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The Selma city council met Thursday night to discuss the city’s normal business items which resulted in several items on the council’s work session list, being discussed at the city’s next council meeting and some items being discussed during the session.

The result of this push led the council to have the opportunity to discuss several items on the mayor’s report including the possible authorization to submit an application to the Innovative Alabama Network program which is a state funded program to help with infrastructure development projects.

“It lays groundwork for broader engagement and growth of outdoor recreation facilities by building and improving trails, parks, and other physical assets, accessibility and quality of outdoor experiences particularly to help fund and leverage technology improvements to enhance safety programming and accessibility at our outdoor recreation sites,” said Danielle Wooten, Director of Planning and Development.

Wooten said the state funded grant’s mission is to improve infrastructure through technology. Currently, Wooten said there is no match to start the project as of yet and the maximum grant amount for the project is $750,000.

“This is actually round three of the Innovative Alabama Network program and once you are accepted into the network, then you can apply for funds annually,” said Wooten.

The city’s planning and development department said they are currently working with ESP Broadbroad, LLC, which is a company that works with 30 municipalities
all over the state to help design what their project scope will be.

“In general, we are in the process of still designing it so, we don’t know exactly what implementation is going to look like, but it does include access points throughout the city, potential cameras within the parks to enhance safety and accessibility to technology.”

Wooten said they anticipate doing four parks within the city, Bloch Party, Memorial Stadium, Riverfront Park and Ronnie Sharpe Park, that will all have access points to free wi-fi and security camera accessibility to monitor and increase public safety in those particular areas.

The city’s planning and development department said they decided to continue to pursue their efforts for the technology improvements, safety programming and the accessibility of the outdoor recreation sites in Selma, because the old contractor within the network could not get issues resolved from inconsistent communication, the correct configuration for the technology service to the spotty network service for the area.

“Right now, we have the opportunity to put up a brand-new system with this grant to provide correct configuration, a more robust system using Wi-Fi settings technology which is the next upgrade from the Wi-Fi systems we use right now that will put us in a better position and also give us better stability, camera functions and protect our public spaces that we have in the city,” said John Kinnerson, IT Director for the City of Selma.

It’s a multiple solution fix for multiple problems that they currently have and that they plan to extend their focus to other parts of the city and not just downtown, according to Kinnerson.

Council president Billy Young said for a while, residents in the community appeared to be excited for the wifi-accessibility and safety of the parks but said it is quite discouraging to hear that the project isn’t where it needs to be.

Young told the city’s planning and development department that it’s good to hear that they are trying to move on with the grant and retry for their efforts to improve the city.