Board of Commissioners - Special Meeting

Good afternoon. Welcome to the special called City Commission meeting for Johnson City. It's Thursday, August 13th at 12.03. I'd like to call the meeting to order.

Mayor, the first item on your agenda is public comment requests. We received three, so we have three individuals signed up to speak. Regarding our only consideration this afternoon, which is Ordinance 4951-26, Our first individual sign note to speak is Mr. Chris Edwards, who has signed up against the ordinance.

Hey, Mr. Edwards, if you don't care, come up and state your name. Right? I know.

Chris Edwards, Johnson City. Good morning, everybody.

Good morning. I think you know the lingo. We've got three minutes to share your thoughts with the commission, and their time will be on the screen.

Awesome. $864,000 has been allocated to Freedom Hall Pool to make repairs and to extend the life of that facility by seven plus years. In my opinion, that puts to bay any questions or concerns about swim teams or the future of swimming within Johnson City. This afternoon, you're voting on a tax increase to fund the Aquatic Center. Page 57 of the pool feasibility study that you all have had access to clearly cited that in the last three years of Freedom Hall being operational, on average, 56 people a day use that facility. On page 91 of that facility, it also calls out that we are forecasted to lose $8.2 million within the first five years of owning an aquatic center. And that's if and only if we get 616 people through the door every day. Again, Freedom Hall had 56. Now, $8.2 million may not sound like a lot to everybody, but to me it is. You add that on top of the $30 million of the Sean Williams cases, existing cases, the albatross of the John Sevier Center, and we have a mountain of debt that we can no longer prepay or pay back within my timeframe. I personally don't want to in-debt the next generation of Johnson Citians. So to put an additional $30 million of debt into that pool does not seem to be a financially conservative approach. Now, we all may think differently. I was raised to spend less than I make, and I was raised to live on a budget. By the way the majority of you are voting, we don't share that principle. Commissioner Goetz, you're the only one that has voted against the pool and against the tax increase. I thank you for that. In the same vein, I'm going to ask you to find your voice tonight, your voice amongst your peers, because each and every time that you voted against this, Mayor Cox has given you the opportunity to share dialogue, to add comment, and to publicly bring discussion around this topic. You have remained silent. I am loving tonight or today if I can hear you cite from the feasibility study, because there's about 150 pages of data that will help bolster your case. I want to hear you use financial and business acumen that will help build a case, right? Which anyone that has ever built a case before knows how to do. And then lastly, I'm going to ask you to bring in some like nuggets or insights that will persuade people into the way you think. And I'll give you one to start out with. 85% plus of all aquatic centers owned by municipalities never turn a profit. So today, this is my ask. We need to hear from you because you're the odd woman out, and they're going to vote the way they do unless you change their mind.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Edwards, very much.

Our second individual mayor signed up to speak is Mr. Chris Caragio, who has signed up for the ordinance.

All right, Mr. Caragio, if you keep it to three minutes so I don't have to hear that terrifying sound.

I have not gone over three minutes yet. I do one.

I've seen you let people say no.

Okay. Good morning. Slow down. Put it on hold. Once again, you are being told to stop progress, to abandon your vision of ways to better Johnson City, for motives which range from personal agendas to political posturing. Now is not the right time, you hear. If we waited until every star was perfectly aligned to make valuable strategic decisions, nothing of substance would ever be accomplished. No vision would ever be realized. Wait, you are being told. I moved here almost 25 years ago, and during the decades since, I've witnessed nothing but slowing down and waiting on providing this community with the inclusive, quality aquatics facility our city needs and our people deserve. During my job interview in 2002, the Parks and Recreation Director at the time showed me the blueprint for Wing Deer Park. Provident in the middle of the big field by Boone Lake was a huge rectangle. That's where we are building our new aquatics complex, I was told. I drove by yesterday, haven't seen it yet. Around 2007, I was honored to serve on a city task force along with representatives from all aquatic constituencies in the community to plan a comprehensive aquatic facility. This was about an eight-month process. Then our whole body of work was disregarded as funding for Memorial Park was approved. I distinctly recall one person referring to that building as a great senior center complete with a pool. In 2023, the Parks and Recreation Master Plan came out, and both Freedom Hall and Legion Street were listed as areas of high concern due to their age and limited programming functionality. In November 2025, the city's aquatic feasibility study was published. It stated, and I quote, the findings confirm that Johnson City's aquatic facilities are no longer meeting community needs, unquote. And that was before the announcement to shut down Freedom Hall. Now, here it is 2026, and finally, finally, After more than a quarter of a century of slowing down and waiting, we have a vision of the Johnson City Aquatic Center codified in the budget you have so thoughtfully passed. Today, you get to eliminate the political loopholes that those who want to derail their vision of progress have pulled out of their bag of tricks. Growth and progress on building the Johnson City Aquatic Center has been put on hold for way too long. Now is the time to confidently step forward, pass the property tax proposal, and give the vision so purposefully outlined in the budget the funding to make that vision a reality. Made it. Thank you.

