Board of Commissioners - Regular Meeting

I'd like to welcome everybody to the regular scheduled City Commission meeting held at the Municipal and Safety Building. It's Thursday, June 4th at 6 o'clock. I'd like to call the meeting to order. For the first order of business, I'd like to welcome Pastor Alan Evans with Faith Miracle Sanctuary for the invocation and the pledge. If everybody would stand.

Father, we come to you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. We submit this meeting to you. We ask your blessings upon our leaders today, Lord. We pray, Father, that you give them wisdom and guidance and direction for every decision that has to be made tonight. We also pray for everyone that will be stepping up to the microphone tonight, Lord. Father, that everything will be shared, decent and in order, and that everything would be in alignment with your will, your purpose, and be glorified this night in Jesus' name. Amen. 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.

Ms. Ball?

Yes, commissioners. The first order of official business is to consider approval of the minutes for the regularly scheduled city commission meeting held on Thursday, May 21st, 2026.

Move approval. Second. Ms. Lause?

Commissioner Fowler?

Yes.

Commissioner Goetz? Yes. Commissioner Wise? Yes. Vice Mayor Brock? Yes. Mayor Cox? Yes.

Second, the second item for consideration is presentations of proclamations. The first proclamation, well, the only proclamation we have tonight is a celebration of life and community day. Accepting this proclamation is Doris Keff, I'm sorry if I mispronounced that, founder and director of Celebrate Life Union Mission Inc.

There we go. Thanks for being here. I'd love to read this proclamation to you. Is it Yaun or is it? Yaun. Okay, Yaun. Whereas Celebrate Life, Yaun, mission was founded in 2016 with the desire to serve low-income and homeless members of our community through celebrations honoring the birthday of those individuals with food and fellowship. Whereas those quarterly celebrations allowed the individuals to feel seen, heard, and valued by others. whereas these celebrations have expanded to include any life event a community member cherishes and wishes to recognize and whereas this non-profit organization has doubled its membership in the year since its founding and expanded its services to the community to include graduation celebrations for the community's young people, and supporting Black History Month with special programming, and where it's the goal of Celebrate Life, Yahoon Mission, to bring the entire community together to realize they are loved and appreciated. Now, therefore, I, mayor of the city of Johnson City, Tennessee, do hereby proclaim June 13th, 2026. Celebrate Life and Community Day in Johnson City, Tennessee, and encourage the citizens of Johnson City to value, respect and celebrate their neighbors. Thank you for being here. Do you have anything to share about it? Could you tell us a little more about the organization?

Yes. Thank you, Mayor and Commissioner. Thank you so much. From the bottom of my heart, thank you so much for recognizing Celebrate Life Day. And we just appreciate and we are so grateful for the honor and the support. And we want to continue to celebrate our community and continue to bring them together to just value life. And this shows that we all can put hands together and bring hope to one another and that's through birthdays so we invite everyone and i just want everyone to remember that uh life is not counted by the number of years that we live it is uh uh go by the values that we cherish here don't say it you know emotional but uh Yeah, it's by the value that we cherish and the moment that we share with one another and the life that we value. We just give to others, lifting others up. So anyway, sorry for my emotion. But I just want to invite everyone. It's going to be on June the 13th at Carver Recreation Center. And you can bring a gift card for Walmart, $5, and give to someone who had a birthday and didn't have anyone to celebrate with. So that's bringing love and sharing the Christ love that we all have and bringing our community together. So that's what this will have for. We'll have music and we'll have people, you know, just saying, transforming their life from, You know, being down from homeless and giving their life back and getting back into the community. Because our community, if we can value our lives, we can value our family, we can value our community, we can value our country. So that's all you're bringing it together, and that's what it's all about. So I invite you all to please join and look forward to seeing you. And thank you all so much.

Thank you so much. You said it was June 13th. Thank you so much.

The next item on the agenda is public comment for items on the agenda. The first person up to speak is Robert King.

Hi, Mr. King. As you come on up, I'm going to I'm just going to remind everybody, we have three minutes for public comment for items germane to the agenda. This is a little separate from public hearing, which we will have on a couple of items tonight.

Even though three minutes are not in the king jeans, I'll do my very best. We'll keep you there. I am Robert King. I am an owner and resident of Hopper Road. My wife is here. She lives there with me by her graces to me. I'm going to make my points as quickly as I can because of the limits. The first thing is we're not against development. The second thing is we are concerned about development that has the implications this does. Hopper Road is a winding hilly road with very few places that you can, well you can't pass anybody unless you use a ditch and some people have. And I think that to put 37 new homes, 37 driveways because we're going to be coming into what looks like a horseshoe on your drawings and that at the end of it's where my our house is and they will be coming out above our house and below our house in and out of the community. It reminds me, if you've ever seen the movie Zulu, the way the Zulus went after the British at the Battle of Rorke's Rift. We're trapped in there, and that's what the Zulus do. You can only go one way, and you have no way out. We don't, if we don't use those ways. I think that there's another issue with a bill recently passed by the legislature which leaves the zoning of unincorporated areas to the county. And that needs to be resolved. And I hope it can be resolved here and by agreement and changing the zoning to an R2A. Less place people coming in and out of there. And I would advise you to do what a judge might say. Take a view. Go down to Killer Curve on Indian Ridge, just below the school. Drive up the... Hopper Road and cross killer hills one after another. You cannot see from my driveway what car is coming down the road. I will point out something that maybe is not fair, but a number of these people are senior citizens and a couple of young families with kids that I see run out to get balls and things all the time. There's no sidewalk as a buffer. This should be turned down, and if it isn't turned down, it needs to be redone to an R2A. It also needs to be many improvements. Somebody asked me the other day, are they going to cut down those hills? I was astounded at the last meeting to find out they're going to leave it to the developers. So far, the developers have done nothing at the DR Horton areas, and we are begging you for help so that Killer Hill and Killer Curve don't end up getting an official sign. Thank you. I appreciate your consideration. Thanks, Mr. King.

The next speaker is Ann Goins.

Hi there. If you don't care to state your name.

I'm Ann Goins. I live at 151 Hopper Road. And I just returned from Williamsburg yesterday. And when I looked around that community, which has been there a couple of hundred years before we were, they still have these huge plots of trees of green areas where they've carefully planned so that they would remain there. I'm afraid in a few years, five, ten years from now, we're going to look around and say, what's happened? We don't have any trees except maybe in our parks. There might be a few yards that still have trees, but it's not allowing for development so that we still have a lot of green areas. It's not doing any of us a favor. cram so many homes into one area, and that is now occupied by deer and wild turkeys, and I hate to see all that go. But again, the road condition, we have probably one of the worst roads in the town. I think maybe Browns Mill might rival us. but and i understand that there was a development considered for that area that was turned down and i think partly because of the road certainly that should be a consideration at hill uh hopper so i appreciate it thank you thanks for being here and speaking miss goins the next speaker is tony treadway

Mr. Treadway, if you don't care to step up and state your name.

Hello, I'm Tony Treadway. I live on St. Ann's Court in the neighborhood. Here we are once again for an R2C discussion. It seems like deja vu again. You guys were very wise previously in turning down on the same property 105 townhomes. You were smart, and why did you do it? Because it was too dense and because Indian Ridge Road and Hopper Road were hazardous. Okay? So here we are again. Same developer with another development zone just like Archer's Point. Archer's Point has 25-foot front yards. It allows that. Do we really, in my neighborhood, want more of that? No one here. How many people here are interested in this Hopper Road thing? Raise your hand. It'll grow in the second reading and I'm sure the third reading. What I'm urging you to do, and you've heard it previously, number one, you need to stop it. Just stop it. If you're not going to stop it, rezone it. It's still too dense. It's too much, too close to something just like it. Look, you're going to be discussing tonight a property tax increase. It's tough. You've got a lot of demand on infrastructure all across the city. I can't imagine the investments that you're making. So why don't we just move the discussion to other properties across the city who are already zoned R2C and have adequate infrastructure so you don't have to make such a big investment. That would be the wise thing. Another wise thing. What's really shortage in Johnson City is nice neighborhoods with large properties that's going to bring the city higher property tax income. That's the shortage in Johnson City. It's certainly not R2C. We've had a belly full of it. Have you had a belly full of R2C coming before you every meeting? You've seen the kind of destruction that happens with these. We all know the weaknesses of D.R. Gordon. Right now they have a $1.2 billion lawsuit reserved because of lawsuits against them because of shoddy construction. They've already proven, they prove every day, the ilk that they are. Let's preserve our neighborhood. Let's make super wise decisions and let's shut it down tonight. You can vote tonight to send this back to planning or just say no. Save all of us two more meetings about this because it's going to be the same topic. Thank you very much. I really appreciate it. Thanks, Mr. Treadway.

We have three other individuals that are signed up to speak on the budget, but it's also a public hearing on the budget tonight.

Yes, and if those individuals would rather wait until public hearing and kind of speak in that area, they're welcome to. I don't know how best to handle that. We can say their name, but sometimes it's better to have those kind of in the same item amongst each other. And so.

Sure, I'm happy to read the three names. The first is Michael Sterling. Second, Hannah Pugh. And then third is Danielle Goodrich.

So if you guys would rather wait since it is a public hearing to kind of have those together, I'd say we go ahead and. Yeah, we'll let them go first in public hearing. Well, we have a public hearing on the budget already tonight, and so you don't have to sign up separate necessarily for the item. So you're welcome to speak now or kind of when we're discussing the budget as a whole. Okay. We'll go ahead and call the names, Ms. Ball.

Sure. Michael Sterling. Okay.

I'm Mr. Sterling. If you don't care to state your name. My name is Michael Sterling. I live at 2814 Oak Cliff Court, Johnson City, Tennessee, 37601. The reason I'm here tonight is because I'm against the aquatic club, whatever you want to call it. In 2023, I came before you about the tax increase for the 25 cents for Town Acres School, Infrastructure and Roads, and 911 EMS. which you generated approximately $5 million. Now we proposed another 28 cents in three years. I told you then I'd see you. And what's it for? An aquatic pool cost of about $37 million and a tax increase of 28 cents, which is equal to about $7 million in additional taxes. The tax increase could affect escrow accounts. It can affect business leases. It can affect rent directly. It affects the bottom line for people that has business. Why? Because when the guy that owns the building, it's automatically they're going to pay that tax. the business owner is. That cuts from his bottom line. That raises everything. Price of gas is almost $4. $100 doesn't go far enough in a grocery store. And here, you want to pop us for $0.28. I understand it. The total cost of the taxpayer could be as high as $16 million this fall because the first $0.25 also goes in line with the last $0.28 that you want to put in effect. That's not right. Before raising property taxes, I asked the Commission to compare the lower-cost attorneys, including repairing existing facilities, partnerships and sponsorships, a phased plan at a later date and time. A permanent tax increase should be reserved for clear public necessities. This is not a necessity. It's a want. It's what somebody wants, but not necessarily a necessity. such as Benefit and Science Hill High School, Liberty Bell, and Indian Trail. They'll get used from it because where Freedom Hall is, and if you redo Freedom Hall, it's central to where they're at. The upgrade could give the pool another 8 to 10 years of life. That's pretty good revenue back over a 10-year period, and it's a fraction of the overall cost. And I will say this much. My subdivision, the average house, when I built my house was $78,900. Now it's $355,000. It's four times the amount. That's what they say the houses are worth because that's what they're selling for. You take somebody that's on a fixed income, older person, your grandmother, your uncle, your sister, whoever. You take $40 a month from them at that rate. That's groceries. It's gas. It's medicine. You can run them out of town because of taxes. That's all I have to say. You have a good day. Thank you.

Thanks for being here.

The next speaker is Hannah Pogue.

If you don't care to come up, state your name.

Hannah Pogue. Okay, hi. So I wrote this all down. I'm going to try to make it within this time. Okay, hi, my name is Hannah Pogue. I'm here to speak about my reservations regarding the proposed JC Aquatic Park. So I have three points. The first one is, would an aquatic park be awesome? Absolutely, 100%. It would be awesome for everyone here. Number two would be, would it be accessible to everyone? Now this question creates a problem for me. So I have over eight experience of active expert level communicating with the local parks and rec. And I have literally no faith that the current department could manage that space fairly and equitably. They have proven to me over and over again that they refuse to allow access to the programs and then they will hide behind whichever policy fits their agenda. They have effectively discontinued sports in Johnson city for 12 to 17 year old girls. Parks and Rec has disengaged the public by limiting access to their programs. If they are in charge of a pool complex, why would their decisions and policies suddenly benefit the community as a whole? They have and continue to build parks that do not represent the needs of this community. The two basketball hoops and the locked bathroom at Kiwanis Park do not draw the interest of teenagers. The mountain bike paths are sort of cool. but I personally know three out of 100 children who have mountain bikes. When the community services do not engage the youth, do you know what does engage the youth? It is drugs, sex, and violence. No one here today seems to understand that when these kids who do not fit into a box are idle, everyone in the future in this community and widespread will pay the consequences for that. They do not adequately maintain the existing parks or facilities within those parks. And by the facilities, I mean that the park bathrooms are falling apart, disgusting, unclean. Even when they're freshly cleaned, they are disgusting. This goes for the new and old structures from anywhere from Boone Lake to Civitan Park. So there is money that's being spent on maintenance, but where is the maintenance? I don't know. Number three is could $37 million be spent elsewhere? Could be better spent elsewhere. And that money could definitely be spent on sidewalks, on crosswalks, on speed bumps, on bike lanes, on urban parks designed for children over 10, up to 100 years old, okay? On at-risk educational and job training centers and to bring back the neighborhood cleanup. It could also go on external audits for the police department. and on improved public transit. And I would also have a question of who is loaning the proposed bond? Who is going to own that bond that Johnson City is trying to borrow from? Okay, again, I'll be here later.

