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Wlaf1450Temporary hiring of Jeff Marlow will go to full vote at next week’s regular commission meeting
By Charlotte Underwood
JACKSBORO, TN (WLAF)- Whether or not to hire the soon to be retiring County Finance Director Jeff Marlow in a temporary year-long position to write guidelines and policies for the county’s Hotel/motel tax collection was a topic of discussion at Monday’s Budget and Finance Committee meeting. If approved by the full commission next week, the position would also include Marlow working on several other county finance projects “that he has been involved in from the beginning.”
Marlow’s last official day as finance director is Sep. 26, 2025.
Three county commissioners on the budget and finance committee said they were not in support of this amendment. This included Commissioner Beverly Hall, Commissioner Scott Stanfield and Commissioner Dewayne Baird. The amendment passed the budget and finance committee in a ten to three vote on Monday evening and will be voted on by the full commission next Monday night.
Commissioner Dewayne Baird said the fact that the position was listed as temporary bothered him, as did the fact that the job was not going to be posted, and that a temporary position was going to be made full-time.
“There’s a lot of flaws in that job right there … from my understanding, it would be the county clerk who would be over collecting hotel/motel tax, they would be over that person. Is the clerk going to have to hire someone else to do that position? There’s just a lot of flaws in that,” Baird said.
Commissioner Beverly Hall said she was not in support of it and that she also thought the position should be posted.
Commissioner Rusty Orick said he supported the amendment and that the commission had “been kicking this thing around for six to eight years” regarding the collection of hotel/motel tax.
“It seems like we kick it, and the can don’t move, and we keep coming back and kicking it and we know we have been told that we are missing out on probably $1 million dollars that we are not collecting. It was brought to the table to let Jeff draw up these specifics and it’s a good idea; we’ve not done anything yet. Now talking with Mr. Marlow, he wants to help the county, but he doesn’t want to stay here long, that’s why it’s been set up for a year. Once you get these policies and procedures, but not only that when you go through and look at the various things he’s going to be doing – we’ve got projects under way – multi-million dollar projects that are going to have to be overseen, and I don’t think it is fair to our new finance director to be undertaking them anyway. The biggest thing is dealing with this hotel/motel tax, it’s moving it forward to where we can control it and actually try to bring in some revenue for the county…I’m going to support this because it’s going to help us get revenue in,” said Commissioner Rusty Orick.
Commissioner Scott Stanfield pointed out that it is an $84,000 a year position and said the county “needed someone who can represent us legally and that’s our attorney”.
“If you’re going to do this, you can draw up all kinds of guidelines, we could have bought the program to tell us how to achieve it, but if we ain’t got nobody who’s going to collect it, it’s not going to do us any good. Why create this position when we’re just going to have to create another position for someone to collect it” Stanfield said.
He also said if it is a full-time position, then it “needed to be posted as all full-time positions are posted.”
Commissioner David Adkins said something needed to be done now and that the commission had waited long enough on trying to establish a way to collect the lost revenue from hotel and motel taxes in the county.”
“This commission has kicked this around like Rusty said for beyond six years and there’s no clear path that anybody, including myself, has presented to be able to collect that we are not collecting. We’ve had people say we are missing on monies, but we don’t really know if we are or not. I believe we are, and I believe everyone in this room believes we are. Now, this position that we are talking about that Mr. Marlow has agreed to accept is not just the hotel/motel tax, there’s about three quarters of a million dollars hanging in the balance on these other project that he knows every in and out of and he’s going to collect for this county, that would be hard for any person to come in and pick up and know all of the history behind all those projects and all that money,” Adkins said. He also said that in his opinion that “not one person in the county or state that could create more airtight policy and procedure for collecting hotel and motel tax that our former fiancé director Jeff Marlow, who had created all the policies and procedures for the county for the past 30 years.
“I’m not trying to blow smoke up his hind end, his work speaks for itself,” Adkins said.
He also said the county commission was not the regulatory authority on collecting the hotel/motel tax and that responsibility lay with the county clerk.
“Before we can decide what to do about that or how we are going to do that, we have to have a clear path to be able to do it. Once these policies are developed and we have a clear path to what we know we need, then this commission or a future commission can take up the decision on who will collect and if a position needs to be created. I appreciate everyone’s position, but I will be supporting going forward with this,” Adkins said.
Commissioner Baird reiterated that he still had a problem with the position not being posted and that he thought the county attorney could do policy and procedures and save the county and taxpayer’s money.
When it was put into a vote, along with other budget amendments as a package, the budget amendments passed with 10 yes votes and three no votes. Commissioner Hall, Baird and Stanfield were the dissenting votes.
It will go to a full vote at next week’s meeting.
Budget amendment 9-19 was also approved and regarded the county highway department and was due to an increase in several state aid funds. These funds will be reallocated to different state aid projects. (WLAF NEWS PUBLISHED-09/09/2025-6AM)