Alright, it's six o'clock.

I'd like to call this meeting to order.

We'll begin with an invocation led by Vice Mayor Fugitt, followed by the Pledge of Allegiance led by Councilmember Lloyd.

Please stand as you're able.

Thank you.

And to the Republic for which is saying one nation.

Undergard indivisible.

Liberty Justice Roll.

Okay, thank you.

Mr.

Johnson, would you please call roll?

Councilwoman Adams.

Here.

Councilman Debarta Laban.

Here.

Councilman Grant.

Here.

Councilman Helsley.

Here.

Councilman Honeycutt?

Here.

Councilman Lloyd.

Here.

Councilman Parker.

Here.

And Councilman Thomas.

All members present, Mayor.

Okay, thank you.

Is there a motion on the minutes of the May 7th legislative budget hearings?

Moved to approve.

Motion made to approve and seconded.

Any questions or discussion?

Seeing none, all those in favor, please say aye.

Any opposed?

Motion carries.

Is there a motion on the minutes of the May 12th regular meeting?

Motion made and seconded.

Any questions or discussions?

Seeing none, all those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Motion carries.

Okay, moving on to tonight's agenda.

Are there items to be withdrawn?

Are there items to be postponed?

Councilmember Thomas.

Yes, Mayor.

Item 11AC by the request in agreement of the parties.

I would move to postpone it until the next meeting on June June the 9th.

Okay, motion's been made to postpone for two weeks.

Item 11AC.

Is there a second?

Second.

Second.

Any questions or discussion on this motion?

Seeing none, all those in favor, please say aye.

Any opposed?

Motion carries item 11 AC is postponed for two weeks.

Councilmember Adams.

Yes, Mayor, I'd like to request that item 10i be postponed until the June 23rd per applicant request.

Okay.

What was the date you said postponed till when?

June 23rd.

June 23rd.

Okay.

Motions made to postpone until June 23rd.

Item 10 I.

Second.

As in India.

Second.

It's been made and seconded.

Any questions or discussion?

Did you have anything to add to that?

No.

All those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Motion to postpone carries.

Okay.

Any other items to be postponed?

Okay.

Um, is it there's an item to be added by motion?

Vice Mayor Fugit.

Thank you, Mayor.

Council members.

Um, you have the resolution at your desk to be added to the agenda.

It is um necessary to appoint members to the um county tax equalization board.

As you know, there's been a reappraisal.

We think they might be busy, and so we're gonna ask for this on emergency board reading so that if it passes tonight, it becomes effective.

Is there a second to this motion to add this?

And everyone should have a copy before them and the and the training for this position uh starts June 1st.

So I appreciate everyone's uh understanding.

And George Annie Arbor, just want to publicly thank her.

She's done a great job for many years on this board.

Uh, and we're grateful that Mr.

Lockhead was willing to serve.

Any further questions or discussion on this motion to be added?

And where will it be added in the agenda?

Ma'am, it'll be a item 9a.

9a oh.

Okay.

Well, you'll get us make sure we're on it.

Okay, all those in favor of this motion of this item to be added by motion on an emergency basis, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Motion carries.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

Okay.

Any other items to be added by motion?

Okay.

Uh there are no item, no memorials or honorary resolutions.

Okay.

There's a consent agenda.

Are there is there a motion on the consent agenda?

Move to approve.

Second.

Okay.

Motion made to approve the consent agenda.

Any questions or discussion?

Seeing none, all those in favor, please say aye.

Any opposed?

Motion carries.

Okay.

Okay.

Uh time now for my mayor's report.

We have a very full agenda, so I'll try to keep it short, but I do have some things I want to mention at the beginning of our meeting.

First of all, as you know, affordable housing is a huge need in our community, and I'm excited to uh let you know about another project that's moving forward in our city.

Tomorrow we will celebrate the groundbreaking of Golden Age 2.

It's a new affordable senior housing community in East Knoxville.

That means uh this will be breaking ground on 90 new affordable homes just for seniors.

And this is scheduled for 4 p.m.

It's along Beaman Lake Road near Canaan Baptist Church.

Parking will be available at the church, and I hope to see you all out there tomorrow, 4 p.m.

Um other fun free activities for families in our city.

Uh Kidorific starts next Wednesday.

It's a free summer series.

Kidorific in the park, and the first one is at Chihuahua Park from 10 a.m.

to 1 p.m.

It's a hot time of day, but there'll be lots of cool activities to do.

Uh there'll be a touch a truck area, which is uh always a favorite.

Kazoo fun.

If you haven't tried that, I recommend it.

Arts and crafts and more.

It's our first kitorific this Wednesday, June 3rd, Chilhawi Park.

And you can see the rest of the schedule, which park will be uh all throughout the rest of the summer.

Another reminder that we are in the process of gathering the community's thoughts on our comprehensive plan.

What's next, Knoxville?

The comprehensive plan is really important, so that's why we're really encouraging as many people to participate as possible.

There are many opportunities, but uh this will guide our city's uh land use and mobility for the next 25 years.

So we want to hear from as many people as possible.

There's different ways to get involved.

You can go to what's next knoxville.com to fill out to learn more about upcoming events to fill out an online survey, and our friends at planning uh director Brooks and her team are setting up other events and opportunities for people to give their input in the months ahead.

So again, that's what's next, Knoxville.com, and thank you to everyone who's already contributed.

And thank you to council members because I know you're working to get the word out too.

It's hard it's sometimes hard to get people to uh understand what this is and how important it is.

So thank you.

Uh last our rules of decorum.

A quick reminder we are here to do the city's official business.

Those who wish to speak, either to a specific agenda item or during public forum, need to sign up with the city recorder before 4 p.m.

Do not use profanity.

And when speaking to specific agenda items, you must stay on topic.

Remarks must be germane to the question ahead of the assembly.

That is, statements must have bearing on whether the pending motion should be adopted.

Those who fail to adhere to these rules will be ruled out of order.

For those who are listening, please note if you disrupt a public meeting, you will be asked to leave or escorted out.

I appreciate in advance.

Everyone's respect for these rules, and that does it for my mayor's report.

Are there any reports of committee or council members serving on committees or boards?

Councilmember DeBartel even.

Yeah, earlier um, no last week.

Well, last week, the Knoxville Transport Authority, uh Transportation Authority met uh with CAT and other officials, and uh we passed two resolutions, and one is that the downtown connector, uh the bus that is downtown, is gonna be permanently free.

It's been free since December the first, and it's gonna stay free.

Um, they run three buses uh at a time, so about every 15 minutes is when a bus comes by and when there are events um at Covenant Health Park, they run two additional buses, so to keep that regular.

Um, the other thing we discussed that's really excited, is uh there are 15 bus stops in design right now, and the funding has already been appropriated from T DOT from a previous council.

So excited those 15 stops are in design.

And then one last thing about that down connector.

They had been running two different routes because of game day stuff, and they said that's confusing.

So now it's just gonna stay on the game day route permanently and free.

Okay, thank you.

Councilmember Adams.

Thank you.

I just wanted to report that the rules committee uh met uh during the period between our last council meeting and uh few of the items that we've been working on.

We asked that they be uh presented to council before the end of the fiscal year, and Mr.

Frost has this ready for our next agenda on July, excuse me, June 9th.

So that's when council will be seeing those come forward.

Okay, thank you.

Are there any other general council member announcements?

Councilmember Grant.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, first and foremost, want to give a shout out to the Austin East High School class of 2026, graduated last week, and also West High School graduated last week.

I had the pleasure of seeing uh Mr.

Hudson Honeycutt graduate.

We'll be attending UT next year.

So I want to say congratulations to my constituent.

Um but also wanted to take the opportunity to utilize my platform to speak on uh what I feel like is an issue that I've been able to see just given my experience, and so one first and foremost, I want to send my deepest condolences out to the family of Lakeisha Johnson.

