County Commission - Regular Meeting

OK. I think the clerk's going to verbally call the roll. That I do declare quorum. That takes us to number two on the agenda. Number two is public hearing. Franklin County Regional Planning Commission recommended in favor for the following. Rezoning from agricultural to sea commercial, third civil district Franklin County property map number 82, parcel one, location Ferris Creek Bridge Road, 1.76 acres of a 62.5 acre parcel. Applicant Shane White, agent for Scarlett White property owners. Is there anybody here to speak against this rezoning? Anybody here to speak for this rezoning? Commissioners? I'll entertain a motion. I'll let you have it. Let's get a motion in a second, and if we have any other questions, we can ask them. Motion approved by Commissioner Riddle. I'm sorry. A motion for Commissioner Keller, second by Commissioner Riddle. Any other further discussion or questions? If not, please cast your vote. If you wish to change your vote, do so now. Please tally the vote. Motion carries 11-0. Number two, public hearing. The Estrill Springs Municipal Regional Planning Commission recommended in favor of the following rezoning from agricultural to industrial special 17th Civil District Franklin County property map number 25, parcel 24.14, location Elk River Drive, size approximately 5.66 acres, applicant Donald Colson, property owner. Is anybody here to speak against the zoning or rezoning? Anybody here to speak for? Chair would entertain a motion? OK. Motion to approve by Commissioner Keller, second by Commissioner Davidson. Any further discussion or questions? If not, please cast your vote. If you wish to change your vote, do so now. Please tally the vote. Motion carries. That takes us to number four, the approval of the minutes for the regular call session from October 2025. Motion approved by Commissioner Davidson, second by Commissioner Haag. Any further discussion or questions? If not, please cast your vote. If you wish to change your vote, do so now. Please tally the vote. Motion carries. I'd like to stop right there. If you look on the back of your agenda, at the very bottom on page three, for a judicial commissioner appointment, that's going to need to be tabled until January. Because that's two actions that have to take place at that meeting. And the commissioner's not here to do that. So I talked to him today. And he said if we would just wait till January, we would take care of all that business all at one time, which is really, we can't go forward to this until we have the paperwork we need. So we're going to table that if that is OK with everybody. Number five on the agenda is a report of the finance director. Motion to approve by Commissioner Haas, second by Commissioner Riddle. Commissioner Anderson.

Hey, Andrew, can you just give us how we're sitting? We're about halfway through the fiscal year. Is there anything that you're... So did that get fixed? Okay. No funds. You're worried about everything. Seems okay. Okay. That's all I need.

Any further questions or discussion?

If not, please cast your vote.

If you wish to change your vote, do so now. Please tally the vote. Motion carries. Number six on the agenda is recommendations and communications, which there are none. That takes us to number seven, committee department reports. If it pleases the commission, we can combine A through D to receive and file those. Excuse me. Motion to approve by Commissioner Keller. Second by Commissioner Kelly. Are there any further discussion or questions? If not, please cast your vote. If you wish to change your vote, do so now. Please tally the vote. Motion carries. Number eight, sole business. Wish there was none on the agenda. Number nine. New business resolutions, resolution 11A, 1125, resolution amending the Franklin County Board of Education general fund budget of Franklin County for the fiscal year ending 2026. Motion to approve, Commissioner Haas. Second, Commissioner Hawkins-Smith. Any further discussion or questions? If not, please cast your vote. If you wish to change your vote, do so now. Please tally the vote.

It's got all kinds of problems.

Motion carries. Number 10, new business resolution 11b, 1125 resolution amending the Franklin County Board of Education General Fund budget in Franklin County for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2026. Motion to approve, Commissioner Anderson. Second by Commissioner Davidson. Any further discussion or questions? If not, please cast your vote. If you wish to change your vote, do so now. Please tally the vote. Motion carries. Number 11 on the agenda is new business resolution 11C, 1125. Resolution amending the highway fund budget for Franklin County for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2026. Motion approved, Commissioner Bower. Second by Commissioner Riddle. Any further discussion or questions? If not, please cast your vote. Wish to change your vote, do so now. Please tally the vote. Motion carries. Number 12 on the agenda, resolution 11D-1125, resolution amending the journal and library fund budgets for Franklin County for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2026. Motion approved by Commissioner Kelly, second by Commissioner Davidson. Any further discussion or questions? Not? Please cast your vote. If you wish to change your vote, do so now. Please tally the vote. Motion carries. We're 13 on the agenda. Resolution 11E, 1125. Resolution authorizing submission of an application for a correctional training equipment grant for fiscal year 25 through 26 from the Tennessee Corrections Institute and authorizing the acceptance of said grant. Motion to approve by Commissioner Bauer, second by Commissioner Kelly. Any discussion or questions? If not, please cast your vote. If you would like to change your vote, do so now. Please tally the vote. Motion carries. Number 14, new business resolution 11F1125, resolution authorizing submission of an application for a safe baby court grant for fiscal year 2026 through 28 in the Tennessee Administrative Office of the Courts and authorizing the acceptance of said grant. Motion approved by Commissioner Davidson, second by Commissioner Riddle. Any further discussion or questions? OK, gotcha.

