By SABRINA GARRETT
The Wilson Post 

Lebanon City Council members Alex Buhler (Ward One), Kevin Huddleston (Ward Two) and Haywood Barry (Ward 5) said goodbye to their seats at a final meeting Tuesday night. On Thursday evening at 5:30 p.m. the new councilors, Lanny Jewell, Fred Burton and Tick Bryan will be sworn in.

 Barry said he will miss everybody but that he will “still be around.”

“It is like what Walt Whitman wrote in Leaves in the Grass – “if you don’t find me one place, look another. I’ll be under your boot soles,” he quoted.

Ward 6 Councilor Kathy Warmath said that she will welcome the new council members and looks forward to serving with them.

At the meeting, councilors also voted to approve an ordinance on second reading for a community based policing agreement witht the Lebanon Housing Authority for a second officer.

The council had previously shot down the ordinance at the special called October 22 meeting, when councilors Alex Buhler and Kevin Huddleston were absent. When the resolution was originally brought to the council by Police Chief Scott Bowen in early October it unanimously passed its first reading. At that meeting, citizen Annie Ward appeared before the council to commend the work that current Officer Dana ‘Scooter’ Sandefur had done to patrol the Lebanon Housing Authority properties.

Lebanon Police Chief Scott Bowen echoed Ward’s praises, adding that since the placement of Sandefur, who is paid in full through Public Housing, the department has seen a decrease in violent crime calls from the area. With the resolution, a second officer would be placed to patrol the area – funded “fifty-fifty” between the LPD and Public Housing.

Bowen said at the time that he planned to bring the ordinance to the council again in the future. This time it was unanimously approved.