County Commission - Regular Meeting

like to call the county commission regular session order um what month is it number six becky commissioner spicer you leave some prayer who does that call you do it for me okay just anybody jump in there we're all christians let's pray heavenly father we thank you for another beautiful day thank you all the blessings for us this day and throughout our lives father thank you for this opportunity we have to serve this great community that we live in Father, we ask you to be with us tonight in decisions that we make, that we may make decisions with a sound mind. These blessings we ask in Christ's name. Amen. Thank you. Everyone stand for a place.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God.

Here. Here. Here. Here. Here.

It's good to see 92% of you here tonight. First order of business is approval of the minutes of the May 18th, 2026 regular session. Have a motion. Motion by Commissioner Buckner. Second by Commissioner McElwain. Any questions or discussion? Hearing none, all in favor of abstaining, aye. Opposed, thank you. Next is approval of the minutes of the June 1st special call session. That was for the budget. Open floor for a motion. Motion by Commissioner Grove, second by Commissioner Britt. Any questions or discussion? Hearing none, all in favor of abstaining, aye. Opposed, thank you. I don't think we had anybody sign up for public comments. Good. Next time, committee reports. Any committees to report? Seeing none, first order of business under resolutions, budget amendments, all school funds, Board of Education representative. These were given to you three weeks ago. Dr. Southerland's here. Do you have any questions? Hearing no questions, I'll open the floor for a motion. Motion by Commissioner Gray, second by Commissioner Ledger. Any questions or discussion? Hearing none, all in favor vote by stating aye. Aye. Opposed? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Item number two, budget amendments. Mr. Hall, Director of Accounts and Budgets.

I don't have anything to add except the fund balances, the percentage fund balances to expenditures.

It's good for all the funds that we have except for the schools. The only one that you would look at if you was to kind of study on them would be the drug control fund percentage is down. But it's due to confiscations, basically, is all it is. So for that fund to have a high fund balance, they'd have to go out there and find confiscations and that type of thing. So that's the only one I would make a notice of. Everything else, fund balance percentages are up to an acceptable area. So to finish the year, that's the only note that I would make on all the funds that we take care of.

Any questions for Mr. Hall? Open for promotion. Motion by Commissioner Gray, second by Commissioner Buckner. Any questions or discussion for Mr Hall? Hearing none, all in favor of abstaining, aye. Opposed, thank you.

Thank you, guys.

Thank you. Item number three is the three-star fiscal confirmation letter. Ms. Malone's here for that, but this is what we have to do each year to be able to apply for grants is a three-star confirmation letter that she sends to the state. There's no questions. I'll open the floor for motion. Motion by Commissioner Petty, second by Commissioner McElwain. Any questions or discussion? Hearing none, all in favor vote by stating aye. Aye. Opposed, thank you. Item number four, speed limit study on Old County House Road, partial. Commissioner Simpkins, you asked for this study and Do you have any discussion item? Oh, thank you, Sheriff.

Hey, Mayor. Unfortunately, we had some glitches with the equipment, but I'm assured that we'll have all the data in by the next meeting for all three roads, actually. That's being studied.

So that's also for Old County House Parcel, Slade and Wood Road, and White Road. We just need to move these to the next regular session? Yes, sir, if you will. There's no objection. We'll move those items to the next regular session. Thank you, Sheriff. Other business? any other other business i know there's on the regular session we're about to have a work session a minute hearing the next order business approval notice madam clerk

Angela Battam, Anissa Balitsky, Allison Bateman, Stacey Diener, Allison Fuson, Emily Gordon, Penny Harris, Jesse Howell, Lisa Kinnikin, Paige Macondro, Terrell Miller, JoJo Nordike, Maria Perez, Emma Stevens, Scott Story, Victoria Vaughn, Sherry Weaver, John Michael Westerman, and Linda Woods.

Motion by Commissioner Dawson, second by Commissioner Simpkins. All in favor vote for stating aye. Aye. Opposed? Thank you. Any announcements? Do you want to make your announcement now?

I had two people... veterans come by the office today and one of them was just kind of a grand family of mine but was talking about he's real active in getting the participation for this uh it's coming up this weekend uh it's coming to dixon this is probably the last time that uh this particular memorial is going to be uh traveling around or something and so So I actually was working on putting my stuff together for tonight and he said, well here, could you say something? I said, give me some information and I'll deliver the message. So anyway, it's the Vietnam Traveling Memorial Wall. It's going to be at the VFW post. And I did learn that there was a historical rift between the VFW and the Vietnam Veterans Association. I don't know what the genesis of that was, but they're trying to make amends and try to pool all their resources and really to have one veterans association or whatever. But anyway, like I say, it starts the 26th through the 29th. It's going to be at the VFW club.

that's the message i was asked to deliver so here it is thank you any other announcements you'd like to share at this point i'm going to take care of one we need to wish commissioner petty happy birthday we won't see you again before july 5th i'll be back i'll be back we look forward to it well happy birthday we thank you the best Any other announcements in the regular session? Hearing none, the next regular session meeting will be on Monday, July 20th at 2,026 at 7 p.m. at the Beaverdale Beauty Reed Junior County Commission Chamber of the Dukes County Administration Building, Four Courts Square, Charlotte, Tennessee. Have a motion, second adjourned. I'd like to call to order the work session for July. This is, the work session is today, but it's the July work session that we're having. Madam Clerk, would you call the, roll please.

Mr. Simpkins? Mr. Ledger? Mr. McIlwain? Mr. Dawson? Mr. Spicer? Mr. Buckner? Mr. Britt? Mr. Petty? Mr. Williams? Mr. Grove? Mr. Gray?

