City Council - Regular Meeting

Okay.

I will call the football city council meeting for Thursday, July 2nd to order. May I have a roll call, please?

Councilman Bocce. Here. Councilman Walker. Here. Mayor Wheaton.

Here.

Vice Mayor Eldridge. Here. Councilman Gilbert. Here. Five present.

Thank you. At this time, I would like to ask those that wish to do so to stand for the invocation given tonight by the Associate Pastor Kristen Miller from Living Hope Church, followed by the Pledge of Allegiance.

Let us pray. Heavenly Father, as we approach this 250th birthday of our nation, we want to take time to thank you for the many blessings you've given us. We also want to take time to invite you into every aspect of our nation and city. Lord, this is one nation under God, a nation established as a constitutional republic where we elect people to represent us in government. And as our representatives, we lift up this city council before you. We pray they have godly wisdom, insight and understanding to make decisions for our city that are honorable to you and bless our people. As we embark on wonderful patriotic celebrations this weekend, we pray for protection from tragedy, protection from wicked and unreasonable men, plots and plans. We pray for safety of this community. We pray for the safety of our first responders, and we pray this is a celebration that reignites love of this country and this community in the hearts of our fellow citizens. We thank you for this council seeking you first for the betterment of this community, and we pray blessings over them as they meet tonight. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, Thank you.

Item three, consider approval of agenda as presented. Are there any changes?

Yes, ma'am, there's one change. We'd like to add item 7D, which is consider approval of change order number one, the final balance for the Henley Drive street extension project. And this will be sponsored by the public work department, Ms. Elrod. I respectfully ask that the attitude of the agenda.

Thank you. Is there a motion on the agenda as amended?

So moved.

Motion by Mayor Eldredge. Seconded by?

Second.

And by Councilman Gilbert. Any discussions in the council? Go ahead and vote on that.

Thank you. All votes correct. Five yes, motion carries.

Thank you. 5A, consider approval of minutes of council meeting held on June 18th, 2026. Is there a motion?

So moved.

Motion made by Councilman Bacci. Is there a second? Second. Second by Vice Mayor Eldridge. Any discussion from the council? Go ahead and vote on that.

Oh, that's correct. 5B, yes, motion carries.

Thank you. 5B, consider on second and final reading, Ordinance 026-0612, Amending the City of Football Municipal Code, Title VIII, Chapter 2, and Chapter 4. Mr. Mills.

And, Councilmembers, as you stated, this is the second reading. We've had no files. There's been no changes since the first reading. I recommend your approval.

Thank you. Is there a motion?

So moved.

Motion made by Vice Mayor Eldridge. Is there a second?

Second.

Second by Councilman Baggi. Any discussion from the public on that? Councilman?

Although it's correct. 5VS motion carries.

Thank you. For the consent agenda, we have 6A, consider approval to purchase one side load sanitation truck utilizing the source flow contract ID 110223. 6B, consider approval of purchase of one front load sanitation truck utilizing source flow contracts ID 110223-NWY and, oh my goodness, 032824MAP. Item 6C, consider approval to purchase one dumpster truck, utilizing source contract ID 032824MAK. And 6D, consider declaring equipment as surplus. Is there a motion on the consent agenda?

So moved.

Second. A motion from Vice Mayor Eldridge, second from Councilman Walker. Any discussion from the Council? Okay, we'll vote on that.

All that's correct. 5. Yes, motion carries.

Thank you. New business 7A, hold a public hearing and consider on first reading ordinance 026-0611, pending the zoning code section 227.3 to permit adaptive residential multifamily reuse as a use permitted on appeal, special exemptions, and to the zoning code section 234, charter permitted uses to include adaptive residential multifamily reuse. Mr. Ward.

