At its August 12 meeting, the Maury County Budget Committee amended a request to fund the proposed administration building at McDowell Elementary School, effectively scrapping current plans for the building and forcing the Planning Committee to start over from scratch.
Budget Committee member Gabe Howard introduced a motion to amend the resolution that would essentially kill the project, urging that the Budget Committee abandon the project for now and possibly reallocate its $4.824 million budget at future meetings.
“When we voted to postpone a few months ago, I wanted to answer some questions. I think the school board really answered those questions for us last week,” Howard said. “I felt like a lot of the commissioners are not on the same page about the building itself… the school board is not on board with the project at all.”
Earlier Tuesday, the Maury County School Board voted not to build an administration building until the county commission approved the construction of a new elementary school. Howard said the building was clearly not the school board’s top priority and could not be built without its approval because it owns part of the old McDowell campus. He further argued that the county commission had not fully agreed to the details of the project.
Committee member Kathey Grodi clarified that the school board’s intent was to protest the county commission’s apparent preference for an administration building over much-needed classroom space. Commissioner Ray Jeter brought up the fact that a majority of the school board would be leaving office after the Aug. 19 meeting and the new majority may have different ideas about the administration building.
“What happens if this new school board that takes office in September changes their mind? I believe this board has voted unanimously on this twice. If they change their mind because they have a huge turnover of personnel on September 1st, can we revisit this?” Jeter said.
Another topic of discussion was the resolution to add $746,000 to the Highway Department’s budget to complete repairs to the bridge over the Duck River on the Tom J. Hitch Parkway. Howard moved to also add to the budget the $443,000 needed to repave Mt. Olivet Road, since Mt. Olivet would take over the diverted traffic from Tom J. Hitch. Since adding this amendment to the Tom J. Hitch project would postpone the vote on both until next month, the Budget Committee kept them separate, passed the Tom J. Hitch budget amendment and asked the Public Works Committee to develop a plan to repave Mt. Olivet.
The budget committee voted to pay off $15 million in school improvement bonds from the 151 debt service fund. Doug Lukonen, county finance director, said the debt service fund has made so much profit that it currently covers 130 percent of annual debt payments. Paying off those bonds would also give the county the ability to take on up to $26 million in debt for other projects. Several other funds also have surpluses.
The committee also voted to carry over into 2024 outstanding and unpaid budget items that were not completed in the previous fiscal year and to add block grants to the county budget and the City of Mount Pleasant budget.
