The Athens City Council on Monday decided to delay a vote on changes to the city’s zoning ordinance out of respect for two councilmen who were not at the regularly scheduled meeting.

Council President Harold Wales said because Joseph Cannon and Chris Seibert were out of town, he would prefer to delay the council’s vote until the April 22 meeting. The ordinance to amend was instead introduced and a public hearing was held, though no members of the public spoke at the hearing.

City attorney Shane Black, Police Chief Floyd Johnson and Geographic Information System Coordinator Micah Cochran each provided an overview of the proposed changes and how the current ordinance would be changed. The proposed changes can be viewed online at https://bit.ly/AthensZoning.

Elsewhere Monday, Mayor Ronnie Marks encouraged the council to consider funding a request from Athens Main Street Director Tere Richardson to provide up to $12,000 to purchase signs for the city’s downtown public parking lots and way-finding signs to guide visitors to the lots. Richardson explained there are four major lots she feels are ignored by the public because downtown visitors may not know they can park in them.

Richardson said if the city would agree to purchase the signs, Athens Main Street would fund the purchase of directional blades for the signs to point the way to attractions and public restrooms. She said a second phase would involve cleaning up the public parking lots, but Richardson hopes those efforts can be funded through a partnership between public and private entities.

The conversation about parking led to a brief discussion about the parking around The Square. Wales asked if employees of the Limestone County Courthouse were ticketed if they were parked longer than three hours. Johnson said his department had not been writing parking tickets on a regular basis because the three-hour parking limit signs around the courthouse were taken down and never replaced.

“There’s no warning and I just didn’t think it was fair,” he told the council. “We do know if a car has been left for an extended period and we do (write tickets) where there are still signs.”

Finally, the city approved spending $1.38 million from Athens Utilities’ budget to let Broadway Electric perform line construction in booming parts of the county. Electric Department Manager Blair Davis explained there are several line-construction projects in the works, including on Capshaw Road in East Limestone and on Greenbrier Parkway from Polaris to the future Mazda Toyota Manufacturing U.S.A. site.

Davis said the upgrade would provide MTMUSA temporary power until a planned substation goes online next year. Once the substation is complete, the new line would be used to provide power to other properties along the parkway.

Another line will run south from the former Delphi manufacturing site to the Belle Mina substation. That substation will provide power to automotive supplier Bocar, which is building a $117 million facility in the SouthPoint Industrial Park that will hire more than 300 people.

Money for the line construction projects was included as part of the current budget.

Other business

In other business, the council:

• Approved Friday, April 19, as an additional holiday for non-essential employees. Human Resources Director Marsha Sloss said essential personnel would receive holiday pay, which amounted to $75,000 to $80,000 for employees paid by the general fund and $4,500 to $5,000 for Athens Utilities employees. She plans to request Good Friday be added to the current list of citywide holidays as part of the fiscal 2020 budget;

• Adopted a new organizational chart for the city’s Gas Department to reflect the addition of three new employees. Sloss explained there is a need for the additional positions because of the city’s growth. Funding for the new hires was included in the current fiscal budget;

• Approved the state’s Back-to-School Sales Tax Holiday, which exempts certain items from local and state sales taxes. This year’s holiday is set for July 19-21;

• Approved special events retail on-premises consumption alcohol licenses for Athens-Limestone Hospital and Athens Rotary Club for upcoming events; and

• Set a public hearing for May 13 to review a request from the Athens city school board to rezone property at 16152 Lucas Ferry Road from a single-family medium density residential district to a single family attached residential district.