Thank you, Mayor and Council. This ordinance is a text amendment to the city's zoning code that creates a new use called adaptive residential multifamily reuse. The proposal would allow the conversion of existing hotel or motel buildings into multifamily residential housing within the CI commercial industrial mixed use district through a special exception approved by the Board of Zoning Appeals rather than a use permitted by right. The Planning Division began exploring this amendment after receiving inquiries about converting an older motel property into long-term housing. The Planning Division has also received general comments from the public about identifying ways to expand affordable housing opportunities and reduce barriers to providing housing for residents across a broader range of income levels. The property that has prompted this discussion is the former Fall Creek Inn, now operating as Homebridge Suites, located on Salem Road. Although this is legally classified as a motel, the property has been serving as long-term housing for several years. The owners approached the city because they believe a multifamily designation would allow them to obtain financing with more affordable interest rates, than those available for motel properties. According to the owners, this would lower their financing costs allowing them to maintain and potentially expand the availability of affordable housing at the property. Rather than creating a broad new residential district in the CI zone, staff is proposing a very limited adaptive reuse provision. This existing motel building would become eligible for consideration by the Board of Zoning Appeals. It would apply to future existing hotel and motel buildings for consideration by the BZA on a case-by-case basis. Each proposal would be evaluated individually and the Board could impose conditions or deny a request if it finds the proposal inappropriate. The ordinance includes several safeguards. First, the conversion is limited to existing buildings. No new apartment complexes could be constructed under this provision in the CI zoning district. Second, the building must comply with all applicable building and life safety codes before occupancy. Third, each development must dedicate a portion of its units to affordable housing. Specifically, at least 20% of the units must be occupied by households earning no more than 50% of the area median income or 40% of those units by households earning no more than 60% of the area median income. Rental rates are also capped based on HUD affordability standards. Staff is recommending the use of HUD Area Median Income or AMI as the income standard. HUD updates these figures annually and they are the benchmark used by most affordable housing programs nationwide. This ordinance also permits participating developments to accept housing choice vouchers and TNHDA project-based vouchers and requires an annual report to the Community Development Department documenting occupancy and rental rates. We recognize several benefits to this proposal. It recognizes the existing use for property that's already functioning as long-term housing. It preserves a naturally occurring affordable housing option without requiring new construction. It encourages reinvestment in an aging commercial property. And it advances housing goals contained in the COBOL 2030 plan by expanding affordable housing options while making use of existing infrastructure. There are some considerations from council. If the property converts to multifamily residential use, units would no longer be subject to hotel motel tax. However, because these properties are already largely occupied by long-term residents, staff believes the current hotel motel tax generated from these locations is likely minimum. We also recognize that this ordinance could establish a precedent for similar requests. For that reason, we have intentionally structured this as a special exception rather than a permitted use. Every request would require a public hearing before the Board of Zoning Appeals and would be evaluated on its own merits. Currently, this is the only property in the city limits that is an existing motel in the CI zoning district. We don't have any other properties that would qualify. This ordinance has been reviewed by the Planning Commission, and they have made a favorable recommendation. I recommend your approval. Happy to answer any questions from the council on this.

Thank you. And I know we have some representatives here, which we might talk to y'all in a second, but we'll get to the public hearing first, if that's okay. So this is a public hearing. I'll need a motion to open up the public hearing. Do I have a motion? So moved. Motion by Vice Mayor Eldridge. Do I have a second? Second. Second by Councilman Baji. Anyone who would like to speak on this agenda item? Seeing none, we'll close the public hearing portion. I know the council's got some stuff to ask or discuss.

I'll go first. I think my biggest concern is that Effectively, the caps on what the maximum rent should be, if that's based off of... and my figures here that we showed, a four person household being 43,800 area median income, which is a very low income. The rent for basically the one bedroom would be 1,095 to be the rent cap. And I think that's pretty high for long-term stay above market rent. And so I guess my questions would be, A couple of questions I have. One, is this place going to still operate as a hotel for some of the guests and be long-term stay for others, or is everybody going to be over 90 days stay, which is ultimately would – and I'll ask you guys. I mean, are you going to have guests over?

I would ask them to come to the podium if you'd like to ask them questions.

Yeah, go ahead.

Cool.

Take your question away.

Well, great question. If, you know, there's a reason why, you know, Hilton and Marriott doesn't step up to the plate. Oh, yes. Yeah, of course. My name is Michael Bowie. I'm the owner of Homebridge Extended Stay. So, great question. You know, there's a reason why Hilton and Marriott doesn't come into these properties. If you look around, all the hotels you see typically have the exact same box. They're a nice rectangle, multi-story rectangle. So, they've moved on. The nightly business has, you know, largely moved on from these boxes. And no one really would want to own, you know, an aging box, you know, with, you know... crime that happens and battling the city no one wants to do that they would much rather have an exit path to multifamily but you know largely because they have you know a bad rap sometimes they come to the city and say hey no we don't want multifamily but it stays there so uh Myself, and I'm sure plenty of other, you know, extend state properties. We do want to go multifamily. We would rather go multifamily. If the nightly business was there, we would be doing it. I wouldn't be here. So we already do long term business. We probably only do a few nights, maybe a week, if that. So. No, the intent is to allow us to do what we're not only already doing, but what the property has been doing for years, maybe even a decade. And we just really want to formalize that, what's going on. And then in terms of like the rent, I'll have to look back at it. The way that I calculated it was like maybe $1,300 was the max. If $1,096 is the max, that is still – like our break-even right now is $1,100. So it seems like it's high for a small studio. But when you're taking into consideration the time that it was purchased – your debt service is a lot higher. You know, these properties are a lot higher, taxes are up, insurance is up, you know, our insurance on that property is probably over 100, 150,000, you know, a year. So, you know, people don't, it's hard to compare, you know, a smaller, you know, property and, you know, what they might rent as a studio. And then in terms of like the AMRs and the fair market rates, or the AMIs and the fair market rates, you know, we work with some organizations that, work with veterans, and they come to us and say, hey, this is what FMR is. And one of the great questions is they say, hey, great, awesome. Well, you probably don't have a need for any housing, right? Because you can just supply all these people with FMR. And they're like, no, we can't find anywhere to put them. And it's because FMR is usually dragging behind what rent reasonableness is that actually kind of takes into consideration what other people are renting. And then once they were able to do a rent reasonableness study in another market, they went all the way from $900 to $1,400. So rent reasonableness is a lot different than what what HUD and FMR does, but we still would actually love to take vouchers. If there's a way that, you know, with Section 8 that we can take the voucher and apply that and maybe they pay the difference, we would love nothing more than, you know, to fill up with vouchers and offer that. Last thing I'd say, and I'll shut up, is this is a lot more than, you know, just a zoning question. You know, for most people in the room, you know, you might be month-to-month or, you know, you might have some savings, you know, But for these people, not only are they day to day, they're probably hour by hour. $100 plus or minus is a life-changing amount of money, sometimes literally the difference between life and death. It's not an exaggeration. It's happened. Um, so if we can now means, you know, in Cookville with Putnam County and Cookville, you know, taxes are almost 20% occupancy and sales tax. It's like eight over 18%. So you are giving hundreds of dollars immediately in to these people's pockets. You might as well said they won the lottery. So for at a property like ours with 112 units, you know, a vote tonight, if we do a voter or later, um, in this direction, you, you, We may not solve affordable housing nationwide. We may not solve affordable housing in Cookville, but you absolutely will have just changed the lives of 100 families. That's all I have on that.

