County Commission - Regular Meeting

There she is.

Oh.

Please call the commission meeting to order. Thank you. Pastor Jesse Briggs of Love Temple Church of God in Christ and the Tennessee Faith Episcopal Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction, please come for the invocation.

First of all, it's such an honor to be here today to do this prayer and we thank God for all of the service that you've already done and committed. Father God, we just thank you for being with us in this hour. We ask that you bless these gatekeepers and watchmen today. God, you've already looked over our city. Now the people in charge. God, you give them understanding. You give them how to lead and guide this city. We want to thank you now for unity that we have in this place. We've made it to a safe place. God, you bless and give us wisdom this hour. We're going to ask that you touch each one of these commissioners today and allow them to make good decisions in harmony about the city of Memphis. We come now in Jesus' name. We're praying. Thank you, God. Amen and amen.

Vice Chair, can you lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance? You may be seated. Madam clerk, please do a roll call. Okay.

Commissioner Wiley present. Okay. As well, Sugarman present meals present July present, right? Present Thornton Morrison Brooks.

Lowry Bradford present chairwoman event here We have nine present we have a quorum Now I'd like to ask for the approval of the June 29th 2026 minutes, can we do that without objection? Saying none so moved It is possible to join the meeting two ways, via the designated email account, boc.email at shelbycountytn.gov, via phone at 901-222-1234. Parliamentarian, please read the rule.

members of the public who desire to address the county commission shall request permission by completing an appearance card which will be given to the chair by deputy members of the public shall be permitted to address the county commission unless ruled out of order by the chair or denied the opportunity to speak by majority vote of the commissioner's president voting please note that as it pertains to public comment our rules of order set a limit of no longer than three minutes when recognized by the chair The chair may set a limit for discussion by the public of less than three minutes for each individual if circumstances require. Finally, to the members of the public, if you would like to express your pleasure or displeasure on a matter before the county commission, please do so by raising your thumb up or pointing it down as opposed to applause or other expressions of approval or disapproval. Disruptive members of the public are subject to removal from the commission chambers by the deputy sheriff. Thank you for your attention and in advance for your cooperation today.

Thank you. We'd like to recognize those staff and commissioners who had birthdays in the month of July. April Powell, happy birthday on 7-20. And Commissioner Clay Bibbs, who has a birthday coming up tomorrow on July 28th. We'll now move to the consent agenda. Before we do that, I'd like to ask if Commissioner Shalai, you would make a presentation to Pastor Jesse Briggs.

Proposing trust and confidence in the fidelity and ability of Pastor Jesse Briggs of Love Temple Church of God and Christ, COO of the Tennessee Fifth Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction, we do appoint and constitute you chaplain of the Board of Commissioners to serve the 2025-2026 term of the Board of Commissioners at the will and pleasure of the Chairwoman. This is the 27th day of July, 2026.

All right. Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

Commentary, please read item number two.

Item two, Lemoyne-Owen College 807 Giving Day, sponsored by Commissioner McHale-Lowry.

I ask for this to be referred to the next commission meeting in light that Commissioner Lowry has not made it yet. I'll move to item number three. Can we do that without objection? Item three, parliamentarian.

Item three is a special resolution celebrating the 125th anniversary of Overton Park and the 15th anniversary of Overton Park Conservancy, sponsored by Commissioner Erica Sugarman.

Thank you, Madam Chair. This is a special resolution celebrating the 125th anniversary of Overton Park and the 15th anniversary of Overton Park Conservancy. Whereas in 1901, the city of Memphis established Overton Park as one of the original jewels of George Kessler's visionary park and parkway system, creating a place dedicated to public health, recreation, culture, and the preservation of nature that has served generations of Shelby County residents for over 125 years. And whereas today, Oden Park remains one of Memphis' most treasured public spaces, encompassing approximately 342 acres of old-growth forest, open green space, recreational amenities, cultural institutions, and community gathering places that welcome more than one million visitors annually from every corner of Shelby County and beyond. And whereas in 2011 the City of Memphis entrusted the stewardship daily management of Overton Park to Overton Park Conservancy, a non-profit organization that has spent the past 15 years restoring natural resources improving public amenities expanding educational programming strengthening community partnerships and ensuring that the park remains vibrant welcoming and accessible for all and whereas through the dedication of its board members staff, volunteers, donors, community partners, and countless Memphians. Overton Park Conservancy has invested millions of dollars in park improvements while creating innovation programs that connect people with nature, wellness, history, arts, and one another. Whereas during this milestone anniversary year, Oden Park Conservancy is leading the development of Oden Park's first comprehensive master plan in more than 40 years, engaging residents across Shelby County and shaping a shared vision that will guide the park's future for generations to come while honoring its historic legacy. And whereas the 125th anniversary of Overton Park and the 15th anniversary of Overton Park Conservancy provide an opportunity to celebrate not only the remarkable history of one of Shelby County's greatest public assets, but also the enduring spirit of civic stewardship and community investment that will preserve this treasured place for future generations. Now, therefore, it be resolved that the Shelby County Board of Commissioners hereby recognizes and celebrates the 125th anniversary of Overton Park and the 15th anniversary of Overton Park Conservancy. So thank you so much for all that you do.

Thank You Commissioner Sugarman thank you all of you for this generous acknowledgement of what is a definitely a big year for us in Overton Park not only is the Conservancy celebrating our 15th anniversary in the park the 125th but the Overton Park Shell is celebrating their 90th anniversary the zoo 120 and in a few weeks we're going to be celebrating the opening the doors of of the metal museum and the revitalization of that historic building in the park. For lack of a better metaphor, I often say the park is like Swiss cheese and the conservancy is the cheese. So if you think about the management, it's very different than like Shelby Farms. We manage all of the free and open spaces, the Conservancy does. And arguably one of our greatest pieces of our mission is managing the old forest state natural area. That forest is one of only three or a few in the country. It's the only urban old growth forest in the Southeastern United States. It's a forest that rerouted the interstate back in the day. And it is for many Shelby County residents, perhaps their only chance to really experience true wilderness. So I would love for all of you to come out at any time for a tour. The temperature drops 10 degrees when you go into the forest. So that's nice as well. But the future is bright for Overton Park. And however you interact with the park, we hope you bring your friends and family. And again, we thank you very much for this honor.

Don't you want to get the picture? No, come on. Don't. Come on. Well, Ian, you don't see.

Okay, parliamentarian, we, Commissioner Lowry, would like us to go ahead and take care of Lemoyne Owen, Lemoyne College 807 Giving Day. So if you could read item number two.

Item two, Lemoyne Owen College 807 Giving Day, sponsored by Commissioner Mikkel Lowry.

Madam Chair, Commissioners, thank you all for the opportunity. I'm proud to present a resolution here and thank you all for doing this to, as we recognize, August 7th as Lemoore-Noah College 807 Giving Day. I think we'll give a round of applause for that. Obviously, I'm a proud alum of LeMoyne-Owen College, and I remember when this day was started, and it's something that has continued to grow and grow, and to show the beacon of what can happen. 807, for those who don't know, that's the address of LeMoyne-Owen College for 807 Walker. So, if I may, whereas LeMoyne-Owen College stands as a beacon of academic excellence and opportunity, serving as the only historically black college and university in Shelby County, and whereas the institution has historically empowered leaders who have shaped civil rights, educational, economic, and political landscape of Memphis, the nation and the world. And whereas the historic campus is located at 807 Walker Avenue, remains a pillar of pride, culture, community investment in the heart of South Memphis. And whereas the annual celebration of 807 Giving Day runs annually, From 8 0 7 AM to 8 0 7 PM. Every August 7th unites alumni, students, faculty, faith leaders, elected officials, and community partners to honor the legacy of this institutional treasure. And reaffirms our commitment to its future success. Now for let it be resolved that the Shelby County board of commissioners recognize August 7th, 2026 as Lamorne on college 8 0 7 giving day in Shelby County. Thank you so much.

Commissioner Lowry, thank you very much. And to all of the Shelby County commissioners, we thank you for acknowledging what is our single largest donation day in the legacy of our annual fund for the college. This year, we're looking to raise on 807 day eight. $200,000 as the kickoff for toward our $3 million campaign. I agree with all that Commissioner Lauer has said about Le Morneau College and as a third generation alum, I will say what my elevator speech is. You cannot get to transformational leadership in the city of Memphis, the county of Shelby, the state of Tennessee and beyond without crossing the sacred grounds of Le Morinon College. And by the way, 85% of our student body are indeed Shelby County residents, which means you also protect your tax base. So thank you for your investment in our institution and Memphis and Shelby County's only HBCU.

Thank you.

We'll now go to public comments. I will read a few names for you to come forward. The first Reverend Laura Geddes, Adam Nelson and Sarah Hodges will each have three minutes. If you could say your name and your zip code when you come to the podium.

My name is the Reverend Laura Geddes, zip code is 38104. I am an Episcopal priest at Grace St. Luke's Episcopal Church, as well as a partner with MICA, Memphis Interfaith Coalition for Action and Faith. First, I want to say thank you for taking your role and authority seriously as commissioners, one that has been given by the community as an elected official. And I also wanted to share a quotation that comes from the baptismal covenant to respect the dignity of every human being. It's one of the tenets in our church that all baptized seek to follow. so i'm here to read the names of the people that we have lost inside the shelby county jails since 2018. alex winrick antonio davis antonio first antonio golden avon rollins bobby sellers carl ewing charles johnson christopher pettis christopher steele Klynis Strong, Cultural Pondexter, Courtney Berry, Corey Jackson, Dalton Goddard, Daniel Neal, Darian Nolan, Darren Crawford, Darrell Tyrone Young, and Dion Byrd. Those are a lot of names. We are asking and we need the formation of a healthcare committee representing the community, the families, and advocates. This committee, we hope, will have an active role in a selection process, reviewing candidates alongside officials, hoping to provide a formal recommendation to the purchasing committee based on clinical outcomes, safety records, and capability rather than price. And finally, I ask and we urge the Commission to establish a statutory requirement that provider selection prioritizes clinical outcomes over cost. Over cost. To choose the bidder ranked first on the evaluation scorecard. Thank you.

Adam Nelson?

I'm Adam Nelson. I live in 38107. I'm here to read the names of people we lost in the Shelby County Jails from 2018 to the present. Demarcus Jarrett, Demarion Walker, Denny Fugate, Desmond Shipp, Donald Jones, Larry Gilliam, Lawrence Sumlin, Leodre Isabel, Malcolm Ford, Marcel Hutton, Martin Perez Estrada, Michael McCabe, Nicholas Dancy, Raymond McGee, Richard Higgs, Richard Willingham, Robert Turner, Raquez McDaniel, and Roy Dunbar. And I've spoken and read these names before and I've told you pieces of the story of Roy Dunbar who I journeyed with, who I knew. Last time I was here I told you he was in 201 Poplar because he stole less than $100 from the care home where he was getting treatment for paranoid schizophrenia. I haven't told you about what happened before that. Roy tried everything that he could to get the treatment that he needed as somebody who didn't have money. And I walked with him, I saw him do it. We went to the Salvation Army and we were turned away. We went to Serenity and we were turned away. We went to... We went to Delta Medical, right? And all of these places had programs and offerings and there were criteria and he didn't meet them or he met them for a week and then they couldn't help. He was back on the street. Like the help that he was supposed to get, he just couldn't get it anywhere else. And so the last possible chance for him to get that care was inside 201 Poplar. And he made it a few months. And he was so depressed and hopeless that he gave up. And then he wasn't even given, he was found dead in his cell. And who knows how long he'd been dead when they finally found him. That's the reason why we demand a formation of the healthcare committee representing the community, families, advocates that will have an active role in the selection process, reviewing candidates alongside officials. We want them to provide a formal recommendation to the purchasing committee based on clinical outcomes, safety records, and capability, not price. And finally, I'll urge you as a commission, establish a statutory requirement that provider selection prioritizes clinical outcomes over cost. Choose the bidder ranked first on the evaluation scorecard. Thank you.

Sarah Hodges.

Hello, I'm Sarah Hodges, zip code 38112. It's almost a divine appointment having these two people go before me. I'm here because due to my son's diagnosis, I'm in the unenviable position of being an experienced and long-time visitor, often on a 201 poplar. Forgive me. When I went to visit Thursday, they turned me away because they said only 25 people can visit. So I signed up for the Zoom and was supposed to speak with him this morning. And when 15 minutes before I was supposed to go live, it flipped and said, oh, you're signed up for Thursday, not Tuesday. And I've worked my life both times coming back in town and then also, you know, being in position for these Zooms. So I was told that the reason they only saw 25 people was because that's the way that it had been since COVID. And COVID is over. And so we need to return the visitation schedule to pre-COVID levels. I'm not the only person, the only mother, the only spouse, the only child who has gone to visit somebody at 201 Poplar and been turned away because there's this artificial cap on the number of visitors. There are 2,700 men at 201 Poplar and visitation has been shown to reduce recidivism, it improves institutional safety, and it preserves family bonds. The studies track a 26% reduction in recidivism with visitation. Employment is two times higher for inmates receiving family visits over those who do not, and the visits break up the monotony of the prison routine. The benefits for the facility are that the visitation visits are tied to the facility rules, and it shows a decrease in violence and in behavioral infractions if visitation is allowed. It also ultimately decreases the number of reoffenders, which translates into millions of dollars of potential public savings. So 2,700 divided by five is 540 people. And so only with 25 people, only 5% of the population gets a visit. And I can say that the mother is heartbroken, and I assume my son is heartbroken, but I can't talk to him. So anyway, so my request is just please restore the on-location visits to pre-COVID capacity. I used to go in there, there were hundreds of people sitting, waiting patiently for their turn without anything to read, just to see their child. So I didn't know how to cut through the red tape, so that's why I'm here. I'm hoping somebody cares. and that you can talk to the sheriff or whoever runs the jail and get that artificial 25 limit erased and just let as many people in to visit their loved ones as it can hold. So thank you. Thank you.

Deb Mashburn, Joanne Lewis, and last, Laramie Wheeler.

Good afternoon. My name is Joanne Lewis and this is my secretary Stephanie Watkins. We represent the military retirees of the tri-state area. This is an organization that was founded in 1974 due to segregation. Three African-American veterans had nowhere else to go so they decided to create a home for themselves so they can have somewhere to wind down. So since its founding or establishment, we've done a lot of great work in the community. We want you all to know that we are there. For the last 51 years, we've been out in the community doing things for other patriots, for our youth, and just being a beacon in this community. But for the last 51 years, we have not had any upgrades to our building. So in order to continue to do the work, we need some upgrades for our building. And I would invite you to come out to our building located at 280 Cynthia Place. I'm sorry, I didn't give the zip code 38126. And that is not far from here. And we do a lot of work there. And I'm going to let Secretary Stephanie Watkins talk to you about some of our events.

We're proud to serve our community through fellowship, service, mentorship, and support. Some of our upcoming events that we got going on is Sunday, August the 2nd. We will have our annual cookout. It'll be our fourth annual cookout. It is free. We also have free backpacks for the children. So backpacks filled with school supplies. Everything for that particular day from 3 to 6 on Sunday, August the 6th is free to the community. So while supplies last, they'll get to enjoy that. some of the things that we've done is we have a scholarship program. We were able to provide for students with $500, uh, for scholarship money to go to school. We also do quarterly feeding of the first responders. So we visit the police stations and the fire stations to provide them with breakfast. Uh, we provide Thanksgiving and Christmas baskets during the holiday time. And we have a quarterly visit with majestic garden rehabilitation center, providing veterans with prizes for the games that they'd be playing. So, um, Again, I do want to highlight that Sunday, August 2nd from 3 to 6, we will have a free event, which is our fourth annual cookout. The kids can receive haircuts, free haircuts, free backpacks, free food.

What's that? Manicures.

Manicures, yeah. Manicures and haircuts for the kids. So come out, bring your grandkids.

One last thing, we do this with no funding, no federal funding, no donations. We donate ourselves. We do little fundraisers. So we're asking if you all can come out, take a look at our building or give us a building and try to upgrade the building so we can continue to do the good work in our community.

Also, if you can visit our Facebook page. So I've been working very hard on updating the Military Retirees of Tri-State Area Facebook page.

Thank you. Our next speaker, Deb Mashburn. Laramie Wheeler.

Good afternoon. My name is Laramie Wheeler. My zip code is 38103. We've been here a lot reading these names. 68 people who together all their time combined served 12,500 plus days, which is cumulatively 34 years. The remaining names are Sam Carr, Santrez Traylor, Sherman Weekley, Stanley Campbell, Stephen Gomez, Tiffany Dukes, Timothy Black, Tommy Young, Tracy Gill, Tyrus Watkins, Wesley Joyner, and William Trentham. Hopefully you all received a handout about the vigil that we're having this weekend. But I wanted to invite you as our commissioners and residents of Shelby County. On Saturday, August 1st at 630, we will be holding a vigil for these 68 people at Memphis First United Methodist over here on 2nd Street, 204 North 2nd Street. We will say their names, hear family testimonies, and just be there to support and hold them. The vigil is called Make Them Known. So we invite you and the public to join us. We want to make them known, and we want to make it stop. Thank you.

All right, parliamentarian, if you could read. Before we do that, we're going to take three minutes to allow commissioners to review the consent agenda to see if there's any items that you would like pulled. Commissioner Sugarman.

Thank you, Chair. Item number 15. 15.

Commissioner Brooks.

Thank you. The Commissioner Sugarman has pulled the one I was interested in. Thank you.

