By JESSA PEASE / Staff Writer

PELHAM—Pelham City Council voted to extend its one-year prohibition on granting certain business licenses at the June 15 meeting.

The extension will last one-year and prevents certain businesses, such as payday loans, car title loans, check cashing, gold and silver brokering, tattoo parlors, pawn shops, vape shops, tobacco shops and used automobile sales businesses from obtaining licenses.

Last year, the council voted to prohibit issuing business licenses for said shops in order to reassess, with help from the Pelham Planning Commission and the Commercial Development Authority of Pelham, the city’s present zoning ordinance, policies and procedures concerning those businesses.

The city has not yet completed the reassessment, so the council decided to extend its prohibition one additional year.

“We’ve discussed this many times,” said council president Rick Hayes. “We are still in the process of nailing down everything that needs to be put together as far as the review, and, working through this with council, they have recommended that we renew this for one year as we work through the overall objectives of the proposal.”

Also at the meeting, the council accepted the independent audit and financial statements for the 2014 fiscal year.  Auditor Jenny Gray was present to discuss the break down of both Pelham’s assets and debts for the year.

The total capital assets for were $97 million, a $984,000 decrease from last year that Gray attributed mostly to depreciation offset by purchases during the year. Pelham’s total debt service for the 2014 fiscal year is $98 million over the course of the next 20 years.

“Since we reviewed everything as you were going through it, I feel very comfortable with what you were saying,” Hayes said. “We know the issues we’ve got with the additional debt we issued, how we set it up and why we set it up that way. There’re a couple options we will probably look into as we go forward with that.”

The city council also:

• Proclaimed June 2015 as Scleroderma Awareness Month in the City of Pelham.
• Approved the transfer of surplus property — 2.16 acres in Pelham — to Donovan Gravlee. Graylee will purchase the land $30,000.
• Declared certain non-specific computer and electronic items as surplus property of the City of Pelham, and authorized disposal of said items.
• Considered the transfer of surplus property, 2080 Lee St., from the City of Pelham to Peltown Realty, LLP. In it’s first reading, the ordinance proposes Peltown purchasing the 8-acre property for the sum of $480,000, $10,000 of which in earnest money to be paid at the execution of the sale contract.
• Announced that the City of Pelham will co-sponsor Fire on the Water at Oak Mountain State Park July 3.
• Announced that Pelham Palooza will be held at the Pelham Civic Complex & Ice Arena July 17-18.

Council member Ron Scott was absent for the June 15 meeting. The next scheduled Pelham City Council meeting will be July 6 at Pelham City Hall.