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Gadsden approves $75,000 change order to expand roadside herbicide treatment to state-owned lots
Summary
The council authorized a change order with EDKO LLC to add treatment of state-owned vacant lots within the city; the single-application cost was stated as $35,656 and the total change order amount was capped at $75,000 to cover two applications.
The Gadsden City Council voted to adopt a change order with EDKO LLC for the 2024 City of Gadsden herbicide project to add state-owned vacant properties to the city's contract for roadside and median herbicide treatment.
Councilman Wilson explained that the city maintains many state-owned parcels that became city concerns after tax liens and that the state provides no maintenance funding: "The City of Gadsden has over a thousand properties in our city limits, which are technically owned by the state of Alabama due to individuals abandoning that property... and it being, taken by the state in the form of a tax lien. ... the state of Alabama does not give those local municipalities any resources or funding to maintain their state owned properties."
On the record, the council approved adding "4 26 state owned properties" to the treatment list and stated the cost to apply herbicide to those "4 26 properties" was $35,656 per application. The council accepted a change order totaling $75,000 to cover two applications per year (the meeting record frames the total as sufficient for two applications). The motion to consider the item under new business was approved and the change order was adopted by voice vote.
The meeting record contains an ambiguous numeric phrase — "4 26" — when referring to the count of state-owned properties added; the transcript does not clarify whether that denotes 426 parcels or a different figure. The transcript also did not include a project start date, a list of parcel identifiers, or a detailed map of affected locations; the contracting department and attorney's office were described as part of the review process for discretionary spending.