All right, commentary, please read the consent agenda minus item 15.

items 4 through 10 come from the budget and finance committee which is chaired by commissioner whaley item 4 is a resolution approving a contract extension for armored car safe point smart safes and kiosk services with loomis armored us llc for the period of july 1 2026 through september 30th 2026 in an amount not to exceed $44,373. This item requires the expenditure of FY2027 Tennessee Trustee General Funds in an amount not to exceed $44,373. Sponsored by Commissioner Michael Whaley. Item 5 is a resolution approving a contract extension for banking services with Regions Bank for custody and deposit of county funds for the period of July 1, 2026 through September 30, 2026. This item does not require the expenditure of county operating funds. The county will fund the contract extension amount with a compensating balance on deposit with Regions Bank. Sponsored by Commissioner Michael Whaley. Item six is the resolution to receive and file the Shelby County Trustees annual financial report for the year ended June 30th, 2026 in accordance with tenancy code annotated section 67-5-1902 sponsored by Commissioner Michael Whaley. Item seven is a resolution approving a three year contract renewal between Shelby County Government and Fifth Asset Inc. DBA debt book in the amount of $24,000 each Fiscal year beginning in FY2027. This item requires expenditures of FY27 general fund operating budget in the amount not to exceed $24,000. Sponsored by Commissioner Michael Whaley. Item 8 is a resolution receiving and following the April 2026 monthly comprehensive financial update reports entitled Shelby County Government Monthly Commission Division Reports for the year ending June 30th, 2026. Sponsored by Commissioner Michael Whaley. Item 9 is a resolution receiving and following the May 2026 Monthly Comprehensive Financial Update reports entitled, Shelby County Government Monthly Commission Division Reports for the Year Ended June 30, 2026, sponsored by Commissioner Michael Whaley. Item 10 is a resolution to receive and file the Trustees Annual Report of Delinquent Tax for the Year Ended june 30th 2026 in accordance with tennessee code annotated section 67-5-1903 and to authorize credit be given to the trustee sponsored by commissioner michael whaley ITEMS 11 THROUGH 13 COME FROM THE PUBLIC WORKS COMMITTEE WITH COMMISSIONER MILLS AS VICE CHAIR. ITEM 11 IS A RESOLUTION APPROVING A CONTRACT IN THE ISSUANCE OF AN EMERGENCY PURCHASE ORDER TO G&J CONTRACTORS LLC TOTALING $173,920 FOR THE RESTORATION OF THE AIR CONDITIONING HANDLING UNIT and necessary replacement parts located at the Walter L. Bailey Jr. Criminal Justice Center 201 Poplar Avenue, Memphis, Tennessee 38103. This item requires the appropriation and expenditure of FY2026 general funds in an amount not to exceed $173,920. Sponsored by Commissioner McWright. Item 12. It's a resolution approving the agreement between Shelby County and Oaklawn Estates LLC to secure the public improvements to Oaklawn Estates Plan Development Area A Phase 2 PD 04-315CC and authorizing recording of the plat when bonding procedures have been fulfilled. This item does not require expenditure of county operating funds sponsored by Commissioner David C. Bradford Jr., Item 13 is a resolution approving the agreement between Shelby County and Oaklawn Estates LLC to secure the public improvements to Oaklawn Estates Plan Development Area A Phase 3 PD 04-315CC and authorizing the recording of the plat when bonding procedures have been fulfilled. This item does not require expenditure of county operating funds. Sponsored by Commissioner David C. Bradford, Jr. Item 14 comes from the Economic Development and Tourism Committee, which is chaired by Commissioner Lowry. Item 14 is a resolution approving the Downtown Memphis Commission fiscal year 2027 budget and affirming the assessment for fiscal year 2027, sponsored by Commissioner Mikel Lowry. ITEMS 16 AND 17 COME FROM THE GENERAL GOVERNMENT COMMITTEE, WHICH IS CHAIRED BY COMMISSIONER BROOKS. ITEM 16 IS A RESOLUTION APPROVING THE ELECTION OF NORTHERN'S PUBLIC FOR APPOINTMENT AND A REAPPOINTMENT FOR SHELBY COUNTY, TENNESSEE, SPONSORED BY COMMISSIONER HENRY E. BROOKS. ITEM 17 IS A RESOLUTION APPROVING THE COUNTY MAYOR'S NOMINATION OF VICKIE WILLIAMS COX, STANLEY LIPFORD, AND MICHAEL WORKING FOR APPOINTMENT TO THE CITIZENS LAW ENFORCEMENT REVIEW COMMITTEE, SPONSORED BY COMMISSIONER HENRY E. BROOKS. Items 18 and 19 come from the Core City Neighborhoods and Housing Committee, which is chaired by Commissioner Brooks. Item 18 is a resolution correcting the resolution approving the sale of 99 delinquent tax parcels acquired by Shelby County from various Shelby County tax sales to identified purchasers at various prices collectively totaling $1,860,840 pursuant to Tennessee Code Annotated Section 67-5-2507 and authorizing the Shelby County Mayor to execute proclaimed deeds adopted October 26, 2020 in item 19 by approving the sale of one delinquent tax parcel acquired by Shelby County from Shelby County Tax Sales 1601 to identified purchaser correcting the sale price from $700 to the contract price of $600 and changing the collective total sales price to $1,860,740, pursuant to Tennessee Code Annotated Section 67-5-2507 and authorizing the Shelby County Mayor to execute a quick claim deed. Sponsored by Commissioner Henry E. Brooks. Item 19 is a resolution approving the sale of 75 county-owned delinquent tax parcels acquired by Shelby County from various Shelby County tax sales to identified purchasers at various prices collectively totaling $333,769.75 pursuant to Tennessee Code Annotated Section 67-5-2507 and authorizing the Shelby County Mayor to execute reclaimed deeds. Sponsored by Commissioner Henry E. Brooks.

I have a motion by vice chair Bradford, a second by Commissioner Sugarman. Madam Clerk, please prepare the screen for a vote. Madam Clerk, please record the vote.

We have aye votes from Commissioners Whaley, Sugarman, Mills, Shalai, Wright, Morrison, Brooks, Bradford, and Chairwoman Avent. We have nine aye votes.

That motion passes. Consent agenda is approved. Parliamentarian, please read item 15.

Item 15 comes from the Community Services Committee, which is chaired by Commissioner Caswell. Item 15 is a resolution approving a contract with the Community Alliance for the Homeless with three one-year options to renew in the amount of $230,000 to provide planning, Grants Management Database Administration and Clinical Services to Reduce Homelessness in Shelby County for the period of July 1, 2026 through June 3, 2027. This item requires expenditure of FY27 funds in the amount of $230,000. Sponsored by Commissioner Charlie A. Caswell.

I have a motion by Vice Chair Bradford, a second by Commissioner Shalai. Commissioner Caswell, can I get a committee report? Thank you. There's a light on. I think they turned it off. We were getting some feedback. Thank you.

Good afternoon. All right. Good afternoon, commissioners. Dr. Lasagna Hall, deputy chief administrative officer. The item before you is an annual contract that ensures that homeless services throughout Shelby County is tracked and monitored through the continuum of care. And that federally designated agency is the community of the community alliance for the homeless. This is a contract in the amount of two hundred and thirty thousand dollars. It is and was approved in the FY27 operating budget. It is an annual contract that we renew as the administration. Each year we've done it for a number of years. The administration does recommend approval, and I am joined today by Sydney Taylor, the Executive Director for the Community Alliance for the Homeless, as well as her VP for Information Management, Tara Williams. There was at the Wednesday committee meeting information requested. That information was transmitted to all commissioners at 6 o'clock Wednesday evening.

Thank you. Commissioner Sugarman, you're recognized. Thank you, Madam Chair. And so in the resolution, it says three one-year renewals. And according to our rules, it should only be two one-year renewals. So I'll make a motion to change it from three to two one-year renewals. Can I get a second?

Commissioner, point of information. Commissioner Brooks. Thank you. I will second that, but I do have a question, and I did read the information. Thank you, Dr. Hall, for responding. However, I didn't get enough information to help me to inform my vote this afternoon. I needed to see something in reference to outcomes. All of your subrecipients here, I definitely want to see at least one sheet that shows some of the outcomes and some of the information that you use in order to Do your compliance. I mean, how you do compliance.

Hi, Dr. Sidney Taylor, President and CEO, ZIP Code 38112. I'm sorry, can you repeat your question, please? A little bit louder. Can you repeat your question, please?

Okay. I just need some information to show to, or maybe you can explain to me. How do you do compliance? What's your matrix? What are you searching for? Are you looking at Title VI, Title VII and other related kinds of federal statutes? Or do we have something even more specific to state and local government?

Yes, so HUD releases the regulations and they send it directly to us and we use those as metrics to judge each agency that receives HUD funding in the community.

You want to speak to the LSA reporting standards?

And we have reporting standards, Tara. VP Information Management can share our reporting standards, how we measure that.

Okay, so, and I don't want to belabor this, but it would be a good idea if we had some information before us that shows, you know, like your grading. I'm a retired teacher, so I relate everything to a report, evaluations and all that. So, if we had something like that in front of us, in front of me, it would be very helpful.

Yes, and HUD gives us rubrics and things like that to follow. So, we have all that. We have it. We just didn't share it today.

Okay.

Thank you. So there was a motion on the floor by Commissioner Sugarman. Is there a second?

Madam Chair, do I need to get back in here? I guess I do. Am I recognized?

Yes.

Thank you, ma'am. I have an issue with, and I think I've stated this before on the record, with more than one year. Because we do need to take an opportunity to review Everyone, everything, every entity can stand improvement and it needs review. So I would, if my colleague is willing, I'm gonna second that either way, but if she would be willing to just do one year

Yes, so I want to, let me just be clear. So right now there was a motion on the floor. Are you seconding that motion or not?

I will, but I want to see first if she's willing to amend her motion to one year. And if she's not, I will second the motion.

Are you amending your motion?

May I respond?

Yes.

Thank you, Chair. And so... I would say this to my colleague, Commissioner Brooks, that I will amend in the sense that we need to be aligned with our rules and states to one year. So with that, I will add that they come back after a year to report back to us.

I do want to make sure that we don't get muddled in the administrative functions. Part of what these contracts require is that there's a report. If there's something that we would like to put on the record as far as the report and how it comes to the commission, but the contract itself, I don't want us to get muddled in how the administration, because the mayor is the contracting authority, makes these decisions about contracts. I think we have to stay away from what is, stay very clear in our legislative function. Point of information. And I'm, as soon as I finish my statement, then I'm sure to allow your point of information. That we stay in the purview of our role in our legislative function, which is either to vote these things up or down. So, point of information, Commissioner Sugarman, you had a question?

Yes, and so as a legislator, we make laws but we also have the capacity of approving the budget and we have to be fiscally responsible especially when there's so much concern about the budget and the fact that we are now borrowing money against our cash flow and so i would be very clear that we need to have more oversight because we are collectively being criticized publicly for the lack of oversight. So again, I will amend it for two, one year with the understand they'll come back in a year to report to the commission. Now that could be via email through reporting, et cetera, but we need more reporting. Thank you. Dr. Hall.

Thank you, Chairwoman. So from an administrative point and just having worked in this space and knowing the administrative wrangling of getting these done with a new incoming mayor, new commissioners, the administrative function is quite arduous. Might I suggest, and Chairwoman did allude to this, that there is an annual report presented by this organization Each year, and as the legislative body is reviewing its budget for each fiscal year that you require that that report is provided in advance of your approval of the budget, thereby giving you the authority and the insights prior to making your decisions. on the annual budget, you will have had an opportunity to review their reports. And with that, I would ask from the administration's lens that you allow it to stay. It has been cleared by the legal office, the county attorney's office, so we would ask that the three-year renewals, three one-year renewals stay in place. But we would be more than happy as the administration to ensure that that report is provided to this body prior to the approval of the FY27 operating budget. Again, this entity only manages the data that's collected from our nonprofit agency. So they're just returning the information, the data that then can inform this body. So that would be the recommendation coming from the administration.

Commissioner Brooks, you're recognized.

Again, not to belabor, but I can appreciate everything that Dr. Hall said. However, I would suggest without intruding on administrative functions that maybe we can have a report submitted to community services within one year.

Yes ma'am, that is actually within the contract. That report is a part of the contract as well as the scope of services. So it is a requirement, quite honestly, of any entity that is contractually bound to the county. There is an annual report that is provided. what I guess I am responding respectfully is that the administration can provide you this body with that report annually upon receipt, thereby giving you the information to ask the questions during the budgeting process.

Am I right now? Just to conclude, I just want to make sure we're saying the same thing. If the report can be provided to the legislative community services committee.

Yes, ma'am. We will make sure that happens as well. We will make sure that that is put in writing so that it happens.

Commissioner Sugarman. Thank you. And so my motion does stand. Thank you.

And I'll object just for the purpose of. just saying man comment just a moment so you made a motion did you second it okay and so there is an objection by commissioner morrison you recognize commissioner morrison just simply to state that i think the criticism from the community is fair about uh we are meddling outside of our lane often and i think it takes an inordinate extra amount of time and money do all of this extra all these extra it seems like I'm very often in in our resolutions we are interfering in my view and so sometimes it's occasionally justified but I in this case I just think it's unnecessary all right Commissioner Brooks would be your third time speaking do you want to ask for okay Commissioner Caswell

Thank you, Madam Chair. And again, I agree with my colleague, Commissioner Morrison, as it was stated by Director Hall, that the report is there. We just got to ask for it. I mean, they're giving it to us. We just got to ask for it. Anything we want from them before budget, we should ask. And again, just want to thank the community for the tracking record in fighting to get more federal dollars, something that this body right now don't have the capacity to do. You bring in $12 million to the homeless population. because you're working with bringing all of these entities together. Thank you for their work. And again, to this body, just hearing from Dr. Hall and seeing the report that we have here, we just got to ask for what we're looking for. I do understand where my colleagues are coming from to want to have that accountability there, but it's there. We just got to ask. So I support the objection.

All right, Commissioner Brooks. This will be your third time, first on this, I'm sorry.

Move to suspend rules. Thank you. And again, we do have information here. And I do not believe it's a waste of time. We certainly need oversight. and accountability and transparency when spending public dollars. Shelby County government does not, and maybe we will be, and we'll put in place an oversight, an independent oversight entity. But until that time, when we recognize that populations such as the one we're dealing with is increasing every single day, and we're spending upwards 230,000, and respectfully it's still increasing and there's not evidence there's not evidence demonstrated evidence of this money working in that population so again without the oversight independent oversight entity the report coming to the legislative uh community services committee is important and it's not a waste of time and i think the people in district 7 will applaud that

Dr. Hall, you're recognized. Just one point of clarification, Dr. Lasani-Hall, Deputy Chief Administrative Officer. The contractual amount to the Community Alliance for the Homeless has been $230,000 annually for the past 10 years. So the increase to Shelby County's expenditure has not increased. That amount has remained flat. for the time that I've been in the county government. So there is no increase. I just want that clarified that the organization of the Community Alliance for the Homeless has not experienced an increase in its expenditure. That 230,000 remains flat.

Thank you for that clarification. Commissioner Strickland, this is your third time speaking. Do you want to ask to suspend the rules?

Actually, Commissioner, Chair, this is my second time. Yes, it was. Yes. This is not a reflection on the Committee of Alliance at all. It's about accountability. It's about reporting. And I understand what Dr. Hall is saying about budget. But as you know, you've witnessed many times when we ask for detailed reports in writing, in person, on record, we have not got it. So I don't understand why there's such a pushback on our requests that we receive the reports at the end of the fiscal year And so, again, I do support the work that you're doing. I don't want to get that mixed up. But again, we have to scrutinize every nickel and dime, especially when we have obligations that we cannot meet. You know, the specialty courts have been here begging for money because they're what's going on from the state. And so we're being forced to obligated to have made this effort six. So as you know, our budget is very tight. And it's not that I don't think that you're doing important work. I'm just talking about accountability. And that's not just for use for all the organizations that come before the commission. And as far as my colleagues are concerned, I come to all the commission meetings It's very important. They're very important to me and my community, my colleagues, and the public. So I take my work extremely important. I can't say that for all of my colleagues. I'm just saying for me. This is very important work. And don't take it as a slight to what you're doing. I'm asking, requesting, as a commissioner, within my rights and in my role, is that you all, again, bring the reporting. It's simple. I understand the pushback. I really don't. Thank you.

Again, I just for the record want to clarify that there is an annual report that is provided per contract. Is that correct?

Yes, that is correct.

Okay. And so I think the other step that may be helpful is if that information is provided to the commission, but I don't think that there's any pushback in the fact that this is something that's already a function of any contract that's being done within the county. So the objection before us is there's an objection on changing the renewal dates of this. And I do want to clarify for the record, the rule states when there's extenuating circumstances and parliamentary, if you could read the rule and I want to state. On the record, based on Doctor Hall's comments about the transition within contracts and with the new administration, why this would be make be considered an extenuating circumstance of that being a three year renewal versus the two year renewal, which is what the objective, the amendment or motion that Commissioner Sugarman makes. So I'm going to have parliamentary and read the rule.

Yes, ma'am. The pertinent portion of Rule 6 C. Three reads, all new contracts shall contain no more than two annual renewal options, and there shall be no more than two extensions per contract absent extenuating circumstances which shall be provided by the department requesting the contract extension.

So the objection before us, we're now voting on whether or not this motion, which is by Commissioner Sugarman, to change this to, was your motion one year or two year, Commissioner Sugarman? two-year. That is what we're voting on. This is a motion to amend to make this contract only a two-year renewal versus how it's stated now before as it's a three-year renewal. Please prepare the screen for a vote. Madam Clerk, please report the vote.

We have I votes from commissioners Sugarman and Brooks, commissioners Wigley as well. Meals shall I write Morrison Bradford and chairwoman a vendor voting? No, I have two eyes and eight nose.

That motion fails before us. Now is the resolution as presented the contract with community aligned from this for three year, three one year options. Commissioner Castle, you recognize?

Yes, ma'am. Call the question.

Please prepare the screen for a vote. Madam Clerk, please record the vote.

We have aye votes from Commissioners Wiley, Caswell, Sugarman, Mills, Shalai, Wright, Morrison, Brooks, Lowry, Radford, and Chairwoman Avett. We have 11 ayes.

That motion passes. Palminterian, thank you. Palminterian, please read item number 20.

Item 20 comes from the Law Enforcement Corrections and Courts Committee with Commissioner Sugarman as Vice Chair. Item 20 is an ordinance first reading. Ordinance to amend the Shelby County Code of Ordinances by amending Chapter 10, Article 7, Sections 10-373, Definitions in 10-388, Temporary Housing of Children, Creating Rules for Seclusion and Restorative Practices in the Youth Justice and Education Center, sponsored by Commissioner Erica Sugarman.

