Board of Mayor & Aldermen - Regular Meeting

Could you all stand and join us, please?

Not yet.

I'll tell you what.

Not yet. Not yet. Go ahead.

Thank you. Welcome to the Board of Mayor and Alderman meeting. This is July 28th, 2026. Beginning our meeting tonight was A.J. Allison. He did a wonderful job there. He is the son of Rachel Allison. We appreciate A.J. you starting our meeting for us. It's just a few minutes after 7. We appreciate many people joining us. And we're going to start as we typically do, and that's with a prayer followed by the pledge. And tonight providing the prayer is Doug Varnadoe. Doug has been the pastor at Community Church at Hendersonville for a long, long time. And he retired, oh, it seems like it was a long, long time ago. I think it's been about a year. It's been over a year? Three years ago. It's been three years. Wow. And we appreciate very much, Doug, what you and your congregation have been doing for a long time for us. Will you open us up in prayer, please?

Thank you. Let's bow together and pray. Almighty God, there is none like you. In the heavens above, in the earth below, you are without equal. We ask you, O God, to be present tonight. And we ask your spirit to guide all who are here, Lord. I thank you for this remarkable city within which we live and we work and we engage. I thank you for what is taking place, what has been, for those who have come before us and for what will be ahead after many of us are gone. And so God, I pray for a long view to be able to see beyond the streetlights at night, those things that within the grasp of your vision for this city, I pray that it will be ours also, that it will be this board and this mayor and those who assemble I ask you, Lord, for a spirit of graciousness and kindness to fall upon those who lead. I know, God, that it is difficult when there are competing views and different views, but I pray, Lord, that there will be graciousness in what is said and what is done. I pray, Lord, that, too, those who hear will not see will not see the things that would be cast as of great value in those that are lesser. When they involve those made in your image, they are all to be held with great weight. And I ask, too, as we engage in this meeting, that you would make us aware of those who are the least of these, those whose eyes don't rise far enough to look into ours, but avert when they see someone or ones with perceived power or influence. For you, O Lord, came among us as the one who was imprisoned, the one who was blind, the one who was crippled, the one who was hungry, the one who was naked. And so, God, may we never be guilty of passing by that one on the road whose wounds we choose not to bind and whose heart we choose not to be a part of the healing process. I ask you, God, to make us attentive to those who live with a lethal absence of hope and for those for whom the next meal is just a roll of the dice. So, God, let us be gracious in the building of big things to see that underneath bridges Those who are made in your image seek to live and at times survive. So use us well. Use us as advocates of humankind for whom you said, the greatest commandment is to love you with all of our being, but that which is like unto it is to love our neighbors as ourselves. Whether they live in gated communities or they live in temporary housing, May we be not just a part of, but responsible for the next day that has hope and is lit by your presence. And so we seek you, almighty God, and we pray. In the name of Jesus Christ, the one who came as appearing slain, but who is alive forevermore. Amen.

Amen. Thank you, Pastor Varnado. And by the way, what he is doing now is he is the pastor at Alive Hospice. So thank you very much for continuing your service for Hendersonville. Appreciate that. Mayor A.J. Allison is going to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance.

So if you start it, we'll join you. Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

I'm going to entertain a motion that we accept the agenda that's provided in your packet. We have a motion from Alderman Goodwin.

Second.

And a second from Alderman Garza. I do want to make sure that you all realize that we are waiving the two week rule on one of those items. And also we're going to group all of the appointments, which is 16 of them. Any discussion or suggested changes for an agenda? All those in favor of approving the agenda as it was provided to you, please say aye. Aye. Those opposed, please say no. That passes unanimously. Now we have a couple presentations. I'm going to ask the folks from Blood Assurance to join me, please.

Come on up. Thank you.

Sure. Let me do this first, and then I'll... Let me read this, and then I'm going to ask Drea to speak a little bit more. Whereas over 55 years ago, blood assurance was established to help support blood product needs for local communities, so blood that was collected at blood drives supported local hospitals. And whereas every two seconds someone needs a blood transfusion, which are only made possible by generous donors who roll up their sleeves to help save lives, but only about 3% of the age-eligible population donate blood, and whereas Blood Assurance and its community partners work diligently to inspire donations and maintain a safe and reliable blood supply for TriStar Hendersonville, children's hospitals, and other surrounding Middle Tennessee hospitals, and whereas the citizens of Hendersonville have demonstrated a long-standing commitment to supporting blood drives, encouraging community service, and helping in times of need. And whereas recognizing blood donors, blood drive coordinators, volunteers, and community partners help raise awareness of the ongoing need for blood assurance, blood donations, and encourage others to participate in this life-saving mission. Now, therefore, I, Jamie Clary, Mayor of the City of Hendersonville, do hereby proclaim the summer months as blood assurance donation months throughout the city of Hendersonville, and I urge all citizens to celebrate the cause of blood donation and recognize the life-saving contributions of volunteer blood donors. I'm going to ask Dre to tell you a little bit more. Thank you. Thank you for bringing this to us.

Thank you all for letting us be here and to have a few minutes to speak and thank you for my team members who are here and some of the other members here are part of our advisory board that we established a couple months ago here in Sumner County. So blood assurance was established 55 years ago and the main reason it was established is because in Chattanooga people were tired of having blood drives in their community. and watching the blood leave their community and go to other locations. So with the hospital council, JC's and other service people, we established blood assurance and now we've replicated it to all the areas across Tennessee. to where when we have blood drives here, we are supporting our local hospitals here. So it is the people that are here in this room tonight. It is your friends, your family, the people you go to church with, the people you work with. We want to make sure that when somebody has a car accident, a trauma, there's something going awry during childbirth, that somebody is fighting off cancer, that we have the blood products on the shelves to make sure that we can help not only prolong their life, but save their life. And we need your help. So in Sumner County, we have blood drives all over different locations. You can go to bloodassurance.org to look at all the different locations we have. But as we're supporting TriStar, we're also supporting 16, completely 16 TriStar hospitals, all the Vanderbilt hospitals, the children's hospitals, and we are making sure that everybody in this area has the blood products that they need. We also pour into our schools. Just so you know, we go in and do blood drives, blood programs with our schools. Last year, we were able to give away about $4,000 to Sumner County Schools. We would like to increase that. but we need more participation in our schools to help us to have these blood programs. Not only are they able to have the blood drives and one donation is going to save three lives, so every donation makes a huge impact, but they're also getting money in their grant program to put whatever they want to do with it in the schools, and we're raising up the next generation to create that lifelong blood donor. So 50 years from now when we are not here, We know that our children are okay and we have a stable blood supply and a stable medical system. And so we're asking, we can't be everywhere all the time. And so we do have this amazing board that is helping us to get out and establish blood drives, helping us to get out and provide education free and our schools and all different surrounding areas. So we're looking to find some other partners to get into more schools, to be able to help our students, um, to be able to go to our churches and work together. 80-90% of prayers have to do with prayer requests, have to do with health. And if you really take a look at that, over half of those have to do with people that are battling cancer. And we have some of the answers to actually help answer some of those prayers because we're collecting the blood products that they need and a lot of the different procedures that they go through. So we are here today to thank you again for letting us come and speak. We would love to be able to give more information. We actually have a blood drive. at City Hall on the 6th. Thank you very much. Yes, no, no, no, I'm not forgetting. It is the 6th from 10 to 2. We're going to leave some of these here. You just mark the QR code here to sign up. We also have a sign-up sheet. Please come out and donate blood. Again, every donation helps up to three patients. As an organization, we need over 540 pints a day just to keep up with current patient care, y'all. It is something that we have. Our city of Hendersonville is growing. Our amount of donors are decreasing, and it's just not working the way that we need to. So we're asking for help to be able to get there and help educate people. Ask people to come donate blood, and when you come, bring a buddy. Make it fun. Have a good time with doing it, knowing that you made a huge difference. So we will leave these here. Please help us to support this blood drive. Again, we thank you so much for supporting it. Thank you for all that you have done. Mayor Clary, we appreciate us being able to come here today, too. And I will take any questions if there are any questions. It's got to be one question. All right. Thank you very much. Appreciate your time.

