A thick black plume of smoke could be seen off in the distance over Atmore City Hall Tuesday morning as personnel with the city’s fire department performed a controlled burn on two houses council members voted to demolish less than 24 hours before.

The smoke was another sign of the city’s continuous cleanup efforts headed up by the building inspections department.

“We need the city council to give permission to be able to demolish the properties in question,” Building Inspector Chris Black said Monday afternoon during the city’s council meeting. “As you can see they are in poor condition and past any point of being repaired.”

Mayor Howard Shellagreed with Black and encouraged the council to OK his request.

“It’s obvious that these two houses need to be torn down,” Shell said. “I think we need to authorize the building inspector to move forward with the demolitions and speak to demolition companies.”

Black was unanimously granted his requested by council members and the houses located at 89 and 95 Jones Street were burned down Tuesday, ridding the area of two more eyesores.

In other business Monday, the council:

• Denied APX Alarm Sales’ was request to go door-to-door within the city limits selling residents alarm systems.

“We have had door-to-door sales in the city before and it has not gone well,” Shell said. “There have been a number of bad experiences with that type of sales. Therefore we do not issue permits for door-to-door sales. You can still pick up a phone book and make phone calls if you want to sale in the city though.”

A representative with APX was not on hand as the motion was brought forth, but later showed up after council members had denied it.

• Reappointed Bob Jones and Tommy Moore to the Atmore Industrial Development Board for six-year terms ending in 2016. W.J. Grissett and Joe Brown were reappointed to the Planning Commission until 2014.

• Engineer Paul Darnell spoke on bids for an upcoming sidewalk project in the city.

“I recommend that the bid be awarded to the lowest bidder in the bid tabulation, which is Bay South,” he said. That is pending ALDOT approval of course.”