It's good to see you all stay for this meeting. First order of business is approval of the 2000. I tickled myself with my own jokes. For the June 1st, 2026 work session. I have a motion. Approved. Second. Motion by Petty. Second by Jody Britt. See you in the morning, Mr. Hall. Any questions or discussion? Hearing none, all in favor vote by stating aye. Aye. Opposed? Thank you. Item number two is committee reports. Any committee's report on work session? Seeing none. Next time's appointments. The first appointment that's available, I'd like to bring forward the name Miss Cindy Gray to put her on the airport authority. That'll be for a five-year term. I thought she needed something to do since she's no longer a commissioner, so we want to keep her out of trouble. But I'd like to move this forward to the regular session. Motion by Commissioner Petty, second by Commissioner Williams. Any questions or discussion? Hearing none, all in favor vote by stating aye. Opposed? Thank you. That's one no. He doesn't own a plane. There's nothing you can do about it. Next item is sanitation board. Mr. Jason Epley has served on that for 15 years and has done a great job, but he decided it's probably time for him to dismount. And for the same reason, Ms. Gray, Mr. Ray Ledger needs to stay out of trouble. I'd like to put him on the sanitation board for a three-year term. Motion by Commissioner Grove. Second by Commissioner Spicer. Any questions or discussion? Hearing none, all in favor of what we're stating, aye. Opposed, thank you. Item number six is, or no, item number three is a secure term, regional solid waste board. We have to have one of these, but we don't really know what it does. But we're gonna go and put these folks on for six years again. The names up at this point in time, Mr. Kyle Ruff, Mr. Darrell James, and Mr. Cotton Dawson. I need a motion to second move that to a regular session. Motion by the legislature, second by Simpkins. Any questions or discussion? Hearing none, all in favor of abstaining, aye. Aye. Opposed, thank you. Item number four is Industrial Development Board. These folks are already on here. We delayed putting them on. They're already in their terms. They've continued to serve. But these names brought forward are Donald Richardson, Allen Reagan, Don Weiss, and Mike Easley to be reappointed Industrial Development Board. Thank you, Commissioner Buckner. Do I have a second? Second by Commissioner Brett. Any questions or discussion? Hearing none, all in favor of upstating aye? Aye. Opposed? Thank you. Item number one, designation of TCRS plan for director of 911. Is there an English way to explain this? Okay.

I'm going to do it my way then.

As you all know, we took on the pay for the 911 director, Ms. Shawna Atchison. She has a new last name now, but Shawna 911. We are paying her as payroll. Our funds come from the – 9-1-1 board so there's no expense to us plus we charge them ten dollars above for our effort every paycheck on that uh we have to accept her into our tcrs plan because she was other another plan over there there's no additional money to us 9-1-1 board pays for it all but we have to approve that and send this to the treasury open floor for motion most by commissioner brett second by commissioner ledger any questions or discussion Hearing none, all in favor of abstaining, aye. Opposed, thank you. Item number two, moratorium on review of zoning of data centers. I think we all know what's going on here over the last year or so with data centers are coming fast and furious, but we're not in a position to get answers. to our liking. They are eligible to come to this community, but we don't feel like we inside the economic development, our legal team, have enough information to make that determination. We did this a few years ago on R2. We proposed a moratorium to give us time to study this and put some rules in place on it. So what I'm asking y'all to do is move this forward to our regular session that we place a six month moratorium on data centers allowing them to come to Dixon County. Commissioner Williams. Allow them not to come. I'm sorry. And that was second by Commissioner Gray. Any questions or discussion? Hearing none, all in favor of stating aye. Aye. Opposed? Thank you. Item number five, other business. Charlotte Middle School Board of Education representative.