Um Keisha Johnson uh tragically lost her life over the weekend uh prior to the weekend, um, due to domestic violence.

Um I think domestic violence is something that doesn't uh have too much light shed on it.

Um, we talk about a lot of the grassroots work that's being done in our community, um, and so I just want to challenge us as a council uh also any anybody from the county that's listening, anybody on a state level that's listening, um, to try to figure out how we can take domestic violence a little bit more seriously.

Um, this lady tried everything she could and unfortunately lost her life to it.

And so um I want to put that on everybody's minds and hearts.

Uh when you're out here and you and you're seeing certain things, speak up, utilize your platform, use your relationships to help those women who are experiencing domestic violence, whether it's in their household or in their families.

Um, and so I just wanted to take this opportunity and utilize this platform to put that on everybody's hearts.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um, Vice Mayor Fugin.

This for general announcements.

Yes, okay.

Um, well, after that, after that, I will say um I agree with you, Mr.

Grant.

Is that it is a terrible thing, and there are organizations across the city that work on it, and um we just need to make people aware that they're here.

But on a lighter note, I would like to wish our colleague, Councilman Honeycutt an early birthday.

It will be next Tuesday.

He won't get to spend it with us.

So I was you know, so we could have a called meeting for a party.

So happy birthday.

We won't ask you the year.

Thank you.

Okay, seeing no other lights on, we'll move on with the agenda.

9C is a resolution confirming the reappointment of Courtney Bergmeyer and Kristen Farley to the Knoxville to the visit Knoxville Board of Directors.

Motion made to approve and second it.

Any questions or discussion?

Seeing none, all those in favor, please say aye.

Any opposed?

Motion carries, just want to give a shout-out.

Visit Knoxville, had a very busy weekend with the golf tournament and banana ball.

Did it go, they did a great job.

Next item, please.

Nine D is a resolution appointing Jonathan Weiss Hugo to serve as the first district representative on the Knoxville Golf Course Advisory Committee for a term expiring December 18, 2029.

Motion to approve.

Sneaky second.

Okay, motion which is seconded.

Any questions or discussion?

Councilmember Adams?

No, okay.

All those in favor, please say aye.

Any opposed?

Motion carries.

9A0 is a resolution of the council of the City of Knoxville appointing Mark Lockhead to fill the unexpired term of George Anna Yarbrough.

On the Knox County Board of Equalization.

Move to approve.

Motion made to approve and seconded.

Any further questions or discussion?

Seeing none, all those in favor please say aye.

Any opposed?

Motion carries.

10 E is an ordinance making and fixing the annual appropriations for the several departments, agencies, and funds of the city of Knoxville for the fiscal period beginning July 1, 2026 and ending June 30, 2027.

And providing for the authority to reappropriate non-project related encumbrances at the end of fiscal year 2025-2026 into fiscal year 2026-2027.

Move to approve.

Motion made to approve and seconded.

Yes, ma'am.

Okay.

We do have uh two people signed up to speak on this item.

So we'll start uh two uh in opposition to this item.

First is Vivian Scheipe.

Ms.

Scheipe, are you present?

Okay, please come up to the podium and Lindsay Uramco is uh after that.

You'll have up to three minutes to address council.

Vivian Scheit, 3615 MLK, Knoxville 37914.

Infrastructure maintenance, manual labor, mowing, weeding, brush collection, sweeping waste management, painting, trimming, pothole repair, pedestrian pathway safety, inspectors, codes enforcement, maintaining public buildings, neighborhood compliance, turning on the splash pads, and keeping them safe, keeping roads clean and safe, a person whose job is to serve the public without profit, city maintenance, recreation specialists, codes inspectors, and the list goes on and on.

The public service worker is called to duty in all types of weather.

The public service worker is the one common denominator in all of your districts, they're the first one you call when something is wrong, and you expect them to show up ASAP.

The City of Knoxville says on its website it values itself on being a place where workers feel valued, supported, and inspired.

Refusing to give them a raise in this budget is a contradiction to that statement.

Every public worker in Knoxville and Knox County should be full-time with good wages and benefits that they need to care for themselves and their families.

Making a video costing thousands of dollars to show your appreciation for workers during national public service week last week is not enough.

We need to show them the money before you approve this budget.

Move some of those dollars set aside for entertainment in that budget and give the workers you will expect to care for the parks, the walkways, the roads, the pipes, a living wage with benefits.

Then and only then will they truly feel valued, supported, and inspired.

Do not approve this budget if those who take care of us are not taken care of.

Okay.

Uh next person signed up to speak for public forum is Lindsay Ureimco.

Jureko?

Yeah, and you'll have a sending to speak for this item.

Lindsay Uremco 1750 Hillwood Drive.

Uh, three minutes is not enough time to respond to this budget.

And I'm happy to see more pay for our firefighters.

Disappointed not to see meaningful investment in warming and cooling centers.

Speaking today to ask you to do your due diligence as council members.

Please follow council member Parker's lead in determining if general funds will be used to pay for reoccurring costs.

If you look at page 40 of fiscal year 25 through 26, the adopted budget, you can find the following policies.

Budget policy number six, current operating revenues should be sufficient to support current operating expenditures.

Fund policy uh fund balance policy uh the second item.

The city should use fund balance for capital or other one-time projects and not support ongoing operations.

Are these policies set in stone or are they just best practices?

I don't know.

They are based on state and federal law as well as our codes and our charter.

And I would like to see the city be transparent about if we're using our general funds, especially if that's an indicator of financial trouble.

I've personally reviewed several of the city's fund ledgers, and I've seen a concerning pattern of balancing budgets with Fund 706, the Equipment Replacement Fund.

And the affordable housing fund 240047, 2.5 million dollars.

You're welcome to check it yourself.

Additionally, the external auditors wrote in the city's most recent audit that cash balances were misstated prior to audit adjustments requiring an adjusting entry to properly state case and related accounts and reducing the reliability of this city's financial reporting, and that was for the community safety and empowerment fund.

Now the external auditors only looked at that one fund.

They did not look at the affordable housing fund or the equipment replacement fund.

So the auditors have not expressed their opinion on those funds' cash balances.

They did tell the audit committee you have a problem and it's pervasive.

Coupling the natural tendency of the rural fronts here mentality that often prevents people in power in the city from performing the role that they inhabit, coupling that with the fact that this will be passed regardless of if all of you voted against the budget.

I'm still asking that the city council perform the role that you were elected and sworn to do and exercise the oversight that you can over this budget, even if it's just exercising transparency with the public and not treating this process as a formality.

Please look critically at the budget for the sake of the public.

Thank you.

Council members, that concludes the people who have signed up to speak on this item.

Over the last six months for some of you, but others of you last several years to develop this budget and make sure that we invest in our city in sound fiscally responsible ways.

It's lean, it's balanced, and it contains no new taxes.

It also is really important to recognize that we are in the service industry, and the bulk of our budget goes to the people who provide those services, including raises for our general government and public service workers.

Every one of them will get a raise.

It includes generous benefits for our for all our employees, some of the best benefits in the community, and also significant raises for our first responders.

So I just want to share a few highlights of the budget and then be happy to answer any questions that you may have.

First, it contains more than $2 million for the Knoxville Fire Department.

This will go to renovate Fire Station 15 in Fountain City, which is 70 years old, and also to upgrade life-saving equipments, radios, and defibrillators.

Five new positions for the Knoxville Police Department.

It's the first increase in KPD's authorized staffing in decades, which again reflects our growing city.

City that I hear from people all the time is the need for more housing, especially affordable housing.

So this budget contains eight million dollars for affordable housing, including money for transforming western and a new habitat for humanity community in the Alice Bell neighborhood.

It also includes $2 million to homelessness prevention, including half a million towards warming centers and more support for the Joint Office of Housing Stability.

So and we again appreciate Knox County's partnership on the joint office of housing stability because homelessness is a community problem and we need to solve it as a community.

