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By NOAH WORTHAM | Staff Writer

CHELSEA – The city of Chelsea awarded funds to Chelsea High School for the purchase of a Daktronics video board during a regularly scheduled city council meeting on Tuesday, May 16.

The complete project is estimated to cost $418,789. The Chelsea Quarterback Club has raised $100,000 to aid the city of Chelsea in paying for the project.

“I have received some emails that were not in favor of this but I received many, many more notes and people urging us to approve this,” Chelsea Mayor Tony Picklesimer said. “I want to say to the quarterback club, ‘When you go out and raise 100,000 of your own money, that speaks volumes to us as a council.’ We appreciate it when parents get behind something and get it to work. Well done.”

The initial pitch for the video board project was presented during a pre-council meeting on Tuesday, May 2.

Chelsea Quarterback Club President Mike Brooks attended the pre-council meeting with other members of the club to explain the school’s need for a video board.

Brooks said the video board will help bring Chelsea to the level of some of the competition and help retain and attract players.

The video board also serves as a revenue generator, allowing the club to obtain funds to use for future expenditures.

“The Shelby County Board of Education does not provide any revenue for athletics, so we have to generate all the revenue,” Brooks said. “There is only so much we can generate by selling signs on a fence and doing PA announcements and things like that. A video board gives us a lot of opportunities.”

The video board has multiple functions and can also serve for educational and recreational purposes.

“It doesn’t just have to be used for sports,” Brooks said. “You have graduation, pep rallies, district PSA’s, student growth and movie nights, concerts, corporate events.”

Members of the Chelsea Quarterback Club were present at the city council meeting to support the passing of the resolution and clapped at its unanimous approval by the Chelsea City Council.

In other news, the Chelsea City Council approved a rezoning request by David Brogdon of Tall Timbers for property located off of Highway 11 consisting of roughly 40 acres.

The council also approved a resolution to close a bank account for a completed utility improvement project.

“We did a waterline improvement down Highway 49 to boost pressure in existing neighborhoods over there,” Councilmember Scott Weygand said. “(The city accountant encouraged us) to create a secondary bank account just for that project, and now that project is completed he told us to close it.”

Picklesimer said the city came under budget on that project.

During the meeting, the Chelsea City Council also approved the submission of a TAP application for streetscape improvements on Chesser Drive.

The Chelsea City Council meetings for the month of June will be on Tuesday June 2 and on Tuesday, June 16th.