Pembroke City Clerk Cathy Rushing told the city council at its monthly meeting March 8 the new city hall is proceeding on schedule and should be ready to open in September.

“The mayor and I had meetings recently with the architect and we met with Stage Front Lighting. They’re the company that designs the audio visual for the new city hall,” Rushing said. “We talked about the microphones for the council, the podium, podium stands and the touch panel controls.

“Things that will be in the council chambers and meeting room. We also met with Tim Jackson about security for the new city hall. He already does the security for this building. He will be providing the fire monitoring, silent alarms, etc.

“We met with the people who will be in charge of setting up all our technology. We also talked to Pembroke Telephone and discussed what they would do and what the contractor would do. We felt like it was a very productive meeting. We were told we should be in the new city hall by September 1.

“Things are moving right along and it will be here before we know it. General contractor Lavender & Associates asked that we push the completion date back 10 days because of all the rain we’ve had lately. It doesn’t affect the cost,” Rushing said.

In a related move, the council disapproved a bid to remove the dirt from the new city hall site.

“We only had one bid sent to us. It was for $1,500 with the stipulation that he would have until Labor Day 2021 to remove all the dirt,” Rushing said.

The bid was rejected because the city required the dirt to be removed within 14 days of the bid opening with Labor Day being significantly longer than 14 days. Further it didn’t use the bid form as required.

Additional council business included:

• Approving an employment contract for former city clerk Betty Hill. Hill will help with the transition to the new city hall and aid in record review.

• Approved liquor beverage license for the Twelve 07 Bistro.

Downtown Development Authority director Renee Hernandez told the council that with COVID things were still pretty quiet.

“But we still have new businesses rolling in. The Mexican restaurant is really close. It’s so close if we can just get a couple of things squared away. I think they’ll be coming. I think we have some little boutique places about to come. We have another business crawl planned April 22, a Friday from 2 to 4 p.m. It’s Easter time so we’re calling it the “Bunny Hop,” she said.