Board of Mayor & Aldermen - Regular Meeting

Go ahead.

I would like to call the mayor and board of Alderman meeting for June the 23rd, 2026. It is now seven o'clock.

Thank you. That was former Alderman Lee Peterson. We're going to begin our meeting as we typically do. That's with a prayer followed by the Pledge of Allegiance. Providing our prayer tonight is Joshua Strader. He is a senior pastor at Christ Methodist Church here in Hendersonville. Joshua, we appreciate you coming back here. We appreciate what you're doing with your congregation and what your congregation is doing for the community.

My pleasure. Let's pray. Father in heaven, we are thankful to be gathered here tonight and thankful for the opportunity to petition our needs as a community before you. As we lift up Andy Griffin for your healing as he recovers from stroke. For the Park family, on Mr. Park's passing and Joe as widow, for your comfort as she grieves and for your care to be sensed. We lift up to you Ben Duggan, who's in a car accident and needs your interventive healing, Lord. And for Don Anglis, that your needs would be met in Christ. Lord, to you we lift this council, our alderman, Mayor Clary. Lord, to you we lift our police, our firemen, and emergency responders. We know that it's your desire for petitions, prayers, and intercession to be made for all people with thanksgiving, and especially those in positions of authority and leadership. We pray that you'll guide our leaders, elected and volunteer, with your understanding, your directives, and your peace. May you grant them wisdom in their deliberations, freedom from distraction, and perseverance in their service, that they may fulfill the responsibilities that you've entrusted to them with a full and joyful spirit. Bless this community, bless this council session, and our work together for the benefit of our neighbors and the glory of Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen.

And again, that is Joshua Strayed, the senior pastor at Christ Methodist Church here. Thank you so much, Joshua. I appreciate that. Pleasure. Please join Lee Peterson with the pledge.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.

I'm going to entertain a motion that we accept the agenda that was provided to you in your packet. Okay. So Alderman Skidmore makes a motion. I think we have a second from Alderman Goodwin. And then, okay. Alderman Goodwin, go ahead.

I'd like to do a employee presentation before, under presentations before A, I guess.

Okay. And Alderman Gardner, did you want to second that?

Second.

Okay. Any discussion about that item? Okay. So we have a motion from Alderman Skidmore, a second. Okay, and then a motion from Alderman Goodwin and a second from Alderman Gardner. Okay, okay. So any discussion on that amendment?

Now, just a point of clarification.

Her amendment is for Alderwoman Goodwin. What is that amendment for? What is your presentation?

Employee recognition.

How many employees, two?

Two.

Okay, okay, very well. Thank you. And then I'll just, I'll take back my amendment, uh, clarification from Mrs. Alderman garden. So we're good to go. I'm ready to vote.

Appreciate that. Appreciate the elements. Good one. Uh, all those in favor of the amendment, please say aye. Aye. Opposed. Please say no. That passed unanimously. Now we're back on the main motion. I need to, uh, uh, ask you all to withdraw, um, the group discussion about the Bradford Berry property. I put that in there sort of as a placeholder in case it was worthwhile for us to, share some information that would be helpful as we got further down on the agenda. But I'll just share that information when we get to the two items as we get further down the agenda. So I'm going to entertain a motion that we remove the group discussion item. I'll second that. Okay. So we have a motion from Alderman Sassi, a second from Alderman Garza to remove that item. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Those opposed, please say no. That passes unanimously. Thank you all. So the next thing we have is a presentation. I need Chief Jones and Chief Edwards. I'm sorry, we need to vote on the agenda as amended. Thank you. All those in favor of approving the agenda as amended, please say aye. Aye. Those opposed, please say no. That passes unanimously. Thank you. Thank you, Gabby. And Jesse. Yep. So we recognized employees in the past couple weeks that have been with us in increments of five years. And we wanted to recognize our first responders at a luncheon that we held. And two of the first responders are these guys right here. They helped us set the date, and then they went on vacation. So I want to read a little bit here. Whereas you are observing your 30-year service anniversary with the City of Hendersonville, and whereas the Board of Mayor and Alderman appreciates your commitment and excellence to our city. Now, therefore, I, Jamie Clary, Mayor of the City of Hendersonville, would like to commend you, George Edwards, for your dedication and service. 30 years.

Congratulations. Don't go anywhere, okay? Okay?

So that's yours. Okay. And as you probably figured out, there's somebody else here. Whereas you're observing your 40 year service anniversary, the city of Hendersonville and whereas the board of mayor and Alderman appreciates your commitment to excellence for our city. Now, therefore I, Jamie Clary, mayor of the city of Hendersonville would like to commend you Jim Jones for your dedication and service to the city of Hendersonville. So in addition to surprising them by adding this onto the agenda five seconds ago, I asked them to say something.

Well, obviously we don't have anything prepared. 30 years has gone by really, really fast. I was just 22 years old and excited when I first got this job, and it seemed like 30 years would take forever for it to go by, and it went by in a blink. So very appreciative to the city and all the aldermen over the last 30 years and the mayors over the last 30 years that and the fire staff and the chiefs that came before me that gave me an opportunity to do something I've always wanted to do since I was a kid and be able to work for a city like Hendersonville that's given me a great career. So I thank you very much.

Well, I was going to say ditto to what Chief Edwards said. And as the mayor said, I'm not prepared. But thank every one of you. And I wouldn't have got where I'm at tonight without the wonderful people that I work with, but especially the support of my wife and my family. So that's always important for us as first responders. And I appreciate it. It's been a wonderful time working 40 years. So thank you.

The next item is a presentation from our K-9 officers and our police officers. Chief Jones, who do I need to turn this over? Oh, I think we know who to turn it over to.

Hello, I'm Sergeant Edwards. I supervise the Criminal Investigations Division for the Police Department. And I came to give you guys a demonstration of K-9 Stella. We got her through our partnership with the Secret Service. NCFI, which is the National Computer Forensic Institute. They're basically an institute that trains state and local law enforcement officers different ways to extract and analyze digital forensics. But of course, to do those extractions on those devices, you first have to find the device, and that's why we got K-9 Stella. She is a two-year-old black lab. And she's trained to detect and locate electronic devices. And we use her, unfortunately, during search warrants for mainly child exploitation cases, but there are other applications. Say a victim thinks that someone is stalking them, she can search their car for tracking devices. Anything that stores data, she can alert to. Her second purpose is she has therapy training, so if we have a victim who's suffered a traumatic crime, K-9 Stella can sit in the room with that victim and help that victim tell that story. If that makes it a little bit easier, that's a win in our book. So Sergeant Holman has hidden two devices in these boxes. If we don't have any questions, I'll run her or I can take questions after. Whatever you guys prefer. You want to see it?

Okay.

Hold on. Sergeant Anderson, we can't hear you. Could you step up to the microphone?

This is really interesting.

So this is an SD card, right? And this is something that can be in a camera and it can hold thousands of images, which can be victims of children of child exploitation, something that can put someone in prison for a long time. And something like this, someone can hide very easily. And so even though we have great detectives, great search teams, this is something that can easily be hidden. And this is really her main purpose is to find these kind of devices. Does anyone have any questions about K9 Stella?

I do. If there ain't nobody else, that's amazing to me. All right, what is the process of it? All right, I'm familiar, obviously. Please go ahead. My family's had clients or used to have. We don't practice anymore, but, you know, they would have the dogs search for drugs, so I'm very familiar with that. But how do they do that with the microphones, you know, with telephones and the SIM cards? How do they train them in that way?

It's amazing to me. Basically, if you can single out an odor, you can train a dog to really alert to anything. They train dogs in airports for custom purposes to alert to fruit. There's been companies that train dogs to find bed bugs. So if you can single out the odor, you can basically train them to alert to anything. In electronics, in the manufacturing process, they use different chemicals. Tritetinylphosphine oxide is one of the main ones, also known as TPPO. That's really the main chemical that's in these electronic devices. So that's one odor that she's looking for.

So they go through the same work ethic as the dogs did, such as in Afghanistan and Iraq and places like that, that they had the dog sniffers to go around and find that. For, like, explosives?

Yeah, so we have an explosive dog. Corporal Frentz has explosive dogs. They can alert to gunpowder or any different types of accelerants and that stuff. So you can single out the odor. You can train a dog to alert to it.

Because I have a little teacup poodle, and she needs to go to the door. She can sniff out anything. Dogs are amazing. Thank you very much. Mayor, that's all I had. I just thought that is just so amazing, actually.

Appreciate it, Alderman. Alderman Sassi, go ahead.

Yeah, quick question. So you said she... that it was through a partnership with the FBI. So the secret service, the secret service. So, but she's not on loan, right? Or is she on loan?

No, the secret service donates, um, uh, the equipment to the police department. So the police department now owns. Okay.

And how long is her service life? Would you say about 10 years, 10 years? Okay. Thank you.

Okay.

Thank you. Alderman Roberson.

So what kind of dog is it? She's an English black lab. And chief, uh, How many canines do we have working in the department? I mean, this is not the only one we have, right? Six now. We have six canines. But this is a specialized dog. And in what situations would likely this dog be called to work?

So unlike drug dogs, she does not develop probable cause. There's nothing inherently illegal. The smell of electronics is not inherently illegal like drugs. So we would use her on search warrants where we already have probable cause to search a home. And electronic devices are one of the things that we're looking for. as a part of that warrant. Or we can search with consent. A few weeks ago, we had a lady come up here. She thought her ex-husband was tracking her, and so we used K-9 Stella to search her car for like air tags and tracking devices. So consent or search warrants.

So like could that dog detect if an illegal bug was in a person's apartment or if they felt like they were being surveilled?

Yes, if it's an electronic device that stores data, she should be able to, yes.

All right, thank you. Thank you, Alderman Robertson. Sergeant Chief, thank you so much. Stella, thank you. Thank you.

I just wanted to add a couple things, Mayor, if you don't mind. So when we became aware of this opportunity, Sergeant Edwards has been with the department a long time, but he was also previously a patrol dog canine handler. And he did that for a number of years. So when this opportunity came up, he was the obvious choice to take on this dog. And this is just one more opportunity where our partnership with the Secret Service has assisted the city of Hendersonville and the Hendersonville Police Department again. And they've helped us over the years on a number of things. But they offered this opportunity. Sergeant Edwards did all the legwork, all the paperwork, everything to get the process started. There's a lot of work that went into it. And there's a lot of obviously ongoing work, not only with training, but the care of the dog. And it's, you know, a lot of people don't understand. If you're a canine handler, that's a 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week job. That's not an occasional thing. It's all the time. And so we're very happy to have him doing this.

