WEST POINT — The West Point City Council held a short business meeting Monday night but did sign off on a memorandum of understanding with Mobis for a potential significant project.

While the memorandum of understanding has not been released to the public, West Point City Manager Ed Mood said the Mobis is planning an $11,385,000 investment to its property, which will create about 80 additional jobs to the city. In return, the city has offered a 50 percent reduction in taxes for seven years through the Payment In Lieu of Taxes process.

Mood said the agreement is not approved until Gov. Kay Ivey’s office signs off on it. Once that happens, he said more details would be provided.

Councilman Henry Hutchinson rescued himself from the vote because he is an employee of Mobis, and it would be a conflict of interest.

The Troup County Board of Commissioners and the Troup County School System need to approve the memorandum of understanding as well. The memorandum was discussed at Monday night’s TCSS work session, but a vote won’t be taken until Thursday.

Also, on Monday, the council entered into a debt collection services agreement with DPS Recovery, LLC.

The agreement says that DPS Recovery will attempt to recover the city’s debt from utilities and court costs that have not been paid.

Moon has said at a previous meeting that the city does not have the staff to attempt to recover bad debt other than turning off utilities. However, if people move away and don’t provide a forwarding address, trying to collect a bad debt can be cumbersome.

Moon said there is more than $129,000 in unrecovered debt just from utilities.

“It is a substantial amount,” he said.

The contract between the city and DPS says the company will attempt to collect the debt and charge 30 percent on top of the debt owed to the city.

DPS would then receive the 30 percent on top of the original debt for itself, and the city would get the rest.