Board of Mayor & Aldermen - Regular Meeting

Good evening. Welcome to the board of mayor and altim for the city of Hendrisville, Tennessee. It is May 12th, 2026. We are right at 700 p.m. We are going to start our meeting as we typically do. That's with a prayer followed by the pledge. And tonight we have a special honor and that's senior firefighter Matthew Elliott who's going to provide our prayer tonight. Um, Matt, appreciate very much um you being here and pre appreciate very much what your day job is, too, and what you do for us every day. Thank you very much. I appreciate that and thank you for the opportunity to do this. Obviously, I wasn't expecting to do this tonight, but uh any chance I have to glorify God, I'm there for that. So, let's do that. Let's pray.

Good and gracious heavenly father, we thank you so much for your son, Jesus Christ, and sending him here for us to die on the cross for our sins. Lord, I pray that you be with all these people tonight as we discuss the the goings on of the city. I pray that calm minds and and and good good thoughts are with all with all tonight, Lord. And I pray that you just watch over the the health and the wellness of this city and its and its residents and its employees. And I pray that you be with uh all the people here that have anything heavy on their heart and they know that they can come to you and lay at the feet of Jesus. Lord, in his name we pray. Amen. Amen.

Again, that's senior firefighter Matthew Elliot. Thank you very much. Please join me in the pledge. I pledge to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands one nation indivisibley and justice for all. Yeah, mine's back there.

I'm going to entertain a motion we accept the agenda that was provided in your packets. We have a motion from Alderman Ward, a second from Alderman Burgdorf, I believe. Um, Alderman Goodwin. Yeah, I would like to amend the agenda to add under presentations item E uh a presentation from Lakeshore Committee regarding National Safe Boating Week, please. Okay, so we have a motion. Second. We have a second from Alderman Collins. Any discussion on that item? All those in favor of adding item E under presentations is National SA National Boating Safe National Safe Boating Week, please say I. Those opposed, please say no. That passes unanimously. Thank you. Next, we have a couple presentations and the first one I need to see Mr. Todd Burnham.

Mayor, hey, mayor. I don't think you voted to accept the agenda. All those in favor of accepting the agenda as it's been amended, please say I. Those opposed, please say no. That passed unanimously. Thank you. Let me tell you about this guy here.

H just right there is good. Um so Todd's been on a golf course commission for a long time. Uh probably the most or second most longest serving person on there. Um and uh uh has seen a lot happen in the time that he's been on there. But let me read this. Whereas the Hendersonville Golf Course Commission was established to oversee the operation, maintenance, improvement, and continued development of Country Hills Golf Course. And whereas Todd Burnham faithfully served on the Golf Course Commission from 2015 through 2026, providing leadership, guidance, and support for numerous enhancements and improvements to the Country Hills golf course. And whereas throughout his tenure, Todd Bernham demonstrated a strong commitment to the citizens of Hendersonville and continues to do so. I, Jamie Clary, mayor of the city of Hendersonville, by the authority vested in me as mayor and on behalf of the entire board of mayor and alderman, do formally proclaim our gratitude and appreciation and urge all citizens of Hendersonville to join us in honoring Todd Burnham for his dedicated service to all the residents of this community. I don't think many people understand that we have a fivep person board of five person board of directors for a golf course that we don't run it, but we have people that understand golf and understand business that have done a fantastic job. Uh we went from eight years ago to uh the city using tax dollars to subsidizing the the golf course to uh Todd and the other four getting us in the black by more than $200,000 sitting in the bank after we've made significant improvements there. So I very much appreciate you've done and um I have a little bit of a gift here. Somebody said you don't have enough golf shirts.

Oh no, I don't. Okay, there you go. Oh, nice. That's almost big enough. Okay. Okay. Thank you, Tom. Appreciate it very much. Do you want to say a couple things? Do you want Do you want to speak? Do you want to say a couple words? Okay. Okay. Maybe it's going to be too large. I don't know.

Thank you, Mayor Clary, and thank you, board members. Uh, I appreciate your confidence in me and in the commission. Uh, we have seen a lot of change as the mayor said and we've had a lot of help in that and we've had great support from the the board and uh we have that that has improved over the years. Thanks to the board. Thanks to Alderman Eddie uh Robertson and uh he's he's our liaison from the board. Uh Andy Gilly is our liaison from the staff and he's been very supportive of of us with labor and and resources. But uh I just wanted to say that u I have brought members of my family with me tonight that I'd like to introduce to you. my dearly beloved June and uh next June's my first grandchild Aaron Salace and my dear daughter my first uh daughter uh only daughter and she is Elizabeth uh Elizabeth Roberts her c uh her cousin I believe you are cousin don't you uh Chuck Roberts her her my son-in-law and my oldest grandson is Michael Roberts and his friend Leila and uh I I appreciate them and their support. Also uh we had a real boost in in uh rounds played during the pandemic. That was a thing that kicked us up. Now uh we expected the board and our management company

expected that to drop off after the pandemic but it didn't. Uh we continue to uh our our rounds played and income depend uh uh continues to increase. I talked to David uh Battis, our president of our management company, and he said that actually is a nationwide trend uh for municipal golf courses. So, apparently we got a bunch of newbies out there during the uh pandemic and the the bug caught quite a few of them apparently because they're coming back and and we do. But I appreciate your thanks again and good luck. And uh I still plan to get out there and play some. Yeah, I wear my golf shirt.

Thank you, Tom. Appreciate it.

Oh, thank you.

So, next we have a proclamation from James Dunn. uh he is in charge of our legislative engagement and uh he's going to speak for a few minutes about what he's accomplished and what he anticipates with the general assembly coming up. So, James, you're on. Well, it's always an honor and a privilege to be here before this board. I want to thank the mayor and this board uh for the opportunity to do what we've done. We've been doing this for three legislative sessions now. We've had a good amount of success. There is about, and I've explained this before, 4,000 pieces of legislation that move through the general assembly every two years. We've got a great Sumary County delegation and and representative uh William Lambert, uh Johnny, of course, Garrett, who won't be with us after this year at the general assembly. Uh William Slater, and then of course Frell Hill, who is our senator and also serves as speaker prom. The speaker proim by the way is appointed by the lieutenant governor who is speaker of the senate and our speaker of the senate is retiring. So things will start to change up a little bit and we also will have a new governor. We are in the very last uh year of governor Lee's administration. So all of this will be will be changing. Um there are I guess over 400 uh cities in this state and 95 counties. And so sometimes to have a voice among the bunch uh can be very very beneficial. I think uh aside from our big four cities in Tennessee that you all know about Johnson City, uh German Town, Severeville, Murphy'sboro, and Middle Tennessee, several others actually do have lobbyists that are they're blessed enough to be able to do that and we do too. And so that's very helpful in particular when we have issues that are important to the community that might be important to some cities and perhaps not others. I'll give you an example. Out of every crisis comes an opportunity. And all the tragedy that we dealt with

recently with NES. We were able to uh amend legislation to ensure that there would be a spot on the NES board representative of Summer County. There was a resolution from the city of Hendersonville some years ago to be able to do that and so we finally be were able to do that this this session. We did have a piece of legislation a a REIT bill, real estate investment trust bill. Y'all know we've had issues with people who have REIT ownership being able to get a hold of the actual owners who manage these properties. Uh the the Tennessee Municipal League ran a similar bill. It didn't get through committee this year. we were able to pass that uh through all of the committees and the House floor. Unfortunately, they did not take it up on the Senate side. So, it's one of those battles that continue. Uh the mayor has u a copy of of all the legislation that we have tracked. So, and also council does too and and I believe that you all do. If you don't let them know, let myself know. We certainly can get a copy uh to you on all the bills that we've tracked and monitored so that you know not to be redundant. I know this is not news but when a law or when a legislation is enacted it's enrolled as a public chapter before it becomes law. There's a process where the governor signs it or doesn't can veto it whatever before it becomes law. So, a lot of the things that we're talking about here, they have been enacted, uh, but may not necessarily be public chapter because they they await the signature of the governor, that kind of thing. We just got through session and then we had a special session on congressional redistricting. So, this is this is sort of fresh, but some of the things uh that we have that we have worked on, there was a and I'll try to be quick with this. I know you got a lot of business to take up. Uh there was a uh accessory dwelling units

bill that would have preempted local governments at the state level. What that would mean then is an existing neighborhoods people would have been able to erect those ADUs without authority from the city and overview from the city. We defeated that legislation. We thought that was important to the integrity of our of our community here and and for you guys to retain the autonomy that you need that our residents want. Uh there also was um an effort to to preempt local governments regarding building materials and zoning for modifications to existing properties. Um that would have um that would have also interfered with your autonomy uh on on modifications and standards on it because what would have happened is basically the building structure of the time whatever new modifications they would make would would be retroactive to that particular year build. So you wouldn't be able to apply new modern standards. We defeated that bill. There were three uh pieces of legislation that would have capped property taxes. I think we're all for lower taxes, but maybe what some people don't realize is with the mandates that local governments have for services if your uh uh property taxes were capped, you would lose the autonomy then to be able to adjust as needed. And whenever a local government, should it ever become insolvent, the state would take over through the comproller. So, it's just not good fiscal planning and policy to cap that. We need the flexibility to be able to fund things as needed and to do so responsibly. So, we defeated that those pieces of legislation. There was another bill where counties would have preempted local governments with respect to annexation so that the county would have had to have checked off uh the local government's efforts in annexing before it could be approved.

