TIFTON — The City of Tifton is taking another look at its mosquito control initiative after a resident expressed concerns at a recent meeting.

During a public hearing at the Feb. 17 city council meeting, Tifton resident Michelle Powers requested that council members deny or postpone a decision regarding a budget amendment that would provide for mosquito control via Astro Exterminating Services of Valdosta.

The initial proposition would have enlisted Astro for a monthly spraying of every street in the city for eight months, for around $3,300 a month, in order to curtail the mosquito population within the city.

However, Powers protested the initiative, arguing that it would negatively impact Tifton’s ecosystem in myriad ways, including eliminating a food source for and endangering birds through the potential chemicals utilized by the exterminators, affecting and likely killing other insects that are directly beneficial to the ecosystem, and polluting the city’s ponds and aquatic life.

She also expressed concern over the extensive steps residents had been instructed to take to protect themselves, their pets, and fixtures like pools and birdbaths from the spraying, further calling out the danger to the city’s bodies of water by noting there were no such stipulations for covering them as there were for pools and birdbaths.

Powers requested that the city council at the very least postpone a decision on the program until more research could be conducted into what chemicals the exterminator would be employing and what risk, if any, those chemicals would pose to the city’s ecosystem and residents.

The city council agreed, unanimously voting to push the vote back to their next meeting in March. Acting city manager and chief financial officer Larry Lawrence also agreed to invite a representative of Astro to speak on the matter prior to the council coming to a decision.