By Jay Sowers

The Selma Times-Journal

 

After spending much of Tuesday’s City Council meeting talking about recent, current, and future repairs on the city’s aging infrastructure, Selma Mayor George Evans made an unusual plea for financial assistance from members of the public.

“I say to our citizens if you have means or monies, or you want to leave a trust or an endowment to the city of Selma, leave an endowment were we can take this money and do our infrastructure,” Evans said.

With the costs for the upkeep of roads, buildings and services mounting, Evans said the city must get creative when considering how it can pay for the work.

“I think that the only way we’ll be able to cover for [repairs], unless we get some money from somewhere, is to get people to donate money to the city of Selma in a trust fund or endowment to get our city’s infrastructure up to par,” Evans said.

Evans added that any donations left to the city can have instructions on how the donator wishes for the money to be spent.

“I’d love for folks to leave endowments to the city with certain criteria for how the money should be spent,” Evans said. “And it has safeguards so that the money won’t be spent illegally or wrongly.”

While he acknowledged that Selma’s current financial situation is not one-of-a-kind, Evans said the city’s age means there will be a steady stream of work over the coming years.

“We are an old city, God knows we are,” Evans said. “We have an old city that is going to require some millions and millions of dollars to build, and do infrastructure [work] in our city. It is not going to go away, no matter who the mayor is.”

Evans said the city’s size also has it at a disadvantage when getting funds.

“I’m doing all I can.” Evans said. “And I know all the councilmen are doing all they can to try to find the funding. But, we don’t get the money [from the state] that Mobile and Montgomery get, because we are an un-entitled city.”