A follow-up question. You mentioned taxes, but my understanding, can you rent in a hotel for more than 90 days straight, or do we have a restriction on that?

We do not restrict that.

Okay, so if you rented now for more than 90 days to any individual, month to month, and you did a more than 90-day lease, You're not obligated for the mobile social tax or state sales tax. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. Let's jump off. 3% of that 20, roughly 19.75%. Yeah. The city's only 3% of that. So you'd still be, if you rent less than 90 days, you're still obligated for the state sales tax of 9.75%. 100%. And the county's mobile tax of 7%. So it's not a lot of savings. Now, I'm just trying to understand, because I've got 42 apartments myself. We do, they're all three-bedroom, a little less than 1,200 square feet. We rent by the bed, include utilities, and we're at $615 a month. Yeah, 100%. So that's a big spread from $615 to $1,300. Not granted. In my situation, I will acknowledge that they're mostly students and their parents co-sign leases. And I do sympathize that you've got a challenge with collecting rent and vacancy and those issues. But you have that avenue to the tax discount without this. So how does this benefit you?

100%. So this is absolutely the highest collective sales and occupancy taxes that we pay at all four properties. You know, our lowest is 12. Around here, it's, you know, over 18%. So, again, when you're talking about a demographic where, you know, $100 makes or breaks it, and you're adding, you know, if you're at $1,400 or, you know, $1,200, and then you add an extra 20% onto that, that is – Not only is that the difference between eating that night, it's going to work the next day. It's the people that have the parents that can sign the paper and the people that we have are miles apart. That money, it may sound... like nothing to you, and for most of us it is. To them, it is everything. Also, when they come to us, they're turned away at most other apartments. They can't get into apartments for one or two reasons, credit, or they don't have the cash. So coming to you, you say, hey, the parents have to sign. Boom, you got the credit salt. Hey, you need first and last month's rent. You got to pay for furniture. You got to pay your utilities. You're looking at probably $3,000 to $5,000. So what do you say? Okay, great. Yeah. So in most, and I'm not saying to use necessarily just on average to get into an apartment, you're looking at thousands of dollars. So what do you say to the person who, you know, we typically think of homeless people as, you know, the big beard pushing the shopping cart, asking for change. But what about the people that are in the car at Walmart who has their kid in the van who's going and, you know, being a waitress, they have 500 bucks in their pocket and they've said, hey, mommy, when can we get a roof over our head? Where do you go? You can't go to an apartment. You can come to us where you can get in for 500 bucks. You know, that's, we take on the effort of working with people and working with payment plans. So we can, we inspect the rooms every single week. So we have a much higher labor costs again, not just factored in the typical apartment that has software that you just pay and it just hits the bank account. You know, they hit software when every time, you know, the maintenance request comes up. It's a different ballpark with us. It's very labor intensive in order to provide something that they have a roof over their head tonight, not 90 days from now or 180 days from now, whenever I can save up that few grand. I've got a question for you.

So you said you'd like to take the vouchers and stuff. What have been the barriers that prevent you from doing the vouchers?

And how would this help? 100%. Yeah. So vouchers are not for hotels. As a hotel, you can't take a voucher. You can as multifamily. So in most, even most places don't even, you know, take vouchers right um so for us that that money would be good for us um we would absolutely take it because we're dealing with people who have no way usually of paying um we print out resources we contact all the different um you know churches that might pay we work with you know area rescue ministries that might pay basically whenever they get close to maybe not paying we see that in front of front of time um and give them resources work give them some time to call um So if someone has a voucher, that's way better than what we have. And that's better paper than what we have today. So we would love to be able to take those vouchers, especially if we can bridge the gap where they may have to pay a little bit of the difference between what the voucher may pay and what rent reasonableness is.

So in other words, what you're saying is changing the classification to multifamily would actually allow you to do that, which you can't today, right?

