County commission meeting subdued as controversies appear settled

JACKSBORO, TN (WLAF) – Last week the Campbell County Commission spent over five hours at a sometimes contentious workshop and a stormy sanitation committee meeting. On Monday night, commission chairman Johnny Bruce predicted that since all the conflicts were worked out in committee, the regular commission meeting would be over in an hour or less. Watch the meeting HERE on demand.

Bruce was off on his estimate. A group of surprisingly agreeable commissioners completed their agenda in 45 minutes and went home. They began by quickly running through all of the reports and minutes, along with most budget amendments.

One additional amendment was brought up after a suspension of rules as Ralph Davis moved to ask the finance office to find $1,000 to be donated to Woodland Community Land Trust. Tonya Brookman from the land trust addressed commissioners at the workshop last week about financial help with the upcoming Remote Area Medical event at Jellico High School on May 15-16.

Brookman announced that her organization would be sponsoring the event offering free medical, vision and dental examinations. She explained that Woodland is expecting 116 volunteers, many coming in from outside the county, to help with the event. The sponsoring organization has to provide meals for the volunteers during the two-day event and commissioners were asked to make a $1,000 donation to help with costs.

“We had 139 patients at the RAM event in White Oak and expect to at least double that number at Jellico,” Brookman said. Davis’ motion to provide the $1,000 was approved unanimously.

Mayor E. L. Morton also asked for a suspension of rules so the commission could vote on approving a FEMA grant to the county for $244,794 to help with the cleanup costs from flooding in 2019. The federal government declared the county a disaster area due to the flooding and Morton explained that the grant, with no cost of matching funds from the county, would be received as soon as the county approved the application. Robert Higginbotham moved to accept the grant which predictably passed unanimously.

The controversy surrounding last week’s sanitation committee meeting was replaced with all good news this week. The county had angered officials from the four municipalities by complaining that cities were not properly sorting recyclables from garbage and announcing that the county could not accept more refuse from cities until a crisis situation was settled at the Towe String Road facility because of lack of space.

Monday night, sanitation chairman Davis and other commissioners expressed gratitude to LaFollette Mayor Mike Stanfield along with Jacksboro Metals for their help and loan of heavy equipment to help clear out much of the trash backlog at Towe String.

Davis also made a motion from the building and grounds Committee to approve the specs and solicit bids for new courthouse windows on the upper floor, as well as another motion to invite bids for siding to go in place once the new windows are installed. Both motions were approved unanimously, with costs estimated at around $20,000 for the windows.

Also gaining unanimous approval was another motion from building and grounds to approve installation of speaker boxes for the drive-through windows of the county clerk and Circuit Court Clerk offices. Finally, commissioners approved a resolution from Zachary Marlow opposing any legislation in the Tennessee General Assembly that would limit a county’s right to sue drug companies for damages from drug addiction. (WLAF NEWS PUBLISHED – 04/20/2021-6AM)