Hinesville City Council has approved an agreement to provide a city police officer for Liberty Regional Medical Center on weekends.
LRMC requested that the police officer be posted at the hospital on the weekends for security reasons. An officer would be taken from the Saturday, Sunday and Monday-night shifts and posted just at the hospital starting Aug. 1.
The hospital would pay the city $30 per hour for the officer.
The agreement will remove an officer from patrolling the streets on weekends because the city does not plan to add officer to fill in that shift. Some council members said during their meeting Thursday that they were concerned about losing a patrol officer.
“We’re going to review this as a test period to see if it works for us and them,” City Manager Billy Edwards said.
The agreement may be expanded to include more hours and days, according to Edwards.
The agreement has a termination clause so if the setup doesn’t work, the hospital or the city can get out of it.
Road paving
During the council meeting’s public-comment segment, Dorothy Rentz spoke about Mattie Street off of Highway 84.
Mattie Street needs to be paved as soon as possible, she told council.
Rentz said the road was ranked 20th on the city’s list of improvement projects, and third on the list to be paved.
Mattie Street has about 30 families and six businesses who use the road, while the first and second streets on the paving list together have a total of four families, she said.
“We have a washboard of a road,” Rentz said. She added that a company can grate the road, but the next rain makes it bumpy.
She said that already, a family had to leave the area because the car broke down as a result of the rough road. That family, she said, decided to leave the area as soon as they were able.
Councilman Keith Jenkins said he’s been down that road before and knows it is bad. He said the council will look into moving the project along.
Executive session
The last item on the agenda was an executive session about a real-estate matter. The council’s decision was to authorize two friendly condemnations or eminent-domain proceedings in the Azalea Street redevelopment project.
The four parcels in the two estates had several heirs, including some who could not be located.
One of the estates possibly has more than 30 heirs Assistant City Attorney Richard Braun said.
“This is the cleanest mechanism to get title to the city. And the money will go to the probate court, and the probate court disperses the funds,” Braun said.
He said that many of the heirs are excited about this so that the matter can be concluded.