By By Adam Prestridge
If another hurricane wallops the City of Atmore officials are planning to be even more prepared to clean up once it has passed.
The Atmore City Council unanimously agreed during Monday afternoon's regularly scheduled meeting to begin the process of finding a contractor that would be on standby to begin debris clean up without the delays faced with Hurricane Ivan last year and most recently with Hurricane Dennis.
"We have been working on proposals for qualified firms for advanced contracts to provide disaster debris removal and reduction services in case we should ever encounter another hurricane," Atmore Mayor Howard Shell said. "We don't foresee any in the next few years, but you never know."
State officials and officials with the Army Corp of Engineers advised Shell and the council to consider advanced contracts since Hurricane Ivan and Hurricane Dennis are so fresh on their minds.
"Since we have so many of these things that have been brought to our attention and while we have them all documented it would be to our benefit to go ahead to go out for proposals for advanced contracts in case we did have a disaster, not only a hurricane, but any type of disaster, we would have somebody pre-positioned" Shell said.
The city will send out a notice to contracting firms to announce their intentions for request for proposals from qualified firms for advanced contracting for disaster debris removal and reduction services. The notice will go on to read that the city anticipates release of the request for proposal within the next seven days and will be limited to qualified and experienced firms.
"The city anticipates a multi-year contract for these services," Shell continued.
Qualified firms interested in responding to the request may contact city hall expressing their interest and will then receive a package by first-class mail to qualified first.
Shell believes by awarding a contract prior to a disaster it will save time.
"Rather than us having to wait and do this like we did this time we can go ahead and put people in position to do that," he said.
A number of cities including some in Baldwin County have already awarded advanced contracts to assist in clean up efforts.