LEESBURG – Leesburg Town Council changed the town parking ordinance, accepted a bid for road work and enacted a distracted driver policy at its Monday night meeting.
Councilman Tom Moore informed the council that there was a downtown business that opens for breakfast at 5 a.m., but the town parking ordinance prohibits parking on the streets between the hours of 3 and 6 a.m.
Larry Richey mentioned the idea of changing the hours of the ordinance slightly to give the street commissioner enough time to clean the streets, but also not interfere with business downtown. Ritchie suggested changing the ordinance to say 3 to 5 a.m.
Doug Jones agreed with Ritchie and suggested that the council keep it simple and change the ordinance to say 3 to 5 a.m. all year round.
Richey thought the town should make it seasonal and alternate on which sides of the street people could park based on what day it is.
Jones disagreed and pushed for a simple change.
Street Commissioner Brandon Queen told the council that two hours was enough time to clean the streets.
Jones moved to adopt the change to the ordinance to say no parking between 3 and 5 a.m., and Richey seconded. The ordinance passed 3-0.
In other business, Queen presented the board with bids from Ranger Materials and Phend and Brown for road work on Smith and School streets.
At last month’s meeting Phend and Brown had not submitted the proper bid. This month Phend and Brown submitted an accurate bid for the work. Phend and Brown’s bid came in at $17,300 and Ranger Materials bid the job at $18,430.
Since the bids were not over a certain amount, the town was not required to use a formal closed bidding process. All of the bids were procured informally, and the town was able to ask Phend and Brown for a rebid.
Moore informed the council that the there is enough money in the street budget to do the project.
“Now that we have an apples-to-apples comparison, I think we should go with Phend and Brown, the local company whose bid came in $1,000 cheaper,” Jones said.
“You said the same thing I was thinking,” said Richey.
The council approved the project 3-0.
At a previous meeting, Richey suggested looking into a possible distracted driver policy for the city in order for the city to be more proactive and safe.
Town attorney Vern Landis prepared an ordinance that was read at the meeting. The ordinance prohibits town employees from using town cell phones while driving town vehicles or personal vehicles. If the employee would like to use the phone, the vehicle must be stationary.
The council approved the ordinance 3-0.
The next meeting of the Leesburg Town Council is Aug. 14 at 6:30 p.m. at the Leesburg Town Hall.