Hold on one second. Alderman Carson.

Yeah, just quickly. Have we or can we loan the dog out to other cities? In a situation that's highly intense?

So the Sheriff's Department, we have agreements with other agencies. And the Sheriff's Department has one of these dogs. But yes, if another agency asks for our help, as long as Chief gives me permission to go, I'll go and help any other agency that needs it.

And we will assist any other law enforcement agency that asks.

It's a very specific action.

It is. All of our dogs are very specialized, I mean, in their own way. You know, explosive detector dogs, even the narcotics dogs, patrol apprehension dogs, and, you know, electronics detection dogs. So they're all super specialized, but we do get requests to go help other agencies with various things that involve our canines, and we're always happy to do that.

Thank you. Thank you guys. Appreciate it. Thank you, Alderman Garza. Next time we have is public hearing. We have none. And then I'm going to entertain a motion. We approve the minutes from June 9th, 2026. We have a motion from Alderman Goodwin and a second from Alderman Garden. Any discussion on that? All those in favor of approving the minutes that were provided to you in your packet, please say aye. Those opposed, please say no. That passes unanimously. Now we have citizen comments. We have a couple people signed up. Speakers must identify themselves by name and address. Public comment shall be limited to five minutes per person, which time is not transferable to other speakers. All comments are to be directed to the presiding officer, not to aldermen, city staff, or other members of the public. Comments must address issues, not individuals or personalities. Personal attacks shall not be tolerated. Comments may support or oppose particular issues or measures, but the motives of those with different views shall not be questioned or attacked. Malicious comments will not be allowed. Speeches for or against particular candidates running for public office shall not be allowed. Thomas Killian, Carolyn Lane, Gallatin.

How are y'all doing? I'm Thomas Killian. I'm from 650 Carolyn Lane, Gallatin, Tennessee. Even though I live in Gallatin now, I'm from Hendersonville, so I've been around a long time, and I've got to hearing about the Bradford Berry House and this partnership that had come up and I thought it'd be worth speaking on. So we've got, from what I can tell, there's a society that wants Henry Saville to partner with it so they can help preserve this historical home. I go back far enough that when I was in the Police Explorers, we spent a night over there at the Arts Council and it was really cool, but anyway. The house is in pretty rough shape now. I think it's a big bonus to the town to have somebody that is willing to take on the effort of putting that house back to right. And I was going to share a couple of examples. I'm going to be kind of loose with them because I don't want to point fingers at any other cities or anything, but I'm a historian, so I've been around a lot of these instances where something's not been quite as well maintained as it should have been, and sometimes it can work out and sometimes it can't. One of those in particular, it's an old home, and a government entity was supposed to be taking care of it. That got very lax. and then by the time it got to the point of we need to do something or not, it was too late. That entire house made a really big pile somewhere that somebody got to sort through. In addition to that, we've got a fairly well-known landmark in the local area that was made a park and it was kind of a big deal to people that were into that part of history And there was a proposal not long ago about let's take some land away from it, cut down the size of it, and make other businesses surround this. And if you looked at the proposal, it was going to make this great landmark into a backdrop for businesses with postage stamp parking that would allow five or six people to come and look at this landmark. Fortunately, by some detective work and discussion with historians and archaeologists and people that like to dig holes, it was determined that let's not do that. This is something that we need to keep track of. So I just wanted to point those two things out to show you how far something can go if you either don't maintain something that's very historical or If you cut it down to where nobody can go to it, had nobody been able to go to that landmark, it would have been gone in years because what's the point of having a great historical asset like we do here without allowing the public to come and get some use out of it and see how great these people were that formed our country and we're some of the first people here in town. Um, I just think it's an opportunity that, uh, you guys need to jump on. If somebody wants to take care of something for you, you let them. I mean, that sounds not trying to be rude, but that sounds like a really nice plan. If somebody says I'll handle that, let them have at it. Um, also it's the two 50th right now. And one of the, uh, original owners of the Bradford Berry House, was a Revolutionary War veteran. So it's kind of a big deal not to let all of that go astray right here at this historic era. That's all I've got. Thanks, y'all, for your time. Thank you, Thomas. Appreciate that.

Tom Williams, Time Bay Drive.

Let me get up. Good evening, my name is Tom Williams. I live at 209 Tyne Bay Drive here in Hendersonville. Mr. Mayor, thank you for granting me time to speak this evening. I'm just going to read this mostly. As we rapidly approach the birthday of our great nation, we are reminded of the sacrifices and struggles of our founders who had a dream for a better life. We will hear stories about wars that shaped our being. We will recount anecdotes associated with revolution, the founding of a nation, and events that brought us together and tore us apart, events that defined who we are today. But what about our antiquities? In the 44 years my family and I have lived here, I've witnessed much of our charm disappear in the name of growth and progress. Historic homes and storefronts still exist, but most are off the beaten path. There are historic homes on both peninsulas that have been lovingly preserved and are cities dotted with cemeteries and family plots. Less than a handful of historic sites remain on Hendersonville's Main Street. The Bradford Berry, or what is left of it, is one of those sites and is prominent in terms of historical value. Henry Bradford, as Tom said, was born in 1757. He served in the Revolutionary War. After being wounded, he was discharged as a sergeant. In appreciation for his service, he was awarded a homestead grant for approximately 1,000 acres in what was then western North Carolina. In the fall of 1784, He, at age 27, began his trek across the Cumberland Gap, where he and his party were attacked near Hazel Patch, Kentucky. He escaped on horseback and finally ended up on the banks of Drake's Creek. That site on Drake's Creek, just north of the Cumberland River, was the beginning of what we now call Hendersonville. The first brick was laid in 1794, four years before Cragfont, the first manor house west of the Allegheny Mountains was built. The house is also the first brick structure, I'm told, in Hendersonville and was originally named Hazel Patch in honor of that event. Henry Bradford was not a wealthy man, but he did grow to distinction. He served as a federal tax collector under Presidents Adams and Jefferson and became a brigade major in the local militia. He raised his family here continued to serve his country here and was instrumental in the settling of a new state called Tennessee. In 1887, the Bradford House was sold to Horatio Berry, a prominent business leader from Nashville. Now, without giving a history lesson on the contributions of the Bradford and Berry families, it should be known that they were pivotal not only to Hendersonville and Sumner County, but to Nashville and the growth of Tennessee. Historically, the Bradford-Berry House is connected to Rock Castle, Hazel Path, Donaldson Family, the Smith family, President Andrew Jackson, and there are even ties to First Presbyterian Church here in Hendersonville. And I haven't even mentioned Berry Field. That's for another discussion. I have a problem, though, with our history being sacrificed in the name of progress. This house has been ignored to the point that many in our community would prefer to see it collapse into a pile of rubble where it could be loaded into a dump truck and hauled off and then make room for additional commercial ventures. There are people who live here for decades who are not aware of this house. And there are others who are aware but really not aware of what it means to this community or what it should mean. So I'm pretty sure that when school children study Tennessee history, mine both went through Hendersonville High School, et cetera, Bradford Berry is not part of that curriculum. But we have an opportunity and an obligation to preserve our history and draw recognition to the significance of our founding. Hendersonville as a city is relatively new. As a community, we're historic, and yet when people are asked about Hendersonville, the usual responses seem to be, it's a great place to live, convenient to Nashville, or it's a city by the lake. Franklin, Murfreesboro, Springfield, and Gallatin all pride themselves on their heritage and settling of the new state and new nation. As we celebrate our two and a half centuries as a nation, I hope we not only honor our founders, but also remember what they built. The Bradford Berry House could have a bright future as a museum, a visitor center, or even the cultural icon that it once was. One last thing. A few years ago, my wife and I were visiting Cherokee, North Carolina. And we noticed a gentleman, an older gentleman, who was probably Native American and most likely Cherokee. Tell him 30 seconds. I'm sorry?

30 seconds. 30 seconds.

30 seconds. And anyway, every time an attractive woman would come past him, he would raise his hand and say, Chance. After a while, my wife and I got... curious. We asked him why he said chance. He said we know how. So with that being said, our little group, we think we know how. We just want the chance. Thank you.

Thank you, Tom. Appreciate that. Robert Little, Raindrop Lane.

Robert Little, 314 Raindrop Lane. I've been told in writing by both Auburn Mark Evans and Eddie Robinson of Ward 6 and Mayor Clary that they are working to improve conditions of our subdivision. I want that to be true, but what I'm experiencing at my property does not reflect that. Last month, the city skipped our subdivision for brush pickup. I reported the problem and was told the road crew must be running slow. If you look at the daily brush map, the crew is continuing around the city sequence. And now, who pays for all the dead grass in our subdivision where the brush was sat for two months? Again, this shows the Creekwood subdivision is a stepchild of Hendersville. My elected officials do not care. There are two issues I'm bringing up tonight. First, my driveway apron does not meet the city's own standards. The city requires a minimum depth of 5 feet. My measure is approximately 4 feet. That is a clear measurable deviation from the city's speculations. Second, and more important, is the drainage problem created after the road work on Raindrop Lane. The road was supposed to be regraded to properly carry rainwater. I was informed by the city's chief of operations that this grading was not done due to cost, and the city does not intend to correct it. Because of that decision, stormwater is now being directly onto my driveway. My side of the street is lower and additional high curves has made this situation worse. After rainfall, my driveway collects runoff from the street while the opposite side drains normally. So at this point, the issue is straightforward. If the city is not going to correct the roadway grading, then the connection between street and my property must be corrected so that stormwater is not discharged onto my property. I'm not here to tell the city how to engineer that solution, but the result must be that my driveway no longer functions as part of the city drainage system. So I'm asking for two things. Bring the driveway apron into compliance with the city's five-foot standard and correct the conditions so that stormwater is properly conveyed along the street and not onto my property. If my elected alderman of Ward 6 and the mayor talk about improving Creekwood, then these improvements need to be visible in the actual infrastructure, not just in written statements. I'm here to get corrected. I'm also sending a copy of these three lawsuits. I'm bringing towards the city, the stripping of Creekwood lane, the drainage culvert on my property, and now the cement aimant to the state of Tennessee. Thank you.

Mr. Little. Thank you. Lee Peterson, two 48 Lake terrorist tribe.

