City Council - workshop

To our strategic planning meeting for September 15th. Council, can I get a motion on the minutes from our previous meeting? So moved. Second. All right, we have a motion properly seconded, and the minutes from our previous meeting on September 1st will stand as published. So today we have two items on our agenda. The first is that we're going to be hearing a report from Chris Hopkins, who is our city council appointee to the Chattanooga Police and Fire Pension Board. So, Chris, if you want to join us at the table.

Thank you.

And we'll do about half an hour, if that's all right, and we have half an hour for our next presentation as well. Thank you.

Good to see you all again. Good to see you as well. Thank you.

All right. Do we have some slides or something? And if not, do you have the report I submitted?

No.

No? No. I wonder what city I sent it to. No. Chattooga?

Chattooga.

We don't have it.

Yes.

So I didn't get a bounce back on that email.

I'm sorry about that. Do you have it on your phone? Yes.

follow it up on that all right with me a second I just say everything's okay well that's right

It's been a good year.

Maybe it'll catch us up. We're definitely on the right track.

Council, I guess while we're waiting on that, so we don't waste any time, I usually do this at the end, but kind of look ahead to what's coming. We do have this afternoon a presentation from Chief Chambers about license plate reader cameras and then coming up at our next strategic planning we'll have workforce development overview of Chattanooga Works and also our required annual report on our TIFs that are outstanding. That's on October 6th. And then on October 20th, we have a report from CARTA on their five-year public transit roadmap. On the 29th, we have a couple of different special presentations. So we have a smart grant project update from our DTS department. And then CARTA will be giving us an update on the parking enforcement, if you recall. It seems like it was about this time last year, maybe, that we were dealing with that parking ordinance, and it's about to roll out for enforcement. So they wanted to come in and just give an update for the October 1st kind of start date on the booting and those sort of enforcement mechanisms that we have. And then also, you might have seen some of you all in your emails today, With our new committee structure, I've sent emails, I think to Councilwoman Burrs and to Councilman Clark, assigning different issues to committees. So at strategic planning, I guess about a month ago, Councilwoman Burrs, you brought us your vacant properties proposal or idea for legislation there. And so I had assigned that to Councilman Clark's Parks, Public Works, and Infrastructure Committee.

I do have a question about that.

Yeah, sure.

I guess I want to understand kind of the process for that assignment because there's lots of work that's already been done. Okay. I mean, what I brought to you all were just the bullet points, but there's already been a draft ordinance, which we're still kind of working on. I've been working with the Chief of Staff and the Deputy Chief of Staff and Nicole Heyman leading up to this point. And I know that Councilwoman Hill has done some research too. I'm not particular about where it lands. I just want to make sure that I'd hate for somebody to have to start from square one. And I guess I want to understand the thought process. And to me, it comes across as an ordinance zoning issue. So I don't know. We don't have to talk about it today, but I want to get a little better understanding. Sure.

Yeah. I guess my initial thought was just that, I guess, at the end of, you know, once the ordinance is in place, it would be a code enforcement LDO matter, and that would fall under that committee. So that was my thought, but we can certainly discuss.

No, that's great. Again, I'm not, I don't need to get credit for it. I want to make sure it's done right, you know, done well, and I don't want somebody else that wants to take the lead on it If that's your wish, then we can share. I want to share in that.

No, may I? Oh, sure. I'm like, that's what that means. We don't have lights here. First of all, you do get full credit for that because you've spent a tremendous amount of work on that, and I'm very grateful because it benefits all of our corridors. And so I'm very grateful. But I think our question is, is it necessary to send it to committee if it's already been flushed out? It might be ready just to go to strategic planning just for a presentation and then straight to the agenda. Is that...

I think we still have a little more work to do. It's about half-baked. Yeah. So... Let's talk outside of this meeting and figure out or at the next strategic planning meeting about...

I'm okay with it going straight to strategic planning and then to the agenda from strategic planning.

Okay. Yeah. And then the vape ordinance that Councilman Harvey and Councilwoman Hill had presented to us on, I thought that the planning and zoning committee would be a good fit to look at that issue. So I had sent that email as well. Okay.