We've been independent in the way that the city and the county operates when it comes to annexation. So that would have been a lot different. We defeated that. We felt that that to have the autonomy at the local level was very important for both the cities and the counties. Um there was a government tort liability uh piece of legislation that would have increased uh lawsuits uh for local governments. it would have it would have removed certain caps or or increased those caps for what they could recover from the city which then of course would have resulted in higher premiums for our cities and then paying more money. So we defeated that legislation and were fortunately successful in that as well. There was another bill. There actually were two of these bills where if you guys had zoned in some kind of a way and someone made the subjective argument that by virtue of doing that it devalued the property, they could then sue the city and recover in that way. That would be a new lawsuits. You can't do that today. Uh we defeated that legislation as well because again that would have increased premiums for our local governments. There was an open records uh exception bill that we that we worked on to to help uh be enacted that will allow you all now to have uh confidential uh interviews and things with respect to executive director level positions. A lot of local governments and this is sort of a collective interest. uh we're fearful that people who are existing employees with local government might be fearful from applying uh and competing for jobs because of disclosure and so autonomy the hope is that that will increase the number of applicants that you have for director level positions. So we passed that hopefully that will be a good thing. There's a tiered fine uh piece of legislation that would allow for repetitive uh violators to be fined in a tiered way, which is above and beyond the regular $50.

We don't have anything like that going on in Hendersonville. Sure. Right. Yeah. Um so anyway, those are the main pieces of legislation that we worked on. Again, I think there were u there maybe I don't know a hundred plus bills that we tracked and monitored overall. A lot of things we're tracking because the code can be open to be amended and do just various different things. But those are the key pieces of legislation that we worked on. Wanted to give you an update uh today on that. And with that uh mayor, any questions? I'm happy to answer them. I don't have anything further. I don't think any questions from our board members. Al Robertson, the tiered fines that you mentioned.

Yes, sir. That would be in municipal court where our our city judge would be able to for repeat offenders find them additional fines. Is that is that right? That's right. I mean, we need to work with our council here. This is a new law and make sure that we're doing things as they're supposed to be done. But it's my understanding that it would give us a new mechanism to deal with that. Those things, I guess, can always be appealed to a different kind of court, but that's my understanding. So, uh, again, we've not applied this yet. It's a new law. Uh, but in fact, it's not even effective until July. So, we got a little bit of time to plan for this, but it's my understanding that would be the case.

Okay. Thank you, Alderman Martin. Yeah. Yeah. I just want to get a copy of the uh list of bills that you're tracking. Yes. Could you send it to all of us? I didn't see it in the packet. Uh it wasn't in the packet. Um I'll email it again. Okay. I'll make a note right now. My my apologies, Alderman. No works. Thank you. Any other questions for Mr. Dunn? James. Appreciate very very much. Thank you, mayor. Thank you, mayor. And we meet with the mayor on a regular basis. There's ongoing things that we also work on. Transportation, different issues. I know we've had some lighting issues, exit 8, different things uh that we've that we've worked on and so hopeful to to continue to be helpful. So again, thank you'all for the opportunity. Hold on. Hold on. Yes, sir.

Yeah. It it it appears to me that both at the federal and at the state level. Yes, sir. That there have been attempts to limit the our a's jurisdiction on zoning.

Okay. Uh, so I I hope that you will, you know, if if we retain you, I hope that you will watch that closely because I I want us to do everything we can to make sure that we retain authority on local zoning and that the state doesn't try to preempt. We we have had uh and board we have had a number of attempts to do just that and we're the increasingly seeing more of those in the name of of of uh lowincome or affordable housing. And so uh there have been uh things that have passed that incentivize local governments to partner with builders in ways but it's voluntary. So, anything uh that the state has moved or put forward to to preempt, we certainly have been fighting. We'll continue to do that. We will see more of that legislation. There are other associations with interests in that. Some of them are not for profits, homebuilders association, different folks uh have an interest in in some of that. So, I think we'll continue to see that. Thank you. That's a that's an important point,

James. Thank you.

Thank y'all. Have a blessed night. See you. So, next on our agenda is a presentation of pay studying the information that's part of that. Uh, we had that earlier uh some of it in the general committee. Um, so I'm going to ask uh Jason and Beth to come on up, but I want to sort of set the stage here a little bit is when is when somebody is hired, we don't really name a um a a salary or pay rate for them. What we do is we is we go to our pay tables and we go to a line and we go to a cell and we figure out where their uh experiences and where they fit. Each position for the city of Hendersonville um fits fits on one of those one of those lines of our pay tables. So every position fits on one of those lines. We have five RA ways of increasing somebody's pay. One is through the cola. And what the cola does is we just we change the numbers in the I'm sorry. No, we don't. We um yeah, we change the numbers in each cell. Okay.

On the pay table.

On the pay tables. A merit increase. We move them to the next to the next column which will so that those are two ways that uh that folks are uh provided payraises. So the cola is approved by BOMA. The merit is the money is approved by Bulma. Then the supervisors and the department heads actually approve the person uh for that uh for that merit increase. We also have reclassifications which we're about to tell talk about right here. Uh the and I'll let Beth tell you how to do that. The reclassifications also have to be done by Bulma. Um we also have people who are promoted to director. That is also a board decision. Um and when that when that person is promoted to director with that comes the compensation that I recommend uh with Jesse's help. And so not only do we vote to hire that person, we also vote what their what their pay is going to be. Um when we have a promotion that's not to director, um say somebody goes from uh uh somebody goes from a um a firefighter fire to senior firefighter um that is a decision that's not made by Bulma. It's a decision that's made by uh the staff uh whether it be the CEO, the fire chief, the supervisors. So that's a decision that's made by staff. That is the only decision that is really made solely by staff is when a person who is not moving up to director um is moving up but but does get a promotion. And our expectations there is that they will receive a 7.5% raise. So they will move on that uh they will move on they will move up a table um for them to for them to receive that and we will plug them into the correct cell that they will have that. So, having said all that, trying to give you a foundation of how we set somebody's pay and how people are given payraises, I'm going to ask Jason to go from here.

Sure. I appreciate it. Thank you. Um, so, you know, the board had voted on doing a pay study and so now we're doing them every four years. So, we're engaged with BTA consultant to do the pay study. Beth Thompson is with BTA. She's our pay consultant that we've been working with. um when we do reclassifications if there's budget pieces that are tied to that that's often what will come before general committee and then go to Bulma. So, but for this situation or for where we're at right now, Beth is going to give you an overview of the pay study, what we've done so far, where we're at. Other components of our study include benefits and um differentials. That's part of a separate piece that we'll be working on after that. Um, but this was we wanted to make sure was in place in time for the budget. So that's why we're looking at pay first and then we'll look at benefits and differentials afterwards. So with that, Beth, I'm going to turn it over to you

and I asked Beth and she invites you to interrupt her with your questions.

Absolutely. Absolutely. That's what I'm here for. So again, my name is Beth Thompson. I'm with BTA Consulting. Quick um just a real quick history on me and BTA Consulting. Uh we were formerly you some of you may have heard of Buris Thompson and Associates. We've just shortened the name to BTA. My associate uh Steve Thompson has been working with cities and counties throughout Tennessee for about 30 years and I've been with him for about five. 100% of our work is with public sector employers, cities, counties, a few utilities, and school systems. So, we're very familiar with how cities and counties work, and this is all we do. So, that is just a tiny bit of that history. Previously, I did work for the private sector, but I was in compensation for that employer as well. So I have I have more than five years of experience of compensation just not all of it is public sector. So tonight what I Oh that buzzes it's different. Um what I surprised me sorry what I wanted to go over this evening is for our agenda in this presentation. I would like to talk to you about the process that we went through for the pay study at least up to this point. what we found in going through this, the recommendations we've got put together for you and the results. And as the mayor said, anytime you have any questions, feel free to to interrupt right then because I know if you're anything like me, you'd forget them by the end. So, I don't want to lose your questions. So, throughout the process, what we do, we do a full job analysis for every job in the city. We compile

market data for all of those jobs, analyze all of that, develop or revise the pay structure. Then we put together employee salary adjustment recommendations and at some point in time we also discuss pay policy considerations. So that's the overall process. So let's get into some of the details that will work for the job analysis. The first thing we well for the whole study the first thing we do is we sat down with the mayor with Jesse and with Jason to discuss what are the objectives for this pay process, the pay study process. What do we need to focus on? What is our target market? what are we trying to achieve as far as our market um rates? Do we want to be in the middle of the pack? Do we want to lead the pack? That sort of thing as far as where are we targeting our market rates. So, we discussed a lot of that with with the study kickoff. Jason provided us with the job descriptions, the job quest, we did job questionnaires with all of the employees. Every employee in the city was offered or at least to my knowledge, most of them were offered the opportunity to fill out a job questionnaire. All departments were given those. Uh the only reason I say most employees is in a position where there may have been 20 or 30 employees in the same position. Not every one of those employees may have filled out a job questionnaire, but for Yes, sir.

What is the example of one of those positions? A police officer, firefighter. Because there's several people in that particular position, you just ask one or two or a small sampling. We gave we gave the the job questionnaires were given to all of the department heads and it was up to the department head in that particular situation if he wanted to ask every single police officer to fill out the questionnaire. That was entirely up to him or every single firefighter. I don't believe all of them did fill those out, but for every other job we did get pretty much every employee filling those out. But they were all given that opportunity. It's important to have the employees as part of the process to get them to participate.

Absolutely.

And we are also going to be doing the job description rewrite. And so that's valuable information in that respect as well. But it gives us one of the things that's very important in this process for myself and my colleague that as I mentioned, we know cities and counties pretty well. We know how they operate. We know what departments exist in cities and counties and what they're supposed to do, but every single one is set up just a little bit differently and everybody wears just a little bit different hats. And so it's very important for us to understand what those different hats are and what different jobs are in each of our clients, how the organization is set up and all of those things. Because when we get to job matching and getting those market rates for every job, it's very important we understand the nuances that make Hendersonville Hendersonville because you're not like everybody else. Your jobs are unique to you. And so we want to make sure that when we're pulling market data for your jobs, it's appropriate and and as accurate as we can get. You're welcome. So, we used the job descriptions, the job questionnaires, and we also had department head meetings with every department head up front to discuss this the organization of their department and what their their employees did. We also at the very end had another follow-up meeting after the job table was built and discussed all of that after the fact. So we I had two different meetings with every department head. This is the overall objectives for the pay study. essentially ensuring that employee pay is aligned with their job

duties, that it's fair across all departments, that salaries are properly placed within the pay structure, the jobs are properly placed, and it's consistent across all departments. One of the things that we did up front with the administration is we selected the public sector benchmarks that would be used to compare. We have 15 I guess that are local all in middle Tennessee considered to be your direct labor market competitors. And one of the things that our firm does that's unique is that we do a survey across the state of Tennessee every two years to request salary data. This is actual salary data. So what these different employers are actually paying their employees. We don't look at their pay tables. We look at what are they actually paying their employees right now. And so this is the year we were updating all of that. We have fresh data and we get it and use this to determine or to pull market data for each of your jobs.