Thank you. Mayor and Alderman. I am Lee Peterson, 248 Lake Terrace Drive, and it is great to be back. I want to speak about the Bradford Berry House. And just being back at this meeting tonight reminds me of what a wonderful town we live in. To be able to celebrate 40 years of of our police chief working here in Hendersonville. How blessed are we with that? Um, the, the new canine and the remarkable things that that dog can do to keep our city safe. I, I just relish that I live here and I'm so proud of everything that the alderman and the mayor are doing and rarely, Do historical significant items come before this board, such as the Bradford Berry House? What a beautiful place we have right here in the heart of Hendersonville. I know we're celebrating our 250th birthday as a nation, but we're also celebrating the 232nd birthday of the Bradford Berry House. That is just phenomenal. And I appreciate you all looking at these two resolutions that are before you tonight. The Bradford Berry House dates back to the Revolutionary War. This is something special that will put Hendersonville back on the map. People come from all over the country to see these historic homes and sites. I know 40,000 visitors come to Rock Castle, and I can't wait for one day when they can also visit the Bradford Berry House. We formed a society, a preservation society for the house. We started fundraising. We appreciate the city of Hendersonville. paying for the insurance and the maintenance, but we're not asking for any money. We can do that ourselves. I appreciate several of the aldermen are already on board in our society. They love history. They love Hendersonville. They love the Bradford Berry House. And we appreciate that. And we're already a 501 and we're ready to move forward with this preservation project. We are ready to start on phase one, which is hiring an architect to make sure that the house is sound and stable and safe. And we can start doing things as far as I had asked for this to be put on the screen, but we already have information and a fancy QR code for the kids. So people can find out how to get involved with our society. We're asking for help from everybody. Um, that this is something that everyone in Hendersonville will be proud of. There it is. Thank you, Jason. I appreciate that. Um, that there's all the information you, you need to help us help the city. Save this beautiful house and something that we all can be proud of. Thank you very much.

Thank you all. I'm Peterson. Next is rain. Renee shepherd, but they court.

Hello, Renee Shepherd, 107 Bethea Court, also chair of the Arts Council here in Hendersonville. I'm here also to speak, to be an advocate for the partnership with the Bradford Berry Preservation Society. As everyone has said, restoring the home Um, it's rich in history. It adds to our culture. We have art and culture opportunities, which align with the arts council. Um, and I think what we want to do here in town, um, we don't have a square, um, but it would be really nice to make sure that we take care of that historical home, which may be the last one in the area. Um, and the longer we wait, the more expensive it will be and the more difficult it will be if at all. So, um, I'm just super excited about the opportunity and hope that the partnership can go forward so that we can get started. That was brief. That's less than five minutes.

Thank you. We have no items on our consent agenda, and then the group discussion has been withdrawn when we set our agenda. Next, we have Resolution 2026-17. This is a resolution authorizing the installation of historic and informational signage at the Bradford Berry House. Alderman Bergdorf, would you like to make a motion? Yes, sir.

Thank you, sir. A motion that we read the resolution.

Do we have a second? Second. Do we have a second from Alderman Sasse? Alderman Bergdorf, would you like to go ahead and speak?

Sure. What we got here is we've been working on this project for a long time. But in working with this project, I've recognized lots of aldermen and other people have told me since the Jim and Nick's has opened, since the Chick-fil-A has opened, that there's a lot more traffic around there. And they can actually see the house. And so they don't know what it is. And in an effort to help educate the public and educate people on what it is, old members of the community and new members of the community because we have grown exponentially over the last 20 years. And I believe 20 years ago is when the property was last utilized as a, it's over 20 years ago now, utilized as a home or a art center or anything to do with the community. And so what is that big house? The signs that we've asked, planning, and Keith Free was kind enough to set these up for us, are just so that we can help educate the community and let them know that that is a part of our heritage. It has a quick, you'll have in your packet examples of what the signs will say and examples of what they'll do. There's going to be one sign on each corner of the property. If I'm not mistaken, is that correct, Keith? Okay, great. So one in front of the cemetery, the historic cemetery, where Colonel Bradford's buried. It is Colonel, I think it is. But then on the other side, there's another sign. So that way we capture both sides of the property and people understand what this property is and what it means to the city of Hendersonville. I think I've covered that. Any questions?

Alderman Bergdorf, thank you.

Alderman Sassi, can I go first?

Yeah.

Okay. So I shared some information and periodically you all received some information about the Bradford Berry House from me. Alderman Skidmore and I were on the board 2004-2005 when the Bradford Berry House changed ownership a couple times. Prior to that, I mean, it was built 200 years ago or so, and then it was owned by General Electric. They own the building right out here. Uh, General Electric sold the plant and Bradford Berry House and surrounding, I would say about 30 acres, uh, to Bosch and then Bosch, um, owned it for a little while, sold it to Aladdin. Somewhere in there, it started to be used, I want to say 1985-ish, it started to be used by the Arts Council, and that was through a partnership with the property owners. It was used for the Arts Council, had offices in there. It was a phenomenally well-maintained building. It was very nice. There were people that worked in there every day, and events were held in there. It changed hands into the May family. I'm misstating this. It wasn't actually held by the May family. It was held by a trust that I think the May family, that the May family controlled. At about that time, the Arts Council moved to Mont Haven, and then a couple were living in Bradford Berry House, still maintaining it, still taking great care for it. The May family wanted that couple to move out, and we were concerned, the board was concerned at that time, what would happen with the house. We all know that a house that's lived in is typically maintained much better than a house that isn't. A couple years after that, probably 2005, maybe 2006, the owners then, the May Trust, had an interested party in developing the whole piece of property there, and the house was literally an impediment to their development. And so they wanted to demolish the house. Alderman Skidmore, myself, Alderman Foster, John Bradley helped write an ordinance to designate property that we thought had historical significance to have an overlay for historic zoning. At that time, we had nothing like that. There were a lot of residents in Hendersonville saying, you've got to do something to save this house. And it was no different than you all telling me I've got to do something to keep Lance mowing his lawn. I mean, really, we didn't have anything other than to say you've got to maintain it just like you maintain a house. There was nothing that said a house has historical significance there, should be treated differently, and the city has some authorization on that. So we created the historic zoning commission. They placed an overlay on it, some protections on that, and where we worked it out with the property owner was that as they developed it and as they developed the front portion, they would deed the house to us. That was 2005. It just got developed. Unfortunately, in those 20 years, the property owner did not take care of the house. It was a house you could live in in 2005. It was in phenomenal shape. Twenty years of very, very few people going in there and And. Vandalism. And everything that could go wrong with a house, vandalization, as well as roof leaks, and you see where we are. Now we own that house as of about a little over two years ago, and what we wanted we didn't get. But we do have the property, we do have the frame of a house that is evidently in pretty good shape. The city spent in our budget a couple years ago, spent some money to have an assessment of the house, done to look at what it would take to restore the house. It was in the neighborhood of $2 million to $2.5 million. That was a couple years ago money, so it's likely more than that. You all gave me authorization about a year ago to entertain anybody that wanted to make a proposal for how to restore that house. What I've done since then is anybody that I have met with or talked about the house, it's probably about eight or ten parties, I've let them know that It seems from my judgment that the board is interested in somebody restoring the house and somebody maintaining the house. And in return, they get the use of the house, possibly even the deed to the house. Because if you remember, when we took the deed from the house, we made sure that we had the opportunity to give that house away. We didn't own the house at that time, so we made sure that when we accepted it as a donation, and you all voted on this, that we could then give it away if we felt like we had a good deal on that. But I've been very clear with anybody I've talked to that we expect you to restore it, we expect you to maintain it. Like I said, we've had maybe eight or ten folks, different organizations come forward and talk to us about it. The price tag for the repairs, for the restoration has scared most of them away. We do have one that seems to be serious about it. We have a couple other ones that just haven't really gotten back to us on it yet. Typically the way that they are going to be able to reclaim their expenses is to have an office building or something that generates revenue around there or nearby. One or two of them have talked about possibly operating a community campaign to raise money to restore the house. I think that's fine. And so I think what we have now is we have the opportunity for a partnership with a nonprofit that might work with one of these parties that I've talked with. It might end up working on its own. But either way, we have a couple organizations that are interested in restoring the house. interested in maintaining the house and we have a nonprofit that's interested in the same thing. I don't think that they are competing interests at all. I think they can certainly help each other. It still has an overlay on it and a city protection over what could be done with it. Fortunately, We, the city of Hendersonville, is the parent of that board that makes those decisions. So I think if we have a good plan and take it to the Historic Zoning Commission, that we can probably get some relief from that or some input on that. I think that's very reasonable. So where we are right now is with these two resolutions, I think, so... Have I shared, Mark, anything? Have I forgotten anything that I've shared, Mark and Mark? I'm sorry, Alderman Skidmore, Alderman Bergdorf. Anything else I should share that I?

No, I think you've covered the bases there. Thank you. Okay, I appreciate that.

And if you all have any questions about that, feel free to ask me. I'm going to go to Alderman Sasse. Thank you all.

Yeah, thank you, Mayor. And I wanted to especially thank you for, I know that you've.

I forgot one thing. I retract my statement. Too late. There has been a little bit of confusion about the Bradford Berry Historic Society. That is not part of the city. It could be a partnership with the city or a partnership with somebody else. I love what you all have done. I love what you all have developed. But we have to make sure that people understand that their taxes are not going there. That's not happening. Very good point. That is a separate organization. Sorry. Okay.

Well, I know that you have put a lot of time, energy, and commitment into that house. I wanted to thank you. for your commitment to the house. Years and years, almost a decade, I think, right? Maybe no, longer than that. Longer than a decade you've been working on that. So I really do appreciate that. Alderman Skidmore, same thing for you. Thank you so much. I'm a big, I'm a history buff. I love understanding the, and our city has a lot of history. You wrote a book on it, Mayor. Good read, if anyone wants to read Mayor's book. But you put a lot of energy into it, and there's a lot of history in our city, especially when it comes to the Revolutionary War, when it comes to the Civil War. And, you know, as was mentioned previously, there's not a lot of knowledge on that. This is one way of preserving that knowledge and giving something back to the community and allowing that house to speak. to the citizens. So that's all I wanted to say, but I did, and Mr. Ray, it would now be a good time to disclose, or should I, do I need to disclose for this one, or should we disclose for both of them, or just the second one? What do you think?

Definitely the second one, but no, I would be fine if you wanted to.

Okay, can I, can it encompass both of the resolutions? Sure. Okay. So I just wanted to mention I have been involved in preparation planning for this and note a specific and direct interest due to that role, but declare it publicly and vote based on the merits for the city. Thank you.

Alderman Sessy, thank you. Alderman Skidmore.

