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Wlaf1450‘The money is there, so it’s time to act-‘ School Board Chairman Jeffrey Miller
TOP PHOTO: Mark Proffitt, owner of the Norris Lake Sports Complex, presented a proposal for the school district to buy the sports complex for $2 million at Tuesday’s BOE meeting.
By Charlotte Underwood
JACSKBORO, TN (WLAF)- At Tuesday’s Board of Education meeting, Campbell County School Board members heard a proposal asking if the school district would want to purchase the Norris Lake Sports Complex and the eight acres it sets on for $2 million.
The complex is owned by Mark Proffitt. The more than 42,000 square foot building was completed in 2023 and sits along the north side of Old Jacksboro Pike near the La Follette Church of God.
Proffitt, State Representative Dennis Powers, Campbell County High School Principal Ben Foust and Co-Athletic Director Ryan Browning each briefly addressed the BOE.
No vote was made on the issue on Tuesday, but it will be revisited at a soon-to-be called BOE Building and Grounds Committee meeting, which should be held within two weeks.
Proffitt began the discussion after handing out photos of the sports complex to BOE members.
“As you all know, my daughter grew up here, played basketball, she was fortunate to get into gyms and stuff playing basketball, that’s when we realized there was a need for more gyms for kids to get into. She was very vocal and able to talk her way into a gym, but not every kid is that way, that’s how this all first got started,” Proffitt said.
He told BOE members the sports complex was “the hardest project he had ever done” and that when he first got started, he “got scammed out of $134,000 by a building company and that one thing led to another.”
“We have tried to make it privately, we can’t figure out how to pay the debt and keep it private; I don’t want to see it as any other thing as a gym, but I have other things I’m going to have to do if I can’t keep it a gym,” Proffitt said.
He went over the different schools in the district that use the facilities and the “benefit it has to the community and surrounding area.”
“The first thing we done was CCYBL came in there and did their tournament, we had Caryville’s Basketball banquet going at the same time. Last year, when you all were doing the remodel on Jacksboro Elementary, they used it the whole time for their basketball practices – they didn’t do any games there, but they used it. Jellico High School, Mike Reynolds used it last year for a whole week because something was going on with their gym. Jacksboro Middle School has used it for their JV Teams, Jacksboro Elementary has always done their parties there…volleyball camps and practices have been held there, we’ve also had cheerleading there, we have never not let anyone come in and not use the gym,” Proffitt said. He also said the Campbell County Youth Basketball Team uses the gym and that the Special Olympics has used it as well.
He also showed BOE members a bid form for a gym that is being built in Anderson County for a 32,000 square foot building and that for the concrete and building only, the lowest bid came in at $2.4 million. He showed this as an example, explaining that if the school district purchased his building, it would save money over building a new sports complex or gym on campus from the ground up.
“I owe $1.7 million … we have $2.2 million in it, there’s an apartment there I will keep, I will take $200,000 off of it and sell it to you all for $2 million, you get me out of debt at $1.7 million and we can work out the other $300,000 over three years, at $100,000 a year or whatever is convenient for you; I would just like to see it stay a gym and good for the community,” Proffitt said.
State Representative Dennis Powers addressed the board briefly, saying should the board decide to purchase the sports complex, he would look into state and federal grants for a pedestrian bridge and include a letter of support.
Powers said he was meeting with TDOT tomorrow and that when he “got wind of this proposal”, he thought he would look into a couple of proposals for grants that are available for pedestrian bridges and talk with TDOT.
One such grant is a grant through TDOT that addresses pedestrian walking “gaps along a state route” and this would be considered a state route. Another grant is a Federal Transportation Enhancement program, saying that this grant was federal money and could be a little tougher to get at.
“I would propose that if you decide to purchase the sports facility, that you submit applications for both of these grants; in those applications, you might want to include that the Church of God is an evacuation center for the school and that sports facility would become one, those would help our chances of getting a grant like this approved and I will be glad to include a letter of support and I would even talk to them about a grant that would include a car path for like a golf cart,” Powers said. He said he speaks with TDOT tomorrow and that he just wanted to attend Tuesday’s meeting to let BOE members know what was available and that he will help in any way that he can.
Campbell County High School Principal Ben Foust and Co-Athletic Director Ryan Browning spoke briefly as well. Both men said they were not there to push either option, but to “advocate for the students, the staff and the community.”