I have a motion by Commissioner Sugarman, a second by Vice Chair Bradford. Commissioner Sugarman, can I hear a committee report?

Yes, Chair. It came down with a favor recommendation.

Okay, thank you. Is there a report from the... Is there a presentation by the administration, or are we ready to proceed?

We have brief comments. Okay. Just good afternoon, Commissioners, and we want to thank Commissioner Sugarman for the sponsorship of this ordinance and your steadfast advocacy for children in Shelby County. Last Wednesday, Director Alexander from the Department of Corrections and Executive Director Reese Walker and I sat in front of the body to introduce this ordinance to end the abuse of seclusion, also known as solitary confinement. and to establish restorative practices in the Youth Justice and Education Center. This ordinance has been shaped by conversations with community partners like the Black Clergy Collaborative of Memphis and the Countywide Juvenile Justice Consortium and the Youth Justice Action Council. I want to thank all of these partners for their guidance that helped bring this ordinance to you today. The overuse and abuse of seclusion of youth in detention has historically been a deep concern in our community, and Director Walker and I are here today to ask you to help us put that to rest. Through the leadership of the Department of Corrections, Juvenile Court, the Office of the Mayor of Shelby County, and now with your support in this ordinance, we are starting to rebuild community trust, and we are raising the bar for the standard of care for the most vulnerable children when they are in our custody awaiting adjudication. So I thank you for your consideration of this ordinance today. And we're here if you have any questions.

Could you state your name for the record and position? Sorry. My name's Dana Wilson, and I'm Deputy Chief of Staff for Mayor Harris. All right, please prepare the screen for a vote. Commissioner casual.

Thank you. Madam chair. I just want to be added as a sponsor on it.

I have a motion by commissioner as well. Second by commissioner Sugarman. Can we do that without objection? Seeing none. So moved commissioner Brooks.

I'd like to be added as a sponsor.

I have a motion by commissioner Brooks, a second by commissioner Sugarman. Can we do that without objection? Seeing none. So moved. Please prepare the screen for a vote. Please report the vote.

We have aye votes from Commissioners Whaley, Caswell, Sugarman, Shalai, Brooks, Lowry, Bradford, and Shellwoman-Avent. We have eight aye votes.

That motion passes. I'm going to move to item number 27. Parliamentarian, please read for the record.

Item 27 comes from the Budget and Finance Committee, which is chaired by Commissioner Whaley. Item 27 is a resolution approving the intergovernmental agreement between the City of Memphis Public Library and Shelby County Government for the operation of the East Shelby Branch Library from July 1, 2026 through June 30, 2027, with three annual options to renew. This item requires the expenditure of FY27 general funds in the amount of $639,742 sponsored by Commissioner Charlie A. Caswell, Jr.

I have a motion by Commissioner Caswell, second by Commissioner Sugarman. Commissioner Whaley? We move to item 27. Do you mind giving us a committee report? This is the intergovernmental agreement between the city of Memphis.

Yes, item 27 came down with a favorable recommendation.

Thank you. Commissioner Wright, you're recognized.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I don't know if there was a presentation before I speak or if you're just here for questions.

I'm here for this item.

Okay.

Dr. Lasani-Hall, Deputy Chief Administrative Officer, I was just gonna speak on this item on behalf of the administration.

I will defer to Dr. Hall.

Good afternoon, commissioners, Dr. Lasagna-Hall, Deputy Chief Administrative Officer. The item before you is an intergovernmental agreement with the City of Memphis to provide to the City of Memphis $639,742 to ensure the operations of the only county-owned library here in Shelby County. The funds before you that you will be approving goes to cover personnel costs as well as materials and supplies. This is also an item that is approved in the FY27 operating budget. I am joined by Dr. Eric Harris, the Director of Memphis Libraries, if there are questions about this item. But the administration does recommend approval.

And Dr. Hall, I'm assuming for us to, in order for us to approve this we would need if you're stating that this is also an extenuating circumstance based on the administration? Yes, ma'am.

With the change of administration, these are items that would normally be handled, but with such new members coming on board, the administration respectfully requests that the exception be made for the three one-year renewals. Okay.

Commissioner Wright, you're recognized.

Thank you, Madam Chair. So I did have a question if the director could come up. Thanks so much for being with us. Was it Mr. Harris? I'm sorry, what was your name?

Yes, Harris.

Mr. Harris, thank you for being with us. I just had a question on this. I don't remember if this has come up. I mean, I guess it must have come up before the board before on the contract. For this branch, what is the amount of this contract that is going towards the books and the materials in this branch?

Thank you, Dr. Eric Harris, Director of Public Library, City of Memphis, 3030 Poplar. In this budget, the amount for circulation in books, I believe, is what you requested. It is a fairly low number. I do believe it is not, it's not $3,000. And we're looking to be sure. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Hall. For materials and books for FY27, it is $2,367. $2,367.

Yeah, so I thought I saw that in the supporting documentation. That seems like an extremely low number. If we're talking about $639,000 and the actual books and materials that could be accessed by the citizenry is $2,000, I don't know what percentage that is. It's got to be not even 1%. Can you... I mean... How can we justify that?

Yes, if I could speak to that. In this contract, again, I have been the director for five months with the city of Memphis. And in examining this, I think that that was a measure that probably was taking place a while ago to keep the overall contract down. Because what the benefit of East Shelby, the benefit that East Shelby Drive receives is that in the Memphis Public Library system, we have what's called a shared circulation system. We have about two million books that are available for anyone to check out at any library. And if you go to East Shelby Drive, you're looking for a particular book. And if it's not there, then we will ship it to that branch the very next day. We have a delivery and distribution department that does that. They go to every single library twice a day, every day so that patrons there can check out whatever book they want. You can also turn a book into any branch. as long as it is part of the Memphis Public Library. So we're able to supplement that. Now, again, yes, of course, I'd love for it to be higher. That would only increase and make our selection a lot more robust in the public library system. But that's just where the contract is. But we are able to use this. And in fact, for East Shelby Drive and FY26, there were about 22,000 books that were checked out there. Um, and they had about 40,000 visitors to the branch. So even with that low amount, we're able to maximize it and still get a lot of participation and a lot of checkouts occurring at that specific branch.

Commissioner shall I, uh, being that I do work for the city of Memphis administration, I am going to play it safe and recuse myself from this item.

Okay.

no second needed it's just the way they don't vote commissioner sugarman thank you madam chair and so i would urge my colleagues to support this item over the past four years i've supported you all in your districts and i just want to say this this is the only gathering place in my district i know you all heard this a million times i'm going to say it again we do not have a community center we do not have a ymca we have small rooms in the library where they're hoa meetings and i meet there on a regular basis to dozens of hoas there because it's free it's the only free place in my whole district where we can meet and yes we do want to amp up the programs and i stated on record that i will be working with um I'm very emotional about this because, again, this is the only place we have that's free in my district. And the rooms are very, very small. We need more, not less. And I just hope my colleagues, again, like I've supported you in your districts, that you support me and Director Harris, I will be meeting with you one-on-one. So, again, I'm urging my colleagues to support this item. Because if not, you know, we have no place that's free in my district to meet. Thank you.

Commissioner Caswell?

Madam Chair, I don't think that no one here probably wouldn't support this great item that's here. I just want to say that some of the research I did even before coming on this body, I used to question the city of Memphis 1.2 million plus for books. And they explained to me what you just shared with my colleague, Commissioner Wright, that they gather $1.2 million worth of books, but they're there to circulate. Because I'm like, kids don't read books to print. No, we should do. I said, but technology is the thing why we're not putting... putting that $1.2 million in technology, and they shared that this is a circulation of books. So I just wanted to share that it is a big budget for books in the library coffin, and that it will get there if there are need, and if there are need, it's there. That's what I got some years ago from that education. I just wanted to share that on the record. But thank you. I support this item.

Commissioner Wright?

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Dr. Harris, for the explanation. So let me just clarify. This branch is open to every county resident, no matter where they live in Shelby County? Yes. And it's free of charge?

It's free of charge. All services programs in the library system are free.

THE ONLY LAST THING I WOULD SAY IS SIMILAR TO A PREVIOUS ITEM THAT WE HAD I THINK IN THE SUPPORTING DOCUMENTATION AGAIN IT TALKS ABOUT THAT THERE ARE REGULAR REPORTING MAYBE QUARTERLY OR THREE TIMES A YEAR SOME KIND OF REPORTING I'VE NEVER SEEN THAT I THINK YOU KNOW WHEN WE TALK ABOUT THIS THIS THIS BOARD HAVING THAT performing some level of oversight. I've never seen any kind of details. So I appreciate what you've shared about the high level of activity of people coming and accessing materials, but I'd like to have this body to have eyes on that. and to partner because if we're going to be if we're going to be partnering with with the funds we should have direct oversight about what's happening and and some insight into what programming is being offered and how we can enhance those things so yeah certainly support my colleague commissioner sugarman and uh and the things that she likes to do with her district i just want to see this be successful when i saw that 2000 number i was like surely this must be wrong but but i understand what you're saying about circulation um but it i guess i'll i'm looking at dr hall if you could see to it that the administration shared those reports with the board um i'd be appreciative thank you so much thank you we'll prepare the screen for vote

May I add one thing? Just adding one thing. Yes, thank you. And this is something probably for future consideration of this body. I do not expect a vote today, but there is a discrepancy when it comes to the personnel in this contract. The city of Memphis implemented a salary floor last year, which changed the number of specifically to East Shelby Drive branch of about 75,000. which we are prepared to get the year started and get going. We will not close the branch and we will not reduce hours no matter what the verdict is. But I do ask in the future that this body consider an additional $75,000 being provided to the Memphis Public Libraries for East Shelby Drive personnel and that it be added to future contracts if you do consider and approve. Thank you.

Commissioner Brooks. just I'll be real brief thank you for the job that you're doing I understand the need for additional money for staff and I want to echo some of the comments that my colleagues well Commissioner Sugarman articulated and I do want to separate myself from any comments that takes moves us away from books toward technology. We always need to have books. Books are important, important for our children too, who are reading. They need to start reading books. So when you come back, if I'm here, then you know you have my vote for additional books.

Thank you.

Thank you again, Dr. Harris. All right, please prepare the screen for a vote. Adam Clark, please report the vote.

We have I votes from commissioners Whaley, Caswell, Sugarman, Mills, Wright, Morrison, Brooks, Lowry, Bradford, and Sherwin-Avon. Commissioner Shalai has recused. We have 10 ayes and one recuse.

That motion passes. Commentarian, please read item 21. Item 21.

comes from the Land Use Planning Transportation and Code Enforcement Committee with Commissioner Mills as Vice Chair. Item 21 is an ordinance first reading, joint ordinance to amend the Memphis and Shelby County Unified Development Code adopted by the City of Memphis on August 10th, 2010 and by Shelby County on August 9th, 2010 to establish a procedure for replacing the zoning map being ZTA 2026-002 sponsored by Commissioner David C. Bradford, Jr.

I have a motion by Commissioner Sugarman, a second by Commissioner Whaley. Mr. Redfield, is there a presentation?

Thank you, Madam Chair. Brett Ragsdale with the Division of Planning and Development. I'm happy to give a presentation if you'd like. It did come down with a favorable recommendation, and this is the first reading of three. So if you'd like a presentation, I could.

Okay. I know we did this in committee. Commissioner Strickland, thank you for stating. Commissioner Strickland, I guess you'll ratify that this did come down with a favorable recommendation.

I chaired this committee, and it did come down with a favorable recommendation.

Okay. i'm sorry i'm looking down at the wrong name my apologies my apologies commissioner mills thank you okay if there are no commissioners in the queue then let's for first reading let's take this for a vote looking at the wrong name on the sheet Please report the vote.

We have aye votes from Commissioners Whaley, Clay Bibbs, Caswell, Sugarman, Mills, Shalai, Wright, Morrison, Brooks, Lowry, Bradford, and Chairwoman Avant. We have 12 aye votes.

That motion passes. Volunteer, please read item 22.

Item 22 comes from the Education Committee with Commissioner Sugarman as acting chair. Item 22 is an ordinance second reading joint ordinance of Shelby County Government and the City of Memphis amending ordinance number 573 adopted April 14, 2025 in furtherance of a program for a high quality early childhood pre-kindergarten for all. Sponsored by Commissioner Erica Sugarman and Commissioner Miska Clay-Biz.

I have a motion by Vice Chair Bradford to second by Commissioner Sugarman. Commissioner Sugarman, can I get a committee report? Yes, Madam Chair. It was favorable. It was favorable. All right. Please prepare the screen for a vote. Commissioner Lowry.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I'll be added as a sponsor.

A motion by Commissioner Lowry, second by Commissioner Sugarman. Can we do that without objection? Seeing none, so moved. Going once going twice. Prepare the screen for a vote. Please report the vote.

We have I votes from commissioners Wiley play builds as well should have been July. Morrison Brooks Lowry Bradford show on a bank we have tonight.

That motion passes this goes on to a 3rd reading. I'm Terry please read item 23.

Item 23 comes from the general government committee which is chaired by commissioner Brooks item 23 is an ordinance first reading ordinance to amend the Shelby County code of ordinances by amending chapter 2 article 4 division 2 to add a new section 2 dash 191 financial reports sponsored by commissioner Erica sugarman deciding was sent down without recommendation in July 22nd 2026 committee meeting.

I have a motion by commissioner sugarman a second by vice chair Bradford Commissioner Brooks, is there a committee report? I do not have a committee report. Maybe someone does.

Without recommendation. Without? Came down without recommendation. Okay, thank you.

Mr. Sugarman, you're recognized.

Thank you, Madam Chair. And so this just puts into place things that we've been asking for the past four years since I've been a commissioner is detailed records. And it just reflects what we've been getting from the comptroller's office. Again, another fiscal budget year went by. And I know I've put in writing and my colleagues as well put in writing, we've asked for details and we continue to not receive it. And so this just puts in writing as a law and ordinance what our function is according to the charter and so hopefully going forward when we ask for details we will receive details because again again this fiscal year budget we did not receive it as requested thank you seeing the commissioners of Commissioner Morrison Ms. Scheinbaum I think I see you out there could we hear from you do I

I don't have my far vision in, so yes. Or Director Tipton, one of you. This ordinance states that we're not receiving these reports and I'd just like to hear your response because we have received quarterly reports and I want to hear your response to any that you might have.

Thank you, Audrey Tipton, Director of Administration and Finance. I am surprised at the requests. We do present each month the monthly reports for the general fund, and we also present quarterly reports. And in our budget book, you can find all of the line item uh budgeting per se so i'm not really sure of what this request is asking for uh if if it could be explained further to me i'm sure we'll be happy to provide it commissioner morrison are you done with your time yeah yes i i just wanted to hear

a fair response. Thank you.

Thank you, Commissioner Sugarman. Okay.

Yes, Director Tipton. And again, I put it in writing, we've asked requests, for example, other elected officials appointed officials. In particular, I'm thinking about the election commission, when we asked for details reporting For example, how many employees they employ? You know, what's the makeup? Are these a temporary point? We have a list of questions that I don't know if you received it because we sure did not. And so that was a pivotal moment because that's a massive effort. And again, we have now six months of effort. I'm sure you're aware of them. And so this puts us in a situation where, or put us in a situation that's over now, that now that it's over, the budget that we approved, the election commission is now set at $9 million, even if there's not an election. And so those kinds of things are very concerning, especially when we're consistently asking for reports. I don't know if you received them, but I know I've asked for details. Thank you.

Thank you, Audrey Tipton, Director of Administration and Finance. I know that on a quarterly basis, we do provide the summation of salaries and expenditures per department in our reporting as far as the detailed specifics of the number of employees. All of those things do require a lot of work to do, and we've been transitioning to the new system for this past year. So time has been very short to give you those really specific answers that you're looking for thank you you are correct and that's the purpose of this so that we have poorly reporting exactly yes excuse me so going forward hopefully we'll be able to provide to you some more detailed reporting that'll give you an idea of how things are ran exactly and this is what this is requiring as far as an ordinance and so that whoever's in the seat or in your seat or whomever

Because again, it was so frustrating from my side when every budget season we're asking for details, details, details. And I understand what you're saying is that as a director, it is important that whoever, you know, is sending us this information that we get all the details, not just some of them, so that we can make an informed decision. And to be honest, that wasn't done. It was not done as far as the questions I was asking various departments in particular, I'm calling up the electric commission because they have a maintenance of effort and we have six and we were not told or informed there are six at all by anybody. And that's huge. That is huge. And I don't know if there's going to be additional ones, but again, as a body, we need to know those kinds of details. Thank you. Thank you.

And I also want to add that those questions can be presented before budget season. So throughout the year, when we're presenting our quarterly reports, I think we respond back when we get questions. At the end of the year, it becomes more difficult when you're trying to put together the budget to answer those type of detailed questions. So just going forward, I am recommending to the body that you ask for those questions throughout, ask those questions throughout the year and we will provide that information for you. Commissioner Wright?

Thank you, Madam Chair. I also had a question for you, Director Tipton. So I agree with my colleague. I felt like, especially this budget season, there was a lack of detail. I think maybe you acknowledge that as well in some of your comments. So it was hard, and there were a number of my colleagues who asked a lot of questions like you said, and I get that that is a burden when they're last minute, but there were a lot of good questions that I never saw really an answer to to this day. I understand also that we are transitioning or have transitioned to the new accounting software and hopefully that will assist with that also at our last meeting on june 29th you distributed a report that is the organized organizational structure of shelby county government um is that was that accurate was that report accurate is it active accurate yes that's accurate it was accurate as of that day yes it's accurate now Okay. All right. Does the county intend to bring, speaking of these reports and insight into the budget, does the administration plan to bring the school budget to this body?

No, we do not.

And why is that?

Because the schools bring their budget.

So when do you anticipate this body wrestling with that budget?

I don't know, I think the schools have already presented their budget, haven't they?

You think that they've already presented the budget?

The schools?

Yeah.

Yes.

Okay, all right. So I've not seen their resolution for a school budget, so it's concerning to me, that you're not really seemingly very aware of where we are with the school budget.

