County Commission Agendas - Regular Meeting

There you go. This time I'd like to call to order the August 24, 2026 Jackson County Convention meeting. Thanks for our members of our singing river trail staff for being here today. And the opportunity is here, there. We're planning for Jackson County. We will get to that in our business portion of the meeting today. At this time, I'd like to ask Ms. Turner, our County Administrator, to please come to the stage.

Mr. Doherty?

Present.

Commissioner Kinnamer?

Present.

Commissioner Buckner? Commissioner McBride?

Present. We do have a quorum. If everyone would please stand and ask to offer invocations. And Commissioner McBride, you can lead. Thank you.

Let's pray together. God our Father, we come before you in this blessings and we're so thankful give you thanks for the natural beauty of the county that we live in in this part of the country we have the mountains we have the lakes we have rivers we have trees and forests and god we're just so blessed to live in this part of the country that that is so beautiful that you made it that way god we also pray that we will be good stewards of the the outdoors that you've given us to enjoy and to uh to use for our benefit. So God, we're thankful for all of these things. We're also thankful, God, for the people of this county. We pray you will continue to watch over us all and guide us. In Christ's name, amen.

Attention, salute, pledge.

In your packet is the agenda for tonight's meeting. We do have two items on new business that are a portion of the meeting, two items that we discussed in the last or fourth session. And as I mentioned earlier, we have a done item for discussion in our work session. With that, do I have a motion to approve the agenda for the commission meeting August the 24th, 2027? Second. On the motion, we have a second. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Motion carried. We don't have any awards or presentations and no comment tonight. We'll go directly into the new business portion of the meeting. In our last meeting, Our EMA director, Josh Whitcomb, made a recommendation to surplus a radio tower and that would translate into radio teams that are working in support of EMA. And I had the opportunity to discuss this with him. They think that that could be very useful and helpful in what they're doing with their support of an emergency management office. So do I have a motion to surplus the radio tower for EMA? I make that motion. We have a motion. We have a second. Second. Any questions? Discussion? If not, all in favor say aye. Motion carries. Thank you. Second item we have is regarding the 2027 county transportation plan. Our county engineer briefed that to us at the last work session. You do have the copy sheet of the transportation in your packets. This will be certainly forwarded to ALDOC, and also it has to be publicly posted for the public. I'll give you a chance to look over that. So do I have a motion to approve the FY2027 County Transportation Plan? Motion. We have a motion. We have a second. Second. We have a second. Any questions or discussion? I just want, since Mr. Campbell's not here, I just wanted, for the record, to make sure that as we make this public, this is for safety and paving upgrades. And so it's a very comprehensive program.

And so when you look at the mileage and divide the numbers, it's more than just putting asphalt on the road.

Yeah, this is, in fact, using the federal exchange funds we give as well as the Rebuild Alabama funds to support that federal grant that we have. That is specifically for the purpose of redoing a nine roads across Jackson County for those exact purposes, making it safer. So any other questions, comments? If not, all the favors say aye. Uh-huh. Thank you. That's the last item in our new business portion of the movie. We'll now move to the work session. And we are fortunate tonight to have the Singing River Trail team here tonight to give us a brief on the Jackson, the plan that they have been working now. I think this has been going on for a little over a couple of years. For the opportunity to create some trails through Jackson County that will certainly be of great benefit to us. So let me turn it over to you guys.