Yes. And again, to the other point about comparing the price of an apartment versus a hotel, I went into it with 11% interest. My rate fluctuates every single quarter. That's a lot different than being able to lock in long-term, low-interest debt sponsored by the government. you know, I mean, you can, we could then afford to, you know, pass on a lower rate. We simply can't do that because our costs are significantly higher and it's harder for people to see that might not be in our, you know, our P&L every day. They just say, oh, well, you know, let me compare this to a two bedroom. You know, it's only six, you know, six, seven, 800 bucks. Why are you trying to trick 1100 bucks? Well, Again, we're not charging first and last month's rent. We don't have a long-term lease. We are inspecting the units. We have higher debt service. We have higher utilities. I mean, everything we pay is commercial.

So since you've got a week-to-week payment plan, are you still going to be paying the sales tax and motel tax for the county?

So if we're able to go multifamily and offer housing, we no longer have to do that. So you would still be on a 6- to 12-month lease. A 6-month lease is the shortest by law that I'm aware of, ideally a 12-month lease. But There's nothing stopping us from collecting more money, helping break that up for them. If they want to pay weekly and we're able to do that, most apartments don't do that because it's laborious. There's not a law preventing them from being able to take more frequent payments. they want your bank account hooked up to their automated system, and it's going to draw every month, and please don't call me unless you have, you know, something's on fire, which is completely different than how this demographic, you have to work a lot closer, you know, with this demographic, so.

So with the long-term leases, are you going to have cleaning, like a hotel?

No. I mean, certainly, you go to a nice apartment, they'll have amenities that they could offer. Ideally, if we wouldn't need to have housekeepers anymore, we wouldn't be offering cleaning. But again, you still want to be inspecting these units. So I don't imagine that we'd be able to get away from two. We're still going to have to have people there. It's not going to run autonomously. So if we're in there and the room needs cleaned and they want to pay us some money to clean it, then obviously we'd be happy to do that for them. But that's, again, more to keep the unit, right? Like, so again, it's hard to see the issues that are happening at this low of a level. You know, this type of demographic, When you're struggling life and death situations, the amount of pests that you have in your room is not a concern to you, usually. However, it is a concern to the people left and right of you. So we need to do our job and make sure that we're providing somewhere that's safe and clean and affordable. And that's laborious. That's not because we're trying to also do nightly raids. I mean, in a perfect world, everyone would keep their room clean. But Sometimes it can be babysitting in a sense where we have to come in and make sure the room is safe and clean for everyone. So I see that as a service that we're providing that you're not going to get in your Section 8 apartment that probably hasn't been seen in years.

Did you have something to add? I just was seeing if Darren could shed some light on this, like in a motel situation, if they stay longer than 30 days or 90 days, they're paying the taxes until that time. So are they exempt from that after? I mean, how does that work? Do they get a refund? They have to charge it on the front end. Does it get refunded back? How does the hotel, motel tax and sales tax relate in there?

For the city of Cookville, for the occupancy tax, The hotel has to collect the 3% occupancy tax from day one through 30, and they have to remit that to the city. Day 31, they stop collecting that 3%, as long as that's a continuous stay. Sales tax, to the best of my knowledge, sales tax is 90 days, and after 90 days, they quit charging sales tax. To the best of my knowledge for the county, the county, you collect and remit for 90 days. 60, right? Yeah. It's 60 now? Okay. They have a longer run of continuous occupancy than the city does.

I think one of the issues they probably run into is that if you're doing 30 days or 90 days they haven't paid, they miss one day, they're out, they come back in, that resets.

Well, ideally, yes, but we're already most of the time getting treated as an apartment anyways by, you know, the police. So, you know, we have to pay sales and occupancy tax as if we're a hotel, but if someone doesn't pay, they go and tell the cops, oh, no, you know, I have a lease or, you know, they need to evict me. Cop comes and is like, yep. Looks multi family to me, you need to go victim. So it's like, we don't we get the worst of both worlds.

So, potentially by doing this, you could have. Like you said, 18 to 20% savings. by just switching from the hotel status, the multifamily residential. And the thought is you would pass those savings on to renters.

Yeah, that's an immediate savings that they would get. And then on top of that, again, is multifamily. That completely opens up banking options completely. So, you know, the pool of liquidity for hotels is this. The pool of liquidity for multifamily is this. So, you know, there's no Fannie and Freddie hotel loans, but there are Fannie and Freddie, you know, multifamily loans, as Mr. Gilbert's room up there. Roughly 360, 390 square feet, somewhere around there. So they're small units, absolutely. This isn't something where you're like, hey, you aspire to be here. Our guests are, I'm in my car. I've been in my car in the Walmart parking lot for a month. I have a kid. I'm working two jobs. The apartment that I went wants me to have my parents sign and I also need to have a few thousand dollars up front. I've got $500. No credit is trashed. Might even have a criminal record at some point. Where do I go? And that's the largest demographic of homelessness. It's not always just the people with the shopping carts that you see. It's actually the working class, the people that are trying. And right now, most of these extended stay, they... If we went multifamily, we could service those people better at a cheaper cost. The reason why extended stays get a bad rap is because they don't turn down the drug dealer when it shows up with $2,000. They just rent it to them because they no longer have the Hilton business and they can't go multifamily. And so when you fall through the cracks, you get...