Please understand that what we pay is a maintenance of effort to the schools, and our county attorney can speak to that. We have no control over that. The schools prepare their own budget. They have a finance department, they have a board, and they present that to this body. So what we present to you is the amount of money that's allocated as the maintenance of effort to the schools. So I am very aware of what my position is as far as the schools.

Okay, all right, I appreciate that. We're responsible for our own budget as well as the school's budget, so I think it's a legitimate question for me to wonder what's happening with that because I've not caught a whiff of the school's budget yet, and so that's just another piece of information that I think should be available to us. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Okay. Commissioner Caswell?

Thank you, Madam Chair. And again, appreciate you, Director. I know you responded to my email, and I understand from my email close to budget that was asking a lot of those questions, and you shared the tightness of time to get it done. I resubmitted it after what you said that you would be looking at. I think those things that I asked, a lot of those questions will help us. And I'm hoping that since it's getting to you now, that you have time to really look through those things. And I think this is kind of in line with what my colleague is asking with this, because, you know, I truly think that when I look at last year, the budget's proud and the resolution I was attempting to bring about that and then was told it was a lot of connecting to the MOE. I would like to know that way ahead of time. because that gives us a better scope of what can be cut if something can or, you know, properly move. So I can understand in part, right? In large part, because I know some of those questions need to be answered to better do this job, right? And then when we look at not wanting to be able to raise taxes for anything, if the money is there and we can see that or it need to be moved again, because it's based on this body, making those decisions. But if we don't have those answers, It's hard to make those decisions, that's one. But two is just, I think the last three to four years, I've never seen us receive the book at the same time the mayor gave his presentation for that. So now without that book or having that information, it pushes us closer to a deadline that we even got to wait even later, right, to ask any questions about that. So with this, I don't know if it's in this ordinance, but it should be that we receive the book at the same time that the mayor presents his budget to us uh to that to that point uh so i i just want to leave it there i i too i hear my colleague uh commissioner wright is asking about too about the school board budget and and and if it's i don't know if you can help us uh chief or if it's the budget chair i might want to ask this to madam chair when the school board presents they do their presentation to us uh cheryl do they present their budget to us at that same time

uh budget chair whalen if that's through the chair yeah so they they they come and they present their preliminary budget in may uh and then they don't submit the actual uh final budget until after we have approved our budget uh which really should have been today's meeting because they had a meeting right after ours my expectation was that that would be when they would approve the budget My understanding is their next meeting is not until tomorrow, so there should be no reason why the budget's not approved at their meeting and then brought to us for approval because that's the proper process. Just presenting it in concept is not good enough. It has to then come to us because they have to match the capital allocation that we approve in our budget.

Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Chief.

I just wanted to say one thing, Commissioner Caswell, Audrey Tipton, Director of Administration and Finance. The one thing that I do want to say is that when we present on a monthly basis and a quarterly basis, we would like to see more than four commissioners sitting in the gallery to hear it, and then you could possibly get some of the answers that you're looking for right now. It is also the mayor's prerogative to present his proposed budget in the way that he presents it. asking us to present it in that way next time, it will be up to whoever the mayor is at that time on how they would like to present their proposed budget. So having that book at that point in time would be up to that person.

So, uh, thank you to commissioner, right? I think what we will just need to do is follow up with next steps from the school board about when they voted to accept their budget, which then has to come back to us to be presented, uh, so that we can accept via resolution.

Any other questions?

Question, right?

Thank you, Madam Chair. So just maybe to drive at least a part of that point home, last year when this body approved a budget, we received word back from the comptroller that not all of the component parts and not all of the sort of the addendums to the budget that this body never saw were out of compliance with what the state required. And so to not even have the school's budget at all, which is required by law, 45 days prior to the July meeting or 45 days prior to the date that the budget is to be adopted, That's a problem because it falls on us. And at least in, you know, the headlines are going to say that Shelby County doesn't know up from down because it's not able to approve a budget that this, that the state can accept. And so there's not anything more that I can do without having access to the budget or having access to these pieces that it seems the administration only has access to. And I feel like my colleague who's sponsoring this ordinance has asked nicely, firmly, lots of different ways we've tried to get to the details. And I believe the budget chair as well has had resolutions to that effect of trying to get us in order so that what we approve here is successful in being approved finally at the comptroller's office, we look bad when that doesn't happen. But if we don't have access to any of that information, it it can't fall on us but ultimately it does because we are the funding body for the schools and we are the budget approvers so i just don't know how we can do our jobs without these additional measures and i appreciate commissioner sugarman bringing this I don't know what, now we're being told that unless we attend every committee meeting, then not to expect information. And I appreciate the director of finance, but that's just not always possible. But we still are owed the information that we seek as a board to do our jobs. So it's very frustrating to me. So I'll be very much in support of this ordinance. Thank you so much.

I'd like to just put on the record to have a follow-up with the administration to correspondence with the district so that we have clarity about next steps about the budget. Seeing no other commissioners in the queue, please prepare the screen for a vote. Please report the vote.

We have I votes from commissioners, Wiley, clay fields as well. Sugarman meals, July, right? Brooks, Lowry Bradford and show woman event have 11. I will.

That motion passes. This goes on to a second reading parliamentarian. Please read item 24.

I just want to provide a little context for this item. We suspended the rules, or this body suspended the rules at committee because EOC wasn't on that commission agenda. The rules were suspended so they could appear under general government. Once this item, since it's going on to a second reading, once that ceremonious vote takes place, we're going to ask to entertain a motion to refer this item to the EOC committee. Item 24 comes from the General Government Committee, which is chaired by Commissioner Brooks. Item 24 is an ordinance first reading. Ordinance amending Shelby County government's locally owned small business LOSB ordinance section 2-224 in order to apply 25% LOSB goals based upon market availability and increase the sheltered market threshold to less than $50,000 in the county's procurement process. Sponsored by Chairwoman Shantae K. Avant, this item does not meet requirements of the permanent rules and was an add-on and sent down without recommendation in July 22nd, 2026 committee meeting.

I have a motion by Commissioner Sugarman, second by Commissioner Shalai. Can I have a motion to suspend the rules? I have a motion by Commissioner Misca, Commissioner Misca, Commissioner Misca-Claib is second by Commissioner Sugarman. Can we do that without objection? Seeing none, so moved. Okay. Administrator Wilburn, do you want to give reference, small presentation to how we got here?

Thank you, Chair Lady. As those of you know, who have been here for almost eight years, and those of you who've been here almost four years, we've been talking about revising the LOSB ordinance. The primary situation with LOSB, and I have to state for the record so that everyone hears clearly, LOSB is the county's small business ordinance. It is race neutral. Its governing factor is income and income limitations. As a result, we have had certain categories of income where businesses fall that have been in those categories since 2007. There has been continual request that we review that and we visit that to see if those limits need to be raised, if so, to what level, for what businesses, and how. As a result of that, we sort of pushed it to the side when there was a MWBE program and ordinance because that took precedent. But obviously, as we all know, that is operationally suspended and we do not have that anymore, which has allowed us to take a fresh look at the LOSB to see how this might work. What we did was to ask Griffin and Strong to get data which they have provided that list businesses by income from Dunn and Bradstreet in the last two weeks that shows us where the limits may be practically uh ready to be raised to for those of you who are not familiar with what i'm talking about our losb ordinance has a limit of one million dollars for general business five million dollars for construction and architectural engineering firms and 15 million dollars for i.t firms and or security companies security guard companies There are those who say that if we had just raised the level based upon inflation, that the $1 million would now be around $2 million, that the $5 million would be higher than it is, and that the $15 million would be higher, although there is reason to believe that we really may not need to raise that level at all. We have been working on this for a while. We have gotten the data from Griffin and Strong. Legal department basically asked us to provide the data and we did. Purchasing asked us to provide the data and we did in a summation and they have the data. Now let me quickly say the data is raw. Because Griffin and Strong was not asked to propose an ordinance for us, they were asked to provide the data so you could provide where you wanted the limits to be. The numbers that are in the present ordinance for first reading are a point of departure not a final ordinance for you to basically make a decision on. And between now and your second reading, we will have further conversation with legal, we will have further conversation with purchasing, we will obviously have conversation with you, and we will have additional conversation with Griffin and Strong so that you can have more information with which to decide where you want those limits to be. But clearly now is a good time. I know that those who have set in on the EOC Appeals Board, Commissioner Bradford and others are aware that the number one number of issues we get in appeal is small businesses that have exceeded the $1 million level that we have now. And for the past year, almost two, we have been giving extensions on their LOSB even though they may have exceeded it because we have told them we are in the process of reconsidering and we do agree that some adjustment may need to be necessary. This is sort of where we are now and this is how we've gotten to where we are, but let me... Quickly say, again, this is a document that is not final. They were not asked to give us a final document. They were asked to give us information upon which to base a final document. And so the final composition of that document will be between those of us who have the responsibility, EOC, purchasing, legal, and others, to bring to you with numbers in them that then will be the basis for you to approve. So with that, Madam Chair, I...

i'll leave open for go ahead uh the minutes clerk asked for it to be articulated on the record what a rule um what was the purpose of the suspension of the rules did it did this complete a legal review did it was it approved by legal megan smith county attorney's office it was approved moments before the item was heard in committee so it is approved so it was approved by committee didn't require it didn't have a financial note so it didn't require that right okay so okay so for in the future at committee if we suspend the rules because it appeared under the wrong committee um you don't have to it doesn't need that language doesn't need to appear but we've already suspended the rules so because it wasn't under the general it appeared on general government we suspended the rules that committee and that was good enough we didn't have to carry that over to today but we've already done that so it's fine okay mr gloucester

Good afternoon, commissioners, co-chair, chairwoman. First of all, based on what Administrator Wilbur was saying, I do agree that we did get some data from the vendor. I THINK THE NEXT STEP WOULD BE FOR US TO MAKE SURE WE DO OUR DUE DILIGENCE TO KIND OF CONSIDER A FEW THINGS AND LOOK AT THE DATA TO HELP US MAKE THE RIGHT DECISION. AND I GUESS ONE QUESTION WOULD BE, HAS AN ANALYSIS OF THE DATA BEEN COMPLETED THAT SUPPORTS AND JUSTIFIES CHANGES TO THE THRESHOLDS AND THE LOSB PERCENTAGE? I DON'T THINK WE'RE THERE YET, SO HOPEFULLY WE CAN MEET AND ALL GET TO THE POINT TO WHERE SOMEONE IS DOING ANALYSIS ON THE DATA. The second thing, since these changes, and which I will say for the record, I am aligned with making changes. I think it is time to make some changes. I'm going to make sure we make the correct changes and the right changes using the data and getting the feedback from the different departments and you guys to help support this. As far as the shelter market goes, today the range is from $5,000 to $49,999, which the person team, we use our informal solicitation process to where we are completely centralized. And my staff, we get with the departments, they fill out an informal solicitation form, We get the form, we do the process, get the vendors, do the quotes, get the information back. We do the whole process. The departments are not involved at all. With this increase, And I'm assuming we want to increase. We don't have that number. I think Commissioner Shugman mentioned in the last meeting that we don't need to have greater or less than. We need to have a number. I agree. A number is set in stone on what that will be. Because when the number is set, based on that, our informal solicitations will increase. I'll just use $100,000 to $100,000, which means our formal solicitation, our RFPs, RFQs, sealed bids will increase also. So what that means, my team will have to do more informal solicitations, which right now I don't have the capacity to do, but we can work on that later. But right now we don't have the capacity to do that. And we may need another employee to help support increasing that level. The last thing I want to say, I know in the past before I got here, the threshold for contracts that come before the commission was around 100,000 and it got switched to 50,000. I ask that we consider raising those limits back to the threshold that come before the commission to 100,000 since the informal solicitation process will increase to where the first vendors are LOSB vendors and it won't be a big process if it's higher, so.

you guys would consider that and looking forward to working with you guys to make this happen madam chair again that's one of those questions that you all will ultimately decide the resolution uh the ordinance right now keeps it at 49 it actually says less than 50 000 and you know he's got the less than sign um And we will make it $49,999 just so that we don't have to go through that. But it keeps it there, although the consultant has said we ought to look at perhaps raising it to $100,000. That is a decision that you all need to make in terms of what you want to be. the sheltered market for LOSB business. What that means is when you raise it, if there are three or more LOSBs who can provide that service, they are the ones who only bid on it. If there are not three or more, then it's open to everyone to bid on just as it would be. Right now, it only applies to contracts less than 50,000. There is a suggestion by the consultant. It's not in the ordinance, but it is a suggestion that he is making that we perhaps consider raising that limit to $100,000. But again, those are the kinds of things that we're all going to have to have some discussion about because when you raise it, as Administrator Gloucester said, you affect the purchasing process because now you're going from an informal solicitation unless you're going to raise informal up. from $50,000 to $100,000. You're going from an informal solicitation to a formal. And quite frankly, once we get beyond the $50,000 level with LOSBs, then there is a goal on them. And that goal then kicks in. And that goal is obviously a partial piece of whatever the prime contract is. But it is not... it is not for the whole contract the beauty of the sheltered market is that it goes to a locally owned small business in its entirety uh if a locally if there are three or more locally owned small businesses who can perform that particular work commissioner brooks thank you mr wilburn trying to understand what we have here before us so help me

So we have a piece, if you will, a component of EEOC under your office and another component of EEOC or part of the work that EEOC does in purchasing. Is that correct?

let me correct you on that i know where you're going but let me correct you on that the losb ordinance is basically an ordinance that says that purchasing shall promulgate rules and regulations but it includes in there at least four sections five sections i believe where eoc and purchasing should agree we get together and we agree uh this ordinance at what is being brought to you right now has nothing to do with the governance of the program let me be clear it only deals with what the program should be all right at some point if there is a desire to change the governance in any shape form or fashion from what it is now then that obviously is a decision you commissioners can make but right now we're just talking about getting a program with the right program elements for whoever is administrating it so that we can make sure we have as much inclusion of small businesses with Shelby County contracting as possible.

And that's fine and that's good and I wasn't trying to change the subject. It appears to me that if we maybe got the governance out of the way, and it's not here, but we can deal with it, we can still have conversation about it, it would be helpful for me if we got the governance issue out of the way, then we could eliminate some of these differing ideologies and philosophy regarding who does what, when, and where. We need to just kind of have a rule as to who's going to do what.

commissioner you don't have to answer thank you commissioner mills thank you um the data do we have the data i didn't see it in our

It should have been sent to you all.

Okay. Because we've been burned with the data, not having it before.

I wanted to make sure everybody had it. But let me be clear. It's raw data. It is 29,000-some-odd. entries in excel of all the businesses in shelby county that will qualify to be a part of a small business designation and it basically breaks them down on uh 10 million dollars or less five million dollars or less two and a half million dollars or less one million dollars and less than one million dollars and that's that's basically what you so you have the raw data plus there's a brief summary sheet what administrator gloucester is talking about is we have asked griffin and strong to basically give us a more detailed breakdown in a summary so that you can see how many businesses those are what they do and whether or not we ought to for instance under the flat one million dollars maybe some businesses keep the one million dollars and some go to two and a half million but we've asked them to give us that kind of analysis and they have given us the raw data. We are working on getting that specific analysis so that you all can make that decision. It's coming. Because Griffin and Strong does not want to present an ordinance other than as a talking point, a starting point for the numbers to go into it. They did not want to be put in a position where they did anything other than suggest. that they did not want it to be an ordinance where they said you ought to have, like they did the, because again, this is a threshold analysis. This is not a disparity study. You are not required to have a disparity study with a small business program. And so they're just looking and compiling data, but it is coming.

okay and i just asked you understood why i asked for the historical of what happened before and getting burned um so that that's my question so i look forward to seeing it when it's cleaned up where we can where it's not so much okay thank you seeing no other commissioners in the queue could you please prepare the screen for a vote

Please report the vote.

We have I votes from commissioners Wiley, Clay Bibbs, Caswell, Sugarman, Shalai, Brooks, Lowry, Bradford, and Chairwoman Avant. Commissioners Mills, Wright, and Morrison have abstained. We have nine ayes and three abstain.

If that motion passes, it goes on to a second reading. Can I get a motion to refer to the EOC committee? motion by Commissioner vice chair Bradford second by Commissioner Bibbs can we do that without objection seeing none so moved this item has now been moved to EOC for the next committee Parliamentarian, please read item 25.

Yes, ma'am. Item 25 comes from the Core City Neighborhoods and Housing Committee, which is chaired by Commissioner Brooks. Item 25 is an ordinance first reading, joint ordinance of the Shelby County Board of Commissioners and Memphis City Council to amend Ordinance Numbers 581, County, and 5946, City, to repeal and replace the existing building home program implementation plan and to establish a building home program application fee sponsored by Commissioner Henry E. Brooks. This item was sent down without recommendation in July 22nd, 2026 committee meeting.

I have a motion by Commissioner Sugarman, a second by Vice Chair Bradford. Commissioner Brooks could have a committee report.

I'm sorry, this item will sit down without recommendation.

Commissioner Sugarman, you're recognized. Thank you, Madam Chair. And so this is a question for the attorneys through the chair. I requested on record about why do we use, let's see, instead of using amend, they decided to use, what was it, to repeal and replace And so I just wanted to have a question about that. Why are we repealing and replacing as opposed to amending?

You could state your name. Are you to answer this? Yes, state your name for the record, please. This Roman, could you hit the button on the side of the microphone? It's in the it's actually on the stem of the microphone.

Robert Rowan, County Attorney's Office. In 2025, the commission passed an ordinance that approved a homestead program. Part of that was exhibit A, which was the implementation plan itself. This ordinance changes the implementation plan. It does not change the ordinance at all. So we are repealing the exhibit A, the plan, and replacing it with this current plan.

okay i still have a a minute and 33 seconds so what part of it because my understanding is the only thing that you're replacing or adding rather was the fee ready a fee and i'll let miss justin uh give you the details of the ordinance better verse than i am

Dana Sjostrom, Division of Planning and Development. I will take you through the changes that we made in Exhibit A. There were really more corrections and a couple of methods of property transfer. So Exhibit A, the building home program structure and function. In Section A, or Section 1, we simply updated the URL to be in evergreendeveloped901.com. Section 3, we needed to transfer property via quick claim deed and not through warranty deed, and that was done in coordination with our county attorney's office. And again, Section 4, property transfers instead of warranty deed are simply changed to quick claim deed. And in Section 5, we have added, in line with the statute, Shelby County Board of Commissioners may waive annual back taxes, liens, and fees on subject properties consistent with TCA 766108. So those were the changes, more housekeeping than anything.