Good evening, Commission. Thanks for having us tonight to tell you about the Singing River Trail and this plan that we have here that Ron will tell you a little bit more about later. But my name is Scott Graham. I'm the new trail development project manager. I've been on the job now for about three months. Before that, I was a project manager for Ducks Unlimited in Louisiana. But I'm originally from North Alabama and glad to be home and take part in such an amazing project that's really going to transform North Alabama and Jackson County. Because as you all are well aware of, Jackson County is probably one of the prettiest counties in North Alabama. And Singing River Trail really wants to help you all protect that and enhance the outdoor recreation opportunities through it. And so if you're not familiar with the trail, it's going to be a 200 plus mile long greenway system that runs across North Alabama, closely paralleling the Tennessee River. Singing River is what Native Americans call the Tennessee River. We've got a neat little story in here about how that came about if you want to read it. But what you have in front of you is just a summary of the plan. The full plan is about 80 pages that we can get you electronically if you'd like. But eventually the Singing River Trail is going to run from Bridgeport here in Jackson County across the state all the way to Florence. It's going to connect multiple small towns and large communities such as Huntsville, Decatur, Florence. and be able to increase recreational assets, provide economic opportunities for small businesses, provide health benefits to local residents as well as visitors alike. So it's really just a win-win for everyone to have these greenways and trails on the ground in your county. The reason we're here tonight is to ask y'all to formally adopt this plan. to review it and to have it in your back pocket so that when opportunities come available for funding and whatnot, seeing River Trail is able to take advantage of those opportunities without delay and actually put trails on the ground and make this plan go from paper to reality. So with that, like I said, I've been on the job for only three months now, but Brian King with GMC did all the public outreach, which was really extensive to develop this plan. That was all done before I got here. So you can give you a little bit more detail about that. But I would encourage you all to review it and ask us any questions while we're here tonight. And Brian can take it from here and maybe give you some details about the plan and what all we have in store for Jackson County. Is there anyone?

Anyone?

I'm Brian.

Can you hear me?

All right. lead planner for Goodwin Mills K. Wood, vice president of planning for GMC. First of all, it has been an absolute honor to get paid to come explore your county. And I'm hooked. And I just want to make sure that other people have that experience and come hooked with this county. The prayer to open us up was a great segue into, you know, me preaching to the choir. You know what you've got is a question of what do we do with that? And what we want to talk about today is making sure you understand the importance of trails moving forward to unlock the tremendous amount of assets you've got here in the county. I want to talk quickly about why trails in Jackson County, touch a little bit on the process, highlight the route overview, then talk about how we use this plant. So again, just going to beat the dead horse. Your county is the most unique county in the state of Alabama, hands down in my opinion. comes to topography, no question. When it comes to natural resources, when it comes to public land, I believe you've got the most public land percentage-wise of any county in the state. And not to forget the So how do we connect those? How do we make the most return on that? And how do we make that most accessible to our current residents? How can that apply to growth, both economically and residentially? And how do we incorporate it into what we do So, again, you know, we couldn't have asked for a more unique place to do a trail master plan. These are endless, and they're anchored by some phenomenal small towns that really pair nicely with this rural trail master plan. If you flip to this page with the circles on it, why are trails important? Trails have a massive return on investment. And when I talk about return on investment, I speak of that holistically. So I speak of the quality of life they provide, assets to tourism. They increase property values. They create jobs. They allow you to attract employers that may be on the fence. And studies have surprisingly literally shown that there is stronger community pride when trails are present in a community. Going back to actual literal return on investments. We have looked at studies across the country and studies have shown that even in rural areas, return on investment is at least 72% of construction costs in the main place. So significant return on We're not just talking big cities. We're talking communities and counties of your scale. That 72% return on investment is significant. Even more significant is the Silver Comet Trail, one highlight. It's got a little more density to it, but they're looking at over 400%. return on investment list, which is astronaut. So the benefits of trails is immense. And you are at a time now where trails can be incorporated into your processes, into conversations with your county engineer, into your grant decision-making, And I want to talk a little bit at the end about how we're offering to help with that. So when we think about trails, I want to challenge you to consider thinking about trails like you do industrial site development or just in industrial recruitment because the benefits are equal and they both followed the vaccine, but the quality of recruitment you're able to get if you've got natural assets and the trails to connect them is significant. Does that make sense? So next, we've just got a couple more highlights for you. This last one in particular, Swamp Rabbit, It's a very famous study, but not necessarily as rural as the trails we're talking about today. But Tammy Trace Trail is a great example for y'all to look at. 31-mile rural trail connecting five towns. Because of this, farmers markets opened, concerts and festivals started happening. And they have documented their annual impact specifically before and after. And they found that the annual ROI local impact is $2.8 million. Turning the page here to your proposed trail route. First of all, I want to just highlight the process that we've been through. This has been a long time coming, but the process needs to continue. I just want to say that. It has been robust to bring us together here today. We've had about 20 meetings. And those meetings included the public. They've been across the county. They've been with very enthusiastic people. They've been with very enthusiastic elected officials, mayors. They've been with hunters. So we've met with at least 100 people throughout the county. And because of that robust engagement, this trail alignment that you're seeing here has changed over a dozen times. I don't know specifically how many trail alignment, where the trail is actually traveling, how many times it's changed, but it has changed a lot based on every single meeting we've heard. So this trail is your community's trail. Does that make sense? So what you have here is in the yellow is the main spine where Ms. Graham was talking about. This is the proposed route from Bridgeport beyond, actually, all the way to Gurley. And so this main spine is designed to be that main corridor that connects essentially state line to state line. What is unique about this county-wide trail master plan is essentially you've gotten two trail plans in one. This hasn't happened in any other county in SRT's footprint. We just couldn't help ourselves when we noticed how much public land we got. And so with that, you have a proposed extension natural trails through puffin plants. This is extremely important for what we call low-hanging fruit because to take a, just to be candid and kind of talk through this, a lot of implementation has been focused on the cities because that's where the infrastructure is, that's where You've got a tighter network of destinations. And so trail connections can be built at two miles or less to get from point A to point B. With the county, that's a different story, isn't it? because the length that we're talking about in a main spine at least is a lot longer. And so you need much more of a trail culture to be built instead of that needs to happen prior to you deciding for a $10 million expenditure, for instance. You're not building a trail to nowhere. So you naturally need to nurture and we need to nurture together a more robust community of outdoor centric destinations, which you certainly have, but we just need to continue to nurture Jackson County as that destination and continue to build you as that trail resource. And we see in doing that, we need to start realistically with the natural trail system. Does that make sense? The cost there is much smaller. The network of potential vendors is much greater, and you can really plug into a more robust partnership as opposed to building a trail on a county road. With that said, I think it's still very important to try to identify funding annually to look at state senators' discretionary funding and the like, and we'll talk about that. But I just wanted to emphasize that the natural trail systems in the northern part of the county is a logical and important first step to help you build