Mr. Mayor, County Commissioners, how's everybody tonight? Good. Just to bring a little Quick history on this, up to speed for those who are just now be watching or to get us where we were. A few years back, y'all approved an amendment to our budget for $15 million for some capital improvement projects. Capital outlay projects included purchase of the Sybil's Road property, which we did. It approved the CET building at Creekwood. uh... just around five million dollar mark and then the uh... sports complex project the large project at the high school uh... that's essentially done i expect they'll do the final punch list and a few other minor things left in that project hopefully over the next thirty sixty days but certainly the next quarter that'll be complete and funded out uh... i've been told multiple times asking if that is within our budget of 15 million and it absolutely has been and will be we did have some income from tva for some electric adjustments on that that gave us a little bit of more money to spend so it'll be just over 15 million with that revenue amendment To bring that project to speed, it's totally separate than what we brought here back in the wintertime. We were talking about a resolution for a large project that included some roofs at the middle schools, and I think we had a presentation in the last year talking about how the board had laid out some long-range planning of our buildings, the aging aspects of infrastructure, looked at the locations, the elementaries, the high schools and the middle schools, and this board that We've had for the last going two years now. It's been very involved in understanding what this community is going to need. So we we laid out largely the three aspects of that project was the occupancy. You know where our buildings located, the condition, the aging and the needs of the building and. Putting those together, we feel like the middle school is where we need to focus this last project on. Back in about 15 years, Buildings were done back then by what you wanted. You get enough people to vote for a building, you come to the county commission and you try to put a building somewhere. And that's what I saw growing up in this community. That's what I saw, how the process worked. But our mayor, when he came on 15 years ago, laid out a capital project, a debt service. schedule for lack of better words and he came to the school board back then and told us what we would have in the future laid out a 25-year plan and the school board has worked towards that uh every time we've needed something we try to stick to what that debt service plan was the last big project was known to be the burns project but it also included classrooms at stewart burns it also included some in white bluff and in between we've had lots of amended projects out of our regular budget but from the county funding standpoint that was the last big project knowing then we had the next outlay for schools on an as needed basis fell about three years ago and since then we've been kind of struggling with uh showing the need and and uh we can show the knee but showing what the need would be to the county commission. So this is not something that we just came up with this year and we want to do Charlotte. The board laid out the planning, the long range planning for the middle schools and felt like Charlotte was the biggest need because of the age of the structure along with the occupancy. Fortunately, the occupancy hasn't grown much the last few years, but we're still at a max capacity of that building. School needs have changed over the years from when I went to school and all you went to school. We have so many more small classroom settings and space needs than we would have had back then. It's just a different culture than it used to be and what you need for spaces. But that school has been maxed out, that tied along with the aging infrastructure. it doesn't make sense to the board to add eight classrooms to give you that occupancy space you need because you don't have the room in the cafeteria the infrastructure itself with all the mechanical work needs to be done on it it just made it makes more sense to replace the school knowing the money wasn't there for that we were fortunate enough to have a design team an architect firm that came on board with us in the burns era and we've we've had a good relationship with them they understand the needs of the county and quite frankly, they're pretty humble and that's hard to find in the space of architecture when everybody wants to sell you something. They really haven't tried to sell us anything. They've tried to hear the board's needs the whole time. So they've put together what we think we need in charlotte i think what the building says that it needs and what the best spend of that debt money is that that was committed to schools that that we work towards the state under the dollar amount so that brings us back to the 47 million dollar resolution that uh that was 30 million of the county money and 17 million of the school money We did audit that towards the end, two and a half million increase based on our revenues and our reserve money being higher for one time expenses. We pulled that together. So of that 19.5 resolution, two and a half went to one time expenses. You can expect those to be out of our amendments most any year because of school buses and one time expenses. We don't spend that in our budget until the year after it comes in where we have that money from last year's revenues for those one-time big expenses. We don't purchase them ahead of time. We don't extend ourselves into that. But that $2.5 million of that was dedicated for the one-time expenses. That 17 million remaining was largely for the roofs to finish at the high school. That project has since had the phase one bid. I believe the contract was signed in the last week. Work is projected to start on the phase one of that roof completion in the next week. It may go into 10 days, but they tell us that they will be ahead of schedule getting that complete done. So we'll hope to have phase one done very soon. We've asked the architect firm to go in and start the final design on phase two of the high school. So that can be done right away also and hope to have it bid out sometime by the fall would be my goal as long as the design work is done. From there, we'll have the Dixon Middle School roof design and White Bluff has already started. So we do also have some design work to do at Dixon Middle School for the interior, which is part of that $17 million project. But quite frankly, they haven't started in depth on that to this point because we had to focus back on the $30 million that was removed from that resolution. And I think you ask us, Mayor, at that point in time to separate the long-range expenses or the capital improvement expenses from the capital outlay, capital outlay being the roofs and maintenance type items. So with that being said, they went back to work and have done a great job designing that building to add the classroom space, the cafeteria space, the infrastructure. As they got into that building, they found it to be in quite an aged condition in many areas from mechanical, all aspects of it. So it's basically going to be a large renovation of that school. It's going to be real similar to what we talked about a few years ago, except we won't be adding the gym on it. And we are going to be leaving the old NDA building as that program continues to have a need for this community. It's prosperous for our other schools to have that. opportunity to utilize that for some of our kids. So we will leave part of the old building for that. And what they've designed is taking part of that building down the additions. And at this point, I'm gonna ask the architect if he could come forward and show you some schematics of what you asked to see before the final rendering of that building.

How are you doing?

Mr. Brad Martin, by the way, I apologize for introducing him with Law Cook Martin out of Clarksville. He's been a big asset to us, but Mr. Brad Martin.

I think I'm going to find an apartment in Charlotte. I was here this morning. I'm glad to be here. So I want to show you some images of what we're proposing to do in Charlottesville if you all vote to move forward with this. So the big idea here is to renovate this school, add on to the school, set it up for an additional 200 plus students, and keep it operational during the whole time. And that's a challenge. But we've done it successfully across the area of Montgomery County and Robertson County and so forth, and we think we have an orderable plan.

So this is the existing Charlotte Middle School right here.

