Clarksville, TN – The council met in its usual first Thursday of the month regular session. The agenda was light and only a couple of items of note were discussed.
Ordinance 42 – This ordinance requested a rezoning of property from Agricultural (AG) to Residential (R-2A). The issue with the property in question is it is next to the racetrack. There have been several battles over racetrack noise with nearby neighborhoods. I and other members of the council believe we should not expand the issues of noise by adding more homes near the track. The ordinance was defeated by a 3-yes & 7-no vote. I voted “no”. Two council members and the mayor were absent tonight.
Resolution 29
The resolution requests that a section of the charter dealing with committees and boards (see my previous emails on this) and the members that may be on them and also do business with the city, be deleted. As you know, my thought on this was the change should be included in a whole revised city charter, not a piecemeal fix of an outdated document.
When the issue came up, I proposed a postponement of the resolution until it was addressed in a totally revised city charter for council review. Before we could vote on my postponement, Councilman Redd requested a modification of it to postpone it a month only. After some back and forth over the legal approach to vote on this and assessing how I thought the vote would go tonight based on council member comments made, I voted to go along with a month delay until the next regular council meeting.
The final motion to delay for a month passed by a 10-yes vote. Interesting that the mayor planted the seed at the executive session to have the vote delayed until she got back and then she would call a special session to have the vote, likely next week. The way Councilman Wallace worded the postponement it will not allow the mayor to have a special session on this topic.
I still plan to fight to have this charter change deferred and included in a complete revised version of the city charter in next month’s council meeting.
Editor’s Note: This article contains the view points of Councilman Bill Summers and may not represent the views of the rest of the City Council, the City of Clarksville or ClarksvilleOnline.