Well, I think, too, one of the barriers with homelessness and getting support that you need is not having a mailbox someplace where you can receive mail. And it's written in the ordinance where that would also be a requirement as well. I think this is an opportunity for these people. who are living in their cars, certainly 3, 400 square foot is more than you get in your vehicle.

Exactly. And I have one more question. How many people transition from this? Where's the success end of this model? Are people able to... stay here for a time until they can save up that deposit and get into something, something that's more affordable on a monthly basis. Yeah.

And transparency, you're probably going to have 20 to 30%, you know, that graduate, you're going to have 20 to 30% that go back. And then you're going to have a middle that just like all of us, right. You know, we start scrolling, we're not working as hard as we should, you know, we are just surviving and you stay there. Our hope is if we can give them something a lot more long-term, cheaper, that we can expand those percentages that graduate a lot higher. Also as a multifamily, something that I've seen other of these properties do, there's these software services that now we can report their monthly payments if you're multifamily, you know, to some sort of credit bureau. That's great for us because it gives them more incentive and it gives them the ability to build their credit. So you can't report your hotel bill to the credit bureau.

I see a couple things in this. If we can get this changed to what you guys want, we've talked a lot, and I'm all for it, but we get this changed to this, people are going to hear that and the people who are trying are going to move there. because it's going to be cheaper then the next thing that will happen is then they can be on a lease a true lease right if they can be on a true lease then they can come to somebody that is a renter somewhere because they're going to save a little money hopefully because they're going to have a rent history For a while, and then hopefully what they can do is use that to get into an apartment. That's the next step up. That's the whole. And that's that 20%, maybe you're talking about, but that's better than what we have right now, which is. We have some of these hotels is just people day to day. I deal with them on a regular basis, needing something, wanting something. But to give them this option, it's not going to fix. a housing crime, but it's going to be another thing because we do have Highlands Residential that we gave money to that are working on the homeless housing, and hopefully they can get that up and running. So they're going to deal with that. You're going to be able to give us another avenue, which I appreciate. I'm all for it. Anything I can do to help outside of this because of my work and what I do. Of course, helping people find jobs and all that. I'm there to help. But I appreciate it. Thank you. I appreciate it. Absolutely.

So just to comment, I see that we're basically creating the most expensive per square foot multifamily auction in Cookville. I mean, at $1,100, this is $37 per square foot. The average apartment's under $20. And by moving this to multifamily status, the main thing here is just, the only thing I think we're saving you is, from my understanding, is that we're allowing you to reduce your interest rate. And because you can already save on the taxes if you go to a longer-term stay, is my understanding. And I would like some clarification on that. Like, I don't understand. If they book more than 90 days up front, They're long-term residents. Not from the start.

So that's a great question. So for example, anything you book less than six months, so say you come in and book a three-month, you do have to pay that. So again, it's what is the person with 500 bucks? Yeah, it's weird that the cheapest place is the $37 square foot place. Because I can't get in at the $20 square foot place. So we offer a place where someone with 500 bucks can get in. That option doesn't exist. And I carry the property. The property operates at a loss. I'm essentially like a nonprofit right now. So I won't be able to do that forever. At some point, this property will transition. If we can't stabilize this property, this property has had the same history for, you all would be able to tell me how long it's had this history for, that will continue to then happen with someone else who's less invested in it. What I'm trying to do is with a hotel loan, you've got five-year debt, variable interest rate. I'm trying to, how can we freeze this into 30 40 year debt how can we stabilize this so this is solved for the next 30 40 years not oh man that fall creek in has all this issues you know i'm these these extended state properties don't want to be there they would way rather be um but i think to your point eric too is that if they do so if they're there 90 days you know that goes away right so

They pay the first 90 days as a motel. Right. They have to pay the first 30 days, 60 days, and 90 days, and then after the 31st day or 61st day. That's how I understand it, and I just wanted Darren to clarify.

Yeah, I mean... Yeah, I mean, so we don't collect hotel tax on leases, right? We collect hotel tax on daily, from day to day. Correct. Which is currently, you know, folks are going, whether they're going a week, two weeks, whatever, they're going for, you know, they're going essentially day to day. So they aren't, they don't really have leases, right? They're coming and say, hey, you know, I want to stay until... I want to stay until the end of next week. And then when the end of that next week comes, they're saying, hey, I want to stay another week. So it's not actually a written lease.

You're not doing a six-month lease right now. Correct. Right. So they go and they're paying week to week. And then when we get to 90 days, all the taxes are out of the way. Right. But you get to 94-day, they've done great. They've struggled. They're out. They come back. That resets to take the taxes. Correct. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so it's not a benefit. It's a benefit to the group.

So does the Holiday Inn, if they offered a six-month lease, would we charge hotel, motel tax on that property?

Because they wouldn't do a nine. They wouldn't say a lease. Somebody might say, hey, I want to stay there for a six-month lease.