good to go all right yeah we're gonna jerry-rig this thing so i apologize for that and i will i will mr chairman i'll send you a copy of the hard report it's got a little narrative to it you can circulate that um appreciate the time to catch up with everybody uh as you probably know i'm your appointee to the fire and police pension fund i'm the other civilian along with weston porter and then we have six sworn officers that serve as trustees we use an outside investment advisory firm to advise us in terms of the actual investment policy and decisions that we make. We've made tremendous amount of progress I think in the last ten years and just by way of just kind of refreshing everyone's memory the fund took a substantial hit in 2008 during the great financial crisis we had a 31 percent decline in the fund value in one year which is quite a lot it's hard to recover from that and that followed up by a period of relatively stagnant results which time the fund got involved in some hedge funds at I'm hasten to add I was not here at the time, but I joined the board of the pension fund in 2018, so it's been my honor to serve for eight, nine years now. In that amount of time, we've made a great deal of progress. The funded status of the fund at one time dropped to about 46%, which in our trade, We say it ain't good. But let me kind of get you caught up on where we are now. I've covered this already. The fund was founded in 1949. I did not serve on the board at that time either. But Chip remembers that. As we said, we have eight trustees, including your appointee, myself, and mayor's appointee six sworn officers we have two staff members who run the pension fund um just a refresher what the pension trustees do it's our job to oversee the the funds for the benefit of all of the beneficiaries of the fund that is current and active firefighters and policemen in addition to retired of fire and police and their heirs if they receive benefits on behalf of someone who's deceased. We also, as trustees, have a fiduciary duty to the fund. So we're charged with doing what's in the best interest of the fund. I'll kind of cut to the chase right now. This is a summary of our most recent investment results as of the end of the second quarter. So this would be June 30th. We just received these numbers last week. And so if you look at the first inside the red box, that 10.8% return is for the second quarter of the year. That's not the whole year. That's just a quarter. uh... we had an exceptionally good quarter and exceptionally good year uh... so far that's a fiscal year so that was the end that FYTD is one whole year of results the little six in the parentheses that's our rank out of a hundred among public funds so we were actually in the top six percent or sixth percentile of all public pension funds and the top ten percentile for the fiscal year to date If you go on across the board, look at three years, we're in the top quartile, the top one-fourth of all funds, 22 out of 100 is our rank. And even going back as far as 10 years, which includes a couple of bad years, 2018 and 2022, we're still in the top third. And that's a kind of a reversal from what we were accustomed to seeing a few years earlier. So I think that's remarkable progress. We're very pleased. I'll show you the actual hard numbers in a minute. That number across the top is the gross of any fees or expenses. That's just what the investments earn. The next line down below where it says total portfolio net, that's net of fees and expenses. So the quarterly numbers are a little bit noisy, but if you go across the column and look at the three-year number, you can see the difference between 13.6 and 13.2. What that tells you is that The total cost of administering the fund is 0.4%, and that is exceptionally low. As I'm sure you all know from your own personal investment experience, paying an advisor 1% is not unusual, even higher than that in some cases. Funds have internal expenses and so forth. So we've managed over the course of the last eight or nine years to drive about half of the total cost of administration out of the fund. by about 43 basis points to about 40 basis points or 0.4% for administrative fees. So it doesn't sound like a lot, but compounded over 30 years, 40 basis points adds up to millions and millions of dollars on this fund. So driving costs and expenses out has been a key to accomplishing this. Some of that involved liquidating some of the hedge funds, which as you may know, are not very liquid. It takes time to work your way out of them. In some cases, it took us three years to get all of our money back from the hedge funds. And in addition, the fees are considerably higher. If you could justify the fees, typically 2% fee plus 20% of the profits. That only works if the fund is making substantially more than an index. So one of the things we've done is about half of our total exposure now is just indexed. to the S&P 500, to the bond market, to the international markets, the MSCI, ACWI index, which you can accomplish that for very, very little cost, maybe 10, 15 basis points all in. So that's been a big help. Plus, we only take that kind of liquidity risk in areas where we think a manager can add value. We think it's very difficult to beat the S&P 500. Nobody does it consistently over time. And if they do, they've got inside information. Those guys end up in a different place. But there are places, like in fixed income, for example, where the bond market is not very efficient, and investment managers can add value there. So paying them a little bit more, paying them 40 or 50 basis points to add value has worked. And we've done a study or two on this over the last few years to demonstrate that where we have... liquidity risk, particularly we have a little bit of money in some private equity funds that have access to other private companies that we can't get in the S&P 500. And they have more than carried their weight. So we've trimmed our exposure to hedge funds completely. The additional liquidity risk we're taking is bond substitutes. Councilman Henderson and I were talking about the bond market a little bit earlier, that we have about 20% of our exposure in bonds directly. The other uh... fifteen or sixteen percent of our what we call fixed income investment is in real assets like real estate including farmland and timber which generate income of six seven eight percent a year and they're relatively illiquid but again our fund horizon is thirty years or infinite theoretically so we can afford to take liquidity risk where an individual typically wouldn't be able to do that all that to say We're very, very pleased with the results we've turned in this last three years in particular and the progress we've made over 10 years. Let me get to kind of the development of our second quarter returns, we began the quarter at $397 million and we ended it at $437 million. An all-time high watermark. As of the end of August, unofficially, that number was $495 million. I'm sorry, $445 million. Slipped a little bit in the last couple of days. But I think that's astounding. Just to take you back to... The recent low point of the last 10 years was 2018. We ended that year at $208 million. And we were about 46% funded. So our compound annual growth rate all in has been 10% net of fees since 2018. And I'll take that any day of the week. Bear in mind that If Councilman Ledford was still on the council, he would ask me about our assumed rate of return. I've heard that question more than once. Our rate of return, assumed rate of return, is 6.75%. There was a time at which that number was 9%, which meant that was our hurdle rate. If we earned less than 9%, we fell behind. And with Council's support, I have to say we've come to you every time we've done this and explained that when we drop that assumed rate of return, that's our discount rate of all the future payouts to the retirees, right? So the lower that number gets, the bigger your contribution becomes every year, as you've seen. So Council has always met that need and made at least the required contribution or in some cases more. And so that's helped greatly. Yes, please.

I want to make sure that I understand our withdrawals and our income. So is the income new money going into the plan from employees?

The income is, there's money, the net withdrawal is net of employees in employee payouts. Income typically is like interest on bonds.

Interest on bonds versus capital gains.

Right, and then the capital gain line is the change in the value of the securities in the portfolio. Okay. Does that make sense?

Yes.

So the total gain was $42 million, less than $2.6 million outflows for retirees.

Great, thank you.

Yeah, great. Any questions about that? I mean, I'm super pleased with that, I've got to say. So exceeding that 6.75% threshold... means every year we do that, we gain a little bit more ground in terms of increasing our funded ratio, the percentage of total liabilities that we have in the bank, so to speak. There's two numbers we report. One is called the actuarial value. And then the actual market value, that's the blue line. That's kind of what everybody cares about. That's the end of 2025 when this valuation report was done by our actuary. But that's that $437 million figure I showed you as the end of June. The light blue line, you can see, is a lot smoother. And that's because that is actually a five-year rolling average. That's how we compute the city's contribution every year. So we report both of those values. The actuarial value is a smoother ride because if we came to council every year and we were down 10% or 15% last year, and we reported that to you, it would require a much bigger contribution that year to meet that. So actuarial standards allow us to smooth that over five years. It makes the ride smoother. So council has a more predictable expected contribution. The other things that change along the way are assumptions, like mortality risk. People are living longer. When we were looking at this back in 2001, versus today, life expectancies have gone up since then. So the actuary has to change those assumptions, which means our obligation goes up. In addition to which, you all well remember, and we are very appreciative of the raises that were granted to fire and police in 21 and 25. And those two actions together increased the future expected liabilities because pensions are based on historical earnings, right? So all of those things, they were all discussed well at the time, but so you all understood that and nevertheless went ahead and did that. The hope there is that we can get on a path where we're maintaining salaries rather than having to make big jumps every once in a while to catch up with everybody else. So very appreciative of that. So just to mention when you see two different values reported the actuarial value is that sort of statistical average and it ebbs and flows and the actual market value bobs up and down around that line because that's the current number. wanted to show you why that really matters because this is the rate of return that we've experienced going back to 2006. So you see that 31% drop in 08 you see there was a you know about a 12% drop 14% drop in 2022 there was a pretty good drop in 2018 well if we came to council after in 2023 after being down 14%, and we would compute the required contribution, that would be a much larger number than what you actually saw in 21 because those results get smooth. The light blue line is that smoothing. That's the actuarial value. So yeah, it fell certainly in 2008 because the market value dropped. But it's a lot smoother ride. And they end up about in the same place over time. And the dark purple line doesn't show up very well because the scale is too big, but that's the assumed rate of return that's dropped from, it was 9% in 2006, it's now 6.75%. So I know that's kind of off in the weeds, but it's good to cover that when you see these two different numbers reported, the actuarial value and the market value. The market value is really the one to key in on because that's the benchmark that is going to be used to determine when the full cost of living adjustment can be restored to the plan participants. So just to kind of back into this just a little bit, if I sat here today and I took a roster of all the active duty fire and police and we added up the pension they have accrued so far during their employment, plus the pension that is owed to the retirees. And we add that all up, and then we discount it back to today at 6.75%. That number is $629 million. That's what we would have to have in the fund to completely be 100% funded. So that's the accrued liability. That's what we owe for pensions that have already been earned. in today's dollars. The actuarial value of the assets, that was the light blue line on the other graph, is $381 million. So the gap is the unfunded liability. That's how much we're short of being fully funded. Now, there aren't too many city pension funds that are fully funded. There are some, but The city of Austin, Texas is 120% funded. And I actually think that's fiduciary malpractice because that money could be used for something else. But there's a history there. That's a whole different story. As you probably recall from the city council's and the mayor's plan to contribute $18 million last year, the intention of that was to kick us up above the 60% funded ratio, which it did. even net of the liabilities for the new raises. So that was very, very helpful. The 60% threshold, there's nothing written in stone about that, but that's kind of considered the threshold line below which you're considered unhealthy. And the comptroller starts sending me an email. And by the way, I stay in touch with the chairman, with Lillard at the state, just to keep them informed of what's going on here. He's been very supportive of us. That's on the actuarial basis. If you look at the market value, we're actually at 63.6% funding. That's as of the end of last year when we do these annual valuations. So we're making steady progress. We're in the hunt. So I mentioned earlier what these thresholds are. Our first target is to get to 70% funding. If we have an annual valuation that shows the fund is 70% funded, then we can restore part of the cost of living increase. To get too technical, it allows us to go back to a 1.5% cost of living increase one year after retirement. Right now, it's a three-year wait. Once we get to 80% funded, we can restore the full COLA, which is cost of living, the CPI, a maximum of 3%, starting one year after their date of retirement.

