News

Council approves land sale for USDA facility

By DON FLETCHER
News Staff Writer

Atmore’s City Council, sitting one member short, approved during the Monday, April 26, council meeting the sale of a piece of property on Carpet Drive that will be used for a United States Department of Agriculture peanut grading facility.
The new facility will reportedly be built on a 5.014-acre site near the Coastal Growers shelling plant that is being constructed along Industrial and Carpet drives. Mayor Jim Staff said the city would receive $9,000 an acre for the property, indicating a total price of just over $45,000.
“This resolution authorizes the sale of certain property to Rolin Smoke LLC for the construction of a laboratory facility to serve the Coastal Growers plant at a fair market of $9,000 an acre,” Mayor Jim Staff read.
District 4’s Shawn Lassiter was in New Orleans for his job, and his council peers voted unanimously to approve the measure.
The council members also heard from Municipal Court Judge Karean Reynolds about the new I.M.P.A.C.T. program, under which middle school and high school students perform monthly cleanups and otherwise work to rid a 600-meter section along Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue.
In other business, the council

  • held the first reading of a resolution to adopt the 2021 Alabama Division Hazard Mitigation Plan.
  • reappointed Willie Hawthorne to the city’s Housing Board.
  • reappointed Dr. Ulysses McBride and Wayne Gray to the city’s Utilities Board.