Yes, thank you, Mayor. Many years ago, and I'm going to say that loosely, when you and I served together on the board, I really and I genuinely appreciated say this wholeheartedly, that I appreciated you bringing that ordinance before the Board of Aldermen at that time. It was a very interesting living in Hendersonville representing the city at that time, but that was something that was really a thing that, that was in our hearts that mayor Clary, uh, and myself, and along with the other, uh, alderman and, uh, city attorney that he mentioned, uh, that we were very strong and strongly in favor of, and I just appreciate it. And now more than ever mayor, I appreciate that you had the, that you had the, the vision. to really see that is where, you know, about that house at that time. Um, because you look at it now and I'm just saying, you know, thank you for, for what you did. I, it's not like a love fest up here tonight, but, um, you know, I really do appreciate what you've done because what's happened is you've become mayor of Hendersonville from an alderman and now you've given it, or not you personally, but now the Alderman Bergdorf has picked this up and carried it to its fruition, what it is now, and it's up to this board to see what it is. And it truly is the last vestige of Hendersonville that's of historical value for the whole city and not just a privately owned. We do have places that are privately owned of historical value. But it can be truly said that this is the city's line in the sand that we're going to take care of this house because it started from the American Revolution, which is just so hard to go over there and you kind of think about it, from the American Revolution until the Indian Wars and then the Civil Wars. And then every war that we've had after that, you know, which really didn't have anything. I'm talking about the Spanish-American War, World War II and all that, but it didn't have anything to do with. But it had the foundation of this country, the United States of America. And I was talking with Alderman Ward tonight, and he said, remember we were talking about the acreage, and it's so amazing that under Washington's administration – For some of the people that fought the American Revolution, they said, go to Tennessee and I'll give you 10,000 acres. Oh, my God. If you think, would you like to have that now that our country, our Congress and our president would say, hey, go to Tennessee. Smith County or Lewis County in Tennessee, and we'll give you 15,000 acres down there to share crop or to grow your farmland. So it's an amazing thing. We've got a great opportunity here, and I just appreciate – The support I hope that we will get from the board, I feel like we will, because we look at that house every day. You go by. I always look at it when I'm ripping up and down Galton Road, obeying the speed limit. Chief Jones, just want to let you know, I'm a bay in the speed limit there. But when we rip and romp on 31E right there and we look at it, I do, I think of Bradford Berry, you know, and how, you know, at one time the city was involved. and with it. And I want our city to remain involved of what it is. Um, I support the, uh, Bradford Berry preservation. I think that's a great opportunity here. And, uh, I will tell you this. I was at their first meeting to listen. Uh, they're not playing. These people are serious about helping preserve that house. And, um, they're open to other private organizations to help. And, see, that's the key there with that house is to do that. And, you know, I really appreciate the mayor meeting with us, with Alderman Bergdorf and myself, you know, to sort of, you know, make sure the ground rules that we're following are right. Well, that Mark is actually following, and I'm kind of like, you know, I'm just right there with him like a puppy, like that little dog right there that was helping us out tonight. Um, but I just want to tell you, thank you to the mayor and his administration and everybody here at city hall that has really helped with us. And I hope, and, uh, you know, that you will support, uh, this resolution and all, well, both resolutions tonight that you, um, that you see before you, because it is important. It's, It's about the children of our community. Can you imagine after we're long and gone that there's kids out there that are 6, 7, 8 to 10 years old and their parents are going to this house and saying, this house is over 250 years old. As a matter of fact, it was given to this man that lived there by our first president, George Washington, and it's Congress. I mean, that is, that is so amazing. If you really just sit down and think about it and it's still in existence and that's what I want to do. And mayor, that's all I have to say. And I just appreciate that. Um, and I appreciate Mr. Bergdorf of all the hard work that you've done, sir. I genuinely appreciate what you've done. It's been a pleasure. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, mayor.

Alderman Skidmore. Thank you. Alderman Collins.

I apparently need to disclose that I also attended the meeting. And I hope to be able to help with connections to the historic home historic house museum community and fundraising a fundraising campaign and Also just like Skidmore I do not speed on 31 and But, Jamie, I wanted to ask you, I mean, Mayor.

I don't speed either.

I'm so glad we're all having so much in common. Do we have any deed restrictions on this property currently?

Oh, very good question. I'm going to have to turn to Jesse on this. We used to.

They were lifted.

Yeah, we do not anymore. Jesse and Lance spent so much time on this. If you can imagine cold calling General Electric and asking for an attorney. To get you out of deed restrictions that they have no incentive to lift.

And they don't even know anything about the property or care. Right. Yes.

Jessie and Lance were able to do that for us.

I appreciate that work so much. I appreciate that we've done the environmental work to know that we can use this land without deed restrictions. I appreciate Bergdorf and Skidmore, just everybody, even you, Mayor,

Thank you. Alderman Collins, thank you. Alderman Martin.

I just want to speak on the signage of the Bradford Berry House. I think everybody heard a lot of the history, and thank you, speakers, for sharing that. I moved here, I guess, ten years ago, and so I have driven by that house millions of times and had no idea. The significance of that house. So when we started learning more about the history, I was just blown away. I mean, connections to the airport, it just blew me away. So I love this signage. I'd like to add my name to it, if you don't mind.

Without objection, we're going to add Alderman Martin as a sponsor to this one.

We'll tackle the second one next. But the signage, educating, letting people know, you know, so they're not driving by it for nine years and not even realizing what a gym it is. So I love it. And thank you, Keith Free, for putting it together. And great job. Great job. Alderman Martin, thank you. Alderman Dixon.

Thank you, Mayor. I don't have anything to disclose, as I did not attend the meeting, and I will not disclose anything about the speed in which I dropped down 31. But I will say that I appreciate all the work that everyone is doing to preserve this home, and I will gladly vote in favor of this. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Alderman Dixon. All those in favor of Resolution 2026-17, please say aye. Aye. Those opposed, please say no. That passes unanimously. Thank you. Now on Resolution 2026-18, a resolution to establish a partnership between the City of Henderson and the Bradford Berry Preservation Society for the purpose of preserving, restoring, and maintaining the historic Bradford Berry House. Alderman Bergdorf, would you like to make a motion? We have a motion from Alderman Bergdorf, a second from Alderman Goodwin. Alderman Bergdorf, I apologize. When we were sitting in the Public Works Committee meeting, I saw what I think is a typo here, and I meant to bring it up to you before we sat down. If you turn to page 23, where it says Section 3, it says the city administrator. We don't have such a thing anymore. And the person who has those responsibilities now is the mayor. Should we change the city administrator to the mayor?

Oh, hold on, let me turn. The city administrator, the city mayor should be COO because I don't want to burden. Lance, what do you think? Because he was in charge of operations. Well, you are, but what was most directed?

Previously, we amended the code to change anywhere where it said city administrator to chief of operations.

That's what I was concerned with.

But inherently, the mayor has ultimate authority.

Absolutely, yeah. So what should we do here?

To keep it consistent, perhaps the chief of operations.

Are you okay with that? Absolutely. Okay. So Alderman Bergdorf is making a motion on section three. We changed that from the city administrator to the chief of operations. I sure did. And Alderman Sasse is going to second that. Any discussion on that item? All those in favor of the amendment, please say aye. Aye. Those opposed, please say no. That passes unanimously. Alderman Martin, we're going to add your name as a sponsor if we don't hear any objection from anybody.

It was unanimous, and I need to ask Alderman Bergdorf about this. You might want to poll the aldermen to see who all would like to be a sponsor to show the unification of this board and how we feel about it. I'm not trying to put words into everybody's mouth, but I would gladly be a sponsor of both resolutions as well, if that's okay from Alderman Bergman.

Absolutely, the more the merrier. Many hands makes light work.

I am seeing everybody nod their head up and down, except for Alderman Garza, and Alderman Garza has done it as well. So, Gabby, if you will, on this item, will you include all of us as sponsors, please? Thank you, Alderman Skidmore.

Yes, sir. Thank you very much.

Alderman Bergdorf, anything else to add? No, sir. Thank you all. Okay. So we've had a motion and a second. We have no amendments. Oh, I'm sorry. We did have an amendment. And we voted on that. Okay. And now we're back on the motion. Alderman Sasse.

Thank you, Mayor. There was somewhere on here, and now I've lost it. Apologies. I'm looking for it. Looking for it. Oh. No, that wasn't it. I'm sorry. Just one moment. There was somewhere on here where it mentioned just the house. And I was wondering if you'd be prudent to also include the land in that. Oh, yeah. So, yeah, right on that page for 23, page 23, it says, for the purpose of preserving, restoring, and maintaining the Bradford Berry House, would it be prudent to also include the land there?

At the end of Section 1?

At the end of Section 1, yes. I would agree. Well, I would like to make that motion. Let me include the land. Or property. I guess property.

Okay. So we have a motion from Alderman Sassi, a second from Alderman Collins. I need to interject something here. Whenever I have talked to anybody interested in that, I have talked about just the house and the 3.85 acres around the house, not the additional 10 and part of the parking lot. I've said that's not part of anything that we would lease to anybody or that would not be part of the payment for restoration. You get the 3.8 acres and that's it. Do you want to restrict it to the 3.8 or include all the property that was deeded to us?

So the additional 10 acres, that's behind the home, right?

Behind the home and next to it, including asphalt.

Yeah, probably just the 3.8. That's consistent. That includes the cemetery. That includes the cemetery.

And we have not subdivided it by any means, but that's just what I've showed people that we're talking about the house and just what's surrounding it, including the cemetery. Okay. Okay.

So we should – how should we word that? So the Bradford Berry House and 3.8. acres that the property sits on.

Yeah. Approximately three. Okay. Yeah. Okay.

So I'm going to Collins.

You okay with that? I think you seconded it. Okay. So we have a motion to second from Sassy and Alderman Collins, uh, Alderman Evans.

I just, since we're making that change on section one, I'd like to also mention maybe section four there where it says Bradford Berry house and also include the land, the three point acres. Oh, okay. There as well. Can I include that in my amendment?

That makes sense. Alderman Collins, you okay with including? Okay. Thank you. Okay, that makes sense. So we're going to add that wording in Section 1 and Section 4. Thank you, Alderman Evans. Alderman Robertson?

Just clarification, and that 3.8 acres does include the cemetery? It does include the cemetery. Okay.

So the upper portion versus the lower portion? So we need to vote on the amendment first. Any clarification? Any questions about the amendment? Any comments about the amendment? All those in favor of the amendment, please say aye. Aye. Those opposed, please say no. That passes unanimously. Now we're back on the main motion, which is Resolution 2026-18, as we just amended it. All those in favor of Resolution 2026-18, please say aye. Aye. Those opposed, please say no. That passes unanimously. Thank you. Now we have a first reading of Ordinance 2026-08. It's an ordinance amending personnel rules and regulations policy HR 42 section 4 relative to public safety assistant chiefs promotional pay. And to amend the proposed 2026-2027 budget to appropriate funding accordingly. Alderman Goodmore, Skidmore, or Garten, would you like to make a motion?