Is that every year?

Yes. Yep, based on CPI. So CPI is 2.5, that's what we get. If CPI is 3.5, we get 3. That's the max as written into the legislation. So when we first did this number and we started projecting this out, the original estimate was something like 2037 or something like that. So the fact that we've made steady progress every year, that 2030 number is three years earlier than it was just last year at our evaluation. This is a number that retirees look at very closely, as you can well imagine. And our target rate for 80% funded now is really within about 11 year window. And again, bear in mind that this is a great big giant ship and it doesn't turn on a dime. You make small course corrections and then three years from now you see those things show up in the path. So all that to say we're ahead of the game from where we were when I first Started talking to you about this very pleased about that this all assumes of course that That number right now assumes that we're kind of static in our rate of return We're just moving forward at that six point seven five rate from here from today forward doesn't it doesn't take into consideration the possibility of Backtrack in the market which could happen but again our time horizon is long and our progress over the last years like the last eight years I think has been a testament to the fact that taking a longer term perspective on this and making as many small course corrections as we can pay dividends over time. So just to kind of go back and give you a historical look at this. If we look at the market value, this is the funded status for the data that I have available to me going back to 2019. We were 47% funded, which was not a good place to be. So the dark blue bar is the the funded status on a market value basis, which is what the COLAs are based on. That's the way it's stated. So at the end of 2025, I mentioned it was in the neighborhood of 64%. By my rough estimate today, based on the numbers we have today, we're closing in on 69% funding. So we're getting close. And even on an actuarial basis, now about 65%. So that leaves out a lot of things. There could be assumption changes that the actuary makes. There's all kinds of things that could happen, a retreat in the market value of the fund, all these things. But all that to say, the trend is very positive. You could draw a line on there and see that if you can compound that progress over another 10 years, the fund's going to be pretty healthy. Any questions about that? Yes, sir.

And I don't know, are you through with the slides?

I think so. Yes.

It's other than the most important part. Thank you. One slide I didn't see was assumed contributions that the city will be kind of expected to make. Right. Possibly over the next 10 years.

Yeah, and I probably, I should have thought to bring that with me off the top of my head. Weston, do you remember what the contribution was in... I think we were 26 mid.

I was going to say. It's 26.

It's like 35%. Something like that. But I think it goes up. For a while. For a while.

And I was trying to see if we had a. And then the tide turns and it comes down. And that's not something the actuary looks at. He doesn't look ahead at the contribution. He just figures this year's contribution. But assuming that the city makes the required contribution every year, that's where that projected date of 2037 comes in. So. I can get you more color on that if you like. I'm happy to do that. I think it would be helpful as we're looking at future budgets. Sure. Typically what happens, because we report on an annual basis, calendar year, but then we adjust, the actuary adjusts to the city's fiscal year, and he produces a separate report in the middle of the year. and that's the report that's used to create the city's required contribution. And the city's typically kicked in a little bit more, but I would be happy to get you some more information. Okay. Councilwoman Dotley?

Yes, thank you so much. Thank you for the presentation. And I went back to the education session you did back in March. Yes. So I still have those notes. So I think I was, to Councilman Henderson's point, if we could just see that again. Because I know when you did the presentation initially, had the city's contribution, which is us kind of catching up, then it's just a regular contribution, which is like $11 million. Okay, just wanted to make sure I'm on track with you.

So that $11 million you mentioned, that's called the normal cost of the plan. If the plan was 100% funded, and just to maintain fully funded status, that would be the $11 million this year. That's going to go up with inflation. It's going to go up with changes in personnel, raises. Life expect, all that. So it changes every year.

Right. And then I guess once you get information back for Councilman Henderson, you can get us to the space where the city, that contribution kind of moves, that city contribution moves away at some point. Right.

If we get it where it needs to be. The closer we get to fully funded. So just to back up, and I'm not looking at the numbers, but that 11 sounds right to me. That would be what's called the normal cost. That would be maintaining the pension if it was fully funded. Right. And the rest of what the city kicks in is the makeup to close that gap. Right. Okay. And that combined with... us beating the 6.75 is what's going to close the gap but we assume we're going to hit 6.75 right so anytime we do better than that that's going to reduce the city's future required contribution okay anytime we do worse than that okay the other way around

And then my other question was about the actual numbers themselves and just kind of how, so when we were here in March, and I'm just going to get what I wrote down, we had an unfunded liability at $252 million, and then now it's at, oh, what is it, $248 million. So that's that $2 million that we saw here, is that right?

Well, it would be that plus the increase in the value from the investments. I... I think in March that included the pay raise. I'm pretty sure it did. Remember that valuation only comes out once a year. So a lot of this stuff I'm showing you like that last bar I striped it on purpose because it's my interpolation. It's just based on what's happened assuming that no other actuarial changes have occurred like The actuary comes back and said, well, this expense category, or we had way more retirements than we expected, or we had more disability claims. That's a hot topic is disability claims. And claims for PTSD in particular are accelerating. The actuary has to take into effect what impact that has over time.

OK.

But I will bring you more information. In fact, I'd be happy to come back to another planning session and go through some more numbers if you'd like. But I'm happy to provide a report. And Nicole can give it to you when she gets back from vacation. Yes.

And then we can get a copy of the thing. That would be fantastic. Absolutely. But I appreciate you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. Any other questions, Council? Yes.

Chris, you've said some interesting things about life expectancy and... how life expectancy, fortunately, is going up. At the same time, we're having more PTSD. And I anticipate that we're having very few retirements this fiscal year and the next two because we have the raise. And so I think a lot of people are sticking it out for three years so they secure that higher pension. Are you... taking that into account as you all are planning and giving us projections?

The actuary does.

Okay, so, because I wouldn't want to see just a sudden, a huge liability pop up three years from now because everybody, you know, I've also thought about that with our, we have no vacancies because everybody's going to work three years, right?

I know that's what I would do. The actuary, that's what we engage them for. And And not only do they make changes every year based on experience, but they do a five-year experience study where they dig deep into things like the life expectancy changes. That comes up every five years, for example. We did one of those in 2025. And there were some significant changes. They look at expense history and look at what it costs to run the plant. They look at, I mean, there's like 20 factors he considers, and one of them is a projection of future retirements.