So I'm looking for Futch and Trevor, I see Trevor, and Andy Gilley. No Futch tonight?

Okay.

I want to tell you a little bit about three of our employees. Trevor Cole, Keith Futch, who I actually didn't know had a first name, and Caleb Waters. What they did, so for a little while we've had some problems with the irrigation on the soccer fields. You've probably heard from some of your constituents about it. And it's something we could never quite, quite get to where it needed to be fixed. What really needed to be done there was, in addition to some pipes, there's also some wiring. So what these three guys did, Trevor, Keith, and Caleb, was they looked at what the bids were and thought, we can do that better ourselves. And so Andy went out for bids, talked to a couple folks on what it would cost to do that. And what we found out what needed to be done was around $50,000. Instead, we decided, Andy decided and mostly Trevor decided, let's use the staff we have. They spent about $5,000. Obviously saved us some money. They spent a lot of time doing this. They pulled about 3,000 feet of wire on one day, if you can imagine 3,000 feet of wire. And what ended up was we have a better watering plan. We have the ability to turn the system on and off remotely, which means you don't literally have to have somebody there to turn it on and off. And so also there's a savings there. So like I said, by doing that, it really solves a problem that we had with the condition of the fields. Thank you very much, Trevor. Thank you very much, Futch. And thank you very much, Caleb. Also, Jesse wants to say something, so you all hang out here real quick.

So if you get up at 5.30 in the morning and you walk Drake's Creek Park, you might see one of these gentlemen out mowing the grass. So this is a really late night for him, but we appreciate you being here. Trevor's done an awesome job since he's been here. It's just recognized by everyone who works around him, Futch as well, and all the guys in parks. I do want to spend a minute to recognize Andy right now. Andy manages not only the professional staff in office, but also all the work that gets done out in the field. So it's quite a bit different when you manage guys in the field and manage people in the office. And on top of that, Andy has earned his certified park and recreation. He's been... Certified Park and Recreation Executive Designation. So that's a certificate that's issued through the National Recreation Park Association. It's the highest professional certification that you can receive. And I think there's fewer, I think Andy said there's 500, but I think there's actually fewer than 500 people in the nation, not in the state of Tennessee, but in the nation who have that certification. You know, we have great parks employees, but it's managed very well, too. And that's a reflection of Andy and what he does for his staff. And we didn't ask him to go get the certification. He just went and did it on his own because that's the kind of person that he is. So congratulations, Andy, to you on earning that and, you know, the great job that you do and the great job that your staff does. So thank you guys and tell the other guys who didn't show up that Trevor's the champion. He's staying up late and getting up early.

So our presentation C doesn't look like we have the person here and I may have made a mistake by including that on there. I apologize for that. Next we have no public hearings and now we have minutes from June 23rd, 2026. I'm going to entertain a motion that we approve those. We have a motion from Alderman Sasse and a second from Alderman Ward. Any discussion on that? All those in favor of approving the minutes that were provided to you in your packet from June 23rd this year, please say aye. Those opposed, please say no. That passes unanimously. We have two people sign up for citizen comments. Speakers must identify themselves by name when they come up and speak, in addition to their address. Public comment shall be limited to five minutes per individual, which time is not transferable to other speakers. All comments are to be directed to the presiding officer, not to the alderman, city staff, or other members of the public. Comments must address issues, not individuals or personalities. Personal tax shall not be tolerated. Comments may support or oppose particular issues or measures, but the motives of those with differing views shall not be questioned or attacked. Malicious comments will not be allowed. Speeches for or against particular candidates running for office shall not be allowed. Dale Payne, Civil Drive.

I thank y'all for your time. Dale Payne, Liberty 230, Civil Drive. Some of y'all may know about the blessing box issue. So When this blessing box issue came up, I didn't feel as though me and my church was getting treated right on this, so I put it out on social media to bring attention to it, and that's what it's done. And this is exactly what I posted, was I recently built a blessing box for our church. Before installing it, I contacted the city of Hendersonville's planning department to see if it was okay to install it where we wanted to. They asked for a site plan. They simply printed me off an aerial view with the setbacks marked. I drew two lines, one marking at 20 foot and 25 foot off the roadway. After a few days, we contacted the city back to see if it was okay, and they informed us that it was okay to put the blessing box in that location. However, they informed us that there was a charge of $126 for the planning reviews. That day, after finding that out, I spoke to Mayor Clary and let him know about the charges, and I didn't feel as though it was fair being charged to install a blessing box at my church. He spoke to the planning department, called me a short time later to let me know that if I was building a church or a parsonage, that that could be waived. However, they couldn't do nothing about the blessing box fee. I felt as though this was a big crock of crap that I ever heard. We're trying to help the community with these blessing boxes. I got full confidence now after listening to the finance committee that I think this is going to be taken care of, and I appreciate y'all's time very much in taking care of this issue. Thank you.

Dale, thank you. Holly Neely, Rice Road.

Hi. I was actually involved in this as well, the blessing box with Dale. We're at Holiday Heights Baptist Church, and we're a little church. We're like 30 people. Mark, you know our church. I sure do. You knew my mama. Yeah. You knew all them little old senior ladies at that church, didn't you? I did. They all turned out for Mark. Mark would go pick them up and bring them to vote, you know. Oh, he did. Don't let him kid you. He did. He'd take them to lunch if they'd vote twice. But, you know, we just got concerned. We wanted to do a Blessing Box. And Dale's new at our church, and we're just thrilled to death to have him. And he agreed that he'd do it on his own, not charge a church any money, just do it. And it's a beautiful Blessing Box. If you haven't seen it, you need to go look at it. It's one of the prettiest ones around. And I started doing some research on it. And I talked to Tricia Russo, who runs Sumner County Blessing Box, Facebook page. And, you know, I want to see more about what they do. You know, when you put it up, what happens? Because, you know, we never run one, but we just want to help. And we're a little church, but we're mighty. We want to help back. We want to give back. You know, God gives to us. We want to give back to people. And I actually want to read this. It's, you know, from everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded. And from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked. Luke 12, 48. And this one... I love even more is, and this sort of goes to the city as far as I'm concerned with what we do here. And that is, you know, when God gives you something and he's entrusted all of you with this city, you know, people have voted for you. They've put you here. You've been entrusted for the care of this city. And we have a lot of people in this city that can't eat. And it's not homeless people. We just had one of our postal carriers approach me at church on a Saturday and say, you know what? My daughter and I came to put stuff in the blessing box, and I want you to know why. Because five months ago, the post office messed up my check. And he's been our postman forever. And I didn't have money for my daughter and I to eat. But somebody told me y'all had a blessing box. He said, somebody told me that there was a blessing box in Hendersonville, so I went to it. And he said, now I see one here as I'm doing my route, so I want to get back because somebody helped me. And so when I found out, when I started calling, I don't know if y'all know Zachary Jackson that works in, okay? He was very helpful, extremely helpful, such a nice young man. But this went on for about four weeks with me calling, trying to get, how can we get this in? And all we called for was to see if, what the easement was, you know, because I never thought in a million years it would be a charge to do this. And he told me we couldn't put the blessing box up unless we paid the $126. And I've got to tell you, I put one post on social media, and I cannot tell you how many people offered to pay this $126. But that wasn't the point. The point was there's four years ago there was only 13 blessing boxes in Sumner County. Now there's 55. That tells you the need is here. It tells you the people want to do this. My fear is how many people, I don't know if you're aware of this, Mayor Clary, but the city of Hendersonville is the only city in this county that charges to put in a blessing box. I called every city today. No one charges for a blessing box except the city of Hendersonville. And I found that embarrassing honestly i didn't share that with the city's thank god that i did find it embarrassing and um... but i know we're going to change it i know it's been brought to everyone's attention i feel confident this is going to be changed but what my fear is is there's only seven in hendersonville so how many people have tried to do this and if it hadn't been for dale we might have given up because they wanted us to get a Google aerial shot. Then they said, you probably need to go get an architect or a surveyor to put your mark on there to tell exactly where it is. We have to have a surveyor's mark. And you can verify this was Zachary because we talked many, many times. I said, you mean I've got to go pay to have somebody do that, to put in a blessing box on top of the $126? I found that absurd. So that's the reason that we brought this to everyone's attention because I don't know how many more people wanted to put in a blessing box.