trail command.

If we look at North Georgia, for instance, you know, they're, they're just as rural as we are. And, and the only possible to that landscape is Jackson County. And we can see the, the economic impact of tourism, uh, in North Georgia. And I really want, um, and hope you agree that that level or some level of elevated outdoor tourism would be a huge impact to your local citizens. And because you are speculating between two very prominent metros that are full of outdoor enthusiasts, They just need a reason. And we just need to market what resources we're able to scrap together and slowly build that. Because if they come in on the weekend, spend some money, and go home, that is the definition of the most return on investment for your community, for your values, for your people. for your citizens' quality of life, because tourism is the greenest form of economic development there is. And by green, I mean money and also just ease of operations. We all good on that? We've outlined a couple of ground typologies here. This is not extensive. I just wanted to throw in a couple of what you'll see in the full master plan. We've got buffered side paths. We've got on-street improvements. And then we've got low-traffic farm-to-market revs. But what do we do now? Again, this is a formal request to adopt the Jackson County Trail Master Plan. This plan is a tool and not a mandate. There is no money obligations tied to adopting this plan. There is no money obligated to adopting this program. So as a tool, this serves to, as a roadmap for trail investment, this positions us to go after state and federal funding, including TAP, ATRIP, RISE, and a number of other things. funding opportunities, including even earmarks. This helps guide the county engineer. This operates as a reminder to what I call the big ones policy. If we're doing a lightning, it does not hurt to remember this. Just at a quick glance, talk to somebody and see if there is an opportunity for . This also is just a reference point for trail opportunities to staff, to you as a commission, and to future commissioners to encapsulate all the work that's been done. And again, this is a plan and these are trails that were built by your citizens. So what I want to also say is with this process, we're not done. We're not done. We would like to continue to work with you SRT is a phenomenal group. Their mission is to share grand opportunities. Their mission is to not plan projects. This is a fraction of what their goal is. Their goal is to put trails on the ground. And so this is just a means to it. Does that make sense? They're not in the business of making 80 page documents. They're currently building, doing construction documents and signing about 70 miles of trails across the state right now. And we just want to make sure that we're putting you in best position possible to be next on that list. So we've already had several conversations at the statehouse about Jackson County and the potential to unlock some of that public land for trails for recreational use that would add to the hunting that you're already experiencing. And we just want to reiterate again that we would like you to consider us almost like on-call staff. Please, please, we will reach out and ask if you're interested in opportunities, but we would like to come back and do updates. We would like to just have a working relationship with you because we talked about the process like it's over when a plan is adopted. It's not. We would like to invite you to join us in our passion for trails and even even a certain percentage, and just use us. We're asking you to use us. Your resources are immense, and a big next step is to just peel off those low-hanging fruit opportunities and put some trails on the ground. I'm open to, I'm not going to, dive into the specific routes. It's 70 miles plus probably another 70 plus the natural trails that we've outlined. But any questions for me outside of AJ? That's what I'm told. A quick question. Will any of the trail routes