Yeah, so I'm on the other end of that. No matter what you do, if you're an Airbnb in a multifamily, you have to – we have this going on right now. We have Airbnbs in multifamilies downtown. And if you're an Airbnb, it doesn't matter what your property management system is. It doesn't matter. If you owe hotel-motel tax, if you are a short-term stay, so if you are less than 30 days, so if you pay the one week, if you have the low barrier entry and you don't sign a lease and you just pay a week, The taxes still have to be collected by the state. So they still have to pay the 9.75%. And then they still have to pay the 7% for the county. The only way they get out of the county is if they go over 60 days. And the only way they get out of the city is if they sign up for more than 30 days. So they can get out of the taxes regardless. They don't need this to get out of taxes.

They do not need a lease to get out of taxes if they are doing continuous stays for those different time brackets.

Yeah. If they do a long-term, more than 30-day stay.

How does that benefit the tenant if they all of a sudden can't make it and then they're out and their clock resets? They're still obligated by the State of Tennessee. That's right. But there's two things. There's the sales tax for the tenant.

No, the multifamily designation has changed that.

Well, there's two things. The thing to factor in that you have to consider both at the same time is the sales and occupancy tax and also the use. You then start getting into a gray area when all of your tenants have been there for a year. The argument could be made you're nonconforming. So it's not just the sales and occupancy tax. You can make an argument that we should be kicking these people out after. 90 days and they can't come back for 48 hours that's what some cities do so because we operate in other cities and have managed in other cities so that's um because there's one the the taxes but then there's also the use of what's actually going on at the property and so yes this isn't just a tax issue that the tax issue is not what we're after uh because to your point it will eventually drop off what we're after is formalizing that formalizing the use that's been going on for years and years and years and years and making sure that that's a legal, you know, bona fide use, which then again would have all these other benefits.

Because I've worked, I think I've worked with some hotels that once they hit that 90, they make them because they want to.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Here's a question. So say you are currently $40 a night. Okay. And so under the short-term rental market model, if you move to a long-term rental model, you know, where you're not, not taxed as a short term. So does that $40 a night change? So you all are, so if you can do that, you can get better financing. Does that $40 a night change for folks or does it move down to $30 a

Exactly. So those are the two savings that we're talking about. You instantly get to save the 18%, but also now our cost of doing business goes down so we can offer a cheaper rate. And if you would say that, well, why would we do that? It's because we don't stay full. We're not making money right now. Our price and demand are inversely related. So if I can lower my price, demand goes up, I can fill up, which actually my total income goes up by lowering my price. So yes, it's a win-win-win all around. So the city gets a property that's stabilized for the next 30, 40 years. We have a property where I don't have to tell my son, hey, bank's taking daddy's house today. And the guest gets a win because now they're saving anywhere from 18, 20, 30%. Now they can also build credit. Now they, you know, can get all, they can use their vouchers. So it's, it's a win, win, win all around.

I think you had a question.

I'm just going to put a little narrative with it here. As you can tell, we're plowing new ground here. I find myself just trying to find my way through. This could be the greatest thing ever, or it could be a disaster. And that's why I think the questions are being asked as they are. And not to mention, I'm sure Lindsay can't type fast enough, this is going to be... This is going to be great content for her because it's got everything. It's just anything. You could get rezoned. You've got the homeless. You've got affordability. And then sprinkle the apartments on it. You've just got this great stuff. So we're trying to navigate through that, as you can tell. Respectfully. What is compelling for me, and I want to like this, I'm not quite there yet, don't know where I'm at yet, but we'll figure it out. But what's compelling for me is that the things that we continually get asked about, what can a city council do without putting their thumb on the scale of the market to help affordability? And it sort of smells like that's in here somewhere. But for me, a good arrangement is, is where as a council where we don't end up you know over influencing market forces and we don't need to is where we we can see lack of better word almost scientifically hey the market ran out here is is this if if if if something we can do with a reason with a zoning initiative whether it be an amendment or a rezone can be done that says okay we can take an existing product that's maybe a little tired and struggling right now but but through administratively we can we can We can redo the use of it. That's appealing to me. But on the other hand, I just... Eric makes some good points, too. If some of those things can already be done now, I want to tease out a little bit more of that. But let me finish, too. Back to my point about, hey, where's the happy median for me as a council trying to... be sympathetic to what you're trying to do is that, okay, well, if that market rent's here, what is the combination? Because right now the percentages that have been offered, they sound reasonable. They sound like a good starting place, but where's the math that's been applied to that? And I'm not suggesting you solve that for us tonight. I'm just wondering if there's another moment we need to take to contemplate that.

And I want to make sure I understand correctly, the math specific, because I love math, but what's the math? We've got some numbers.

Some 20% is going to be at

20% of 50 AMI or 40% at 60 AMI. And then it's capped at 80% of our 30% of the household.

And the spirit of that sounds great. Okay. That, that, that kind of speaks to that affordability without us getting too involved. I just don't know where those numbers came from. Maybe they're right. Maybe they need to be higher. Maybe they need to be lowered.