This budget proposal also contains my commitment to Chihuahua Park, which we've talked about quite a bit.

If you approve this budget, Parks and Rec will begin overseeing the park, helping to transform it from a rental event space to an open park for everyone.

This requires some budget investments.

The budget would include four new employees, so our public service department crew will be assigned full-time to maintain Chihuahua Park.

The budget also includes two million dollars in capital monies for Chihuahua Park, but we have not designated what that would be used for because we're waiting the input from the Chihuahua Park Advisory Group.

So I know they're busy working on that.

And this $2 million is part of a 10-year commitment, no five-year commitment, $2 million a year for five years that I've pledged to do, and hopefully future mayors and councils will continue that pledge.

Another important priority for our city is having a clean and resilient future.

This budget contains $2 million and more energy efficient upgrades to roofs and HVAC systems at city buildings.

And as you know, for those of you who are maintaining your own home, these kinds of energy efficient investments ultimately pay for themselves by reducing utility bills while also cutting our emissions.

This budget also includes money for 20 free new public EV charging stations that would bring the total in our city to 60, and that allows our residents who have an EV to save money too.

So again, I appreciate council members' attention to this budget throughout the recent months and throughout the year and be happy to answer any questions.

Councilmember Parker.

Thank you, Mayor.

I'd like to follow up on questions that I asked at the May 7th legislative budget hearings.

Some of those questions that I asked were initial questions, and I was disappointed to get a response on May 21st, 14 days later, right before the weekend, because it doesn't allow for follow-up questions.

So this is our this is our moment for those follow-up questions.

At the legislative budget hearings, I asked about our use of the general fund for capital expenses.

And primarily I wanted to focus on our use of general fund for capital expenses, largely because it was stated publicly that $6 million, the $6 million that we were going to use from our unassigned fund balance, which is essentially our savings, would go towards those one-time capital expenses.

So I want to identify what those one time capital expenses were.

And when looking in the capital improvements budget, I only saw the 1.9 million of general fund being used towards capital expenses.

So I asked the follow-up question and received the response that it would go towards, or you know, four 4.7 million or so would go towards the Western Heights project, which yes, that is presumed to be a capital project.

But my concern is our commitment to the affordable housing fund and how we are defining recurring cost, because my understanding or my definition of recurring cost would be uh cost that we are legally obligated, which we would be legally obligated to, uh, a cost required by ordinance over multiple years.

It's not a one-time cost, but we have uh four additional years of a five million dollar commitment, annual commitment to that affordable housing fund.

So I'm trying to get a better sense of what is considered a recurring cost for uh uh under the city's budgeting policy, budget policy.

Thank you, Councilmember Parker.

I'm going to ask our chief financial officer, Boyce Evans or his deputy Kitron Smith, to answer that question.

Yeah, I recurring cost is a uh, quote predictable business cost occurring at regular consistent intervals.

That's it.

That's uh that's what it is in accounting.

That's a recurring cost.

And uh as far as the the Western Heights, no, it's not going on for years.

In fact, assuming it gets approved in this budget, the 4.525, I believe we only got one more year for $26.5 million commitment to that, and that's it.

For for Western Heights, but our five million dollar commitment for affordable housing is an ongoing commitment.

So would our affordable housing five million dollar annual commitment be considered and recurring cost?

The only the only reason, okay.

And then of course, we know you know what the others are.

Uh I've spelled those out.

Um, so I don't know.

Yeah, and just uh for clarification, I just want to make sure council members know that every year since that ordinance was passed, this city in this budget is no exception, has given at least five million dollars, allocated a minimum of five million, and usually we've exceeded that, and this budget also exceeds that commitment.

So uh just because it's a capital expense doesn't mean we don't fulfill our commitment.

So this budget fulfills the commitment that this city has given to affordable housing plus three million dollars, and and the commitment is not in question, but the question is about what is considered recurring costs and whether our um whether we are relying on our unassigned fund balance to it to address recurring costs.

Okay, okay.

I can tell you how this works as a practical matter as you're developing the budget every year.

It's the same.

You look at what your personnel costs are gonna be, you look at what your legal requirements are gonna be, contracts that you're in, set price and all that.

You figure all that out.

There's some other things that you figure in.

The last thing that you get to, which is when you start looking at do we have to use unassigned fund balance is capital, because how far can you go?

For this year, for instance, we got a hundred and forty-seven million in capital requests.

We were only able to fund 41 million with the use of unassigned fund balance.

Had we dropped that down, that would have dropped it to $35 million.

But we looked at that capital, any type of capital project, including Western Heights, we said we need to go a little further.

And the only way you go a little further at that point is with that.

So in answer to I think part of your main question is could we be doing using it for personnel costs and so forth?

I mean, legally, technically, yes, we could.

Are we?

No.

Have we, except in an occasional budget amendment where we have to do it for the short time to we can get into the new count or new FY and make it a part of the target for the budget?

Uh, we don't use we our practice has not to been used on assigned fund balance for things other than capital projects.

Again, except in the rare case of a uh uh in a budget amendment.

Sometimes that'll happen.

Thank you, Mr.

Evans.

Vice Mayor Fugit.

I was just gonna ask.

To me, uh a recurring expense would be something like personnel, lights, electricity, all that kind of stuff.

I wrote down some examples.

Personnel costs, supplies, other charges, for categories that yes.

So in the case of the affordable housing fund, the commitment was made by ordinance.

Any other city council could choose to get rid of that ordinance, and the pledge would go away.

So I'm not saying we should ever do that, but that's also people can change the ordinance.

But I I kind of look at that me personally more like a pledge than a guaranteed um fixed expense.

But is I I think the key thing though, from talking about unassigned fund balance, you know, could you all support it every year with unassigned fund balance?

Yeah, there's nothing to keep you from it.

You could do that.

Uh but the the fund 631, the affordable housing fund, we fund it with the general fund every year.

I mean, that's there's no money coming from anywhere else to do it.

I think uh you know, council years ago passed uh an ordinance saying uh uh two and a half percent increase is locked in the cost of living for salaries.

That's a an ordinance that talks about an operating and it didn't have a sunset.

The um ordinance that you all passed a few years ago is about capital.

They're both ordinances, they're both commitments, and if council future councils choose to change it, or if it lapses, they choose not to renew it, then that would change it.

But one's capital, one's operating, they're both commitments.

Um, council member Parker.

Um I think that we should have a clear policy and a clear understanding of the use of the general fund, and if what was written and read by the public's forum speaker is not an actual adopted policy, um that that are recurring expenses should be uh should not be uh uh covered by unassigned fund balance, uh, then I believe we should adopt one.

And within that, what what I would um you know, have appreciated, and I would love to even postpone this uh agenda item so that we can get more clarity.

But what was just described of that process of of outlining what are those personnel costs and those costs that we are currently legally obligated to budget.

Sure, uh an ordinance can be changed in the future, but it's important to know today what are we legally obligated to cover in the budget and have a clear sense of um the amount of the general fund that's being used to cover those expenses that we are legally obligated uh to cover and then what uh are we relying on a unassigned fund balance to cover?

Um so I'm not I'm not able to support the budget tonight without that clarity, but I would support a postponement so that we could get uh the report that was just mentioned by the finance department that shows us uh the expenses that are considered those that were legally obligated to cover each year, and then what remains after that.

Any further questions or discussion?

Seeing none, all those in favor please say aye.

Any opposed motion the budget passes eight one.

Thank you very much.

Next item, please.

10 F is a res ordinance to levy a tax on all taxable properties, real personal and mixed within the corporate limits of the city of Knoxville, provide sufficient revenues to fund the general fund and debt service fund operations and debt service obligations of the city of Knoxville for the fiscal period beginning July 1, 2026, ending June 30, 2027.

Motion made to approve and second it.

Any questions or discussion?

