St. Marys Howard Gilman Waterfront Park's amphitheater to get roof.

At 6:30, the St. Marys Historic Preservation Commission met in council chambers. The event was chaired by Tom Cyphers. Tom is not my choice for mayor, but if he makes it, he chairs a good meeting. Other than forgetting to call for a vote to adjourn, he was almost flawless. Tom started out by stating that investigation revealed that insofar as the park, built circa 1999, does not qualify as historic, it does not fall under his commission's jurisdiction. At least, that's what I thought he said but I'm not sure because they then went on to conduct a 35 minute meeting (orignally scheduled for 30) in which the project was examined by the commission and the audience from every possible angle. In the end, they were unanimously in favor of the city signing a contract tomorrow to build it as designed. Apparently, the city council was hanging out somewhere in the back of the building waiting for the meeting to end. Somebody finally rounded them all up and the 7:00 called city council meeting got underway 10 minutes late. They could have simply made a motion to build it, voted yea, and gone home. But, being election season, it dragged out for 30 minutes, mostly thanks to the mayor explaining how they had no choice but to spend the money on this designated SPLOST (though, like several others on council, he tends to pronounce it "SPLOSH") project and could not transfer it to any other account, yadda, yadda. Mercifully, they finally voted unanimously to authorize signing a contract with Doyle Strickland NLT noon tomorrow. Neither Bird nor Deloughy were there. By the way, I made a point of getting downtown early to ride through the neigborhoods for about 30 minutes. Feller yard signs were rare. He's finished. There was also a surprising dearth of Eskridge signs. Clearly, the mayoral race is between Deloughy and Cyphers. I noticed that where ever there was a Deloughy sign, that same lawn almost always sported signs for Weaver, Post, and Morrissey as well -just like mine does. Christopher Bennett and L.J. Williams also appear to be non-factors.