Thank you for being here. And yes, we'll have a public hearing here shortly.

Next speaker is Danielle Goodrich.

Ms. Goodrich, if you don't care to come up, state your name.

Hi, everybody. Danielle Goodrich. I'm the chair of the Washington County Republican Party. Thank you for your service. I'm here to talk about the Aquatic Center and also the proposed tax increase. The proposed Aquatic Center project raises major concerns about priorities, long-term debt, of taxpayer exposure and government expansion during a difficult economic period. The feasibility study outlines a large scale aquatic complex projected to cost tens of millions of dollars. But one of the biggest concerns for taxpayers is that the publicly discussed numbers may only represent the beginning of the total project cost. The estimated $55 million cost, including financing interest, reportedly covers only the first three planned phases of development. If all phases are ultimately completed and financed similarly, the total taxpayer burden could reasonably exceed $100 million over time. For many residents, that changes the conversation entirely. Instead of asking, should the city build a new poll, The question becomes, should taxpayers commit to a potentially nine-figure recreation expansion in a hard economy? Taxpayers pay three times. One of the strongest fiscal conservative objections is that residents would effectively pay for the project multiple times. First, through public debt and financing. Second, through operational subsidies when revenues fall short. Third, through memberships and user fees just to access the facility. The city's plans reportedly relies heavily on membership sales and usage fees to help support operations. That means taxpayers would finance construction, assume debt risk, and still pay additional recurring costs to use the facility. For many conservatives, that violates the principle that taxpayers should not be asked to both subsidize and repurchase access to government recreation amenities. I would ask that you put this to a vote, get it on a referendum, and let taxpayers weigh in. The facility is projected to lose money every year. Perhaps the most damaging fiscal argument is this. According to the project's own projections, the aquatic center is expected to operate roughly at a $750,000 annual operating deficit. That means even optimistic revenue assumptions still do not cover costs. Taxpayers remain responsible for outgoing subsidies. And when we look at the alternative, where it would be a one-term cost to fix the Freedom Hall pool for $750,000, that looks like the better investment. Taking on $55 million to potentially $100 million in total debt obligations while operating the replacement facility at an ongoing loss would not be a good option. That comparison becomes politically powerful because the numbers mirror each other, approximately $750,000 to repair the existing pool versus approximately $750,000 annual losses under the new facility model. From a conservative budgeting perspective, the obvious question becomes why abandon a repairable public asset in favor of a dramatically more expensive system that still requires perpetual subsidy? Debt today means less flexibility tomorrow. Large recreation projects do not exist in isolation. Every dollar committed is to debt service, facility operations, staffing, utilities, and maintenance. Again, I would ask that you put it on a referendum and let the people weigh in. Thank you.

Thanks, Danielle.

Mayor, the next item for consideration is the consent agenda.

Start to my right, see if there's anything to be pulled. Commissioner Fowler.

I don't have anything.

Vice Mayor Brock. And Commissioner Wise.

It would be worth hearing from Chief Bell on a number of the grant opportunities that the fire department is asking us to vote on tonight.

That was my only item as well.

That's the main one too. Chief, if you want to come up. I think that's most of them.

Actually, 6.1.1 and it's just a quick overview of the federal standards we have to meet now.

Sure. Item 6.1.1 is to consider approval of the updated Johnson City Transit Substance Abuse Policy. And Jeff Rollins with the Transit Department is here to answer any questions you have.

Good evening, Commissioner, Mayor, Vice Mayor. I'm Jeff Rollins, the Assistant Transit Director. This policy is It's been in place for almost 30 years. We've had two major updates to that plan in the 30 years. But after we had a review with FTA, it was kind of getting a little bit bulky. And so they currently have a policy builder now, the FTA, which is Federal Transit Administration. has given us to be on par with everyone else. And so the drug and alcohol substance abuse plan is in place for just our mass transit and paratransit drivers, not school bus. It kind of holds them to a little different standard in terms of their testing, pre-employment, post-accident, and things of that nature. It's a requirement that we have to keep in place due to receiving federal transit administration funding and state funding. So this plan is just to kind of give us uniform with other transit agencies within the United States then.

Jeff, while you're up there, if you could just comment on CDL drivers. Are we able to recruit? I know we did some... setting up training ourselves to be able to train CDL drivers. And I think we've got some on our agenda tonight as well. But just kind of give us an update about school bus drivers and then to other drivers for the bus transit.

The enhancement that we made to our starting pay definitely helped a few years back. That has been a benefit to us. And having the CDL trainer within the city too to help get our drivers ready has definitely helped. It's taken weeks off of that process. School bus is still a tough sell. I mean, even when you're raising the pay, it's still a tough sell to get people. We're always looking. The mass transit side, we have a little bit better success rate of filling drivers in that need. But school bus is still one of those areas where we could always use five or six more drivers every day.

So just for the benefit of the public, how many buses do we run every day? And so obviously then that's how many... bus drivers we have to have and how many do we have total?

Right now we're running 46 school buses average every day and that's large and small bus and that scaled back from around 53 to 54 before COVID. So some of those routes have just been doubled. You have less ridership and on our mass transit routes we are at we have counting our paratransit we average about 13 buses a day. And so people-wise, we haul around 6,000 to 7,000 plus a day, counting school and mass transit on a daily basis.

So we have those buses, but they go out twice during the day, right?

That's correct. That's right.

Thank you. Any other questions? Thank you all. Thank you. Thanks.

And if Chief Bell will come back up, we have three items on the agenda under grant applications for the firefighters. We have the first, the 2025 assistance to firefighter grant program, the fire department's applying for fire prevention and safety program, and the fire department's applying for 2025 FEMA safer grant for staffing.

Good afternoon, Commission, City Administration, and thank you for the opportunity to present in front of you tonight. We are applying for three different grants with your permission. The reason we're applying for all three right now, with the shutdown, they all came open at the same time and they all closed at the same time, so we had a very short window to do this. Luckily, we anticipated this. We was prepared. We already had the grants written. So we knew we were just waiting on this approval. The first one, the AFG grant, that is to provide structural collapse training. So our technical rescue programs. And it's a 10% cost share. So the class itself is a very expensive class, $150,000 for this class. But this will train 36 personnel to the technician level. And that will help us get to the point that we needed to be to get everybody to the level to provide that service we wanna provide. The second, or any questions on that grant first? Okay, the second grant is the Fire Prevention and Safety Grant. We're applying, it's $45,000, and it's for two fire extinguisher simulators. This is a 5% cost share match. With this one and the previous one, we'll actually absorb those costs into our operating budget that we currently have, and the impending one coming for vote tonight. The simulator has proven to be a true asset for our department. We have one right now, but it's aged out. I think it's 11 years old. We're not able to get batteries for it anymore, and it's time to replace them. They are very expensive, but they are worth the investment if we're just able to save one life by teaching somebody how to use an extinguisher. The last one is a really important one for us to be able to provide the level of service we're trying to provide. It's a staffing grant. And this grant is a three-year grant. It pays 75% of salary and benefits for the first two years, and then it drops down to 35% for the final year. And the reason it drops down is it's trying to prepare that municipality to be able to absorb that cost. But with this, it would allow us to hire nine personnel to staff our ladder trucks up. We tried to meet our NFPA 1710, which says how many firefighters we're supposed to have on the scene within a certain amount of time. And right now we're falling under that. They've changed the requirements. They actually added one more person to that requirement last year. So it's put us behind the eight ball, basically. This will get us up to that point where we're able to respond. Additionally with this, we will not be changing minimum staffing. We'll be keeping it the same thing. So this will additionally reduce overtime cost. So we feel that that'll offset the cost that we'll be paying out by far. Any questions? much grant funding did the fire service receive last year last year we ended up receiving uh there was one state grant for 18 000 so and that we just recently finally received it uh we was also approved for a generator grant which is right at a half million dollars to put generators in all the stations and there was a small cost share a 25 cost share which we got it reduced down to 12 cost share the state's covering the other 12 and a half percent of that uh other than that Outside of donations, we really didn't receive anything last year. It's very challenging to get this. There's $360 million available for all the fire departments across the nation. And last year, I want to say there was almost $300 billion asked for. But we have very high confidence in this because we can show the need. When you say gifts, did you have any spectacular gifts last year?

Yeah, I was going to say, you kind of breezed right by that.

What sorts of donations does the fire service receive? Well, we do receive multiple donations throughout the year in nominal amounts. They're all great and they all help us. But the one major one last year was the one that was over a million dollars for the fire truck. And that truck is in service now. It's been running and it has been tremendous, a great asset for us. And it's really helped our department.

Chief, I commend you for, you know, looking for resources from the federal government and, you know, taking that burden off our local residents while getting to train your staff to do the very, very best and providing additional resources. So I really commend you on seeking these. I know it's a lot of work, especially in a compressed time. So thank you for doing that.

Thank you. Well, now I'm just going to throw out as uncomfortable as budget conversations are, which we're getting ready to have. I might as well say it. A million dollars looks like it's about three cents on property. I mean, that just shows how kind of a person it is. And it impacts the whole community when somebody makes a gift like that. Absolutely. Also, I enjoyed seeing you the other day celebrating the firefighters.

Yes. We have great people, great staff. They really go above and beyond. We was also able to celebrate two individuals in the city that went in and saved a gentleman and his dog. That's right, two citizens.

And some of that specialized training has been very relevant, like in the wake of Helene. Yes. What fire departments here were equipped for swift water rescue other than us?

At the time, it was us and our local EMS was equipped for that. Outside of our city, the local departments really didn't have a whole lot. Some of the volunteer departments had makeshift stuff that they was able to put together. Outside of that, you'd have to go to Kingsport and to Bristol to be able to find anybody. And beyond that, you're going to Knoxville or Chattanooga. Thank you.

Chief, why don't you take just a minute and update us on the fire tower and how the final... components of the training center are coming along.

Yes, we're very excited with that. We do have the four-story burn tower being built right now. They actually have completed the third level floor and they're almost to the level of being able to pour the fourth and final floor. We're anticipating mid-July to August. and that's when they'll complete the build, time to get all the equipment installed. I'll say our goal is to have a September 11th grand opening for the facility in honor of the 25 year anniversary of 9-11. So we want to do that to really to honor the ones that came before us and the ones that paid the ultimate sacrifice. But it's a great facility. It seems to be in use every day. It's constantly, and luckily other departments have been using it. We've been getting inquiries from even different businesses in the city to come use that to be able to have meetings there or do a course there. Very excited.

You'll be doing training though, not just for our firefighters, but regionally, how do you expect that to...

We've actually already had five classes that we had offered for local departments, volunteer departments on the weekends. We've been bringing personnel in to help coordinate that. The state's been teaching the courses. Last fall, we actually hosted the basic fire school for the county departments. That's the first time that's ever been done for us. It was always done within the departments where they'd have to travel to Bell Buckle, Tennessee to get that training. So it's working well. We've built a great partnership with our local departments. And that really helps us in the future, being able to get very qualified applicants. We're able to help train them to get into that level. So we have a really good applicant pool when it comes to that.

Just remind me too, a big portion of the training center, both the classroom side of it and the fire tower, Received funding through some of the ARPA money? Is that what it was?

Actually, the entire amount for the training center came through ARPA funding. That was $7.5 million to the training center.

Okay. Well, we'll be fortunate there for getting that. Thank you.

Thank you. And just while we have a captive audience, I know I say this, but thanks to our fire department having an ISO 1 rating, so an insurance rating, and just reiterating this to make sure I'm correct, and our water department that helps supply you guys with what you need, our insurance ratings. Thank you. There's a real meaningful savings on insurance for people that have to pay insurance in our community. When you get down to an ISO 1, it really affects, you know, more of the commercial side of things. And so just as, again, we talk about budget items to know what our fire department does to help keep us, our investment, the community's investment in you guys has paid dividends that we don't quite realize how much it really adds up to. Thank you.

I'd move approval on the consent agenda.

Second.

Ms. Louse, will you call the roll?

Commissioner Fowler?

Yes.

Commissioner Goetz? Yes. Commissioner Weiss?

Yes.

Vice Mayor Brock? Yes.

Mayor Cox?

Yes.

The next item on the agenda is under other. It's item 7.1, which is RFP 6888 of RO Advisors. It's for utility billing upgrade management and implementation support services.