Thanks. Thanks, Coach.

Mayor, our final speaker for this afternoon is Mr. Sylvan Bruni, who has signed up against the ordinance.

Sylvan Bruni, 166 Garland Way. Mayor, commissioners, staff, good afternoon. So my position on this ordinance is really straightforward. I understand why some additional revenue is needed, but I do not believe the full tax increase before you today is necessary or justified. And I believe you still have the ability to change course. There are several different things wrapped into this tax rate, and I think we need to separate them. First, our employees. I support appropriate salary increases for city staff because we need a good-paying job at City Hall, and we need to retain good people. Second, the normal rising cost of business. I understand that, too. I'm a director at a small business, and everything goes on the upside. Everything is more expensive. You can't run a 2026 organization on a 2022 dollars and budget. But then we get into choices. And one choice is replenishing the city's reserves. Last summer, after reserves were depleted substantially to pay for the Sean Williams settlement, I came before this commission and specifically asked whether taxpayers would face a tax increase to replenish those reserves. The answer was no. And I asked repeatedly afterward, then what is the plan? And I received no answer. So I have a real problem now asking taxpayers to pay more for reserve replenishment. I understand that's financial and fiscal argument for rebuilding those reserves, but my objection concerns the commitment made to the public and the lack of a transparent plan afterwards. Trust really depends on us meaning what we say. And then there are new capital expenses. Some are worthwhile. Others deserve another look. Do we need to spend $800,000 right now to demolish the post office? Do we need to spend $200,000 right now for new signage? Could those wait? And yes, there is the aquatic center. There is no doubt in my mind that we need a new facility to replace Freedom Hall. And the public, including me, have made suggestions for alternative financing, partnerships, phasing, revenue sources, to lower the burden on taxpayers. Have those been considered diligently by the commission? I also heard the argument that the budget has already been adopted, therefore the tax rate must be adopted to fund it. But a budget is not immutable. You have the authority to amend it. So the question before you is whether those expenditures in the budget are worth the tax rate you are asking the residents to pay. Three questions to finish. Can you clearly, number one, remind the public how much of this increase is state-directed versus paying for basic operations and employees versus rebuilding the reserves versus new discretionary spending? What reasonable options have you considered to delay, reduce, face, or differently finance expenditures that are not immediately necessary? And third, how do you reconcile using additional property tax revenue to replenish the reserves with the commitment made to resident last year that replenishing those reserves would not require tax increases? I understand that governing requires tradeoffs. There are no perfect budgets, no perfect tax system, but there are choices, and you still have a choice today. Thank you very much.

Thanks, Mr. Bruni.

Mayor, next time on our agenda is our only actionable item for this afternoon, item 3.1, ordinance 4951-26. This is third reading, an ordinance adopting tax rates for the 2026 tax year. Our finance director, Ms. Stephanie Lause, will be presenting this item.

Good afternoon, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Commissioners, and staff. I'm Stephanie Louse, Finance Director. Today, the ordinance 4951 to adopt the tax rates is what we're voting on. This is the third reading. Just a reminder, we do have the certified tax rates that are developed by the Comptroller's Office based on the assessments that are done by the county assessors in the three counties that we're in. Because we are in three different counties and they all assess at a different time schedule, our certified rates are adjusted by county based on how the more recent that the assessment has been done, the more standardized the certified tax rate. If your assessment has been longer since it's been done, then your tax rate is going to be higher to accommodate for the difference between the market value and your assessed value. staff does currently still recommend approval of the tax rate to fund the FY27 budget as adopted.

Any questions for staff?