What percentage of responses? Hold on. Jeeoff, can you ask can you say that again? Yeah. Uh you said that the you check every two years you send out a request from and this is municipalities I'm assuming and counties. Yes. Cities and counties throughout the state. We have 111 participants in our current survey and that includes 10 utilities. Okay. So, out of the number that you sent out, what percentage did you get a response from? Well, with full data,

that's an interesting question. Um, I would say we have of the ones we requested, we have about 80 to 85%. But the reason for that is several of those are open records requests at this point. Quite a few are voluntary and they participate with us every year. But because we are determined to make sure that we have the appropriate data for all of our clients, we have a a list of ones that are absolutely necessary for us to get. And if we request it and they don't respond, then ultimately I will do a public records request to get that data so that I have it to provide my clients.

Good. And that's the proper way to do it. So I appreciate that. Thank you.

But all of 100% of these are voluntary. These are ones that participate with us regularly. So, the ones because we work with most of the cities and counties within Middle Tennessee. Couple of them are a little bit big for Steve and me because it's just the two of us. Uh, we don't work with Murphy'sboro, Nashville, or Clarksville. Um, and I don't and we don't work with White House, but I think we work with everybody else in that list or have. So pretty much everybody in that list is voluntary. You're welcome. We also use a private industry database because you don't only compete with public sector employers for your employees. You also compete with business and industry. everybody else down the road, Walmart, Chick-fil-A, Target, and so or other B businesses. And so we have a business and industry database called Economic Resource Institute, the salary assessor. It is a nationwide database. It has over 17,000 job titles in it. So we can match pretty much every job within the city to at least one or two jobs within that database. The exceptions are of course your certified police and firefighters. Those are not going to be in there. Um, but we can get just about everything else out of that database. We can and do narrow that data down to the Sumar County area. So, we're not using New York or California or anything strange. We are localizing the data so it is relevant. and we project everything from both of our sources to

July 1st so that when this goes into play in place for you, you are up to date and relevant and competitive moving forward. So, we've we've projected all of our data to July 1st so that you aren't immediately behind. We have after discussions and working with the mayor, Jesse and Jason, the decision was made that Hendersonville would be best served by being a little ahead of the market. So we targeted the 65th percentile. And so what we do is we take our municipal benchmark data and the business and industry data and average that together for each job to get what we call a market rate for each job. And that market rate represents a seasoned individual in the position. It's not considered a starting rate for the job. It is intended to be for someone who is in the job for about five to seven years. So we then compare that to the step nine on your current pays and that is how that compares. Okay? So that's not to be considered a starting rate when you look at the market rate. So what did we find? Your current pay ranges overall on average for the city were at 100.3% of the market. And this graph shows you how that was distributed. And it's very hard to read in itty bitty print. Sorry about that. But I have the numbers right here. So,

what this is showing you is that you've got, as I said, on average your jobs were about 100.3%. Now, ideally, you we want it's called a structure market index. And what we do is we compare the market rate to that step nine of your job pay steps. And so, that's where we want those. Ideally, you do have a handful of jobs that are the ones represented in the red columns at the end at the right left hand side. And in an established pay structure, that will happen over time because the market moves a little faster for some jobs and a little slower for others. And when they're all set up initially, they're all right around 100%. But then over time, as some move a little faster and some kind of lag behind, this type of thing happens. So when you do a pay study, things get adjusted back kind of appropriately. So this is this is actually a pretty good distribution for an established pay scale. We also look at employee pay rates compared to the market rate for each job. On average, your employees are at 96.4%. 4% of the market rates for their jobs. And so this graph will kind of shows you the distribution of them across. In general, we prefer to see them over 85%. But given that your market step is at step nine, the first two steps are going to be a little low and that's expected. Over time, all of your employees will will

consistently move up. Another way to look at this for your salary market index for your employees is this way in a pie chart. So, what you're seeing is that 12% of your employees are at less than 85% of market. and the recommendations being made later on in this presentation will address that. But generally when you look at this, the ones in the red slice are the ones that we really want to address. Everybody else is in good position. The ones in green are those that are between 85 and 100% and then the ones in blue are above 100% of the market rate for their own jobs. And that's typically where you want your employees to be living. is in the green and the blue. Any questions about any of that so far?

Sorry. So, uh are are we assuming any type of pay raise for this year in calculating the indexes? These initial indexes are just current pay rates right now. I will show you what this will look like a assuming the recommendations are put through and what the results will look like. I have that later on. But this right now is assuming no changes and and actually here we go. Perfect segue. Thank you, Beth. Hold on. One second. Alman.

Yes. Thank you. I was going to wait until the last, but I was I'm like you. I would for I'd be afraid to forget my questions. I would so much apologies. So, no, don't apologize.

I'm known for that. So, I don't mind it. But um since we are dealing with salaries and things because we've had uh during this past year, we've had issues with this and we've had to go in and correct the things. I mean, nothing that was that I would consider that it's the city's fault at all, but we tried to do what was right and correct it and we did and we got and it it all worked out. But I want to ask you in your opinion uh and also dealing with the city as well as other municipalities that you've that your company I'm sure deals with, but um is it a customary thing for um the top ranks and and you and and you can generalize this. It doesn't have to be a necessarily um I don't know parks department, let's just say. And I'm just using that because it came out of my my AI brain out of there. But um is it a normal thing for our top ranks to be um being paid less than the lower rank that they are involved in? Does that happen a great deal or is it is it it may or it just is it customary that that happens? I I would say that it's I wouldn't say it's customary. I would say it it definitely happens. Um it it really depends on where you're at.

Okay. I have had a a very recent client for example when you're looking at the salary market index and and where they are with respect to the market the the upper ranks the the directors and and that level were much lower with respect to their salary market index then and they were very focused on let's get the lower paid positions. Let's take care of them and don't worry about the people up at the top. They make enough money they we don't have to worry about them, okay?

And let's let's take care of the people under x amount of dollars. Let's let's pay more to them and not worry about these up here. Okay? I have unfortunately I've seen the exact opposite as well, right? But not as often. That's kind of rare. And then I've seen the ones that are just let's not worry about which level it is. Let's just make sure everybody's where they need to be and take care of it. So, but I have seen that, okay, where they're much more concerned about people at a lower rate of pay and making sure that the people at the lower levels have been moved up.

Well, I would just thank you and I'll if I have another question, I'll I'll write it out and and wait. No, don't question. Please, please interrupt as as you need to. It just seems like to me that if you know that should that's something that should be rectified uh by the city you know on the front if it can be done because it may not you know w without wrecking the whole system. And so overall it it can be problematic to do that to to not worry about the people at the top and to make sure you're right continuously bringing the the lower grades up.

Right. Yes. Um the reason is because then you start to cause compression with those upper pay grades. Uh it's it's in a way it's a noble thought because you're much more worried about people who may have a higher um monetary need, I guess. Yes, ma'am. Um and and I get that and I understand it completely. But the the issue is the more you do that and you don't move these higher grades with them, you're going to start bumping up and those they're these lower grades are going to have nowhere else to go

and then they're going to start making as much or more than people that they report to. And you're going to have to move those. And then when you do have to move them, you have to move them more than might be reasonable or look reasonable and then it's going to raise questions from perhaps your taxpayers or your mayor and alderman. Sure. And that sort of thing. So, it's it's a delicate balance sometimes and it can be hard to do especially if you're the kind of person that says, "Well, you know, I don't need the money. I want to give it to my people." Well, yes, but you're going to cause problems down the road,

right? Okay. Well, thank you for enlightening us cuz uh we had that problem months ago, but we were able to rectify it or it rectified itself. But I was just curious on that and thank you for your comments on that. Thank you, mayor. Thank you. Thank you, Al.

You're welcome. So for recommendations, first of all, the recommendation uh we intend to increase the pay grades all of them across the board by 2.8%. That means that oops when it's sensitive, it's sensitive and when I want to push it, it doesn't work. So that means that all steps in all grades would each go up 2.8%. The second thing we want to do is right now the part-time and seasonal positions are on their own little scale. They there's like five little grades that are separate and managed separately primarily for I guess it's parks and recreation and there's a couple of other random jobs in there. We want to merge those into the general pay scale. One of the things my colleague and I are very feels very strongly about is if the job does is doing the same duties as another as a full-time job for example they should be paid the same. If it's the same duties they should be treated the same that and it's much easier more efficient and much easier to administer if they're all on the same pay scale. It reduces questions. It reduces confusion. So, we feel like it would be just easier all the way around if they're all on the same pay scale. And in order to do that, we needed to add a few paygrades back into the general pay scale um to accommodate that. So, there's a handful of paygrades. They probably were there originally, but dropped off because they weren't being used. And so, we're just putting them back in at the bottom. So

those are the recommendations for the overall pay structure. During this process, I have reviewed all of the jobs and their paygrade assignments. Uh that was something mentioned earlier about reclassification of a job. There are a handful of jobs that we feel like are critical uh with respect to where they lie with their salary market index or structure market index. And so those jobs are slotted too low at the moment and have been recommended to be reclassified. There are some more that are on our watch list to kind of keep an eye on. We're not we aren't recommending those to be moved right now, but to kind of keep an eye on how does the market move with those jobs over the next year or two and they may be recommended for movement in the future. For salary adjustments, because of the pay grade change, the increase to all of the payraes, all employees would receive approximately 2.8% increase. some employees would receive a little bit larger increase because of the payrade movements um particularly some of those part-time and temporary employees being moved on to the general pay scale. So what is the overall result of this? The cost the COLA adjustment itself would be 92,820. So just under 93,000 for the COLA. And the grade reclassifications, as I said, those are just a handful and that would be just over $34,000. So the total cost of these, and this is of course excluding payroll taxes, benefits. So this does not include your FICA, Medicare, retirement costs. This is $937,176