involved using our county roads as a portion of the trail where they all meet in the side of the trail. Or the road, excuse me.

Long term, they would all be side paths. Short term, we would be interested in throughout your engineering process to identify potential opportunities for bike lanes. So, but long-term, the answer is protected side use.

So, like, I'm looking at this map, and you said you didn't want to discuss routes, but down, I guess at 67 down the Langston Road, is that like a spur?

What state are you on?

I'm on this state. Oh, okay. And you had like a, you had like a spur. What box is it? dotted line right along the Tennessee River where it's leading down the section or below section there. That's the lengths of roads to the southeast. Yeah, it runs down along the river. Yeah. That's right. Is that what we're finding there?

So we did map out going to section Um, we're also working, uh, uh, Marshall County. It is, uh, it will be the last county trail plan and we're, uh, and so that will be firmed up, um, in, in our second pass, but, but yes, that, uh,

Yeah, I don't think I'm making myself clear. This one is that right when you cross the bridge, you would turn right and go along the river side.

Correct.

Would y'all be going down that road or to the side of the – because there's not a lot of room on that road. There's not. Not a lot at all.

The connection between Scottsboro and Guntersville will be – Will be a challenge. It's gorgeous, but it will be a challenge.

I want that area to be utilized. It's beautiful and we we're all for it, but I that is my favorite route. I love that route. I grew up there.

Yes, sir. We've looked at that and and we we went so far as as to price out. Extending the. Riprap you know because there's a lot of not bridges but. You know, rip rap, highway cut throughs and, and Guntersville has, has been surprisingly successful at, at getting those done. Um, so there, there is a strong local press, uh, precedent for, for that route.

Okay. Other questions? Let me ask, I know you've been working across the states. You've talked to some of your successes so far. That is, you've worked with some of the communities. I think you guys have been involved with some of them for a couple of years.

So we've had a lot of success with existing trails on the ground that we're going to sign those. put our signs out and bring awareness to the trail and bring that brand to those communities so that when opportunities come to build new trails, they'll be familiar with what Singing River Trail is and how that can come to their community and benefit it. But in particular, we've got some trails on the ground in Florence. We've got some trails that are wrapping up in Leeton, Alabama right now. That's a downtown corridor segment. It was funded through a TAP grant. And Decatur, or before we get to Decatur, we have Portland that's about to go to construction. That's another downtown segment. It's going to be sidewalk, street improvement, connecting downtown to one of their parks. And Decatur, we actually had an $18 million grant that got clawed back, unfortunately, through Doge. But before it all got clawed back, we had $2 million allocated already. And so that's going towards research and a study to see how we can update existing trails within Decatur, particularly on the Bill Sims Trail, which is an existing trail route that Decatur wants to improve. We have existing trails on the ground in Athens, as well as the Richard Martin Trail that will connect from the Tennessee line. down to Athens. And then Huntsville, they're one of our main supporters, our original supporters. There's an extensive amount of greenways there that we're working to connect with the city of Huntsville, as well as the Land Trust of North Alabama, which is a partner through Huntsville to help get those greenways built by helping with eastern acquisition. And then Gurley is actually about to take off construction as well. They have another top grant to do a downtown segment. It's going to go from their downtown to a park. And here in Jackson County, we're making some headway in Bridgeport, as well as here in Scottsboro, talking with local officials like yourself. But Jackson County is one of our newest counties, so we're still getting the ball rolling on a lot of projects here. And like he said, we do have our master plan to be completed of our eight counties. That'll be in Marshall County. We hope to get that funded and get that research and outreach going here in the next couple of months, get our last master plan done in Marshall County. That'll give us a plan for all eight counties to work in.