Seeing none, Article 3, Division 2, Sections 2-450, 2-458, and 2-459 of the Knoxville City Code to adjust the classification and compensation plans.

Motion made to approve and second it.

Any questions or discussion?

Seeing none, all those in favor, please say aye.

Any opposed?

Motion carries.

Motion made to approve.

Seconded, uh council members, uh, we have some people signed up to speak in this.

We'll start with the three signed up in favor, and then there's three signed up against.

May I like to make a motion that we suspend our rules to allow for all public forum speakers?

Second.

Okay, motions been made to suspend the rules to allow all the people who signed up.

That's been made and seconded.

Uh there are five in favor and four against.

I just think I think that I think we should allow equal numbers for both sides so that one side doesn't have more than the other, but so if we need to.

Okay, well, um apparently some may not be here.

So uh we'll start with without going back and forth.

I'm not sure how to know for sure if everybody's here.

I guess I could call their name.

Morgan Schmitz.

Uh is Morgan Schmitz here.

Okay, just hope raise your hand.

We just allow all okay.

Okay, the motion on the floor is to suspend the rules to allow, okay.

No, uh Vice Mayor Fugit.

Um I will make a motion that if we suspend the rules, it should only be four per side so that it is equal like any other time that we allow public speaking.

Is that a substitute?

Substitute motion.

I wouldn't gonna vote to suspend the rules, but if we're going to, I think we should.

So I have a feeling suspend the rules will pass.

So I'm gonna make a motion that we do.

Substitute motion.

Uh is a priority motion, right?

What is it?

I mean, technically, technically you would need to vote on the first motion and defeat it if that's not the motion council wants it.

You can't amend the motion to suspend.

Okay.

Well, and I I for me it's either way because we did get an email from someone in support of the agenda item who's not able to speak tonight who signed up to speak.

So it seems like we have four on each side.

But okay.

You know, clearly I need to.

So okay, the motion is on the floor, has been made in seconds to suspend the rules to allow everyone who signed up to speak on this item to speak.

All those in favor, please say aye.

Any opposed?

Okay, the motion to suspend the rules carries.

We'll start with uh the those who signed up to speak in favor.

Morgan Schmitz.

You'll have up to three minutes to address council.

Hi, my name is Morgan Schmitz, and I live at uh 308 East Quincy Ave.

I've lived here since 2021, and a good chunk of my income comes from performing live music.

When I play shows out of town, a lot of musicians from places like Asheville or Chattanooga or even Nashville asked me the same thing.

Like, where is there to play in Knoxville?

And almost every time preservation pub comes up, and they always ask me, is that still a smoking bar?

Arts and entertainment is not your typical workplace.

I pull a lot of money as an independent contractor and as an independent contractor.

I'm assuming the risk of all the jobs that I take.

In Knoxville, however, December to March, it's our dead season, and everyone knows what I'm talking about.

That it's slow and we kind of have to take whatever gigs we can get.

A lot of us are hit harder than others.

And if I have to take back to back gigs at smoking facilities, I'll pay for it Friday.

I mean, yeah.

What choice do I have?

So on top of that, we're at a time for like opportunities for independent musicians are already shrinking year after year, where some small venue gigs for working class musicians are harder to come by.

Um so when some of the most reliable stages in town still allow indoor smoking, musicians are forced to choose between protecting their health and advancing their careers.

That's not the kind of music community that we should be building in Knoxville.

I don't think.

I quit smoking myself because of the impact it had on my health, and a lot of times I'm not into smoking other people's secondhand smoke.

It's not it's not the best, but I do want to acknowledge it's an uncomfortable reality that's come up last month.

There's a lot of musicians, bartenders, and venue workers who quietly support this ordinance, but because this is our community, the people who sign our checks are super mad about it.

We're gonna stay quiet because we don't want to upset or offend anybody that you know we rely on and depend on, and these are also our friends, and they're also our service workers.

So I totally get that.

Um the ordinance is about looking out for each other, and that's what community is supposed to mean.

I think so.

If nothing else, I urge you to think about the people who are most vulnerable, the uh musician with asthma who's part of the cause, the venue worker who's susceptible to cancer because of their family history.

Thank you for your consideration.

Thank you.

Uh, next person signed up to speak in favor of this item is Dr.

Christina Glenn.

Dr.

Glenn is not present, okay?

She's doing her job.

Okay.

Next person is Reverend Charles Lomax.

Nice to see you, Dr.

Lomax.

Good to see you as well.

You have up to three minutes to address council.

Thank you.

Uh American County members of council, good evening.

My name is Charles F.

Lomax Jr., and I reside at 3009 Oakley Township Drive.

Uh thank you for the opportunity to speak to you all this evening.

As a member of the board of directors for the American Heart Association, I stand in support of this proposed smoke-free ordinance because this is an issue ultimately about health, fairness, and responsibility.

At its core, the question for me is should an employee have to choose between earning a paycheck and protecting their health.

Right now, bartenders, servers, musicians, security staff, and others who work in these establishments are routinely exposed to secondhand smoke for hours at a time.

Not occasionally, not accidentally, but repeatedly.

We know the health risks.

We know that secondhand smoke impacts the respiratory health, heart health, and long-term well-being.

That debate has long been settled.

The issue now is whether we are willing to extend the same workplace protections to everybody.

Most employees in Knoxville already work in smoke-free environments.

But there remains a category of workers who are still expected to absorb the consequences of indoor smoking simply because of where they work.

That's neither equitable nor reasonable.

And this is not simply about employees, it's also about patrons as well as performers.

Musicians should not have to spend hours in smoke filled environments just to share their gifts.

Patrons should not have to leave an establishment worrying about what prolonged exposure may mean for their health.

Visitors considering where to spend their time and money increasingly look for clean indoor environments.

This ordinance is not anti-business.

In many cities across the country, smoke-free policies have become the norm, and businesses have continued to thrive in spite of.

In fact, many establishments discover that cleaner air broadens their customer base rather than limiting it.

And to be clear, this ordinance is not about trying to demean or belittle those who do choose to smoke.

I fully support adults making personal choices, so long as that choice does not infringe upon others.

A person's personal choice should not be a workplace hazard for others.

Leadership sometimes requires us to make decisions that prioritize the long-term well-being of a community over short-term discomfort or even resistance to change.

Tonight, you all have the opportunity to say clearly to every worker in Knoxville that they deserve the same public and basic protection and dignity on the job.

I respectfully urge you to vote yes.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Um I'm told the next person who signed up is not present, Steven Ryder.

So I'm moving to the next person, Michael Holtz, signed up to speak in favor of item 10H.

Mr.

Holtz, you'll have up to three minutes.

Good evening, Council members.

My name is Michael Holtz.

I live at 4557 Twin Pines Drive in Knoxville.

I've lived in Knoxville for 34 years, and as I said two weeks ago, I'm a 14-year survivor of stage three rectal cancer.

I'm here because again, I believe it's time for Knoxville to pass a comprehensive smoke-free ordinance and make all public places and workspaces smoke-free.

Um, I've followed many conversations on social media since the first reading two weeks ago.

Much of the buzz centers around the word choice, as in letting people make the choice to smoke and to work in environments where people smoke.

The thing about choice is sometimes consequences hurt other people.

My dad chose to smoke.

Cool filter kings, two packs a day since high school.

Dad had a massive heart attack at age 46 and required sex tupled bypass surgery.

Such was his dependence on his cool filter kings that he smoked while he was recovering from surgery.

At first, he snuck his smokes.

Eventually, he openly flouted his doctor's orders.

He hated that he was a smoker, but he was unable to quit even when his life was literally on the line.

He died at age 48 of a second massive heart attack and left behind my mom and four kids under age 20.

My my wife's aunt Liv died of lung cancer.

As a volunteer cancer advocate for more than 20 years, I have watched a lot of people die from cancer.

I have never seen anything more horrific than her shriveled, unrecognizable form in her final days.

My in-laws were smokers.

