The Poplarville Board of Aldermen declared two local emergencies during a meeting held Tuesday night, both declaring an emergency for the potential impact of Hurricane Delta and extending the local emergency proclamation for COVID-19.
“In my 45 years, I don’t remember having Greek storms,” said Mayor Rossie Creel.
He noted that the storm was expected to make landfall in Louisiana or Mississippi on Friday.
Board member Shirley Wiltshire asked if residents will still be able to vote absentee Saturday for the run off election to choose a new member of the Aldermen. City Clerk Jane O’Neal said she believed that would be hard to tell so far out from the potential storm event. O’Neal said she would contact the Secretary Of State’s Office to find out what the city should do if the weather does make it difficult to offer absentee voting on Saturday. The runoff election was moved to next Tuesday due to a previous storm making landfall earlier in the hurricane season.
Creel suggested the Board encourage people who need to absentee vote in the run-off election do so before Saturday if possible.
In a separate matter, the Board heard an update from Chief of Police Danny Collier about the police department’s efforts to become compliant with new federal reporting requirements.
The department was able to enter six months of data into its new records management system, and submitted reports to a Department of Public Safety test site. However, when it tried to actually submit a month of reports to Department of Public Safety, the process failed.
Collier said it was unclear why there was an issue submitting the reports. He said that the vendor for the records management system the department uses to submit reports has addressed previous issues and performed software updates as needed.
Board members Kevin Tillman and Anne Smith suggested the Board consider finding a new records management vendor, as there have been previous issues with the software. Creel reminded them that the Board had discussed waiting until November 1 to consider changing records management systems if issues persisted.
The next Board meeting will be Oct. 20, at 5 p.m.