A set of unexpected circumstance allowed the Aragon City Council to finish their work session on Thursday evening, but not their scheduled regular session as they’d wanted.

Mayor Debbie Pittman was out due to a personal issue for the Thursday evening work and regular sessions and was going to try to join the sessions by phone, but was unable to do so when 6 p.m. rolled around.

The rest of the council – currently the trio of Mayor Pro Tem Judd Fee, Dickie Gazaway and Donnie Canada – were available for the work session where discussions about the finances took up a good portion of their time, but also determining the need to table some items including finding a new Certified Public Accountant and a request from Aragon Police to get updated body and car cameras for vehicles.

Council members also heard from City Attorney John Hawkins about updates to the code on removing the Planning Commission from any duties its board might have had and transferring the powers to the council, updating the zoning ordinance with changes due to state law enacted this year, and some Appendix A updates as well.

Hawkins told the council that the city also needs to ensure updates are happening in Muni Code, an online system where cities like Aragon keep their entire city code for people to read over. The last update he noted was in 2019.

Council members also wanted Hawkins to read over the SPLOST and Election agreements before they were expected to vote on the items during their 7 p.m. regular session, but minutes before it was set to start, Dickie Gazaway abruptly left citing health issues.

Without Gazaway, there weren’t enough for a quorum to sustain the regular session happening and the city will have to reschedule the meeting to a night upcoming since some of the issues before them are time-sensitive.

Expect an announcement about a reschedule later, but officials expect the meeting to occur sometime early next week.

The city will still have to decide on the intergovernmental SPLOST agreement, an agreement with the Board of Elections for city elections and the SPLOST vote later this year, plus some other items before them including first readings of city code updates, porta potties for use at Aragon Children’s Day, and more.