“First off, thank you all for what you do, I know most of you personally, you are here to better our community and our schools and we appreciate all the work you do; we really do. I’m not here to push either option, I’m just here to advocate for our community, our staff, our community, because that is what this is about – we were promised a building a pretty good while ago, we’ve not got that yet – so, we’re pretty fortunate at this point that we are looking at two options; that’s why you guys got voted in, to make that decision, you all have that stuff in front of you – you can look at the pros of having a building off campus and look at the cons and you can look at the pros of what it is to build a brand new building. We just finished a weight room up there, so you know the costs and the issues you run into, but you also know the things we will face if we have a building across the four-lane, so at the end of the day, that’s a decision you have to make. We have made a promise to our students that we are going to have a building, and we are still waiting on it, we have not broke ground, we have some architect work on it, but that’s all we got,” Foust said.
He turned the floor over to Co-Athletic Director Ryan Browning to go over the logistics of Campbell County High School and to explain what all goes through the school and what all CCHS does and hosts.
Browning said his Co-Athletic Director Olivia Lobertini did a lot of the scheduling and that it was a “logistics nightmare between all the different things going on.”
“Tonight we had a volleyball game going on, softball was running the hallways, basketball was going up to the track, there’s a middle school soccer game about to happen…Just in the past five days on our campus, high school football scrimmage, little league practice, basketball, girls and boys both practicing, cheer is practicing, band is practicing, soccer, our girls’ team and middle school, volleyball practice and scrimmage over the weekend, we hosted Vanderbilt’s University that came and did a retreat up here and had our gym for two days, all that and we have Fields of Faith, we just have everything going on and then someone needs a gym, and we are willing to help, I don’t know how many people have been told no, because we make it work… having that extra gym means a lot to us, extra little bit of weight room for the weight room class – you know, we kick around ideas, we didn’t know if you wanted to put four or five classrooms on there, bring the alternative school back to our campus and sell that land up there, we don’t know what you want to do. My kids are out of there, I said when my daughter was in fifth grade, Jacksboro Elementary School needed a new gym, she is a college senior, and they have half a wall up. So, it’s time, we are a 5A program, we might slip back to 4A, you can look at wins and losses all you want, but our coaches and our staff, we treat it like a 5A program, practice-wise, we do whatever we can,” Browning said.
Principal Foust gave one last parting statement.
“We are losing students left and right to vouchers, to home school, to other school systems, and it’s because we make promises we don’t keep, and at some point we’ve got to do what we say we are going to do… let’s get something done, whatever that is, I trust you guys and I am 100-percent in on what you agree to,” Foust said.
Board of Education member Randy Heatherly said he was in complete support of the proposal and that it was within the district’s original budget.
“The functionality of this building, I believe it suits what we were trying to accomplish to what we set out to do originally,” Heatherly said, adding that he felt it was a “great opportunity.
“This building is 42,665 square feet, more than twice the size of the building we could build and for less money,” Heatherly said.
“We wanted to build a bigger building, but this one is within our original budget … has security cameras, a paved parking area with overflow parking; a total of160 vehicle parking capacity. The basketball courts and contents of building are valued at about $200,000; it sits on 8.35 acres and it’s only using a little more than an acre and there is lots of room for growth and the land is valued at around $400,000. It’s turn-key ready, so we don’t have to deal with a project that can take one to two years, and we don’t have to deal with the possible issues like the steel not being available or all the other construction issues… I believe our kids need this today, there’s a lot of people in this room that would agree with that and a lot of people in this county that would believe that” Heatherly said, adding that it would not just be for CCHS, but “for every child, every coach, every school.”
He asked Browning and Foust how many CCHS kids participate in sports. Campbell County High School has around 400 student athletes, according to Principal Foust.
Heatherly asked the other board members to visit the building and said that if the district were to try to build a building equivalent to the one that is available it would cost over $4 million dollars. He said he thought it was a “win-win for all the schools and the entire county” and that he “hoped the board would consider it and move forward with it.”
Board of Education member Brandon Johnson said whether the board decided the Norris Lake Sports Complex was the right facility or an on-campus facility was right, that he did think the board needed to make a decision one way or the other.
Board of Education Chairman Jeffrey Miller asked Building and Grounds Chairman Ryne Cummins to hold a Building and Grounds Committee meeting with both options on the table.
“Mr. Cummins, if you will in the next two weeks, schedule a Building and Grounds Committee meeting and have both options laid out, those on the table and this board needs to make a decision,” Miller said.
Miller also reported that the fund balance is a “little over $9 million, so the money is there, so it’s time to act,” Miller said. (WLAF NEWS PUBLISHED-08/13/2025-6AM)