for the increase to salaries. what this looks like with respect to your structure market index. Before, if you recall, I said that the average structure market index for the job table was 100.3%. It would with those reclassifications and the change to the pay grades, it would be 103.8%. Ideally, we want the this to be somewhere between 95 and 105%. So you would be right in the appropriate range. The adjusted employee salaries compared to market, if you recall, that was 96.4% on average. And these increases would move that up to 99.9% with half of your employees between 93 and 104.5%. So again, this would be placing employees at at a more competitive position. And the graph that I showed you earlier, again, I know that this is teenytiny print, but um that 12% of employees that was less than 85% would move to 5%. And again, that is because your market step is at step nine. And so new hires, people being hired, brought in at step one or even if they're at step two, they would they would be the ones that are in that 5%, the ones in red. But over time, the intention is to eventually get that step nine moved down to step seven by moving that step one off. And that could take a couple of years to move to get there. We wouldn't do that. We wouldn't start that this year. That would be a future

project. But eventually the intention would be for that red to go away completely. So, one question that comes up sometimes is what what happens with cost of living increases in the future. And what we encourage our clients to really consider more is rather than looking at cost of living, look more at think of it more as cost of labor. So rather than tracking what cost of living does, look at what are your labor market competitors doing to address the cost of living. So for example, if the cost of living goes up to 8%, you can't necessarily automatically adjust your pay grades 8%. That's going to be really expensive. But what you look at is, okay, what are all of your labor market competitors doing? What are other employers doing to address that big cost of living change? Are they doing 4%? Are they doing three and a half? What are they what is their solution to this? What are they doing with their pay grades? What are they doing with their employees? And so that is what we encourage our employ our clients to look at rather than just tracking cost of living as far as their own pay grades. we encourage you to consider looking at cost of labor instead. And that is the conclusion of my presentation. Do you have any other questions that I can help answer?

So far, nobody. Beth, thank you. Any questions for Jason? Okay, all of us good. Go ahead. I just I just have a quick question maybe to you or mayor your yourself. So what is our as a board what is our next process here with this? I think that's incumbent upon us to know. Sure. So our next step is incorporating the recommendations into the budget. Okay. So that has been done. The even the positions that are being recommended to be reclassified are worked into that budget as well. So, that'll be our next step is to make sure that we're rectifying the the issues in red, if you will.

Um, you know, that's going forward with the budget, assuming that that goes through and is approved, then it's monitoring the other positions that are on that watch list over time to make sure that we're still being competitive. Okay. So will the board I know that we had a discussion about coming to see you know and to talk about the study and everything but will we be able to see this uh each one of us as alderman on paper of what it what the determin I know that'd be a lot but right so that was also emailed out okay um to Bulma so I can print that out if you need but it's not the easiest thing to understand just looking at it

right that's what I that's what I was afraid because then I would have to have questions I'm sure that that I would ask about and I'm more than happy to sit down with you. Okay. Um I know Jesse has done the same. So yeah, I was going to ask I I I missed the deadline because I was involved with some uh family issues that had to take get take rectified and they they did this week. Okay. So I was not ever to uh u to to get in one of those meetings. So I might have to set a um a special meeting for me. Absolutely. Anytime you need sir more Thank you, mayor. Alderman Robertson.

M Miss Thompson, I do have a question for you. These pay studies are not inexpensive uh to for a city. They're needed, but they're not inexpensive. Uh uh so how often should a a municipal have a pay study? and and we actually just had that discussion um in the last meeting. One of the things that we um sometimes do for clients is to kind of keep it from getting exorbitant in cost. One thing you can do is after a couple of years you can look at a subset of the jobs. For example, you can one thing we would do is look at a a benchmark group of jobs. What we would do is take make sure we got at least one job from every department and every pay grade. So that may be 40 jobs or so, 40 or 50 jobs out of the entire city. Review that. So that's a fraction of the cost of the whole thing. And that would help to identify if there were any problem areas, issues, anything like that. Help identify where the pay grades need to move at that point in time and then a couple years later do a bigger study. Now, the advantage with us having a long-term relationship with our clients is that this time we've had to do the whole the whole big full thing with department head meetings twice. And you know, it's been a little bit more extensive and had more time spent because we had to get to know all of the departments and and spend a

little bit more time doing that. In the future, if we were to come back and do another pay study, the cost would be a little less because we wouldn't have to go through as much of that groundwork since so for example, if I were to come back in four years and do another study with you, I already know your departments. I already know your jobs. So I don't have to spend as much time getting to know you. Unless there's been like a whole um restructure of a department, then I would want to sit down with that department head and under and get to know what changes have been made. But a good portion of that work has already been done. So, that's one of our our advantages that we have with some of our long-term clients is those future pay studies aren't as aren't as extensive. But if you do a small subsection in a couple of years, that's much less expensive. And then a few years after that, you do another one. You can you could do some the smaller one in two or three years and then a couple two three years after that do a bigger one and that would keep you going. But you would want to look at your pay grades at least look at them every year to see what other employers are doing. Um I mentioned earlier Jason can always give me a call. We keep a really good handle on what's going on especially in Middle Tennessee since we work with so many of the other cities and counties. And so we keep in contact with all of our clients to to kind of well one a lot of them call us and ask us what everybody else is doing. And two, we want to get that information for when everybody else calls us to ask us what everybody's doing. So

okay, we are more than happy to provide advice in that respect. We're going to hold you to the cheaper price. I think you said much cheaper. I think that there was an adjective in there. So I I do have a question though. Uh we have picked the 65th percentile. Yes. As a good benchmark. What do other municiples that you evaluate? What what percentiles do they use?

Well, in the Middle Tennessee area, we actually have um people going all the way from the 50th p median all the way up to the 90th. We have um we have a handful at the median, at least one at the 60th, maybe two. You're at the 65th. We have two at the 90th. And I think we have one looking at the 75th. And is that because of the size of the municipal? like Nashville would want 90%.

I don't know. I honestly don't know what Nashville does. Um, and it's not necessarily the size. Part of it has to do with the location. Um, and I think this is I I it is our policy typically to be very um confidential with what we do for our clients, but in this particular case, I think it's pretty well known. So, um, I I guess I can share, but well, we have one client that nobody can live in their city. Nobody nobody that works for them can afford to live there. So they target the 90th percentile. Actually, it's two of our clients. They their employees can't live there. They they just can't afford it. So they target the 90th percentile because they want to attract quality employees, but their employees have can't have to live elsewhere. So they have to go further away.

And Alderman Robertson, seeing a a growing similarity in that situation, I've said for a little while that I'd like to be in the 75th in the next five years. That costs money. So yeah, we stack up. Yeah. Okay. And I think you you you've given me enough information. Appreciate it. I'm satisfied. Thank you. Okay. Any other questions? Thank you, Beth. Thank you, Jason.

Okay. Appreciate it very much. Next, we have a present a presentation for our deer committee uh chairman Gerald. Thank you for hanging out with us. Um, uh, appreciate everything you're doing with the deer committee and appreciate you basically sat through the, uh, through the length of a deer committee just to give us a report from the deer committee. So, this is Gerald Bar, our dear committee chairman. Thank you. Now, if I can figure how to get to my how do I do this? Here we go.

So, while I'm waiting, thank you all for uh, letting me be here tonight. I promise to be brief, which for me is always a challenge, but uh there's a couple side bets on whether I can really stay under 10 minutes or not. And um I won't tell you what the odds are right now, but uh has grown.

So I'll either dazzle you with brilliance or baffle you. Anyway, I'll leave that right there. Okay. Um so quick update for you all. Um um it's been since last fall um when we um last met. So the big thing we just had done was the annual survey. Um the uh these are the peninsulas. You can see the hot spots that still exist. Um but the hot spots are not as hot. We'll get there in a minute. Um this is the two peninsulas. Uh, of course the south area of 386 in the Country Hills area. Uh, I would encourage you on the Country Hills area to look at the one extremely hot spot because I'll be coming back to it in a few minutes. And for those of you who might have been here at the earlier presentation, you might recognize where that is.

That's my house and your house. That's correct. Yeah.