And so there are more edits as opposed to just changing, because my concern is this is a joint ordinance. And for example, when I had, considered moving it to a later date. I got all kinds of calls from the city council. And so that is my concern. It's going to throw up a lot of red flags and as opposed to just amending. So my question then becomes to the chair, to the attorneys, What would happen? What's the impact if we just amend as opposed to replace, repeal and replace?

What's the impact? I can defer to the county attorney's office, but I would imagine it's the document itself being replaced entirely, even if they are only small edits.

Yeah, well, it could be done either way. We did a repeal and replace because we were repealing the old plan and replacing it with this one, so we simply did it that way. Amending, you'd have to go through Each and every 1 of these changes, explain them in detail and this does it all in 1 fell swoop.

Professor Bradford, I see in the documents, this is a 75 dollar fee. I think that we're adding who pays that? Is it the builder the developer? I guess if they're paying it eventually gets passed on to the homeowner. Go ahead.

Thank you. Day initials from Division of Planning and Development. This would be the developer applying, so the applicants would be providing that fee. And that just goes into administrative costs, things like building out the software for the intake portal, for example. We've already done that, but moving forward in the future, we could be using those funds to help offset some of those program costs that we've absorbed in the past.

Commissioner Sugarman? Thank you, Madam Chair. And so have you all spoken to the City Council and are they in support of these changes?

Dana Sjostrom, Division of Planning and Development. I have not presented in front of City Council and I'm not sure that this has been in front of them, but since they are really housekeeping changes, I wouldn't expect there would be any pushback. But again, that's not my call to make.

Okay. So the answer is no. That's my concern. Again, I would urge you all to reach out to the city council and make sure that there are no issues, because I would hate to kill something that we worked with us for almost a year. And so please reach out to them and report back to us if they are supportive of these changes. And if not, why not? Those kinds of things. I appreciate that. And also, can you let the whole body know? Not just me. Thank you.

Seeing no other commissioners in the queue, please prepare the screen for vote. We could get it to come down. I have two commissioners whose screens are not working. Please report the vote.

We have aye votes from Commissioners Whaley, Clay Bibbs, Caswell, Sugarman, Shalai, Morrison, Brooks, Lowry, and Chairwoman Avant. Commissioners Mills, Wright, and Bradford have abstained. I have nine ayes and three abstain.

That motion passes. This goes on to a second reading. Parliamentarian, please read item 26.

Item 26 comes from the Land Use Planning Transportation and Code Enforcement Committee with Commissioner Mills as Vice Chair. Chairwoman Avant, once this is properly before us, I ask that you allow me to read the applicable rule. Item 26 is a resolution pursuant to Chapter 9.6 of the unified development code of the county of shelby in the city of memphis tennessee granting a planned development for land located at 3723 thomas street known as case number pd 2026-008 co sponsored by commissioner david c bradford jr this item was sent down without recommendation in july 22nd 2026 committee meeting thank you vice chair bradford has made the motion

Commissioner Sugarman has seconded that motion. Commissioner Mills, could I get a committee report?

This item will sit down without recommendation.

Thank you. Parliamentarian, if you could read the rule before we have the presentation.

Yes, ma'am. The applicable rule section, it's 32. let's see f2 at commission the following procedure shall be utilized on land use cases during any regular or special meeting of the shelby county board of commissioners staff presentation staff presents introduction and description of case commissioners may ask questions of staff during this time the applicant's presentation can last approximately 10 minutes maximum. The applicant shall present his or her case. Supporters may also speak during this time. Commissioners may ask questions of the applicant or supporters during this time, but only while each speaker is at the podium and before the next speaker has been recognized by the chair. The opponent's presentation is also 10 minutes maximum. The opponent shall present their case. Board members ask questions of the opponents, but only while each speaker is at the podium and before the next speaker has been recognized by the chair. As it pertains to the presentations, the times of the 10 minute maximum, these times are cumulative for all speakers. the chair may elect to allow additional time to both sides provided both sides are given equal time additionally the 10 minute maximum time limit or any additional time limit provided by the chair shall not include question and answer periods between the applicant supporters or opponents and commissioners and we understand that to mean that during that portion where there's questions answered then we just uh stop the timer yes ma'am okay so uh rebuttal by applicant three minutes max final question answer period commissioners may ask questions of applicant supporters or opponents during this period any board member may recognize any party in the audience to ask questions discussion one second the commission chair will call for discussion during discussion commissioners may ask additional questions of staff additional questions may be posed to the applicant supporters and opponents, but only upon the passage of a motion to suspend the rules to reopen the public hearing. Once reopened, the commission shall allow equal time to applicant supporters and opponents. Finally, the chair calls for a vote.

Ready for the presentation? Yes, ma'am. Let's begin the clock, please.

Good afternoon. I'm Chloe Christian with DPD. I'll be giving the staff presentation for this case. The case number is PD2026008. This is a plan development request to allow a manufactured home park in District 1. The applicant and property owner is UMH Memphis, and this property is located at 3723 Thomas Street. Next slide, please. Here's a location map of the property and of...

I'm sorry to interrupt you. If you could just bring the microphone a little closer down and a little closer so that you... And for the purpose of this, we are getting technology together, I hope, before I'm finished. Commissioner Wright, it's going to happen. Why don't you all come to these set of chairs when you're making your presentation? Because the microphones seem to be better. So if you don't mind moving to this... to have a seat and make that presentation. The closer you get, we don't bite. I promise. That's a rule.

Of course. Chloe Christian with DPD. So the case number, again, PD2026008. It's located in District 1. Next slide, please. There was a neighborhood meeting hosted that is a requirement for cases such as these, and this is an image of the sign-in sheet from that meeting. Next slide, please. So the property is split zoned conservation, agriculture, and residential single family six. And the property is currently vacant. However, there are some single family uses to the south of the property. I will note that manufactured homes are allowed by right in both of these zoning districts. However, manufactured home park is not, which is why this application has been filed. Next slide, please. Here's some photos of the subject property. As you can see, it's currently vacant and heavily wooded. Next slide, please. This is the concept plan that was prepared by the applicant. So there is a minimum lot size of 4,000 square feet for the manufactured homes. And this development would also include some amenities such as pickleball courts, walking trails, and things of that nature. And there is also a detention pond proposed, as you can see, in the north side of the property. Next slide, please. So in conclusion, as I said, this property has been requested for a residential plan development to allow a manufactured home park. I also wanted to mention the property owner, UMH Memphis, owns and operates a very similar development directly to the east of Thomas Street, known as Memphis Blues Plan Development. So the name of this proposal is Memphis Jazz. So the request is something fairly similar to what's currently existing in the area. And the building regulations for PDs are consistent with the provisions of the Unified Development Code. And as such, we have requested or I'm sorry, we have recommended approval of this application. Next slide, please. And the land use control board also has recommended approval of this application with outline plan conditions and those can be found on pages 14 through 17 of the staff report And that concludes my presentation and I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you Commissioner Caswell

Thank you, Madam Chair. I know that in committee it was brought up about one resident concerned about the flood that happened. And I'm sure that I understood that to be the 100-year or so flood. With the city engineering and looking at this project, how we can, and I know the pun has been put there, but do this kind of help that situation if it happened, was to happen again, that that will rectify that situation?

I believe that the applicant has brought their engineer that can speak more to that. So I will defer to the applicant's team, if that's OK. Thank you.

Madam Chair, Josh Whitehead, 275 Jefferson. I'm here representing UMH Properties, and we are joined here with some personnel from the Reeves firm, Ian Murray and Christine Donhart. Commissioner Caswell, your question was with regard to the detention, the adequacy of the on-site detention and how it will affect adjacent properties.

the you know the hundred year the flood that happened last time and i know that one of the residents was concerned about that and i've seen some other areas there look like wooded areas i just wanted to make sure like we're thinking about that long term and having that run off i do understand when it happened last time by rodney baber a lot of that the land was lifted up And we have other pumps and things happening to keep that hopefully from happening again on that end of Fraysia. But just thinking about on this end where Thomas said that this don't happen again to in the future to kind of, you know, harm those houses and families there. Yeah.

Absolutely. Again, Josh White at 275 Jefferson. The county engineering team has reviewed the preliminary drawings. That's what's before you today. And once we submit our final drawings, our final civil drawings in preparation of the creation of a development contract, they will review those specific drawings in greater scrutiny before anything is constructed. And Madam Chair, if I have the floor, I wanted to be responsive to some questions that Commissioner Sugarman had during the land use committee. I emailed the commission a letter that I wanted to make sure was part of the record. And my colleague has hard copies of that. But I did want to make sure that the breakdown of the expected monthly fees associated with this kind of home ownership was communicated to the body.

Okay, and I just want to make sure because I want to keep the time equal before we make any presentation from the applicant. Let's get the other commissioners in the question and cue that with as a part of the staff presentation. She's here. We're here. Yes. You made me read three times. Commissioner Wiley.

So I think my questions are probably going to be better answered by the applicant, so I'll wait until their presentation.

Thank you, Commissioner Whaley. We could have the applicant presentation now.

Madam Chair, again, Josh White at 275 Jefferson. I am joined here with the UMH Vice President of Engineering, Jeff York, as well as the two folks I mentioned earlier from the Reese firm, if there's any drainage questions or engineering questions. But very briefly, I don't want to be repetitive of my presentation at the committee. UMH has been around since 1968. They operate 145 manufactured home parks throughout the country in 12 states. They have never sold a property. So once they begin a property and they manage the property, they hold onto that property. If you have driven by the site on the right-hand side as you're going towards Millington, there is a built site by UMH Properties called Memphis Blues. What we want to do is mirror image that. It's been so successful. Also, there's a community that UMH has long owned at the corner of Raleigh-Millington and New Allen, where New Allen dead ends into Raleigh-Millington called Allentown. And then its second phase is called River Bluff. So those are great examples of what we believe will be manifested on this property if the commission approves it. I think those are my main points where this project is going to involve The expenditure of about 20 million dollars to get its site ready. We will greatly increase the property taxes paid and umh pays those property taxes on behalf of the the homeowners the homeowners pay a Personal property tax. It's usually about six hundred dollars a year with that again My team is here with us if you have any questions.

Commissioner Whaley.

Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair. So I've got two questions here. One is, if I understand this correctly, this is a phased in approach.

Yes, sir.

Okay. So can you can you help me understand like the what is the typical sort of lease up term to commence phase two, let's say? And then historically, what has that look like? What has been the time from like what's that sort of lease up time to make the decision on going forward with phase two or phase three? And then the second question is just around whether whether you have or have in other communities contractual rent escalations on the leases. I asked that because it's prohibitively expensive to move a manufactured home once you've installed it. And so if you have a contractual rent escalation, essentially locking that tenant in to that parcel. So just if you can help me understand the lease up length of time, if you sort of had to hit 60%, 70% to proceed to a phase two, and then do you have or have you had any contractual rent escalations on the leases?

I'm going to turn the floor over to my colleague, my client, Mr. York, in a moment on the phasing. But let me make a quick distinguishing factor between this and some of our other properties. This will be for sale. So you will purchase, you will mortgage these homes. And yes, it is unlikely that you would move them with you should you move, but then you will have an asset to sell.

Yeah, sorry, I'm referring to the land lease. So my understanding is most of these, you do own the home, but you've got to rent the land from the operator. So you're saying $600 every monthly, average monthly land lease, does that have, or do you typically have contractual rent escalations in those land leases? Just mention your address.

Yeah, I'm Jeff Urich with UMH Properties, Morgantown, West Virginia. We're looking for the, I guess, how we handle rent increases on the land lease. Most of our properties, we limit the leases, the annual increases to less than 5%. In some communities where we have mainly homeowners or seniors, we also offer a

long-term uh land lease that matches the mortgage on the home so 20 or 25 years and how do we think okay so i mean i i i guess where i think you understand where i'm getting it here is that it's different from a multi-family you know i mean because if you're living in a multi-family complex and the rent goes up let's say 10 you can't afford it you can easily move and and these the cost of relocating a mobile home park is much higher because you've got to remove the chassis and get trucks to come in and move your home somewhere. So say more about the, I'm sorry I'm out of time, but just I think to me this is one of the biggest sticking points is we'll be locking in tenants or essentially you've got them captive to this lease because they can't easily move if the costs go up.

I'm not sure what the question is. Are you asking about how we protect the residents?

So you mentioned that there's an option where they can lock in a long-term lease on the land. Yes. What is the sort of average annual rent escalation on the lease?

Typically, it's limited to 5%.

And just to elaborate so that commissioner may or may not want to get back and keep and and Q when you're saying typically a limit of 5% is that based on all the other communities, how many communities that based on so that we have some idea of Memphis being a different community and maybe where you have done similar land purchase with the manufactured homes or lease of the land, the manufactured homes.

Well, I guess the 5% is based off the existing rent or the existing lease amount.

So what do we do in River Bluff since that's in Memphis?

Those are just limited to no more than 5%.

The question I asked Mr. York was, we do have a similar community with a land lease on New Allen, River Bluff, and the response was there, it's 5%.

Vice Chair Bradford, maybe you want to.

I did look through the report and notice that staff does have a number of conditions. Does the applicant have any concern with those conditions?

No, Sir, we agree with them 100%.

Commissioner Sugarman. Thank you, Madam Chair. So what type of sewer system does the place have? Is it septic tanks or what? What type of sewer system?

we have a uh approval letter to tap into the city of memphis sewer so we will have true sewer okay that was a good start as well thank you commissioner wiley

Yep, thank you, Madam Chair. I just wanted to go back to the question around the phases. So what's the typical plan about commencing the next phase? Are you looking for a certain percentage of the land being leased? Is it a certain percentage? How fast does that happen typically?

So the proposal for Memphis Jazz will have two phases?

Correct, two phases.

And in Memphis Blues, we also have two phases. Phase one is about eight years old, and we are now commencing with phase two. So would that be a fair assumption for this one?

Correct. I mean, Memphis Blues, you know, the first phase was the existing old community, the Memphis Mobile City. So phase two is the land we bought next to it. So we're just starting the home installation on phase two in Memphis Blues.

so it could be a period of eight years well let me commissioner whaley i think there's extenuating circumstances across the street because phase one of memphis blues the existing development uh was part of a historic mobile home park mobile home park that this the umh bought it was existing i guess had been there for 30 years when we bought it it is expanding to the south towards Our Lady of Sorrows Catholic Church. That was newly acquired land. This, on the other hand, we own the entirety of the land, so it may not be eight years between phase one and phase two. Is that accurate, or is that fair to say?

No, I mean, it depends on the pace of sales, but I would expect two to four years for each phase.

Okay. And do you, I just noticed from the... The photos here that there's like what seems to be a large self-storage facility, is that a separate owner? Do you own that?

That is a separate owner. Okay.

Yeah. I'm sure it services these residents.

I think it it dates back to Memphis mobile home, Memphis mobile city. So you're probably right, Memphis mobile city, located at this property under different ownership in 1959. And I bet that self storage facility came shortly thereafter. Yeah.

All right. So I got Thank you.

All right. So if, is there any opposition to that would need time for to speak? I don't, I don't have any cards, but I wanted to make sure if there's any opposition that they also have an opportunity to speak. Okay. Seeing none. Are there any additional commissioner Mills?

that's i was waiting on did any and i'm um looking at i guess you all anybody reach out again because no one reached out to me in opposition of this at all and i know there was one person

Chloe Christian, DPD. No, no one has reached out to us since the initial land use control board hearing.

Okay. Okay. That was my main question on that. And this has been done before. And with what the land use put in and y'all's approval, I think I'm okay with this. Thank you.

Commissioner Wright.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Unless I'm mistaken, we need to make, well, they would invite a motion to adopt the recommendations. Is that right, Ms. Christian?

That happens after we go through all the steps. We had to make sure that there was no... Oh, I've jumped the train.

Okay, I apologize.

We're coming to it.

I think that portion of the rule is at committee, but generally we don't have this procedure, this process at committee, so I don't think it's necessary for the committee chair, which is part of the rule, to make the motion. So we typically don't entertain that portion of the rules at commission.

Are there any additional questions? There's Commissioner Brooks.

Thank you. I have just two questions. Mr. Whitehead, or to the owner here, do you all have anything similar to homeowner covenants or any kinds of documents that describes who, what, when, and where happens in the community?

Again, Josh White at 275. I think probably not so much on the who, but this community acts in many ways like an HOA because there's going to be private drives, a gate, common elements that the owner will maintain but will be partly paid by the, will be completely paid by the land lease, the monthly rental. But when it comes to actual, the rules of the expectations of each homeowner, can you elaborate on the number of cars they're permitted the the expectations of the maintenance of their their lots, etc?

Well, you don't have to go into all of that. But I'm just curious, I guess, because, you know, this land lease is something I'm still trying to understand thoroughly in terms of why you would want to do a land lease as opposed to just a straight rental kind of thing. I don't understand that because you can't pick up that manufacturer's home and take it anywhere. I mean, you can, but, you know, you may enter into look at the barrier of where am I putting it.

Madam Chair, Commissioner Brooks, Josh Whitehead, 275 Jefferson. I think the reason we wanted to diversify and have both products in this market is because for some people, this option is better. They can build equity, but also because of the down payment, it might be more accessible than paying rent.

No, I mean here at this facility, at this development location, you're implementing land lease as opposed to anything else, the traditional home ownership, if you will. So I'm trying to understand what is the motivation to do that when you have a manufactured home that if you don't own the land, so what are you gonna do with it if you wanna leave?

You can't sell it. Well, if someone has to leave the community, they typically put the home up for sale and sell it in place. Real estate brokers can help with that. Our own staff will help broker the sale. Typically, people don't have problems selling a home in place.

Even when you don't own the land?

Correct.