I've heard it said that my father-in-law began smoking as a child.

He grew up on a tobacco farm.

My in-laws were able to quit, yet both were diagnosed with dementia.

Smoking dramatically increases the risk of Alzheimer's and dementia later in life.

My brother, who is a year younger than I am, was a smoker and almost died of a pulmonary embolism a few years ago.

That almost dying thing is what got him to quit.

He's married and has two kids.

Now let's talk about the folks who work in bars impacted by this ordinance.

We have known for decades, since 1964, that second-hand smoke is a preventable cause of cancer.

Today, people under the age of 50, that's millennials and Gen Xers, are being diagnosed with cancer at increasing rates.

Fourteen types of cancer are on the rise among people under age 50.

Again, these are the bartenders, the musicians, the waiters and waitresses, security personnel, etc.

Someone asked on social media if, as someone proposing this ordinance, would I go to the workplaces that this ordinance covers?

The answer to that is yes.

I love a third place.

I don't love a third place where there's smoking.

Thank you.

I urge you to support this ordinance.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council.

That concludes people who signed up to speak in favor of this item.

Now we'll move to those who signed up to speak against this item.

First, James Kirk.

Mr.

Kirk, if you could start by saying your name and address for the record, you'll have up to three minutes to address that.

Absolutely.

My name is James Kirk.

I reside at 206 Hartford Road, South Knoxville.

I've lived in this city basically in my entire life.

I'm asking you, the city council members, to vote no on this ban.

Or if you won't, please find a compromise that will show respect to the interested parties.

While well intentioned, this ordinance will harm small businesses and the communities that gather at them.

It will directly impact adult-only businesses that already operate with age verification, controlled environments, and a customer and employee base that knowingly chooses to participate.

I'm a cigar smoker.

I understand retail tobacco stores and cigar bars remain exempt by law for now, but this is just another step towards more person more restriction of personal freedom.

These few small businesses have managed to weather one of the worst economic crises of our lifetime, and they continue to face economic uncertainty uncertainty to this day.

They survived COVID restrictions and have fostered places for communities to gather again.

This ordinance would be another devastating blow to those communities and the businesses that welcome them.

People go to these people that go to these bars are happy to get out of their homes and get inside somewhere regardless of the weather conditions and spend time with each other.

I even met my wife at a place indoors in Knoxville that allows smoking.

Furthermore, an indoor smoking ban would push smokers outside on the public sidewalks and into market square rather than allowing consenting adults to gather in adult-only smoking places.

This lobby group is disingenuous.

They are backing this indoor smoking ban for now, but ultimately they want to ban smoking everywhere forever.

Have you heard from any musicians who are part of a lobby group?

I ask you to vote no on this ban.

But if you won't please find a compromise, whether it's a grandfather amendment, a smoke mitigation requirement, or something else.

Is any compromise possible possible that will show some type of fairness?

I would respectfully ask this council and the mayor to consider a reasonable 30 to 60 day delay on this vote and ask that affected businesses, business owners be given the opportunity to meet directly with the administration to see how such a compromise could be reached.

Can we please reason tonight?

We are all adults here.

This issue's not about health.

It's about personal freedoms.

I'm a construction worker, I'm exposed to dangerous environments.

We're all consenting adults here.

Please let's use some reason.

Please, your constituents, we as your constituents need you to help us, help us keep our communities together.

You think just stepping outside, it's not going to work.

And regardless too, smoking will continue in the city of Knoxville at my cigar shop.

So we're not saving the world here.

Let's use reason.

Thank you very much.

God bless.

Next person signed up to speak against this is Houston 4G.

If you could come to the podium, please state your name and address for the record, and you'll have up to three minutes to address counsel.

My name's Houston Forge.

I live at 8123 Tazwell Pike in Corrington, Tennessee.

The last time I walked into this room, I brought a book of petition papers, and I do literally mean a book.

Alright, this the city recorder was shocked when I saw her face.

And the response that I got made me think, oh, this isn't going to pass.

Clearly, people don't want this.

But you know, the first row really brought some clarity to what's going on here.

I want to quote Michael Breder, who was the chief of staff for the current United States representative and the former mayor of Knox County.

He talked about how employees of this establishments do so voluntarily.

And he had a hard time that believing jobs are so scarce that these employees are forced to work there, or that the music industry is struggling so much that these musicians only have the option to perform at the one major venue that allows smoking.

He also went on to say that this is a solution looking for a problem, and how he recognized people from the previous meeting as very affluent and very organized people who are living in the West Hills area.

Called this whole thing exactly for what it was, which is an attack on the working class people.

What I see here is not a policy based on public health.

If it was based on public health, we wouldn't be telling these smokers to go out into Market Square to give secondhand smoke to the general public.

At least inside the building, there's very few people that this affects.

And you know what else?

This is a policy that was tried to be passed as quickly and silently as possible to make this city a polished look for tourists, transplants, and college students who can't even attend these bars.

So what happened to keep Knoxville scruffy council?

I know some opinions here won't be swayed, but the rest of the council just understand we're not upset with you.

Okay.

We understand that there's been an email campaign cold calling residents to get them to send emails, not to ask their opinion.

You've been very misled by a small group of people who want to convince you that the general consensus in this city is supporting the ban.

But I'm here to tell you that's not the case.

If everyone here who's against this ban could stand up for me, these are the bartenders, servers, waitresses, owners, and patrons of these facilities.

Thank you, Mr.

Forge.

Your time is up.

Next person uh signed up to speak against this item is Kip Everett.

Mr.

Everett, you'll have up to three minutes if you could start by stating your name and address for the record.

Yes, my name is Kip Herbert.

I live at 1412 Courier Lane, Knoxville.

My family's lived here in Knoxville for over 150 years.

I've served in the Army for eight and a half years.

When I served in the Army, I swore an oath to uphold the Constitution and defend our freedoms.

But now I feel as if that freedom's been taken away from me and all the people who value the freedom of choice.

I have hundreds of signatures on a petition of for people who feel as I do.

In the preamble of the Constitution, it says secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our prosperity.

I consider to choose liberty as one of our greatest uh choice.

While freedom is not explicitly written in the Constitution, it is interpreted through the 14th Amendment, which guarantees liberty against state interference.

The amendment defines liberty as freedom from unreasonable government resistance and includes the autonomy of personal decisions.

There are over 250 bars in Knoxville and only 15 of them that allow smoking in accordance with the 21 and up law.

I ask how is it unreasonable?

How is it reasonable that non-smokers have 250 places to go and smokers have only 15?

You deem it necessary to take away the few choices smokers have to enjoy a beer and a cigarette without having to go outside.

If I have to go outside in the middle of the winter time, I'm more likely to die of flu or pneumonia than I am smoking.

The non-smoker side of advocate advocates for its safety reasons for employees.

First of all, to even be in one of these places, you have to be 21, which means you're an adult.

When this ban says that you don't think adults are smart enough to make their own decision, and again, I quote the 14th Amendment, autonomy to make personal decisions.

As for non-smoking customer safety, again, you have to be 21 and an adult.

You have over 250 other places to choose from as opposed to the only 15 that we smokers have.

As an adult, I would think you'd be able to choose out of the 250 a suitable place to go.

Don't misunderstand, I respect your right not to smoke, but this is that you respect my right to choose.

Well, it's necessary to why is it necessary to take away the only few places smoker have?

The 21 and up law works and should not be changed.

It was said that it would bring but better clientele and economy for all of us.

First is because I'm a smoker, I'm not good clientele.

Isn't it up to the business owners what type of clientele they serve?

And another choice is being taken away is the owner's choice.

And secondly, economically, out of the 215 to 15 ratio, that's less than 5% of the bar business.

I don't think 5%'s gonna make that big of a significant difference to the city economy.

And again, isn't it the business owners' choices to how much profit they make?