Polly, 30 seconds.

Okay, but didn't want to go do that, okay, and didn't have the money to go do that. So all I'm asking is that not only look at the blessing box ordinance, but this makes me think there are many more ordinances in this city that haven't been looked at in a long time that could very well be prohibiting this city from giving and growing.

Polly, thank you.

Appreciate that.

Next on our agenda is Ordinance and Resolutions. We have Resolution 2026-22. This is a resolution to adopt the 2026 City of Hendersonville, Tennessee Parks and Recreation System-Wide Master Plan, a five-year update. Alderman Garten, would you like to make a motion? Okay, we have a motion from Alderman Garten and a second from Alderman Garza. Any discussion on this?

Alderman Bergdorf. Thank you, mayor. What I'd like to talk about and just Mr. Gilley, if you could come forward real quick, this was quite, I want to, first of all, again, thank the parks department and you and your leadership for bringing this forward here because this. A master plan is fantastic. Um, it is complete and it even contains in there the facilities. some of the facilities that we don't even think of as parks. The piece on Caldwell, I think it was that piece of property on Caldwell. Please, if you don't mind, name some other properties that the city owns that are not necessarily parks yet.

Forest Park would be one. That's one, yes. Forest Parkland.

And then the Durham Farms.

Durham Farms Parkland across the creek from Rugby. Mm-hmm. And then we have a heritage park. Obviously we own half of it. We're about to start construction on our part, but there's half that we don't own yet.

So, and in the plan here, you do have recommendations regarding Durham farms, correct?

Yes, sir.

Yeah. Can you highlight those for us?

Uh, the first, the first plan would be develop a plan for the park. Um, you know, you take, you take a document like this and you look at how your leagues and programs and events are growing and, and look and see where you have opportunities to help, I guess, would be the correct word. And Durham Farms, obviously, is a place that we have that is a lot of land that we could do a lot of things with. You have also an access issue there. So not only would you have to have a master plan for the park for us to determine, you know, do we – build fields that would take people out of another park, or do we build things that are brand new that we're going to be not taking people out of another park? And then you have, uh, a five way stop and a, and a small country road that some of us used to ride up and down faster than we should have. Um, that would take a bridge to get across the Creek, or we have an access through a County neighborhood. That would be a fun thing to.

Well, thank you very much for putting this together. It's a very complete and exhaustive master plan. Looking forward to seeing it come before us.

Thank you.

Alderman Bergdorf, thank you.

All those in favor of resolution 2026-22, please say aye. Aye. Those opposed, please say no. That passes unanimously.

Thank you all.

Now we have Resolution 2026-24. This is a resolution authorizing the waiver of certain municipal fees for community amenity structures such as blessing boxes and little free libraries that provide a public benefit. We have a motion from Alderman Goodwin and a second from Alderman Robertson. I want to say something real quick here. We're good?

Mm-hmm.

Okay. Um, so you heard some of sort of how this happened. I very much thank staff for the way that, that they were able to put this together so quickly. I had no idea there was zoning code, you know, that it addressed or didn't address blessing boxes and little libraries. We have several already, um, in Hendersonville that have never been charged and I'm not real sure what triggers that. But when Dale let me know that, um, I thought, wow, I love these additions that we have in the city. I've got a neighbor that has one of the little libraries. And my church has a blessing box. So it's surprising to me that we evidently don't waive those fees. Now, in some cases, they didn't trigger the fees. And so we only know of one at a time. where one has been charged, and I'll come to that with an amendment pretty soon. When I heard about this, I immediately thought about Grace Place. I think it was about a year ago when the board decided to waive retroactively the requirement for Grace Place to plant a certain number of trees. And I'm glad we did that because the way that I looked at that, and I think most of you all did, was that Grace Place is, that our community is better off if Grace Place spends their money on their ministry than on trees. And it worked out also at the same time that we had money in our tree bank from builders and developers that had contributed. So we were able to plant those trees with money from builders and developers. Grace Place, I think we literally wrote them a check to refund their money to spend more on what they knew well. I never thought about the blessing boxes in Little Free Libraries. Some people, I've seen this online unfortunately, have blamed y'all or some previous aldermen for not knowing all the applications of our zoning code. That's unfair. that's terribly unfair. We have staff that looks over that and, you know, there's no such thing as a blessing box or a little free library probably eight or ten years ago and, you know, we have to adjust and we find out about these things we do. Like I said, it's, They've moved very, very quickly. When I found out about this, I went to Lance and I said, can I waive these fees? And he made it very clear that I can't waive those fees and that I don't know of any time in any situation that I can waive fees. And that's something the board hasn't allowed me to do, nor have I asked for that opportunity. Lance and Keith Free and his staff very, very quickly worked on that about how we do that to waive the fee. And honestly, in record time, I can't think of a time that resolutions have been written that quickly, got it out to the board. We got it to a committee and got it here and for the whole thing to really be taken care of. Several of you all stepped forward immediately and wanted to co-sponsor that. And I felt very confident that we were going to address it at our next board meeting. Here we are. Like I said, I want to make this retroactive to the other one that was addressed. The effective date to do that, if you go to page 128 in your packet, at the very bottom of section seven, the very end of section seven, it says to be retroactive to January 1st, 2021, we had never been asked to refund before. Um, uh, but we know of one other one, I think to be safe, if we change that retroactive date to January 1st of 2021, Yeah, like 21. I think to be extra safe, if we go back to 2021, we'll definitely catch the one that we know of, and if anybody else, which we're pretty sure there aren't any other ones. Like I said, we have several little free libraries and several blessing boxes that were never charged because they didn't trigger what caused the charge. So at this point, I'm going to make a motion. You know what? I'll wait. Alderman Sasse will come to you, but before we finish everything, I'd like to make a motion that we amend that date. Alderman Sasse. Alderman Sasse.

Well, thank you, Mayor. I had a question on that. What kind of implications does setting this back over two years have on future potential legislation? Is it going to affect anything? Because, I mean, if it's going to affect things, I'll cover that. I'll go today and pay them $126. It's not that much money.

So we think the two implications are this one, $126, and one other one, $120.

Well, the January, that one's fairly recent. So I think that one makes sense that we retroactive for that one. But the one that was two and a half years ago, could that have other implications down the line for other legislation or other ordinance and resolutions that we're considering? And if so, then I'll just go pay it. The answer is we don't think so. We don't think so.

We're pretty confident that it's only one other one.

Okay. Okay. Um, well, I'll make the amendment in a few minutes, but yeah, yeah, either way then. But, um, I just don't want there to be to, to, to, for that, to cause an issue for the city later on is my only concern. Appreciate that.

Any other discussion?

Uh, Alderman Robertson. And I too want to thank the staff and mayor for quickly jumping on this and fixing it. Uh, I have a question for Keith because we're giving, we're giving quite a bit of plenary authority. to the planning director to oversee this program, and I want to make sure that we cover all of our bases. Keith, do you have the ordinance in front of you?

I will, actually. I'm familiar with it. Yeah, I'm familiar with it, though.

Okay. Section 5. Section 5 says the planning director or designee is authorized to establish reasonable administrative procedures and application requirements necessary. My question is, how do you define reasonable administrative procedures? We've heard from the public that they may have been required to get an architect or some kind of engineering diagrams to show where this is. So I want to make sure this reasonable administrative procedures is good and tight and streamlined and at a minimum. procedures. So kind of walk me through what you see as reasonable administrative procedures.

Yeah. What we typically do on these types of things, and I think for this one, I think there was probably some miscommunication from our office about needing something as detailed as architects or surveyors. It's simply just having the aerial photo And, you know, drawing, I think Dale explained it pretty well, drawing a line of how far it is from the building or from the right-of-way or the property line just to see exactly where it was going to be. And then actually the dimensions, you know, of the item. And that's all that's required now. And that will still be, even though the fee is being waived, that still will be required to provide, you know, provide that. Not to any high level of detail, just to see exactly where that's at.