So moved. Okay, we have a motion from Alderman Skidmore.

And a second from Alderman Garten. Alderman Skidmore, go ahead.

Yes, thank you. I know we tried... at our last meeting to put this on the agenda, but in reality it probably was the most proper thing, and I appreciate the board's thoughtfulness and thinking, forward thinking that you did by not allowing it to be on that night because it gave everybody an opportunity to really look at this ordinance. And it's unfortunate. and I want to emphasize this, it's unfortunate that we're even visiting this, but we are with no malintent because this ordinance, there's no fault in this ordinance because I know if you serve on this Board of Aldermen, there's always people that are looking to blame somebody. I mean, that's just... Hendersonville is known that way. And no disrespect, I'm sure I'm going to get some emails and Facebook page for that, but historically speaking, that's what happens a lot of times. It doesn't happen, I mean, here recently it hadn't done in a long time, but it has in the past. And there's no fault in this, but here's our situation. If you have read the ordinance, One of our employees, which I'm not going to say who it is or anything like that, but was promoted, and I will emphasize, Mayor, if Alderwoman Garten or Alderwoman Goodwin, if I misspeak, I would ask them to ask for a point of clarification and Ex and explained to everybody where I'm missing, but I don't think I am, but I would ask them just the same mayor point of clarification. And then it stops what I'm saying. And then they they're recognized immediately on this. So, but one of our, uh, employees was promoted and in doing so, he did not get the, the promotional steps, the two steps. that if he would have remained without getting the promotion, he would have eventually got one more and then maybe another, which was, I can't remember, what, 7.5%. So we're asking for him, that person, to get the 7.5% for that. Now, There may be other employees in looking at this by saying, well, what about us? We are not avoiding them. But what this ordinance does is this for this particular one. And in the future, if we find out that we have other employees that are like this, then we will have to address them in a different ordinance. There's no, we're not trying to, uh, hide the fact that there may be other employees, but this is the only one that we really knew of. And so, um, we are asking tonight to approve, uh, that pay policy of the promotional play, um, to that employee. And this is what this is about. And I'm open to questions, and please correct me, Alderman Goodwin, if I'm wrong in anything that I have said so far. Okay.

Alderman Skidmore, thank you. Thanks.

This is to correct pay with the two assistant chiefs. And can I call Jesse up for a minute? I have a couple of questions. Sure. So just to go back and give a little history of this, as a public safety chair, the situation was brought to my attention of several of the employees that the pay they didn't feel was calculated correctly. So working the last year with Alderman Skidmore and Alderman Garten, we tried to get this corrected. We brought an ordinance to you which we were informed could not work because fire promotes differently. So your suggestion came back to us, and correct me if I'm wrong, was to do this ordinance that you wrote and that you said would be the way to correct the problem. Is that correct?

I'm sorry, Jessie.

So, um, yeah, I'll give a little background on it. We, you know, there was a situation of a promotion that happened and, um, you know, in the, in the rules and regs, we spent about a year and a half to two years on the rules and regs. And in some recent promotions, one of the things that we changed in the new rules and regs is if you get promoted from a position that gets overtime to a position that doesn't get overtime. Now, instead of that seven and a half percent bump, you get 10% bump. Um, And there was a promotion that happened previous to that, where that employee didn't get that in those new rules and regs. We also allowed the department heads. We said, Hey, department heads have a very heavy responsibility. And in the old rules and regs, they were kind of carved out separately. So we said, because of the level of responsibility, let's start those positions at step five. We don't expect the department had to come in and have to learn. for five or six or seven years how to really operate their department. The level of responsibility is very high. There's no backup. So let's recognize that with a minimum of a step five. And a lot of times when someone promotes to a department head from outside, they're going to want more than a step five to even come to the city anyway. So when discussing potential solutions for the problem that Alderman Goodwin brought to me, I thought that this was probably one of the most consistent ways to deal with that specific issue. We did not deal with it in the rules and regs, but given the solution that Ms. Goodwin wanted to address, this was what at the time I felt could be one that got more support than an alternative that was being worked on at the time. I think that would fairly characterize kind of how we work together on it.

So this would take care of assistant chiefs right now, and then we will have to come back and work on solving the problem for the future that we noticed that there were several.

Um, yeah, I mean, it, it, it's not necessarily a problem that the assistants aren't starting higher. It's just, if we want them to, then this is something we could enact and this is just for public safety. So we have, we don't have a strict assistant department head for each department. Um, but we do in police and fire. So this is just addressing the assistance and police and fire. It's not for any other department.

due to the rank structure that public safety has?

Some of the other departments do have assistant directors. Planning department has an assistant director and codes has an assistant director, but parks basically has three administrative services has three because like administrative services, we have someone over it, we have someone over communication and then we have someone who's an HR manager and then a finance. We have the two managers as well. So it's not, It's clean cut in all the departments, but at least in planning and in codes, we do have the assistant. But those are the only two in city hall that have a true labeled assistant director.

Okay. And I was told to bring a mechanism to get this fixed. So here's the mechanism that you and I came and worked together to solve or start solving the issue. Okay. Thank you.

All in good or anything else? No. Okay, thank you. Lance, help me out here. You write most of our ordinances, I believe. Is that correct?

Just about all of them, yeah.

When you write an ordinance, does that mean that you endorse that ordinance to pass?

Endorse it? Not necessarily. I just try to do my best to make it legally defensible and correct and let the will of the board do what it does. Okay.

So because Jesse or staff help write an ordinance, does that mean that they encourage that ordinance to pass? I guess by that analogy, no. Okay, I appreciate that. Jesse or Jason, was anything done incorrectly in determining the pay for our assistant chiefs?

No. HR, when they ran the pay, we went by the policy to promote assistance when we do all our promotions. So consistency is one of those things that we are trying to improve on. The new rules and regs do that. But Jason and his team have been very diligent to do everything by the book. Of course, we probably don't get 100% on everything because a lot of the calculations that we do are by hand. We plan to change that within the next year. We have a lot of technology implementations we'll be doing. No, there's nothing that was not to policy for, I think, any of the assistants or the department head delegates for any of the departments that we have right now.

Thank you. I guess what I really appreciate, and Jesse and staff have been talking about this, is some of the, accomplishments as the city's had in the past year. And it's not a sexy one. It's nothing that's, that's really flashy by any means, but having a revised, updated, a comprehensive personnel rules, uh, and regulations that's been huge for us that we, that this board passed, uh, within the past year. Cause it, it, it creates that consistency. And I think that really gets us out of the situation that we were in for several years, finding an employee who wasn't treated like another employee. And we've moved past that. Unfortunately, what this does, and it was just said, unfortunately what this does is this creates an exception that creates another problem that we're going to have to come back and fix. So we're fixing one thing that isn't broken. which is going to require us to come back and solve a problem because we fixed a problem that wasn't broken. I would rather that we go with the consistency that the personnel rules that we approved, that that consistency that was provided for us. The other thing I have a hard time with is that this is amending a budget before the budget even takes effect.

That is a huge fail in my book.

We used to amend the budget. I mean, almost monthly. That was a huge fail in my book. And so we got to the point that we had better budgets from the beginning because we took input from everybody. We had so many workshops and so many meetings. And we had a, we still have a very strong Finance Committee, and we were able to put together the budgets that were very strong, and we didn't have a need to amend our budgets. We are looking at amending a budget before the fiscal year for that budget even starts. To me, that's a huge, huge failure. And we're looking at creating a problem that we'll have to solve sometime in the near future. Alderman Roberson.

Well, I see that the sponsor would like to speak. May I be put under her. I'd like to hear what she has to say. Well, the rules for Robert's Rules, everybody gets to speak once before you come back. So even if you don't want to, I'm going to go to somebody else. I'll be glad to. I'll be glad to. So I understand the rationale for carving out the department heads that we just recently changed and starting them, I think, at five level five or a percent, whichever is higher. So I think that carve out was legitimate. The city has to have the ability to attract the right candidates for department heads. So I believe that was the correct measure to take to carve out the department heads. However, it's very important since I've been an alderman the chief positions in police and fire have gone to the assistant chiefs. And so I think it's important that there not be a financial impediment for an assistant chief to public safety taking the position of assistant chief. I don't want a financial impediment to prevent the chiefs from going down in the department, lower ranks, to bring and promote up, I don't want pay to be an impediment. It doesn't appear that this was an impediment in this situation, but it could be in the future. So I have no problem with carving out. Now, I don't know that I will support it going throughout the ranks, but for chiefs and assistant chiefs, I think that it is a good move that this policy is recommending. One of the problems I have with this ordinance is that it puts us in a negative operating budget for the year. Tamara, would you please come to the... I don't like that. And I'm wondering if the sponsors have thought of a way to fix that. I've got a couple of ideas, but... But I will ask Tamara. What is the best way to fund this ordinance so that there is not a negative operating balance? I don't want to approve an operating budget in the red. If it's two pennies, I don't want to approve it. So what's some other ways that we can fund this without going in the red on our operating budget?

You would need to reduce expenditures from another line item in the operating budget.

Any other methods?

Or increase revenues.

Any other methods?

No, sir.

Well, let me throw a couple at you. What if we fund half of this increase from the operating budget with the instructions at the mid-year budget to fund the additional amount? So fund half of it. with the operating budget, and that would leave us with a balance in the operating budget with the instruction at the mid-year budget that we will fund the rest of it from savings that we have. Is that an option?

Yeah, that could be an option. So you're saying adjust it halfway now and halfway in the middle of the year? Yes. That's a possibility.

Is another possibility drawing it down from the unassigned fund balance?

You could, but that would be use of fund balance, and that still leaves our operating budget out of balance. Because we don't have enough revenues to cover the expenditures that are budgeted. You can do that, but that means your operating budget is out of balance if you're using your fund balance to cover it.

Okay. So the only real option, other than what you're saying, making adjustments, would be to fund half of it now and the rest of it at the mid-year budget. Do you see any problem with that methodology?

Let me ask this of you, Tamara. I think we all have to understand, though, that if that doesn't pass for the midyear budget, their salary is going to go back down. Understood. Okay. Understood.

