County Commissioners Meeting
February 7, 2005

Personal Minutes Written by Dave Sobota

In attendance today:

Mayor Frazer, Commissioners Sesler, Wetterau, Suggs, Smith, Larkins, Spencer, Gray, Corlew, England, Tidwell, Loggins.

-Paperwork items: approval of January 4 minutes, appointments for an employee benefit committee, appointments for the Sheriffs board, commissioner Loggins presented some paperwork to restructure the loan for the industrial park to get it paid off sooner, and the Mayor asked for consideration of a plan to re-finance a portion of the county debt claiming a possible savings of $200k to $300k. The last item would involve a change of interest rate and all other terms the same as the current loan. The re-financed portion would only be approximately 8 million dollars.

- Next brief motion was for some changes to the Zoning ordinances. The changes were approved for discussion. These changes will now be brought to a public hearing, date to be set pending public notice of this hearing. Expect the public meeting some time in March.

- The quarterly reports were brought up for approval. They were approved but there was some discussion on this matter. Mr. Tidwell brought up the fact that the reports showed the first half of the year with income at 1/3 of the projection yet spending is currently at ½ of the original projection. He stated that he would like to see a change in the way projections are made. It was brought up that the first half of the year is always behind due to the time frames when the most tax collection occurs but that it did not look like the year would finish out well. No further discussion was made on this issue.

- The financial report was shown for the month of January. The short version: 2,559,018.59 in and 1,904,589.73 out. It was noted that this month had a higher than usual expenditure and that was largely due to paying some outstanding bills. These overdue bills were paid since the income was strong for this month.

- Ms. Weaver (I hope the spelling is correct), a resident of Dickson who lives next to the land fill, addressed the Mayor and the commission. She had some concerns about the amount of Methane emissions coming from the land fill and wanted to find out if the it was tracked and if the land fill was within specifications allowed. She stated that the land fill is required to make quarterly reports on the monitoring of methane emissions but could find no office, related to the landfill, that had any knowledge of these reports. She asked the Mayor and the commission to find out if anyone has knowledge of these reports and why the people in charge of the landfill appeared to have no knowledge on this subject. She asked, and the Mayor agreed, to have a full report on the matter ready for the next commissioner meeting.

- The next item was regarding a small lot of land in the industrial park. Apparently there is a 13-acre plot near the railroad that was partially leveled, with federal money, when the railroad came through the area. Two business interests have put in a bid to buy this property, RR wood products and CK Pruit (sp?). RR wood products want to build a pallet manufacturing facility and CK Pruit want to build a speculative warehouse on the site. It was discussed what to do with these bids as both came in on the same day and both were for the same amount. The commission voted to bring this item up in the regular meeting and have the parties re-bid for the property. At that point they will decide what to do with the offers on the table. As a side note Mr. England asked if anyone knew how much tax dollars each building proposal would generate.

- The court house repairs were the next item discussed. The Mayor had an update about the status of material already purchased for the re-roofing of the courthouse and had asked to use the reserve funds to pay for the job. All of this discussion was dropped when it was brought up that the Jail annex had a much more urgent need for roof repairs since it was currently leaking. The person in charge of building maintenance had brought pictures and described the condition of the jail roof as in need of immediate repair. He had an estimate, from the same company that sealed the school roofs, for $15,400 to repair the portion of the Jail annex that is in dire need. Considering the evidence, the commission voted use some of the reserve funds to make this repair.

- Ms. Gray brought up the Grand Jury reports on the conditions of the jail. She sited several line items from the report that suggest the jail is not being kept to required standards, especially with regards to cleaning. The Mayor had not gone over this report yet and had not discussed it with the Sheriff. Ms. Gray asked that she please do so.

- A very brief discussion was brought up about the Jail situation. Mr. Suggs wanted to know if the new jail committee (the 12 commissioners) had started looking at a solution to the pending jail space issue. To date, nothing has been looked at.

The final item brought up was related to fire department districts. It seems that the yellow creek area is serviced by 2 fire departments but the district lines, and 911 coverage areas, have never been officially drawn out and approved. The Mayor asked the commissioners for the area to meet with the fire departments and work on coming to an agreement. Mr. Sesler brought up the fact that ALL of the districts need to be looked at. He stated that there are some potential issues with the fact that some residences are in a district where the closest fire station is not the one designated for them. It was agreed that this entire issue would be brought up but that it should start with the yellow creek area first. This topic was apparently last discussed somewhere around 1990 and is due for some revisions.

Final item, taping of the meetings. This meeting was taped and will be broadcast on Cable channel 19, the Dickson public access channel (sometimes called the Renaissance channel). I do not yet know if there is someplace you can view this channel if you do not have cable.

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