And we want to make sure the boxes don't affect the vision, vehicular vision, you know, going back and forth. And that's why we need the setback. And so those reasonable procedures. So I come to you for an application. I wanted to put a blessing box at my church. What am I required to do?

We just need to see the dimensions of what it is you're talking about putting there. That's not going to require a building permit or anything. So just seeing what it is you're building. Uh, and then, uh, if you had an active site plan, a lot of churches already have a site plan, uh, cause they've already had, had it approved, you know, years ago, if not, uh, just even a Google, uh, a Google aerial photo, uh, where you can measure off, you know, how far that, where that's at on the site and then how far that is from the property line. Uh, and, and for many other major structure that's there and that's, that's pretty much it.

So can we, if they, if they can't provide a Google map, we usually can, can we provide it to them? We usually will for, for them.

We'll print something off or if we have the, um, uh, if there is a site plan, we can provide that and they can just kind of draw, uh, draw on there. I don't think that happened in this and I apologize. I did not happen in this, this instance, uh, this, this, uh, this turned out to be more complicated than. what it should have been, and I certainly apologize for that.

That's okay. I think it's important, and I used to be a staff, you know, for a utility commission at the state, and a lot of times staff sees problems. They know it's a problem, you know, and I hope that when the staff does see a problem such as this that, hey, it's not right. Mm-hmm. that you will go to the mayor, you'll go to the COO, and come to us and bring it to us. So y'all are the first line that interact with the public, and you do a great job, but when you do see issues like that, bring it to our attention so that we can correct it when you know that this is not right.

Right. And there are, you know, through the zoning ordinance and amendments, and we have going through the Planning Commission right now and next week before the Planning Commission, a continuation of revisions to the zoning ordinance that are things just like that, uh, that you're talking about. And this one, since this item came up, uh, it wasn't something that we were necessarily aware of that was, you know, a concern. Uh, but now that, now that we are, and I think the board is aware of that as well, uh, then totally separate from what y'all are doing this evening, uh, in the, uh, proposed changes to the zoning ordinance, there's all kinds of changes that we're making, but I put a definition and a clarity. on this, that using that same language that you have before you, so that it's very clear also at bookends it in the, uh, uh, in the zoning ordinance so that future planning directors or future planners, uh, that'll be here, you know, in the future, uh, they'll be able to clearly, uh, see that blessing boxes and little libraries and things like that are separate. from other items.

Excellent. Then the last thing, and I know the mayor is going to have an amendment on Section 7, but it was mentioned that there was one other church that we know of that was charged. Could you give me the name of that church? Community Church. Yes, it was. I checked with our pastor and he did say we were charged. I wanted to make sure that we are the one that you've identified.

I think some of it is I wasn't aware of the number of blessing boxes that are in Hendersonville now. Uh, but it's not necessarily something we're out looking for and then tell people, Hey, you gotta come in and do that. Uh, but when someone's reaching out to us, which they should to do their due diligence, to see what is the proper way to get it approved, then, you know, more than likely if there's these other ones that are out there that hadn't been permitted or went through that process, they just never went through the process. So they were never paid a fee, but we never looked at them either.

And, you know, uh, Dale mentioned this to me at a Rotary Club meeting, and I mentioned it to the mayor, and the mayor jumped right on it when I mentioned it to him, and the staff. So I want to thank the staff for a quick resolution on this. And I know that this problem goes away after tonight.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Alden Robertson. Polly, I saw your hand go up. So we have rules that you can't speak right now, then I can't wave that. But if we don't have any objection, she had her hand up. Do we want to wave the rules right now? Okay, so we have a motion, a second. All those in favor to allow Polly to speak for a second and ask her questions, please say aye. Aye. Those opposed, please say no. So go ahead. I can't do it myself. I have to turn to them.

I know. Listen, I've run my own business for years, so I'm very aware, and I used to do policies and procedures. That's what I did all over the world for ophthalmologists, of all things. So I'm very aware, and I appreciate you. He wrote me. He even offered to pay it, okay? Again, it's not the point of the money. and I know that we only have seven here, and I know you've only identified one that you think paid the fee, but what my concern is is how many didn't put a blessing box up because they had to go through what I went through. I was the one that did this. I was the one that made all the calls. I spoke to two people in your office. Zach is the one that finally He just, the answer was repetitive, that we had to have an aerial drawing, we had to have a mark. I said, well, can we just mark it ourselves? And he's like, no, it has to be a surveyor's mark, it has to be official, and fill out, and I filled out all the forms. I mean, if you guys want to ask me any questions about what I went through, I think it's important that you know what your staff is saying. and that how they are giving information out to the community. And this is not a small community anymore. We're a very large community with a lot of people who make calls. And we tried to do that, you know.

So stay nearby. We have a couple other people who want to speak. They might have questions for you.

Okay.

Okay. Alderman Skidmore. Thank you. Alderman Skidmore.

Thank you. Just a couple of comments that, yeah, once I, my phone started ringing. and then I was going to call the mayor, but I looked on my email, and he had already addressed the situation. But the only thing that I would say tonight is I would hope I notice the sponsors of the – there's only a part of our board, but I would hope and I would ask that the rest of the Board of Aldermen would – would go along with this and it would be a united front on this and they all be a sponsor, have all 13 members of the board and aldermen. I would appreciate you doing that. And just saying this, this is beyond politics to me. When I found out about this, You know, I mean, it was absurd, really, that we would do that. And I'm very grateful that we've been able to take care of it for you. But I think that's an important question that you pointed out is, you know, my Lord, how many more other items or issues that have come up before the board that, we as alderman and even in the mayor's office don't know, uh, what's going on, but I, I would have to say that it's probably, uh, and I pray this to be a limited amount, um, because most of the alderman, including the mayor, we all know, uh, how, what it is to, to live in Hendersonville sometimes when, when you live paycheck to paycheck. And when we go knocking on doors, And we talk to people. At least I can tell you that in my district I do. And it breaks my heart. And I hope that this never happens again. Of course, I know you know that I feel that way. You've known me forever. And I'm just so sorry that it happened and it shouldn't have. But we've corrected it. And if you hear of anything that ever happens in our in our city that we think that we've made a mistake or we don't know about it, please let us know just like you did to take care of this. Because, you know, sometimes we get up here and fuss and fight at the board, but we all love each other in Christ, and there is no question about that. And when we come off this board, we'll go have coffee and discuss it. And so I just wanted to let you know that we're not big and evil like people portray us to be. We do like to walk in Christ. I can say that for myself, and I know that for a fact, and I never talk like this at the board, but I know that everybody up here walks with Christ too because we've accepted Christ in our heart. And so it really... I'm getting chills when I think of this because it really broke my heart. You know, a blessing box, my God, you know, you're having to pay $135 for that or $125 or whatever it was. You know, $1 is too much. You know, you should just get out there and do it. And I know that I'll be putting some things in that blessing box. I can guarantee that. And along with community church, I will too. because I know that it is hard, um, to live in, in, in our society today, especially with all the gas prices and the inflation, you know, how much a half a gallon of milk is. And some people can not afford that. And I know that. And I think about it all the time, you know, and, uh, and I just pray for things to get better. So that's the only thing I wanted to let you guys know. And I wanted to let the board, if we could be unanimous in this vote to be co-sponsors, all 13 of us, because it is important, and it is a recognition to let the people of our city know how we feel about this issue. Thank you, Mayor.

Alderman Skidmore, thank you. Alderman Ward.

This is a question for Keith. A quick question. I don't know if you noticed off the top of your head or not. What is the maximum size blessing box I could build in maximum height? Is it a square? Is it, I mean, cause they're cubes. This is expressing square footage or it could be pretty big.

Yeah. You could do it. You can do a pretty big one, but we'll just have to look at it and it's possible, you know, it's possible if it gets too big, then it's going to become not just like a mini site plan.

That's kind of where, I mean, at what point does a blessing box become a shed?

