MOULTRIE, Ga. — The Moultrie City Council was, for a minute, dead silent as they decided what to do with city events as the coronavirus pandemic drags on. Their motivations begged the question of how do you keep civilians safe without disappointing them.

Conversation during Tuesday’s work session geared toward this as the council reviewed the most recent Second Saturday. City Manager Pete Dillard said people are not obeying safety rules because of COVID fatigue.

The plan, he said, is to have no more Second Saturdays for the rest of the year as he described a woman’s actions he saw take place during the Aug. 8 event.

“She went through the crowd and hugged about 12 people,” Dillard said. “That and a lack of mask use just said we cannot control the crowd.”

When Amy Johnson talked about Second Saturday coming back, she said that it’d have to abide by a new way of socializing. 

This meant having sanitation stations, providing masks to those without them who would’ve liked one and making sure everyone follows the three Ws: wash your hands, watch your distance and wear a mask.

With people not abiding by those rules, Dillard said they felt they had no choice but to cancel future events. The city is looking at bringing the event back next year, having them once every quarter.

This, however, brought on the topic of changing and/or canceling all other city events, such as Trunk or Treat at Halloween, “Lights! Lights!” on Thanksgiving night, and the Christmas parade.

Councilwoman Lisa Clarke Hill said that the city needs to give the people a plan on what it’s going to do from here on.

The Department of Public Health’s Southwest District announced over the past few weeks that Colquitt County’s positive COVID-19 tests have been tapering down. The city doesn’t want to do anything to make it jump back up.

Conversation leaned toward prohibiting special permits and allowing no events on city property, but with that, more questions arose. Councilmen wondered how such an action would affect local businesses. Some events — the largest of which is the Sunbelt Expo, which has already canceled for 2020 — bring in hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars to the local economy.

According to Johnson, other local towns including Thomasville, Pelham and Albany are considering similar decisions.

“They’re probably going to do the same thing that we’re doing,” she said. “It’s almost like every town is sitting, waiting to see what the next town is doing.”

No official decision was made Tuesday, but one is expected by the next city council meeting, Sept. 2.

Also on Tuesday, the council approved all things on its agenda which included a consideration for a Fiscal Year 2019-2020 budget amendment and a resolution to authorize the execution of the coronavirus relief fund terms and conditions agreement.

The latter will be funded through the state and will help the city recover costs expended due to the virus. Dillard said the largest cost was covering for someone’s overtime while they’re quarantining.

“Obviously when a police- or fireman is out somebody has to cover their place,” Dillard said. “The first two months, we didn’t have anybody out, [but] we kind of had a number of people since then.”

The fund will also account for $30-50,000 worth of supplies including hand sanitizer, masks, sanitizing spray and services related. Dillard said they’re looking at $223,000 altogether.

The city is also looking to close out a grant for community development, which it held a public hearing for. The grant reached its end around last summer as the city can’t spend anymore money from it.

This grant was initially intended to buy and clean up properties to build about 14 houses. Two of those houses were built and the other property was put into the land bank which will be used by Community Ventures, a nonprofit out of Camilla that helps and educates homeowners.

Closing the grant will give the city the ability to apply for a new grant, but according to Dillard, they aren’t looking to do that right now.

Dillard also said the city may be looking at options for a new fire chief by September.