And this is the existing NDA building right here with that appendage that comes toward the middle school building right there. I said the biggest problem was trying to renovate and add on and stay operational. That's a big deal. The second big deal is this campus has the most convoluted bus drop-off pickup, car drop-off pickup combination in the system. I've heard very interesting, superlative words you've described. So that's something that we have to solve and I think we've got some good ideas. I'll talk about that after the building. So the idea is to remove that appendage of the NDA building right now to allow for this parking circulation and so forth and build a classroom new addition or appendage in front of the building with a separator, a little courtyard separator. It's all secure, the proper glazing and so forth systems for the building. to allow, and build this piece first, and build an addition and revamp the food service, because you gotta feed the students, you can't run the school without it, so that has to be done first. And then you move a certain number of classrooms work with students into the addition, renovate their spaces, put them back. You take the same number of classrooms and pull them into the new addition, renovate their spaces, put them back, and do that about three times. So there's a lot of renovation complexities to this beyond and all the project. But we've done it. One of the examples that's not that old that we did was the renovation additions to Coopertown Elementary School in Robertson County. That's what we did. If you're familiar with it, the addition is pulled out from it. So we think it's a successful way to do this. You basically have, I think it's, hold on. 72,000 square foot of renovation space 14,500 square foot of demolition space in the NDA building, and approximately 24,000, 25,000 square foot of new construction. It's a lot of square footage. We study the bus driver circulation multiple different ways. One concept is to try to combine the two and do three lanes in this area where the NDA building was and have parking in the middle. And we really truly think we should separate. So another idea, you don't see it right now, but there's a parking lot behind the building that drops down. We think we're headed this way. We think we can take buses and loop them around to like 1314 and pull back up here and stay away from cars and all the car driver business within here. And we think that's probably the smart way to go. We also looked at the potential to for buses to try to exit only on the highway, and TDOT won't let it happen because from the intersection you've got to be 300 foot back from the point at which the highway bells out into two lanes coming from Clarksville. And it's in the middle of the old UBanks property, or your county highway department right now. So that's going to be almost, it could happen, but it'll cost a lot of money, and the building might have to go down, so we said forget that. So we think separating with the buses back here, cars up here is a smart way to go. Now, with this, the renovation work will include basically attacking every space in the building. Have y'all been in that building a while? Hit you up, that's all I'll say. So this is a concept at this point. So the upper drawing shows the existing for an elevation stand up apartment, not looking back at the building. So this is a concept at this point showing the new addition piece out here with a canopy, a pickup drop-off canopy for car riders right there. A new canopy in doing something kind of interesting and special in making it secure, a secure entry for the main entrance of the building. If you've been in there, you know that the administrative suite is back here. It took me a while, the first time I ever went there to figure out where the office was. So we're going to put it where I think you probably should have been to start with, up here, where the kind of ceremonial front door of the building is anyway. And you'll have a secure airlock, buzz-in entry, kind of like Burns, you know, like it should be. where nobody gets past that entry point to get in the building. And right now, it's not that way. This side over here shows the food service cafeteria area everywhere, and behind this piece is that courtyard thing right there. This is a concept that will change a million times, but this is kind of where we're headed right now. That's kind of a section right there through the canopy piece, so there'll be some range for students while they're waiting for cars. That's our concept right there. If you've got any questions, I'll see if I can deal with the questions. What's that? Start to finish. It's a two-year project. It could possibly be faster, but that whole build the first building, move a group of students in, move them back, that's going to be really glorious. So I don't want to tell you anything shorter than two right now, knowing what we're about to get into. If it's close to Robertson County, I don't want to dictate that. I'd say, yeah. It was very similar, by the way. Every piece, new piece, was a pavilion that detached from the building with these connectors. So they stayed operational all the way through, but it took a while. I mean, short of moving people out, there's no place to put them. There's not enough school building available. So we think that's a good way to do it.

It's not an uncommon practice. It's happened in Columbia. It's happened in Franklin. There's been several schools that we deal with through our school board association that have done add-ons, moved, and remodeled the whole section.

the entrance that's the head of the gymnasium right there now right so how's that gonna work with the gymnasium area if you as far as your office space I mean you building out building into inside of it

the office administrative area is right here right now so what we'll do is we'll claim two current classrooms and do that right there so when you walk in that door there's a steering ramp we'll go through the vestibule again and we'll reclaim those two classroom sized areas for classrooms so it's kind of a swamp block and then the media center stays where it is it's right there The cafeteria, you know, this is the addition piece right here, so it grows. They do a great job in that cafeteria for the age of the space and the age of some of the equipment, so it's a total revolution. And if you remember right now, you go through those doors for the serving line back out. So we're gonna redo that. The other thing that's gonna get redone too is the dock scenario. They say they have to send the best drivers possible for whoever delivers to enable . So we could make that . One other benefit of doing this removed pavilion piece, so right now the building doesn't have sprinklers. And it doesn't have to. It's got escape windows all around the building. And we will replace all the windows. All the glazing in the building gets replaced. We can do more up-to-date escape windows. But if we have to sprinkler the building, you're just talking millions more. And you're reeling with holes and just cutting off pieces. We just renovated a Burt School by Austin Peay's campus. Same thing, no sprinkler system, but we did it the same way and everything worked well in the fire marshal's office. The benefit you have over that one is you have to have smoke-tight corridors. Those walls have to go to the underside of the roof deck. Yours didn't. Or it didn't. So that's a big deal. That's a big sale. So we also looked at trying to do a drive around. You can't get around there. We've studied that. anyway we think this is well okay so right now there are no classes in most of that space a lot of storage and chairs tables all this kind of stuff they've got 100 students

Just under.

Scattered in that building. So we think with a little creative thought, we've got to do, we've got to do. But there is some space here, but the rest of it is not used right now.

So the board has worked really hard leading up to our first presentation about laying out what 10, 20 years looks like. And the location was the big aspect of that. Knowing when you have, we based it more on student growth than we did ages in the past. But when student growth does pick up, I think Mr. Grove and I discussed this when we needed a new school, when you have enough kids for a new school. Space isn't our issue right now, but whenever you do have enough kids to add a new elementary on the south side, that's going to free up a couple of the elementaries in town to move towards the south. And I would anticipate, and I think the plan anticipate, that NDA would eventually find its way to a central location. It won't be until the population increases. So we had to work around making an old building new again without spending 150 million for a five building project this fits into a long-range plan and it will make the building as by as close news you can without building a new building and the other thing by doing this new construction on the front you're putting all your new in the front it's going to look good and the inside is going to be rebound on all of it also

all new mechanical systems. The mechanical is, from what our mechanical engineer is telling us, and I believe we've toured it, what, four times now?

At least.

I've done it by myself a couple times.

The mechanical is on its last legs of the ship.

As far as the longevity of this gymnasium, will it keep the same one What do you think it will be in the future? Or is there a maintenance to it?

Right.

What we're planning on doing is new bleachers. The bleachers look like I built them. They just got age on them. I'm sure they're fine at one time. The windows up high, they're pretty bad. We're going to do something with that. We may remove them because a lot of times they don't want the light coming in the gym. The floor is in pretty good shape. Now, the oddity to this thing that kind of blew me away is the floor is wood frame, which is grandfathered in. You know, you couldn't do that right now. There's a crawl space under there. So, new wall finishes and so forth, upgrade lighting, that sort of thing, new paint. The locker rooms need to be, need a bank over. We talked about trying to get a ramp down to the girls' locker room area. We're still trying to figure that out because there's just, there's very limited room to do it. You drop down the steps. The boys' side has a ramp to take you out.