So, uh, so, uh, here's where we are. the total number of deer. And this the uh the three uh bars you see the blue was the uh survey done in 2023 in the previous methodology. The uh orange or red depending on which color is I think that's red um is um the 2025 and then the green is 2026. So on the left most one you'll notice that this year and last year are statistically about the same. I think it's 12 deer difference. So one can argue that's certainly within the margin of error. Um on the SIS fairy peninsula you'll see that we're slightly down. The Indian Lake Peninsula slightly up. Um and then South 386 uh not much at all and almost non-existent. And then of course the Country Hills Golf Club area, you'll see that the green is more. Now, while that doesn't seem like a lot, the far right one statistically um is by far the uh most um incost percentage increase. Um the two I believe it shows on the next slide. Let me back up. Oops, went the wrong way. Didn't back back. Um I'll stay here. The two peninsulas are both under 40 deer per square mile now, which is uh a significant improvement. And what's to me the best encouraging pieces is is that that seems to be pretty flat. Um you know, the Indian Lake W shows slightly higher there. Percentage-wise, uh that's that it's fairly small. The Country Hills area, however, is now over 60 uh deer per square mile. So, that has

grown over last year and um and it is now our it is now our hot spot is is that area. Um anecdotally, you know, there's less area to be hunted over there uh in that area. Although, the mayor does have a deer stand set up on his back porch as I understood. Just kidding. Just kidding. Uh but um but anyway, that's there's there's just not near as much opportunity as there is out on the peninsulas where you do have uh some larger tracks of land, etc. Um there's been a lot of increase in hunting this last um year or two through the um um initiatives that we've started and and creation of or increase in awareness. Um, so I believe that that has a lot to do with the stabilization of the two peninsulas. Um, and in the 40 under 40 deer per square mile, um, that is manageable. Um, so some would argue that it's not enough or too much, but it's it it is a manageable number as opposed to where we get above the 50 and 60. As a as a reminder, uh, the state average is in the low 20s. Okay. So you can see on the graphs uh the blue was the 2023 study. The other two are our current uh uh studies. Uh pretty close statistically last year and this year. Um so what does all of that mean for us? It means that we we're pretty stable population-wise, particularly in the two areas that have been the hottest spots, which were the two peninsulas. That's where we've also had the most hunting. Uh and um I believe that to be the biggest uh uh

biggest, you know, benefit or the biggest reasoning behind uh that. And where we've had the least hunting is is over the Country Hills area. And that of course indicates why we're growing there. So, we're not in a bad spot with regards to population, etc., etc., and certainly better than we were have been in the last few years. So, how are we getting there? Um, you know, this past year, uh, we've talked about we we're getting ready to have our next deer education workshop. Uh, this is really about helping people understand, um, how to protect your property, how to minimize, um, you know, damage from deer. uh and how to, you know, it's how to keep the deer uncomfortable in an area, meaning that you cut down on the uh amount of places where they feel they can set up and have a large party. Um you know, we want them to not feel that way. No mortgage board on the hostas um is usually a good idea. Uh but uh so we spent a lot of time on the education workshop. Encourage everybody to come June the 13th uh 8:30 to 12:30. Um you'll get to um hear more about this survey. You'll also get to hear more about the urban bow hunting directory that was created last year. Uh we did have over 480 people sign up for the directory. Um candidly there's still work to be done as far as getting the u interaction working. we would like to from the homeowners contacting people within the DE directory, but it has in and of itself created a higher level of awareness and I think most people with uh will tell you that the uh amount of people wanting to hunt land and uh and etc out on the peninsulas has has grown dramatically. Um so we are also with you

know refining our processes and we will continue to be so and by the processes we are we maintain a certain number of uh hard statistics each year through the deer dashboard. Uh then we also um have a process where TWWR provides us with information that's sent out to the citizens at key times of the year. Leave the fonds alone when they're being born uh etc. And so all those processes now have been pretty much hardwired over the last year and we met today with um uh Jesse and Casey and Natasha and they are actually going to we're going to hand those processes off now so that those processes are hardwired enough that those will be uh you know those will be managed um internally by the city which will make them more efficient uh as as well. And then of course the city will also be administering the annual aerial survey which takes it less cumbersome. I'm contacting USDA, they're contacting me, I'm contacting Jesse and we're all doing all this kind of stuff. So we feel like we're far enough along in how that process should look that they're going to take responsibility of that. Freeing the committee up from those things to allow them uh you know to continue to explore uh new initiatives uh going forward. Uh but again, please come on June the 13th and find out all about what we're going to be doing in the next coming year. Okay. Did I make it under 10 minutes?

Well, we don't know yet. Alderman Collins has a question for you. What questions do anybody have for um could you email these documents to us? Um I'm sorry. I thought they were already being put out, but yes, we'll get those out to everybody. I appreciate that. Thank you. Okay. Anything else for Joe? Oh, Alderman Borf. Hey, thank you very much, Chairman. Barrett, appreciate it. Now, all these documents that you do see, the deer dashboard, all that is on the city web page, correct? Yes. Okay. Is there any place in particular? What else is on the city? Well, the caveat is is that the new survey is not

new survey is not. That's right. because I felt it would not be uh uh respectful this board that has had us do this aerial survey to provide that information to anybody else before we provide it to all of you. So, um it has not been sent out and perhaps that's why it hasn't already been emailed out to you. Um you know, we didn't want to take all my thunder away, but uh uh but you we you will be getting it u and and you will have in your hands before it is uh posted out on on the website. Thank you. Any other questions?

Chair, we appreciate it very much and what I mean the success you just put in graphs for us right there and really shows what you and your committee have done. We appreciate it very very much and one of the pieces of data that we're going to work on uh in the near future is the number of car accidents that involve deer and that is on the deer dashboard and that's and that's updated and excuse me for not bringing that up mayor. I know that's something that you've always asked. We are continuing sign significantly trending downward on the car deer collisions over the last couple of years. So awesome. Thank you for that. Any other questions for Joe? Thank you so much for hanging out for a little while.

Appreciate you join. So, we mentioned this and we added to the agenda a few minutes ago, National Safe Boating Week. So, um I'm going to read this and I want you to tell a little bit about why you're here and what your committee's doing. Okay, super. So, whereas during National Safe Boating Week, the US Coast Guard, the National Safe Boating Council encourage all Boers to explore and enjoy America's beautiful waters responsibly. hand. Whereas safe boating begins with preparation and through basic safety procedures of carrying communications equipment, wearing life jackets, attending safe boating courses, and staying sober when navigating, we can help ensure voters safe stay safe. And whereas on average 650 people die each year in boating related accidents in the US, of which 70% are fatalities caused by drowning. And whereas the vast majority of these accidents are caused by human error or poor judgment and not by the boat equipment or environmental factors. And whereas a significant number of voters who lose their lives by drowning each year would be alive today had they worn their life jackets. Now therefore, I, Jamie Clary, mayor of the city of Hendersonville, Tennessee, hereby support the goals of the safe boating campaign and proclaim May 16 through 22nd, 2026 as National Safe Boating Week. And I urge the citizens of Hendersonville to use safe boating habits and wear a life jacket at all times while voting. While voting. Angela, do you want to tell a little bit of why this is coming up now and a little bit about the committee? I'd really appreciate it. Okay. Thank you.

Good evening. My name is Angela Holmes and I'm the chair of the city's Lakeshore Committee. And so, um, we're about a year in, so I'm due to come give you a report. Um, but we've been finishing up our 2025 work plan. We are about to uh one of uh one of the things on our work plan is a resource guide. A lot of times people boat or they move here and they don't know a lot about the lake or how it operates or safety. And so we really wanted to make sure that we were putting together information for folks in the city by the lake. Um and and this is um an effort we're undertaking to do some um public awareness and education around safe boating. We're getting into voting season and um we will be putting out some sharing some messages on the city website um about wearing your life jacket and voting sober. Um we will also be putting out some um coloring pages for kids and some posters around at some of the um um places that service boating uh environment. Um and we are thankful to you for authorizing the committee and we are um happy to engage with folks. We just had a very successful meeting with um Lakeshore property owners and the Army Corps of Engineers which is always um an interesting uh relationship and so it was it's always a good time for them to come out. they change staff fairly often and so it's important for us to continue to have sort of that annual meeting to and we had about 85 people in this room attending and so um we are just hoping to raise awareness around uh issues in the lake and so we thank you and we will be spreading the word about national safe boating week so please share

any questions for Angela she didn't mention she's the chairman of the lake shore committee uh thanks so much we appreciate you So, next item, uh, we don't have any public hearings, so we are to minutes. Now, I'm going to entertain a motion that we approve the minutes that were provided to you for our April 28th, 2026 meeting. We have a motion from Alderman Goodwin and a second from Alderman Garza. Any discussion? All those in favor of approving the minutes that were provided to you for April 28th, 2026 meeting, please say I. Those opposed, please say no. That passed. Oh, we have an extension from Alderman Martin.

Okay. And then next we have citizen comments. We have one person signed up. Um speakers must identify themselves by name and Mr. Little. I'm not going to read this. We've You're the last person that needs to hear these. So

you you probably know you probably know them all. Um this is Robert Little Raindrop Lane, but you still have to abide by him even though there is. My name is Robert Little, 314 Rindrop Lane, Creekwood subdivision. I've now appeared before this body, submitted written materials, and provided supporting documentations regarding roadway design, striping, and pedestrian safety concerns in Creekwood. These concerns have been raised repeatedly both publicly and in writing are supported by residents input and reserved conditions. Despite that, the current configurations remains unchanged. The roadway on Creekwood Lane reflects the deliberate design decision. Vehicle lanes maintained at approximately 10 ft in each direction with a WL center line and edge striping while pedestrian space was reduced approximately 3 feet. That decision has real consequences. Residents are left with minimum spacing directly adjacent to the active roadway. There is no meaningful accommodations for safe pedestrian movement and no provision all for bicycle use. This is a residential subdivision where residents have clearly requested safety conditions. This is not a rare theoretical concern. It's a functional one. A continuous three-foot path with adequate passing space does not provide a practical or usable pedestrian environment under normal conditions. does not allow for two people to pass comfortably, does not accommodate mixed use, and at places pedestrians are meetly next to moving traffic. I reviewed the applicable guidance, including the Americans with Disability Act on many minimum dis dimensions may exist under limited conditions. The current configuration raises serious questions about whether design meets real world accommodations when applied continuously in this manner. At the same time, no bicycle

accommodations has been provided despite known demand. The striping reflects a standard vehicle orientated roadway, not a balanced design that considers pedestrians or cyclist safety. This reflects a choice. It reflects a decision to to preserve full vehicle capacity while reducing pedestrian usability even if residents requested a safety alternative. As resulted in prior citizens comments and in my April 14 submission, these issues have been formally presented to this body, the individual alderman, and to the mayor. To date, there has been no corrective action and to clear technical justification addressing these concerns. At this time, I'm requesting that the city clearly state his position. The city consider the current pedestrian configuration be complement with ethical accessibility and safety expectations. If so, what specific standard supports that determinations? If not, what corrective action will be taken and within what time frame? This statement along with the written materials I'm providing today serves as a formal notice to the city of a pending claim on correct action is not taken within the previous provided time frame. This form is a pre-suit notification to the city. Thank you, Mr. Little. We don't have any items on the consent agenda. U we can make copies and get this the rest of y'all. Um and next we

have ordinance and resolutions. The first item is uh resolution 2026-16. This is a resolution authorizing the mayor to sign a proposal with Tennessee Department of Transportation TOT for a bridge project over Manser Creek on Gallatin Pike. We have a motion from Alderman Goodwin and a second from Alderman Skidmore. Any discussion on this? Uh, Alderman Skidmore, go ahead. Yes, sir. Just I just wanted to remind that uh during our committee uh I I I wanted to make sure that I asked for for to be a partless sponsor of this as well, a co-sponsor. Without objection, we're going to add Alderman Skidmore. Thank you so much. I appreciate that. Any other discussion?

