June city council meeting will tackle storm-water issues, ethics complaints committee nominations
The June Jackson City council meeting is Tuesday, and topics cover a good bit ranging from infrastructure improvements to tightening of anonymous complaints regarding elected officials.
The City of Jackson could finally see storm-water systems updates soon, thanks to a pilot study coming before the council as new business on Tuesday.
The proposal, which will look at surveying the Bemis area and portions of District 2, will “begin the process of bettering our city’s storm-water systems,” said Mayor Scott Conger.
“Through the American Rescue Plan funds, TDEC is providing non-competitive grants based on population, with a local match,” he said. “We put in $923,000 and get $9.2 million added.”
This plan was originally pushed by Councilmember Paul Taylor at the January ARP fund meetings.
The process of improvements will be a slow one, Conger warned, because of one specific issue: the city doesn’t know what needs to be fixed, since there as never been a storm-water study enacted.
More: American Rescue Plan funding finally inches forward
“So the problem we have with our storm-water systems—we don’t know what we have, or what the issues are,” Conger said. “So that’s step one—finding out what the issues are.”
One likely issue will be the number of corrugated metal pipes running through the city—an issue City Engineer Tom Wolf has mentioned numerous times as a major hassle for his department.
Conger added that many of the city’s metal pipes are far past their anticipated lifespan.
“A lot of that has corroded over time,” he said. “They have a 20-year lifespan, and we’re pushing 30 now. The metal falls apart at the bottom, and the dirt and water wash it out.”
After the study is applied to Bemis and district 2 —which, Conger explains, have horrible flooding issues—he hopes to apply it to the remainder of the city in the coming years.
“We can look at what we need, what we need to address, and we can work out the kinks in a smaller area and scale it to the rest of the city,” he said.
Anonymous ethics complaints to come to an end… sort of
Following the recent surge in ethics complaints against city councilmembers, councilmembers are looking to pass on second reading the changes to the city ethics code to allow for the creation of an ethics committee.
After extensive discussion into how to handle the two ethics complaints against Taylor in April—each regarding his alleged use of his council position to benefit his family’s company Gary A. Taylor Investment Company—three more complaints were filed against city council members, including councilmembers Marda Wallace and Ernest Brooks Jr, as well as Mayor Conger, prior to the May meeting.
This spurred councilmembers to unanimously vote on first reading to replace sections 1-410 and 1-411 of the City Code of Ethics to reduce the ease of which residents could previously make complaints, in an effort to enforce accountability.
“It gets ridiculous quickly, and that’s what we’re trying to stop,” Conger said. “If you want to hold them accountable, then you need to go through the process to be held accountable. It’s accountability on both ends.”
If passed on second reading, complaints against city employees will still go through the Ethical Advocate Portal, but complaints against elected officials will go through the Ethics Committee—which will investigate the claims rather than present them immediately to the public.
Rules regarding how to file a complaint will change drastically as well. Previously, residents could anonymously fill out a complaint on the Ethical Advocate Portal. With the new changes enacted, complaints must be lodged with the Internal Auditor for the City of Jackson who will then direct the questions and complaints to the Chairperson of the Ethics Committee.
Complaints will have to be submitted in person, in writing, signed by the complainant, notarized, contain the complainant's legal name and mailing address and the names of those the complaint is against.
Document notarization does come at a fee.
Anyone who files a “false a complaint” may be “subject to applicable civil and criminal penalties,” though the code change does not detail how a constituent’s complaint will be ruled “fake.”
This stipulation was not in the previous codes.
Additionally, complaints against an elected official—or anyone running for election—will not be allowed “during the years in which the City holds municipal elections”—specifically, “from the last day on which a person may qualify as a candidate until after 11:59 p.m. of the following election day.”
These new rules are retroactively effective to January 1, 2022, meaning they cover all five complaints currently filed against city council members.
Nominations for the ethics committee are also coming before the council Tuesday, though the proposed names stirred confusion at Thursday’s agenda review meeting.
“Who nominated these individuals?” Councilmember Paul Taylor asked at the meeting. “I don’t see any of my nominations.”
Of the seven names listed—Hunter Baker, Freeman McKindra, Carla Pollard, Joe Brasher, James Krenis, Daniele Hardee and Trunetta Atwater—only two names came from the councilmembers nominations: McKindra and Pollard.
The ethics committee is to consists of three council nominations and four mayoral nominations.
When asked later about this confusion, Conger—who left Thursday’s agenda review prior to the confusion—explained the issue.
“Several of the names recommended by council members were already serving on another board,” he said. “I was reminded that they could not serve on another board as well, and I didn’t have time to go back and say ‘Hey give me more,’ so I just went and found more. I looked at attorneys, people that know the law and know ethics, and business people.”
The recommendations will be voted on at Tuesday’s meeting.
Greenway proposal returns
Last month’s council meeting saw the proposal of the Greenway Master Plan, which envisioned the future of the city’s greenspace, bike and pedestrian infrastructure between Bemis and downtown.
The project, a compilation of work between from the city’s planning department, the Tennessee Department of Transportation and engineering company KCI, details the current uses of space Jackson, safety concerns for pedestrians and realistic examples of different improvements that can be made to the city to improve the area’s infrastructure.
Although opinions have not changed on the plan—which was met with unanimous approval at the May meeting—the plan is coming back to the council due to a misunderstanding between the city and the state, according to Conger.
“We got the grant from the state,” he explained. “So, the consultants that the state hired to present the plan said we did not have to make a resolution for it at council. But then later, state said we did. So this is just the adoption of the plan that the consultants presented last months.”
Other issues
In the expansive agenda for Tuesday, a number of other issues will be presented, including a number of land ordinances, the second reading approving the budget amendment for the Georgia-Pacific land deal and a contract to streamline extra duty services from the Jackson Police Department.
The meeting will be held at City Hall on Tuesday, June 7 at 9 a.m.
Have a story to tell? Reach Angele Latham by email at alatham@gannett.com, by phone at 731-343-5212, or follow her on Twitter at @angele_latham.
This article originally appeared on Jackson Sun: June city council meeting will tackle storm-water issues, ethics complaints committee nominations
