With little fanfare, the Selma City Council approved the School Resource Officer (SRO) program proposed by Selma Police Department (SPD) Chief Spencer Collier and Selma City Schools Superintendent Dr. Avis Williams along with a slate of other resolutions during Tuesday’s meeting.

The SRO program that was finally approved after weeks of back and forth between Collier and the council calls for the local school system to cover the cost of two officers, the city to cover the cost of one officer via funds already earmarked in the SPD budget and one officer to be covered through grant funding.

The original proposal called for five officers, but Collier altered the agreement to ensure that there would be no cost to the city to get the program off the ground.

Additionally, the council approved the following resolutions:

• The council declared 26 SPD vehicles as surplus property – the vehicles will be auctioned off by the city in the coming weeks;

• The council approved a “Back to School” sales tax holiday to commence Friday, July 19 until Sunday, July 21;

• The council declared May Mental Health Awareness Month;

• The council approved a fee waiver for use of the Selma Convention Center for the 2020 Job Fair to be hosted by the Dallas County JOBS Task Force;

• The council approved a drainage system project on Barrett Road in Ward 1 – the project is worth $350,000 and will leave the city paying $175,000 over 10 years with oil lease funds being used to offset the cost of annual payments;

• The council approved a motion to seek guidance from the Attorney General’s office regarding the use of oil lease funds for cleaning overgrown lots in the city;

• The council approved placement of a loading zone in front of Kustom Kreations on Broad Street.

The council also presented a resolution to the Blackmon family, naming Sarah and Haley Blackmon “junior ambassadors.”

The two girls competed in the Our Little Miss pageant, which held an event in Selma earlier this year, and Haley Blackmon was named Our Little Miss of West Alabama and Sarah Blackmon was named Our Little Miss of Alabama.

Both girls will travel to St. Augustine, Florida to represent the state in the national Our Little Miss Pageant later this year.

David and Dee Blackmon, the girls’ parents, were on hand to accept the resolution, which was signed by all nine council members, alongside their daughters.

The council also received its first financial update from Selma City Treasurer Ronita Wade since she returned to work last week.

“We’re not on a major decrease,” Wade said, noting that revenue is out-pacing expenditures and the city currently has no outstanding debts.

In March, general fund revenue was at just over $10 million and expenditures were a little more than $7.2 million.

That being the case, and the fact that tax revenues have by and large increased over last year’s numbers, Wade said she had difficulty understanding why there was a need to lay off 68 employees last November.

“It’s hard to determine what caused the distress,” Wade said, noting that the city never laid anyone off during the recession and was always able to pay its bills.

For her part, Wade said that eliminating a handful of “high-paying” positions not approved in the budget, currently accounting for about $200,000 in expenditures, and taking action to ensure that defunded positions are not being paid would go a long way in bringing some of those laid-off workers back to work.

Elsewhere in the meeting, Morgan Academy Student Government Association (SGA) President Richard Watters announced plans to clean up Old Live Oak Cemetery Saturday morning.

Watters said that he and other SGA members wanted to do something for the city and created the Motivating Others and Revitalizing the Environment (MORE) campaign to find a project.

The group contacted Selma City Councilwoman Miah Jackson and decided to take on the clean-up project.

The group will be at the cemetery at 8 a.m. Saturday and is asking the community to step up and help out – the group still needs equipment, such as rakes, push mowers, weed eaters and the like.

“The youth in Selma is energetic and ready to make a change,” Watters said.

Selma City Councilwoman Angela Benjamin reminded those in attendance that the annual “Jazz on the Grazz” festival will be held June 15 from noon until 10 p.m. and thanked the council and those in attendance for supporting the recent ribbon cuttings by two young entrepreneurs.

“This is what Selma does and this is what Selma looks like,” Benjamin said. “We put the ‘unity’ back in community.”