City Council Candidate Q&A – Ralph Dawe

News

Friday, 02 August 2024 09:09

Each candidate running for public office was asked to answer a set of questions for publication.
Below are answers from candidates running for Scottsboro City Council Place 1.

1. What do you see as the biggest issue facing our city, and how do you intend to solve this problem?
We must plan ahead to find a better way to discard the city’s refuse. Currently, we have landfills where the city discards all of the cities refuse, garbage, shrubs and construction materials. Due to the influx of new buildings, new businesses, new residents, our landfill is filling up faster than the estimated time to fill each landfill.
The City Council and I are researching new and modern ways to discard our refuse in a better manner than landfills. If we run out of room for landfills and don’t have an alternative plan in place, we may find ourselves contracting with other means to get rid of our refuse, which may be very expensive for the City of Scottsboro and its taxpayers.

2. What are your plans to address eel grass in non-residential areas throughout the city’s public access points and waterways?
We are currently discussing remedies for the eel grass problem with TVA and other possible alternatives to remedy the eel grass problem.

3. What kind of paving plan would you implement if elected?
Currently, we have a system in place that allows a council appointed committee that researches the worst roads within the city and then places those roads on a list to be paved.
Funds for paving each year have been increased to meet our demands of repairing our roads. Road paving is very expensive and the city funds dictate how much road paving is completed each year. The committee is compromised of department heads from the Police, Street, Sanitation and Fire Departments. Included in the committee are two city council members and the Mayor of Scottsboro.

4. How would you ensure that the city junk ordinance is enforced, as many citizens report not knowing who is responsible for enforcing it or who to contact with a complaint?
The city junk ordinance is enforced by the ordinance officer at the Police Department. If a citizen has a junk complaint, they can call City Hall rand report the problem to the City Clerk, The City Clerk then forwards the complaint to the ordinance officer for investigation and enforcement. This is the current process.

5. Currently, girls’ softball is played on outdated fields in poor condition with facilities that are not ADA compliant. What will you do to make their facility comparable to the boys’ facility, Veterans Field?
Do you support modernizing the city’s facilities to compete with surrounding cities to host girls’ softball tournaments?
The present council and I are currently researching costs to renovate the current softball fields, buildings and grounds to a more modern and usable facility. This will enhance further tournaments and make it more inviting to our citizens and visitors to pour city. I do support improving out baseball and softball facilities.