The challenge we were up against is when adding space, adding eight classrooms to a building of that age without addressing the longevity of the building was not good taxpayer money. spending six or eight million dollars at three locations to make it look good for a few years did not resolve long-range issues. Renovating the building does resolve long-range issues for that location. All of our middle schools are aged except for Burns. They all need attention and dividing it up amongst three of them to do a halfway job on any of them just isn't smart according to what we believe is the board at this point in time. There will be issues coming up with other middle schools in time, but what we're going to put in the Dixon Middle School should very well carry us into many years also. And we mentioned on the roofs to begin with, getting the old roofs replaced, keeping the buildings dry is the first start to what you're going to do in the future with any of them, including William James.

Steve, I trust. I mean, it's y'all's job to figure out the needs. It's your job to figure out the design. It's our job to figure out how to pay for it. I trust y'all have done y'all's jobs. It's our job to figure out how to pay for it. How long are we away from a White Bluff major renovation and a Dixon Middle major? Repeat that. I said, how long are we away from a White Bluff major renovation and a Dixon renovation?

You know, this board has worked hard with those discussions, and I can give you my speculation. I think getting any of them dried in with new roofs is going to save us a lot of time for anything. It boils down to occupancy load. If it weren't for Charlotte, it maxed out five years ago when we had the building boom up here. It isn't growing at the pace that it was, but it's also not – retreating any so what we didn't address for space five years ago is still the issue now you can make an old building work for a long time it's not cost effective and it really isn't a good image for our kids in our system i think that that our kids deserve to have the best facilities possible but also know as a taxpayer it's been 150 million dollars replaced in three schools so to answer your question i think it would be up to future funding we have um mayor candidates running that are going to be taking over the county coming up. Our past mayor made a long-range debt improvement plan, and I would hope that the future plan would improve what we need to do for schools and what we can use in the future that won't affect the debt of the county, the payoff schedules and those things. So I look forward to hearing from our new mayor on what the schedule will be for schools, and at that point in time, the school board would be able to pick what's in the next step in that process. One of our board members asked me about a month ago what my plan was. I'd already announced I wasn't going to run in two years. What do I want to see done in the next two years? I want to see a long-range building plan put in place, just like several of us have talked about for years, that doesn't necessarily say what you're going to do down the road, but lays out where it's going to be to where future board members coming on don't have to come on the first year and make to approve a plan. A vision laid out there for them. We've come a long way getting that done. This board's worked very hard. Me and Ms. Tills had some great conversations. And it's productive. When we have those conversations, they're productive. But she started writing out the long-range plan, and her format is beyond excellent. It's just not worth putting out until it's done right. It will include a South Elementary. It will be based on student numbers and it will have the age of buildings involved in it. And we did all that preliminarily to say we knew we had some money committed to public education. We wanted to go towards something that will last in the future. The same comment's been made about Dixon Middle School. We have some money to put in that building. We don't have enough to renovate the mechanical and everything at this point in time with that amended or that resolution that you passed a couple months ago. We have enough to get started, but we've discussed the fact that The design team will draw out a master plan like they did at the high school, and it may be a $40 million master plan. But if we have $7 million to spend, we'll pick the sections of that building that we can do that will survive the next improvement and not have to be taken back out or not being utilized for what their future is going to be. That's why I like these guys. They help us plan that if the auditorium has been discussed on that building. The auditorium is standalone. Whatever we do there will survive many years. If it takes 20 more to replace other parts of that building, that auditorium will be ready for it. We look at the whole system that way. We feel like Charlotte's going to be here for years to come. It's a commitment the school board made when we did Burns to stick with community middle schools. That was the premise behind doing the Burns Middle School and the premise by which we have laid out that we need middle schools in our community. And we'll address them as the occupancy is an issue or condition. We only look at this project because it was part of the debt plan that was laid out 15 years ago, and I've been on there long enough to be working towards that goal. The rest of them will have the same goal with the long-range plan we put out. So while I can't answer you, it depends on the population.

Right. Okay. So I guess what we've got to do is figure out how to fund it. Is it safe to say y'all are going to bring in about $16 to $17 million over this year or per year that usually goes into your debt service? That's what we've been averaging, correct?

Not to be— disagree with you, but that's not accurate. We want to maintain a $16.7 million fund balance is what I said. I think at the end of this budget year, when you see your amendment in front of you, was it $13.3 million is showing the reserve? But what's in reserve now? The reason that shows that number is when we do our last quarter, you're seeing the actual expenses on there, but we can't amend revenues mid-year so when the audit gets done at the end of the year which we'll get next january february our accounting department knows what revenues are going to be higher than what you're seeing on the quarterly yeah you add that to 13.3 will be more like 16.8 17 million dollars so it's usually three to four million above what you see with sales tax remaining consistent as they have been right

I've been here about three and a half years, and I've noticed that a couple of times, including this last $19.5 million removal we just done, y'all was in the $30 million twice, about $30 to $35 million twice in the last three and a half years, which dropped it back down. So my projection is showing it's probably over the next two years, you're going to have another $32 million.

It's probably going to go over there based on past history, as long as we keep the three and a half million a year, maybe four on some years, three and a half is a safe number. So if we start with... an audited number of 17 million right now which is projecting above the 13.3 you're showing if you had three and a half million a year for four years and you spend none of it that would be correct but every year we also have amendments for our buses and one-time expenses that we don't spend on the regular budget so a couple million of that would be a fair number but typically that goes into hvac units and one-time big expenses for the buildings These buildings have some age to them. They're not totally ignored. We do a lot of big projects during the year. Millions of dollars worth of work on the buildings. You can't renovate a building on our budget. We don't have that kind of money to do on big projects.