Okay, so on this, the goalposts constantly move. They move back and back, even though we see a reduction in our time horizon right now because of these returns. Within the fire and police pension community at large, not specific to Chattanooga, but overall, what's the conversation around life expectancy and retirement age?

I don't know if I can speak to the latter. I know I can speak to the life expectancy question. I think we all know that over the last 30 years, life expectancy has increased generally. I mean, just an anecdote. When Social Security was created, life expectancy of a man at age was 63 or 64. So the odds were in favor of the house at the time. You know, now a male life expectancy is 83, a woman is 88, whatever the number is. Retirement age for Social Security has only got up two years in all that time. It's going to have to go up some more. I think we all know that. But some of that is the result of increases in medical technology, medical care, health care. The same thing is true in the first responder community and especially in the fire community. All the hazards that they were exposed to, you know, as you know, Fire is largely a family business. Dad was a fireman. Grandpa was a fireman. But those guys went in those buildings with nothing, no protective gear, and so forth. There's also some new presumptions, like cancer presumptions. If a fireman comes down with cancer, he's presumed to have been caused by his occupation. So he can get compensation for that. And health care has improved. So I don't know the exact numbers. I can get them from the actuary. But we know that we're projecting longer life expectancies now for first responders. I think we're all happy about, but it increases the present liability for those benefits if they're going to live two years longer on average.

Right.

Because that's two more years of accrued liabilities we have to factor in today.

Remind me what the retirement age is.

Oh, gosh. I said, Weston, you might have to help me on this. Katrina couldn't be here today, and I'm sorry. She had something come up.

I think it's 25 years.

Twenty-five is the minimum, but, yeah.

I'm thinking it depends on what time you, I mean, at what age you go in. Right.

It's a combination of attained age and time on the job.

And most people stay for three years after that to get their drop.

Right. And that drop is an upfront payment where you can reduce your pension. in exchange for cash out today. And so you reduce your future annuity payments by taking it. Sometimes people, you know, it was a little sweetener when we did the, when the city redid the pensions in 2014. So that gives them the choice. It's actuarial write-off. In fact, you probably saw we just gave you a report. It's called a neutrality report that compares the cost of retirement without the COLA versus with the COLA. And if it's between 95% and 105% of the equivalent, because it's all statistical assumptions, it's assumed to be actuarially neutral. So that's true. You know, just think about in your own personal situation if you decided you wanted to retire at 68 and you took $100,000 and bought an annuity contract. It'll pay you $3,000 a year for the rest of your life. Well, that's based on an assumption of how long you're going to live. And we do exactly the same thing. And, of course, with an annuity contract, if there's a beneficiary, if you want your spouse to get the money when you die, then you take a smaller payout during your lifetime.

Mm-hmm.

Because it's all just math. Same thing is true with the fire and police pension. We have about six or seven options for retirement. Full joint and survivor, joint and 50%, nothing. She's on her own when I'm gone, however. And more from me every month. And so it's all just actuary computations based on the assumptions that the actuary puts into the model. Are there any other questions, counsel? I hope that answered your question.

Yeah, it does. Well, thank you, Chris, very much.

Thank you. Sorry about the mix-up with slides, but I'll send you the reports, and I'll get some more information on the kind of looking forward at required contributions and do that. And if you didn't, if you don't have it, that education session from three or four months ago, I think, covered some of that stuff. Thank you. Good to see you guys. Thank you. Appreciate your support. Really, we couldn't do this without you, and council's always been so good in supporting even during the lean time, so it's nice to come when the news is a little better.

Thank you.

And so we will turn things over now to Councilman Clark. Thank you, Chairman Davis. I'm going to ask Cassie and Linda Moss Myers if you all could join us at the conference room table. You can either come down here or Linda, or you can sit next to Jamie. Thank you.

Thank you.

While Cassie is loading that up, I'll kind of do like a preamble to what the resolution is. So right before is a resolution to make an application for a city hall municipal building to become a local historic landmark. There are two resolutions, and Cassie's going to explain why there's two. And then the second resolution you have is directing the staff to research local historic landmarks, conduct outreach to owners and constituents, and prepare the application for the designation. And the list is in there, and we're going to see a presentation for that. We started this journey probably back with Bea Loring with Preserve Chattanooga. Kevin, if you remember, Bea came and asked for an allocation to help start the preservation process the council approved the thirty thousand dollars to go towards some research and development and we became very intrigued and interested in how do we start preserving our historic landmarks in the midst of us losing landmarks if you remember we lost the medical arts building that's currently being bulldozed as we speak we lost the car barn on broad street that would now be a jewelry hotel And then UTC is in the process of demolishing Ingalls Stadium, which has a lot of historic significance to the African American community, and the Negro Baseball League, and just its historic significance to our city. So I was like, how do we begin preserving buildings in the light of urban renewal? So we brought in Linda Moss-Mines, who you all know is a state historian who serves on, is it the state cemetery?

State Cemetery Commission and served for eight years on the State Historical Commission also.

So we brought in her expertise, kind of as a subject matter expert, and it has been wonderful. The oral history of Chattanooga and our buildings. And of course, Cassie Klein, who works in our land development office, who has been helping us with the technical aspect of actually drafting the application. And she's going to talk about the application process, because remember, this is a resolution to start the application. Part of that process goes before the Historic Zoning Commission. They have a list of... subject matter experts who will get into the design guidelines and they will make that recommendation back to council. So I want to say that again. This is a resolution not for us to actually vote on this. We don't have that authority in this process until after it goes to the Historic Zoning Commission. Does everybody understand that? Okay. So this is a resolution that authorizes Cassie to start the application process on behalf of the city council, which is one of the groups that's outlined in our ordinance that allows her for us to vote, and then she'll start the application. The application goes to the historic zoning commission. There's an immediate moratorium on building and development. And most of this resolution you'll see are mostly cemeteries, and Linda's going to give us some oral history on that. We have some historic landmarks of Lincoln Park and the ML King area. and then some in Councilwoman Burns and I district out in Brainerd, in the Brainerd Hills area. So I'm going to turn it over to Cassie, who is just amazing. She's going to walk us through a couple slides, and then Linda will pick up on some oral history about the landmarks we've chosen.

