City Council - Regular Meeting

Council President and the beat goes on. Okay. Good evening everyone. Um it is 6 o'clock on February 2nd, 2026. And it's time to call the city council meeting to order. Miss Jones, roll call, please. Mr. Austin here. Mr. here. Miss McInness here. Miss N here. Miss Price. Mr. Prime here. Mr. Taylor here. Mayor, you have a Thank you. And let the record show. Miss Price just entered the room. Thank you.

Mr. Brian Reese, would you please do the pledge in prayer? Yes. Invite you to join me in prayer.

Our father, we come before you this evening and thank you for the privilege of getting out and getting here tonight. I pray that you would bless this council meeting. Uh thank you for these civil servants who give of their time to serve our community in a way that just gives um just stability and and and help and vision for the future. And just pray that you continue to guide them in their decisions. Uh thank you for those who were out uh again just plowing and treating the roads and all the hard work they put in. Continue to bless them and uh while this season continues, I thank you for our freedom here in our city, in our state, our country. and uh we pray for continued freedoms and those who protect those for us. It's in your name we pray. Amen. Amen.

Invite you to stand with me for the pledge. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. You may be seated. Okay. Thank you, Brian. And just so you know, Jennifer was not late because I looked when you sat down, it still said six o'clock. So, I sent you a text

and Jennifer did send me a text. Thank you. Okay. Is there any announcements or public comments that does not relate to the agenda? Okay. I will say earlier and uh Mr. Harden who's in the room. Ron Harden, he did bring up at the board of works which was the proper place that uh he thought we need to get our trails um plowed out and the response we had. We are working on those just so everybody knows that tuned in for the city council meeting. That's why I'm bringing this up. Uh we try to get the main roads. There's a plan with the street department, the parks department, uh DPW, fire department. Um, everybody teams up and they have a a plan that they put everything together. Everybody's responsible, each department's responsible for certain areas and then they all work together on cleaning up the secondary stuff. So, I just wanted to get that out there because we had had a few people asking about the trails. So, we're working on those. Thank you. Any announcements, public comments besides me saying some hearing none, we will move on to the consent agenda.

Move to approve the meeting minutes from January 21st board of excuse me, city council meeting as presented. Second. We have a motion in a second. All those in favor? I. Just a note though that it does say board of works. Yeah, I kind of mid-sentence caught that. Tried to anyway on the agenda. I just wanted to make a comment about that. Yep. Yep. Okay. Thank you for that one. And I approve the agendas and I missed that. So, thank you. Make a motion to approve uh read new business by title only. Second. Okay, we have a motion and a second. All those in favor.

Any opposed? Okay. Item number one, introduction. Introduction only tonight of budgetary ordinance 26-01 authorizing an additional appropriation for the non- taxup supported funds for treasure Jan Jones. Yeah, this is just appropriating the money into our donation and grant accounts um so that the money can be spent and again this is introduction only tonight. Okay. including the $44 from 177. Yeah, there's a couple good ones that probably could get spent.

Okay. Okay. So, it's introduced. Is there any questions for Okay. Go on to the item number two. Introduction of budgetary ordinance 26-02, additional appropriation into the board of works employee insurance. Uh the border of works capital and the border works services. uh rainy day services and the cemetery capital line items. Okay. What that is is every year we you know there's money that doesn't get spent and we keep the we keep moving the money forward every year. Uh I did get with the clerk treasures office for an example. Uh the rainy day fund we we try to maintain. It's not something that's mandatory, but we do try to maintain around $5 million in the rainy day and we use some funds this year to to help pay the employees out on some of the back time that we owed over many years and we got that taken care of. Uh thank you for that, Jan. And then the group insurance, uh, the $328,939, uh, we put that in our group insurance. Not saying that, um, that we need to do that. It's it's, uh, more of a thing where Jan and I, when Jan become clerk treasur, um, we we have a fund that that takes care of insurance of what's not budgeted. And we uh in the past had kept that around $2 million and I wanted to keep that around $1 million and Jan was more comfortable and we decided to keep that around $1.5 million. So every year that's going to be something that we watch of what's in that fund. And it's not that's not saying we're spending more money on insurance. What it's saying is is we're trying to keep that fund at $1.5 million and we do have $4.2 2

million that is already budgeted. So this is this is like a safety net fund that we're trying to maintain at 1.5. So that's what that one is. The $1 million into the border of works that's to do projects like uh for our paving projects, sidewalk projects, and yes, we do have money in the border of works 500, but this adds to that. And you can see that we had like 700 and some thousand that wasn't spent um last year. So that was part of the the roll over a roll back into that fund. And then the border works 300 series uh that is at the end of the year we were getting low in that because of some landscaping stuff for the parks department uh watering um w with our sprinkler systems uh with that sort of stuff and our plannings around town. This will cover that this year. And then the cemetery 400 is to help with more headstones and we are getting ahead of the game on that one. Uh it's getting done a little bit faster than I thought we can get done, but being able to spend 50,000 here and 50,000 there to to get that done. We're knocking that out quicker than we thought we would. And there are a couple more streets that need to be paved. So that's the explanation of why we're transferring it transferring into those certain funds. And I did get with the clerk treasur's office to talk about where we thought was the best need. So that's introduced. Does anybody have any questions?

