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If everything goes to plan the new Lincoln Heights Elementary School will be open for the start of the 2024 school year, the Hamblen County Finance Committee learned Monday.

The Hamblen County School’s Assistant Superintendent for Administration Hugh Clement came before the committee to give an update on the Lincoln Heights Elementary project, including that Merit Construction had won the bid for the 470 day contract.

“If we get everything signed we’re hoping to be in the building by August 2024. Our attorneys are working on the contract as we speak to get its language acceptable by both parties,” Clement said.

“It will be a 700 student building; the current elementary school is at 500 students, so there is room for growth. It also allows us to rezone schools if there is overcrowding in the district.”

Traci Antrican, the Hamblen County Department of Education Business Supervisor, highlighted the budget for the school and what has changed.

“We had a total working budget of $27.4 million,” Antrican said. “The bid from Merit construction was the lowest bid at $26.3 million which with our budget would have left us $1 million dollars to work with.”

“However, we had spent $4.1 million from the ESSER grant to pay for land acquisition, site preparations, architectural fees and traffic studies which are all necessary for the project but that left us at a $3.1 million deficit. We also estimate we need $1 million to purchase furniture and technology for the school which brings us to a $4.1 million deficit.”

“The board of education and the State of Tennessee approved an amendment to our ESSER 3 application to move the $5 million we had earmarked for Lincoln Middle’s HVAC program to the Lincoln Elementary project. We plan to move Lincoln’s HVAC program into a long-term HVAC program for the entire district.”

With the $5 million for the project the district will have $900,000 reserved, to be used for the access road onto MLK Parkway.

In other financial news, Hamblen County Mayor Bill Brittain presented the purchase agreement for E-911 to buy the Health Department building.

After reviewing the agreement, Commissioner Mike Richardson asked if E-911 leaves the facility would the county be able to purchase it back.

“We could add in a right of first refusal clause if they ever decide to sell it or leave,” County Attorney Chris Capps said.

“I think we should because the building is a government entity of sorts and we should at least have the right of first refusal,” Richardson said.

The committee approved the proposal with the added amendment to include the right of first refusal.

Highway Superintendent Barry Poole asked the committee to approve the purchase of a new garbage truck.

“We just received the 2023 garbage trucks that we had ordered a while back. The company we purchased the last two trucks from has a slot for another truck available,” Poole said. “If we get out in front of this thing we could have the truck by September or October but if we let this slot go we won’t see another truck until 2025 if we get it then.”

“We would like to jump on this opportunity because what we are running now with our regular fleet is we have the two new ones, a 2020 truck, a 2018 truck and a 2015 that has a new motor but a bad bed. What we would like to do is get the new truck and put the 2015 truck in a spare status because it would cost a lot of money to buy a new bed for the truck.”

“We could budget it and have it ready to pay for after July 1 of this year.”

Poole said it would allow his department to have a decent spare fleet so that in the future if it needed to take a truck offline for maintenance it would have several replacements to choose from.

The committee voted unanimously to purchase the new truck for the highway department.

Register of Deeds Jim Clawson presented a resolution to charge a $2 user fee for all documents filed electronically to the office.

“We didn’t see anyone submit documents electronically but after the pandemic that changed to about 40% of documents being filed electronically and one day that will change to 100%,” Clawson said. “There are several counties who are charging the fee currently but we don’t and we haven’t.”

“By charging this fee we could see a $7,000 to $9,000 revenue increase and one day it could grow to $20,000 to $30,000 easily.”

The committee voted to approve the resolution.

The committee voted to renew the lease for the Employee Health Clinic, at 1748 W Andrew Johnson Highway, which is owned by the city of Morristown from November 1, 2023 to December 31, 2024. The county’s goal is to move the clinic to the space at the Oak Tree Plaza once it is purchased and renovated.

Two grant contracts for the sheriff’s office totaling $473,711 were approved by the committee. The funds from the grant will go to purchase of supplies and new equipment.

Penny Knight, Drug Court director, presented a resolution to apply for a grant to expand the substance use disorder treatment in adult treatment drug courts.

“We want to use current funds in our budget to hire a consultant to write us a grant to the Bureau of Justice Assistance to expand our program in 2024,” Knight said. “It’s a four year grant that will award us $250,000 a year and it is a 25% cash match based on our total budget or project and that is currently met with our funding.”

“It’s is highly competitive but we are being encouraged it is well worth it to spend the money to try, especially if we are awarded the funding.”

The committee voted unanimously to approve the resolution.

The Hamblen County School board had two proposed budget amendments be approved by the committee.

The first, budget amendment no. 5, would increase the school district’s general purpose school budget from $97,241,226 to $97,397,702. This comes after the district was awarded two new grants, one that will allow the district to build a veterinary science lab and classroom at East High School that would be used by both East and West; the second would help the district’s special education programs county wide.

The second, budget amendment no. 3, would increase from $11,290,971 to $11,582,488 by the way of the State of TN supply chain assistance grant to help to cover the increase of food costs.

The commission will vote on all of these items at its next meeting on March 23 at 5 p.m.