Awesome. Thank you so much, Councilman Clark. That was great, and you nailed it, so I will just hit the highlights on the process. Like Councilman Clark mentioned, we do have two resolution drafts in front of you, one for City Council and one for some other districts. The idea behind this is that it's going to be a much... lighter lift to get um i'm sorry for city hall not city council um a much lighter lift to get that since it's a city-owned property we also already have design guidelines in place that can be very applicable to this building and we can work directly with the mayor's office to push it forward so the idea there was that we're able to move a lot quicker because we have a lot of that work done already and we want to make sure that we do the research and outreach and coordinate with stakeholders on that other list so that we are kind of doing our due diligence on those other applications. So that's why we separated those two. So I'm going to talk about what is a local historic landmark and then the designation of a local historic landmark process. And then like Councilman Clark said, I'll pass it over to Linda Moss-Minds to talk more specifically about the historic sites that are on the list. So what is a local historic landmark? So some of you may be familiar, probably all of you, a local historic landmark is a single property or a structure that the Chattanooga City Council designates as historically, architecturally, or aesthetically significant. This designation also protects the landmark in question from inappropriate alterations or demolition. So you know, we do have one local landmark on our registry currently, and that's the Frank Lloyd Wright House on Missionary Ridge. And so now I'll jump into the designation process for the local historic landmarks. So a local historic landmark has to meet at least one of the criteria that are outlined in the ordinance. You can see that criteria on the screen. The landmark must be associated with significant historic events or event, significant persons, have architectural merit, archaeological significance, and or already be listed on the National Register of Historic Places. So again, you can meet one, two, three, four, all five of these, but you have to at least meet one. And so we know that city council ultimately reviews and approves or denies the landmark applications themselves, but there are different groups that can make applications for local landmarks. So that is city council, as you've seen in these resolution drafts, a neighborhood association can bring an application forward, an individual property owner of a landmark, or if it were a district within a district, or a historic civic or professional group. So someone like Preserve Chattanooga, or maybe the American Institute of Architects could bring an application forward. then next this slide outlines the process for once an application has been made for a local historic landmark so a moratorium on permitting for the affected site begins immediately while the application is active and this moratorium remains in place until a decision is made at the historic zoning commission or at council so you can kind of see that arrow if historic zoning commission recommended that the or district were to be denied, that moratorium would end. Otherwise, it would stay in place until we get through the city council process. Once the application has been submitted, we do host a public meeting separate from the Historic Zoning Commission meeting. This has to be held between the application date and the Historic Zoning Commission date. This is an informational meeting where we are gonna have staff and the applicant there to answer questions about the application, about the maps, the boundaries, the guidelines. It's not a meeting where any vote is going to take place. That's gonna happen at Historic Zoning and then at City Council. And then from Historic Zoning Commission, they will issue a review and a recommendation. If approved, it moves on to you all at City Council. And that's all I have for the process, so I'll hand it over to Linda Moss-Mines, unless you guys have questions now.

I do want to ask you to mention the distinction between landmarks and districts, because right now there's a conversation underway regarding, is it Hill, is it? I need people to understand the difference of the specific landmarks which is by the parcel versus a district which includes people's households. If you want to give that distinction.

Sure, yeah. So this is taken directly from the historic zoning ordinance and The applications follow similar procedures, but they are different. So a local historic landmark designation is going to be a single property or a single structure. And a local historic district is going to be more than that, right? It's not defined. It could be, you know, a small city block or a large name park like Upton City. So that is the distinction between the landmark and the district. Again, we are looking at individual sites here.

Gotcha. And before we proceed, what we did in the resolution is grouped into three categories. The first category is cemeteries, I think. And the second category are the R.H. Hunt buildings, which are City Hall is a R.H. Hunt. If you haven't done your research on R.H. Hunt, world-renowned architect. We have torn down RH Hunt buildings in Chattanooga. We're probably one of the few cities that are actually doing that, which is very sad. And then the other landmarks include places like Walden Hospital, Lincoln Park, and some ML King structures that are already registered on the historic landmark.

On the national register.

And so we've grouped those into three different categories. which we will discuss. So I'll hand it over to Linda, and she'll just kind of do a quick, if you guys have any questions, feel free to interrupt, because this is the fascinating part.

And please do ask questions. When we first began, thank you for letting me be your city historian and for allowing me to be a part of this process. I am now celebrating my 20th year. I will be historic before too long. But when we first started the conversation, because I had served on the Tennessee Historical Commission to currently represent Southeast Tennessee on the Tennessee Cemetery Commission and serve on the African American Historical Foundation Board. Cemeteries are near and dear to my heart because they are not only sacred resting sites, but as a historian, as someone who values history, teaches history, cemeteries are textbooks and every tombstone is a story in that textbook. And cemeteries are our most endangered across the state because it's very easy At a time when we were a much more rural economy, people often buried on their own land. And so there would be cemeteries of 10 people or 20 people or whatever, and as land has changed hands so often, those cemeteries have disappeared. That's part that happens, and we know that has happened. Ancient graves have disappeared. We know that many of those indigenous people who were buried in Moccasin Bend, those sites we are trying to restore, but we can't bring back those actual burial sites. Well, two of the first cemeteries that we took a look at, Bek Nov, which is on the historical registry already, has I mean, I'm assuming all of you have been to Beknahm. I should ask that first. Over in North Chattanooga, the site of the largest group of U.S. colored troops are buried there. It is a historic African-American cemetery owned by Hearst United Methodist Church over on North Market Street. It is, you know, it has been restored, and then it'll grow over. It'll be restored, it'll be grown over, and the church has maintained it for decades. It was established in 1863. And it was established as a burial site for those who, many who were in contraband on the North Shore of the river. And it was a gift from the Shepherd family.

You'll need to unlock your iPhone first.

And the Beck family where the Chattanooga Golf and Country Club is now. Pleasant Garden Cemetery is one of our... Big ifs right now for the city because it is privately owned by out-of-state descendants of the original owners. We estimate there are more than 14,000 graves there. Yes. There are about 3,000 that are visible. It is... I mean, it's such an incredible historic site, too. Members of the Scottsboro Boys are buried there. Ed Johnson is buried there. As we'll actually remind everyone, Lionel Richie's great-grandfather is buried there. All sorts of connections, and that is a cemetery... of absolute magnitude size for us. As you look at some of the other cemeteries, you're probably familiar with them. I just came from UTC with a Constitution Day workshop today. In a row, we have what we call the Citizen Cemetery. It is a city cemetery, but Locals refer to it as the Citizen Cemetery. Confederate Cemetery and Mitzvah Congregation Cemetery, three of the oldest historic cemeteries in the city, each of which tells a very, very different story. In looking at the cemeteries that needed to be preserved, we wanted to be certain that we are treating historic cemeteries in the same manner, regardless of their individual history. By the way, the Confederate Cemetery has an awful lot of folks buried there who were not actively engaged in the Confederate War, who did not serve, who were not family members. It was open to others to be buried there during the time that it was created. Mizpah Congregation Cemetery, absolutely priceless historic site. Citizen Cemetery itself, I get a call at least once a year from Todd Gartenhauer, whose great-grandfather was one of the founders of that cemetery. Early, great-great-grandfather, early days of Chattanooga, because... It too helps tell the story. You walk the tombstones, look at the dates, Google the names, When I began this, there was no Googling of names. Now you can Google the names and you realize so many of Chattanooga's founders are buried there.

Where is Mayor Wilder buried? Is he not buried in the city?