They're extremely low, but the good thing, the reason why we don't push back on that, because most people want to have this really big ceiling, is these are people who have a ton of debt.

They have nothing, so they already meet all of the... Understood. I'm saying from the city's perspective. I'm trying to say, hey, how does that strike a harmony with what, for me, the most compelling thing here is, okay, how do we... get closer to providing an affordable product for folks. And Eric makes some good points. I am sympathetic, Eric, the per-foot price. Some of that's a bell curve. I mean, you get too far down the one-bedroom route, that price per foot goes way up. Yes, and a lot of them won't struggle with vacancy and collections, and they And there's a market that says, hey, when somebody can't put down all those deposits, then there's a rate to charge for the management of that issue. And then you go too far the other way. I mean, you could have a 10,000-square-foot house in this market, and you can't rent it for a dollar a foot because there's a ceiling there. So you have to kind of stay in the fairway and work with that. And I'm sympathetic to that, too. But having said all that, I just think maybe another – piece of analysis on making sure that I love percentages. I smell a good spreadsheet in here somewhere, but I think maybe just dialing that in and we use a little bit of logic against what our market says is affordable. And maybe it's an averaging effort. Maybe it's, you know, we're not going to I wouldn't suggest we would take them all. I can tell you right now my intuition says that doesn't make sense. But on the other hand, we can say, well, maybe this needs to go up a touch or maybe even down so that we can hold up our hand in good faith and say, hey, you know what? We have a target out in our market, and we are doing our good faith effort to say the combination of those numbers – beats that. And that's where I think we get closer to hanging our hats.

To John's credit, I was very impressed when I got the ordinance through. He actually picked the lowest possible affordability benchmark you could pick. It actually doesn't get further you know, so there is no bottom. The, the only thing question would be, Hey, could, you know, I was like, Hey, could it go 40, 50, if you wanted to, um, you know, grow, let's say there was a, um, a big employer that went, you know, right behind us. And, you know, you'd hate to say, no, no, no, you know, you're, you're, I mean, people can't rent there because they make too much money. Obviously that'd be great for us, but so it's already our, our, this demographic is so So, so at the bottom that we're already, he already used the lowest possible affordability benchmark.

And I get that. I just would like to see maybe a little bit more appreciable math to demonstrate that. And again, I'll go back to the fact this could be, this could be great.

Yeah.

But on the other hand, we don't want to be guilty of good intentions. Again, I wouldn't suggest this of you guys, but the worst thing is it turned into something predatory, and we don't want that. And so, again, no suggestion there, but I wanted you to understand the spectrum on which we're trying to make this decision, and we want to get it right. Yeah, absolutely. I certainly don't want to hold you up, but I'm just wondering if a little more math might be appropriate. Yeah.

Which we can do in between the first and second reading, is that we can have this reading, we can vote on it, get some more information from y'all, because it is a lot. I mean, we are doing something brand new that we've never done, that the city's never done. Very exciting. We want to get it right. And so, you know, can we... vote on it tonight, keep it going, but get some more information from y'all and kind of to answer Chad's question, to answer Eric's question, where is that happy medium where we're serving the people who need to be served, making sure that y'all can stay afloat, keep the lights on, obviously. So it is that win-win-win for everybody. I think it would be the best thing that we could do if that's possible. And the legal counsel says thumbs up.

I would want to confirm.

And no words is even better. Wow. Congratulations. I love it. It's not saying anything. So if that's okay with y'all, in the interest of time, and you probably were not prepared to stand up for this whole time, but great job. Thank you for bringing it in.

The last thing I would say, it's not new in a lot of other cities. It is new for Cookville, but I hate inventing fire. The good news is No one's inventing fire here. You know, we're trying to copy. I think he's copied, you know, what's worked in other cities. So, but anyways, thank you.

Thank you. And those would be good if we get comps. That probably is as valuable as any spreadsheet I can bring up. So, yeah, that'd be great.

There were a couple different methods we looked at. I mean, there's this complicated formula that you can use to calculate affordable rent. We went this other direction to base it on percentages of AMI and 30% of income is housing cost. And we worked with some of our peers, some of the people in the community that are doing that type of work that are running outreach programs, trying to help families with children in school that are teetering on homelessness, keep a roof going. We tried to seek out some examples there, but I'll be happy. But I want to know specifically what you guys want to see us look at. So it is the number of units. It is the amount. It's the amount that would be calculated because that's a variable based on household size as HUD determines that. So a little direction there would be helpful to me. from you guys.

I don't have any trouble getting direct.

I think a good thing too is this moves the process forward.

It keeps it going, gets us more information because I think everyone up here agrees we need to find some way to help with the people who are, you know, the kids who's living in their mom's car on Walmart. I think everybody wants to fix that. If this is the way to do it, let's find a way to do it. So Does anyone have any more questions right now?

Just one for John. Since the rezoning issue, do we have a timeline with this?