All right, good evening, Mayor, Commission. Nick Geist, Assistant City Manager, here to give you an update on the utility billing upgrade and the RFP. So I think it's important when we're looking at this item and discussing this item, give you an idea of where we're starting from and how this project's going to go forward. So I'll start out by telling you what our current system is. So currently we're using a software called, with the local government, it's called the local government software called Zortec. It's a 1980s DOS-based system. And while it has been helpful for us to have a system, it has lived its useful life. It does not integrate credit card payments. There's third-party payments. And it's limited functionality that requires some manual back-end processes to ensure that everything is done correctly. So the goal is to upgrade this system to staying with local government software, but going to their next-gen solution. And NextGen is a Windows-based version of the software. And this will have the ability to take credit card payments and manage our payment software, eliminate a lot of our manual processes when it comes to billing and the backend. But the largest part of this new system is that it will have a new customer portal. And that customer portal will allow our customers to log in, see their account information, their balances, and make payments directly in the system. So talk about what this entails. We're talking about approximately 45,000 accounts. It's going to impact all of our utilities. So that's water, wastewater, stormwater, and solid waste, all in the same system. And this person or this firm that's going to be selected is selected to help us navigate some of the challenges and nuances of implementing a software from initiation of a contract all the way through to completion and post-live support. When we set out on this path to do our upgrade, we talked to some local governments, and Bristol was successful in going from Zoetec to NextGen, and they recommended the third-party project management, which we are putting before you tonight with the RFP. So the RFP for utility billing assistance went out in March, was opened on April 15th, and we received 10 proposals. One proposal was not signed, so it was not able to be reviewed and go into the next. It's considered incomplete. So we had nine proposals for review. a group of a multi-discipline, multi-department review team came together to review the nine proposals that were valid. And the scoring matrix is there on your screen that we used. 50% of the scoring was relevant experience, project management approach, and methodology, with 20% at cost. And then 10% on project team, change management, and schedule. So the multi-discipline team came together and used those scoring matrix to evaluate the nine to select four firms to move forward for in-person interviews and assessments. The four firms that were selected were eSource companies, Advero Advisors, BenchLab, and Barry Dunn. The same team that did the evaluation, the multidisciplinary team that did the evaluation, did the in-person interviews and assessments. And those meetings focused on specifically different segments of the project management experience. So system configuration, data readiness and data migration, testing, training, change management, process management. go live or transitioning to the new system, as well as post-live support for once we are on a new system, should we have any issues. So all those were discussed with the firms as they presented to us to make a selection. Based on those in-person, four in-person presentations, the panel reconvened on May 22nd and made the unanimous selection to recommend selecting Vero Advisors for our RFP upgrade to help us get there. The selection was based on those aspects you see in front of you on the screen. So Averro's costs were lower than eSource and Barry Dunn. They are located in Knoxville, so they have geographic proximity to us to implement this project. And then in their interview and going through their process, they had much more local government-focused experience, specifically in East Tennessee. And they have experience with the local government system we're using, as well as the teller software system that we're currently using for payments. We will be phasing that out to something new, but they are familiar with both of the projects that we currently utilize with East Tennessee. So before you is a recommendation or consideration to award the RFP. And on the screen is the next steps and what to expect going forward. If approved this evening, we would issue the PO to Averro to be our project management support team. And then we would execute the contract with local government to do the upgrade. The cost of the upgrade is approximately $30,000 to $40,000. Once we get the contracts executed, the next step will be data review and migration. So it's cleaning up our data, getting everything ready to go to transition into the new system. And then we would start a parallel usage of both systems from approximately January to March. The important part there is we'll be using both systems to do two complete billing cycles to send out bills and make sure everything goes well before we transition over into a new system. Our go-live or new system is anticipated to be in place by summer of 2027. I'm happy to answer any questions. Any questions for staff?

I think most people are going to say, what took you so long to get a good system like this in place? So I'm real thrilled that our customers will be a lot easier now for them to interact with the city. Yes, ma'am. I move for approval.

Second. Ms. Lause, you call the roll.

Commissioner Fowler?

Yes.

Commissioner Goetz? Yes. Commissioner Wise? Yes.

Vice Mayor Brock? Yes. Mayor Cox?

Yes.

The next item for consideration commission is ordinance number 4943 dash 26. This is the first reading of an ordinance for the rezoning of 9.52 acres from R3 to R4 for 1170 West Mountain View Road.

Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Commissioner of City Administration. My name is Heath Martin. I'm a planner with Johnson City's Planning Division. And this evening, I'd like to read to you the first reading of the rezoning of a property under Ordinance 4943-26. We're here this evening at the first reading of the City Commission. The following timeline will show the subsequent dates of June 25th and July 2nd, if approved. This is an aerial view of the property itself, just to orient you all to the area. This is off of West Mountain View, Knob Creek is to the south, and County Road, Fink Drive is to the north of the property. It's currently adjacent to a few apartment developments on the other side of the street, and this is also adjacent to a county property to its left, to the west. This is to rezone approximately just under 10 acres, just over 9.5 acres from R3 to R4. Both are medium density residential districts. And the reason is to accommodate the development of a proposed 120 townhome community. Current zoning is R3. The surrounding adjacent zoning dollars.

For this budget, the total budget for all of these funds, this includes schools, enterprise funds, it includes as well as the general fund. The total amount would be $406,410,336. And with that, either Dustin or myself are happy to take any questions you have.

Well, before we have some discussion, we should probably go ahead and open up for public hearing. So we'll do that. I do want to remind everybody to set up some expectations as we begin. We have three minutes to talk about public hearing. And this is really your time to communicate to us thoughts. And if you could keep it as germane and specific to help us understand what the community's wants and needs are, the better. This is the first conversation of three to get to a budget. And if we don't, we've got to operate under a continuing budget, which, from what I understand, isn't ideal. So if you could just limit your comments to three minutes and just be as concise and helpful as possible. And with that, I'll open public hearing. And anybody wishing to speak for or against, come up and state your name.

Can you ask that anyone, can I ask that anyone who has a name that's a little more difficult to spell, please help me out so that I can make sure I get your names correct?

You'll need David Adams to really help you out. I've got yours.

Yes. Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor Cox and Commission. Dave Adams, 3 Coventry Court. One year ago, this body looked us in the eye and said that the Sean Williams settlement would not impact taxpayers. Today, we're being told it's contributing to budget pressure. If that's true, then before this commission asks taxpayers for one more dollar, the public deserves to see every discretionary expenditure justified, every avoidable cost challenged, and every official connected to the failures that produced this liability held accountable. I object to a budget that increases our burden while the internal investigations into the officers who cost us over $30 million continue to sit frozen on City Manager Ball's desk. Commission, before taking another dime from the public, I ask again that you give us an honest accounting of what happened. Direct your manager to unfreeze the investigations into officers Sparks, Jenkins, LeBault, and other members of the SIS so that the public can finally learn whether anybody in this city will be held accountable for the conduct that created this cost. A budget that increases every category of spending while refusing to examine the failures that helped create today's financial pressures is not responsible stewardship. It is a continuation of a pattern, avoiding difficult questions, postponing accountability, and expecting taxpayers to absorb the consequences. Please, I ask you, look inward, and before asking us to pay, reconcile this city both financially and morally. Thank you.

hello my name is leah bolton i'm a downtown johnson city business owner in early 2025 i was contacted by whistleblowers in the johnson city manager's office concerning spending practices by City Manager Kathy Ball and her circle of staff members. While researching, I became aware of reports published in the Asheville blog, the Mountain Express, regarding Ball's tenure as interim city manager there. individuals claim that during her time there was excessive spending, exclusive parts within her inner circle, and reports that she bragged about going months without having to buy groceries, meals.

We really need to stick to this budget.

It is. And never having to cook while eating on taxpayers' dimes. So I submitted FOIA requests for credit card statements and related records associated with Kathy Ball and her inner circle, Heather Hatfield and Alicia Summers. It is. Hold on. I reviewed the 2024 records, narrowed my search to food and meal-related purchases. And the neighborhood meeting.

And the legal ad was posted on May 30th.

Could you go back a slide, Heath? Yes, sir. So I can't read what the purple says. What are the distinctions between the red and the purple in that map as far as the land use plan?

Neighborhood mixed use is the purple. Okay. And regional mixed use is on the other side of the street across West Mountain View.

So those colors are different. How should we understand the difference between those two uses? I mean, they're obviously right next to each other on the spectrum, but it looks like Whitney wants to answer that.

I may know something about that. So regional mixed use, some of those, the scale of commercial would be different. So you would expect that anything in the regional mixed use would be of a neighborhood, kind of a neighborhood walkable scale versus the regional would be more of a draw from outside. of that particular area into it. So I like to think of like, oh, the mall might be a regional, whereas maybe something that's a little more local that would be maybe a shopping center, like a food, like a grocery store shopping center would be more of a neighborhood scale. Does that help?

Oh, I did this again. Staff recommends approval as a request is consistent with the future land use map and proposed R4 district does have a similar to the surrounding area and provides an adequate transitional zone to the nearby RP4 and RP5 zonings to the east. We do have representatives from fire and engineering in the room this evening if you have questions with that, as well as the applicant themselves.

Heath, could you elaborate? You had pointed out that no new school bus stop would be needed, that the families that reside there, their children would travel across the street. Is there a safe gathering spot and is it large enough for the residents on both sides of the road, like a sidewalk? I mean, from a safety perspective with children waiting on the bus.

Right. So from my understanding, we're talking to transit. There's where the school bus would stop and they would actually stay on their side of the street unless they had to cross on their own. So their arms comes out and that's when they'd stop. So obviously you can't pass to stop school bus for that reason that it can cross over in front of the bus and then join the bus on that way. So they wouldn't be required to cross street in the head unless they wanted to on their own. But that's what the bus is supposed to symbolize. That's they can cross in front of.

Okay. Thank you. I appreciate that.

I remember years ago, Unica Avenue Baptist Church bought this and was going to move there. I guess they've decided they're never going to do that, so they're selling this now to these other people.

Yes, it's still owned by the church itself, and they're the owners of the property with this applicant for this rezoning request.

Thanks. Anybody want to make a motion first? I do have a comment, though.

I'll make a motion to approve. A second?

Anybody? Yes. No, I don't want a second.

It's already been seconded.

Okay.

We'll have a discussion. All right. May I discuss? Yes. Okay. Commissioners, this area of the city is probably the most intense, dense area that we have. Whoever owns the property now at R3 can build a certain number of dwellings on that property. What we're being asked to do is to rezone it so twice as many homes can be built on it. I just have such concern because the infrastructure we talked about trying to improve this time a year and a half ago or two years ago, We've made a little bit of improvement, but not near what's needed for good, safe transportation for people who are in these neighborhoods. Right now, and I know we're going to start working on West Mountain View Road fairly soon, but it's hard for people to even get out of their neighborhoods on these roads. The chaos that's going to be created when they finally start working on the the tunnel, the bridge, the overfly there is going to be tremendous. And we've got two or three other areas who want to build right there on that footprint. That is certainly kind of as a steward in Johnson City to say, if we just keep adding more, is it going to get better? It's not. And so I'm not going to be able to vote for this tonight. I think the person can still build on that at a reduced density. But I would not vote to change the zoning so they can put twice as many dwellings on it. I just want to say that.

Any other comments and questions for staff? Then Ms. Laus, will you call the roll?

Commissioner Fowler?

No.

Commissioner Goetz? Yes. Commissioner Wise? Yes. Vice Mayor Brock?

No.

Mayor Cox?

Yes.

Commission, the next item on the agenda is ordinance 4944-26. This is the first reading of an ordinance providing for the conveyance of city-owned property in the former Optimist Park located in the 9th Civil District of Washington County to the Vintage Hotel Group. This property is designated as lot A3 consisting of approximately 2.5 acres.

Mayor, Vice Mayor, Commissioners, Ms. Ball, I'm Steve Willis, Deputy City Manager. You may recall the sales agreement for this particular parcel came before this commission in August of 2025. So this has been a long due diligence period. The buyer has now completed his due diligence as of last week. The 10-month period of due diligence was not because there were any issues with the property. There were just some delays with the contract group and things of that nature. So there were no issues environmentally or otherwise with the property. So what you see depicted here in pink is the parcel, which is on the corner of Novice and Sales Road. see the property just adjacent to that we approve you approve the sales agreement for a future culver's restaurant on that particular parcel to the uh to the south would be the public's shopping center the new echo suites to the northwest of the property so this first reading would be the first step of three in order to convey the property to the hotel group. At this point, they have not submitted plans for the property. We do know that they typically build properties under the Hilton brand, but that's not confirmed, so I can't say that with 100% certainty this evening. But the purchase price is $1.1 million, and staff would certainly recommend that you approve this on first reading.

entertain a motion? Move approval. Second. Ms. Lause, will you call the roll?

Commissioner Fowler?

Yes.

Commissioner Goetz? Yes. Commissioner Wise? Yes. Vice Mayor Brock? Yes. Mayor Cox?

Yes. Get that on the tax roll.

Yes. We will do our best to get a closing date set in short order.

