City Commission meets

By HARVEY SIMPSON

CORDELE — Efforts to establish the city as a permanent satellite campus for Darton College highlighted Tuesday night’s Cordele City Commission meeting.

Cordele-Crisp Chamber of Commerce higher education committee chairman Bob Evans said that since the Darton satellite campus was launched here seven years ago enrollment has grown to 300 full-time students.

During that time Evans said the chamber has raised over $900,000 to fund Darton as a permanent satellite facility, having to provide and maintain a building and to supplement any deficit during its early years of operation.

“We want to re-vitalize downtown Cordele and towards that end have a written agreement for over a $2 million donation of land as Perlis Properties has given us two-thirds of three city blocks,” Evans said.

The area to which he was referring lies from Cordele Recreation Parlor (better known as the pool room) and the Southern Railroad tracks to the west as well as 11th and 12th Avenues on the south and Wall Street on the north.

Evans, who was accompanied to the meeting by fellow committee members Monica Simmons and Billy Cannon, said chamber officials had initially planned to ask the city and county commissions as well as the Crisp County Power Commission to provide $16,000 in master planning money for the project.

Just this week, though, he said the United Industrial Development Authority had given $4,000, leaving a need of $12,000 that would be equally split between the three aforementioned bodies. The city promptly agreed to provide its share.

The total $16,000 request would cover the cost of hiring a consultant who among other things would develop a budget. It would also allow for the employment of an architect as well as structural engineers.

“Our No. 1 priority,” Evans said after the commission’s action, “is to get Darton College completed in downtown Cordele. We have applied for five different grants (one has already been submitted and the other four are in the process of being formulated).

“Our job is to build a building, donate it to the university system and then allow it to take over operations. We would like for it to look like a true college campus that would be attractive to students.

“If we’re successful in efforts to get our permanent campus constructed, current Darton College president Peter Sireno is confident that within five years we can grow from our current 300 students to over 1,000. This would be huge for our community.”

Darton currently has 5,600 students enrolled in its Albany campus and Cordele satellite location. That compares with the approximately 2,400 students enrolled at Georgia Southwestern and the 1,800 now attending Albany State.

In other action, city commissioners:

— Heard from Simmons that the chamber and tourism committee are working with the Department of Transportation on an I-75 beautification project. More details will be revealed later.

—Proclaimed Oct. 19 as Public Safety Appreciation Day in which those involved in that field of work will be special guests at a dinner gathering.

— Received various project updates from River Valley Regional Commission representatives.

Gerald Mixon addressed the city’s efforts to obtain a grant to help launch the Gillespie-Selden redevelopment plan.

Jarrod McCarthy told commissioners its overall scoring on the $500,000 Frontage Road widening project that hopefully will result in additional retail development was “high on demographics, reasonable on feasibility, medium on impact, strong on strategy and pretty good overall.”

McCarthy also briefly touched upon final closeouts of the Boys and Girls Club and Economic Incentive Program for the Commons located at the corner of I-75 and Ga. 300.

— Approved an application to allow the consumption of beer and wine on the premises at Shelia’s Restaurant located in the Ramada Inn.

— Recommended Debbie Wright as its appointee to the governor’s water contingency task force.

— Learned September SPLOST receipts totaled $329,396, an amount almost identical to the $329,591 received in August.

— Heard from City Manager Jean Burnette that the SAM Shortline had attracted 11,641 riders on the 46 runs it has made thus far this year and that since the first of July there has been 60 uses of the Community Clubhouse where 4,390 people were served during that time.

— Tabled a second reading on a new abandoned vehicle ordinance. However, the ordinance as it exists will continue to be enforced.

— Approved the expenditure of almost $1,500 from its contingency fund to help defray the costs of the annual legislative fish fry in Atlanta.

— Heard from public safety director Dwayne Orrick who praised the trio of firemen who recently entered a burning Sunset Homes apartment to rescue four youngsters trapped inside.

“Had they been just 2-3 minutes later in their rescue attempts, those children might not have survived,” said Orrick who also lauded city firefighters for raising $2,900 to support the Jerry Lewis muscular dystrophy telethon.

Orrick also had verbal praise for police officers for their hard work and efforts in solving the Sonny’s Package Store armed robbery and an attempted robbery at Quick Buys and for arresting three teen-agers accused of a string of recent residential burglaries.

Orrick said the city thus far this year has been awarded various grants totaling almost $618,000, $75,000 of which came from the president’s stimulus package as the result of a visit he and commissioner Jimmy Black made to Washington to meet with U.S. Rep. Sanford Bishop.

Some of the grant money received will be used, Orrick said, to install high resolution digital cameras in high crime areas hopefully by the first of the year.

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