Yeah. I mean, that's just a, um, um, Uh, the way the language I believe is in, is in, is in the document is not necessarily limiting the size, just saying that it's small in nature. It's, uh, and so then that's a discretionary, uh, discretionary thing. So ultimately with it being zoning related issues. then it would be me or whoever the future planning director would be, then they would be making that decision whether it's this small or not. Otherwise, you could put a square foot on it, but, you know, depending on what somebody's wanting to do. So, like, today's blessing box could be something a little bit bigger but not quite a shed, but it could be something even larger.

Could I take an, say, old port-a-john and convert it? Yeah.

Well, yeah, I mean, yeah, we don't have restrictions on the material of it.

So maybe we should investigate some of that.

Yeah, so it's one of the things, and I think we talked about it a little bit in finance earlier, it's that, you know, part of what this got caught into, the net that it got caught into, is we have very good regulations, and they are very restrictive. and they produce some really good things, but they also need to breathe. And, and what's happening this evening and the changes we're going to make to the zoning ordinance, that's the breathing of it, you know, to kind of address those things. But trying to bullet point, go ahead and call out all the specific detail, guaranteed we could list 10 things on what this has to be and what it can be. And as soon as we do that, we're going to have somebody wanting to do something pretty good that's like, hey, what am I having to do this for? And at the time, in the future, it's going to be like, well, that doesn't make any sense. Why didn't they think about that when they were listing all those bullets? So at a point, we've got to leave it. We're building in some discretion. We don't really necessarily have the discretion right now, but we're going to have that discretion. But still, it's going to be up to whoever makes that ultimate decision. I mean, ultimately, it'll be a planning director that makes that ultimate decision. And then if somebody doesn't like that decision, then they can appeal that to the Board of Zoning Appeals. So there's a process for that as well. I hope that makes a little bit of sense.

Yeah, that explains it perfectly. Thank you.

It's a good question that you had, though.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Alderman ward. Um, I'm going to make a motion. Now, if you turn to page one 28, that we changed that date from January 1st, 2026 to January 1st, 2021 to January 1st, 2021. Thank you. We have a second from Alderman Robertson. Any discussion on that?

Uh, Alderman Evans, just a quick question. So that means a reimbursement to the one chair. Okay. That's it. Alderman sassy.

I just, I guess, need clarification. When was the other, the blessing box that did pay, when was it, when did they pay for their fee? We're going to turn to our expert on Community Church of Hendersonville, and that is Alderman Eddie Robertson.

It was 2024, after... Doug had left. Okay. Yeah.

So 2024, I guess the question is why are we, why are we going so far back in case we miss somebody else? Okay.

So, I mean, at most, yeah. Okay. Any other discussion on that? All those in favor of that amendment, please say aye. Those opposed, please say no. That passes unanimously. Now we're back on the main motion. Any other discussion, any other suggestions? So we've amended just that once all those in favor of resolution 2026. Oh, I'm sorry. Alderman Bergdorf.

Yes. I'd like to follow up on Alderman Skidmore's recommendation and be a co-sponsor if I could.

Without objection, we're going to add Alderman Bergdorf. Alderman Evans. I was just going to say, just add us all if we don't mind. That way we can just do that. Thank you.

Without objection, we're going to add Alderman Evans. Alderman Sasse. Same. Okay, without objection, we're going to add Alderman Sasse. I'm going to start calling names if you all want to hit your buttons. Alderman Collins. Same. Without objection, we're going to add Alderman Collins. Alderman Skidmore. Yeah, it just put me down, too. Okay, without objection, we're going to add Alderman Skidmore as a co-sponsor. Alderman Martin. Same. Without objection, we're going to add Alderman Martin. Anything else? That's everybody. Okay. All those in favor of Resolution 2026-24, please say aye. Aye. Those opposed, please say no. That passes unanimously. Thank y'all. Now we have a second reading of Ordinance 2026-08. This is an ordinance amending personnel rules and regulations, policy HR 42, Section 4, relative to public safety, assistant chiefs, proportional pay, and to amend the proposed, well, the enacted 2026-27 budget to appropriate funding accordingly. Motion, Alderman Goodwin. We have a motion from Alderman Goodwin and a second from Alderman Evans. Um, we do, you do have a, an amendment in front of you. Um, do you want to deal with that first? Do you want to speak Alderman Goodwin? Uh, any of the sponsors want to speak? Typically I let the sponsor speak first.

Okay.

Alderman Goodwin, go ahead.

I am not for the amendment at this time for the reason that this is a public safety ordinance. I would welcome the sponsor of the amendment to bring an ordinance separate with all of this information, and I would consider supporting it. Thank you. Thank you, Alderman Goodwin.

Alderman Collins, I think I need to call. There you go. Alderman Collins.

I would like to make a motion to amend the ordinance Can I just say as submitted?

Yeah, and I think, would you agree that this is really a substitute, it's substitute text? Is that a good way to put it? It's what? It's substitute text?

Yeah.

Okay.

It adds text. Oh, yes, I see what you're saying, yes. Okay.

This is what we're talking about. You should have it at your desk.

It's printed for you and everybody should have gotten an email with it. I certainly respect Alderman Goodwin's opinion about this being a public safety ordinance. It is my opinion, however, that it changes the way we pay for promotions for the assistant fire chief and police chief. And I feel like that should be extended to other departments for the assistance or what we consider the equivalent, which the language our HR policy uses is department head delegates. Excuse me. For example, in finance, there's not an assistant finance director, but there are accounts receivable and accounts payable. heads of those, all of those positions are listed here on the second page of my amendment. I think it makes it a little bit more fair that it isn't just two department heads, assistant department heads that we change the way we provide promotions for, but to extend that to the other departments within the city. In addition to that, my amendment, which I think if you don't like it, you can amend to X certain parts of it, or if you only want to keep certain parts of it. And we can discuss them separately, but I did decide I'll just go ahead and make it one amendment instead of offering three different ones. So I also wanted to add changing the grade for the three positions in fire, which is the fire marshal, the training chief, and the administrative chief. Because when we change battalion chief and division chief, we – change those by a grade and these three positions were meant to be at the same grade so that a division chief I might have this backwards a division chief would be promoted to be a battalion chief or any of those three positions in fire but now it's lateral instead of a promotion when you move to battalion chief so it's not the ranking system because they're different But it's the promotional integrity of the department. We altered that. I didn't know. I didn't realize that that was what was happening. But it is what happened. And so I'd like to address that. And then the last thing, of course, is the recreation coordinator to change the grade on that position. which that position only has a cost of $1,200 a year. And my reasoning for that is because it's a valuable position. And in the past, we have always treated that like we have the tennis coordinator position. And so our employee's expectation was that that would continue to be the case. So I'd like for us to look at doing that. I know you have some information about how much this cost, but I was hoping that Jesse and I discussed at great length how to pay for this. And the conclusion, and I'm going to let Jesse talk about how we landed where we did.

Thank you, Alderman Collins. That is correct. We did talk about this at length, and I think even more at length than our discussion was what we talked about during the budget process because we went through all the expenditures, and we just did that with our budget. So when Alderman Collins and I looked at what we could do to cut expenditures, we came to the conclusion that we had just gone through that process to really go back and, you know, with a fine-tooth comb, we went back over fiscal year 27 expenditures, and we cut them all pretty good. The option that seems probably the path of least resistance and where we budget conservatively is sales tax. So we just talked about this in the Finance Committee. You know, this would require the use of the – Excuse me, Jessie. Hold on one second. She hasn't made a motion yet, but she can.

And we're okay because it's – Oh, I did.

She did.

We didn't have a second. Yeah, we didn't have a second.

Oh.

But it's okay because it's still apropos what he is speaking about to the main motion. So we have a motion. Would somebody like to make a second? So Alderman Collins, I'll come back to you after Jesse speaks. That was my intention. So go ahead, Jesse. Thank you.

And so rather than going back and cutting expenses since we just went through the budget, We typically budget sales tax conservatively, and we've ended the year in a positive position. So to use, it's less than $50,000 for this entire amendment. It seems like the best spot to get that from is from sales tax, traditionally just because we have a conservative approach to sales tax, rather than cutting some expenditure because we just went through the budget and really got expenditures where we think they should be.

