I'd like to call to order a meeting of the planning and economic development committee of the city of Jackson.

It's um February the 5th, 2026.

Schedule meeting started at 1.30, so we're three minutes behind schedule.

But I appreciate the attendance of four members of the council here in the chambers, Councilman Parkinson, Councilwoman Round Thomas, Councilman Hartley, myself, and then Councilman Grizzell is on.

Are you on present online?

Councilman President Grizel.

His name's up there.

He's on mute.

He may have stepped away.

Okay.

But we've got a quorum so we can get started.

Good too.

The and we also have Ms.

Graves, Matthew Graves, and Mr.

Brunson from Code Enforcement and the departments we want to focus on today.

The uh the agenda items are listed just in bullet points, commercial blight, cleanup of residential properties, code enforcement plans to address, and then discussion of the code enforcement's current current fiscal year budget and year-to-date expenditures for demon demolition cleanups projects currently underway and anticipated in the future.

And I want to get into that more in detail.

So the um one of the points that I want to get to on commercial blight.

If we could start out with commercial blight, which is a real um burr under my saddle, uh that that I just it drives me crazy because sometimes it just takes forever to get anything done on projects that really need to get done.

And the um uh as a as a starting point, if I could ask either Miss Graves or or Mr.

Brunson to sort of give us an update on where we stand with with commercial blight as far as projects that are underway or people have been notified and in sort of maybe a dashboard of where we stand right now with commercial blight here at the beginning of the beginning of February.

Well, commercial bright blight.

Uh as you say, it takes a little longer than the residential because so many entities you have to get in contact with.

But right now, we are uh some of the biggest projects we'll have.

Excuse me, you may want to put it mic.

Some of the biggest projects we have is uh uh Coca-Cola, which is completed today, uh give some grocery stores, uh and think we're trying to target places and yes, also 349 apprentice.

I know that's been uh I saw Mr.

Stokes area for a long time, so that has been started on too.

We are currently have about 500,000 left in the commercial properties uh account, but we have some of this been already uh gear uh earmarked towards some of the other projects that we have.

We have a lot of different the projects of Freeman, Mr.

Harlett area, just a lot of small buildings like uh 737 McDowell Road that we that that is down, uh and some of the stuff we targeted on Bobby Rush Boulevard at the corner there than Highway 80, the old shell station.

Uh we have dealt a lot on highway 80 uh with District 71 money and some of our own money.

We have the project on Ellis Avenue 520 uh 1525 Ellis Avenue.

We cleaned up the rubbish there.

Uh so we're working through a contract on that.

I think that's gonna be another what 167,000, 200 some thousand dollars from this 500 uh thousand dollars that we have here.

And we also looking for other commercial properties that we've handled.

I think we are I've been getting a lot of calls targeting uh the old Virginia College that's um 5341 uh Ridgewood.

So we know so we got a thing in hand, but we try to be careful because with commercial property, you can go over this budget easily.

Uh one project can really take you know over this budget that we use in residential money for commercial uh properties.

Okay, the couple things on that, and I'm gonna let other people bring in to me.

One of the things we really need to kind of figure out is okay.

Let me start over.

Thank you.

Let me make mention a couple of points on commercial properties because I I think it's really important.

Um, and that is that the um too often by the time we get engaged with it, the parties have left, or they they are not willing to put any money up.

And and so we end up having either having Jeff Rent the Judge Randall, or is it Jeff?

It's rentals, excuse me.

Judge Reynolds has to strong arm and try to get them to pay some money or or uh pursue them, and oftentimes they're out of state, which makes it more difficult to pursue.

So we've got to come up with a um a way to be more proactive to identify these things earlier and pursue the people while they'll st why they've still got skin in the game where where they have a vested interest in the thing being fixed or sold, rather than just run into the ground and then walk away and go to some, you know, uh out of the state where it's hard for us to pursue them.

And the um I noticed just in the past week or so that the the further up north of where the Virginia College is, there was this restaurant there, the bulldog restaurant that has been torn down.

And I didn't know uh that um I don't know whether we were the the catalyst for that or whether the the whoever owns that property decided to tear it down.

Um but I hope we didn't spend any money on that.

That's a good thing.

So if to the extent that there's gonna be properties torn down, I I think it behooves us to be in a forward-leaning position and get other people to pay down a turn down torn down and not us.

The um and with that in mind, I uh I I can't help but wonder if if we could come up with a um maybe some kind of blight dashboard for both a dashboard for the blight housing and a blight dashboard for commercial properties where we could, you know, the the big thing would be to identify what are the problem, you know, what are the what are the ones that are are candidates to be on the blight list?

And if we have maybe there's five, maybe there's 25, I don't know, but you have those candidates, and then the council members, the leader the city's leadership can reach out to those businesses.

It shouldn't be up to a code enforcement officer.

In that case, the the city's leaders should reach out to those businesses and say, hey, you gotta get your your property squared away if you want to continue to do business here, and and we're not gonna let you just walk away from it.

And if we can that dashboard might be helpful to us in identifying, so here's the hot spot for things that that um uh we need to focus on so we can identify them early on where we can hold them accountable before they decide to just leave town.