Commissioners, item 8.3 and item 8.4 are connected, although they require a separate vote. With your permission, I'm going to go ahead and read both of those, and then you will take those up for separate votes. Item 8.3 is annexation by owner consent of 135 Hopper Road and 0 Hopper Road. This is to consider approval of a preliminary resolution calling for a public hearing on a voluntary annexation of approximately 13.64 acres along Hopper Road. Item 8.4 is Ordinance 4945-26. This is the first reading of an ordinance assigning low density residential district R2C to approximately 13.62 acres located along Hopper Road at 135 Hopper Road and 0 Hopper Road.

Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Commissioners. I'm Riley Putney, Development Coordinator with the Planning Division, and I will be presenting both items in the same PowerPoint. So this PowerPoint is for both the preliminary resolution and zoning assignments. The timeline for tonight, annexations do run a little bit differently than a rezoning timeline. So tonight is the preliminary resolution and first reading of the zoning assignment. If the process were to move forward, the public hearings would happen at the last reading, which would be July 2nd, and that would be for the final resolution and zoning assignment. Notifications for prior to the Planning Commission meeting were sent out on April 30th. The information of the annexation was posted on our website on the 21st. And if the annexation moves forward today, tomorrow the property signs per the state law will be on the property as well as the notifications to property owners calling for the public hearing and a legal ad in the paper. To orient the commission, Hopper Road, the parcel is highlighted and depicted in blue. The Archer's Point development in Indian Ridge Road is to the north and West Market is to the south. The request is to annex roughly 13.64 acres fronting both Hopper Road and Indian Ridge Road. The parcel is contiguous to city limits and is within the urban growth boundary and service area. And as previously stated in the request, it is for an R2C low density residential district for a single family home development. The commission has seen this piece of property before in 2025 when the property owner and developer came and requested annexation for an RP3 zoning district for 105 townhomes. At that time, the commission referred it back to the planning commission for a different density, excuse me, different zoning assignment noting density concerns, which at that time the applicant withdrew the request and has since come back a year later with this request that we are speaking of today. They have provided a preliminary concept plan that depicts 35 lots that will have access off of Hopper Road and two lots that would share a shared driveway off of Indian Ridge Road. There are two deceleration lanes depicted on the concept plan and this plan moving forward once if annex would become binding at the zoning assignment approval. Plan of services was conducted and all applicable agencies provided comments that are within the staff report, the full plan of services as well as the cost benefit analysis and water sewer analysis. It is proposed after complete build out that the benefit would break even at year three. Utilities are currently on the property. The sewer is on, runs through the property. Water is available on both Hopper and Indian Ridge Road. The property would be served by Woodland Elementary, Liberty Bell and Science Hill High School. A traffic impact analysis has not been completed and it will be completed prior to preliminary plat approval if it makes it to that process. And any modifications would be at the cost of the developer. that being said, there are traffic improvements that are being conducted by the city in the area of the development. As you can see on the screen, the site is in between the Indian Ridge traffic circle to the north and the West Market traffic signal to the south. And we do have our traffic engineer here tonight for detailed questions, but I can present the Plans, the traffic signal at market, so this is to the south of the property going towards, this is Hopper Road as here is depicted and the Indian Ridge traffic circle to the north. These projects are estimated to begin next summer and construction timeline lasting roughly one year for both projects. The summer of 27 is when that would start? Correct, yes. The property currently abuts R2B, low density residential and R2, as well as having RP2 and RP3 in the adjoining areas. The concept plan provided meets and exceeds the minimum lot size requirement of the R2C, The minimum lot size is 6,000. The applicant is proposing a minimum lot size of roughly 7,200 square feet, so it is larger lots than what is required, and it meets the lot width and setbacks. This map here shows a Comparison of density of existing residential developments and the proposed development. The proposed development is notated as number seven and comes in below the average units per acre. The average units per acre is 3.43 and the proposed at 37 homes is 2.67 units per acre. The property has a place type of neighborhood residential in the 2045 Horizon Plan, and that calls for residential use with single family and larger lots. So the proposed plan of R2C is in line with the neighborhood residential place type. Due to it being an annexation, a neighborhood meeting is not required to be held, but through contact with staff and planning commission comments, citizen concerns were over traffic, density, and road safety. The Johnson City Planning Commission on May 12th recommended 9 to 0 for the plan of services and 8 to 1 to recommend the zoning assignment. Staff would recommend the planning, the preliminary resolution and zoning assignment be approved due to the district being compatible with the 2045 future land use plan, the plan of services not having a negative impact on the city and the similar densities are along Indian Ridge and Hopper Road.

Ms. Riley, recently some planning changes occurred so that the county now has our urban growth boundary. They do the planning for that.

Should they not be dealing with this? So I would refer to our legal department on that. I'm aware that the resolution has not been passed and in effect as of yet, but I would refer to legal.

There's some questions about what actually has been passed by the county at this point. So we are still looking into that. And so I couldn't really advise the commission where that stands at this point right now.

So there's some additional history to this property as well. It got pulled from us and then it got pulled from coming to us. Then did it not get submitted to the county and it got turned down? I don't know exactly, but it would be interesting to know.

So they did not, due to it being an annexation request, they did not have to go to the county, whether it was deferred from the city commission or planning commission. So they withdrew their application. They would only go to the county if they were wanting a rezoning of the property and for it to remain in county boundary. So they did not go to the county for this property. Okay.

And I would add, because we asked the same question when we were talking earlier this week about this, it did not make it to the county planning commission, even though there was discussion about taking it to the planning commission. Is that correct?

Correct. The planning commission for the county has not seen this request or the previous request.

I guess, Mr. Seeley, the annexation, is it in question because the county passed their resolution before the governor signed the one in Nashville?

I think there is some issue with the resolution again, how it tracks what was actually signed by governor Lee. But again, and we'd have to look at that. I think there is an exception to this that it would not fall under that, but there would, we would need to do a little bit more research on that. That has happened just recently.

If I may, in tracking that bill, there is an allowance for a property owner to voluntarily annex into the city, and that does not have anything to do with this law. What is required is if they do not want to annex into the city, they have to sign saying they do not want to ever annex into the city. But a property owner has the right to annex into the city still within that bill that the state passed. Now, I think the thing that our legal counsel is saying is whether or not the county's resolution, the status of the county's resolution.

And I'm not sure what the status of that is, but I think what Ms. Ball has said is correct, that there is an exception that would allow that.

One more question I have is the Hopper Road itself. Is there a plan to widen that to make it more safe? Because I'm not that upset about what they want to put there. It's how people get in and out of there that is my biggest fear for the safety issue especially.

So I will say, and I can defer to Anthony Todd as well if there's additional information, but once that traffic impact analysis is completed, Any modifications or improvements to Hopper Road in that area that is depicted by that traffic impact analysis would have to be completed to the developer. And Anthony, I'm not sure if there's anything that the city would do to Hopper Road, so I'll defer to Anthony.

Our project where we do the roundabout at Indian Ridge does go down to Hopper Road. It does alter the intersection at Hopper Road and ties it in a little bit better. That's the extent of what our project does, so the remainder would be up to the developer.

And that driveway that comes off of the development that goes onto Indian Ridge Road, and that is away from the roundabout, though. So it'll be a separate entrance onto the road for those two townhomes that are coming onto Indian Ridge, their driveway?

They will have a separate driveway onto Indian Ridge. It'll be one driveway that they share.

Just for clarity, Mr. King, your property is one of the two in the center of the... Just yesterday, is that where you are?

Okay, thank you.

You know, I remember the last time this came, and I will say I think this is much improved relative to fitting the context of the neighborhood. I am... still a little bit concerned about Hopper Road. And I guess Anthony's comment, and I'm sorry, you got all the way back to your chair. When you say the rest would be left up to the developer, we don't even know what the rest is, do we?

Absent the traffic impact study. That's the unfortunate part right now. We don't have the traffic study in our hands, so we don't know what that is. So that would be something if you wanted it done earlier, then you need to ask for it earlier because our current policy doesn't allow us to ask for it earlier.

I would, while you're up here, I would go ahead and say I would rather defer this until we know more about that road before we do anything with this. So that would be my request.

I do have a few more questions before, if we don't care. Because one is, if you don't, what was the average plot size in that R2C, in their proposed plan?

7,200.

7,200 and I believe 14 square feet. So here's just. a little bit of my concern because I think we all have the same concerns on traffic, but the new law changing brings up a different level of concern as right now it's in the county and it's currently zoned R1. And the minimum lot size in the county so that could be built right now and not have to come back to really anybody is 15,000 feet. And so if If it's annexed to the city, there's some enhanced requirements that the city does require, such as sidewalks and traffic study. There's some things that we would require in this rezoning where if it doesn't come, if it's not annexed and it stays in the county, they can redo this design and probably reduce three or four, five lots. and pick up that square footage and not have to meet any of the city requirements. It wouldn't come back before the spotty, correct? Or the planning department, it would go straight just through the county and meet their neighborhood requirements.

With the new law, that would be correct, yes.

And so that's where there's some gray area is two weeks ago, this was still in Johnson City's zoning boundary. And so we still had some say-so in how it looked. And if we don't look at some sort of annexation, we have no say-so to make it meet our requirements whatsoever.

Correct. Can I add to that? How close is his math? Like, you know, if it were to be developed in R1, is it three or four lots or is it

10 fewer lots i'm just curious i would have to do that math i think the county storm water requirements are also different to some extent and so since the basins don't have to be as big and so there's i I would motion to move forward just to have more discussion to make sure we don't cause more problems and get those questions answered on what it really could look like if the city wasn't involved, if that makes any sense. I mean, there's some consequences that I don't think even the neighbors are because we do have more strict requirements for developers and our standards are higher than the county. And two weeks ago, I probably would not have said the same thing.

And it would be helpful, I think, to just know how quickly by right, because that's what we're talking about. They would just go in with their plan and staff would approve it because you check the boxes. And so this number 37 is what we're talking about here. Yes. And so, you know, if they could go in and by right, be it 32, you know, think the very things the neighbors are concerned about still exist. The only difference is they don't have a traffic study and they don't. There are sidewalks. Yeah. I would support that on first reading. I do still have concerns about Hopper Road. Oh, to defer.

What was the motion? I'm sorry. I didn't go ahead with it, but what I was going to do was make a motion to defer it until we know more information before we vote. But Should we spell out what that information is? Yes. Traffic study and road design. What we're going to do for traffic going into this area on Hopper Road. But I don't... I'm not disagreeable. I just... That...

If you want to make an addendum to that, you're more than welcome. Well, I'm just wondering if it's reasonable. We have a stated policy about traffic studies, and there's a place in the sequence that we do that. And I'm just wondering what issues that creates if we're applying it indiscriminately. And maybe that's a Tom question. I don't know.

I'm opposed. I just want to make sure. I wouldn't want to give a... I think if we, I would like to talk about this again in two weeks and not risk defer and then we never even hear about it again, if that makes sense.

So, Mayor, is your addendum to defer for two weeks and then reassess?

Or do you want to vote on it tonight, the first reading?

And I would really like to get to the second reading. And public hearing. And public hearing. Well, the public hearing is towards the end on this one. I would at least like to get to the second reading and get some answers. A couple more questions. Okay.

Also, with that question, would that give us time legally with legal to review the county, the status of the legislation in the county's referendum?

I think two weeks would give us plenty of time. And again, I think you could go either way with Commissioner Fowler's motion to defer or again, it could be voted on. But.

currently Commissioner Fowler's motions on the floor and he would either have to withdraw that or is there a second for I will say that is there a second on Commissioner Fowler to defer and hearing none that motion will deny is there any other motions on anyone would wish to make okay we'll go we'll open back up for staff questions

There we go. So the average lot size is 7,200. Will they be doing the lot averaging that we allow now? So do they have the smallest lot and then the largest lot in there? Do you?

know if that's going to take place? So as the current plan depicts, they are not utilizing lot averaging. The smallest lot is 7,234 square feet, and there are lots larger than that, but not anything smaller.

All right. And they have a concept plan. Do you know anything about the size houses they're going to put on those lots?

I do not, but the developer is here and could probably answer those questions for you if you would like.

And there's a fine line when we're considering something like this, and I would appreciate advice either from Mr. Seeley or from you. Like, I know there were comments about the developer and I've heard those comments, when we make a land use decision we can't be making the land use decision based on the specific builder and it is the same kind of issue true about the size of the house i mean there's certain setback requirements that limit what kind of house you can build because you got to be so many feet but to what degree does going down that line of questioning open us up to potential liability so with that

Being said, I don't want to answer that due to the concept plan depicting the average building pad as 43 by 60. So that is the information that they have provided to us. But you would be correct in that assumption that it would be a land use decision and not the square footage of the buildings. Thank you.

To address Commissioner Wise's question from the liability standpoint, again, I think considering the builder going down that road is probably outside the scope of really what's under consideration on a decision like that dealing with annexation for the commission. And that, again, could put you in a situation that exposed the city to liability if you were denying it based on who was the developer.

Now, would that extend also to the size of the home question, or is the size of the home a fair question for us to be asking?

That's all I'm asking, yeah.

