By Ray King
By a vote of 5-3 Monday night, the Pine Bluff City Council acknowledged that Garland Trice owes the city $123,496.97 to cover the costs of razing the building that Trice owned at 620 Main St., after it fell in 2014, then hauling away the rubble.
At the last council meeting, Trice and his attorney Luther Sutter had been given two weeks to meet with City Attorney Althea Hadden-Scott and try to reach an agreement on the debt.
Monday, Hadden-Scott told the council that she and Sutter had met ad reminded the council that thier only responsibility with deciding if the $123,000 plus figure represents the amount the city spent.
Council member Bruce Lockett, who cast one of the five votes to approve the figure talked to Deltaplex News after the meeting.
Trice contended during the meeting that amount of the bill is “a fraud” and said it was “inflated.”
Lockett responded to those claims this way.
Others voting to uphold the amount of the bill were council members Lloyd Holcomb Jr., Glen Brown Jr., Joni Alexander and Steven Shaner while council members Steven Mays, Ivan Whitfield and Glen Brown Sr., voted no.
Also Monday, resolutions reappointing Latasha Renee Woods, Stephen W. Huselton and Terrance Mitchner to the Pine Bluff Planning Commission were approved, as was a resolution appointing Lumond E. Rhodes Jr., to the same commission to serve his first term.
The reappointment of another member of that commission, was turned down by a vote of 5-3 with Mays, Whitfield, Alexander, Brown Sr., and Shaner voting no whole Lockett, Brown Jr.., and Holcomb Jr., voted yes.