He is buried there. And I'm so glad that you asked that question because I just did a workshop for Tennessee leadership on Sunday and said, this city is the reconciliation city in the nation because Mayor Wilder was elected mayor of Chattanooga in 1871, having led Union troops at Chickamauga and Chattanooga. So we are the birthplace of reconciliation following the Civil War with our Chattanooga-Chickamauga National Battlefield being the oldest national military park in the nation. It is not Gettysburg. Everybody always says, no, no, it's Gettysburg in my mind. Nope, nope, predates it by 10 years. Other cemeteries, Brainerd Mission Cemetery, 1818 to 1838. You know, I think probably all of you are aware that a relationship between the Cherokee invited the Presbyterian Church out of New England to come to this region to establish a school that was You get me started and I want to talk history. The first fully integrated school in North America where indigenous children, European-American children, and African-American children sit in classrooms together. Not New York, not Philadelphia, not Chicago, Chattanooga, Tennessee, Brainerd Mission. And the reason that we have Missionary Ridge is the treaty agreement between Atakulakula, And the 12 lesser chiefs said the missionaries could go no farther west than beyond the ridge, so that became Missionary Ridge. You know, just little fun tidbits. Forest Hill Cemetery. So much history in Forest Hill. A number of our state leaders, national leaders, U.S. senators. So many of those who died in the yellow fever epidemics of the 1870s. Absolutely incredible site. Silverdale Confederate Cemetery out where Bonnie Oaks and Lee Highway come together. And you'll see descriptions probably in your packets of each of these. One of the things that I always find so interesting about Silverdale Confederate Cemetery, one of the first events I did when I came here almost 50 years ago is John Popham. Is anyone in the room old enough to remember John Popham as the, you know, who was the editor, publisher of the Chattanooga Times? We did a ceremony there, and someone said, you're at a Confederate cemetery, and John... having been a veteran of World War II, answered so beautifully because he said so many of those who are buried here are 13, 14, 15, and 6-year-old children from Sweetwater, Tennessee, Tennessee Military Academy, who marched south as children to fight, and many of them did not even have enough ammunition for their weapons, and they died on sight. How could we not? recognized this cemetery. And I thought, and I told him, I said, I'm going to borrow that for the rest of my life is my explanation for that cemetery. So the cemeteries we felt like were probably the easiest because we're not going to let those be destroyed. The R.H. Hunt buildings I mean, we're opening in less than a month now the Tivoli with its restoration. I hope all of you have bought your tickets for Billy Strings. You're going to be there. You'll learn more about the history that night as Nick Wilkinson and I talk. But it is now 100 years old, and it is the epitome of elegance and theater. And it is a wonderful reminder that Chattanooga, Tennessee, had the first symphony, the first opera in the state of Tennessee. Not Nashville, not Memphis, not Knoxville. Chattanooga.

This is why she's amazing.

Well, you know, and then you look at City Hall. All three of these buildings that you're looking at are R.H. Hunt. You know, R.H. Hunt came here with his father, who was also an architect, and chose to stay here because he believed this was going to be the site of Renaissance.

Mm-hmm.

And it is indeed that. Our city hall building, absolutely a treasure. Soldiers and sailors auditorium. Most cities across the nation, when the Great War ended, November the 11th, 1919, put up monuments to their World War I, or at that point, Great War dead. Chattanooga had already established itself. When we had been assessed a million dollars of bond money to support the war effort, Chattanooga raised $4.3 million, four times what we had been assessed. And the Chattanoogans coming back from that war, along with the city fathers and mothers, said, we don't want a monument.

We want a monument.

Took four years, totally and completely funded with a combination of public and private dollars, including the great organ that was put in there. And it is not Memorial Auditorium. That is only the last part of the name. It is Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Auditorium. And it is a treasure recognized nationally. We go from there to look at some other landmarks. Walden Hospital, Emma Wheeler, the history of Walden Hospital is a history that every student and every citizen in this community should know about. it served the African-American community at a point before Erlanger was created and after Erlanger was created and even when eventually integrated, not integrated, segregated services were available. But Walden Hospital, all black staff, black nursing school, I mean, just an incredible hospital. Lincoln Park, you know, as a former board chair of Erlanger Hospital, Lincoln Park is one of the tops of my list because I am in regular conversation with Jim Coleman, now with our new, Barry Watson is the new chair of the board. Lincoln Park cannot be lost. We cannot, we have lost already a lot of it. I have actually threatened Jim Coleman that I will march in the streets singing. Those of you that are old enough to remember, they covered it up. They paved a parking lot kind of song from the 60s and everything. Willie Mays played there. The number of Negro League baseball players that played there. But that's not even what's most important. When World War I ended, Chattanooga hosted the largest welcome home celebration in the South. White veterans were at Olympia Park, which is now Warner Park. Black veterans were at Lincoln Park, and then they met in the middle of Third Street. We cannot lose those touch points that remind us of our humanity and our service and our sacrifice. First Baptist Church, I'm gonna call it First Baptist to East Eighth Street, absolutely. I mean, look at that. And I used to tease Dr. Lead. Aside from the historical significance of it, we hold the honor of being the community that told Dr. King that he needed to go somewhere and get a little more practice before he actually pastored his own church. And so he goes to Atlanta to work with his dad at Ebenezer. It certainly propelled him into a national site, but just imagine, have we been able to claim him? City of Chattanooga Downtown Library, built for the bicentennial in 1976. Different type of architecture, but significant in its architecture. Brainerd Municipal Golf Course, 100 years old. I mean, wow. Now, if only we had preserved Carver Park, which I'm writing about next week in the Times Free Press, we're not going to let this one disappear, though. And that, for a city of our size to have had its own municipal golf course as opposed to a private golf course in the 1920s, says something about this city. The other... that you'll see the other four buildings in the MLK historic district that we need to add to this. Each of them has its own story. Each of them would be an absolutely incredible classroom for us to educate not only our youth, but to educate our citizens. who vote, who are engaged in this community to understand that the past informs the present and predicts the future. If you have any questions, I promise I'll be relatively quiet.

Well, thank you, Linda. Part of the buy-in of all of this is having conversations with the owners, and we have done that from the Jewish cemeteries to the Confederate cemeteries to Erlanger which those conversations have been very positive. And my main purpose in doing this is because, Linda, we were having a conversation yesterday. You were commissioned by the State Cemetery Commission to come and find us. I don't know if I... Is this something we can...

Yes, it is. Well, and I had gotten a call maybe a month ago from... a woman who lived out of state now, historic African-American cemetery in St. Elmo, small family cemetery. And she said, I can't, we have no family living there any longer. There were multiple families buried there. I'd like to set up a foundation to pay for the maintenance of that cemetery for perpetuity. Told me where it was. We have a database on the Tennessee Historical Commission that we try to have every cemetery registered because then you have to access that if you're going to change property. Told me where it was, and I went to the site. The wall is still there. There are two houses on the property, and the cemetery is gone. And I called my staff person with the Tennessee Historical Commission and told him, and he said, do you want to call or do you want me to? And I said... I'm handing this one to you. You have the state of Tennessee designation, but it's so easy for small pieces of land that are historically significant to disappear. But we have seen buildings with historical significance, even public buildings, disappear over time. And everything can't be saved. There is a healthy balance between progress and preservation. But we need to think instead of reacting, we need to be progressive and think forward into what has value that we want our grandchildren to see. We want to be here to tell the stories of the past.

And Councilman, I think Councilwoman Dotley had a question.

Yes.