Oh, really? I guess I just need to study that some more because I just don't get it. Well, thank you for that piece of information.

uh madam chair commissioner brooks it reminds me of um cooperatives which were you know predated condominiums and were largely unneeded after the condominium law was passed in 68 but it sounds to me it in my mind it's like a co-op an old-fashioned co-op in manhattan right where you purchase shares in a corporation that owns the building and then you pay rent to that corporation

rent that is basically an hoa fee that's how i've kind of understood in my head all right seeing because there were no opponents there's no rebuttal required um we've gone through the final question and answer period commissioners are there any other questions all right Then I will call for a vote of this item. Your aye vote is an approval of the recommendation by the staff for this, for the Unified, no, we're not on Unified Development Code. For the planned development located at 3723, an aye would be in favor of that, a no would be opposing.

Question, Madam Chair? Yes. Does that vote already include the conditions that staff has recommended?

Yes. That would include the conditions that were presented in the presentation. And I think that is one of the attachments to, I think Commissioner, Vice Chair Bradford referenced it. It's in the staff report with those conditions. And I think Vice Chair Bradford also asked if the applicant was in agreement with all those staff changes and they said yes.

Any other questions?

If you could prepare the screen for a vote. Please prepare the Report the vote.

We have aye votes from Commissioners Whaley, Clay Bibbs, Caswell, Sugarman, Mills, Shalai, Wright, Morrison, Bradford, and Chairwoman Avent. Commissioner Brooks has abstained. We have 10 ayes and 1 abstain.

All right. That motion passes. Parliamentarian, if you could read item 28.

Item 28 comes from the Budget and Finance Committee, which is chaired by Commissioner Whaley. Item 28 is a resolution approving the purchase of public official bonds from WTW, a.k.a. Willis Towers Watson, Inc., WTW through Hartford Fire Insurance Company for a period of four years beginning September 1, 2026 through September 1, 2030. This resolution requires expenditure of FY2027 general fund operating budget in the amount of $140,000 sponsored by Commissioner Michael Whaley.

I have a motion by Commissioner Sugarman, a second by Vice Chair Bradford. Commissioner Whaley, could I hear a committee report?

Uh, yes, it comes down with a favorable recommendation.

Thank you.

And also I'm going to recuse on this item. Like I didn't committee. I own a very small number of shares in Hartford. So I just want to recuse on the item just to be sure.

Thank you, commissioner Whaley. Seeing no commissioners in the queue. One wants going twice, please repair the screen for a vote. Please report the vote.

We have aye votes from Commissioners Clay Bibbs, Caswell, Shalai, Wright, Morrison, Laurie, Chairwoman Avent, Commissioner Whalen recused. We have seven ayes, one recused.

That motion passes. Parliamentarian, please read item 29.

Item 29 comes from the Budget and Finance Committee, which is chaired by Commissioner Whaley. Item 29 is a resolution of the Board of Commissioners of Shelby County, Tennessee, approving and authorizing the issuance, sale, and delivery of the county's maximum aggregate principal amount not to exceed A, $25 million, Interfund Tax Anticipation Note Series 2026A and B, $100 million Tax Anticipation Note Series 2026A. pursuant to and in accordance with the applicable provisions of sections 9-21-101 at SEC of the tenancy code annotated as amended for the purpose of providing interim funding to the county for meeting certain appropriations made for the current fiscal year and to pay the cost incident to the issuance and delivery therewith prescribing the forms of and authorizing and providing for the terms of the tax anticipation notes authorizing the negotiated sale of the Series B tax anticipation note, and prescribing the form of and authorizing the execution and delivery of the loan agreement between Shelby County and the selected lender, authorizing the execution and delivery of the tax anticipation notes, the loan agreement, and all other legally required documentation necessary to consummate the transactions contemplated hereby, with respect to the foregoing appointing co-bond council and appointing the municipal advisor with respect to the foregoing authorizing certain county officials to facilitate perform and complete all actions deemed necessary or advisable in connection with the issuance sale and delivery of the tax anticipation notes and setting forth an effective date sponsored by commissioner michael whaley this item was substituted in july 22nd 2026 committee meeting

I have a motion by Commissioner Whaley, a second by Commissioner Shalai. Commissioner Whaley, can I have a committee report?

Yes, this item comes down with a favorable recommendation.

Would you like to speak on this item?

Yeah, I just wanted to write, so just if I may. Okay, thank you, Madam Chair. If finance can just confirm, I think we just need to make sure we all understand the terms of the Series B specifically and the interval of the repricing. So my understanding is that it's 75% of SOFR plus a 42 basis point spread. And is that priced monthly or is there some other interval that's set in the term sheet?

Danielle Schoenbaum, Deputy Director, Administration and Finance. That is the correct calculation. Our financial advisor, remind me whether that's monthly or more frequently.

The rate is reset monthly.

Can you introduce yourself?

Sorry, Admiral Brown, PFN Financial Advisors, but the rate is reset monthly. okay and just just so we're you know super clear so so far right now is what 3.25 something around there something around there i did the i pulled the rate for today and the rate would be around 3.38 for the for the loan the the based on that 75 of silver plus 42 points correct

Danielle Schoenbaum, Deputy Director. I note that the 180-day average for the SOFR is 3.66, and 30-day average is 3.61 and some change, so it's been around the same level for the last six months. Obviously, that's no guarantee of future rates, but...

yeah yeah but i think it's just important that we under this one of the most important uh components of this whole deal is the rate on the series b so i think that hopefully helps everyone understand uh the terms that we've negotiated on it okay all right thank you mentor commissioner mills thank you um so this is just a tax anticipation loan to cover us until the property taxes come in

Yes. Okay. Then can you explain why this agreement references the capital projects? And exactly what these borrowed funds may be legally used for? I saw on page nine and 11. There's a few places where CIP projects are referenced. Page 9, I wrote down of the loan document states the proceeds will be used solely for payment of capital projects.

Corbin Carpenter, Bond Council, Shelby County, Tennessee, 386 Beale Street. Commissioner Mills, you were referring to the loan agreement or the resolution?

The agreement.

Got it. So with the sex anticipation note financing, it is only supposed to be used for operational costs for the county cannot be used for capital project costs.

That's, that's, that's why I asked why that's in there.

So with the loan agreement, Commissioner Mills, my page nine is the definitions, which section are you referring to?

Do you have a section you can reference? Loan document AB states the proceeds And then on 11, it's asked for FY22-26 CIP plan. Item 3. I'm sorry, could you repeat that? On page 11, where it references the capital improvement plan. Under the conditions.

Corbin Carpenter Bond Council, Shelby County Commissioner Mayes, what you're referring to is just the conditions precedent the regions asked for. They just asked for a copy of the CIP for the county from FY 2022 through 2026, just for their own records, as well as a list of items, including the ACFER from FY 26 and a few other items.

Okay. And then under 9, it's section A and B.

Can you repeat that section number, please, Commissioner?

A and B, 9, A and B.

Corbin Carpenter, Bond Council, Shelby County. So Article 9 references are the defaults and remedies. So that's one of the, that would trigger and even a default if the county were to use any proceeds from the Series B note for capital projects or capital costs.

Okay. Thank you.

Yes, ma'am.

Commissioner Morrison.

Thank you, Madam Chair. And Remember, in the past, I was having to use this Interfund Tax Anticipation Strategy. Have we? Director Schaumbom.

Daniel Schaumbom, Deputy Director, Administration and Finance. So last fall, you may recall, we went out or we borrowed $40 million internally. Correct. This year, as the borrowing is larger, we are going externally. for up to 100 million.

And that's concerning if you're our body and our responsibility is fiscal responsibility because it says it like it's basically increasing our line of credit for the county. And so I just want to say on the record, I think it's concerning that we're not managing our fund balance. So just so that all the commissioners are aware of exactly the situation. I'm not saying that, I'm sure you all did your job to achieve this as best you could and would, but it's a concern for our county and its citizens that we're even having to do such.

Vice Chair Bradford?

So my understanding of this process is we approve this today and then it goes to the comptroller for the state comptroller for final approval. Playing a little devil's advocate here, he has not been real excited about previous budgets that we've submitted and other things. What would happen if he denies this request?

Danielle Schombom, Deputy Director, Administration and Finance. We have been in contact with the state as we were last year and they have been fully supportive of this process.

Commissioner Lowry.

Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you all for all the due diligence and hard work. So from your estimation, assuming we get the approvals and everything else, I'm glad you're already in concert and having those conversations. When will this be paid back?

Danielle Schoenbaum, Deputy Director of Finance. So we anticipate, of course, it depends on the receipts of the property tax when they come in, but we anticipate that we would start paying the external loan in December and have the full payment though later than March. Of course, that can be earlier depending on the flow of receipts, and we are required to have it paid before the end of the fiscal year.

All right, thank you. And so short-term remedy here, but what keeps us from not having this issue ongoing going forward? Because it was 40, now we're at 120, and I understand it's a cash flow issue, right? But it's still an issue. What keeps us from having, or this body, to be in this position again going forward?

Daniel Schoenbaum, Deputy Director, Administration and Finance, rebuilding the county's fund balance and cash position. As the fund balance has fallen, you know, this is absolutely an estimate at this point, but we estimate that cash at the end of FY26 will be somewhere in the range of 50 to 60 million. We have revenue that's approximately in the range of 75 to 80 million in the first five months of the year. But we have expenses just for payroll of approximately $155 million. And we have O&M expenses. We have expenses to our partners like Regional One Health that have to go out. So until such time that our cash flow, I mean our cash position and our fund balance is rebuilt, we will continue to be in a position to have to borrow.

Thank you.

Seeing no other, yes, Ms. Tipton.

Thank you, Audrey Tipton, Director of Administration and Finance. I just wanted to also add to what Deputy Director Schaumbom was just speaking of, was that we did add to the fund balance with the tax rate. It's kind of hard for me to hear, so I don't know if she mentioned that part of it, but we did add to it this year, which was a very, very noble thing to do and very good, because as we have stressed throughout the year that we were slowly chipping away at our fund balance. So what would stop this from happening in the future? We now have an adopted budget. Follow the budget. The tax anticipation notes is based on the revenue that we're going to bring in from this year's FY27 budget. So anything that you add now going forward that is a planned use of fund balance. brings that number down lower and lower and lower. So I just wanted to remind everybody in order for this not to happen or to improve as we go forward is to follow the adopted budget that's approved every year because it's based on how much we're gonna bring in as far as tax revenue. That's why we're okay doing this because we have a balanced budget right now. But if you add things to that, it impacts that fund balance number and brings the cash down even lower.

Commissioner Mills. Thank you. We can just fund what we're constitutionally and legislatively bound to fund, and that's all a lot of this. My question, I saw in this where the county agrees to pay the lender fees and all of that, including the interest, the preparation cost. And so my question is, what's the estimated all-in cost that this is going to,

cost the taxpayers with all the legal fees and and whatnot included in addition to the interest the legal fees are about on the from the banks that are about 15,000 and it's including the origination fee and the there's also a small and it's a small utilization fee they need this is out there just to protect the bank, but we're looking at about two or three million dollars in terms of the interest, but of course that depends on the timing of the draws on the line of credit as well. So it's preliminary now, but given the spending and the draws on the line of credit, that's the range of the interest cost in all of these together.

In total, all of it. Okay. Thank you.

Seeing no other commissioners in queue, I think this is not an easy vote for any of us to make. I think it is also a great opportunity for us to have a reset as a body and what our spending looks like. Hence the reason, thanks to the hard work of Commissioner Whaley as our budget chair, we did, with this tax increase, designate funds to go to fund balance, two cents to go back to the fund balance. But I do think that this is a very hard lesson that we can't spend what we don't have. All right. Please prepare the screen for a vote.

um i just wanted to disclose that there's been a request for same day minutes on this item so this can move forward we really don't have a rule about same day minutes we have a rule about um motions to adjourn when the when a bond issue or the minutes of the meeting in which a bond issue was approved a motion to approve a resolution to adjourn is required so um both today and then when the minutes that capture this item, we will need to have a motion to adjourn, we need to vote on a motion to adjourn. But I just wanted to make the disclosure that this will be processed quickly. So there's been a request for same day minutes so that this item can be processed and signed up by the mayor and expeditious.

Yes. Is everyone clear? We don't need to do a suspension of the rules for the minutes. Okay.

All right. Please prepare the screen for a vote.

Please report the vote.

We have aye votes from Commissioners Whaley, Clay Bibbs, Caswell, Sugarman, Shalai, Brooks, Laurie, Vice Chair Bradford, Chairwoman Avent, Commissioners Mills, Wright, Morrison. Voted no. We have nine ayes and three nos.

That motion passes. Parliamentarian, please read item 30.

item 30 comes from the law enforcement corrections and courts committee with commissioner sugarman as vice chair item 30 is a resolution requesting that the shelby county mayor bring forward a plan to accelerate funding for the replacement of juvenile court and offices immediately sponsored by commissioner henry brooks this item was an add-on in july 22nd 2026 committee meeting

I have a motion by commissioner Sugarman. I have a second by commissioner Caswell commissioner Sugarman can have a committee report.

Yes. Madam chair is favorable.

Okay. Um, there's a few, um, public speaking cards. So, uh, judge Sugarman, would you like to kick us off?

Well, uh, thank you, madam chair. Uh, my name is judge charge. She'll be kind of you report. I defer right now at this point to a clerk Gordon. She has a matter she has to attend to around six o'clock.

I'm sure I knew he would be the gentleman he is and defer. So, um, clerk Gordon floor is yours.

Good afternoon to this body. Juvenile Court Clerk Janine Gordon, 616 Adams Avenue. Of course, I am here in solidarity with Judge Tarek Sugarman because our building, and I think some of you or many of you have probably toured the building at some point. And we were out for several months in 2024. And even upon our return back to the building, we have continued to have major issues. And when I say major issues, my office, the juvenile court clerk's office, was without restrooms for more than 30 days. We are currently without operable elevators. So that means we are not ADA compliant. We have some additional friends that will join us on several occasions. That means some rodents and some pests. But when you talk about having a healthy and safe environment, 616 Adams is not that place. When I think of my staff members who have asthma issues, as soon as they walk into the building, there is additional issues for them in terms of coughing. I have one team member who is on oxygen and she cannot walk throughout the building. She has to stay in a certain area. When I think of myself as well, who is also asthmatic and a two time breast cancer survivor, as soon as I walk in the building, as soon as I'm in the garage, there is coughing. So I have an air purifier in my office. And when you think of the babies that come into our courthouse and when you think of the grandparents who come into our courthouse, if we want to be safe and compliant, we are not doing that right now at 616 Adams. And so I urge this body to really consider, instead of replacing, or not just replacing the building, and I know that's what we talked about, we talked about renovations, but we need a replacement of that building. Juvenile Court started out as a college years and years ago, It does not flow well for our customers. It does not look very good for many of our team members. There is still mold in the building. There are still leaks. And in the last 30 days, the juvenile court clerk's office has had several leaks. And when we talk about that, it's all in our central records department. It's in our finance department. I just replaced the furniture in our finance department and two of our desks were damaged. And thankfully, the vendor has decided to replace those without any additional fees to my office. We have had our records not just damaged, but on the verge of being destroyed. However, thankfully, many of those records were also scanned in. So although the paper records were damaged, the official record was not destroyed. actually discarded at all. But I do urge you all as we sit here and we walk in that building every day to try to serve each and every family and child that comes in there. We are doing it at the detriment of our health and our team members health as well. So I do urge you all to consider replacing and not just renovating 616 Adams.

All right, thank you. Judge Tarek Sugarman, Shelby County Juvenile Court. Commissioners, thank you again for allowing me to speak today on this matter. Thank you. I appreciate the discussion you've already had regarding the condition of Juvenile Court building. While I'm encouraged by this issue receiving the attention it deserves, I want to emphasize that today's discussion is about much more than an aging facility. Under the Private Act establishing Juvenile Court in Memphis and Shelby County, Tennessee and Tennessee Law Section 5-7-106 and 5-7-111, this Court has specific responsibilities to protect children and serve families and administer justice. Those responsibilities are not just optional, and neither is the County's responsibility to provide for a facility that allows this Court to carry out that mission of safety, securely and effectively. Nearly a decade ago, Shelby County hired an independent professional team to evaluate this building. The 2017 facility assessment concluded that the Jubal Court facility suffered from significant infrastructure failures, operational efficiencies, and ADA accessibility barriers and space limitations that affect the court's ability to function as intended. Most importantly, those independent experts concluded that replacement of this facility, not continued repairs, was the best long-term solution. Unfortunately, many of those same conditions remain to today. Today we do not have a single fully operational elevator that can reliably serve both the public and our employees. Accessibility deficiencies identified years ago still remain unresolved. Critical building systems have exceeded their expected life and we continue operating a facility that experts determined nearly 10 years ago no longer met the needs of a modern juvenile court. These conditions affect children appearing before the court and in the court on their detention hearings, and parents working to reunify their families, victims and witnesses and attorneys and law enforcement officers, community partners and nearly 300 employees who come into this building every day expecting a courthouse that is safe, accessible and functional. If time permits, you'll hear today from some of the independent professionals who evaluated this facility and can speak firsthand to their findings and the work that has been done since. Commissioners, this request is not about convenience. It is not about aesthetics. It is about fulfilling our legal obligation to provide a courthouse that allows juvenile court to carry out the responsibilities entrusted to us by the state of Tennessee and do so in a manner that protects the health, safety, and dignity of every person who enters that doorway. Experts identified these issues in 2017, nearly a decade ago has passed. These needs are not diminished, it has become more urgent. We have today with us is Mr. Jimmy Tucker with Self Tucker Associates Architects, and with him is Mr. Ryan Hunter, with innovative engineering services and additionally mr mark bill billingsley a former member of this body and now a commissioner-elect to this body who will speak on the conditions that he experienced when he came through our building and those that existed in 2016 when the evaluation was done we entertain any questions on this matter and i hope you give the attention to our experts and our partners to address this issue thank you

you judge sugarman um i don't see any commissioners in the queue with questions on this item commissioner larry thank you thank you all see you all again so someone can speak on it i know the sponsor just stepped out but uh so resolution asking the mayor just to bring forward a plan to accelerate funding. So bring on a plan from a funding source to give to this body. I just want to hear more about what the ask is and what the mayor's responsibility is going to be there.