Is this through you, Judge? You want to tell us just a little bit about it or something?

Yes, please. Absolutely.

So this is a recurring grant that comes from the state of Tennessee. It's a reimbursable grant, and it serves families that are either on the verge of having a child taken or removed, maybe the whole set of children from a family or already have been removed. You have to have a child between zero and three years old to qualify for this grant for Safe Baby Court. If you have a child in that age group and older children, they get pulled into it as well. But it is a $100,000 grant from the state of Tennessee. They do it on a three-year approval cycle. So if this is approved, then we've got it for three years. And we should get it thereafter repeatedly. There's no sunset provision for it at this point in time. And so it's set to just be a continuing grant that's available. It provides the court with some incredible flexibility to help families in this situation. There are often times that there are things that they need that there just aren't funds available for, and this will have some money to help them in just kind of a wraparound way that there wouldn't normally be. there to do that. It would, I think, help tremendously in the long run to break this cycle of addiction that we see so often in families. And so I'm hopeful that we have this put in place. Thank you.

Anyone else?

It's 100%. It's reimbursable. So when we spend the money, we send them the invoice and then they pay us back. Yep. Yes.

Anyone else? Thank you, Jim. Yes. I have a motion and a second. Any further discussion or questions? If not, please cast your vote. If you wish to change your vote, do so now. Please tally the vote. Motion carries. New Business Resolution 11G1125, Resolution Approving Contracted Service Agreement Between Franklin County and the Community Reentry And Bontero. Motion to approve by Commissioner Bowers, second by Commissioner Summers. Any discussion or questions? If not, please cast your vote. If you wish to change your vote, do so now. Please tally the vote. Motion carries. Number 16, new business 11H1125, resolution authorizing a multi-year lease purchase and maintenance agreement for the Franklin County Agricultural Extension Agency. Motion to approve by Commissioner Anderson, second by Commissioner Bauer. Any discussion or questions? If not, please cast your vote. If you wish to change your vote, do so now. Please tally the vote. Motion carries. Number 17, resolution 11-I-1125, resolution authorizing a multi-year lease purchase and maintenance agreement for the Franklin County Highway Department. Motion approved by Commissioner Summers, second by Commissioner Kelly. Any further discussion or questions? If not, please cast your vote. If you would like to change your vote, do so now. Please tally the vote. Motion carries. Number 18, resolution 11J1125, resolution authorizing a multiple-year lease purchase and maintenance agreement for the Franklin County Solid Waste. Motion to approve by Commissioner Anderson, second by Commissioner Riddle. Any further discussion or questions? Anybody have a question? If not, please cast your vote. If you wish to change your vote, do so now. Please tally the vote. That brings us to number 19, new business resolution. This is a fee schedule that was accidentally left out of the packet for the finance committee, but it was in your packet or was emailed to you. And if you have any questions, once we get to that point, I'm sure Eric will answer whatever you have. You might want to know whatever questions you might have. But the first thing we need is a motion to suspend the rules. Motion to suspend the rules by Commissioner Bauer, second by Commissioner Kelly. Any further discussion or questions? Please cast your vote. Wish to change your vote? Do so now. Please tally the vote. Motion carries. That takes us to item number 20, which is to approve the Franklin County Planning and Zoning Department fee schedule effective January 1, 2026. Motion to approve by Commissioner Bower, second by Commissioner Kelly. Are there any questions? Commissioner Riddle.

How come are they going up, Mr. Bradford, the fees? Why so much for? How come the fees are going up so much? I've had a couple people ask me, and I said, I don't know. I had to ask you.