Right.

There's a point that that could become an issue regarding the size of the home, and there's dealing with mobile homes and that. So that's where, when you start down that road, you can get to a point where that, could be an issue. And I didn't hear exactly what Commissioner Brock's question was on that. But again, I would not recommend going down that path.

I don't think he heard your question, so he wasn't sure what you were asking that are going to be built on these 7200 square foot lots. And they do have to meet a standard a percent of the lot and that kind of thing. So I'm sure they will.

The pad on their plan is 2400 2500 square feet, and that's assuming one level. So like, is that a reasonable assumption to make looking at the concept plan?

Correct. So we don't obviously have information whether they're two-story or single-story, but that building pad is 43 by 60, which is depicted on the concept plan.

I think we'd like to know more about the legislation and the law. I do think it would be helpful to understand what we would anticipate a traffic study. We don't have to do a traffic study, but what sorts of things do traffic studies spell out so that we could at least understand if we approve this, how much is it the way it is and how much is it the way it would need to be? I'm okay making a motion to approve it on first reading, knowing we're going to go to second reading and knowing we'll vote two more times and reserving the right to change my mind in subsequent meetings. I think there are just some questions we need to get answered before we actually approve it.

I guess I will second it, but I am... pretty sure unless I hear a lot of good stuff the second time, I'm not going to be changing my mind. I'm not sure I wouldn't be changing my mind.

I will just say it is uncharted territory. This was a significant law to change and it has a big impact. The reason the law was there for situations where you have a piece of land in the middle of a bunch of city on property that's county. And I think it's very important to get this one right. I would like to know, too, by next meeting is just what triggers a traffic study requirement for the county, if anyone likes to know. And with that, I've got a first and a second.

Is this motion to approve the annexation 8.3?

Yes.

Yeah, you've got two different questions.

Yes. So we'll do one.

Commissioner Fowler.

Yes.

Commissioner Goetz? Yes. Commissioner Wise? Yes. Vice Mayor Brock? Yes. Mayor Cox?

Yes. And would we like to go ahead and...

I mean, the first one was easier than the second one, so I would make the same motion on 49-45-26, again, with the caveat that there are those questions to be answered and It's our assessment of this question is evolving. So that's the first.

I'll second with the same concerns expressed, as well as knowing when we discuss this at the next opportunity, some of these planned transit and infrastructure improvements, how that would also fit in timeline and with traffic study, because I think that's a point of concern. Thank you.

Ms. Lousey called a roll regarding the zoning.

Commissioner Fowler?

I will say yes again, but I will probably be voting against this just like the other unless I get some good answers.

Commissioner Goetz? Yes. Commissioner Wise? Yes. Vice Mayor Brock? No. Mayor Cox?

Yes. Mayor, your next item is Ordinance 4942-26, First Reading and Public Hearing, an ordinance to appropriate funds and adopt a budget for the fiscal year July 1, 2026 to June 30, 2027. City Manager Ball and our budget director, Dustin Thompson, will be presenting this item.

Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, members of the commission and city administration. Thank you for the opportunity to be able to present to you the first reading of the FY27 budget. First up, I'd like to just walk through the timeline. Before we talk about the timeline moving forward, I would like just to go back and talk about what got us here. In February, city commission held a retreat. At that retreat, the goals, objectives, and vision of the city were revisited by the commission and staff provided recommendations on different projects, different considerations that fell into line with that visioning statement and those goals. The commission then considered those. In the month of May, there were three workshops, work sessions that were held with commission to review this budget. So as we come tonight, we're bringing forward the budget that came out of those three work sessions in May, as well as the retreat. So as a reminder, the budget drivers for this year are that we need to meet all the mandates and requirements. that the city is required to do. We want to demonstrate physical responsibility for the benefit of our taxpayers and of our bond rating. We definitely know and have heard tonight about growth within our community and want to be able to address it in a proper manner. And we know that inflation is a major factor in this budget recommendation. In looking at inflation, just as a reminder, you see comparisons for the most part of a 2016 to 2026 year for a fire and ladder truck, which as you can tell in 2016 cost $1 million. Today the purchase of that truck would be $2.7 million. for the same vehicle. I'm not going to read all of these. I would also point out asphalt and the number we have is from 2015 has doubled in cost from 2015, which means it takes twice as much money for us to be able to pay the same number of lanes of miles of roadway. We will refer back to this as a major driver within the budget this year. So under fiscal responsibility, our comptroller recommends that we have two months of operating costs, and we call that in our stabilization fund. That's money that's not dedicated to any other thing but an emergency, to some shortfall, something happening, Hurricane Helene, something of that nature that would cause the city to need cash immediately and have it available. Per our municipal finance advisors, in order to maintain a bond rating, we need that same amount. And they recommend building that budget up in order to get to that two months of operating expenses. And then we are looking at a state, at the state level, just last week, we heard again that the state is considering having a property tax cap. on municipalities within the state of 2%. So that would only allow cities to increase property taxes 2% each year. Staff recommends adding $1 million to $2 million to fund balance each year through FY23 to meet the first two bullets that you see on that slide. I'm going to turn it over to our budget director, Dustin Thompson, to give you the numbers. He's our numbers guy.

Thank you, Ms. Ball. Commissioners, good evening. I'm Dustin Thompson. I'm the budget director with the city. Your FY27 general fund proposed budget is approximately $130 million. The drivers behind the personnel and operating increases include a pay adjustment for our employees. It includes a health insurance adjustment. It also includes new positions. There are seven positions proposed in public works, as well as funding a deputy fire marshal and the real-time crime center manager for the police department. As far as operating goes, the operating piece, There's $500,000 included for additional paving, and there's also IT charges that are included in that. Those are only going up. As far as the transfers out, what's driving the transfers out is cash-funded capital. That's fleet equipment for Public Works, mostly for Public Works. some for building services, some for parks and rec, but also the debt service for the aquatics facility is included in that transfers out number. In round numbers, revenue is at approximately $131 million. Sixty-seven percent of our general fund revenue comes from two sources, property tax and local option sales tax. As far as expenses, your operating expenses, as we saw in the previous slide, approximately 37% of your operating expense budget in the general fund is for public safety, police and fire. That's followed by general government and public works. Our transfers out are budgeted at $31.7 million. And the bulk of that is the transfer out to the debt service fund and for our maintenance of effort for the Johnson City school system, followed by, as we discussed, cash-funded capital equipment and projects. I am happy to answer any questions that you might have now or later regarding any of these numbers. Otherwise, I will turn it back over to Ms. Ball to complete the presentation.

So as I mentioned earlier, the additional needs that we're going to talk about now came out of the retreat and out of the meetings that, work sessions that we've had in May. So they essentially make up four different buckets. One is the delivery of core services. The other is infrastructure and maintenance. The third is stabilization fund. And the fourth is debt service for the full build out of an aquatic center, which consists of three phases. Of this amount, 8.47 pennies is associated with the delivery of core services. And we'll break that down even further so that you can see what those core services are. Infrastructure and maintenance of the total 27.85 cents, 7.35 cents, the pennies of that is the infrastructure and maintenance. The stabilization fund of a million dollars is 3.15 pennies. And then the debt service for full build out of the aquatics facility makes up 8.85 cents of the recommended 27.85. When we say breaking down the delivery of core services, this includes adding a new concrete crew. That concrete crew would do projects that we have a few pictures that we will show the type of work that they would do. I think you all have been talking a lot about infrastructure as we're talking about building out homes within the city. So it's to address some of those core services. downtown crew, personnel, and equipment. This is a crew dedicated just to downtown. Right now, we pull from our current public works crews to do the work downtown that often, because of the amount of traffic, just requires more maintenance in that area. We have been working for the past year and a half with a group of developers, builders on improving our permitting process and making it easier to do work with the city once a project is approved by the city commission and the planning commission. Their recommendation now is that we head in a way, and the staff highly recommends this as well, to purchase software that is more interactive, that's more customer friendly, that people can access their information and know the status of their permits immediately and know exactly what's going on with their project. In addition, the second request was to provide customer service within that area as well as within the city. Next, you see city hall signage, some parks and recreation equipment. Earlier, there was discussion about CDL drivers and retaining those CDL drivers. So this is to make adjustments in pay that are equivalent to the pay adjustments that are made for other employees. And this is not only for our current CDL drivers, commercial drivers, but it's also for us to be able to recruit drivers in the future. and then building services equipment. So just some examples of deliveries of core services. You can see some of those core services, particularly in the way of the downtown area. When in discussing the infrastructure and maintenance, again, just going through each of those, these are a way of trying to provide services to our community with some of the significant ones being being able to finish the lower tannery knobs project. That, of course, is being able, is being worked on right now on Market Street. And you can see that a lot of that work is happening, but additional funds are needed to complete that project as it was designed. And then the James Ellis Sports Complex restrooms. Right now we use temporary bathrooms in that location because we have limited restroom facilities out there. And then lastly, to add another $500,000 to our paving budget. So as you can see, the wayfinding signage, you can see a picture of the tannery knobs, and then you can see a picture of the temporary restrooms that are being used at the James Ellis Complex. So the question's been asked how we compare with other municipalities in the area. In looking at that, well, we have been able to show on this graph that Johnson City currently is at 1.3785, with Jonesboro being the only one that's lower, that's a municipality within this area. An additional 27.85 cents would increase that to 1.657, as you can see on this chart. The question also is how does this affect the property owner, especially the homeowner? In Johnson City, the median home value is approximately $300,000. For a property owner, a homeowner with that size home, they pay $85.41 a month. for city property taxes. This includes fire protection, police protection, and it includes roadway infrastructure for 8541. If the Commission decides to approve the proposed tax increase, that would go to $102.66 per month. We are also, this is a $17.25 month increase. And again, this goes back specifically to a $300,000 valued home. Property tax relief, we are proposing a property tax relief program. This program would be available to homeowners who are elderly and disabled along with veterans or widowers of veterans. The eligibility for this program is already determined by the state. Washington County currently offers this as well as Kingsport in our area. It sets a limit on the market value of which tax relief is calculated and it is calculated based on the elderly formula. So the local match option would use those same parameters that the state uses currently. If citizens qualify under the state, they do not have to qualify with the city again if the commission approves this. and the city would provide that tax relief. That tax relief would be $113 per applicant. We anticipate that there's almost a thousand applicants that would be eligible for this within the city. And the total cost of the city would be around $111,000. For this budget, the total budget for all of these funds, this includes schools, enterprise funds, it includes as well as the general fund. The total amount would be $406,410,336. And with that, either Dustin or myself are happy to take any questions you have.

Well, before we have some discussion, we should probably go ahead and open up for public hearing. So we'll do that. I do want to remind everybody to set up some expectations as we begin. We have three minutes to talk about public hearing. And this is really your time to communicate to us thoughts. And if you could keep it as germane and specific to help us understand what the community's wants and needs are, the better. This is the first conversation of three to get to a budget. And if we don't, we've got to operate under a continuing budget, which from what I understand is an ideal. So if you could just limit your comments to three minutes and just be as concise and helpful as possible. And with that, I'll open the public hearing. And anybody wishing to speak for or against, come up and state your name.

Can you ask that anyone, can I ask that anyone who has a name that's a little more difficult to spell please help me out so that I can make sure I get your names correct?

You'll need David Adams to really help you out. I've got yours. Yes. Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor Cox and Commission, Dave Adams, Three Coventry Court. One year ago, this body looked us in the eye and said that the Sean Williams settlement would not impact taxpayers. Today, we're being told it's contributing to budget pressure. If that's true, then before this commission asks taxpayers for one more dollar, the public deserves to see every discretionary expenditure justified, every avoidable cost challenged, and every official connected to the failures that produce this liability held accountable. I object to a budget that increases our burden while the internal investigations into the officers who cost us over $30 million continue to sit frozen on City Manager Paul's desk. Commission, before taking another dime from the public, I ask again that you give us an honest accounting of what happened. Direct your manager to unfreeze the investigations into officers Sparks, Jenkins, LeBault, and other members of the SIS so that the public can finally learn whether anybody in this city will be held accountable for the conduct that created this cost. A budget that increases every category of spending while refusing to examine the failures that helped create today's financial pressures is not responsible stewardship. It is a continuation of a pattern, avoiding difficult questions, postponing accountability, and expecting taxpayers to absorb the consequences. Please, I ask you, look inward, and before asking us to pay, reconcile this city both financially and morally. Thank you. Hmm?

Hello, my name is Leah Bolton. I'm a downtown Johnson City business owner. In early 2025, I was contacted by whistleblowers in the Johnson City manager's office concerning spending practices by city manager Kathy Ball and her circle of staff members. While researching, I became aware of reports published in the Asheville blog, the Mountain Express, regarding Ball's tenure as interim city manager there. Individuals claim that during her time there was excessive spending, exclusive parts within her inner circle, and reports that she bragged about going months without having to buy groceries, meals.

We really need to stick to this budget.