Judge Tark, Sugarman Juvenile Court, Memphis, Shelby County. We have Mr. Thompson here who is with our side of this ask, but I don't know if you're here to speak for the mayor.

Yes. Good afternoon, Commissioners. Dara Hall, Special Assistant to Mayor Lee Harris. So we were invited into this conversation by Commissioner Sugarman and Commissioner Brooks, and we want to thank you both for sponsoring this resolution. So the administration has already allocated $92 million for renovations for this project. And given all of the factual, well, the information that Judge Sugarman and that Clerk Gordon has provided, we have been presented with the opportunity to determine if it's the will, if there's will here from the body to accelerate this project, knowing that building is in the condition that it's in. As Judge Sugarman mentioned, Shelby County government has enlisted two professional studies of the campus over the last 10 years. And it's concluded that the building is in need of substantial investment. Last week in committee meeting, Commissioner Lowry, you proposed a question on the facility assessment behind this recommendation. So we also have with us Public Works Director Norville who is prepared to speak to those assessments that have been conducted over the years and to answer any further questions. So again, this is, again, we were presented with this from the commission. And so we want to, again, determine if it is the will of the commission to prioritize the renovation and building support for juvenile court.

JUDGE TARRAK SHOULD GO IN JUVENILE COURT, IF I MAY SAY. IT WAS THE MAYOR WHO APPROACHED JUVENILE COURT STATING THAT HE WOULD SUPPORT A RESOLUTION NOT ASKING FOR REPLACEMENT, EXCUSE ME, NOT ASKING FOR RENOVATION BUT REPLACEMENT OF THIS BUILDING. SO I WANT TO MAKE SURE THAT'S CLEAR ON THE RECORD.

ALL RIGHT. THANK YOU. COMMISSIONER LOWER, ANYTHING FURTHER? COMMISSIONER WRIGHT.

THANK YOU, MR. CHAIR. SO CERTAINLY I see the need. I've spoken with staff at Juvenile Court who impressed upon me that it is a bad condition that the offices and courtrooms there. I know we no longer have the youth staying there as of a few years ago, but that the condition of the building, that is the offices and the courts. does have issues that need to be addressed. I really appreciated my colleague's question in committee because we're about to have, we're in the midst of some elections and in 35 days there'll be a new administration. And so I might have to piece my comments into a couple here, but when we talk about the will of the commission, And when the mayor, respectfully to the mayor, when the mayor says he will abide by the will of the commission, the will of the commission has been very clear. And as I was reviewing the record earlier today, I was reminded again of what we did in April with regard to the Criminal Justice Center. We pass a resolution unanimously. It says resolution from the Shelby County Board of Commissioners requesting the issuance of a study on the Justice Center Ad Hoc Committee findings sponsored by Commissioner David C. Bradford, Jr. and Chairwoman Chante K. Avant. That was April. As far as I know, there's been absolutely nothing done. So will of the commission. Then this morning, I was reviewing the record and found this earlier resolution. This is from September. So we're coming up on a year ago. that there was a resolution authorizing the creation and issuance of a request for proposals for the development of a master plan to rebuild or relocate the Walter L. Bailey Jr. Criminal Justice Center and to take appropriate actions to facilitate said rebuild or relocation sponsored by Commissioner Henry E. Brooks and Chairwoman Chante Avant passed 10 to 0, will of the commission. Absolutely nothing has been done on this resolution. Absolutely nothing. So do we respect the will of this body or not? And in the meantime, we have emergency after emergency, people falling ill in the jail and having to be sent to the emergency room. again i i'm not i'm not directing this to you judge or to you clerk i respect what you do and you're having to do this in in poor uh in poor conditions but i have i have to take exception to this idea that the administration is going to jump to the will of the commission because that's just blatantly not been the case thank you mr chair thank you commissioner wright commissioner caswell

Thank you, Chair. And again, I agree with my colleague, Commissioner Wright, and thinking back to several of those resolutions, why we haven't received that study of anything, because after I visited the jail, after I visited, I've been to your juvenile court several times in meetings with you all. and madam clerk came to your office where you have to have a heater under your desk just to stay warm i saw what you was dealing with even in those conditions uh that this must be addressed and this is why i too again even though i'm bringing amendment i can speak to that later uh but i say to the administration is We need to study on all the buildings, all the facilities, because we will keep doing emergency after emergency. I'm sure the clerks across the street, I've been over in the courts where the rug is coming up in courtrooms and in the offices of these judges, that that's going to be a situation that we'll be talking about next. But we don't have a real roadmap. to get us there it's almost like commissioner wright that is the conversation that we this body need to do the study and do and push past a resolution to just get it done because if we're going to continue to wait on emergencies to happen we're going to be in situations like this and i just say and i bring and the amendment that i'm i'm proposing to this uh ill so that that we're not just continuing to talk about, but we move towards with a feasibility study to really look at what it's gonna cost, what's the standing. And to that point, I've seen that our director, Cliff Norvell, has brought something. If we could, Madam Chair, if I can have Director Cliff to just come and speak to this, what you just passed out about some of the considerations that you may have at this time. Director Norville. Through the chair.

Director Norville.

Cliff Norville, Public Works.

Speaking specifically about what I handed out, this is just a... several scenarios that we looked at in terms of addressing the juvenile court situation. We don't need to do any more studies because as the judges mentioned and we have Self Tucker and IES represented right behind me here, we hired them in 2017 and they did a facilities assessment. and we haven't let moss grow under our feet. This body passed a resolution in 2016 to improve the sprinkler systems. This body passed a resolution to replace the roof in 2017 and it still has 10 more years warranty on it. And so when leaks are happening, those are reported to our the support services department and we get the vendor out there to repair the leaks. In 2019 we replaced the chiller plant for the building and so that has another 10 to 15 years life left on the chiller plant. And in 2024 when Clerk mentioned that they vacated the building for about six months we spent over over nine hundred thousand dollars to do remediation of mold we remediated some lead paint in certain areas that were found by inspectors and we actually went every six feet in the air conditioning duct work cut access holes so that the vendor could do remediation and clean the duct works out And so all of that was done to the tune of $900,000. And so as we have received maintenance issues and support services from Juvenile Court, we have been addressing them in kind. Now the discussion, the direction the discussion is going so far is to replace the facility. And we do, as was stated, have 92 million planned in our five-year CIP plan. As a matter of fact, we put that money in there soon after the 2017 study was conducted, but because other priorities have dictated, that money has been delayed in the five-year plan. But it is in the five-year plan, and the funding begins in 2028. And so the question becomes, how big is your wallet? Okay, they have requested a new building. And so I've given you four scenarios of how we may approach this juvenile court dilemma. The first scenario is to relocate the entire staff at juvenile court into leased space, and then we gut the entire building back to the bare concrete. and we build it back. And as you can see, we're using the current lease rate is $20 a square foot. If we would have to build that space out to suit their needs, and that's $50 a square foot. And then the renovation costs by today's standards is $470 a square foot. and it's 172 square foot built 172 000 square foot building and then we have i.t cost in courtrooms and then we will have to move them twice move them out and then move them back we don't have a good estimate on that but it's not going to be cheap So you can see the scenario A to move to leased space is in the neighborhood of 99 million dollars and that would have them off site for about three years until we complete the renovation and then we would move them back. Item two is a new construction. The benefit to that is that they can continue to reside where they are as we build a new building and then we move them once. but new construction is running about six hundred and fifty dollars a square foot whereas renovation is for 70. all right so because it's more expensive to build new than it is to renovate you're looking at 108 to 110 million dollars item uh scenario three because we have done renovation while we maintain people in the building working. Item three is to renovate that building while they still reside there, but we pay a 20% premium to do it after hours. Okay, because we have a lot of demolition of the existing bedrooms that involves concrete block and all kinds of plumbing. And that is going to be noisy. That kind of demolition telescopes through the building. And since we're holding court there in 10 courtrooms, that will be very disruptive. but to pay an off hour premium for the construction work, you can see there the price per square foot is increased by 20% and then everything else is kind of the same. So renovating it during off hours would be about $98 million. And then the least expensive, and I'll just say it that way, I'm not saying it's preferred or not preferred, But the least expensive scenario is item D, and that would be renovating while during normal business hours. And that's the $470 a square foot cost that you see there for a total cost. And this is a little bit more than a back of the napkin calculation. So don't quote me on this. We'd still have to bid it. but that would be somewhere in the neighborhood of $81, $82 million. And so it really comes down to a question of our pocketbook. And I'll just leave it at that. I'd be happy to answer any questions. I just wanna make sure that everybody understands that we didn't take a study from 2017 and put it on the shelf and let it collect dust.

uh we have been doing things as we have had funds available all right commissioner clay bibbs thank you madam chair um thank you for this uh director norval i actually was looking at this and i was going to direct the question to um madam clark and um judge sugarman but i think they just got a chance to see this so but i will say um is there any way possible for you to estimate the relocation cost i know because that

realistically speaking that can shift these numbers quite a bit as much as well cliff normal public works uh yes commissioner we can go shop this number uh it will be several hundred thousand dollars but scenario a has moving twice scenario scenario b has moving once, and really, there will probably be more than once in, well, excuse me, scenario B, C, and D will have us moving people once. Now, C and D we will be moving them within the building from where they exist to their new space. And the way we will do that is the vacated distention area in the building is 30 to 40,000 square feet. and we can renovate that space and then we play kind of do it in phases dominoes yeah and we just move people into the new space and then we renovate what's vacated and and that is uh cumbersome and takes a little bit longer but here again is what can we afford figures that's what can we afford so thank you for this and then i'll say just to those i know who've been advocating around um that location

I'm concerned. I'm happy to hear that we have the 92 million CIP already, but it's based upon how we use it and which one is the best scenario. I think this is helpful, but I would be interested to hear from you all around, after you get a chance to assess it, which one would be between, I would say, pick two, and send me some feedback on that. Because, I mean, of course we all have a perfect thought, but the reality is, can we afford it? And that's the thing that I'm most concerned about. What can we afford in a feasible time in order to be able to remedy what you're doing right now?

Thank you. Judge Tarek Sugarman, Shelby County Jewelry Court. If I could just briefly ask if you would consider hearing from our architects, Self Tucker and the engineer. The reason I say that is the estimates that are for the renovation, each of them, I don't believe contain the requirements of making the seismic changes to the structure in order to make it compliant with now existing building codes. And if that's the case, that elevates the cost of those renovations. In addition, the For our employees, staff, and more importantly the public, having to come into a facility that is under renovation where we're in another section of the building, it still presents airborne contaminants, environmental concerns. I don't think any construction company would agree to a contract where people are still occupying a building under renovation. So I'd like to have Mr. Tucker, if you don't mind, just speak briefly to the additional costs that may not have been in these projections. I'm sorry, I'm saying Mr. Jimmy Tucker. Thank you. All right, Jimmy Tucker.

Good afternoon, everyone. Jimmy Tucker with South Tucker Architects. I've been listening intently to this discussion. And actually, I did have a chance to tour the building just this past week, just to kind of refresh my memory from the Assessment that we had done, and I did see that some of the conditions certainly. Have worsened from the time we were there. I will say that also doing. Friday and earlier today, I did speak with some. Engineering consultants that we work with as well, particularly regarding. The seismic issues and 1 of the things they did point out. And this relates to a lot of what. Cliff is saying it's going to depend on. what happens relative to the planning process and how much of the building is gonna be impacted that may affect the project from a seismic standpoint. So certainly there's a possibility that there may be increased costs from a seismic perspective, but still there's some planning that needs to be done, as Forrest Cliff just mentioned, in terms of if this were to be a renovation process moving, using certain portions of the building, but how would they need to be reconfigured to accommodate the needs, the current needs of the juvenile court. And that's still to be determined and that's why it's important to actually go through a planning process. As we, and again, I just want to be very, insightful, hopefully insightful as I'm speaking to and addressing your questions. But I think that's something definitely to be stated. For example, there is currently a need for additional courtrooms and so how would they be uh and those are spaces that uh require a larger footprint so in that case you may be taking out uh certain areas of the existing building and that's where those considerations regarding seismic come into play as to how much you need to reconfigure that existing building to make it work for uh its current the current needs of juvenile court so i'll kind of i'll kind of stop there thank you that that answers my first set of questions but i'm sure i have other colleagues that are in the queue that will ask more commissioner brooks

Thank you. Mr. Tucker, did you produce a report that stated the juvenile court needed to be replaced? The building needed to be replaced?

yes that was in uh in uh 2017 after we had done our comprehensive assessment of the building it was our determination that the best solution would be to uh replace that building and as you all and have already discussed the building goes back to 1935. It has a number of different additions that have been added. But the other part about that is that the current practices for best practices for juvenile court are different. They've evolved over time. So that was also reflected in Okay, and the conclusions that we came. To at that time, 1 thing I will say that's kind of really struck me. Is the fact that all the young people have been. Moved out of the building. So right now it's a real challenge from where we were detention almost 10 years ago, how it was operating compared to how it's that I don't want to sort of walk away and not bring attention to just not just the new building. But also the fact of the operation challenges. that they're dealing with on a day-to-day basis. Whether it's the public coming into the building and being successfully accommodated, parents, children are coming in, but also just the young people that have to be transported back and forth every day. So that's a missing element. that I'm hoping that a new building could accommodate in some way so that that's not part of the operation that's being dealt with on a daily basis. So again, it's important to point that out and make that.

Mr. Tucker, she's saying that you're eating up all of her time.

No, no, no, she said that. Respectfully, I'm going to ask you some more questions, but I've got to get this in. I think this was Cliff Norville who says something about that you had been plastering or doing some kind of band-aid work. Whenever you were called upon, you went over there and you fixed the issue. Is that what you said?

No, okay.

Yes, commissioner, uh, uh, juvenile court has a, uh, facilities. Contact person and when issues are brought to his attention, he contacts support services. We generate a work order and we go out and try to address those issues.

Okay.

I do want to, I don't want to use up any more of your time, so if you would, Chairman, Madam Chair, let me come back and make a couple of clarifications after Commissioner's through. Yes.

i'm out of time vice chair bradford we'll circle back around to commissioner um this is this item's right in my wheelhouse i deal with this kind of stuff every single day and i've heard a lot of things today that i don't know where to jump to to talk about i guess the first thing i heard was from uh commissioner wright down there about the jail study that we had in front of us it was vetoed by the mayor so will of the body was overruled by the mayor on that item Director Norville, your numbers on here are pretty spot on. The $650 per square foot for new constructions about what I'm seeing in the market right now. So good job to you on that one. The renovation in place items probably are going to be more expensive than what you're seeing here just because the contractor is going to have to be dealing with staff, that type of thing. You'll have a longer duration there. And then duration is really the thing that keeps coming back to me on this item on the jail and everything else Due to the process and everything. We've got to go through we want a new building We got to have an RFQ on the street to hire a consultant once we could consultant on board. Mr Tucker can probably speak to this It's probably take at least a year of design to design a new facility Then you got to get your contractor on board your contractor is going to spend probably another three years to build the thing So we're sitting here talking today We're still four years from moving into a new facility. So now not only do we have the cost of a new facility, but we've got to keep the existing facility maintained during all that time. So while we're looking at these numbers here, there's a lot more numbers and dollars that are going to be put into this stuff than what we're even looking at today. And this goes with the jail as well. The jail is probably an eight to ten year project. And so a lot of the renovation stuff that we've got to do at the jail, we're going to have to pay for those renovations in the next five years, plus pay to build the new facility and you know those years out so lots of stuff going on um i i think i think caswell even mentioned this a little bit i think the county has got a lot of facilities like this i don't think this is the only one which is a big concern so for the next administration coming in they're going to have a lot to do to study all of these facilities to figure out where in the world do we even start on all of this stuff. So I appreciate you all coming forward with this today. I do think your facility is one of the ones in the greatest needs, but I would be, and I think the request is admirable, and I think we can go ahead and proceed with this request, but I think probably moving into the next administration, we need to do a lot more to study all the facilities and make sure we're not neglecting one, believe it or not, that could be in worse shape than the facility you all are working in. So I think that's all I had on this. Thank you.

Um, chairwoman, may I just, just mom, let me get back to director noble and then I'll circle back. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair, Clifton Oval Public Works. I just wanted to add a couple of items that I was overlooked as I was frantically trying to list off all the things that have been done. One thing that is really pivotal, and Jimmy mentioned it when he was talking, when Self Tucker performed the study back in 2017, the students were residing at 616 Adams. And after Self Tucker prepared their study recommending a new facility, the administration realized we did not have the funds to build a new facility. And when they recommended that new facility in 2017, the cost in 2017 was $80 million. And so the construction industry has increased 40% since at least 40 to 50. I've got Commissioner Bradford going way up. So 80 million 10 years ago. And so That was substantial. So the administration made the decision to pursue alternative locations for student residents. And that's what led us, the commission voted in 2020 to purchase the facility on Old Getwell. The commission voted in 22 to fund two phases to renovate that facility. So Shelby County has invested about $31 million in the facility that is currently operated by the Division of Corrections under the Mayor's Administration on Old Getwell Road. And so, since that has changed a significant part of the assessment that Self Tucker performed back in 2017, the variables have changed. But in addition to that, Shelby County and this commission voted to hire Pickering in 2024. And they have actually prepared construction documents for the renovation of 616 Adams. And Commissioner Bradford was referring to how long it would take to do the design if we did a renovation or new construction. Well, we have construction documents that were completed and they were bid documents ready to hit the street. We had those in hand in 2024. We just didn't have the funds to pursue it. And so we have been waiting for the opportunity for funds, but there have been higher priorities. And so I did want to make that clarification. If we were to choose to renovate the facility, We don't have to worry about a year's worth of design time. That has been done and it is reconfigured things so that we do address ADA concerns and all the things that the judge has mentioned were deficient. Structural plans were a part of this design set, which do address the seismic requirements and all the codes that are required to be met today. And so I just want to make that clarification and thank you, Madam Chair.

And Director Norville, has Judge Sugarman had an opportunity to see that? I think that's sometimes where the lack of communication between where the administration and those other electeds. I'm sure it would be very helpful if Judge Sugarman has not seen them, that information is provided to him.