I don't think nobody's asking you to do that. Mayor, what have you come up with on the loan?

He hadn't done anything on it since we you know what I think one of the last discussions we hadn't I think we've used the number 30 million for a long time but I think there was a discussion coming out of this several months ago that number should be around 25 million again our borrowing is in a situation we can borrow quite a bit more than that take on a lot more debt if needed but I think we need to determine what this project is going to cost a rough estimation and y'all can determine but we can We can borrow a lot of money without raising taxes. I know you don't want to hear that, but it's true.

Is there a loan that we can use, like a construction loan, that might be 35 to 40? Don't mean we have to spend that. When I got elected, I went and got a million-dollar loan, right? And I use it like a construction loan. I use it, then I pay it off. But if I'm not using it, I don't pay interest on it. Does that make sense? Is there a loan that size for the county level? Yeah, that's what we did on Burns.

i don't think we did that on burns those through the cumberland securities we did on the justice center uh that's what you only it's a two-year interest only loan and then it starts going installments after that so it gives you basically two years construct you know it's like a credit card or a line of credit to a construction on to build your house you only pay interest on the balance that you pulled out there what's the what's the rate on the interest today It depends on what type of bar you're doing. My guess from the last conversations I had on something this side, we could be just a tad less than 4%. You're probably like the three nines, somewhere right in that area.

But if we're not using the loan, you won't pay any interest on it. Exactly. I would like to see, this is just my opinion, is us to go and like borrow $35 million on a loan like that. Approve so much for the school board at times. And that way we can draw it when they need it. Or as be, like give a $20 million draw right now to get started. then come back and give another $10 million if that's what it's going to cost. Then it also gives us, if something was to happen and the new mayor come up, a $5 million buffer where we don't have to go through a loan process. Does that make sense?

I know what you said, but I don't agree with you. If you, I call that a bucket borrowing. You get a sack of money over here and it's easy for a commission and a mayor like, well, we've got another 100,000 here, 500,000 there. I have a part-time job that I'm working, you may have heard about, and that's exactly what I'm dealing with over there. They got money to do projects, but one of the projects they want to do, they spent all the money before they got there, so the project's undone. I think homeowners, Bob Ryle, school boards County Commission's we need this button don't borrow penny more you need because I can assure you we can all find a way to spend it so I would not advise that thank you 16 years get on the same page

as a taxpayer i thank you for that too that's why i like the plan mr roe can i address one thing you said also and you know as far as we do an amendment to our budget that's transferred to a 177 fund of which we do the projects that we give you this right here is a bondage project it's different at no time will you if i'm incorrect mayor will you transfer bits and pieces to us is that not paid through the county at that point were you talking about this if you bond something oh

There's all kinds of different barring, and I'm sure you don't want to clash with me on that tonight, but... It won't come to us for us to spend, I guess, is my point. It depends on how we set it up, but... whenever we do a barring of this magnitude, it needs to run through more instead of one hand. Your finance people and our finance people, we all need to touch it to make sure, because you mess this up, you know, it's not like we're off $10,000 on a pickup truck. We're off 40% or something. That would hurt. Yeah, we can put together on the barring how we need to do it, but I'd suggest anything of that magnitude that we have a serious structure on it.

I don't disagree with it, and I keep bringing up the $15 million amendment from several years back because it was important to me, and I think these school board members will tell you that's one thing that I've hit on. Mr. Corley will tell you, we are in budget, right? And it's not a question as much as we're gonna be in budget because that's what we told you we were gonna do. And there's not gonna be any changes on that. It's gonna make it go above. When it comes to this type of project right here, it's bonded. We've run some numbers on this. We're not going to build this. We're not going to improve that building to the point that's the best for a taxpayer as myself for $25 million. We're going to do good doing it at 30. Our original resolution had several projects needed to be done. There's no way the Dixon Middle School would get completed even with the $47 million total. We end a project with things that we can start on for the next phase. And it's the same with the transportation garage. We need that badly, but it's not in these numbers. This building right here is going to be just south of 30 million, but it's going to be... not very far south and that's based on today's numbers and we expect the bidding will make that very competitive and I hope it comes in substantially lower or at least a bit lower that we can come back and say we came in two and a half million below, we came in a million and a half below, we want to move that over to this project over here. So we're looking for the commitment more so we can get busy on it. These guys spend a lot of time and money that haven't been paid for this stuff, anticipation that this bond will go through and that we can get this work done. And they've done a great job of that aspect for us. We can't go any further until we have money committed them.

So is that... So your budget's still about $30 million? Is that what you're telling us?

It's so close, it'll scare you. But we have to have contingencies in there, and they're figuring it in. It's hard to say a number because that becomes a bid all of a sudden. But I think our anticipation, it will be, I hope there's enough less that we can come to you and say, can we transfer it somewhere else? But the preliminary numbers of contingencies are going to be pushing right at it.

I know we talked about the $19 million that we approved. Are y'all going to reserve any of that to go towards this, or are y'all going to spend all that money?

I don't think that that money, the $19.5 million, $2.5 million was one-time expenses, buses, textbooks, and things that we do annually. So there was $17 million in the $177 million fund dedicated for the completion of the high school roof, Dixon Middle School roof, William James roof, and renovations at Dixon Middle. Dixon Middle cannot be done for the remainder of that money to the degree it needs to be done. We're hoping to do a a full design of what we want to look like and do sections of it that we can do with that money. But there won't be any money from that left over. It's just spending it wisely on the sections that we need to. Now, should we get into the situation where we're half a million short into this? Then absolutely. And Mr. Grove's right. We'll have reserve money hopefully every year coming in, the way we budget the MOE. And thanks for the lessons learned from the mayor on that. That if we need to reach in to offset some to make it work, then we could do that. But we can't spend what we don't have anticipating for next year's money before we have an audit or before we have the end of the year to know it's there. It just wouldn't be good on our part, nor would it be on yours. So I think that buffer is there for us if we need it. Bigger chance to say, keep it down where it belongs.