So first of all, thank you for bringing this, and I thank you for bringing in the strategic planning. So I just had a couple of questions, and I think my initial, I think we brought it a couple months, you brought it maybe a couple months ago, and I think one of my questions was, you know, some of these are private properties. So how does this impact, or how does this impact How does this impact private property rights in regards to that? So that's my first question. The second question is, and I think Councilman Clark already answered, you've already started reaching out to the properties owners and things like that. Can you go back to the presentation about the process? Yes. So I know you said you've already been reaching out. With that... will we be able to have a letter or something from those, especially the private property? Now, the city ones, I understand, you know, it's city property. But when it's a private property owner, like First Baptist Church or some of the others, will we receive a letter or something confirming from those property owners that it's okay for us to make the application for them? And I guess my third question is, Why wouldn't they just make the application themselves, especially as a private property? Again, the city ones, that's on us to do. Because that would be an issue, I think, with a lot of people that at the end of the day, if they own it, they own it. It's theirs, it's theirs. And we can say, don't tear it down. But also, we're not going to put a lot of money into maintaining it for 100 years either. Those are my questions. So how does it impact private property rights? And a reach out has started. So with that, will we receive any communication from just the private property owners, not everybody? Not the city ones, because that's just, again, that's us. Any information from those private property owners consenting to this here, because I don't want to approve anything that a private property owner has not approved of themselves. That's very much government overreach, and I cannot be involved in that. And then within that, explaining to those private property owners, you know, if you are a part of this, then when they do repairs, stuff like that, it has to go through the historic zoning. and the process and all those things. So those are my questions, I guess my three questions, I guess.

Do y'all want to tackle?

Well, the only one that I'll answer is for a number of the churches and properties of that nature who do not have someone on staff who has the expertise to make the application, I think, and Cassie, correct me on this, none of us envision this as a city process, but it is a joint community effort process. Right. where we have someone absolutely brilliant who teaches at the university, the historical preservation and everything, to assist smaller congregations in particular, or large congregations where there's not a staff person who is used to writing grants or doing this sort of work. Chattanooga's always been very good at finding that balance between private property owners having a conversation. And I think, from my standpoint, that's what this process is, is getting back to having discussions about what needs to be preserved. Most of the property owners that you're seeing in this list are people who've already committed to preserving those properties. And the designation, I think, gives them some recognition for the time and money they've already spent. And maybe your marker, that kind of increases tourist awareness.

As far as staff goes, once these applications are made, if we move forward with them, the property owners would be notified with a letter that the application has been made and that there would be a public hearing in the Historic Zoning Commission. But in that second longer resolution, you can see that part of the effort is the outreach to those stakeholders being those private property owners so that we can hopefully get that buy-in so that they're interested in becoming a local landmark.

And that's prior to us putting this, the council approving this?

Correct.

Okay, and can I request that we get confirmation from the ones that are private property owners, and I guess the Councilman Clark, that they're saying that they are okay with this?

And I'll tell you, I'm not really concerned. Part of the process is that conversation. Like if you read the top of the resolution, it talks about outreach to owners. So what we're voting on is not for consent from them. What we're voting on is to have the conversation to put an application in so that we can legally have that conversation. That's what the application process is. Now, for most of the... I can't foresee most... Everybody on this list has been notified, and so they're not going to offer a letter of consent because they themselves would like to go through the process because part of the process is developing a design guide, which we do not have. And so they themselves would not consent. We're not even consenting. Part of the process is for the Historic Zoning Commission, which is where they will work on the guidelines, and that recommendation comes to us. So I won't vote on it until I see the design guidelines. Similar to the districts, I think you represent St. Elmo, which is a historic district. It's the same process. And so we wouldn't be asking these homeowners or not even, these aren't even homeowners, these are property owners to consent because they wouldn't know what they're consenting to because it hasn't gone through the process yet. Absolutely. But what they have consented to is that their property is historic. State law gives us the opportunity through this process as a council to make an application. So remember, we're just making an application so that we can begin the conversation of consent. I'm not even consenting until they come up with the design guidelines. That's the same process that your neighborhood went through in St. Elmo, Ferger Place. What's the other ones? Fort Wood. Fort Wood, and it's the same process that Councilwoman Hill's people are going through with their houses. Some of those people consent, some of those people do not, but there's a process, a public hearing process, where they will have the opportunity to be presented those guidelines so they will know what they're consenting to. To answer your question, do all of these people know that their properties are on historic... Absolutely, because they came to the historic preservation town hall meeting that we had. We have some of the Lincoln Park here. I think she mentioned that she's already been in talks with the president of Erland, which is great for us, right? The cemeteries, they love it, because as you've just noticed, one of the cemeteries in your district, a black cemetery, has now been covered. So... Everybody that's in this resolution has consented to go through the process and learning what those design guidelines are because we don't want any more black cemeteries to be covered. We don't want to lose any more black history from Lincoln Park or ML King, which we could have preserved 30 years ago and we did not. And so, again, this resolution is just the application process. The Historic Zoning Commission is made up of individuals who are specific to different subject matter experts as far as architects. I think there's some guidelines that different types of people can only serve on that commission that offer those expertise to come up with those design guidelines. And so until those guidelines are done, they will make a recommendation to city council. We will have those guidelines and then we will approve it and then it becomes historic and then those guidelines go into effect. For a cemetery, it could be different. I haven't seen those guidelines, but it could be anywhere from making sure the cemetery is open, not putting a building over graves. And so the point of consent does not happen or the buy-in from the private property owners until after the application is made, and it goes to the public hearing and the historic zoning commission process.

And thank you for the explanation. So if any point in the process they decide, the private property owners, again, we worry about municipal, if any point they decide I no longer want to participate or be a part, then they're getting pulled out.

It'll be considered. The Frank Lloyd House, if you go back to the first slide.

Let me just go back. So you said it'll be, so if they say First Baptist says, so you know what, this is a lot, I want to get pulled out of this resolution. It'll be considered, and we won't... Because they're private.

Yeah, so just like any resolution, you can do an amendment. So if the Historic Zoning Commission makes a recommendation to us based off the application, so this is a resolution to start an application. Right, right. I'm there. So they will submit the application to your example from First Baptist. Right. First Baptist will have an opportunity to meet with the commission or whosoever presenting the guidelines, and that will be presented to them and say, hey, do you agree... to do, are you in agreement that this is how we would like to preserve your property? Yes or no. That's where that, it's just like zoning. Some consent, some don't. But they will have the opportunity to say, no, I don't want to be a part of that. And then it comes back to council and we can individually remove them or not remove them. But a part of this process is to recognize that is historic and that it is worth preserving.

Okay, that makes sense. Okay, thank you, Councilman Clark. I appreciate that.

We've got a few folks with questions, and not a whole lot of time, but I saw first Councilman Harvey and then Councilwoman Burrs and Councilwoman Noll.

I'll try to be quick. First of all, thank you all. You know, this is a passion of mine, so I'm very excited about this. A couple of questions. The City Hall Municipal Building, does that include City Council Building as well or no? No. If not, I'd recommend.

John P. Frankeman.