It is. And never having to cook while eating on taxpayers' dimes. So I submitted FOIA requests for credit card statements and related records associated with Kathy Ball and her inner circle, Heather Hatfield and Alicia Summers. It is. Hold on. I reviewed the 2024 records, narrowed my search to food and meal-related purchases made within 30 miles of Johnson City during 2024 and for comparison. I also obtained Kingsport's records for comparison for 2024. Based on the records, I found that in 2024, 18,000 $334.14 was spent on food and meals by Mrs. Ball and two close staff members, all paid by the taxpayers of Johnson City. Records indicate that Kingsport City Management and related staff spent $380.56 on similar expenses. This January, another whistleblower asked me to investigate 2025 allegations that alleged that meal expenses were now also being placed on personal credit cards owned by Mrs. Ball, possibly others. and later reimbursed by the city so it wouldn't show up on the city FOIA request for the city credit cards. I FOIAed records again, seeking not only credit card records, but now reimbursement records and receipts. From the 2025 records so far, I have found...

I appreciate it, but not one of that has to do with the budget that we're trying to pass.

That's a lot of money. 14,939 so far in meal-related spending during 2025, where Kingsport only had $1,419.22, and Bristol's total was $289.86. I'm requesting that Kathy Ball be placed immediately on administrative suspension pending the completion of a full investigation into the matters described herein, including the credit card statements, receipts, and all related records to any and all city's employees for city-issued credit cards, including any reimbursements to employees beginning with the start of Ball's employment. This would allow for a complete and accurate review.

I have heard one item that has to do with our budget right now.

Substantiate the concerns that evidence presented through city records regarding improper spending, mismanagement, or other misconduct. I further request the immediate termination of Kathy Ball, city manager of Johnson City, as well as any individuals who knowingly authorized, approved, or enabled such actions. Ms. Ball's leadership has failed and taxpayers' dollars have been spent irresponsibly. She and her circle have lost the public's trust. Thank you.

Anybody else to speak for or against any items on our coming year budget?

James Rees, 125 Cindy Ann Drive, and also 611 Hamilton Street. First, with what just happened there, discretionary spending was mentioned just right before her, and what she was describing is discretionary spending. I've never spent a lot of time in the budgets of Johnson City. I have a bigger problem with Washington County. Y'all's budget's a lot bigger and a lot more complicated. But real quickly over what I just saw tonight, in the core, you know, $2.7 million, there's $1.3 million of one-time spending in equipment and stuff like that. So what happens year two? 1.3, because it's going to go in that pile of money we're going to create again. You got $1.4 million for crew and equipment. Okay. Well, crew is going to cost you every year, but equipment should cost you that first year maybe. So now there's more money going to that big pile of money. Okay. Then we're into everything in the infrastructure, except for probably the $500,000 for roads. That's every year. Okay. Some of the other stuff, just looking at it, a lot of one-time stuff. Okay. One million to rebuild the fund. Well, one million here, 1.8 million, that's 2.8, another 2.3. Looks like four to five million dollars is rebuilding the fund. It isn't one million. And don't get me started on being in a great big pool and throwing money into it. I'll be around, guys. Thanks. Thank you, Mr. Reeves.

Michael Sterling, 2814 Oak Cliff Court. Now to make a comment, please. When you all taxed this in 23, it came out to $5 million, $3.1 million for town acres, a million and a half for roads and infrastructure, and $695,000 for 911 EMS. And that was based on $205,000 to $210,000 per penny Now, it's my understanding, with my math, unless I'm wrong, that same penny is worth $320,000. So you're not charging me the same as you were in 23. You're charging me the $320,000 on the same penny that you got back in 23. So you got an excess of that $0.25, probably maybe $4 million. You're not looking at that. She's not counting it out. But it's there. And it's not right and it's not fair. And all I'm saying is, really need to look at the budget, people. She thinks $17 a month ain't much. But I'll tell you something. When you're on fixed income of $2,000 a month, it's a lot. It's a lot. And not everybody gets it. a break when it comes to the taxes. I make just too much money to get that break. And I'm a vet. But you're going to wind up pricing me on my own home. And I don't like it. And I've seen three families move out of our subdivision over taxes. Taxes. They went to Unicoi. And by the way, Greene County's got high taxes because they got real taxes. And they count that. We don't have wheel tax.

Please address the board and the commission if you don't care.

Excuse me. And all I'm saying, well, I'm getting upset and I don't want to. It gets, it just gets me. I'm for this city. I raised two kids in this city. I sent one to college. I love this city. I lived in Charlotte. I lived in Richmond. I lived in Chicago. I lived in Atlanta when it was bad. I live here because I loved it. Why? It was small. It was community. You could see trees. We had good medical and damn good schools. And I'm watching it go to hell. Excuse me. Because if you guys let them build over there off Mountain View Road, you ever go over there about 4 o'clock in the afternoon and try to get through? It ain't happening. It ain't happening. And they're going to have construction. I talked to the state. There's 167 defects to the current plan. They don't even have a plan for the bridge. And I helped get this light that goes underneath the tunnel because I did safety for CSX. And all I'm saying is slow down, please. Slow down. But as far as this tax goes, you guys need to really look at it. Thank you for the time you've given me. Appreciate it.

Thank you. If you don't care to state your name, Mr. Bruni.

Good evening Mayor, Vice Mayor, Commissioners, City Administration. I want to speak as well against the property tax increase. As a time when many Johnson City families are struggling with the rising cost of everything, groceries, housing, childcare, healthcare, gas, I do not believe this budget strikes the right balance between the City's financial needs and residents' ability to pay. This price is not right. I understand the challenge to rebuild reserves, maintaining services, investing in the future, but residents also deserve accountability when major financial decisions have such impact on their household budgets. When the settlement was approved, the public was repeatedly told that a tax increase would not be necessary to address the resulting financial impact. During last year's budget discussions, I specifically asked you all how the reserves would be replenished. And the answer was organic growth would allow the city to recover over time. And today we are presented with a 20% tax increase that is intended to refill the reserves. And whatever the explanations, residents are being asked to shoulder a burden that they were previously told they would not have to face. And the same pattern appears with the aquatic center. When the pool was closed, there was no discussion of a ready to finance replacement project. And today we find ourselves committing to one. I support the goal of providing a modern aquatic facility. I've advocated for a public private partnership specifically to reduce the burden on the taxpayers. The question is not whether that center is worthwhile, We deserve that in our communities, but the question is, is this the right financing approach at a time when affordability remains one of the community's greatest challenges? Even leaving the aquatic center out while residents are being asked to pay more, the budget drastically increases capital equipment and non-school project spending while also lowering permitting revenues. That combination raises questions about priorities. Those investments may have merits individually, but together they raise a fundamental question. Have we fully distinguished between what needs to be done now or what can be held until later when residents are in a stronger position financially? So three quick questions for you. Number one, what specifically changed between last year's budget discussions and today that caused the city to move from a stated expectation of rebuilding reserves through organic growth to a 20% tax increase? Second, before asking residents to absorb higher taxes, what capital projects, equipment purchases, or discretionary expenditures were considered for delay, reduction, or alternative financing? And third, given the affordability challenges facing residents today, what objective criteria did the commission use to determine that now is the appropriate time to pursue both the reserve replenishment and major new debt obligations at the same time? Charleston City deserves strong services and responsible financial management. It also deserves the confidence that every alternative has been explored before asking families to pay more. Thank you.

Thanks, Mr. Bruni. if you don't care to state your name.

Good evening. Tricia Crade. I'd like to step away from the numbers for just a moment. And with regard to the process, I'd like to recognize the finance team, the budget team, and the city leadership for making hard decisions. I know this period is not easy. I do support investment. in assets that serve the public good. As a taxpayer, as a finance professional, I struggle to wrap my head around investing and building more large cost burdensome assets like an aquatic center without taking a hard look at shedding other large cost burdensome assets. I was here in the fall to bring some light to the taxpayer burden of Freedom Hall. I'm here again. In 2025, Freedom Hall drained $600,000 from our general fund. This current year, it's estimated to drain $855,000. Next year, estimated $635,000. This is consistent in the history of Freedom Hall. With the closing of the pool, The true public good, public access, decreases. Why are we not talking about selling this asset? I understand there are legal parameters that make that challenging. I also believe that where there is a will, there is a way, and there is very, very knowledgeable legal advice to help us through that. For the good of our long-term financial trajectory, I ask the commission and city administration to begin legitimate conversation and research about how to sell Freedom Hall in order to reinvest that money towards infrastructure. Future-ready infrastructure, as you all well know, is one of the four strategic goals of the City of Johnson City. Based on the trajectory of our growth conversation that has happened not only here today, but in past years and months, the future is here now, and our infrastructure is not ready.

Thank you, Tricia. Thank you.

Hi, Lori Rutan. I'm a swimmer and I use Freedom Hall. It's fantastic. $800,000 compared to $44 million is a big difference. The Sean Williams thing is an embarrassment. We need to get that done and gone. Completely. Everybody that moves here that hears about it, it's like, wow. really, really embarrassing. Let's keep Freedom Hall open, do an aquatic center later, and get that debt paid off with what's-his-name. Please. Really, it's so embarrassing. For all of us. That's all.

Thank you. Laurie Rutan. Anyone else? if you don't care to state your name.

Charlotte Pubal, P-U-B-A-L. We obviously can't afford this aquatic center. If we could afford it, we wouldn't need a tax increase. So we can't afford it. We need to live within our means. The other thing is, We need to think out of the box. We need to think of ways these students can use some of the other pools in Johnson City instead of building an aquatic center. And number three, I'm nervous.

Oh, you're fine. You're great. Thank you for being here.

Number three. Our taxes are lower than other cities around here. It's because we're smarter. They're dumb if their taxes are more. That's all I have to say. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Well spoken. Coach, I don't care to state your name.

Chris Coraggio, Johnson City. I'm not going to be very popular with a lot of you in here because I'm the swim coach, and I'm the swim coach for Science Hill, Liberty Bell, Indian Trail, and the local club team, and I'm here to advocate for the Aquatic Center. That doesn't mean I don't want to see Freedom Hall re-looked at, but that's not what we're talking about this evening. All right. First of all, we need to get our facts straight. With respectful deference to Mr. Sterling, the 28 cent sales tax does not all, I'm sorry, property tax does not all go to the aquatic center. Only eight cents of that. The majority of the proposed tax increase is for city infrastructure and provided raises for city employees. Aquatic Center is an easy target because it's one line item on the budget, easily discernible from all the other minute on the other line items. That $0.08 increase comes out on the median home value in Johnson City to less than $5 a month. Prior to its 1991 opening, there was controversy over investment in Wing Deer Park. Wing Deer Park is now a great resource for our community. In 2007, we missed the opportunity to establish a landmark aquatic center in Johnson City. Now people from all over the region spend their money in Kingsport. visiting their water park, competing in their indoor pool, staying in Kingsport hotels, and even in Kingsport restaurants. I appreciate the vision to look forward to what an aquatic center can bring to the city. Increase tourism, increase sales tax revenue from those tourists, Giving Johnson City one more amenity to attract new families and businesses to move into Johnson City as opposed to Kingsport or Bristol or Knoxville. And to provide additional water to teach swimming lessons to our kids. Provide lap swimming and aqua fitness opportunities, which we heard from another speaker, those youth opportunities are important. And make Johnson City an attractive travel destination. I do not like taxes, and I don't think anyone does, but I sure like a lot of what I get out of them and a lot of what the community gets out of them. And while one could never or would want to use all the assets and programs that our taxes provide, having them available for those who want to use them increases the quality of life for all of us. I ask the Commission pass this budget on to the second reading. Thank you.

Is there anywhere else to speak? Anyone else to speak? Seeing none, I will close the public hearing. And it's time for some discussion, questions for staff amongst us. I guess I would go. Well, I'm sorry. Go ahead.

Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, everyone. Just tremendous information. There are a couple of things, though, I would like to sort out as we look at this budget and as we look at past budgets all the way back to 1980. How many lived here in 1980? Okay. Since that time, the city of Johnson City has raised taxes twice. Twice. 2015 and 2023. And one of the reasons we didn't raise taxes, there was a period of time where we should have, and we lost tremendously staff, equipment, everything kind of got run down. And it took a while to build that back. So if you don't keep up with your city that provides day-to-day services to our citizens, number one, the citizens complained. and they're really upset because their streets are getting potholes, and they are right now. We have to add to the street bucket of funds so we can get more of our streets paved in a timely manner so they don't break down. One of the reasons we haven't had to raise taxes, and somebody said the word organic a few minutes ago, is because of the organic growth that we've seen. We talked about Freedom Hall and the subsidy. Well, in March, we had the Big South tournament. Okay. It was brought to our attention. We subsidize it $600,000 a year. And most any park amenity that we have, we subsidize it. We used to subsidize our golf course tremendously. That's why we closed the one in Buffalo Valley because the subsidy was too great. And now we've invested in one at Pine Oaks to the point that it's almost breaking even. But those are items that we do for the citizens who pay for them. You know, Pine Oaks Golf Course is the home course for Indian Trail, for Liberty Bell, for Science Hill, for the University School. That's all free golf that we give away so that our young people can have a place to go, you know, do their sports. And so a city the size of Johnson City has to have a golf course. A city the size of Johnson City needs a center like Freedom Hall. If you look at what the subsidy is to Meadowview and Kingsport, whoa, much bigger for sure. But because we've invested in this city, and we had someone get up and really kind of beat down our park system, I totally disagree with that. Our parks are some of the best parks of any place in Upper East Tennessee. And not only do they serve as the home for our youth through Parks and Rec leagues, from soccer to lacrosse now is a new one coming in, to football, to tennis, to all the different leagues that we have. Every field is almost filled up every single day. Ride by Science Hill and look at Kermit Tipton Stadium. We paid a lot for Kermit Tipton Stadium, but it is the home for our school teams. It is the place where travel teams beg to rent the space to have their games because it's such a beautiful, wonderful facility. So these fields, number one, first, are for our citizens, our youth. And then we can really leverage having them here. I tell you, one of the best sports complexes anywhere is Wing Deer Park. And from the time we opened up the addition of Wing Deer Park, the second part of it, it is rented out. every single weekend through the year. And every time a softball tournament takes place, they usually start on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, you can have 100 teams come in for one tournament. Guess how much money they leave behind? If you own a restaurant, you should appreciate it. If you work in a hotel, you should appreciate it. If you work in the mall, you should appreciate it. Because that one tournament with 100 teams playing there, and particularly if they're girl teams, 15 and under, grandma, grandpa, aunt, uncle, mother, father, all the siblings come. And they stay here for three or four days. And they can easily leave $2 million behind in direct and indirect spending for sales tax and then directly to the restaurants and the hotels that they attend. Big South tournament, did I finish that one? I don't think I did. We subsidized Freedom Hall, but that was a week-long tournament. And it is the conference tournament for the Big South basketball organization. That's a big deal. They left $6.8 million into this community that week they were here and they love it here. And guess what? They're coming back next year. So with that one tournament, you know, coming in, it brings such a value, brings this organic growth to our community that number one, delivers a public relations, things to our community as well because they go home and tell everybody, go to Johnson City, it's great there. But it allows us then to have growth because we've invested. If we don't invest, they go somewhere else. So I could not be more proud of what we have done here in Johnson City to create a city that has amenities that address the quality of, we call it the quality of place for our citizens. It's a desire, why do you think people are moving here? It is for the lower taxes. And we have some of the lowest taxes of cities right here in Upper East Tennessee. And even if we implement this particular sales tax, it's still gonna be some of the lower that we have. But if we take that money and invest it into our community, then we will continue to have that organic growth that we need. So this will be three since 1980 if we pass it tonight. Imagine that. Just think about that. That is what has happened here in this city. I grew up here. And you know, in 1960, it was a great time of economic expansion for Johnson City. How many lived here in 1960? Okay, there's one or two hands, I see them. Do you remember the two features in Johnson City that opened up in 1960? I was there on one of them for sure. I was there for both of them actually. The Legion Street Pool. That was a home run for this community. I was there for the grand opening, the ribbon cutting, and I went swimming that day and I was a kid. And it was cold then, it's cold now. That pool is what, 60 some years old. It leaks. It has some of the same issues that we have at Freedom Hall. But that was a visionary investment from the leaders at that particular time. The second thing that opened up was Pine Oaks Golf Course. I mean, nobody ever had a golf course around here and they opened it up in 1961. I was there too. It was the greatest experience that I think I've ever had. I didn't even know what golf was as a young girl back in those days until they put a golf club in my hands. And I still play to this day. And guess what? Pine Oaks is still there too. And it is a beautiful green space in this community. So many of the entities that we have here are dual purpose. They're for quality of life. They provide green spaces in our community and we need more of them and look at Buffalo mountain. We're getting ready to have that as a state natural designated area, but to keep our community, to keep our city moving forward, we have to continue to invest. Investment creates results that begets more investment. And so when we have people who come here, they love it here. I mean, you wouldn't believe how many tourists come in for a tournament, love it here, come back for a visit, and they wind up moving here. It happens all the time. So I'm sorry to kind of get on a soapbox here. But I just want to tell you how much I love this city. I want to tell you how proud I am for the things that we have done. It's been tough these last two or three years. And the toughness is not over. But cities have that. Look at Waverly, Tennessee. It got wiped out. And so their stability fund, their rainy day fund, as we call it sometimes, probably got wiped out too. And y'all think about it, when things get damaged here, the city fixes it. When somebody takes a telephone pole down, Bright Ridge fixes it and they don't send you a bill. So there are ongoing maintenance issues that sometimes we get behind on. You know, it takes three different sets of trucks to pick up your garbage, your leaves, and your brush. And all those trucks probably cost anywhere. Joe, you're good with these numbers. But a garbage truck is what? Several hundred thousand dollars. It does. And it runs constantly. The mileage that we put on the vehicles is tremendous. And folks, it has to be replaced. We are buying, I see Dr. Slater from the schools back here. The city is buying three big full bus, 60 passenger buses in this budget. And those are now 150,000 each. And then it's five small ones.

And it's a mandate.

And every year we have to buy those buses. You can only run them for 15 years and they get worn out. So I want to argue for our success. I want to argue for our happiness here in this city. And all of us, instead of trying to tear it down, let's stand it up. because it will continue to grow and be the place we want to live. No one's trying to be maliciously irresponsible here. We're trying to do the best that we can, and we have challenges. And I yield my time. Thank you.

So I appreciate those of you who addressed us and then stayed to hear the deliberation. Several who did unfortunately left and so they won't get to hear some of the answers to some of their questions There was a lot said about you know food or a discretionary spending and I think it's worth at least acknowledging what that looks like the number if you calculate it, amounts to about $1,500 a month across the entire city. Where is that food spending going? Well, we have a program called Johnson City 101, where we invite citizens to come in and be a part of an evening class that goes on for, I think, about a dozen weeks. They're here from right after work till about 9.30 or 10 o'clock at night. We are so extravagant, we sometimes serve a Barberito's buffet. or Taco Bell buffet. We have the Johnson City Leadership Academy where we're encouraging staff to be a part of their ongoing professional development and they're coming in on weekends and they're staying late in the evening and we're feeding them on occasion. We have volunteer boards and commissions that sometimes are meeting in the evening or sometimes meeting at lunch. An example recently, former Mayor Fowler initiated the JC Builds Initiative or Task Force. And there's a round table of folks that come together and they have that monthly meeting. And their input has been invaluable to the process of figuring out where we need to be making changes relative to the permitting and review process. Here's another one. Two or three weeks ago now, we had about 25 juniors and seniors from Science Hill High School who were in the conference room back here for a day-long thing that we call GovAllOut, and it's for high school students to learn about city government. We bought them pizza. That's where that money is going. It is not a grocery store avoidance mechanism by your city manager. If I thought it was, there is no one who would sound the alarm louder than me. We do two employee appreciation lunches a year. Well, when you have a thousand employees, That costs a little bit of money. And so that's not a small investment in the corporate culture that drives the services we provide to everybody who lives here. The tax increase has gotten conflated with one part of the conversation, the aquatic center. And that's a legitimate conversation to be having. But 20 cents of the tax increase goes back to questions of capital and core services. And there was a comment made in the public comment about think the phrase I wrote down was piles of money. And just to be clear, our long-term practice around capital has been to pay go capital. So what that means is when we go buy a fire truck, we pay for the fire truck. We don't go take a loan out on the fire truck. We pay for the fire truck. Why do we do that? Because every year we buy a fire truck. And if every year we were taking out a new loan to buy a new fire truck, we would have literally dozens of fire trucks, each with lungs on them. There's Pago Capital. Right now, the public works equipment, just in the public works department, the average age of vehicles and capital in public works today is 19 years old. So we are getting our money's worth out of the capital. This is not an effort to like upgrade a two year old model. We're talking about replacing things that are nearly 20 years old. Now, the mayor made a reference to school buses, certain things that we buy. are actually forced out of service by law, like school buses. And so every 15 years, those school buses have to fall out of service because they've hit that magic date in the eyes of the law, and we get to go buy a new school bus. When I was first elected, and it hasn't been that long ago, it was $80,000 or $85,000 to buy the big yellow bus. Now it's 145 to buy the yellow bus. I heard comments about the price of gas and affordability, amen. That's the struggle the budget is trying to deal with. Well, you know, the city buys a lot of gas, right? All those vehicles and so forth. When we buy a fire truck, and we buy a fire truck literally every year, When a ladder truck used to cost a million dollars is now anticipated to cost $2.7 million by the time it's delivered. And if we pay for that out of this year's budget, our general fund budget is roughly a hundred million dollars. And I know a lot of times when we talk about millions and hundreds of millions, your eyes kind of glaze over and it seems like it's just a lot of money and surely they're being irresponsible and reckless, but just stop and think if we buy one fire truck a year in a hundred million dollar budget, and the difference in that fire truck went from $1 million to $2.7 million, that $1.7 million difference has to come from somewhere. And when 67% of our revenue comes from two sources, property taxes and sales tax. Now, sales tax trends up. If inflation is driving up, you're going to collect more sales tax. But property tax doesn't work that way. And so I've heard from a lot of folks that say, you know, I just got my reappraisal and my house has appraised it twice what it used to be. Well, here's the thing. That doesn't correlate to your taxes doubling. What it does, because if you think about it, the last time we raised taxes, we went from a rate, we went to $1.97. So think about that. We're currently talking about a tax rate of $1.37. Three years ago, our tax rate was $1.97. That's what happens when your home values increase. So the question one gentleman raised was, you know, a penny used to be 200 and something, and now it's 300 and something. That reflects the fact that the average home that used to be $190,000 is now $300,000. And so it is taking smaller numbers of pennies to arrive at those numbers. And when the reappraisal happens, the only way that the entity can raise more revenue is to have a separate conversation about setting a new increased tax rate. So when you get the appraisal card, that doesn't mean your tax is doubled. It means that how we divvy up the pie may have changed. But it's very important in my view to keep those two questions clear just so we all can agree on what we are talking about. The idea that we subsidize things like Freedom Hall. You know what else doesn't make money? Memorial Park. Do you know what else doesn't make money? Science Hill High School. Do you know what else doesn't make money? There are returns on some of these kinds of investments. The best kind of taxes are the ones people pay and then go home. You know, that money we get to spend educating our children and paving our roads. And the source of that revenue is somebody who drove here from Georgia. And so good on that, right? But so I just want to make clear that none of us come to a conversation about coming back to voters and asking for revenue. without having done an awful lot of the hard lifting and hard questions and second guessing and breaking it down and looking at it different ways. And I think for me, it's really a matter of consistently investing in core service. There's been a lot said about a particular individual and transparency around a particular set of circumstances that happened a couple of years ago around a settlement. There is no one in this room sicker than that conversation than me. But what I will tell you, if you really want to know where the problems are that led to that whole conversation, it is not that someone did something wrong. It is that we failed to make an appropriate level of investment in policing, police training, equipping, staffing, et cetera, over the last 20 years. But for a colossal stress test, We had got away with it. But the colossal stress test was we had a monster in our midst. We had somebody who committed serial rape across dozens and dozens of people. And then just to err on the safe side, videotaped all of it. Okay. And so, yeah, there's some problems around that case, but it doesn't mean anybody did something wrong. It means that when, when you go to court and somebody tells a very sad story and they're all very sad stories, you're left having to justify what you would have, could have, and should have done, but having known about it, right? And so we made a decision as a commission a year ago to take a known risk, a known loss, over a greater, exponentially greater potential risk. And what we said at the time was that there would be no tax increase required that year. Now, anybody that heard us say there would never be a tax increase in the future of Johnson City ever and forever and always, That was not what was said. And in fact, all of these dollars are going to operating fund things. They're not, with the exception of the stabilization fund, they're not backfilling dollars that were used in that conversation. And so this is first reading. This is public hearing. There will be two more meetings. And I think there is a question about whether the third meeting will be the 23rd of June or the 25th of June, because I think we had a last minute scheduling issue for one of us. I think it will stay the 25th just to let you know. Okay. So, so thank you. So there's not a change in date. I would make a motion to approve on first reading and leave that as my comment.

