By NEAL WAGNER / City Editor

The Pelham City Council during its June 4 meeting likely will reconsider a motion to seek outside companies to possibly manage the Pelham Civic Complex, Council President Teresa Nichols announced during a May 24 special meeting.

During the meeting, council members received a detailed revenue and expense report for the Civic Complex, which was broken down by food and beverage service, ice and main arena “cost centers.”

City officials previously said the Civic Complex has been losing between $900,000 and $1 million a year for more than a decade.

The council narrowly voted down a similar motion during its May 14 meeting.

If passed, the motion would issue a request for proposals for companies interested in managing the Civic Complex. After the companies’ proposals came back, the resolution would authorize Pelham Mayor Don Murphy to negotiate a management contract with one of the companies.

As presented during the May 14 meeting, the resolution also would authorize Murphy and Pelham Human Resources Director Jerry Nolen to implement a job reclassification plan and an employee “reduction in force plan” for the complex, and would allow Murphy to set new hours for the facility.

The resolution would require all actions taken by Nolen and Murphy to be approved by the City Council before they went into effect.

“My plan is to bring that (motion) back to the agenda on June 4,” Nichols said during the May 24 meeting. “I believe some of the objection (during the May 14 meeting) was because of a lack of information.”

In other business, the council also unanimously approved an Internet connection agreement with the InLine company. The new agreement likely will save the city about $7,000 per month, Pelham City Clerk Tom Seale said previously.

The council originally was scheduled to vote on a new telecommunications maintenance agreement with AT&T, but council members voted to remove AT&T from the resolution. Councilman Steve Powell, who made the motion to remove AT&T from the resolution, said the city needs more time to review the maintenance contract before voting on it during the June 4 council meeting.