Alderman Collins, I appreciate you putting this together, working with staff, working with our city attorney, and setting it out ahead of time and the work you put on it.

I'll let you go ahead. I don't think I have anything else to say, actually. I will say, though, that Alderman Goodwin I always do that. I don't have anything else to say except this one thing. Alderman Goodwin suggested that it should be another ordinance, and that is something else that I discussed with staff at great length. And because I wanted everybody to have ample time to discuss it and to think about it, but the thing that... swayed me to doing it as an amendment is that when we discuss HR issues and HR policy, it's hard on our employees. And prolonging that discussion could have a negative impact on the people who hold the positions that I'm pointing to. So in the end, I did agree. It's best to just get it done. Up or down, let's just end it. tonight and not have to revisit this hopefully for a while. We won't have any HR issues to discuss.

Alderman Collins, would you like to renew your motion at this time?

I move to substitute the language as provided.

Do we have a second? Okay. I'm going to go on to Alderman Goodwin. We're back on the main motion.

I just wanted to say the difference between this ordinance and some of the amendments that Alderman Collins has suggested, one reason I want to keep them separate is there is a ranking structure within public safety that is not in other departments. So I think it sets it apart. But I would definitely welcome another ordinance with these changes. Thank you.

Alderman Goodwin, thank you. Alderman Gardner.

Yes, I like this amendment. However, I do think that with, I mean, it has a pretty good-sized budget impact, and I would like to see that go through Finance Committee before it comes to BOMA. I think it's worthy of that.

Alderman Robertson. Thank you, Alderman Carton.

Yeah, I have some questions for the staff, so either Jason or Jesse. It did. It did. I didn't want to be that cruel. Typically, we deal with salary increases for particular positions because they're difficult to fill. Recently, you informed the board of a GS coordinator, I believe, that we had to competitively pay, you know, and that was accomplished through administrative procedures. So these positions that are added Alderman Collins, are these hard to fill positions?

Typically, the engineering positions or positions that are highly specialized, like that GIS position, would be your harder-to-fill positions. As you mentioned, that GIS position, in our personnel rules and regs, we do have an allowance if we have a problem filling hard-to-fill positions where we can offer above the starting rate, which is the email that you all got about that GIS position where there was a higher starting rate because that is a very specialized skill that only one person has on there. So I think there's a city engineer that's a department head delegate, so that one position is noted on the list. Off the top of my head, I can't think of the other ones that are necessarily hard to fill, but engineering is always going to be at the top of the list for hard-to-fill positions.

Jason? We, what'd we spend? 50,000 for a PACE study or 60,000 something?

Not quite as much, but yes, it was about 40,000 when we're done.

And so I want you to remind me on the positions that we're talking about here, where did the PACE study put these positions as far as on the scale?

Sure. So all of these positions fell above our threshold. Remember, we had said at the 65th percentile, if that's 100%, if you're lower than 10%, so let's say you were at 15%, we'll address those. All of these positions fell 10% or less to the 100th percentile. In fact, some of these positions are above the 100th percentile already.

Okay. But we have other positions that were under that 65%, and we addressed those.

Right. That was part of our budget process where they were at like 80% to the market, and we made sure that we brought them up.

So let me ask you a softball question. Okay. So if this amendment passes, will the gap between management and starting employees be larger or smaller? It'll be larger. It'll be larger.

Mm-hmm.

So we would be giving employees raises that are some of them at 125% of the 65% threshold, while other employees are less. So is this potentially an unexpected, unintended outcome, B, that it would hurt morale of employees?

It definitely can hurt morale of employees. When we have the finalized report and employees see where they're at bench-to-market, and then they're going to look at these positions to say they were paid above market and they got an increase and I didn't. There becomes also the internal equity struggle that we'll have with it as well, where with those positions, other positions are lower to the market than these.

Alderman Robertson, please keep in mind that we didn't have a second on that.

Pardon me?

We didn't have a second on that.

We're not on the amendment.

Oh, then it died. It died? I'm sorry. I thought I thought Alderman Berkner seconded. I didn't make it clear. That's my fault. Okay. I'm sorry.

That's all I have. Okay. Thank you, Alderman Robertson. Alderman Evans. Well, I was just going to, I thought you were talking about just the chief positions. No. Okay. All right. I just wanted to make sure that. When we're talking about those positions and talking about morale, I just want to be very clear because I have a different opinion about the morale when you're talking about the assistant chiefs. So we need to be very clear about what we were talking about there. And, Jason, you should have also been clear about what we were talking about there too. Thank you.

Okay.

Appreciate it, Alderman Evans. Alderman Robertson, did you want me to come back to you?

I agree with Alderman Evans.

I was not talking about the assistant chiefs. The original, I supported that. I do believe that the public safety assistant chiefs are kind of in a different category than other assistant directors of departments, and I've got a lot. So I don't think they're equally situated. So that's why I support the original language on the ordinance, but I can't support it.

I'm sorry that I wasn't more clear earlier.

Alderman Martin. Yeah, I'm going to abstain on the ordinance and any amendments that come up because I think HR matters should be handled administratively by Jesse and Jason.

Appreciate that, Alderman Martin. Alderman Ward.

I agree with Alderman Mike. I feel like we're coming back in Monday morning quarterbacking everything that HR, the COO, and the police chief has done. They made the decision. They're running their department, and I don't think we should be stepping in to tell them how to do it after the fact.

Alderman Ward, thank you. Jason, we'll do an electronic vote. Does anybody else wish to speak or make a suggestion? Okay, so it looks like Jason, you ready for us? Okay. So all those in favor of second reading of Ordinance 2026-08, press your green button. Those opposed, press the red button. It's a little bit confusing, so I'll come back if anybody needs to change anything. Anybody need to change anything? Okay. So that passes seven to five with one abstention. Those in favor, Alderman Bergdorf, Skidmore, Goodwin, Garden, Collins, Robertson, Evans. Those opposed, Alderman Ward, Sasse, Garza, myself, Alderman Dixon, and Alderman Martin is abstaining. Thank you all. Appreciate that, Jason. Gabby, we good? Okay. So next we have 16 appointments, some of them reappointments. I'll go ahead and read these because we're going to vote on them as a group. the appointment of Taylor Smith to beautiful Hendersonville, reappointment of Michael Krasnow to the Beer Board, appointment of Keith Cartwright to the Facilities Naming Committee, appointment of Jeff Mensch to the Facilities Naming Committee, reappointment of Pat Greeley to the Facilities Naming Committee, reappointment of Bill Gregg to the Facilities Naming Committee, reappointment of Cash Knies to the Facilities Naming Committee, reappointment of Rita Lee to the Facilities Naming Committee, reappointment of Julie Merriweather to the Facilities Naming Committee, appointment of Jason Johnson to the Golf Course Commission, appointment of Donovan Rice to the Historic Zoning Committee, appointment of Gary Dice to the Industrial Development Board, appointment of Richard Stewart Bond to the Lakeshore Committee, appointment of Robert Cox to the Lakeshore Committee, appointment of Roy Jones to the Municipal Board of Zoning Appeals, and appointment of Brian Ray to the Municipal Zoning Appeals. I need a motion, please. So moved. We have a motion from Alderman Garza and a second from Alderman Sasse. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Those opposed, please say no. That passes unanimously. I think we did have one or two people that were on the appointment list that were here. Next, we have brief committee reports. Alderman Skidmore, Chairman of the Public Works Committee.

