In addition to approving the long-discussed Pope Center hotel proposal at their regular August meeting Monday night, Mayor Willie Burns and the Washington City Council covered several other items, including discussing how to reverse the choice of a contractor to build Rusher Street homes.

The meeting was preceded by a zoning hearing in which the city approved the request by Renee Brown and J.R. Suggs to rezone two Spring Street duplexes adjacent to Wills Memorial Hospital from R-3 to P-1 to allow for professional use.

Councilman Ames Barnett told the council that he wanted to rescind his vote on the motion to award the first Rusher Street housing contract. “I disagree with how the process was done,” Barnett said. “We didn’t choose the right contractor. I recalculated those bids and saw that we were wrong to accept that choice over Mr. Dill.”

City Attorney Barry Fleming said that Barnett could go on record as having voted ‘no’ on the selection of the contractor, but any action beyond that could cause problems. “I’ve talked with several of you about this, and said that any reversal would cause problems. Rebidding would cause the least problems. Since the contract has already been signed, any other choice is opening us up for a lawsuit.”

Stephen C. Carter, lawyer for the low-bidding builder Sim Dill, rose to argue his case that since the mayor knew the majority of the council wanted to award the contract to Dill, he should have called for another vote. Fleming pointed out what he said were errors in Carter’s statement, and said that such an action would have been improper.

The council considered having a called meeting to discuss the problem, saying that delays in street work on Rusher Street had delayed the start of construction of the homes. Council members have stated the desire to structure the bidding process to give proper weight to well-known local builders such as Dill.

Councilman Nathaniel Cullars proposed to change all city employees to be paid weekly, rather than some city employees being paid monthly, some bi-weekly, and others weekly. “It’s not right. Employees should be paid once a week,” he said. The proposal passed with the vote split 3 to 3 with Mayor Burns voting in favor.

Washington Police Chief Mike Davis announced that former Washington Police officer Philiph Perkins has been chosen as the department’s new investigator. “I took Philiph from McDonald’s ten years ago,” Davis said. “He’s completed his training as an investigator and I know he’s going to do well.”

At Councilman Kimberly Rainey’s request, City Economic Developer David Jenkins gave the council updates on the effort to have a statue of Austin Dabney erected on The Square, and on the preparations to build a city pool and community center.