It's a text amendment. It's a text amendment. Yeah, it's a text amendment to the zoning code, the CI zone and the charter permitted uses and the definition. So we were adding a definition. Changing the CI code to add a use permitted upon appeal, special exception and amended the charter permitted uses. I don't believe there's any timeline requirements. The timeline requirements we have are notice for a public hearing before this can be heard by the council. Okay.

Yeah, so. Sounds good to everybody. We'll get our questions together. We'll go ahead. We've had the public hearing. I think we've had some discussion. We've got the motion. If everyone's ready to vote, we'll go ahead and vote on that. Everybody good? Move to approve. We've got a motion. We have a motion. We've got the hearing. We've fought. We'll let vote. Sound good to everybody? Okay. With the intention of getting more information, we'll get this reading connected.

What's our motion? Yeah. Well, it's the original motion approved as is.

Approved as is.

Approved as is with... You can amend it in second reading. Okay. Yeah, with the understanding we may need to do second reading that are not big.

That's changing. Or this may hit the sweet spot. Okay.

Okay. Sound good? Yeah. Okay, we're good.

All those correct? Or yes, motion carries.

Thank you. Thank you all. If you want to hang out, you can. Or make a run for it. Someone else needs to get somewhere.

What time did the doctor start?

6.15. It's fine. Oh, yes. The 7B. Sorry. Consider approval of summary change order final balance for SR 24 Spring Street Sidewalk PH2 Project 10-122002.02. Mary Beth.

Thank you, Mayor and Council. So this is a final adjustment change order to close out our Cookville sidewalk Spring Street project. This is the phase two of this sidewalk project. This is our local programs TDOT funded project. This is a recommendation from our HMB professional engineers. This is the CEI consultant we're using on this project and they've done inspection. So they've provided this final adjusting for overruns. We had overruns with additional pavement removal came up, sidewalks, base stone, asphalt, and then we had a lot of underruns. So it is a net total deduct of $30,789.43. That will take the original contract amount was $913,582.65 for this project. This will take the final contract amount down to $882,793.22 for this project. And this is a 95-5 grant match. So this is 5% match on the city of this money. So I do recommend your approval of this change order. Thank you. Is there a motion? Second.

and i'm trying to get you i don't even know who did that during good luck uh we've got a motion in a second any discussion with the public discussion from council okay a vote's correct five yes motion carries all right item seven c consider approval to purchase one vermeer horizontal grinder utilizing the source well contract id zero three zero nine two three vrm missile rod

Okay, Mayor and Council, we had approved this previously contingent on the budget passing. At the time, the purchase price of the Vermeer grinder was $740,000, and I told you that we would work with the Vermeer to get a trade-in of our old machine and a restock of parts. So our final purchase price of this machine will be $427,000. $724,559.85. Our insurance recovery amount from the lost grinder was $251,637. We will be doing a share on this. Putnam County will contribute 50%. So the 50% match of that will be $236,461.43 that we will pay and the county will pay for the purchase of this grinder.

Thank you. Do I have a motion? Second. Yep. Got that again. Any comments from the public on this item? Comments from council? Go ahead and vote.

All votes correct. 5-yes, motion carries.

Thank you. And 7-D, consider approval of change order number one, final balance for the Henley Drive Road Extension Project. Ms. Elrod.

So this is the final adjusting change order for Henley Drive roadway extension. I know we did the ribbon cutting on that on June 15th. We are backing up with this final change order. We're going to deduct the days on this project by 52 total days. The original contract was 150 days. Rogers Group was able to complete this project in 98 days. In addition, we had some additional items identified. We asked them to strap the entirety of Henley Drive from Jefferson all the way to Bunker Hill, not just the project limits. We also asked them to riprap a ditch that was adjacent to the project that wasn't in the original contract. So that is an additional cost of $13,521.20. That will put the final contract price of this project at $547,500.20, and I do recommend your approval. of this change order.

Thank you very much. All right. Any discussion from the public? Discussion from council?

Great road.

It's open.

Although it's correct. 5-yes motion carries.

All right. That concludes the agenda portion. You'll have fun, okay? That concludes the agenda portion of the meeting. Is there anyone who would like to speak to the council on any non-agenda items? Seeing none. Do you want to make some announcements? First, we've got a lot of stuff going on in the city. Very exciting. So Jefferson, next week? Monday. Monday is going to be going down the two lanes from Stevens to the house. Going to be doing some repaving, so be patient with us on that. We're also going to start working on Interstate Drive. Monday as well?

Yes.

Okay, yeah, Monday as well. So we're getting stuff done, but we're going to ask for everyone's patience, please. As that goes through, y'all can blame me. It's my fault, trying to get everything done before August. And then I do want to recognize real fast our 250th flag back there, the DAR, the Daughters of the American Revolution, which I am one of them. Thank you to my mom. They presented us with the 250th American Birthday flag. So I just want to recognize that and thank them for that. And everyone have a wonderful Fourth of July.

Don't forget, Red, White, and Boom is going on this weekend. Massive event in town. Second biggest fireworks show. Done by the people who did the first biggest firework. Anyway, it'll be huge. Go out and enjoy it. It's going to be hot. 250 years. Yeah.