All those in favor of resolution 2026-16, please say I. I. Those opposed, please say no. That passes unanimously. Thank you. Next, we have resolution I'm sorry, ordinance 2026-03. This is the first reading. An ordinance amending the Hennersville Municipal Code, Title 2, Chapter 2 regarding Board of Parks and Recreation. Title 2, Chapter 4 regarding the golf course commission. Title 8, Chapter 2 regarding the beer board and the 2000, and it should say 2025 zoning ordinance to allow compensation for members of certain boards. I'd appreciate a motion. We have a motion from Alderman Robertson, second

and a second from Alderman Garza. Now, I need to hand you I think you all have uh the amendment. We sent it out by email and then we set it in your desk. It's going to look like this. It's going to have uh four pages with a lot of yellow on it and we need to amend that amendment. Um I think you all should see this. This is what we're looking at. Okay. So, um, I'm going to make a motion that we amend ordinance 2026-03 with this. And do I have a second?

And a second from Alderman Robertson. Alum Robertson. Now, I have to make an amendment that we change this in one place on page three on section five. Right below, right above where it says E, we need to change that year to 2025. Yep. So it says section five, it says the 2024 zoning ordinance. That should be 2025 zoning ordinance. Alum Robertson, will you second that motion?

Okay. So we have a motion, a second to change that from 2024 to 2025. Any discussion on that proposal? This is just the amendment to change 2024 to 2025. All those in favor, please say I.

I. Those opposed, please say no. That passes unanimously. Now, we're back on what you have here. All the yellow. Um, and with with that change we made. But I need to go back to gosh, it's probably been a year and a half from uh ago that that we had a version of this and then uh about two months ago that we had a version of this. Um, and was asked to me back then about other cities. And um, I was sort of stumped uh at that point. We did talk to some other cities, not many of them, and we found out that not many other cities pay um other than their their governing boards and their planning commission. Some of them don't even pay their planning commission. But the reason that I didn't think it was too important um to compare ourselves those other cities was because it's not like um what we just heard as far as our compensation study. Um, we're looking in the compensation study. We're comparing ourselves to other cities because our employees are literally uh uh well, other cities are literally competing against us for employees. When it comes to our committee members, they're not looking at going to another city and serving on a committee. I mean, that's that's obvious. What we're competing against with our committee members are vacations, family events, work events, church events. And so it didn't make much sense to me to try to uh compete with other cities to keep those people as far as being a committee member. Um and my feeling also is that I didn't really care what other cities were doing. I want to set a standard. I want to be better than those other cities. Uh very similar to the way that we reduced our uh grocery tax in Hendersonville. No other city had done that. And had we decided to do what every other city had done, we would have never reduced our grocery our sales tax on groceries. We did that and it's been about two years and now the mayor of Nashville looks at us as a standard and says Nashville should reduce their grocery tax. So, I want to set the standard. Um I'm not real concerned about what other cities do as as far as their as far as them

paying their committee members. Um, but I also, um, want to make sure we understand that this isn't about, this is not appropriating money to pay anybody. This is allowing it to happen. I think that the amendment that um, Alderman uh, Robertson and our city attorney worked out. I think it's a great amendment and I think it addresses some of the concerns we had um, a couple weeks ago and some of the concerns we had a month ago. Alderman Robertson, do you want to speak? Okay, Alman Robertson, go ahead.

Thank you, Mayor. And I have kind of a different reason why I'm motivated uh for this uh for this change. And it's uh basically on a uh on a fairness question. Uh we have uh three committees in the city where training is required. The planning commission it's required by the state and they are compensated. BZA has training that is required by the state. They are not compensated. We have the storm water appeals board. Uh we mandate that they do training through MTAS and they're compensated. So at a minimum we need to correct BZA. BZA is is is an important uh committee to this uh uh city. uh they take on some very weighty issues and so let me walk through the the changes because really the changes make the bill it make make the ordinance. So with these changes there are four conditions where committees members may be paid four conditions. Let me walk you through first those committees that are listed here that these are committees that make decisions. These are not committees that make recommendations to us but they make decisions uh that affect the citizens of this of this city. So uh first of all so the first parameter is they make policy decisions. The second parameter is are they budgeted? So every year this board will be able to look at the budget and be able to say you know yes we will be able to fund uh uh the the uh uh the uh

committees and commissions that are outlined in this ordinance. That's the second. The third is there has to be training. If a committee does not is not required to be trained, they will not be compensated. So that's the third condition. The fourth condition is they have to meet. You know, there are some committees that don't meet every month. And so uh the those are the four conditions that they that they are policymaking boards and commissions that they have been budgeted by this board and that's kind of the oversight that that this board will have over the process. Third is that they are required to go through systematic training and fourth is that they meet. So if they meet those four parameters they will be compensated. uh they will be compensated just like the planning commission is compensated now. So it kind of brings up everybody to equal status uh to the planning commission on that. And so uh and and and as it mentions also uh a voting member may opt out. If a voting member says no, I want to do this as service to my city. I'll do the training. I'll attend the meetings, but I don't want to get paid. Then all they have to do is opt out and then they'll be opted out. Now, the the fiscal note on this if and I don't know I don't know uh mayor if you've included this in your budget. You have not for this year

but but uh when it if it was included the only incremental change would be the BZA because BZA is the only committee at this juncture that meets all four conditions I if we approve to to make them part of the budget. So, uh, I I think it's a it's a good approach and and I will say that the county board of equalization, I talked to our representative to that uh uh county board of uh equalization and they are compensated. So, there are some county commissions and boards that are compensated. So, uh, so again, I'm sorry for the lengthy explanation, but that is why I believe in fairness and, uh, that that this is that this is the right way to go. Thank you, Mayor.

Al Robertson. Thank you, Alman Evans.

Thank you. Um, Alderman Robertson, thank you for the clarification there because I was kind of confused on where we were drawing the line, the delineation there. So right now is BZA is the only one that is has required training and that they meet all that criteria. So that's the only one we would consider at this time. These others, it's just setting up a framework for them to have that, but they have to meet all those other requirements. And then who determines what that training will be? I guess that will be written or that will come later is what that training training will be. And is it going to be required that it's a uh monthly meeting for these other or is it just periodic or

it it will be up to us. It would probably be periodic. Okay. Yeah. I don't know that any of the other committees would need monthly training but periodic makes sense. Yeah. Not monthly training but monthly meetings or I I didn't know what the um so but that will but I guess my point is that that will be coming later for them to be able to to meet the criteria of the training and the meeting and all that. It'll be spelled out what that should be for us to consider that. Yeah. I wouldn't feel comfortable having Lance or Jesse or Tamara doing that without the board weighing in on that. Okay. Okay. Thank you, Alman Evans. Alman Burgdor.

Hey, thank you, Mayor. I appreciate it. Um, mayor, this is quite an interesting conversation. We we've had um and it kind of we kind of swerve into accidentally what uh Alderman u Evans was was asking about the training aspect. you know. Um I I would like to suggest and one more quick question if I may just u looking at the highlighted portion title 18 chapter 2 storm water management section 18-211 appeals board is that one that is already compensated or is it not yet compensated?

They are compensated right now. They also have training but they have not met. So this would make a change for them. Alderman Robertson, do you want to Why don't you go ahead? That's exactly right. So, uh, that storm water utility board, they do the training, uh, but they don't meet So, they would not meet the qualif they would not meet, uh, the standard of this. They would only meet the standard if they met. Yes.

Okay, understood. Now, I like the rewarding of this. I appreciate the effort that went into it, and I think that it's a great um, start. Um, but what I would like to offer I, everyone I've talked to, let me just go ahead and tell you, everyone I've talked to has told me that they don't understand why I why we want to present uh offer compensation. Anybody knows um government and and we're up here and we're spending taxpayer dollars. As soon as we open up a line item, we're at risk of filling it every time. Um, for instance, we had a we had a struggle last night. We didn't have a struggle. We had a finance committee where we questioned a lot of finances and we considered not paying them. I think that's a good approach um to address this every year annually whether it needs to be paid, whether it needs to be compensated, whether it needs to be in the budget. And that gives the the board um some um some control over that. Secondly, um that was that was one things. Then the conversation I had with uh I've had with lots of different people have considered I'm I'm not going to change it. U have consistently suggested that it's just not necessary. It's not something that the city needs to spend money on. Um, so those are my constituents that I represent and they tell me that we don't need to pay for this, but I'm going to I understand the training aspect of it. I would like to uh suggest a amendment, a friendly amendment. I think um reading through each one of these sections,

section one, section two, uh section three where it addresses each board individually, I would like to but before we do that, I would like to at the whereas the one two three four five the fifth whereas what's highlighted whereas the city finds it approp appropriate to authorize. I would like to uh mark out a uh and then go on to limited and I would like to substitute the words monthly stipen for compensation. That's the first one. Then under section one at the highlighted section, I would like to under compensation voting members are authorized to receive compensation in an amount not to exceed $100 per month. I would like to strike per month. I would like to add for training because as we've all talked about, we need to have trained individuals working with us. And I believe everybody wants to be trained so they do their job as well as possible and serve our uh citizens as well as possible. And the last piece I would like to go to section three and strike out this section regard regarding compensation altogether. Leaving of course if desired a voting member may opt out of receiving pay. I would like to do that on sections one, sections two, sections three, uh, sections four,

and the appeals board. Yes. and section sections five. Is that understandable? Well, maybe. But let me ask you a question. Sure. So, we also have under each section a paragraph one that mentions training. So, now we've got some redundancy there that that doesn't have the same verbiage under u demonstrate to me please. voting member. I don't see that. Maybe I'm overlooking it. So you just so at the beginning of each section you just train you just changed it from per month to for training.