All right. Thank you very much. We had a wonderful meeting tonight. We had one resolution that is on the agenda that passed unanimously and then will be coming to the Board of Mayor Nalderman, and that is Resolution 2026-23, which is a resolution authorizing the City Department of Parks and Rec to apply for a Blue Cross Blue Shield Healthy Place Grant. Now, we've never won that grant, but hey, we're going to keep trying. just like they did in Shawshank Redemption. Remember that guy that kept writing the letters to the state for getting the library, and then he finally got it? Well, that's what we're going to keep doing. We're going to keep writing for the grant, and hopefully one day we'll get it. And you just got to believe, man. That's the thing. You got to believe it. So we recommended that to the board to vote for. Trash collection update. It is the summertime. We're having a few misses, but not any that will register, you know, that I need to come and complain about. So that was a good thing. Then we had a presentation on composting by one of our workers here in town, in our city. Sophia, and she did a really, I got to say, she really did a good job. And I encourage you guys to go back and look at the Public Works Committee on YouTube. And she was emphasizing a lot about composting. And that is something that every year when we talk about the trash pickup in town, Uh, we do talk about composting, but she, uh, brought a, a different light, um, about it. And, uh, it's, it is time for us to maybe kind of look at it, uh, in a different manner in a way that she brought forward. So I'm very proud of the fact that she did what she did. And, um, it took a lot of nerve to come in and, and tell us. And I, and I appreciate, I appreciate her and I appreciate the mayor's office having her work with us. And, uh, she did a really super good job. I'm proud of her. I want to let you know on Spadely predict, uh, pedestrian crossing project. Um, it's completed now, so I'm real excited. You know, that we have that, um, we have a couple one now we have on Saunders ferry road and we have another. on Walton ferry. So, uh, I'm real proud of, uh, of the board and, uh, the committee of getting that completed project. Cause it is important. It's a very serious safety issue. Uh, one to let the, uh, the board know as well as the constituency about Drake's Creek and stop 30 intersection project. Um, the HUD lines, which is a Hendersonville utility district, uh, relocation of the lines there has been completed. 100%. Our permit updates, we're supposed to get our final update on that on August 15th, and we just found out that our right-of-way acquisition on Drake's Creek and Stop 30 was ruled in our favor today. I believe it was in Chancery Court, but don't hold me to that, but I'm pretty sure it was. So We're moving right along with that project, and I just really appreciate the board working with the committee so well on that. Our light synchronization project in Hendersonville, that process is still ongoing. We've completed phase one of that, and we're going to get a report on phase two at our next meeting. So I'm really glad of that because that's been a long time coming. And I'm just looking forward to it. And I know the board is, too, because I know you guys are tired of me talking about it. Then we had on the LED streetlight conversion project, which we're having and pushing, we're about 81% through within the city of Intersville. And I've had a couple of calls saying, hey, our lights are different. And I go, yep, they are. They're better. So I'm real proud of that project. And like I said, we're about 81% through. Then we had a discussion of the ordinance about changing our time to 5.30 instead of 5 o'clock. And we're going to get a resolution together on that. And then we adjourned at 644. And Mayor, I guess that was about it. But I do want to say a couple, two things. It's important. Well, all my, this report is important, but these are real key to the people of Hendersonville. You've got to remember where, I know it's been hot, so check on your elderly and your neighbors regularly. and make sure they're okay. I mean, just go knock on the door. You know, if you don't see that air conditioner running with it being 100-degree weather, just check on them. I was just driving down the road, and I saw these doors open, and I found out that I stopped, you know, because that's not right. I mean, this kind of weather. So the point is I stopped and I knocked on their door and they were getting a new air conditioner. The son-in-law had gone to a Walmart to get the elderly people that lived there a new air conditioner. So it's important just kind of pay attention and look around. Make sure if they have an air conditioner that's a window and it's not running, There's probably something, there may be something wrong. Or if they've got an HVAC that's not running, just check on them, make sure everything's okay. You'll be glad that you did, I promise. Because it could be worse. And then about the rain. Now we have been getting rain lately. And we're checking, we're going out and checking a lot of the drainage projects to make sure that they're still working. There's some that that are not because of the age of the drainage area. And so, I'm sorry. Oh, okay. All right, yeah, we talked about Robin Hood this evening. But we're in the process of going through the ones that are not working completely and coming back to see what we can do to help. But about the rain, make sure, because this is important, You know, it's hard on a flash flood versus regular flood. It's hard for us to work on flash floods because that is completely different than regular flooding. And so I just want to bring everybody's attention to that in your own districts and your wards, that when people call, because I get calls from everyone, which is I don't mind at all. I get calls all the time. But when I go and look at them, You know, there's some I go, man, that's a flash flood. There's no way, you know, because we don't know, you know, when that will happen. So it's a big difference between flooding and flash floods. And then the other thing is I do want to say, and I've been in contact with the mayor, when it comes to tree limb pickup, we do not pick up tree limbs for businesses. And I know we've had some problems. I've had a constituent call that they've had a problem with these tree branches that hadn't been picked up in a while. And so I've been there several times. But they're business tree limbs, and the city does not pick up tree limbs for businesses. So if you do get a call on tree limbs, let them know if it's a business, we don't pick them up. Now, we do. We pick up as best as we can and as quickly as we can for our residences that live here in Hendersonville, but we don't pick up for businesses. So, Mayor, that's the end of my report.

Chairman Skidmore, thank you. Thank you. Chairman Sasse for the Finance Committee.

Thank you, Mayor. We had a jam-packed meeting today, but with only one ordinance on there. So there was a lot of discussion on other things that we proceeded with. But the one ordinance that we discussed was the same one that we approved today, and that was on the blessing boxes. And we were happy to move that to BOMA with a very positive recommendation. I really appreciate you all bringing it. Supporting our community, supporting your neighbors, being there for them, what you're doing is so valiant and just good, and following the mission of Christ, and I really appreciate that. You quoted one of my favorite scriptures when you said, to those who are given much, much is required of them. And so you're living that mission. I really appreciate it. So thank you very much. We've approved that tonight, and we can now put that to bed. So very happy about that. We also had a presentation from Renee, the president of the Arts Council. President, right, or chairman? President, yeah. Chairman of the Arts Council. Did a great job. She went over the Arts Festival. So we got a fantastic report from there. I'm happy to report that it's almost like breaking even for the city. Um, the first year of course was a big initial expense and every single year has trickled down to last year. It costs the city only about $8,000. Um, and we're hoping to bring that down even closer to zero this time. And every year it grows. There's more people that come in that are coming. It's up. It was up like 20, almost 20% or a little over 20% just last year alone and, or for 2026 alone. And 2027 is going to be even bigger. Uh, if you haven't been to the arts arts festival, I encourage everyone to, uh, to go, it'll be this spring. And so I'm sure we'll, we'll mention it as it gets closer as well. Um, and so that was a fantastic report and, uh, we were happy to hear it. Um, other than that, we also discussed the ordinance that we approved tonight for 2026, uh, dash oh eight. which was the ordinance adjusting the pay for our fire and police chiefs and how to pay for it. I feel like we came to a a solid answer. Um, it, there's not a lot of wiggle room in our budget. Uh, so we're going to be keeping a very close eye on it. This was only, uh, I, you know, we were $6,000 to the green. This amendment brought us, or this brought us to about 50, 14, 15,000 to the red. We're adjusting some things to make it flat so we're still, we're not in the red, but we're even. But we're just going to have to, it's playing with some numbers and we're just going to have to keep a very close eye on it each month. as we're progressing to make sure that we're putting those dollars where they need to be and making sure that our people are paid and that we're still able to pay the bills. And the rest of the meeting was adjourned before we could even get to it. So that's the end of my report. Thanks. Chairman Sasse, thank you. Alderman Martin, Planning Commission.

So I actually missed the last Planning Commission because I was in North Carolina on summer vacation with my kids. So I've I've taken a page from Lee Peterson's playbook, and I've asked Keith for you to read it.

