Madison City Council hears presentations, gives funds to improve Dublin Park

The Madison City Council heard presentations from the local YMCA branch and Huntsville’s behavioral health facility at its meeting March 23. (File Photo/Nick Sellers)

By Nick Sellers | Staff Writer

MADISON – Funding for the Hogan Family YMCA, as well as for the Wellstone Behavioral Health (formerly the Mental Health Center of Madison County) were both in the spotlight at the Madison City Council meeting March 23.

Jerry Courtney, CEO of Heart of the Valley YMCA, which manages Madison’s Hogan Family YMCA in addition to the two branches and three child development centers in Huntsville, and Hogan Family Executive Director Daniel Kasambira made presentations to the Council in connection to the $12,500 appropriation approved to the local branch.

The Council approved the funds 5–1, with District 2 Councilman Steve Smith dissenting.

“We are thankful for what you do for our community,” Mayor Troy Trulock said. “It’s obvious, the number [of customers] is going up.”

All Council members expressed desire to cultivate a relationship with the branch going forward.

“I hope we can honor some appropriation based on what they’re doing today,” District 3 Councilman D.J. Klein said.

The Councl also approved the $20,000 appropriation with Wellstone Behavioral Health.

Brian Davis, CEO of Wellstone, said the center saw more people in 2014 than in any other one-year period in the clinic’s 45-year history. Davis said 950 of those were Madison residents.

Alabama Psychiatric Services, a psychiatric care group that had offices in Madison and Decatur, closed its offices in early February.

In other business, the Council approved a services agreement for $3,980 with Johnson & Associates, a Huntsville-based civil engineering firm, to survey the east boundary of Dublin Park and identify “trees of concern (generally, diseased or decayed) as directed by City, visible property corners, and encroachments into the Park within the surveyed area,” as the resolution stated.

Smith, Trulock and Council President Tommy Overcash also grave a brief account of the trio’s meeting with Moody’s Investors Service, which prevented the three from attending the last Council meeting March 9. Overcash said the City retained its Aa2 bond credit rating, which is two notches below the highest rating of Aaa in the company’s 22 tiers.