Cliff Norville Public Works. As a matter of fact, and I don't want to speak for the judge, his recollection is probably better than mine, and I was not in attendance of all of the meetings. But when we started this process with Pickering, I think Judge Michael was still on the bench. There was some discussion about how the building was to be laid out. But after Judge Sugarman took the bench, Support services continued to work and had planning meetings with Pickering and the judge and the clerk. And so the building was actually designed to meet their standards. Now they may have changed their mind and want some reconfiguration and some adjustments since 2024, but Judge Sugarman was involved in the planning for the renovation of the existing facility.

Judge Tarek Sugarman and Shelby County Juvenile Court. My recollection is that I was not involved in the planning for the renovation. I understand that that's what the county at that time in 2024 was leaning towards based upon, and I didn't know about the Pickering Group, but I think there's still a breakdown in communication. The mayor indicated when he called me about presenting this resolution that his desire now after visiting the building and doing a tour of the building, he wanted to have new construction and not a renovation. I felt that there was also a model that would best fit our county's needs. We're the largest juvenile jurisdiction in the state. We have 40% more business than Davidson County. I'm not going to talk about the footprint that they're building for that court, but it is dealing with trauma-informed juvenile court systems and the current best practices for a juvenile court. Let me also just conclude with this. and to Commissioner Wright's point, what we're asking for now is a million dollars to start this program, that it be the will of this commission. The mayor has expressed his desire. We will have a new mayor in the next year. Our budget, when I came into office, the CIP budget was in our budget and it was taken out and we were kicked down the road and kicked down. Now we're in 2028. We really need to begin this process in 2027. We ask for the money to begin this process so that the will of the commission, the will of the mayor currently, and the will of the people of Shelby County is for a new building.

Did you have a statement?

Yes, just to clarify. Just state your name for the record. I'm sorry, Daryl Hall, Special Assistant, Shelby County Mayor's Office. To respond to and clarify, the points on the will of the mayor. Again, on this matter, and this is something that's probably already been established, but on this matter regarding prioritizing juvenile court, the mayor wants to know what the county commission wants to do. The mayor does oppose building a new jail at the time until our school needs are better met. So if the county commission does not want to prioritize juvenile court, then that's the information that we need to move forward. Thank you.

Commissioner Caswell, you're recognized.

THANK YOU, MADAM CHAIR. IT'S A LOT, IT'S A LOT. BUT ONE JUDGE, THAT'S WHY I SAID SOMETHING ABOUT THE NEED FOR A STUDY. COMMISSIONER BRADFORD MADE MY POINT, AND THANK YOU, AND THERE'S EXPERTISE OF UNDERSTANDING. EVEN WHEN WE GOT HERE TO THIS BODY, FRASER HIGH SCHOOL WAS TALKED ABOUT, AND IT WAS $80, $90 MILLION. AND IT GOT TO KICK DOWN THE ROAD, IT WAS $140 MILLION. And so when you talk about why we can't, and I hear you, Director, when you say we don't need another study, I think we do, because even when I toured the facility that was done temporarily and went over with the judge and seen the courtroom footprint over there on Get Well, it didn't fit the capacity of what the court needed to do to do the business. So now you're talking about people being transported back and forth, that's costing money. So I think in part, what we need to look at is if we're talking about, and I hope we not talking about keeping it separate, but how do we come together? How do you bring it back together in part? But I hate to think that we put $30 million over there in that facility and it becomes nothing. I'm sure the sheriff may can do something with that and maybe I don't know if it's fit for that. But two, we need to get this study done so that we know what that footprint look like because the footprint has changed from the fact that in that 160, you're not doing detention right now. So if we're only talking about courtroom and having space just for temporarily till they go to court and go back over to Getwell, That's a different cause, I think, right? And Mr. Tucker, you may can help me, because you just spoke to that. If you can come up one minute. You just spoke to the price tag that was given in the $90 million was for the footprint of they was living there at the time and the courts being there. So when you spoke to the fact that it may be different configurations of what is the need of the court, and I know I think it's the will of the judge to kind of have everything together, So if you can kind of speak to your idea of what you were sharing about now the detention part is not there. You're just talking about the courtroom footprint and the clerk's office that's there. Is that less than the $90 million that we're looking at to build a new facility?

Well, keep in mind that, as Flip pointed out, that number was a number that came out of the $20 million 17 study for new construction. But here we are in almost 10 years later. So obviously, costs are going to be higher. But again, I also just want to be clear about the fact that we're talking about new construction. Then to your point you just made, we're talking about a number that's escalated or increased from where it was in 2017. But I'm also just trying to be clear about the fact that, and I haven't looked at the Pickering drawings, so I don't know if they actually include

the detention.

That's right. So that would again, that's an operations aspect of this that I think is very critical and we need to have some clarity about whether or not, because in a best practices, there would not be the transporting daily of the young people from the get well location. I hope, did I answer your question?

Okay. If you could get back in the queue, yep. Commissioner Whaley?

All right. Thank you, Madam Chair. So, I mean, I think the point Commissioner Bradford made earlier on the timeline I think is an astute one, but it's also something that we've considered in the plan. I mean, the CIP plan shows an allocation to this over several years. So this is not a quick solution. So I think that is contemplated in the budget. I mean, I think it would be beneficial for us to try to focus in on what kind of action can we actually take here that moves this forward? Because what we're looking at now is a resolution to request mayor to bring a plan so that's one thing we can do and then i'm seeing a an amendment out of the cip for a million dollars out of contingency which i'm not sure you know million we're talking about over 100 million dollar projects i'm not sure what allocating a million dollars in fy 27 leaving everything else the same accomplishes uh i don't really understand that um and then i think the other thing that that is important to understand is that I don't think it's as helpful to sort of piecemeal all these buildings. You know, we talked to, and Commissioner Wright brought this up earlier, like this whole sort of study around what does the Criminal Justice Center look like? I mean, one of those ideas was that we had everything in one place. Not to say that's what's going to happen, but just it seems to me like if we just take one little project at a time, we get down the road 30 years and now we've got super inefficient systems that no one's happy with, all in the name of we got to do this first thing here right now and do it this specific way. So it may be that we end up continuing we we build every building exactly where it's at today maybe that's what happens no one's made that decision we haven't seen a study we've got no idea what the costs are going to be and so it's hard to say that that's the way we ought to go i mean it certainly makes sense a new construction just given the costs makes sense to me conceptually but is it a freestanding building on its own does it include The Youth Justice Center, does it include the Criminal Justice Center? I don't know. Those things I think need to be thought through in a serious way, otherwise it's just not coherent. It doesn't make sense to me. We just continue to spend hundreds of millions of dollars without a coherent plan. If we look at that aside, if we just look at this particular issue, It seems to me that if we're going to try to do something here, it's to accelerate the deployment of the CIP budget toward this item. Okay, that makes sense to me. The million dollar amendment on the floor today doesn't make sense to me, but I think if, the way I see it is that we pull that whole thing forward, which gets at conversations we've had going into budget season, which is we need to know the budget actuals on these CIP projects, because some of them are not gonna happen, most of them, quite frankly, don't happen in the year they're budgeted. Now with the schools, we carry it forward. We add it on top to the next allocation. We don't have to do that with county projects. So if we allocate $20 million to a project, that project only spends down $5 million, that whole additional $15 million gets pushed out. The whole project can get pushed out versus adding it on top of what was budgeted in the five-year plan. So I'd much rather us take the time, work with the administration to figure out how we pull it forward probably into half of this year and look at the other projects that are unlikely to be fully encumbered in 27, such that it's not costing us more, it's not jeopardizing the debt service, but it's allowing us to bring the existing plan up. That makes sense to me. It still doesn't solve the master plan and all that, but at least it lets us get going on something.

Thanks, Madam Chair.

I'm going to get to the other commissioners, and then we'll have, if there's any other reposts.

Commissioner Brooks? Thank you, Madam Chair. Let me try and clear up a couple of things. The resolution that was passed by this body resulted in the appointment of an ad hoc committee, so it was not ignored. uh and i'm not sure about that and then two i think we we should not make this a competition between building a jail and juvenile court let's separate that uh the jail is not before us it's juvenile court that's before us uh now in addressing these issues Let's not forget about what we're talking about. Yes, Cliff Norville, we remove some of the children. We remove some, but we still have babies coming in there. We still have women. We still have families. And you still have those pollutants. And you still have lead-based walls all over that place. And any amount of lead is deadly. It's deadly. you can read that you don't need to be an expert to know that so let me just say can we deal with what's in front of us please do not make this a competition between the jail and juvenile court there is no competition they both need to be done the clerk's office i was over there and a full disclosure i used to work there The clerk's office, which bothers me a lot also, in addition to the lead-based paint all over the place, was potentially destroying children's minds and making them incapable of being academically successful. The clerk's office is a lost dude waiting to happen. All those legal files in there, underneath a tarp covering a hole where the rain and the water and whatever substances, legal jackets contain legal information. And that legal information deals with disposition of cases. Disposition of cases. So I don't know what we're thinking about. Maybe we need to, everybody should take that tour because that could really put us in a financially vulnerable situation if a lawyer decides to go with federal court. and have all of his or her cases dismissed and then sue us on top of that. It's not a competition for me. I will admit I'm biased toward babies. I'm extremely biased toward babies because they cannot do anything for themselves. They have no advocacy. They have no vote if you will so they cannot voice their opinion so we have to stand up for them but as far as putting a patch on these things that's been going on and i think there's some uh one of the uh presenters in our committee meeting testified not well she gave a presentation that she did have expert information And I asked her to bring that today. So we have the names of experts, and I say this to my colleague because that was his question. And I do not want to be out of order, so I'm going to get back in the queue because I am out of time. Vice Chair Brantford?

I wanted to clarify because I heard the judge say something. The item in front of us right now is as printed on the agenda and in the system, and it does not include a $1 million. Now, I think an item, is it my incorrect? I'm seeing heads nod and heads shake.

That's correct.

Okay. We did get something passed out, but that has not been moved to the floor. Okay. I just wanted to make sure I had that in my head because I'm more in favor of what we have in front of us than spending money on this at this time, which I think is a little bit to what Commissioner Whaley was speaking to. I just wanted to make sure I had that right. Thank you.

Commissioner Wright.

Thank you, Madam Chair. So again, I certainly don't hold anything against you all. You've got to be here, and you've got to advocate for your situation, and you should. And I think that's great. This body has a slightly different perspective in that we do have to deal with all of the infrastructure issues throughout the county. And so we do have to find a way to make it all work, to make all those pieces work within our CIP budget. And so, you know, for me, you know, that's why I think it's hard for me when I'm losing trust with what I'm hearing from the administration because the will of the body was expressed through these resolutions and as well as this ad hoc committee where Commissioner Lowry and Commissioner Bradford led many months of work to get us to a point on one of our facilities that obviously needs a lot of help. And so, you know, is this decision going to be made by politics because the mayor doesn't get along with the sheriff or with the board of commissioners? I just don't think it should be about politics. I think it should be about prudence and what should be done and in what order And so, again, I lose trust when I see things happening at the Justice Center where you have a leak. the health department comes in and says this is an immediate health concern we've got to shut the place down and then it's only closed for two days and suddenly it magically reopens i don't know we never heard from the health department why they got an all clear i never heard any explanation of that and then 12 days 12 days the water just sat there in a state of disrepair for 12 days. Now, what happens when the facility has no air and it has water? What is that a recipe for? But was that decision to reopen made because of politics, because some of us were putting pressure on the mayor to do something about the Justice Center? Did he rush to reopen it for that reason, for politics? because it makes the sheriff look bad for him to blame the sheriff for the problems at the jail, but the CJHC only looks bad about the mayor, so let's rush to reopen it and make it look like everything's okay. Well, it obviously wasn't okay, because then 12 days later, we had to close the entire courts for an entire week, and then the city courts were still closed for another week. So we,

think it would be very unwise to rush a decision and to make it based on the politics of who the mayor does and doesn't speak with we ought to be making it based on prudence and information so colleagues I've given a lot of latitude because this obviously is a subject that is very important to all of us I'm gonna ask that our comments are based on the purview of the item that is in front of us and if there is action that we are going to take on this particular issue tonight we should make uh move judiciously to do that we could debate it for another two hours and still there has to be action that is taken so uh commissioner caswell um i had stepped out so are you introducing are you wanting to make a motion to introduce your substitute

Not to, if I can get the answer I need from Director Norville, that'll help me understand. Thank you, Madam Chair, Director Norville. And again, I can support what my colleague, Commissioner Whaler is saying, and I hear you Commissioner Radford in the need of just supporting, but moving forward. But I'd still believe that in part, we need to move forward with some actions that leading to us addressing all of it, But then how do we look at if we're going to move this money up, what is the next steps that we're going to take to actually begin to address that? So I want to ask you, Director, just to something that, if you can help me understand, but do you know about the CMAR, the Construction Manager at Risk process?

Cliff Norville, I'm a big fan. We are using it to build the new mental health facility out at Shelby Farms Complex, and the contractor is staying within budget and is on schedule. Go ahead. They helped us greatly by shopping every commodity in the project and got the lowest price, and the best contractors do the work, and it is proceeding. We couldn't be happier.

And that's good to hear. And so with that, is that something that we can look at for this process to help us on this project?

Cliff Norville, that is absolutely my plan. Depending on how we move forward, it will be a contract construction manager at risk.

All right. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Commissioner Brooks. Is this, I'm sorry, I don't know if this is your second or third time I stepped out. I'm a third. Third, okay. Can we do a suspension of the rules? So moved. Okay. Do that without objection.

I'm not going to labor this. I think I've articulated my concern. And again, This is an issue that needs to be addressed. Of course we do have to have a starting place and we need to be logical in the starting place. And so the resolution clearly states, the caption of the resolution clearly states what we're asking for is to accelerate funding for the replacement of the juvenile court offices immediately. So that's basically what I'm asking for. Thank you for the time.

Commissioner Sugarman. Thank you, Madam Chair. And so juvenile court judge Tarik Sugarman is my brother, but there's no conflict of interest. I know not lived in his house. He's not supported me or anything like that. So I will be voting on this item.

All right, colleagues. So the item before us is to expedite funding for the replacement of juvenile court. playing playing seeing no other commissioners before this body please prepare the screen for vote Please report the vote.

We have aye votes from Commissioners Whaley, Clay Bibbs, Caswell, Sugarman, Shalai, Brooks, Laurie, Vice Chair Bradford, Chairwoman Avent. We have nine aye votes. That motion passes.

Parliamentarian, please read item 31.

Item 31 comes from the General Government Committee which is chaired by Commissioner Brooks. Item 31 is a resolution of the Board of County Commissioners of Shelby County, Tennessee, the Shelby County Evidence-Based Election Governance Act to promote evidence-based election record preservation, provenance and auditability and to encourage best practices for transparent election record management consistent with state and federal law. Sponsored by commissioner Erica Sugarman. This item does not meet requirements of permanent rules and was sent down without recommendation in June 22nd, 2026 committee meeting.

I have a motion by commissioner Sugarman. Is there a second second by commissioner July commissioner Brooks can have a committee report.

Thank you. That item was sent down without recommendation.

Okay. Do we need to suspend the rules for this item?

Not clear what rules are being suspended here.

Did legal do a review of the item? Okay, so is there a motion? I'm sorry.

Do you want to speak on it, county attorney? Megan Smith, county attorney's office. The version in the system we did not review. However, there is a substitute that's been passed out. We did review that one.

Okay, so I need a motion to suspend the rules to get this item properly before us. I have a motion by Commissioner Sugarman. Is there a second? Is there a second? Okay, if there, for lack of a second, the item will not properly be before us unless there is a second to have it properly before us.

Seeing...

give it another okay all right so uh unfortunately commissioner sugarman lack of a second the item is not properly before us for us to act on it okay um we are at a standpoint where we're waiting on the minutes do the minutes have to be approved before we leave tonight no

Because there's a bond item, we need to have a resolution to adjourn. And I know the minutes clerk went to prepare it, and we're waiting for her to... She's not ready.

All right, so we're going to take a 10-minute recess in order for us to adjourn today's meeting.

We have to have a... She said it's in the system. Can you pull it up? She said that the resolution is in the system.

Madam Chair, Megan Smith County Attorney's Office, the resolution to adjourn was included in the publication and is item 32 on today's agenda.

We don't see an item 32.

It's on there now. Here it is. All right. Item 32. I'm going to let parliamentarian read. Item 32 is a resolution of adjournment pursuant to Rule 10 B of the Permanent Rules of Order, PRO, sponsored by Chairwoman Shante K. Evans.

All right. I have a motion by Commissioner Whaley, a second by Commissioner Lowry. Commissioner Lowry?

Thanks, Madam Chair. Before you bang the gavel here, I just want to make sure, what's the process to do a motion for the need to reconsider for 31? And I just wanted to make that comment now before you bang the gavel and conclude the meeting.

Yeah, that's right.

so because the item failed for lack of a second um it was it is not properly before us um so any person that is on the side of whatever made it not pass no second yeah can can bring the reconsideration so since that means any of us yes because no technically anyone who did not

put forth a motion for a second, can bring it up for reconsideration based on what the parliamentarian is sharing. She'll check that to be clear.

Yeah.

So point of order. Yes. We have 32 in front of us. We gotta get rid of this one so we can go back to 31. If we approve this now, though, then does that close the night?

It does. It does. It could be reconsidered.

After. But 32 is before us now. We're on resolution 32. Once we vote on it, so his vote is...

Yeah, and this I would say, if it's not something that's time sensitive, that it could be brought back at a different time. Let's not make our lives more complicated than we have to when we don't have to. All right. There's a motion before us to a resolution to adjourn the meeting. We can prepare the screens for a vote. We're voting to adjourn the meeting. Please report the vote.

No statements tonight. Okay, okay.

No statements tonight? Nothing. Please report the vote.

We have aye votes from Commissioners Whaley, Clay Bibbs, Sugarman, Mills, Shalai, Brooks, Lowry, Vice Chair Bradford, Chairwoman Avent. We have nine aye votes.

That motion passes. Our meeting is adjourned. The meeting is adjourned until August 10th, 2026 at 3 p.m.