I've never even been in a plan for Scottsboro. I had opportunities across the county. So you're integrating, I think, Tennessee River Line into your plan a little bit. That's correct.

Right. So Tennessee River Line is a great counterpart to us. They're their own separate nonprofit, as you know, but We often get confused because we kind of have the same, I guess, mission to increase outdoor recreation and whatnot, but they stay on the river. We stay on the land for the most part, but wherever we meet on the riverfront, we do work together to do co-branding and awareness for our trails and make sure that we're not duplicating efforts. So we're in close communication with Tennessee River Line.

My last question, it seems, and don't tell me if I'm wrong, For you to be able to go after federal and state funding, you need adoption of your plan. That's correct.

That's correct. As well as an updated plan. So we're actually updating our original master plan right now. That was the original idea for this whole trail, which was only three counties to connect the Calhoun campuses and Huntsville, Decatur, as well as the Athens State University campus. So that was Limestone, Madison, and Morgan counties. It blew up from three counties now to eight counties because people are so on board with the idea. And so we're actually updating that master plan here this fall. And we can, like you said, take that to go get some bigger funding from the state as well as federal funding. So one of our internal goals for the Singing River Trail is to have 60% of the plan done in five years. And the way that that's going to be done is through our existing trails that are on the ground that we are going to put signs on and activate those trails. So it sounds ambitious, but it's very doable. And so we're going to hope to have that done in five years. And then once that's done, we can move forward with maybe a bigger ask for funding to do some more connections within towns and then connecting towns to each other.

All right. And you have a question?

And with their help, you know, it's existing trail networks, but really they're, they're opening up, um, trails that may not be known by a lot of people, um, to a much bigger audience. And so, so the, that trail usage just goes up and down. And those studies have shown that people who use trails, um, stay longer, spend more locally, um, And then again, they go home.

And y'all maintain the trails, or y'all hire that? How does that work?

So like you said, these trails are your community trails. This plant is not set in stone. Like you said, the alignments change. So once it goes to construction and we decide on alignment, It'll probably most likely be down to the community level to maintain these shows is the majority of them within city limits are going to be on a public easement. Right. And so one of our future goals to the same room chose to have a maintenance endowment that we can help cities with. That's definitely something we want to do and help with.

But and when we do get to that point, we we do fact. when we do get to that point. But again, early wins here is continuing to work with the state, being able, you know, we've got another meeting coming up The date's not set yet, but to be able to say, you know, David, this trail was made by the county, it's just been adopted by the county, and for the state to truly know that we're supporting y'all when we talk to them, that's really important.

Okay. If there are no more questions... They're asking that we will adopt the King and River Trail plan for Jackson County. It's not a financial obligation. Are we okay to put this on the new business for the next meeting? Okay, we will do that. Really appreciate you guys being here, and thanks for your work.

Thanks for your time. Yes, thank you all for having us. Thank you.

Thank you. It's the last item in our work session. We'll go to the county. Okay, thank you. Sheriff, anything else? Okay. So we'll now move from the county from the commission, Commissioner Bookman.

I just want to thank everybody for coming out today and I'll have anything else to add. Thank you, sir.

District four, Mr. McBride.

Back home. Thank you to all our boys for all the hard work that's been done in our county. Thank you guys for coming and presenting to us.

District two, Mr. Kim.

I'd like to remind you of a fellow, a little girl that had an accident. Been a good while. She's in Texas at a rehab center. The reports we're getting is she is making some health improvements.

I was able to go down and attend the ACCA conference last week, had a good networking session with the other commissioners and had a good session on learning about some of the new laws, both laws and ways those affect the county and looking forward to sharing what's learned to the rest of the commission. okay i don't have anything to add with that uh we will uh next meeting is scheduled for september 14th uh he will be here uh this time we need to move into an executive session to have a discussion regarding pending litigation so do i have Thank you.