Correct. And then the next paragraph it says the voting member has training education requirements supposed by city under the state of Tennessee. Still relevant because it's imposed by city and state. Okay. So, we have a motion and a second from Alderman Sassy. So, we're just Now, what I'd like to do, furthermore, I would like to just try this and see how it goes. I mean, if we need to come back to it in in a couple of years, I I think because this is not a um an end all beall. This is just an idea just trying to get us over the hump.

Thank you. So, I don't consider this a friendly amendment because it negates part of the point of what we're trying to do is is have some fairness among our our boards, including this board, is that um we get paid for showing up for meetings. I think that the other committees for I mean all of us get actually except for me um get paid to show up to meetings um these other committees that make final decisions. I I just don't understand why we would Well, I do have a honorable member. I'm sorry. I apologize.

I don't understand why we would treat them differently and in my opinion go back to what Alman Robertson treat them unfairly. Um so uh that's that's my thoughts. Um Alderman Martin and Sassy had their buttons pushed. Do you want to hear back from Alderman Burgdorf?

Okay. Go ahead. Thank you. Um one of the things I did it did come to mind because I've been watching the city for a long time and one of the things we had several years ago we had a um a position in the city that was uh reduced. their salary was reduced dramatically. And that person, that mayor, did not quit because of the reduction of pay. He did not do it. He fought through it. He wanted to serve the city. He continued to work with the city in the in this in in the position and he and he succeeded. So the volunteer spirit I believe is much stronger than than just trying to um to to serve the comm community. Thank you. Thank you Martin.

Is this going to be funded from operational revenue? Well there's there's no money that it would be but there's no money would be in the future. Yeah.

Okay. Um the timing of it seems a little off because um we had we had the state of Tennessee tell us we have to increase our contribution towards a retirement. Um and that really did violence to um to our budget and we had to go Jesse had to take it back and fix it. Um and then we also have on the horizon, you know, we want to go from 60 whatever to 75 like you said earlier. Um and we are star for operational revenue. Um so not really a question just just a comment.

Okay. Appreciate it. Alman s um alderman Collins I have a question for alderman Bergdorf point for clarification. Um it's more than clarification. I just did not understand what you were what you are proposing to change on section three. Could you just restate that for me please? Yes. Uh it's the same thing as on section one. Uh so it's the se in each section it's the same. Well changing section three. Okay here we are. Um again voting members authorized to receive compensation and amount not to exceed $100 per training. Well that is per train. Okay.

For training. I thought you said something about the word you used the word compensation. You wanted to remove or did I miss that was in the first section? That was in the whereas that was in the whereas and that's all I had. Thank you. Thank youman Sassy. Yeah. Thank you mayor. Um, so when we were discussing this previously, um, I believe it was Alderman Garza that brought up was it was it you that brought up about train about um, maybe we should pay for training

when they got train. No. Okay. Well, someone and and I thought that was a an absolutely great idea. I mean the we're talking about the thing that sets these boards apart is their training but the other boards are meeting and they want to volunteer their time for the meeting which is admirable. We're the volunteer state. Um and we have a lot of people in our community. I've I've talked to several of them over the past well not last week but pre but the week prior to that and a couple weeks prior to that uh I had several people same as uh Alderman Burgdorf you know why are we looking to pay I would love to serve on a board I love my city I love I love what the city stands for um and would love to be a part of that um but because of the training on these specific boards words. I think it does make sense and I I stand by that uh recommendation that was made last time as well, which is why I seconded uh this amendment. I think paying for the training makes sense. This is something that they are doing in excess of what a legitimate board does of what any of our other boards do. And we should pay them for their time for that because they're not actually conducting the work of the city at that time. They're not they're learning how to, but they're not actually conducting the work of the city. They these these citizens, they want to volunteer their time for the good of the city and to better themselves. They want to take this training. And for that, I think we should we should commend them by paying them. And so I fully support paying for the training, but I can't support paying a monthly stipen because our citizens want to give time to us. I

mean, we get paid because we partially because we're here two times a month. We're sometimes here for multiple hours. We have to run a full campaign. That's expensive as well. So there's a little bit of compensation to kind of counteract that. And I I but honestly I would do it without any pay. And if this vote board voted or wanted to vote on eliminating our pay, I would I would vote for that because that's how important this city is to me. Um and I want to be a volunteer for our city if if if need be. Um so I and and I've talked to so many people that want to do the same thing. So, but um I do want to get clarification on the amendment as you did uh Alderman Collins because there there are multiple items on here where it says per month.

Um so, and I think there's also a numbering issue here. Like on uh section one, it says 1 2 3 and then you go to section two and says 456. And it repeats that several times. I think that's just that's just a type of typographical error error though. I don't think we need an amendment for that. Is that correct? That's correct. It's clerical. I've already made notes. Okay, great. Thank you. Um, but so let's see. Section one, the amendment is the amendment of the amendment of the amendment is per training. And anything else in that section one that is changing just section one

section two-205 that whole there piece there. No. Okay, then I want to go to section two. Okay. Number three. Number three. Oh. Oh, thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you. Uh number three in section one. That will need to be just strike that out. Strike that out. Mhm. And then leave, of course, if desired, a voting member may opt out of receiving pay.

Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. Okay. Then going on, we would do the same thing each section throughout this irregardless of one, two, or three or four, five or six. Does that make sense then? Um, yes. So, one sections one, two, three, and there's Yeah. Okay. And then strike three. Three is also training. two is also training. Um, and then what about section four? Yeah, it also says per month there. So, we're are we saying? Yes.

Okay. Train. Yep. Great. And section five, same thing. Correct. And then on each one of those, we're also cross uh marking out that third item. Correct. Yeah. Okay. But leaving if desired, a voting member may opt out of receiving and then section five that uh yeah I that to me that makes sense because of the uh due to the items I mentioned and uh that's all. Thank you.

Thank you Alderman Sassy. Thank you Alderman Borf. Alman Robertson. So, in the spirit of promoting volunteerism, uh, Alderman Burgdorf, are you recommending to include the planning commission in eliminating their pay? I'm not recommending that because that was passed years ago. I have no no issue with that whatsoever. What I want to do is make sure going forward we have um a good plan in place. Now, like I said before, if this doesn't work, we can bring it back.

That's inconsistent. I I just want I just wanted, you know, if we're going to if we're going to take treat all of the committees planning commission is not on this ordinance. No, but but they're the only ones that would be the outlier. Understood. You know, in being paid, how long have they been paid? I don't know. It's there's no sense in going to rewrite. know going back to fixing.

Okay. All right. All right. Uh so I wonder if uh since there are so many changes if it wouldn't be a good idea, mayor, for you to I mean to to uh withdraw this at the at at this time and let al Burgdorf work with uh Lance and bring back a clean document. I I appreciate that. Um we don't have much on our agenda. I'd sort of like to push through. Okay. All right. I'm ready. Okay. Okay. Any other discussion on this on this proposed amendment? Jason, ready for us? Oh, I'm sorry. Alman Skidmore. Okay, hold on. Alman Skidmore, go ahead.

Oh, so so just to for a point of clarification that I'm asking under the rule, we are you're talking about now the amendments that has been proposed by my colleague uh Alderman Burgdorf. Is that correct? That's correct. And so then after that we go to the uh the ordinance as as amended or yes your amendments I guess then we vote on that and then we vote for the ordinance one one way or the other. Okay. Here was my question

and I'm sure and I will be the first to admit this evening. Uh I'm abusing the Robert's rules of order. So if anybody wants to call me out of order, feel free because I've got some but something else that I can come right back at you with under the rule. So best thing to do I would just my and I'm not trying to be a smart elicare but my advice is let me go ahead and ask the question and don't try to trick me because I'm going to trick you back in a big way. So let's just not go that route and I'm being nice as I can possibly be. So my question is to you to you mayor uh or uh finance or someone what is the cost going to be if we do this or do we even know um with providing all these amendments and it and it let's say that it passes. Do we even know what the cost is going to cost the city of?

You mean for the fiscal year 27 budget? Um yes. Yes. or when this goes into effect. So it' be 26. So if what the mayor proposed initially were to pass tonight, there would be zero impact to the budget because it is not recommended in the budget for next year. If it were to be included to pay all of those committees as the mayor proposed would be just under $35,000 for a year. But again, there was it's not proposed or included in the proposed budget. The mayor's recommended. Yeah, the mayor has not recommended that in his budget for next year.

Okay. So, I was going to ask you, mayor, and I and I really don't mean to put you on the spot, and I probably just should have called you and that's so that's on me. I mean, honestly, it is. It's on me. Um, so it's not going to be in this year's budget. Correct. Is that what you're telling me? Okay.

Okay. So, it's 35,000. That's almost like half of a salary of a police officer. Really? Um, Okay. Thank you, mayor. Thank and thank you for your uh indulgence on the Roberts rule of water. So, Jason, ready for us? So, we're voting on the amendment that was uh that was proposed by Alderman Burdforf and seconded by Alderman Sassy. Those in favor press the green button. Those opposed press the red. So, let's see. So that passes with Alderman Burgdorf, Skidmore, Ward, Martin, Sassy, Alderman Goodwin, and Collins uh in favor. Those against, alderman Garza, myself, Alderman Garton, and Alderman Robertson. Okay, so now we're back on the main motion. I passed 8 to four. Now we're back on the main motion. So we had my amendment and then we had Alvin Burgdorf's amendment.

The amendment that I made, we're voting on that. but as amended. Gotcha. Gotcha. Okay. Gotcha. Okay. Okay. So, so now we're back on the amendment that that I propose as has been changed uh by us and then Alman Burgdorf's amendment. Um Okay. Um Okay.