Cassie, does that include this whole parcel?

Yes.

I know we're connected, but it just states City Hall. Right, right.

Say that again, Phil. They were constructed at different times.

Yeah, I mean, this was the jail at one point. So, yeah, that was just a question. Maybe we need to make that specific if we want to do that.

The resolution right now is by the tax not number, which would include the entire parcel.

Right, the entire, okay, all right, cool.

But if we need to change that, we can obviously.

I mean, I think, so it does include the parcel, and so we are, our city council chambers, the John P. Franklin chambers, are actually included on the same parcel, the same tax ID parcel with City Hall. Okay, good. But if it's worth it, Cassie, we could give recognition to John P. Franklin because that is historic as well.

Absolutely.

We can call it out in the history and the application materials.

That would be great. Yeah, John P. Franklin, City Council, that would be great. Okay. Just to piggyback off of what... Councilwoman Dottley was saying, I do want to make sure that we don't prevent like what happened at uh like what they did with the waymark i think that's a beautiful shining example of what can be done when a developer comes in and can make something that has set vacant for years beautiful and so we don't want to prevent like we it does i want to make sure it's not so strict that that can't happen right so the waymark used national historic

tax credits and that would not be impacted by a local designation those are also impactful on the interior which we would have no jurisdiction over with these local with the local landmark designation we can also make sure when we're looking at the guidelines that they're aligning with the Secretary of Interior standards which is what the National Park Service uses when they administer those tax credits our guidelines are based on those so they shouldn't conflict but we can definitely make sure that they don't

Yeah, I want to be real careful with that as to, you know, if it's so strict, we don't want something to sit vacant and rot and just fall in on itself.

Absolutely.

We want to make it to where it is, something that is going to stick around, where a developer or property owner is able to come in, make it beautiful again. You see what I'm saying? Absolutely.

And that's one of the things the Tennessee Historical Commission works with local communities, works with the federal guidelines, because those tax credits... help us preserve some of those structures, but allow some leeway.

Part of the awesomeness of this designation that it unlocks some funding availability. Right now, buildings that are currently, to your point about some of the vacant buildings, especially on ML King that are sitting there, this gives an opportunity to preserve the history, but then to open up some funding opportunities for those developers And they can sell it at any given time, but they would, similar to this property I think sold for, what was it, $4.2 million? But when the owners purchased it, I guess the exterior... guidelines were attached to the deed, and so even the people who bought this house, they're like, you know, this is how we have to preserve it. It'll be the same thing for the other buildings where we say we want to preserve this because it's a part of history, and if you sell it, the owner would have to adhere to those same guidelines that we established.

Okay.

Thank you again. I ditto everything everybody said about kudos. My question is is there, where is there a master spreadsheet that says, say, you contacted the Mitzvah Cemetery, who was your contact? Because what I'm thinking about is if I'm connected with one of these organizations and somebody says, oh, I see where city council is doing blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, I either agree or I don't disagree, then I can go back and say, oh, well, you may not have known, but they talked to Tom Smith, And he's the one that approved it. So it might be good to have that resource at any point in time.

We were intentional because we knew most of you would be more concerned about private property rights versus preservation. And I get that. It's your prerogative. The law allows us to preserve properties and to go through this process. You don't have to vote for it. It's okay. But to your point is that we knew that would come up. So we've been in this process. I think we have the preservation town hall that can... June or July. And so we've been doing that due diligence. Good.

And so in preparation for this. Yeah, no, so we can help you. Yeah, for sure. So if somebody picks up the phone and calls you and says, well, I don't remember us approving this. Who did you talk to? It would be nice to say, you know what, let me just ask Cassie, then she can, or let me just ask so and so.

And just so you know, a lot of the conversations have been met with gratitude. Oh, I'm sure. They're so thankful that someone is preserving Confederate cemeteries, black cemeteries, Jewish cemeteries, missionary cemeteries. We're working with Russell Gilbert now on Turkey Foot Hollow where we don't know where some of the bodies are. And so we have not, and I get the presumption, you gotta ask those presumptive questions. That's not the case on this list. You guys can actually call. You know, the list is in your resolution. We can get you the list. It would help maybe if they're in your district that you can interface with those individuals and say, I'm interested in preserving your history because they are aware of the resolution. And we had a strategic planning meeting last week specifically for this because we knew what some of your questions would be. And we're very grateful that most of our, not all of our partners, and our heaviest lift would probably have been Erlanger.

And they may still drag their feet. And they may still drag their feet.

But here's the thing, they're waiting on the design guidelines. Like no one is going to make a move, including this council, until we understand what the design guidelines, like what are we, how are we asking you to preserve this?

Okay, so Kathy, can you go back to the properties on MLK? So they were contacted, especially up in the upper right-hand corner. Were the property owners there contacted and the property owners in the lower right-hand corner?

I'm wondering about... Cassie, were they contacted?

I did not make contact with the owners. Because I'm... I'm not sure that they would, that they, the reason I ask, I don't think that they would have said I'm good with this. Because that is in my district and those are my peeps. Okay, so that's why I'm saying... So let me stop you. So first of all, these properties are already on the... You do realize that these properties are on the historic zoning?

Okay, I mean, I understand where they are. So at some point, there was a conversation. So there were 15 properties on ML King Boulevard that's currently in the historic zoning, and so they were torn down. And so these properties are the only ones that remain that's currently registered. So they are aware of the registry.

Well, they will contact the people that own those properties.

I think for these particular properties, because I'm doing some of the contacting, Linda and I are, we're still in the process of doing that.

Okay, so you might not have hit them yet, but okay, that's my thing. So my other thing was, I'm glad to hear, I think that question was answered about the historical part would be pretty much exterior, not interior. Okay, and then the other part was who covers the cost. I heard grant money or funding or that this stuff has to do with

So as far as if they were adopted as local historic landmarks, whenever they went to pull building permits, they would be required to get the certificate of appropriateness like the folks in San Elmo have to. So that would just be like an additional permitting cost.

Okay.

As far as the application fee, because city council is the one making it, that fee would be waived. And then staff would be the one working on the guidelines. So that's a cost that we would. Okay. All right. Thank you. So there would be additional permit fees at the very end if it gets passed.

Okay.

But up front, nothing.

Yeah, and then it would if it exchanged hands or even currently if there were to be, there are tax credits available for restoration.

Specifically for the Martin Luther King Jr. District, they're in the National Register, so they can work with our State Historic Preservation Office to get a 20% rehabilitation tax credit towards restoration. rehabilitating these properties without any of the stuff we've talked about today.

That's eligible today.

Thank you. One last thing.

But I will recommend since these are in your district and if you're interested in preserving African American heritage zones, the building, since these are already on the historic registry, you could assist us in reaching out and maybe helping us connect to some of those people.

Well, I just, you know, the statement was made that they were contacted. And that was my thing is to make sure that they were contacted, which I know those two property owners would have definitely. Thank you very much. It's good to see you.

Move to adjourn. Move to adjourn?

Yes, yes. We are adjourned until 3.

Second. Second. Okay. Thank you. I was like, thank you.

Thank you.