and share on their own Facebook pages. Greenlee then moved to Open Meetings Act.
“When you go into executive session, you have to go through the steps. You have to consider going into executive session, then tell why you’re going into executive session. You can’t just say it’s a personnel matter, you have to say ‘we’re going into executive because of such and such.’ Then, you have to close open meeting and then vote to go into executive session,” Greenlee said. “You can’t skip a step, you have to do all three.”
“Pauline’s pretty good about making sure we do all of that,” Alderman Bryan Lott said.
Greenlee agreed that Kilmichael’s board has been diligent about taking the steps to go into executive session when it’s needed.
Before closing, Police Chief David Eldridge told board members another tidbit.
“Anything you put on Facebook is permissible in court,” Eldridge said.