Go ahead, Alderman Robertson. I I believe that the that the amendment, Alderman Burgdorf's amendment rewrote my so I don't think there's a need to take up my motion. I mean, I think the majority has spoken. So, I think we need to go directly to the amended Burgdorf's amended final motion on on the ordinance. I mean, it wouldn't do any good. We're going to have the same vote if we if we take up your amendment. So, I I don't see where we would Procedurally, I think we need to go So, we have to go to here and add Burgdorf's items in there because if we just go to Burgdorf's items, we would actually go back to where we were. Okay. Yeah.

All right. Burgdorf, excuse me. You're right. I'm sorry. I was wrong to begin with. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It's nothing special. I apologize. Okay. Okay. So, we're back on this with Alderman Burgdorf's proposal. That is part of it. Um so any discussion at this point on this as it's been changed. Okay. Uh all those in favor press the green button. Those opposed press the red. Okay. So that passes. Do you need to press

Jason? Can you start us again please? Okay. So, those in favor press the green button. Those against, press the red one.

It's it's this as it's been changed by Alderman Burgdorf's amendment. So, that passes 10 to two. Voting in favor, Alman Burgdorf, Ward, Martin, Sassy, myself, Alderman Goodwin, Garton, Collins, Robertson, and Evans. was against Alman Skidmore and Garza. At this time, since I'm the only sponsor of this, I'm going to withdraw this. Um, we I think you're right, Alderman Robertson, we need to rewrite it because the explanation really should have been sent sent out to us ahead of time. Um, and uh, we need to make sure that we all know what we're voting on. So, I'm going with it at this time. Our next item on the agenda is brief committee reports and chairman Garza from the general committee.

Yeah, excuse me. We had a fairly light um general committee report. We had resolution uh 2026-17 authorizing the installation of historic andformational signage of the Bradford Berry House uh through Mark Bergdorf, Alman Bergdorf and that positive recommendation diploma. Also, uh, Alderman Burgdorf was a reading of resolution 2026-18, a resolution to establish a partnership between the city of Hendersonville and the Bradford Berry Preservation Society for the purpose of preserving, restoring, and maintaining the historic Bradford Berry House. Also with a positive recommendation uh, resolution 2026-9 authorizing the city to apply for the public entities partner safety partners grant that went positive. We go for that every year. In a reading of resolution 2026-20, a resolution amending the job classification list and payts also with a positive recommendation. And then finally, the reading of resolution 2026-21, a resolution amending the personnel rules and regulations for the city of Hersville, also with a positive. So, we must have been in a real positive mood tonight.

Chairman Garza, thank you. Chairman Goodwin, public safety committee. We had a brief committee meeting. We discussed code red and some changes that we could make. More information will be forthcoming at a later date. Chairman Goodwin, thank you. Alderman Martin Planning Commission. Oops, there you go.

Thank you. Uh, so we actually had a very short meeting. It was only like 10 minutes long. We grouped all the consent items and site plans together into one and and voted on them. Um, some some uh projects that you guys would be interested in. Um, the Waw Wa final plat uh was approved. that's located at 451 West Main Street. Um the project at 134 Chival Drive. Uh the owner is Rob Kushman and it's a uh warehouse project uh going um in between Imperial Drive and Main Street on um Shival Drive. And then uh we received the site plan u for Lincoln Rockland. Um that's the warehouse um that we talked about earlier um that they're building a road extension off of Rockland Road. Um that passed in and moving supplies uh located at 216 Innovation Way. Um they submitted a site plan and it was approved. And then the Rugby Fields Pavilion Extension u that site plan located at 451 West Main Street was approved. And then uh we had a Wawwa submit site plan that we reviewed um in conjunction with their final plat uh that was approved. I think that's going to be a nice project and a welcome addition uh to our city. Staff level projects approved. Um Hendersonville Business Park um at 100 New Shackle Island. Um WA Chival Edition lots one, two, and three at 134 Chival Drive. Uh and then West Main Exxon beverage cooler edition at 1082 West Main Street. Staff level projects pending CL POW edition lot 17 and 18 located at 134 Powell and then

the TBN U Millennia uh cottages across the street. Um that final plat located at 645 East Main Street and the planning director comments. Um, we're excited to um congratulate congratulate Chris Willard u for his promotion to the uh fire marshall position. That concludes my report. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Alman Martin. Uh, Chairman Sassy, Finance Committee. Oh, I still had Alderman Martin's microphone on. Thank you, Mayor. Um, and I think your report was longer than the actual meeting, Alderman Martin.

I think so, too. Um yeah, so uh the finance committee bravely uh tackled the uh the 2026 27 budget. Uh we had a special called meeting yesterday, planned out two hours, but it was a solid and clean budget. We went through uh several line items asking a lot of questions uh even digging into the check registry and and verifying that there's certain things that should we be paying for. and we we uh had the staff look they're looking into a couple things, but ultimately the budget itself is strong. It's balanced. Uh and I just wanted to give uh kudos to our staff, to the mayor, uh for their hard work on that. Uh because um I mean, you couldn't ask for a tighter budget than this. uh especially with revenue not being uh not keeping pace with the expenses that we have going out. Um it's it's a very strong budget and I'm very pleased to pass it to the board with a positive recommendation from the finance committee. Thank you.

Thank you, Chairman Sassy. Um next we have Bulma report. Jason, beautiful. All right. Motion to return. There's more to it than that.

Looks pretty good. Motion to Jesse had a family obligation, so he recorded this earlier. to us.

What we could do is we could um uh we could vote to um move this to just above adjournment and we could go ahead and uh have our have our meeting with our city attorney, have executive session. Okay. So, so who made the motion? Yes, I did. Okay. So, Alderman Sassy and Alderman Ward um to move the um Bulma report uh after the executive session. Any discussion on that? All those in favor, please say I. Those opposed, please say no. That passes unanimously. We're going to go over in this room here and we'll be back in a minute.

Okay, we're back in a regular session. Um, Alderman Evans. Thank you, Mayor. I'd like to make a motion that um we uh pursue legal action against the Eagle View um subdivision uh to to so that we can get the things corrected there as far as the uh the buildout and the bridge and the road there. That way. Okay. Second. Um I have a second from Alderman Robertson. Any discussion on this? All those in favor, please say I.

Those opposed, please say no. That passes unanimously. Thank you all. Jason, you ready for us? Here we go. This evening, uh, if you turn to page 27, if you look at the very top, uh, line graph, you'll see that local sales tax revenue is up almost 4% over prior year. That's good news. In the month of March, we collected a little over a 100,000 more than we did in March of the previous year. Investment earnings are about $6,000 less u from March of 25 to March of 26. We anticipated that with just less uh money in our investment account and with those interest rates being a little bit lower. If you flip the page to page 28, you'll see that local sales tax and permit revenue when they're combined are actually down from the previous year. and that's due to uh just less building activity and uh not as as big of building projects come through this year. The bottom uh bar graph on page 28 shows our general fund operating expenditures at 4 and a.5% higher than the previous year. That's pretty much what we expected to see and we'll probably see that trend out through the rest of the year. Page 29 and page 30 go over the PIP fund. Uh we don't have a whole lot of new information to talk about on the pit fund. Uh but we continue to track that to show all the revenue and all the expenditures for everything we collect for that half cent sales tax. If you jump to page 31, it shows our uh fire and police calls for service are both up a little bit from previous years. Um but still within the realm of typically what we're doing. If you look at police calls, we're up 15%, but we did uh start reporting our calls a little bit differently beginning August of 25. So, uh it's probably a

little bit lower than that for actuals on calls for service. If you turn the page to 32, uh you will see that um police and fire when we combine them on fiscal year 2026 um is much higher than if you look to the left of that graph and see fiscal year 2024. Again, we did do a different reporting method for calls for service for uh police. So, that is a little bit skewed, but the trend is is running upward for both uh police and fire calls. If you hop over to page 33, you'll see resident residential permits issued down, commercial permits issued up. Uh and if you look at the bottom of the page, you will see a breakdown of the year-to- date permits and year-to- date inspections for residential activity. And if you look at the U bar graph on the far right, the column on the far right, you will see that fiscal year 26 is lower than fiscal year 24 and 25. And that's why some of that um revenue from sales tax and permit um permit revenue combined is is a little bit lower just because we're not seeing quite the activities we see we saw the previous years. Uh if you turn the next page, we have commercial projects approved, total projects approved, and then we give a list of some of the bigger commercial and residential projects that have been approved recently. On page 35, we have parks activities for the month of May. And I just want to remind everyone that the Isaac's will be out at Veterans Park May 25th. Gates open at 300 pm and that is a free event. They do a really great job. And then Friday, May 29th, at Drake's Creek Park from 9 to 11:00 is a touch a truck event. So, both of those should be really fun and they're free. Turn to page 36, you'll see storm water projects actually completed. Uh they actually exceeded our budgeted projects. So, uh Trace and his crew have done a great wa job sneaking in some storm

water projects and and completing those uh ahead of our schedule. Paving and lane miles as rising are completed is rising up to our budget. One of the big projects that we got done was the Saunders Ferry uh pavement. So, that is much much better out there. If you've driven Saunders Ferry lately, uh you will appreciate the new pavement. And then the last page of the report, page 37, if you go to the bottom of the page, you'll see vacancies and fire and police. Police uh still remains really low with one vacancy. Fire has five vacancies. So, that is kind of a trigger for them to start their in-house academy, which they're going to start July 1st. and they should wrap up on September 25th. They're going to use a list, an existing list we have of candidates. So, we should have another five firefighters um that'll be on our equipment beginning September 25th. And that concludes my report. Thank you.

Thank you, Jesse. Does anybody have questions? Alderman, we're going to jump right into the report this evening. Oh, here we go again. A motion to adjourn. We have a motion to adjourn from Alderman Garza, a second from Alderman Garden. All those in favor, please say I. I. Those opposed, please say no. That passes unanimously. Thank you all. Y'all have a good night. Appreciate your help tonight. So,