I have a comment. Just thank you for the three gentlemen who spoke on this topic. Just a couple of things I want to, from my perspective, Mr. Bruni, when you talked about us saying there would be no tax increases, it was my understanding when the question was first asked, were we going to have to raise taxes to pay the settlement things? And the answer to that was no. We had it in our reserves. I'm saying, I mean, you're I'm saying I'm not right. I'm saying what I remember from this. And then at the end of that first year or two, do we have money that could go into reserves from how tightly the budget had been managed during that year? As a part of our fiduciary responsibilities, it is important to get the reserve back up to what the comptroller standards is holding us accountable for, and so that's what this is about. Secondly, the comments on the pool, that it would not be making any money. There's very little amenities that we have in Johnson City that make money. The golf course is making money now, which is amazing. I'm thrilled for them. But they sell a product. It's a retail opportunity as well. But the thing for me, and I know Freedom Hall's been talked about and Wing Deer Park's been talked about and the swimming pool talked about, it brings into Johnson City money from both direct and indirect sources as well. And so we are able to, when we have these properties that we can then have conferences or conventions or tournaments and people come into town it really increases the lodging tax and that's the part that comes back into the businesses here the restaurants the hotels the shopping and it really enriches our community in terms of kind of organic growth of sales tax in addition to that so it enriches the community in ways that far surpass just having 600 people, as you were talking about, have to come through the door. When we plan those things right and the Convention and Visitors Bureau plans these large events that come in, we just had a softball tournament. I think they had 1500 athletes plus all the people who traveled with them and they were here for a week. And so that kind of event, you know, leaves, $2 to $4 million in the community in five days. And so that's good business for our businesses and that we can do that using the facilities that we have. I think all of our facilities have what I call twofers. You know, we did Founders Park and made it into a park instead of just a detention basin. And what that has done for this community is huge because now it serves as a gathering place for our citizens and It is a place where we can have festivals and all that generates funds as well. The last thing I want to comment is the debt. Been on the commission for a while and we have issued debt and managed the debt service that we pay on that debt over time. But what that debt does, we're going to have people that 25 years from now or 30 years from now who are going to be using the facilities that we put into place today. And they, too, can help pay for that facility instead of this group of people today paying for it all. to their benefit in the future. So if debt is managed wisely, I think it's something that can help a community, you know, begin as, you know, one of our core elements in our strategic plan is future ready infrastructure. So to be building this facility that can be used for both competition and bringing people into the community and for recreation facilities for our residents, and then the debt can be paid over time, I think is a formula for me that I see as very positive.

I do have questions for staff. Normally when we're taking up the budget considerations in June, we have a special called meeting because we're trying to get three meetings into the month of June. It's a little bit unusual to have a special called meeting to set the adopted or to adopt the tax rate. Can you say a little bit about what may be happening that's leading us to have this meeting out of regular order?

So in order to, let me start over. The comptroller's office does all of our tax calculations. We provide them with our tax rate. The county assessors provide them with the assessment data, and then they do all those calculations. Until we have a tax rate set, they cannot proceed with that. And us not having a tax rate set also stops them from locking the county assessments down as well. So in order to meet the deadline where we have to have our tax bills out, they're supposed to go out the 1st of October. In order to meet that deadline with the comptroller for them to get the calculations done, verifications, get the files to us, the tax bills printed. This was the time frame that we needed to get them the tax rate in order to give them the amount of time to do all those tasks.

And my understanding, correct me if I'm wrong, was that we were asked by the assessor's office to try to get our adopted tax rate back to them by tomorrow?

Yes, sir. Okay.

And so the reason we're not taking this up at our second August meeting is because we would not meet the requested time frame from the assessor's office. Yes, sir. Okay. Thank you.

Not necessarily a question, but I would like to reiterate what I shared during the first reading of this ordinance that due to the concerns that I raised during our budget debate and reflective of how I voted, I will also be voting no on third reading. But thank you so much for your work in putting all this together. So I just wanted to reiterate what was shared. Thanks.

I'd make a motion to approve.

Any seconds?

I'll second.