So the end result on the rainy day fund is how much? The end result will be right about the $5 million that we try to maintain. Yes, sir. Okay. Any other questions? Okay. Hearing none, we will go on to other business, which there isn't any. We'll go to council comments. And if it's okay, I'm going to start with our mayor's youth council. Name your name and everybody's here. Hi, I'm Anna Kate Luggers and that's Cali Taylor and we're part of Franklin Mayor's Youth Leadership Council at FCHS.

Okay. And you just had an event the other night that I thought went very well that I was able to attend. Yeah, we had a chili supper and Mayor Barnett went and basically it was just to inform everyone on like what our club does and like how what we're providing for the community which is right now we're doing a coming up on April 26 we're doing a pets like a walk around the trails because we are making or we're setting dog water bowls around like Franklin and hoping to help like dogs and like not people dogs

stay hydrated and stuff like that. So, if you have a dog, bring it. Yeah, that's basically what we've been doing. Thank you. You've done a good job. Thanks, Jennifer. Yeah, just u I think somebody said earlier or maybe Brian did. Um but kudos to the uh fire, police, and the street department for the big haul that they had to do this last couple of weeks. did a great job. Yep. Yes. I'm going to piggyback off of what she Jennifer just said. Um, thank you and thanks for coming out of late and staying out all night cleaning up, making it safe for everyone the next day. Thank you, Irene.

It's much appreciated.

Uh, yes, I was not in town when the snow hit, but I was delayed getting home because of the snow, but I'm gonna let everyone else talk about the snow. in the business that I'm in, financial advising and insurance, and I own storage units, I often have people come into my office and say, "We're moving to Franklin." So, I have an opportunity to talk to them on a regular basis, and you'd be surprised just how many people I get in that office that are just moving in from Franklin for the first time. It's pretty cool. Uh, and discuss why they're moving to Franklin and and so forth. So, the city of Franklin's still moving in the right direction. And I pass that along to you all. Thank you, Todd. Sean,

yeah, again, uh, congs to the street department. Got the pleasure to go out and ride around with the street commissioner, Brett Jones, and help the guys and see and see what they do. And, you know, as the roads were starting to be plowed, and it was, I said, that's a hell of a job that they do cuz it's mesmerizing to actually find the roads in some spots. They hadn't cleared yet. To actually be able to find the roads and know what they're doing is is amazing that how much work they do in a short period of time. Do you get any mailboxes? Nope. Brett and I did not hit anything. Good. That'd be my department. Ken,

I set the board of works and say it again just to counter what uh Sean said that the street department, not just the street department, but the whole city. Seems like that they work together to get all this done. So, thank you to everyone. And echo what everyone else said. I mean, what else can be said? Not much. Josh. Um, so I did attend the uh mayor's youth um chili cook off and everything and um I thought they did a wonderful job on their presentation. Um a lot of conversations was being had um with people there. So congratulations. Thank you.

Thank you. Do you guys have a number on what you got out of the chili cookoff? $93. We'll have to add to that. Yeah, it was it was it was good. I mean, $93 is $93 and the conversation and the experience was was worth a lot for our kids, our youth. It was more about them getting ideas for projects and hearing from the community. Yeah. It was just they were donations.

Yeah. get that $4.77 right after$100. We're getting there. I'll make a pledge to donate $100 to the mayor's. Wow. You Thank you. Thank you. Hey, Jan, do you have anything? Tara Lynn? No, I do not.

Okay. I just have one thing to bring up and she was here at the board of work. You and you heard this this snowfall. Uh we had we had it tracked with what we were spending, equipment, salt, manpower. $74,74811 is what this snowfall and that's not what we're uh you know what we're doing still with the trails and trying to catch up some secondary. That's that's where we're at today. So the barn out there that it cost us with with the what the barn at the street department. Yeah. And I don't know if a lot of people probably don't know that, but the there's a like a pole barn at the street department. It literally is a pole barn with a roof on it and it come down. So luckily we didn't tear up too much equipment.

Did you run into that the other night? I did not. I did not. We drove around, checked it out. I only asked about mailboxes. Maybe a full building, too. And I did not hit anything. Uhhuh. Uhhuh. It's not what the cameras said. Yeah, very impressive. All right, we're at 13 minutes. Just thank you to everybody in the city that worked their tails off and done a great job for our citizens. Thank you very much. And we're ready for motion.