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For almost a month, Councilman Clay Carmichael said he has made city officials including other department heads within the city aware of Wednesday’s public works meeting.

But two minutes into the scheduled public works meeting, Carmichael sat alone in the City Hall Chambers, waiting for other committee members of the city to arrive, when he noticed a  “non-verbal” memorandum from Mayor James Perkins. It indicated all issues that Carmichael wanted to discuss with all parties involved including the council within the city should go through an executive session due to issues such as potential litigation, ethics questions and/or contract negotiations with the possibility of bid requirements being involved.

Soon after, Councilwoman Jannie Thomas joined Carmichael and was made aware of the city’s decision. That led to a mutual agreement between Thomas and Carmichael to adjourn the meeting early because there was not a quorum to discuss the public works business that was on the agenda Wednesday.

“It’s not fair,” Thomas said, “to do this at the last minute. We have been planning this meeting for a month. We talked about it at the council meeting, and we planned this meeting to have the talk about the citizens’ getting this garbage contract and also trying to get this garbage off the street. This is sad for our city, and being that I drive around here every day and I’m a part of Keep Alabama Beautiful, I want to have my city clean, and I’m a part of the public works committee. And I don’t miss meetings and I’m involved in the city because this is where I live and it’s important that our city gets cleaned up.”

Thomas said it didn’t make sense to have household garbage on the street and litter everywhere. She said they are trying to solve issues and work together, but every time they get ready to have a meeting, there’s always a roadblock because “nobody wants to work together.”

Carmichael said the meeting was looked upon as a “gateway meeting” for the members of the council to connect with other departments in the city to bring closure, resolve issues and come to the appropriate solution to alleviate excessive garbage within the city. He wanted to see the city discuss solutions for litter control and work with the code enforcement on possible solutions to make the city a better place.

“If I could take the time and be on the committee and come down here and hear what we can do to help move our city forward, others should be able to do the same as well,” Thomas said. “We just got to work together. That’s the only way we profit. We’ve been playing this for a long time, and citizens are calling us about this garbage out here and the trash on the street.”

Carmichael said it’s about “par for the course.” He said there have been 20 public works meetings since they have been in office, and for half of them, committee members never show.

“It gets worse and worse,” said Carmichael. “Like giving notice of it right at the beginning is just not right. I spoke with Hatwatha McGhee, who is the interim director of Code Enforcement, and she said she had a proposal ready for us for the meeting. And so, if she didn’t have it ready, I wouldn’t have called the meeting.”

Carmichael said they are just trying to find a common ground with the city and an effective way to compromise on something. The purpose of the meeting was to compromise because Perkins rejected the initial proposal with the county, and “we expected a proposal from them at this meeting.”

“But, it’s wrong,” said Thomas. “This is a municipality, a government and the municipality is supposed to work together, on all common ground of any move in the city for. This is what is going to have to come to an end because none of them are all a part of anything when it comes to beautifying the city of Selma, people go all out their way to try to help do things for the city itself or try to keep it clean.”

Thomas said since being in office, cleanups are solely held by them and not the city.

“We even haul our own garbage that we pick up out of our own wards and take it to the landfills ourselves,” Thomas said. “All the litter we pick up and the garbage that we get off the street in my ward, Ward 7, I do it and whoever Carmichael has helping him clean up his ward, they take it to the landfill. So, we’ve been doing a lot of work, keeping our district clean. So, these people that are holding us back, we don’t ever see them out there in the streets with a pickup stick or volunteering, including getting involved and keeping Selma clean.”

Thomas said sometimes when she drives throughout the city, she gets depressed because litter is present all throughout the roadways and there’s so much garbage on the street.

“It makes me mad that we have to come to this,” Thomas said. “Selma has never been as littery and nasty. We got to do what we have to do because we are the legislative branch and people got to understand that we have to come to common ground. They are the department head. You got to work with us. We are not trying to run day to day, we want the committee to come together and that’s the purpose of a committee meeting for both sides to come together.”

The Selma Times-Journal reached out to the mayor’s executive assistant Jasmine Robinson on Thursday and her statement to the press was that she was currently out of office and could not talk about the situation at the present time and said she would reach back to us once she got a chance.