To vote for the ban is to vote, take away our personal liberties, our freedom autonomy to personal decisions, and one of the foundations of our constitution and directly violates the 14th Amendment.

The 21 and up law works and should not be changed.

The vote for the ban is wrong and should not happen.

Thank you.

The last person signed up to speak on this item uh in opposition is Tony Ewing.

Tony Ewing.

If you could come to the podium, state your name and address, and you'll have up to three minutes.

Hey, ladies and gentlemen, I'm Tony Ewing.

I live at 1204 Folkestone Place, Knoxville, Tennessee.

I've lived here my entire life.

I'm a graduate of the University of Tennessee.

And actually have a couple of friends, the dueling Pauls who own these kinds of establishments, but that's not why I'm here.

I'm here to make you maybe just look at one other aspect to this whole thing.

These have been smoking bars for quite some time.

Everybody that works there may just smoke.

And the ones who don't, it's been a smoking bar for let's say 10 years.

They know that going into this.

And the gentleman just said, and it makes a very good point, the ratios are not matching up.

And I know this is important to all of you.

Local business.

It's local people who have families to feed as well that own these places.

And if the time frame that a person hangs out there, there's not great margins in these.

So if I spend less time there or I go there less often, those people may just lose their jobs.

So we worry about there's not enough venues to play music.

I think Knoxville pretty much has that covered.

You know, there's um not enough restaurants or bars.

I think we have all those covered as well.

But we've got to think about are we going to support local business and local people, or are we going to keep, you know, looking at Applebee's and and chilies, and those are the kinds of places that we want only here.

Um I think everybody, I'm just trying to kind of wrap that up, but I would like for you to look at it at from the aspect of our local folks who have started these businesses, put blood, sweat, and tears into them, and what happens if they start to lose clientele.

How are we going to fix that?

So I don't need to take any more of your time.

I thank you very much for considering there may be some other options.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Uh Council that concludes public forum on this agenda item.

Councilmember Helsley.

Yes, ma'am.

Thank you so much, Mayor.

Um, I'd just like to thank my colleagues for joining me to support the health of air community, clean indoor air, and smoking outside.

We should all agree breathing is not optional.

Publicly open businesses should provide the freedom to breathe clean air.

Smoking outside and breathing clean air indoors are not only possible, but the accepted norm in just about every other workplace now.

To those that are fighting for indoor smoking, I never imagined after decades of solid science on smoking and the revelations we've had on big tobacco that people would fight for something that clearly makes people sick.

Let's not fight to make people sick.

I want to address myths that have been swirling around since first reading.

Left or right, progressive or conservative.

This is not not political.

Cancer and asthma, don't care what party you belong to.

We have Dr.

Briggs and Dr.

Wright are advocating for this.

And I personally know that they are not of the same political persuasion, and we can talk about that later if anybody's interested.

In the 2022 State House vote, support wasn't partisan.

Gloria Johnson and Michelle Carringer, Sam McKenzie, and Eddie Manis.

Clemens and Sexton, it's clear to me this wasn't political at all.

People have been saying my body, my choice in opposition to this ordinance.

Secondhand smoke affects everyone.

This is a situation where one person's choice impacts the health of others nearby.

And we know that there are people that work or get invited to these spaces and hate the smoke or have to avoid it because of health reasons.

What about their freedom?

Their freedom of choice argument is straight out of Big Tobacco's playbook.

They've been making this argument for decades, and the goal is still just to sell cigarettes.

This is not a simple matter of personal choice.

This ordinance does not force smokers to quit.

It just makes it so that others aren't suffering the consequences of that choice.

Exemptions for cigars or vape retailers.

The state controls the governance of tobacco and exemptions surrounding it.

It is not, I repeat, not.

You're not hearing me.

He's got his ear to his ear to his ear.

Uh, his hand to his ear.

It's not a local decision to exempt cigar and vape retailers.

The state is in the simplest terms, exempts retailers.

On the contrary, this ordinance is focused on businesses whose revenues come or from retail of drinks, food, music pool, and other entertainment.

Their sales don't depend on sales of an outside product that creates second third hand smoke.

In 2007, when everything everywhere went smoke free, people were upset they couldn't smoke with their coffee.

Indoor smoking was banned in the diners, and nothing else changed.

People kept drinking coffee and eating biscuits and gravy.

Folks just smoke outside.

In 1967, people were mad about the helmet law.

You couldn't feel the wind in your face while you rode a motorcycle, but it saves saves lives and prevents traumatic head injuries.

Before us today is an opportunity to save lives and prevent asthma, cancer, heart disease, and strokes.

This is an opportunity to create a healthier future for our community.

And we aren't stopping people from smoking while accomplishing this.

They can simply step outside and smoke there.

I did it myself for years.

It's it's easy.

Instead, we can protect these those who can't and don't want to smoke and guarantee them the right to a smoke free work free workplace.

I ask you kindly to join me today in supporting the health of our community and saving lives with a yes vote.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Councilmember Parker.

Thank you, Mayor.

I had um a question that I wanted to ask the sponsor.

There have been um a lot of questions since this ordinance has come up.

Um questions regarding what is exempted, what is not, you know, what's included in cigar bar, what's the difference between that and a cigar lounge?

Uh what about private uh clubs, and what role would this ordinance um, how how would this ordinance impact uh private clubs?

Would you support uh a workshop so that we can get a little bit more clarity on some of these questions?

Council Member Halsey?

No, because what you just mentioned is already private clubs are exempted by state law.

You had also asked about three.

Three employees or less, which is also addressed by state law.

Everything that you asked for has already been addressed by law.

Well, there's no move.

My uh interpretation of it was different.

Um private clubs was one of those that um I was unclear about whether that was uh one of the establishments um uh allowed to be within the uh jurisdiction essentially of the local municipality.

Uh I had read that differently than what was being told to me.

That's just one of the issues and cigar bar versus cigar lounge and what we have in place, um, is another distinction that I think we need a little bit more clarity on in order to be able to inform businesses of who would who would be impacted by this ordinance.

Is that one that you have a little bit more clarity on cigar bars versus cigar lounges?

I don't know that there is a difference.

Is there a difference, Mr.

Frost?

Mr.

Frost, these are legal questions.

Maybe you can just think you mayor.

Uh cigar bars are defined by the state of Tennessee and the state statutes.

Uh they do not define cigar lounges.

Uh private businesses with three or fewer employees are clearly within uh where this ordinance cannot apply, as well as retail tobacco stores, cigar bars, and retail vapor product stores that prohibit persons under 21 years of age on the primises.

And that's TCA 3917 1804.

And what is that definition of cigar bar?

Uh it uh that comes from 3917 1802, means a legal establishment that holds a valid license or permit for the on-premise consumption of alcoholic beverages, generates a portion of its total annual gross income from the on-site sale of cigars and the rentals of humidors, does not knowingly sell products or services or permit entrance to the premises to a person who is less than 21 years of age and does not prevent vaping or smoking of products other than cigars on the premises.

Respectfully, the state will only allow you to regulate what the state will define and let you regulate regulate.

Well, that's also one thing that I have uh a disagreement around is our powers to regulate, um, because one thing that has been questioned is our ability to grandfather um existing businesses uh when when considering this ordinance and I was told that legally we weren't able to uh include a grandfather clause.

Um but my own research showed that um, you know, the enabling statute gave us the authority uh over regulating these businesses, and and that would include you know, a tool like grandfathering and and that not being considered um uh a separate authority that would have to be explicitly granted by the state, and I think that's another issue that should be clarified because even um including uh uh a delayed implementation date uh is you know considered by by the state as already in some ways grandfathering in uh until a certain um until January 1st.

Thank you, council member.

There's a couple other members with lights on in that is the end of your five minutes.

Uh council member, oh I didn't know if there was a question.

Is there a question you'd like me to respond to, Councilmember Parker?

I just think that we need time to clarify what our authority is as a local municipality now with the ability um to provide regulations for these businesses, okay.

