Image Credit: Williamson County Television / YouTube
The Tennessee Conservative [By Kelly M. Jackson] –
This week, The Williamson County Commission revived an issue that was addressed and not concluded at last month’s meeting: whether to renew a contract with Williamson Inc for economic development services.
During last month’s meeting, it was revealed Williamson County Mayor Rogers Anderson, has been paying Williamson Inc., a Chamber of Commerce affiliated organization on a $400,000 contract that had apparently lapsed, without anyone noticing. The contract was renewed in May of 2022, and expired on June 30th, 2023.
The contract, which was initiated by Mayor Anderson’s office, was initiated for the purposes of economic development services in Williamson County.
Beyond working from an expired contract and disseminating funds to Williamson Inc for services rendered without approval from Williamson County Commission, it appears that the terms of the agreement have been breached by Williamson Inc with regard to transparency of where the funds are being spent.
The language in the contract with Williamson Inc obligates the organization to not only be compliant with the terms of the agreement, but also allows the County to have the ability to terminate the agreement should those terms be found to have been breached.
The language of the contract indicates that Williamson Inc is obligated to:
• Provide an annual report to the Williamson County Board of Commissioners on or before February of each year, including data that evaluates whether the Chamber has met its benchmark goals and the effectiveness of the Chamber’s economic development services in the County, as well as any other data requested by the County.
• Ensure the Economic Development Board executive committee and the full Board meets a minimum of four times annually with the executive committee meeting at least once each calendar quarter.
• Ensure minutes of all Economic Development Board and executive committee meetings are kept.
• The Chamber shall use the funds only for those actual costs related to the operation of the Office of Economic Development and the provision of economic development services defined herein. The Chamber shall not use any of the budgeted funds for Chamber-related expenses including, but not limited to, Chamber employee salaries and Chamber operating costs, which are not relative to economic development functions. C. As a condition of funding prior to July 1 of each year, the Chamber shall provide a detailed accounting of the expended funds for the prior fiscal year, including supporting documentation. Should the annual report show that the Chamber expended funds in contradiction to this Agreement then the Chamber shall reimburse the County those funds upon receipt of written notice.
• Should the County determine, through audit or monitoring expenditures, that the Chamber expended funds for any unallowable purpose, the County may reduce any future appropriations due to the Chamber in the amount of the unallowable expenditures or demand the amount of the unallowable expenditures be refunded to the County.
A follow up meeting to further address the issue, led to an admission by the mayor’s office that there were filing mistakes made. In Mayor Anderson’ words, “we burnt the biscuits”. He went on to explain that the 5-year contract expired on 6/30/23, was inadvertently placed in the 6/30/24 renewal folder.
Anderson stated at the time, “We have been operating under the belief that we had an agreement, which we don’t but we are working on that”.
At the end of that night’s meeting, which didn’t conclude until 11pm, when the resolution was finally proposed, another motion was made and passed, to defer it to June’s meeting for further discussion. The meeting was then adjourned.
On this Monday night’s meeting, the house was packed again, for a few reasons, one of which was the vote on the resolution to extend the contract for Williamson Inc.
The list of those who were waiting to offer public comment was just under 30, two-thirds of which were there to give their support for renewal of the contract with Williamson Inc. All were business owners who gave their own accounts on how the organization has assisted them in their success.
However, critics pointed out that the accolades do not erase what they assess to be an “egregious mishandling of millions of taxpayer dollars” by Mayor Anderson’s office, since the contract in question had started in 2018, and during the entirety of the time period until it expired in 2023, the terms of the contract had not been met by Williamson inc.
When the resolution was presented, D4 County Commissioner Greg Lawrence proposed an amendment to the resolution that would compel financial participation in the expense of supporting Williamson Inc by all the major municipalities in the county. As they provide economic development services to everyone, the burden of that $400,000 price tag would be dispersed among all major county municipalities. According to Lawrence, this would be a solution that aligns with Tennessee state code.
Because of the short notice of the amendment and a desire to take a closer look at what the effects it would have on the county, the municipalities and Williamson Inc, Lisa Hayes (D1 commissioner) moved to defer the amendment to July’s meeting and suggested an attempt to have a work session style meeting in the interim in order to gain a more thorough understanding of what adoption of the amendment would produce.
That motion was defeated, which then led directly to a vote on the amendment itself.
A vote was taken, and with a county commission with 24 members, 13 are needed to push any action through. The amendment got 12 votes and therefore, was announced to have been defeated by County Commission Chair, Brian Beathard.
After much more discussion and what was at times a heated debate, a vote was taken on the original resolution to renew the contract with Williamson inc, that despite negative taxpayer response, was passed with only 3 of the 22 commissioners present, voting not to renew.
Local grassroots who had attended to display their opposition, left the meeting at close to 11PM, with the belief that Williamson Inc and Mayor Anderson’s office would not be subject to any sort of accountability.
There were, however some new developments the next day.
Earlier in the Monday night meeting, County Commissioner D10, David Landrum, vacated or resigned his seat because he had moved. Bringing the total of current County Commission members to 23.
This is importance because with one member permanently removed, it brings the threshold for passage of actions to 12 members. This was the number received for the amendment proposed By Commissioner Greg Lawrence.
This means that the resolution passed to renew the contract with Williamson Inc was incomplete, since it did not include the language in the amendment.
Due to this, all actions carried out by the county commission pertaining to Williamson Inc can likely be revisited by the County Commission at the July meeting next month where they will have an opportunity to obtain some transparency and accountability for Williamson County taxpayers.
The Williamson County Commissioners can be contacted at commissioners@williamsoncounty-tn.gov.
We will continue to cover this story as it develops.
About the Author: Kelly Jackson is an escapee from corporate America, and a California refugee to Tennessee. Christ follower, Wife and Mom of three amazing teenagers, she has a BA in Comm from Point Loma Nazarene University, and has a background in law enforcement and human resources. Since the summer of 2020, she has spent any and all free time in the trenches with local grassroots orgs, including Mom’s for Liberty Williamson County and Tennessee Stands as a core member. An outspoken advocate for parents rights, medical freedom, and individual liberty, Kelly also has a YouTube channel @Tennessee_Truth_Teller and is planning on expanding out to other channels soon. Kelly can be reached at kelly@tennesseeconservativenews.com.
2 Responses
I guess you could say County Commission Chair Brian Beathard “ burned the biscuits “ on the vote count. I like those two alliterations in alignment. Oops did it again.
Yeah, they burn money like they burn the biscuits. At least one of my commissioners voted no – thank you Lisa. Brian Beathard never had my vote for D65 rep anyway.