But since I've been on the board each midyear budget, we always have a surplus, and it looks like to me that the sales tax – projections are, are maybe a little low. They may come in a little higher than, than, than what we have predicted. So I feel pretty confident that we would be able to have $10,000 additional revenues. And I've had in, in the, in the committee meeting, public safety, I asked both chiefs, well, assistant chief and police and chief and fire. And they believe that their departments will have savings during the year. So, uh, So I would just ask the sponsors to consider that. I just don't want to approve of a, an operating budget in the red. So I would, I would urge the sponsors to come up with a solution. I've I've offered one that I think Tamra's offered some, so I'll, I'll leave it in the hands of the sponsors. Alderman Robertson. Thank you. Alderman Dixon.

Thank you, mayor. Um, I have to, uh, agree with Alderman Robertson about having trepidation over this with no plan to fund the money in our budget that we just passed. I do like the idea of maybe splitting it half and half. It could get messy. One of my concerns is fairness after we went through such a strong last 12 months with the fire department and issues and talks of fairness. And Alderman Goodwin did mention this could create some other compression issues, right, that was brought to light in public safety. And I want to make sure that those issues are worked out before we approve this. I don't want to have to wait to the future and then clean it up and be messy with it. And we just have completed and spent citizens' money, a lot of citizens' money on a pay study that did not point to this being an issue. for these positions. I understand that this is individual to the individuals. Um, but the assistant fire chief was 110% 0.4 above market. And the assistant police chief was 102% above market on the pay study. So I, I, I understand that both of those roles are new and their, their pay may not be there. where we would like for it to be. But with tenure, they will get there. And, you know, I have experience in my 35 years in the corporate world where I had many people reporting to me that made more money than I. And even though I was a new leader in the company, I had to live with that. And it's normal. It's actually a normal thing that happens. Um, I don't like it and I don't like it for these two positions, especially. Um, and so I am, I'm sitting in the middle right now. Um, and you know, finding the, uh, the way to appropriate the money now is difficult, but I do like Alderman Roberson's idea of splitting it and I could get on board with that. Thank you.

Alderman Dixon. Thank you. Alderman Evans.

Oh, thank you.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Alderman Evans. It's Alderman Skidmore. Sorry about that.

Oh, okay. Thank you. I'll keep the comment short because I do want to hear everybody's opinion on this because this is important. We need to show that we support our employees, and this is by no way means that if it doesn't work that that There's some of us that hate our city employees. Listen, we would not sit in these chairs right now if it were not for the city employees, and I want them to know that first and foremost. This is not one of those get your ordinances. This is something that we saw that there was a problem, and there was an easy solve on this, and I will see my distinguished colleague from Ward 6 In fact, it was late at night, and he said the same thing, basically, that I thought. And so I wrote it down. I wanted to prove it to you, Mr. Robertson. Yeah, well, I don't care. You know how I feel about the Sunshine Law. Yeah. just read it. And that's all I've, that's all I can say about that. But no, it wasn't from Roberson. It was me in the middle of the night going, Hey, what if we do this? And it's exactly what robe Alderman, my colleague from six said, and I appreciate that because I believe, uh, and I'm like every Alderman that sits on this board. Uh, we don't want to put the, uh, the city of Hendersonville on our budget because since Mayor Cleary has been in office, we haven't been this way and been in the red. But we want to continue to do it in the black. So I would be very, very supportive of the fact doing the sort of the half now and then doing at budget time again at mid-year, you know, finishing this off. But also in the meantime, we can either have a committee or have, of the personnel here in City Hall to go back and look and see if there's something wrong with any of the other departments. I just want us, you know, and I'll close with this, Mayor. I understand what, you know, we've gone through, and you're right, Alderwoman Dixon, you're right when we said we've had a hard time this last year on dealing with these things. And I'm not going to go there because I don't want to go there. But we just need to do something that's right tonight. And this is right. And this is the right way. There's no politics in it. There's no difference. I mean, it's not anybody's mistake. It's just something we found out about by looking at the procedures and policies of the personnel. And there's no wrong, I mean, you can't, there's no blame. I mean, it was just, it's unfortunate that we're having to do it. And it's unfortunate we're having to do it right out after budget. But we are. So let's do what's right tonight and support this ordinance and move on. And then if we, you know, if we do find out that there's a policy issue that we need to correct, let's correct it. Let's do what's right and correct it for all the city employees. But I don't know if there are many more. I don't know. But I do know this. I know there's one here, and it's not right. But if we vote for this tonight with, I guess it would be an amendment by Alderman Roberson, or if he needs to. I'll second that, his amendment. But if we can just get that done and pass it, we'll correct that problem we have. So I thank you, Mayor. That's it.

Alderman Skidmore, thank you. Alderman Evans.

Thank you. Just some thoughts on this, and I appreciate the comments of everyone on this. I guess the first thing I want to say is that with the studies that we did, and I appreciate the work that went into that and the very detailed information that was provided in that study, Those are helpful, but studies are meant to be a guide. It's something to be used to help you make decisions for the future, not to be that that's the end-all, be-all, that that's not going to be the way things are. It's used as a guide to help you make decisions in the future. I agree with Alderman Roberson that... that we need to do this and also with Alderman Skidmore and others that we have two positions who have been moved up in the ranks to assistant chief and that we do need to take care of this and also I keep going back to the fact that these are long-tenured employees. They have been with the department for a long time, and again, this is the right thing to do. I do want to offer another solution for how we do this. I think coming from the Finance Committee, I don't really like the idea of splitting it half and half because I don't want to get in that situation where if we get it mid-year and we don't have the funds, and I don't want to have to be looking at, okay, we've got to take it back or we've got to find it from someplace else. What I'd like to throw out there, and I know this might be a little bit of work for the finance team, we're talking about $7,000 that we're over as far as the budget. Making this amendment... to the budget, it would be $7,000 that the expenses are over the revenue. That comes down to 0.01%. of our budget. So if you take $7,000 of $66 million, you're talking about .01%. And I know we've done this over and over again, and I know that when you're doing a budget, it's an estimate. We've all done budgets before, and it's an estimate. But we do, we have good data that shows that our revenue is We're very conservative when we're doing the budget around the revenue. I think that we can find $7,000 through some form of revenue, not having to cut expenses in any way, putting this in the budget, and we can find $7,000 in revenue, doing it as an amendment now and not having to wait until midyear. And that's what I'd prefer to do as opposed to splitting it. Thank you.

Alderman Evans, thank you. Alderman Collins. Yes.

some kind of procedural questions that I'm gonna ask of various different people. But Lance, I'd like to start with you. This ordinance is an ordinance to amend the HR policy, not the budget. So amending the budget would happen later in another ordinance, correct?

Well, no, this one appropriates the funding. So this would amend the budget.

But it doesn't take care of the... If we, perhaps on second reading, because I don't know that anyone's prepared for it on the first reading, if there was an amendment to this which reduced an expense line or increased a revenue line in the budget, is that procedurally allowable in an ordinance that's about our HR policy?

Uh, that's a really good question. I think on its face is probably not ideal, but, um, I believe it would, it would be acceptable.

Would that make that budget adjustment part of the HR policy?

No.

Okay.

It's kind of twofold.

Just be in there. Okay. That helps me a lot. And then Tamara, I have a question for you. sorry to make you walk across the room like that and you're next Jason these are all kind of procedural like I need to understand how these parts move together and if we amend this it changes the budget what version of the budget do you turn into the comptroller the one we approved

at our last meeting? Yeah. Yeah. So I actually turn in the final approved budget along with a bunch of other documents as our starting point. And then every budget amendment that we do throughout the year also gets submitted to the comptroller. So they see the full picture throughout the year.

But the approval of our budget from the comptroller comes from the initial one, which we've already voted on and it's already passed.

Yes.

Okay. That is the only question I had for you. Well, that was easy. Thank you. They don't – I do that. The comptroller doesn't – they just accept and file the amendments that are made to the budget. They don't, like, offer an opinion or approve or disapprove. No, they don't. It's just for them to be aware in case we start going – crazy over here or something.

Yeah it's aware and it ties into our annual financial report the audit because all of the final budget which includes the amendments is reported on that so it's a way to cross check that we've done all of it. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Okay.

Don't go far away. Um

I want to make sure I understand a pay study, our pay study, any pay study, really, just all of them that have ever been. They capture a moment in time and say, how does this position compare to the market?

Correct.

Does the pay study look at whether or not promotions and how the person got to the pay, if that was done in accordance with policy? That's not part of a pay study.

Generally, no, because it can vary for the incumbent in the role.

Does the pay study say whether or not the policies that we have in place are good or bad?

No.

Does it say how they compare to other municipalities? Does it compare our policies to other municipalities policies?

The consultant doesn't look at if it compares to other municipalities as more a, what's a best practice that they see amongst all municipalities. Okay.

So there is some judgment on our policies, but the implementation, which I hope and believe is now happening consistently, but in the past we've seen some examples that it was not applied consistently. Um, That would never come up in a pay study. That would only come up if we did an audit of our compensation.

In looking at past pay studies, it had come up years ago, and there were some adjustments that had been attempted to try and make it right, but it is the same problem. You're trying to undo the inconsistencies in the past.

Do any... Does a pay study or if we were to do an audit of our compensation system or a pay study, would any of them consider the cultural issues of our workplace?

Only if we ask them to.

And we have not. No. I appreciate that. Thank you. And so the reason I asked Tamara about... what we turned into the comptroller is because I know we're not allowed to turn in a negative budget to the comptroller. And to me, $7,000, I would not want to split that up because it's like saying we know our revenue projections are wrong if, and so we know we're going to be making up at midterm. If we know our revenue projections are wrong, let's just adjust our revenue projections now. Um, That just, I don't know, I'm comfortable with it being negative for now, and if we get to mid-year and it's still looking negative, then we could make the adjustment. It's just, as was stated, .01%, so relative to our budget, it's so small. And the reason I asked about if the policy is, if what does the pay study actually tell us and what it doesn't tell us is because I've heard from so many people in public safety that are saying they've considered applying for a promotion, but they didn't apply for a promotion. They, there's not enough in it for them to want that additional responsibility. So it, I don't know, but I have to wonder if we have a cultural situation in both departments, frankly, where promotions are not being valued and probably that has something to do with the compensation or lack thereof. So those are all things that really are questions that I wanted to get answered in my mind tonight, and I really appreciate the staff for helping me get there. Thank you.

Thank you, Alderman Collins. Alderman Sasse.