I think there's a narrow uh provision in the state law that allows uh the city to or excuse me, city council to proceed with the ordinance uh that's um before you uh the delayed effective date.

I don't respectfully disagree that that is some sort of grandfathering, it's simply it it's ending it, uh ending the practice assuming uh it passes.

Uh uh, but uh you know that that's my opinion.

Uh you know, any other Mr.

Swanson wants to weigh in or anyone else who has studied.

I but I don't know if that's who what you're asking.

Well, I'll wait until others speak and then perhaps we can dive into the Dillon rule.

Uh council member Grant, you had your light on did you wish to speak, Mr.

Grant?

Yes, thank you, Mayor.

Um, been quite a long 14 days in between from when we first voted on this, um, and obviously uh, you know, myself and and other council members voted to to approve this ordinance.

Um, with the belief, you know, that this is protecting public health, um, and obviously, you know, improving the well-being of residents and families in our city.

Um, I think that vote was rooted really in the idea that government has a responsibility, right?

Um, to create healthier environments and to put people first.

Um I'm gonna be honest.

Um, what I wasn't aware of is the proposal to allow alcohol outdoors, right, in designated areas.

And over these past two weeks, um, you know, I've just continued to think about those two things in contrast.

When you look at this one ordinance that's clearly centered on health safety and a long-term quality of life for for residents, and then you have the proposed downtown outdoor refreshment area resolution, which is largely centered on obviously economic activity, increasing revenue downtown.

Um, economic growth matters.

Uh a vibrant downtown matters.

Supporting local businesses matters.

Um I want Knoxville to continue to grow as the district six representative.

Uh I want to be able to attract visitors.

I want to be able to create opportunity and build energy in that in that downtown core.

But I think progress should never come at the expense of thoughtful leadership and honest conversations about the trade-offs that are involved.

So now we're in a position where we're going to be prohibiting 14 locations from smoking indoors while at the same time we're considering to allow hundreds and possibly thousands of people to walk around outdoors with liquor in the same public spaces where families and children are going to be gathering, right?

This raises legitimate questions in terms of our consistency when you when you talk about governing and if we're serious about health safety and quality of life when it comes to smoking, then we also have to consider the the potential consequences to have expended public alcohol consumption, DUI accidents, enforcement challenges, right with our local law enforcement.

Officers obviously will be forced to monitor boundaries and compliance, and as leaders being willing to ask the difficult questions to make sure our policies aligned with the values that we promote.

We cannot frame this issue um entirely around public health while framing another around revenue without knowledge the tension between the two.

Downtown should definitely continue growing, thriving, and welcoming residents and visitors alike.

I believe we can uh pursue economic development while also protecting public spaces, supporting families, and maintaining a strong commitment to public safety.

What makes this conversation difficult for me is being a different district six representative.

Majority of these bars are in my district.

The designated um areas for alcohol consumption are in my district.

On one hand, you know, we're voted to strengthening restrictions around smoking.

Obviously, like I said, because of the public health and secondhand exposure, but then on the other hand, we're now considering expanding public alcohol consumption.

And so what I vision on a Sunday evening, I'm taking my kids to Market Square, and um there's alcohol and cigarettes in Market Square.

How is that family centered if people are going to be forced to smoke outside while also consuming alcohol?

To me, it's it's it's contradicting government, and that's just my personal opinion.

Um this is definitely uh a difficult decision uh for myself, and and you know, I've I've appreciated the amount of work and effort that's going into this particular ordinance, um, but it's challenging.

Um I'm not sure if I can support this ordinance the second time.

I worry about the alcohol consumption downtown.

I worry about how it's gonna be policed.

I worry about the extra pressure that's gonna be put on our law enforcement.

Um I think about the friends that I've lost to.

Oh, Mr.

Mr.

Grant, um, I'm gonna move on to the next speaker.

You're if I you can come back.

Thank you.

If you want to turn your light on again, uh Councilmember DeBarteleybon.

Um thank you, Councilman Grant.

Um I think a lot of us have the irony's not been lost on us that uh we're gonna be banning one substance for another one, one in private for another one in public.

Some irony there.

Uh I'll be short, mentioned the two things that I still care about first, and that is I do think that there's a lot of false tropes here.

Um we have 14, 10, 12 establishments, um, really a very few who have regular live music.

I've known lots of musicians in the community.

They have many, many opportunities to play.

And so I think this is a false trope there.

And then the potentially pregnant employee.

There are incredible service industry jobs all over the city and county.

And uh I think that these are actually just they're they're not true things.

Uh the second thing, which I've mentioned last week, is these are really unique communities for a group of people who choose to live this way, and uh I don't take that for granted.

They they they make Knox feel unique in a way.

And if you've ever gotten to be a part of one of these communities and just seen that everybody knows each other's names and everybody knows what's going on in somebody else's life and and care.

So these are unique communities that um they're special, and I will not take that lightly.

Uh the third is there's a gentleman here kidding.

He opened uh just under two years ago, he opened uh lucky shot in South Knoxville and spent over $60,000 two years ago to put air ventilation in so there could be smoking inside.

And I've actually shot pulling there, the airstairs very clean, and this businessman has fought to open a community space uh and made a huge investment that we're just gonna pull out from under him, and I don't think we should consider that lightly.

Um two new thoughts.

One is that I honestly believe this is um this is government overstepping into private world.

Um we I I we we should regulate.

That's what we we have a great law from 2007 on the books to regulate smoking like this.

We took it out of uh general workplaces in mass, out of offices, out of uh other places.

We took it out of most restaurants who didn't want to stay over 21.

Um, it was removed from so many places because we regulated it, but now we're talking about banning it, and those are two very different government actions.

We banned books, apparently.

We did that kind of last week, we banned drag shows.

Instead, we should be regulating these things.

And so I think to go as far as as a ban uh oversteps the role of this body in our community's life.

Um the last thing is that this is not the stopping point.

We heard it during public comments.

It wasn't only smoking in an indoor places, it was in all places that I'm quoting that.

And this is not the end of the goals of this group, which I appreciate the goals, but the goal is not to end with indoor bars.

So, and I'm not against some of the other places.

We we have to share Market Square, we have to share Gay Street, we don't have to share lucky shots, we don't have to share the urban bar.

Um, those are choices that we make, but we have to share uh Neeland Stadium, we have to share Covenant Health Park, we have to share the Millen Mine.

These are the Tennessee Theater.

These are the spaces that we share together.

Uh and have don't really have choices in these small businesses, uh, we have choices to make, and I think we overstep uh by making these choices for them.

Councilmember.

Councilmember Parker.

And then Vice Mayor for you.

Thank you, Mayor.

Public health measures require a thoughtful approach that weighs the urgency of the threat against the impact the measure would have on the public.

We learned this thoroughly through COVID, which from my perspective, um, there wasn't a clear line between the public health advocates and those who were against it, but there were those who were coming forward not only with concerns about how the the uh the new measures would impact their businesses, but folks were also concerned about uh seniors and youth who didn't have access to activities and were uh uh experiencing isolation and loneliness and the impact that that would have on mental health.

Every policy had to be balanced to consider unintended mental health, economic, and other consequences of limiting the public's ability to gather, even during a time when daily deaths were occurring.

Not from a lifetime of of a certain behavior, but due to a new threat that we were just learning about, even in that situation, we still had to weigh and balance what measures were adopted, and we've known of the threat of cigarette smoking and secondhand smoke for quite a long time, and we have over the years.

I'm not gonna list them all out because council member Debartelatum really did a good job of laying out the measures that we've taken over the years to uh reduce uh smoking in public spaces and limit it only to those 21 and up establishments.

And I would even argue that one of the things we're not clear on is exactly who will be impacted by this.

