At the February Midway City Council meeting, Police Chief Kelli Morningstar promoted Mark Rich to sergeant and Duvalle Page Sr. to senior patrol officer. Congratulations to these exceptional officers, who also received recognition awards for their job performance.
The community center is coming along. This project, which is financed with SPLOST funds, will be a real plus for Midway. Once completed, it will house the Midway library, a gymnasium, the parks department, county maintenance, a public junior Olympic-sized pool with a pool house, skate park, playground, pavilion and ball fields.
The city finally approved new street lights. Nine lights will be installed at Lyman Hall — one at the curve of Martin and 84 and one on Winoca Drive. The lights will be turned on pending installation by Coastal Electric.
 “Miss Midway” will be crowned at 5 p.m. April 13 at Dorchester center.
The Midway Day Festival is scheduled for 10 a.m.-3 p.m. April 27. Make sure to mark your calendars. It will be at Cay Creek Interpretive Center on Charlie Butler Road. The theme is “Midway, where the action is!”
Also on April 27, the Historical District of Midway will hold the eighth annual Arts Festival from 10 a.m.-4 p.m. at the Midway Church, which was founded in 1792. Admission to the festival and parking are free. Descendants of the Midway Society will conduct tours of the church, museum and cemetery. The church is one block north of U.S. 84 at Highway 17 in Midway.
I commend the city council for standing up to Liberty County and refusing to go along with the county’s fire-station proposal. If we are not alert, the county will take over everything, leaving the city nothing more than a shell.
2013 is an election year for city officials. Don’t let your vote go to waste. Educate yourself on the issues, the existing officials and the candidates when they are announced. Then vote in November.
I would like to welcome several new businesses in Midway — Coastal Family Counseling, Debi’s Carousels & Flowers, Evolving Beauty Studio, Family Dollar, Flatland Farm Foods, Into the Sun Tanning Salon, Plunderful indoor flea market, Presidential Cuts barber shop and Studio 84 Elite Men’s Salon.
Finally, the Celebrate Beverage Center at the new mini-mall is open. The opening apparently was delayed due to a work stoppage after construction approval was postponed. The requirement of a $4,000 landscaping bond, which is ridiculous, also slowed things up. No business spends money on landscaping to improve curb appeal and then lets the plants die. Large corporations can absorb such expenditures, but small businesses don’t have the extra cash sitting around — especially after Liberty Consolidated Planning Commission reportedly told the store owner that the bond was only a few hundred dollars. I question whether the LCPC is good for Midway.
The city is working on hiring a new company to handle its website. There have been problems in the past and the website has not been properly updated and contains many errors.
Utility Department Manager Terrell Chipp is working on updating the city’s water system infrastructure, which needs to be replaced.
Midway still needs to update the city charter, which originally was passed in 1955 and periodically amended. The problem is that the city has lost some of the amendments and no one knows what they contain. How can any city operate without knowing the rules and regulations?

Calderone is a conservative who lives in Midway. He is a professional salesperson and has written articles for trade publications in various fields for 30 years.