Thank you, Mayor. So, Alderman Evans, I wholeheartedly agree with you. I don't like the splitting of it. I don't like what it looks like to our budget. We don't know if the revenues are going to be there. We don't know if expenses are going to come up. We don't know if we're going to have another storm that we have to – put money into. Um, and, but I, I think what I would recommend and request is if this passes tonight, that it come to finance committee. Cause we will have a finance committee at our next, um, at our next Boma. Cause I think we have, it's four weeks, four or five weeks till our next one. So we'll have another finance committee at that time, uh, right before Boma. So I would recommend that we, uh, review it there since this is a change to our budget for the fiscal year. Uh, right off the bat, as you mentioned, mayor, um, also just my view on this a little bit. Um, I do think this sets, uh, a, a negative pre uh, precedents. Um, I've heard a lot tonight that we're trying to fix something for a person, but we're not doing that. We're not fixing something for a person. We're fixing something for a position. And so anyone that enters this position in the future, this will affect as well. Now I know this is rare. A lot of times we don't have someone who's skipping so many steps to get to a position, so it is probably unique and maybe a single time that this ever happens, but this is also not a top position, right? We made that change to our chiefs because we knew that they've experienced leadership, they've trained their careers for this chief position where there's no one above them except the mayor and the COO, and they're leading that group, those officers, those firemen. um, that it makes sense to, to, they've got the, there's nothing, there's no one there to train them. They're on the job and they're just doing it. They're executing. The assistant chief's not that way. They've still got the chief above them who's training them day in, day out to be the next chief, which is his ultimate goal. When our chiefs retire, they're probably going to be the, the, the likely candidate to step into that role. Uh, Moving forward and now they're gonna be the top dog if they're not that 5% that makes sense Let's get them to the 5% or the the fifth tier. Excuse me But as an assistant chief you're training you're still learning that position also We followed the guidelines of our promotion policy This was not a standard seven and a half percent raise either we took his education pay which is a 5% bump and and then tacked on 7.5% on top of that. So it was really close to, I think, 13-something percent. It was. I looked it up. I know you're shaking your head, but I did the calculations, and it was 13-something percent. So we compensated for the educational pay. We compensated for the promotion, which is in line with all of our other employees. So I have a hard time now going against that policy, which we've spent so much money on the PACE study, and I understand it's a recommendation. We've spent so much money on reestablishing the tiers and making sure that our employment policies are fair and equitable. And now we're saying, oh, never mind, it's six months later, we've made a mistake. I have a problem with that. We have to stay consistent, and that's my view on it. If this board chooses to vote for it, I want to go and find that money, see where it is, let's bring it to the finance committee. As your chairman of finance, that's my job, and I will do my job to the best of my ability and bring an amendment to this board that says, hey, here's how we can balance this budget with the help of my other finance committee members and, of course, the staff who will be involved in that as well. I think that makes sense. As your alderman, I don't think this makes sense for our city and for consistency of our policies. So I may be in the minority here and I may be the only one who votes against this, but I'm going to have to vote against this. Thank you.

Alderman Sasse, thank you. Alderman Goodwin.

Yes. Well, I have one comment. Could I call Chief Jones in here for just a second? And I wanted to say this was never about one person. It's getting turned into one person. This was brought to my attention and brought to me. This is a very unusual circumstance, and it's a very unusual circumstance in the fire department. To date, this has only happened three times in the fire department, and they were not compensated correctly. One of those, after bringing it to the attention, has been corrected. They were able to correct that. So there's two left, to my knowledge, in the fire department and one in the police department. It was never intended to single out anybody. It's very rare, and we have been working on this for probably six or nine months, and this is the advice that we were given to bring an ordinance, and that's how we got here today. And, Chief Jones, if you don't mind, is the 13% correct? that he is saying?

I'm not sure that it was 13. I don't know exactly what the percentage was, but I don't believe it was 13%, to my knowledge.

And the education pay was removed, correct?

Right. When he went to assistant chief, then the E2 pay was removed.

Okay. I just wanted that corrected for the record.

Thank you, Chief Jones. Thank you, Alderman Goodwin. You mentioned the two situations in the fire department. Are these the two situations where people were promoted above a position that didn't exist at the time? Is that the two positions?

No, sir.

So explain those two situations to us, please.

One went from a senior firefighter to a chief and the other one, I'm not sure what his ranks were. If, uh, Chief Edwards, you might could tell me the ranks that I don't want to say his name out loud. If you want to come up here, I can tell you. But there were two because I never meant this to be about individual people. I meant it to be that we have a problem and it needs to be addressed.

Are you talking about one of the administrative personnel that we have? Is that the other person you're talking about?

It was just two names I had. I know one went to a chief's position.

Correct.

From a senior firefighter.

Correct. And the other one went to fire marshal.

They've corrected that one to my knowledge. Okay. I'm not going to.

Is it two or one?

Two.

And when you say corrected, what did we do wrong?

In the calculations, they fixed it.

In the calculations, our staff did something wrong. So with the calculations of the senior firefighter to chief, we're talking about the previous chief, right?

No, one that didn't get all the steps. Gotcha.

Gotcha. Okay. Alderman Collins. Thank you, Alderman.

Actually, Alderman Goodwin, when you said three – People in this situation, is the situation that they skipped a rank?

Correct.

Okay, so the situation is that they skipped a rank and they did not get 7.5% per rank. They just got 7.5% straight. That is what you're referring to.

Their bump was a little larger because of where they went and how they went, but it should have been 7.5% per each rank.

Alderman Collins, anything else?

Well, is that what our policy says, or we're not sure how we're interpreting the policy? Why don't we ask Jason?

It is not the policy, but that's what we're trying to do.

Hold on one second. Alderman Goodwin, I need you to say that for the microphone, okay?

We're trying to get their...

You said it's not the policy, or did you say it is the policy?

That's what this is getting in there.

So did we do it incorrectly or not?

I don't know.

They weren't given the amount that they should have been given.

Okay. Jason, can you answer Alderman Collins' question?

So the policy is 7.5%. It's not 7.5% per rank that may have been missed. It's only 7.5%. I think there are a lot of

contributing factors to how we're in this situation and that might be one of them because when you skip multiple ranks but you only get a 7.5% promotion because police and fire have ranks and I don't know how often it would come up in positions in other departments outside of public safety but If you're promoted multiple levels and you only get 7.5%, I mean, I wouldn't take it. And I think that's the problem that we have here. That's the root, one of the root problems that we have. And perhaps how we, the pay system is so complex. And for those of us who don't work under it, it takes quite a long time to really understand it. And I think sometimes we're putting Band-Aids on stuff and we don't have the knowledge base to kind of look around and say, if we make this change, all of these other people are going to be so upset because they're going to feel like it should have impacted them as well. Or why didn't it? Because I was thinking in terms of, If we do this, who's it going to upset? And I thought it's going to upset the other assistant department heads that are not in public safety. And Alderman Goodwin thought it's going to upset people who've skipped ranks in public safety and weren't compensated. Well, we're compensated at 7.5%. So now I'm aware of two groups of people that this might be upsetting, and we just need to slow down and look around and say, what's the full impact of the changes that we're making? And it's hard for us because we don't work in the system.

If I can, just as a point of clarification, in some of the cases, the increase was greater than 7.5%. So by skipping pay grades, the increase in some cases has been greater than 7.5%. So they got more than the policy required.

And I also know that when we remove education pay, it's because it's supposed to be baked into the salary at that grade level. But in this instance, the increase in the pay because of skipping so many ranks, because of removing education pay, because of what step they're on, all of these things, it's really like it doesn't feel like My gut just doesn't feel like that is an adequate compensation for the additional responsibility. I don't feel like the college degree is adequately baked into that. The whole thing kind of feels off to me. Like I said, this pay system is so cumbersome and difficult and impacts people who you're not trying to impact. But I feel like From my point of view, the least I can do is the next right thing, and this feels like the next right thing to me. Thank you.

Alderman Collins, thank you. Alderman Garza.

Yes, Jason, I need you up there. Okay. I know this started with the skipping of ranks to move up to assistant chief. I can't speak in both cases, but one I know. What I'm struggling with is you take the promotions, because it's good for the city, and hopefully it's good for you. And you look back and go, I shouldn't have taken the promotion because I would have made more money if I hadn't taken the promotion. In a way, that's kind of trying to fix that. But you didn't have to take the promotion. I came out of the private sector, kind of like Karen did. So I had people report to me that made more money than me. Most of them had more time than me. But what I'm trying to go with here is I have a question that I don't have the answer to, but maybe you do. Are both assistant chiefs, salaries as they stand today, not with this, in the framework of what that salary should be. Yes. And see, that's where I struggle. I struggle that they are making in this little, because no one makes the same, but if you've got this stretch of, you know, whether you're in the low end because you've got less time in or you're on the high end because you've got a lot more time in. If you're in that, I just don't find it fair to look back and go, if I'd gone these other two steps, I'd be making more money. Because the reality is, and the private sector, again, I bring that up, is you're going to make more money long term, period, if you become chief. So I'm struggling with this a little bit. But for that reason, the skipping of the grades, or whatever you want to call them, that's where I'm struggling with this right now. I've taken promotions and made less money. Of course, long term, I made a lot more money. So you have to look at both of these, even though, again, I know this is in the city and government, but that makes me struggle a little bit with this whole situation. Thank you.

Alderman Evans, Alderman Sassman, I think I'm keeping track of this correctly. Thank you, Alderman Garza. I think it's Alderman Evans' turn. Okay.

I do need to talk to you, Jason. Okay. I won't steal your thunder, um, a point of clarification, because I went back and ran the numbers again on these two positions. And, and when you look at just the annual pay for the one position, it does come up to be almost 14%, 13.9. But if you consider the education pay and everything in there, uh, for the assistant police chief at 7.7, 4%. And when you consider the assistant fire. chief at 6.6%, so we're not talking about 13, 14%. So in my mind, it's, when we are looking for the best people for these positions, we want the best people, but I want to try and see if we can't find the best people within the ranks of our current city employees, because I know we have the people there. And I don't know about maybe both of these. I know that they did have to skip certain ranks for us to be able to get the best person that was willing to take that job. I keep going back to the fact that nothing's ever going to be perfect. But you have to look at this as this is the right thing to do. We have an opportunity to fix this. And again, I'm not saying that anything is wrong with that. It's just the fact that we have some people who have jumped the ranks because we needed them in those positions as assistant chief. And I think that we should take care of that from a financial standpoint. Thank you. Alderman Evans, thank you. Alderman Sasse.

Thank you, Mayor. So if you could come up here. So, if I'm to understand it, the base pay for that position, yes, the e-pay was removed, but we add on the 7.5% from the base pay plus the e-pay that they started with. Is that correct?