Well, first, Lee, if you're watching, hello. Thank you, Keith. Thank you, Alderman. The Planning Commission met on Tuesday, July the 7th, and took care of a little bit of business. A few of the things that are notable was a site plan approval for New Maple Glen. That's right across the street where the brick building there will be torn down, and there will be Two buildings, one probably more office, one more retail, about 16,000 square foot in one, 12,000 in another. And then there's an outlot for up to like a 3,000 square foot restaurant over there. So there's a lot going over here across the street. Also approved a site plan for 216 Sanders Ferry Assisted Living. This was one everybody's probably somewhat familiar from a few years ago. that the time frame ran out on the site plan and they just needed to get it renewed. Also we had a really cool project, the YMCA pavilion addition. The YMCA got approved to put about 1,800 square foot of restrooms in a building right by the pool and also by the pool another building that's about closer to 2,800 square foot is going to be a community pavilion that they're going to use for summer kids programs and other, other types of activities. So that's pretty cool. Also, we approved changes to, uh, the, um, subdivision regulations, the planning commission approved that. And so with the subdivision regulations, the planning commission approves that it doesn't actually go to Boma, but the zoning ordinance does. And that's going to be coming to you at your, at your next, uh, uh, probably at your next meeting, uh, the zoning ordinance, we did have a public hearing and we had discussion. And we added some things, and so we're having it back on our agenda for next week. And then after that, it will be moving forward to the general committee. So love to see anybody that might want to be there next Tuesday when we're discussing that. And that's everything that occurred at the meeting.

Thank you. Thank you. Alderman Martin, thank you. Jesse, phone report.

We didn't get to go over this because we didn't hold our first meeting in July. So we'll just go over these numbers. Uh, the report begins on page one 52. So you'll see that our sales tax year to date is up 4.2%. Uh, that's a great thing for the city. Uh, interest earnings are down a little bit, uh, 17,000 from may 25 to may 26, but overall our interest earnings are up from what we projected. And then sales tax, when combined with permit fees, revenue from permit fees are actually down 1.7% from 25 to 26, and that's just due to less activity and less fees we've gotten on the permit side of things. General fund operating expenditures are up almost 5%. Um, that's typical of what we'd expect for this end of year to, to finish about 5% up. Uh, the PIP fund is going to start on page one 54 and go through one 55. Uh, next month, we'll see that the use of, um, some of these funds has increased as we're about a month behind on getting some of these bills, maybe two months behind on getting some of the bills. And so you'll see that we use up most of the fund, uh, the available budget. except on the parks budget, because that is related to Heritage Park, and so we disapprove the requisition for that, so we have a contractor lined up, so construction on Heritage Park is gonna start very soon. When you go to page 156 and 157, that's gonna show our public safety calls. Calls for service are up from the previous year. Fire calls are up, and if you look on page 157, There's a little graph for HFD fires worked. We're going to change this up a little bit to label it fires called, and then we're going to actually list the type of fires called that were reported on this report. So it should be a little more information. Not all these fires are actually fires worked. Some of them are just fires called. So we're just going to break it down a little more granular to show you what kind of calls HFD actually went out on. If you go to page 158, what we're seeing there is that residential activity just continues to trend down a little bit from the previous years. If you go to page 159, you'll just see the list of commercial projects that we approved. And so FIRE will have something like this where we just actually get granular and show you some lists, the actual items. Page 160 is all the events we already had in July. This is the end of July. But if you look on the bottom right-hand corner, you'll see there's a food truck festival coming August 15th. So that's going to be at Veterans Park from 4 to 8 in the evening, August 15th. So that food truck festival might be something to go out and participate in. Okay to get in you need to bring a can good or a box good. So bring that and then enjoy some food truck atmosphere. Should be a good time. If you go to page 161 you'll see both stormwater and paving. We've exceeded what we thought we would do in terms of projects completed. So Public Works did a great job on that. Some of this is just the timing of these projects. Some of the stormwater projects they were just able to do more than they anticipated doing. And then on page 162, we're going to just highlight vacancies here. You can see in FIRE there are zero vacancies. That's because we have our in-house academy going on right now. So we have five recruits in our in-house academy. So our in-house academy allows the recruits to graduate faster. And we don't have to retrain them when they come back from the state. And they will graduate with an EMS certification that they would typically have to wait to get once they joined our group. So it's been working really well. Police is up to four vacancies. That's just probably what we're going to see throughout the year. We're going to have a handful of vacancies in police as people come and go to those positions. And then one last thing that's not on the report, but if Jason would pull it up onto the screen. I just want to make BOMA aware of some of the kind of big ticket items that we will be seeing over the fall and the winter. We've talked about these from time to time, but I just wanted to make you aware. I don't want to put too many on. But this is a lot, just a lot that we have to chew through. So you can see every month we have a pretty big ticket item. In August, we're going to go through benefit analysis. We did our compensation. We're about wrapped up with benefits, so we're going to go through that in August. So Jason will present that and just kind of show you where we land in terms of how our benefits compare to other agencies. In September, we're going to dig into GNRC and the West Main Transportation projects. The funding update, as you know, we just received an enormous award from GNRC. Of the nine projects that were awarded in Middle Tennessee, we received six of them, so it's over $90 million worth of projects, and that's an 80% match that we're going to get through some federal funding. There are definitely strings attached with grant projects, but we're talking about receiving $70 million for these grant projects, which is incredible. And as time goes on, these projects will increase I'm sure in costs. So we're probably going to receive north of a hundred million dollars in these projects by the time that they're done. So we're going to go over that and kind of dig into that, what those projects are timelines. And some of those projects we already are working on. So we are actually in design on many of those projects because the board approved transportation improvements to the tune of $3 million for engineering. And so on three of the projects were already in the design and engineering phase of it. So these projects should move quicker than typically. In October, we're going to go over a limb collection analysis. I think there's some ways that we can do limb collection better. And so we want to discuss how we can do it better, how we can do it more efficient. Some of those ways may take more resources, but limb collection is a major component of what we do in terms of services that we give to residents. I think any way that we can enhance that is worthwhile, and I think we have some pretty good ideas between Trace and Steven and the guys in the field. We have some pretty good ideas on how we can make that program better. In November, we plan to have the facilities plan wrapped up, so have some proposals to you guys in terms of what we do, long-term facilities. That's mainly going to revolve around what we're going to do with the police station. We have an annex there that's in need of some rehab or demo. in the existing station that we have some needs at too. So we're going to present a facilities plan in November. We'll also talk about TCRS and the pension plan and kind of options for the future in December. We'll probably take a break. January, we're just going to review the health care plan. So we've been on the state's health care plan and we want to give the board an update how that is going under the state's health care plan in terms of what employees are choosing, what that cost is. I know this, I think we reported that the state had never had a double-digit increase in costs, except this year they're going to have their first double-digit increase in costs, which is the first year we're on the plan. So we just want to kind of keep you up to date on what those costs are looking like and what employees are choosing to go on, and then February we'll kick off the mid-year budget. So We're going to have a pretty big-ticket item kind of every month, and some of these items might take work sessions to work through, so I just kind of want to give you posted. We may switch kind of the dates around, but these are all the items we plan to bring by the end of February. So just so you know, these are in the works, and each of them are going to be probably some substantial conversations, so I guess be prepared.

Jesse, you have inspired at least two questions. Alderman Sasse.

Thank you. You mentioned the Fire Academy. I know we had discussed about other jurisdictions and other departments bringing in some new recruits into our Fire Academy. Are there any in this time around, or is that something that has been reviewed yet?

Gallatin and Goodlettsville both have recruits in the Academy. And some of the training has been shared between the agencies, too. So it's been working great.

So they're contributing to the cost of the training, right?

They're contributing to the instruction, yeah, the instructional training. Wonderful. Yes, sir. That's great.

Great job on that. Looking forward to that. And there's a lot of opportunity there. Thank you. Alderman Sasse, thank you. Alderman Evans.

Hate to admit it, I was going to ask the same question. I want a different answer. Go ahead. I want to follow up on this calendar. Can you send this to us?

Yes.

Just so we have it kind of as a where.

Absolutely. Like I said, we might move some of these dates around, but these are the big ticket items. I can send it out to everyone.

Thank you, Alderman Evans. Next on our agenda is executive session. I do not anticipate that we will take action when we return. The executive session can only include the 13 of us and our city attorney. Likely when we come back, and I'll say it will probably take us 20 to 30 minutes, a couple things to cover, likely when we come back we will probably adjourn. If we come back and choose to take action, that will require a two-thirds vote to amend the agenda to do that. I don't think that our city attorney is going to recommend on any of the items he's going to update us on that we take action. So, Jason, we do have to come back and actually adjourn publicly, but we're going to head over here for a few minutes. We already did it, Jason. Do we have to do it again? Okay, thank you. Sorry about that.