BY ALLIE HULCHER/ REPORTER

The Madison City Council voted 6-2 to approve a $2 million bid for construction of a third fire station in Madison.

Fire Station #2 was condemned a few years ago due to mold and the fire fighters have been housed in a trailer beside the fire station.

“I’m anxious to get this started and get these fire fighters out of the trailer,” said council member Larry Vannoy at the city council meeting on Tuesday night.

“It’s been four years, far too long,” added council member Steve Haraway.

The money will come out of the Capital Improvement budget and will go to Lee Builders.

The council also authorized Dublin Park to be an emergency shelter facility with the American Red Cross.  City attorney Kelly Butler emphasized that it won’t be a storm shelter, but rather somewhere victims can go in the aftermath of a storm.

“It’s mainly just a roof and four walls and a bathroom and a place where they can sleep and shower and perhaps set up for meals that are being brought in.”

The council agreed to pay $1000 for an artist to create drawings of what downtown Madison will look like in the future.

“The drawings can show residents what it will look like in a few years when we have mature trees develop,” said council member Ronica Ondocsin.  “We can use these renderings as publicity.”

The council made further advancements for the publicity of when it agreed to pay $600 for advertisement spots in a Huntsville tourism book that will be distributed in 3300 hotel rooms around Huntsville.

Amy Furfori, director of community development and planning, presented plans to rezone a 17.3 acre area from M-1  (light industrial) to MU (mixed use).  The council decided to move making a decision on the rezoning to the next council meeting.

The council authorized a water and sewer infrastructure relocation agreement with Madison Utilities.

“What this does is puts in place sort of a ‘now you know what we’re thinking and we know what you’re thinking’ when it comes to water and sewer relocation projects,” said Butler.  “Now we know who’s responsible for what and who pays for what and under what circumstances.”

Contractor Clay Baker addressed the issue of a sinkhole located on Dublin Circle that partially touches a private property.  The sinkhole has been growing larger, especially with the recent rains.

“The homeowners who are chasing for this have to realize that we’re not preparing the whole sinkhole, because we don’t know the full scope of this. We’re just trying to stabilize the sinkhole,” said city engineer Gary Chynoweth.

Mayor Paul Finley was not present at the meeting, but Butler said that he should be able to negotiate and execute an agreement not to fix the sinkhole but to not exceed a dollar amount of $2950 plus 10 percent.

“We’ve been getting a lot of rain within the last days, so of course we don’t want to sit on this. I hope we can make this happen by the next council meeting,” said council member Steve Haraway.

In other business, the Dollar General Store on 7950 Highway 72 West was able to obtain a beer and wine license from the council.