Right. So, our policy is that when we're looking at promotions, call it the base pay, plus their education pay is considered in that. And then we recalculate what that would be. Roll off what we need to, but the goal is at the end of that, when the dust settles, they still get a 7.5% increase.

Yep. So if this individual had just gone up to the next step and they kept their e-pay, they would still get that 7.5%, and so it's a wash, essentially. Correct. So... it's not that we took away the e-pay from them, it's that we added it into their salary as the base, and then added that 7.5% and then determined what that next tier was for the assistant chief position. Right, so the base pay is an increase of like 14%. Yes, I understand that it's 7.5% when you add those things together because that's what a promotion is, it's 7.5%. I do want to understand further, you said that the other chief only got like 6.6%. Try and understand that because on a promotion you have to get 7.5% and whatever the tier that is, the next tier is, that's what you go up to. So it should always be a minimum of 7.5%. So I'm trying to understand where that calculation was.

The sheet, the information that's provided us by Director Gallo, it's got the annual pay, adding in the education pay, and the differentials.

I can answer that question for you. Okay. So this was one of the changes that we made in the policies moving forward, is that the old policy stated that a promotion was the closest to a 7.5%. So that meant that there were employees who got less than 7.5%. And the new policy... policies, we said at least a 7.5%.

Oh, so this is before we created the new policy. Understand. Okay. Thank you. Alderman Sasse, thank you.

We don't have anybody else wishing to speak. Sort of what's in my mind right now is voting on this, taking a break, and then coming back for the last items. However, that's up to the board. Like I said, we don't have anybody else wishing to speak right now. Alderman Robertson.

I still... I understand what Alderman Sasse said, but I would prefer to come up with a solution to keep this from being in the red. So, Tamara, would you come up? Based on your analysis of the trends of our revenues, would it be imprudent at this time to increase revenues by $7,000?

That's really ultimately at this point a choice of you all.

Understood. Looking at the numbers, are there projections you think could sustain a $7,000 increase in revenues?

Potentially.

Okay.

I will say we budgeted tighter for fiscal year 27 than we have typically in the past, but. And I do want to point out, if I may, that the number that you're looking at, the $7,000, that was assuming the surplus that we had available at the first reading of the budget. There was a small amendment that happened at the second reading of the budget, so the total amount that you're looking at is $8,381. That dollar amount has changed after the second reading of the budget.

Repeat that, $8,000?

$8,381. Still not a large dollar, but a little bit more than the $7,000.

Alderman Robertson, I am the last person who likes to put things off. However, we will have another month of revenue the next time we meet. Okay. Okay. All right.

That's all. Okay. With this understanding... I will vote in favor of this ordinance, but with the understanding that if it doesn't come back with a revenue-neutral number, I will not support this on the second reading because I don't want to approve a final budget. I know it's messy, Mayor. It is messy. But I'm persuaded to take this position on the assistant chiefs. I don't want to open Pandora's box. I don't, you know, we'll look at those situations later, but right now this is it before us. Thank you.

Alderman Roberson, thank you. Alderman Dixon.

Thank you, Mayor. And I'm going to actually just be the opposite of Alderman Roberson. I'm going to vote no tonight to not put us in the red and hope that we have a solution in the next five weeks and that I can vote yes in the next five weeks.

Alderman Dixon, thank you. Thank you. Jason, you ready for us? So we have no amendments. We're voting on Ordinance 2026-08 as was presented to you in your packet. All those in favor, press the green button. Those opposed, press the red. set passes eight to four with one abstentions those voting in favor alderman burgdorf skidmore ward alderman goodwin garden collins robertson and evans those voting against were alderman dixon garza sassy and myself and alderman martin abstained hold on one second jason we're good alderman dixon would you like to make a motion

Yes, that we take a break.

Okay, how about five minutes?

Second.

Okay, we have a second from Alderman Sasse. All those in favor, please say aye. Those opposed, please say no. We're going to take a break for five minutes. Thank you all. Okay. Thank you, Jason. We are now to brief committee reports. Chairman Skidmore, Public Works Committee.

Thank you, Mayor. No report.

Appreciate that.

Jesse.

Jesse, we need a BOMA report. No report.

No report. No report.

No, he needs to share a couple things that are pretty interesting.

He expected Mark to take longer. Yeah.

Thank you. I did want to give Jay Ritterbeck credit. The first Bradford Berry cold call was Mr. Ritterbeck. He somehow got that attorney on. And then, you know, we had to do about 5,000 follow calls and emails, but we had to send the Energizer Bunny and all types of things on the emails to get responses. But Jay originally contacted the legal counsel from GE, so thank you. And, too, it's great that Chief Edwards is here, and he got to say some words tonight. Chief Jones as well, Nick Edwards up here with, you know, our new canine. We have an awesome city, awesome departments, awesome chiefs. Just it's great. We're going to have a new mobile command center here pretty soon, too. That looks incredible as well. So it's just great to work with such great people. I did want to have Steven come up. I'm not going to go over the BOMA report since it's static from last month, but I did want to mention on page 50, you will see the pavement from this report showed completed was at 22.97. We've completed 100%, so we've done all the paving for this year. So we're going to start fiscal year 27's paving in July 1. So we're already done, and we'll start that new pavement schedule here as soon as July starts. The transportation plan, which you guys approved, which has over 30 projects, we have 10 projects that are under design right now. uh... which is significant set over a third of the product out there to the projects in the transportation planner and design says steven is overseen all that consult the engineer having doing that but i wanted him to talk for a minute about stop thirty cuz that project is wrapping up right away. And one of the things that we had to do, we had to buy some mitigation credits on that. So I'm gonna let Steven just talk for a couple minutes. These projects are very complex. This is a very small, small portion of what we had to do, but these are the types of things that we encounter with these projects. So Steven, if you'd come up and just give everyone an update on that.

Good evening, or night, I guess we're approaching night. So mitigation credits, Just to kind of give a quick summary of what they are is you'll have an environmental consulting firm go out and rehabilitate a stream section, basically establish the riparian area, stabilize the banks, and then a jurisdictional agency like the Army Corps or TDEC will go grade that and say, yeah, that's worth 500 credits. Now that firm can sell those credits to an agency that's going to, take a section of stream and either fill it in or have to relocate it. In our case, we're relocating a section of stream, which more or less has the same impact as filling it in to some extent. So anyway, that's kind of where we are with what mitigation credits are that we had to buy. But this all started back in February. Our Army Corps permit application was submitted. We got comments back from the Corps on what we had submitted and they said, okay, we're okay with your relocation, but How are you going to mitigate? What compensatory mitigation are you going to do here? Which means, are you going to buy credits? So we had to kind of scramble because we weren't really expecting that. It wasn't built into the project. It hadn't been part of it for a while because there weren't any credits available. There were at the time that these comments were made. So we had to go down this path in order to get the Army Corps permit buy-in on it. We were basically relocating 800 linear feet of stream. That equates to about 224 credits that we had to purchase. There's a whole calculation sheet that determines what that is. We were heading down a path of buying credits from a bank, stream bank credit, at $4,000 per credit. Kind of last minute, another bank opened up with 500 credits that we could buy. We only needed 224 of those. They were at a rate of $2,800 per credit, so it was a huge savings. May 29th, we put a 10% deposit down and got a reservation letter. Right now where we stand is we've submitted a response to the Army Corps and to TDAC because they had requested additional information to obtain our permits. Those permits are in review, and we expect comments back or hopefully acceptance of our applications. in the next couple of weeks. They still have to issue the permits, but we're hoping we'll at least get kind of the verbal okay. We agree with what you've done. So that's where we stand right now.

Stephen, thank you. Alderman Garza, do you have a question for Stephen or for Jesse?

Well, actually both.

Okay. When we do our 27 paving, could we add the ward on the paving? Sarah used to do that. For me, anyhow.

Oh, just another column?

Another column with the ward on it. Because when you get in the maskers, all the streets sound exactly the same.

I have that. I can send it to you.

You have it? Did he give it to you?

No, I made it.

Oh, you made it. Well, I think other people would like to see what ward is on there, too.

Alderman Evans, question for Stephen or for Jesse? Go ahead.

Real quick. So concerning the Drake's Creek Stop 30... Is Hendersonville, is it Hendersonville Utility? Are they finished with their portion? So are the utilities almost finished there? And then briefly, what are the next steps over the next few months?

The next steps over the next few months is wait for the actual issuance of the permits from Army Corps and TDEC. Usually what happens is Army Corps will give us a conditional approval on TDAC's issuance of a permit, then TDAC will issue a permit that will be followed by the Army Corps permit. We're kind of expecting that to occur by beginning of October, just based on timelines and the way it works. It just takes a lot of time. As far as the utility relocations, I'm going to be asking HUD for an update. I know they've run into a lot of rock out there, and that's really slowed progress. They can move quickly when they're in soil, but as soon as they hit rock, it's blasting or hammering.

I think if we're able in Ward 6, if we're able to pass along some information about how much longer it's going to be that they have to close down and have the detour through Arrowhead and Spearhead, that would be helpful if we could talk about another month or what with that. That would be great.

Certainly, sir. I'll look into that tomorrow.

Thank you, Alderman Evans. Alderman Robertson. Yeah, we discussed this in Public Works Committee, and I asked Stephen to contact the head of the utility, Joe Rewa, and not only contact him but push him. I'll be blunt. Just push him that we need them to get their job done and get out so that the traffic can be restored.

Thank you, Alden Robertson. Appreciate that. Jessie, did you have anything else? Yeah.

I know mitigation credits probably aren't the most riveting thing at nine o'clock at night, but I just, that is the demonstrate. That's one comment we got back from one permitting agency that goes into there's months and months of work that go into that. So, uh, these projects are very hard to predict and they're hard to deliver quickly because of those types of things. Uh, I'm just thankful that Steven and his staff had worked very diligently to keep pushing on those types of things. But that just brings your attention to a little bit of what they have to deal with on a day-to-day. The only thing I wanted to mention is July 3rd. As you know, on page 49, I just didn't want anyone to miss it. We don't have the July 3rd there, and we won't have a meeting, but that's our Freedom Fest at Drake's Creek Park, so do not miss that. That's from 5 to 9. That is free. There will be fireworks. There will be food. There will be music. So that will be a great event. Thank you, Mayor.

Alderman Garza? Yeah, after Alderman Skidmore's amazing report, I'd like to make a motion to adjourn.

We have a motion to adjourn from Alderman Garza. Second. We have a second from Alderman Sasse. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Those opposed, please say no. That passes unanimously. Thank you all. You all have a good night. Thank you.