So.

One on the old NDA part. I think it was 1.4. If you'll give me a minute to look it up. I don't want to misquote it, but. Absolutely. With the abatements and the tearing down of old buildings, it's very expensive. Same with the old Oakmont. I'd committed to the board that I wouldn't approve any plan and take care of the old Oakmont, but it looks like it's probably going to happen to stay because it costs money to tear those buildings down.

How many square feet are you talking about?

Brad called that a moment ago. Was it 7,000? No. Demo of existing 14, five and eight.

The demolition of that portion of new directions.

And I'll tell you, I've done about three budget estimates. Jeff Corley was doing one or two.

We pulled in a professional contractor to do it. So we've got some comparative numbers. The best number, this is budget. Early projected, don't hold me to it. Don't write it down, budget. Demolition of that new directions wing. is about $250,000. Now that's the building, not the site, the foundation. So that's good. But then you've got to close up the face of it. There's a hole there. So that's another $300,000 or $400,000. So there's just a whole lot of parts and pieces to it.

Well, if you had a new location, it might be beneficial for you to just take it, go sell it as a building. and then just put an old new school up. Instead of tearing one down and trying to replace it back, you're still gonna have an old school.

I would certainly agree that building a new school might be the smarter move. A new school for the Charlotte would be in the 45 million range, I believe. That's using existing property. You know, you're looking at close to 100,000 square foot building. You're averaging 450 a foot on the budgetary side of that, hoping to get by for less. But, you know, the Burns School was $32 million, I believe. That building, there's a $40 million project, $8 million put into other wings. It's an expensive endeavor to build these new buildings. It just goes up.

So tonight, we need to come up. So basically we're slowing this project down if we don't prove the money tonight. Or the mayor's authority to go forward to start the loan process. And pretty much you're saying you pretty much need the whole $30 million.

I think that we've gone as far as we can go from what we've paid out for planning what they've designed without a commitment for a $30 million bond. I don't look to spend all that. I don't want to. But if we wait a year and a half to bid any of it, it may very well. But to show you how tight our bidding process is, we bid that roof at the high school. We had four bids turned in. There were two that were $150,000 higher than the two that were low ones. The two lowest bidders on that both qualified through the RFQ process. Of a $1.3 or $4 million project, they were $4,500 apart. We went with the low bid. So that bidding process can be tight for some, but I think it keeps the rest of them bidding fairly, and I think the bidding process is the way to go on this. It's a lot more work on our end, but it's been productive so far.

Got a question for you, Steve. That facility right there, you built it like that, what would it cost to put the gymnasium on it?

Well, 450 square foot, and how many...

for a track of land see the land ain't figured in either and I know property sold this past weekend for sixteen thousand dollars an acre just vacant land so You don't got to figure that in, too.

When you say it's for a school, it gets more expensive all of a sudden. And from a location standpoint, I know there was talk we've discussed that, you know, it's not a secret we discussed, and there's been some interest in a Creekwood Middle School. The numbers of the way the school lays it's not good planning to do that because you're gonna be funneling one middle school into a high school. You're not getting the future use out of that Creekwood building. And when we look at long range planning, from my standpoint, if that building is rated at 1600, means 1,280 students is what would occupy that to be a max capacity. If we don't have a supply of kids but for 900, we're wasting 300 student occupancy that may force us to build a high school somewhere else 10, 15 years down the road. Today's number is $150 million. So that's, from my standpoint, I've got to look at how the occupancy lays for the future. It doesn't affect me, but it affects the next generation.

So I think Burns was about 105,000 square feet, and would you say 32 million? Is that what it was? We just finished a year and a half ago, Lewis County High School, which was really based on the Burns concept, a different school, and it was 110,000 square foot. It was 39 million. He couldn't build it for 39 million right now.

How much did the football field cost?

The football field or the whole complex? The whole complex costs money. None of our middle schools are scheduled to have auditoriums except for the Dixon Middle School. It has one because it was a high school converted to a middle. The way that structure is laid out with that wing setting off, you can close that school off. That's a great community facility right there that can be used for a lot of things besides school because you don't have to access the building to get to that auditorium. But it was a high school originally is why it has one. White Bluff, Burns, North Charlotte have an auditorium. We've been here for a long time so America go ahead but when I first came on the board and I think you were can commissioner then about the same time we were looking at some projects in and a member of the are they telling us that if we didn't plan for 200 bucks a square foot that would be behind and that's what's happened in you know 1516 years. Same with school buses that were 85,000 there are 185 now. Education is expensive it's requirements.

It's 105,000 square feet, he just said. I knew it was in 100 range.

It's 320 square foot would have been back in that time.

I won't cut off the debate. I'm fine with this going on, but let me just, I kind of want to get it summed up in my mind where we are and tell you what I'm hearing and let y'all know, and y'all know if I'm not hearing this. I think what I'm hearing tonight is that we need to be able to see if we can raise the funds through borrowing or other means for $30 million to build that school. We can't amend the budget tonight because there's no amending to be done because there ain't $30 million around the pot right now. But if we, and again, please keep debating this, but I think what we'll eventually get to is we need a motion for it to carry this to the regular session in four weeks for me to sit down with the bond companies to figure out how much it's gonna cost uh to borrow that and come up with the different funding ideas for y'all to approve and again i didn't want to stop you your questions i know y'all have still have more but is that what y'all want me to do no i was prepared to make that motion on this time i mean i hate to spend that much money it scares me but it is what it is and i think they need to get started so i was prepared to make that motion to go ahead and start the loan promotion

The way I understand it, 30 million ain't going to be enough, right, to finish the projects that get started? So where's that money coming from?