Actually, there's not a lot of change. There's some line items that are being added to clarify some of the things that we do. The ones that are going up is a rezoning fee. We doubled it, which is pretty much in line with other places. The plot plan review is also, that's going up. Preliminary subdivision plat, we have up the preliminary and the final review, as well as per lot fees. The minor division of property is the biggest thing that you'll see a change there. One is it's going from 100 to 200, which is nominal as far as the many we do. There could be as many as 10 to 12 on a desk any given week down there. The thing that's the big deal there is the additional review afterwards. So the process is we get a minor division in from a surveyor. Usually it's a PDF, and each one of us get that. We do a checklist on it. Each one of the surveyors that deals with us has that checklist as well. So that comes in, we run a checklist on it. If we find errors, we send it back to them, correct this, and we're ready to go for originals. That would be the $200 fee. If we send that back to them with corrections and it comes back to us with more corrections needed, that's the additional $50 charge. Continues the more times we have to review that one document. It's progressive. It goes from 50 to 100 to 200 to 400. Hopefully we don't get that way. What we're running into is we've got some people that we deal with as surveyors that are using us, our office, as their office staff. They're sending us things that are just thrown together, and then we're correcting it. That's not really fair to my office or my staff at all. And we spend, some of them, we spend as many as 10 hours, 10 man hours on one minor division. Where others, we get them and we do them in an hour or two. So that's the big difference here on that thing. The second minor division in the calendar year is the same as it would be right today. It's $800. All we're doing is giving it a line item. The other changes of use permitted on appeal, which is $200 to $400, the variance. Variance after the fact is staying the same. The initial is $400. And the minor division after the fact. We still have minor divisions that are coming in that have not been recorded after the official document was passed by you guys to change that to mirror the TCA code. that once a minor division is done before it can be transferred or sold or used as conveyance of property, it has to be reported. We still get those come in now, and that was done 3-18-24 in this body. And then we added it to the subdivision regs and the zoning resolution. We still have those coming in that have yet to be recorded. So we're not following the law. So that's the reason for the after the fact. And I was asked earlier about... one member about comparison to other counties. We compare pretty close to some counties. Other counties are way ahead of us because they either have an impact fee for things or they have what's called an adequate facility fee. That adequate facility fee can start at $2,000 and move up to $8,000. So what that is is you go get a building permit at that county. You pay a $50 fee on the front end to get your building permit. Once your building is complete to get a CO or completion certificate of occupancy, not necessarily a code document, then you pay the other however much it is. And if it's $8,000, that's $7,950 that you have to pay at the end to get that CO letter. So I mean, I'm happy to look at that for the county as far as that goes. But when I was doing the research for this, this is what we ran into, that a lot of the counties do have that adequate facility fee or an impact fee. And there is one county in the state that you get a building permit, depending on how big a house you build and where you build it at, could be $30,000. And that's just for the building permit. I mean, we're not anywhere in that comparison. Don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to compare Franklin County to that county, but it's just the fees. There's 95 counties, five of which are in the metro area, which metro area is a completely different animal from what we are. There are, I think, three or four different counties in the state that do not have zoning at all of any kind. So that's the Wild West. And then there are others that do have building codes, and then there are those that are like us that do not have building codes. But this is our attempt to try to slow some of the progress down as much as we can, or at least try to pay for it as it goes. Does that answer? That's more than you really wanted. I apologize, sir.

You've done good, sir. Thank you.

Anyone else? Any questions? I think Eric about covered it. So I'll have a motion and a second. Will you please cast your vote? If you wish to change your vote, do so now. Oh, I'm sorry.

OK, we'll give it a minute.

Now, please cast your vote. If you wish to change your vote, do so now. Please tally the vote. Motion carries. 21, new business resolution, approve the finance committee schedule for fiscal year 26. Motion to approve Commissioner Anderson, second by Commissioner Riddle. Any discussion or questions? If not, please cast your vote. If you wish to change your vote, do so now. Please tally the vote. Motion carries. 22 on the agenda, approve the county commission rules and schedule for fiscal year 26. Motion to approve by Commissioner Bowers, second by Commissioner Anderson. Any further discussion or questions? If not, please cast your vote. If you wish to change your vote, do so now. Please tally the vote. Motion carries. Number 23 on the agenda, approve the county legislative committee schedule for FY26. Motion approved by Commissioner Bauer, second by Commissioner Hawkersmith. Any discussion or questions? Please cast your vote. Wish to change your vote, do so now. Please tally the vote. Motion carries. Number 24, approve the county budget calendar for fiscal year 26-27. Motion approved, Commissioner Keller. Second, Commissioner Davidson. Any further discussion or questions? If not, please cast your vote. If you wish to change your vote, do so now. Please tally the vote. Motion carries. 25, elections and appointments. We can do all those together for the extension reappointments are the ones I'm talking about. Motion approved, Commissioner Anderson, seconded by Commissioner Riddle. Any discussion or questions? All in favor, please cast your vote. If you wish to change your vote, do so now. Please tally the vote. Motion carries. The next one on the agenda is the Pavilion Board. There's two of those. We can combine and reappoint those together. I know, but there's two of them, and then one's a beer board. That's what I'm saying. Did you do them all, extension, pavilion, beer board? OK. Everybody get that? We approved from 25 all the way down to the judicial commissioner. We approved all those together. If you want to back those out, we can. But you can see. OK. And the last one for the judicial commissioner, I talked about that earlier in the meeting. We're going to wait on that. because of a technical issue. The next one is Franklin County Planning Commission to reappoint Jeremy Price. Or is that part of that too? I'm sorry, that was part of that combo also. 26, elections and appointments, no republics. There's 13 attached. Motion to approve by Commissioner Kelly, second by Commissioner Bauer. Any further discussion or questions? If not, please tally your vote, or cast your vote. I'll get with you in a minute. If you wish to change your vote, do so now. Please tally the vote. Motion carries. Board of the meeting, we open it up for public comments. Are there any public comments from the audience? If not, the chair would entertain a motion to adjourn. Motion by Commissioner Riddle, second by Commissioner Davison. Everyone please cast your vote. We'll show your vote do so now. Please tally the vote. Motion carries. I will remind everybody we have a benediction.