So just for some discussion purposes, you know, again, we're kind of ratifying this rate. But just to respond to a couple of comments and questions, I do want to answer really each one of you, specifically Mr. Edwards first, is I can assure you We will do every attempt for public-private partnerships, different other – there's a lot of opportunities out there to get some different revenue sources to pay for a pool. What I've kind of come to realize in understanding the commission and how Johnston City works and – Recently, Bristol has approved some funding for planning that aquatic center. They've approved the funding for the engineering and design, but they yet have a funding source for the whole complex. This is a little bit different. And me trying to understand what was... what I felt was best for our community through this process, I had a lot of those same questions as should we have that in place or the funding in place. Realizing how much easier it is to recruit sponsorships, public-private partnerships, with the funding in place for the whole center is much easier. So I just want to reaffirm that we will look at every opportunity and get creative as we can. As far as Freedom Hall pool goes, I think being able to have the funding to allocate to that and then commit within a time period why that pool does still have a lifetime on it, lifespan, to have the next stage of the aquatics program for our town, I think it's really important because that hadn't been looked at. That was a concern that we heard over and over was why has there not been a plan for Freedom Hall? And as uncomfortable as adjusting any tax rate, that this is to help set a plan for that. So funding's in place, can long-term plan for aquatics. We can slow down a little bit with Freedom Hall and having our kids have a competitive pool and have good planning and figure out what opportunities are out there and how to have the biggest impact for our community. Because as Vice Mayor Brock said, when it comes to a city and understanding, I had a really hard time thinking about freedom hall and how much it costs to operate freedom hall. Then I start looking at the number of tickets they sell and concessions they sell. And every one of those has a sales tax component, which brings money back into the city. Um, and all of a sudden that gap gets really small, really quick. When you start including the people that are coming in for these events, um, and spending money there, same thing with softball. And as you mentioned, um, thinking about aquatics and how to pay for it is the velocity of money is real. And when people come in and leave $4 million in a weekend in our city, that money will circulate. And it usually circulates at least twice before it leaves the community again. So $4 million really should be about $8 million of spend in our area. And so for a restaurant that got an extra $20,000 that weekend is real expensive. impactful to that restaurant. And then their servers, and it all circulates in the community, and sales tax comes out of each one of those. And so I think that kind of responds to several of y'all. And thanks for being here, and thanks for being consistent, asking good questions. But I do want you to know that we talk in depth about it. And the last thing I'll say is... Johnson City has had very good financial stewards after being in this seat for 20 months now to have the services that we have and the quality services that we have. And that doesn't mean we don't need to get better at it. We need to continually improve. we do still have a lower cost than most any community with our services out there. And so we get hung up on adjusting the tax rates so much. And I'm in real estate is not something I would ever do. It's without knowing that it's necessary to meet our service expectations for our community. And

If I could expand just on deliberative comments, you know, it doesn't turn a profit, neither does Rotary Park, neither does Science Hill High School, neither does Memorial Park. That isn't why those facilities exist. They exist as features for our residents and guests, and that isn't the standard against which they are evaluated in total. It's a part of the conversation, but not all. And I think when you look at Freedom Hall pool, Freedom Hall pool has been a topic of concern, as Coach Coraggio noted. I remember 25 years ago talking about Freedom Hall and its deteriorated state. And city commissions in 2000, 2001, 2002 said, elected not to prioritize doing something about Freedom Hall. You fast forward to today and one of the critiques that was made earlier this year was, well, what's your plan? Why did you allow it to come to this place? Why is Freedom Hall pool in the condition it's in? The reality of it is, is because others for generation now have kicked the can down the road. This commission isn't going to kick the can down the road. And you're right, we've got identified funding that's going to buy six to eight more years. It's going to take two to three years to build a new facility. So if we keep kicking the can down the road, we're going to be back in the same place six to eight years from now, where we're back having to deal with the limitations of already substandard facilities, particularly the Freedom Hall pool. And we won't have made any arrangements. It's not like dealing with the Freedom Hall pool today resolves that issue for infinity and we can just move on. We need to be walking and chewing gum simultaneously. We need to be dealing with the facilities we have and extending their useful life to the degree that it's financially responsible to do so. But then we also need to quit ignoring the realities long-term of what our growing community needs by way of these sorts of facilities. And so it's with that, that I'm supportive of, again, what we're doing is adopting the tax rate. We're not relitigating the budget. And so I would call the question.

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

Mayor, that concludes your business.

With that, I will adjourn City Commission.