It will be enough. Our primary numbers are just south of 30 million. There are some contingencies in there. There's also going to be some unknowns is what it's there for. Hopefully there will be no unknowns. Hopefully that contingency will come back and not be spent. But we have to anticipate a worst-case scenario when we feel like just under 30 will do it. We just know 25 is not going to do it. At that point, we can't do that project. We would be upwards of $4 or $5 million upside down. We'll be safe at the $30 million, and if it's anything over that, then we will have reserves that can cover for that. Hopefully, I'm coming back with a couple million that we can put towards another project out of that bond, but we have to anticipate what costs are going to do.

I know you said two years for construction. What's the timeline for design and bidding?

It's only taking forever to get to this point. I'm kidding.

He's correct. It has. Use the mic.

because of the nature of of what the complication is this thing it's going to take a while to get it designed engineered go through construction documents do contracting and all that kind of stuff i would say that will take us toward the end of the year several months five six months to get that ready for bid so i'm thinking you caught me off guard here i'm thinking it's a first of the year construction start job

From a timing from a borrowing standpoint, that's not really out of line. I mean, we would need to start the borrowing process. Have y'all approve it in August with the note being signed within the next 30 or 60 days after that. So I think it'll line up nicely with what they're saying on that. Section to have a commitment that. I think the only commitment we can make right now is to see if borrowing $30 million is feasible for this project and for y'all to understand the unintended consequences may come from us borrowing $30 million. So it's not just borrowing, it's other potential borrowing we may have because I think we all know an ag center standing right behind this and there's money to do both in my opinion. But again, I think y'all need to understand fully where we are on it because the next time the with the debt service we're in right now the next time the door really kicks open because we kept moving it down it used to be like 31 32 but that was three years ago so we're talking about 2034 is the next time the windows opens up where we can borrow large money and not raise taxes and that has always been kind of the goal that we manage this going forward but we can borrow it exists of 40 million dollars right now without raising taxes no i would recommend that because we we carry it down to the limit again we talk about periodically but we have a fund balance in excess of 50 right now but to get the best bond rating the credit rating we need to have 40 uh unreserved in there which we do so but we don't and again schools has a different number they use. But at the end of the day, when the world comes crashing in, they're coming back to us and our fund balance to take care of all the problems. So no, we need to keep a fat fund balance. They can drain theirs more than we can.

Mr. Mayor, for the record, the schools don't want you to use your fund balance to fund that. We want to ask for the bond money that you can do. We work towards that number. And we're taxpayers too. And it's just an ongoing maintaining, renovating of old schools. It never ends. It was here before we came. Maybe we're gone. We're hoping to have a plan laid out where generations can see that coming along. So we don't want you to go into that situation.

Has it ever been in the history of Dixon County to spend that much money on renovating the old school?

I think, personally, I would rather build a new school, but I think they've put it to the sea.

That doesn't make sense to me.

Well, we've never renovated a school. We add wings on to it and put some new windows on it and new lights and call it renovated when the rest of it's falling apart.

I heard him say a while ago about the sprinkler systems. I mean, I think that would be lawful. I mean, if you had to build a commercial building, you had to have a sprinkler system. And, you know, we got schools that ain't got a sprinkler system. And we got schools, I don't know if they're in codes with the windows like you was talking about. See, that needs to be addressed.

Every school we have has an escape route that meets the fire marshal standards. They inspect us at least once a year, if not twice. And when they find a violation, it's addressed immediately. When they do find one, it's very rare. I feel very comfortable. My child is safe in any school from a fire standpoint or exiting at any given time. And as a past firefighter, they're very safe from that standpoint.

So we have a motion, and who made the second? It was Commissioner Brett. Any other questions for anyone? Hearing none, all in favor vote by stating aye. Aye. Opposed? Thank you. Thank you for your time. Thank you. uh under announcements before i make the final announcement i do want to make everybody aware that uh this saturday at the fairgrounds there's going to be a fundraiser for lieutenant shannon yates shannon has uh been with the dixon county fire service uh the emma for quite a bit of time uh i think everyone knows he's had some tough luck he has colon cancer uh he's a he's a tough guy but he's gonna need a little help so if y'all can be a part of that That starts at 9 o'clock at the fairgrounds and runs on to 4 p.m. But anything that y'all see fit to help Shannon, he's one of ours, I sure would appreciate it on that. So that's this Saturday. Anybody else got another announcement they need to make? oh yeah another one yes there's a ribbon cutting for the groundbreaking of the ag center as you know we have grant that's uh getting the dirt work done there's a big track hose sitting out there becky tried to operate the other day well it's going to be good for the picture so uh that that's good uh that will be at two o'clock on Friday. Friday on that.

Yeah.

It's Friday at 2. Hang on a second. We all good? Friday at 2 on the groundbreaking. At noon is the Vietnam veteran wall that was mentioned earlier. That's at noon on Friday. and then before all said and done we're having the uh because we're having such a long time between meetings we're having the america 250 celebration that will be on saturday july the 4th here on the square there's going to be a drone show i've seen one of them they did one of those vanderbilt last year pretty cool so come on out be a part of that then head on the cumberland furnace and shoot fireworks and guns in there out there firecrackers whatever you think is necessary We've got a bunch of announcements on that. Is there anything else? We took care of your birthday. Hope that's a great one. Any other announcements? Hearing none, the next work session will be on Monday, August 3rd, 2026 at 7 p.m. in the Buford L. Booty Reed Jr. County Commission.