Can I speak for just a second before we do more? So we talked about the big South basketball tournament and all of the money that came in here. That was one of those things that not one of those teams was from Tennessee. Not one of those teams was from Johnson city. Not one of those dollars that they spent here came back, went with them anywhere. It stayed here. Their tax money stayed here and it benefited our city because we had a facility like freedom hall here that loses money every year. Without a doubt, it has lost money every year. We can't have enough shows there to make money on that facility. But the citizens of Johnson City who own businesses, the city got tax money. It didn't directly affect Freedom Hall, but it came in. So things like that are what make Johnson City so great because we have facilities that people want to come and use. this swimming pool would be a facility that people want to come and use. Wing deer is the same kind of thing. We spent a lot of money. We, we paid more money. I voted no even to buy the land because we were getting raked over the coals because we were a city buying land and somebody made a lot of money off the city by us buying that land. But again, Once we bought the land, I was 110% behind developing it for those softball fields and that to be an amenity, not just for our citizens here to have fun playing there, but for people to come from out of state, out of our city to come and spend the night in our hotels and go to our restaurants and leave their money here so we can do better things with the money. So we try to do things like that. This pool, if we pass this, probably will not make money. but it's a great amenity and it contributes to everybody who lives here with restaurants, with hotels, with everything else coming in and they will spend money here. If you build it, they will come. And yeah, I am a sports medicine physician. So I am very, behind athletic activities that help our young people, that help our older people, that will be benefiting from swimming there and using this facility, yes, we will probably lose money on it. That's one of those things that's going to happen. But it's an amenity, like a golf course, like a track, like a mountain to go hiking on that we develop, like a bike trail that we do. All those things are great for our citizens. They get people out exercising instead of sitting around using their phones and their computers. So I'm, I'm sorry that we're doing this or contemplating doing it at this point in time, but we need a swimming pool. for our citizens here, especially our kids to swim in. Freedom Hall, if we can fix it, that'll last a couple more years. But it's 25 yards long. In the summer, people swim 50 meters and not 25 yards. They don't have a pool here except for an outdoor pool that isn't covered, that's cold. that they could use some for that 50 meters, but we could have an indoor 50 meter pool that you can put a dock in that you can have a 25 yard pool on one side and a 25 yard pool on the other in the winter and swim two teams at the same time in that same pool. So it's a great amenity. And I'm, I'm sorry about the cost. But I can't help that. I can't help the cost of gas right now. But hopefully, praying that it will go down and cost of food will go down when transportation goes down, where the prices go down, and we would get better. So, you know, just wanted to add that.

Well, I had a lot of comments to say, but I think there's Jenny spoke and Joe very covered a lot. And I do want to add, this is the last thing I wanted to talk about 17 months ago. And I decided to run for commission. And now I'm in a spot that I'm talking about a subject that I really despise. But I will say after coming over here and realizing that, a few things that I think is really important for the community to understand. And we've lightly covered on them, but Johnson City was able to not raise taxes for a long, long time. And that was largely because of annexation, in my opinion. Johnson City spent 20 or 30 years annexing new land in and getting property taxes. And so a way a city can get taxes, you know, business, you can figure out how do you raise revenue, right? You can raise prices, you can grow market share. So the city's the same way. You can grow the market share. You can grow your land annexation. Well, you talk about what changed with the stabilization fund two weeks ago to state of Tennessee and got rid of our growth battery plan. I mean, even a subject tonight, it's a bigger deal than people realize. Whether not saying I love the annexation policy that we had, but it was the real thing. It was a way to increase revenue. Another one is And, of course, the sales tax is another one. And it's one that I hesitate to throw out. This is not just not a belief that I have, but there is other cities in Tennessee that have raised their property tax rate or their sales tax rate. There can be a referendum that can be a way. That has nothing to do with this budget, but that's another way to raise revenue. And another one is property taxes. And what I've learned after being here is how stagnant property taxes are. You know, I think we all imagine when you get your tax appraisal that the city is getting more revenue. But if you pull up the history of almost any house in there, I sell real estate, and you look back about the last 10 years, the rate goes up, what they pay, it goes up and down about $100 a year. Your rate never is stagnant. it doesn't raise with inflation because this body has to raise the taxes to get more income. So realizing that the property tax, as the cost of doing business, as gas raises, property tax has zero inflation protection built into it. And I just don't think I realize it until I really looked at the math over here like oh my gosh it doesn't matter if the house is worth more unless we decide to raise taxes there's no more income to the city from that and that's a big deal and i just think that really needs to be understood in an inflation time and the other thing is and i just have to thank our second to last speaker that just says hey johnson city is amazing we are talking about this and we're still the lowest rate in the area with the exception of some cities that don't have schools that they're having to maintain. So we have some of the best schools in the state. Our police department, the investment that they've had over the last five years with our city manager and what she's pushed and made it what's important has changed completely. Our fire department is completely staffed. And so when I look as, and you are right, $17 is a meaningful number a month. But when you look at that first one, currently $85 a month. So what people pay for cable, we have world-class schools, and facilities. We have world-class fire. Our police is, at this point, is top notch. I love every one of them. I wouldn't want to live in another city because of it. We have 24 parks that we can enjoy. We have programming at a lot of the parks that we can enjoy. You think, I'm sure I'm missing curbside trash pickup. I mean, brush pickup. So for $85 a month, what people pay for YouTube TV, or their cell phone, we have some pretty unbelievable amenities, let alone our insurance rating for people that are paying homeowners insurance. There's a significant savings there. So I don't mean to get on a little soapbox. And I think next time I really hope we get into some more nuts and bolts of the numbers. But I appreciate the public hearing.

Yeah, I've got a couple things to say. The budget is the most significant responsibility that we have as a commission, and I take that responsibility very seriously. And we've talked about a lot of the really positive elements included in the budget tonight. And at the same time, I am very much aware of the economic realities we've heard from residents here this evening, as well as those that stop us in the grocery store, send us an email. And affordability is a concern that I've expressed during our workshops throughout this process. I'm very appreciative of staff, including the staff property tax relief program for qualifying individuals, those that may need it the most. So I'm very supportive of that inclusion. I'm committed to this process and How I plan to vote on first reading should not be interpreted as a final decision, but really a commitment to this process and receiving additional feedback. And I hope that the final budget reflects both an investment in our city's future, which we've talked about this evening, as well as an awareness of the financial pressures that are facing our residents. So, Just wanted to make that statement, please.

We have a motion. Do we have a second? Ms. Lause, will you call the roll?

Commissioner Fowler?

Yes.

Commissioner Goetz? Yes. Commissioner Wise? Yes. Vice Mayor Brock? Yes.

Mayor Cox? Yes. Commission, the next item on the agenda is 9.1, which is Ordinance 4939-26. This is the second reading and the public hearing for an ordinance to amend the Code of the City of Johnson City to increase court costs by amending Title 3, Chapter 2 of the Code of the City of Johnson City, Tennessee, and repealing all ordinances and parts of ordinances in conflict herewith.

Good evening, Mayor Cox, Vice Mayor Brock, Commission, City Manager Ball, administrative staff. My name is Blake Watson. I'm the senior staff attorney for the city. Sorry, I've been sitting down a while, so I was trying to get my shirt tucked back in. So the last time we were here, the Commission passed on first reading the proposed city ordinance subject to a couple of amendments. Those have been made. So tonight for your consideration is again ordinance number 493926 with those amendments contemplated. I have made three amendments. is a clerical error that was not called by us when we originally submitted the amendment but it just removes the reference to tca section 55102071 which is that five dollar electronic citation fee that would be removed by operation of the law in the newly implemented uh court costs ordinance The second revision is on page two. It's paragraph three. This is the specific provision that we discussed in our last meeting. That language has been changed to reflect the desire of Vice Mayor Brock to allow the commission more flexibility in setting court costs in the future by doing so through a resolution as opposed to by ordinance. So the language is there. I can give you a second to read it, or I can read it to you, but that is the newly proposed language that is included in the current ordinance before you for consideration. Then the second revision wasn't necessarily contemplated by the commission in the first reading of the ordinance, but it is consistent with Vice Mayor Brock's desire to allow flexibility for the future so that we do not have to continually come back before this body with an ordinance to amend a provision. So this provision is contemplating the current ordinance is just a renumbered provision. So it's actually already in the ordinance. It should be moved from 3 to 11 to being renumbered to 3 to 12. And it really helps to provide clarity in the ordinance by separating out parking violations versus court citations for municipal court. And so with that, what I've done is changed from the specificity of $1. in the ordinance and simply gone to the language that we use in 3211 as proposed, which is to reference the statute as opposed to referencing a specific dollar amount. And with that, I'm happy to answer any questions. But tonight is the second reading, and it is for public hearing. Sorry, one more thing. This is just in the event that it is approved this evening and we move on to third reading, the resolution will be prepared for your all's consideration on the passage of the ordinance on third reading. So we would review the ordinance for third reading on June 25. And then following that, the resolution would be considered by the body. for implementation. And with that, any questions that you may have, I'm happy to answer. But otherwise, it's been a long time for you all. If you'd rather, we can open up for a public hearing.

Any questions for staff? With that, I'm going to open public hearing. Anybody wishing to speak for or against the ordinance to amend our court costs? State your name.

Evening, Commission. Dave Adams, Three Coventry Court. At the last city commission meeting, when we had the first reading on this, I was a bit perturbed to hear a request for additional funding without what felt like prepared justification for that funding. I'm not against raising court costs. I think it definitely makes sense that court costs are going to go up over time with inflation. But as a general rule of stewardship, I think we ought to be able to reconcile with the public where exactly that money is going, why the current costs are inadequate, and how we landed on these numbers. So I'm not asking you to vote a certain way tonight, but as you deliberate before passing this on third reading, I urge you to solicit answers for the public record to those basic questions. Thank you. Thank you, Charles.

Anyone else?

Sorry for prolonging this meeting. I wasn't planning on speaking to this, but one procedural question. When the ordinance changes between reading one and two, isn't it supposed to go back to reading one? Or what is the latitude you have to make changes between readings? And the other part is connecting the dots between this particular resolution or topic and things we've seen before. I think there is a pattern that's emerging, because if I recall correctly, the first reading on this, the motivation for the fee increase, which by the way is another thing that the residents pay, affordability, was described as in essence, we haven't raised this forever, we need to do something about it. And then Commissioner Brock, Mayor Cox, you just talked about the same thing about property tax. having been stagnant forever. And in 2023, it was a triple whammy because multiple jurisdictions did that and the appraisals. Commission-wise, you said the average age of public vehicles is 19 years old. So especially with the PAYGO approach, why wasn't this solved 10 years ago with a staggered approach? You also talked about the police not having investment in training and infrastructures 20 years ago. So we see the same thing with the utility billing system that is dating from 1980. I wasn't even born and I'm in my mid 40s. So it seems and with a pool, same thing, same problem here. There is a perception that the city keeps getting caught off guard on all of those things. And at the end of the day, the citizens are here to pay. So I would really recommend some discussion about a better strategy with slow and steady that everybody can agree with and that everyone can absorb and anticipate so that these needs for investments are actually feasible and absorbable by our community. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else? With that, I will close the public hearing.

I move for approval on this second reading with the revisions that he came up with for us.

Before I second that, I would just ask if on third reading we could have a breakout of the degree to which the general fund subsidizes municipal court. So there is a... question justifying the fee increase i think it's safe to say we're we're not looking at municipal court as a profit center perhaps you could be prepared to address that a little more closely yes sir absolutely and i make that as a second and uh it any discussion one of those i'll i'll mention is i think some of that court cost goes cover the there's a judge that city pays but also some of that money does go into a police technology fund from

what I understand. And keep in mind that these fees are for people that have largely been assumed to have broken the law. So I'm all about. But with that, Ms. Lause, you call the roll.

Commissioner Valor?

Yes.

Commissioner Goetz? Yes. Commissioner Wise? Yes. Vice Mayor Brock?

Yes.

Mayor Cox?

Yes.

Commissioners, the final item on the agenda is public comment under other. We have one person signed up, and that's Sylvan Bruning.

for the opportunity to speak again. So although data centers are not on the agenda this evening, I wanted to take a moment to recognize the important work that is currently being done by the staff and encourage you all to keep the conversation moving forward in supporting the staff in all of the spaces in which they have to discuss the various ordinances. Johnson City has an opportunity to get this very right. Across the country we see communities that are struggling with questions surrounding data centers, cryptocurrency mining operations, and some local governments are facing lawsuits. Others are rushing to adopt regulations after projects have already created conflict. We just saw that this week in Knox County where they are discussing a moratorium and those officials are working through the exact same questions that we have here. Johnson City chose a different path And at the impetus of the residents in our neighborhood, the city enacted a moratorium and committed to a process that includes research, public participation, and technical analysis. And as a member of the Noise and Vibrations Study Committee, I have had the opportunity to work alongside the staff, subject matter experts, and community representatives throughout that effort. And the results have been a thoughtful process that many other communities would benefit from studying and replicating. The next phase will be especially important with the draft ordinance language now available to all. The public has an opportunity to review it, ask additional questions, provide feedback before final decisions are made. So that additional engagement will strengthen the final product and help ensure that any regulations do reflect both our community values and the realities of a rapidly evolving industry. So I encourage the Commission to continue prioritizing transparency and public involvement as we move towards the anticipated first reading in july sometime we have roughly a month before that milestone and it's an opportunity for residents to continue being informed and engaged i would also like to personally invite both the commission and the administration and members of the public to attend our next two community meetings focused on these issues They will be held at Langston Center from 6 to 8 p.m. on June 23rd and July 28th. So these meetings are open to everyone and are intended to provide information, answer questions, facilitate productive dialogue about Johnson City, and how we can balance economic opportunity with protection for our neighborhoods and our quality of life. So the decision that we make over the coming months will help shape our community for decades. I believe Johnson City is demonstrating that local government works best when residents, experts, and staff, and elected officials work together to solve difficult problems. So I look forward to continuing that work with all of you. Thank you. Thanks.

With that, I'm going to close the meeting. Thank you.