One thing that I've noticed since uh we've started this conversation is that there are some uh new clubs and lounges opening up in East Knoxville that are not paying attention to this conversation, that are you know, investing in um a hookah as one of their uh products that they'll have and don't realize that these conversations are taking place, so uh that's another aspect of this that I wish we had more clarity on is the is the actual um impact.

But what I wanted to highlight was that at no point since we over the years, as new measures have been adopted in 2022, City Council under its authority uh chose to ban smoking in public parks and greenways.

Yet at no point have I heard uh any city city leadership or leadership on city council mention any intention for Knoxville to also ban smoking at all establishments not exempted by state law for something that will have such a significant impact on our community, the community is deserving of a longer conversation, and for this item to pop up uh what seems like out of nowhere, um, and for us not to give more time and attention to this and not be very clear on what we're passing, I think is a disservice to our community.

The number one question I keep hearing around this smoking ban is why now, why now with all that is going on and simply how challenging life is for so many in our community, why now?

When we're presented with arguments, uh for the reasoning of why now, why the reasoning behind the timing, those arguments have fallen short.

Uh protecting the health of the workers is a tough argument to make when when those in support of these smoking establishments uh coming forward are largely workers coming from these establishments.

Uh, it's hard to make these arguments when there's disagreements within uh the music community about whether uh those speaking out uh in favor of this ban are actually representing the music company the community.

There has been a lack of clarity there, but I would say at minimum, it speaks to the lack of urgency and the need for more clarity, and so I would appreciate um slowing down this process if it is to move forward, but I'm in the camp of um valuing the community that's developed, created by these establishments and and seeing uh uh the need for them, especially right now and where we are as a city, uh, much more than this uh public health effort.

So that's where I'm at.

Okay, Vice Mayor Fugit.

Thank you.

I have a couple of questions for one of the two attorneys here.

Um, so my understanding would be if this were to pass, um, any new establishments could not, they would have to be smoke-free if they were over 21.

If we pass this, it's it's it's for.

But if we don't pass it, we keep talking about they're only 14.

Many more could come.

There's nothing to stop that.

Correct?

I mean, I've you can laugh.

I I I am torn about this too.

I'm just trying to, we we're talking about clarity here.

I think we need to be clear that if it if it does not pass, it doesn't mean there will still only be 14 businesses in the city of Knoxville that this would that would be able to um Mr.

Swanson, can you answer that?

That would be correct.

I mean the law right now permits uh business establishments who serve alcohol if they restrict their population to people who are over 21 to allow smoking.

Uh and that would not change if you don't pass this.

What this statute provides is a limited exemption to the law that says you can ban that.

And the limited exemption does not sunset, but it has been but the original law was passed in 2007, correct?

I believe I read that somewhere.

Okay.

Um my other question for Ms.

Parker when you talk about wanting clarity on how this would apply with the different nuanced things that you talked about.

What would be clarity?

Because you researched one thing, the couple of attorneys up here say they interpret the law differently.

I just if you're asking us to wait to get clarity.

What is clarity?

Does that have to come from the attorney general?

Uh does it have to be litigated?

What is clarity?

For instance, one um category that I asked about were the um cannabinoid derived hemp products, I believe is what it's called that are exempted in Nashville's ordinance.

Uh we did not exempt those.

I had a follow-up question that I sent to our city council attorney and and asked it of the bill sponsor, and was told that there's pending action at the state and federal level uh that would limit what we can do.

But if you look into that, what they're targeting are products at a certain strength of THC and not at an other strength.

And I'm not an expert on this industry, but if a constituent asks me how this would impact their business, I cannot answer that.

And we do have businesses in our community that sell the THC products with less than 0.3%, and I don't, you know, I don't know all the things.

So that would be an example of an area that I would like to get clarity around.

Any further questions or discussion?

Okay, the motion on the floor is in favor.

All those in favor please say aye.

Uh any opposed?

We'll do a roll call vote, please.

Councilman Hellesley.

Yes.

Councilman Honeycutt?

Yes.

Councilman Lloyd?

Yes.

Councilman Parker.

No.

Councilman Thomas.

Yes.

Councilman Adams?

Yes.

Councilman Debarta Laban?

No.

Councilman Grant?

No.

Mayor, the vote is six in favor, three opposed.

Okay, motion carries.

Okay.

Uh Council, would you like a brief recess?

Let's uh reconvene at 740.

Okay, council members, it's seven forty.

Uh we're gonna resume our meeting, please.

Uh members of the audience, if you could take your conversations outside or um have a seat and enjoy the rest of the meeting.

Thank you.

Mr.

Johnson, if you could please proceed with the next agenda item.

11 AB is a resolution approving an appeal by Mary Carter of the denial of the Board of Zoning Appeals of variances to one decrease the minimum required interior side setback for a detached accessory structure from five feet to point one six feet per per article ten point three point A point five, and to two, increase the maximum allowed height for a detached accessory structure from eighteen feet to twenty-one feet four inches per article ten point three point A point four in a R in one zoning district for probably located at five zero five Woodlawn Pike R in one zoning district, first district.

Okay, council members, uh just as a reminder, this is a quasi-judicial um hearing.

Um I will be calling on the appellant, uh, either uh Mary Carter or her representative uh will have up to 15 minutes to present her case.

She can have as many speakers as she wishes as long as it doesn't exceed fifteen minutes, and then the appellee and any meaning the opponent of the appeal um may use up to 15 minutes to make their case.

So we'll start with the appellant, uh Mary Carter or representative.

If you could come to the podium, please state your name and address for the record.

And if you have more than one speaker, just make sure they're uh prepared to come to the podium.

You'll have to turn the microphone back on, please.

Okay, thank you.

If you can start with your name and address, Anthony Carter, five zero five, Woodlawn Pike, Knoxville, Tennessee, three seven nine two zero.

Good evening, council.

Thank you for your time and listening and hearing this appeal.

We are adding an addition to the right side of our home.

Does not meet the required side setback and height requirements.

And I'm here trying to work through that proper process.

I have extra copy hard copies here.

And I'm asking, can I please pass those out to you guys?

Is that okay?

Yes, Mr.

Johnson will come get it from no worries.

I'll continue while he's flying here.

I believe there are only 13 copies in there.

I apologize, y'all might have to buddy up on a little buddy system on that.

Due to where our building sits relative to their property line and the distance between our building and their house, and considering the use of the building, the neighbors are do not object.

They don't believe this variance will negatively impact impact their property.

BZA members expressed a desire to hear from the affected neighbor before making their decision, though my neighbors verbally gave me their you know so full support, I did not have that in documentation.

You have that before you that is Mr.

Gene Manaco and Madeline Rajero.

The second variance is to increase the maximum allowed height for a detached structure.

If you see the the diagram on the second page, if you if you could will please imagine you're standing on street level and you're looking down my lot, this it slopes downward.

The topography of it goes downward.

So if you're standing foot level on the street, imagine one foot down is the front porch.

You're standing the same site level, if you pan over with it, you are standing almost dead level at the middle of my building.

That kind of gives a little bit of explanation of the height that variances of the topography for that.

The closest neighbors also agree in their letter to you that the structure is structure is not intrusive and fits the visual character of the street.

They don't think that it will impact the neighborhood aesthetics and surrounding property values.

I have not heard any objections from any of our neighbors.

BZA members also discussed that given the slope, the height shouldn't negatively affect our neighborhood.

In conclusion, I regret having to bring this to you, but request that you grant our appeal.

Fortunately, the requested variances will not negatively impact the character of our neighborhood nor surrounding property values.

We have the support of the neighbors whose property line is directly in affected.

I appreciate you listening to my words.

And if you have any questions for me, please.

Okay, sorry.

That was my spill.

That was my defense, and here we go.

Okay.

Thank you.

Yeah, you may step aside.

Sure, sure.

There's no one else in mind.

We were speaking of my wife and my children say thank you.

Okay, thank you.

Um is there anyone here in opposition to this appeal?

Okay.

Umbers, that uh concludes the uh designated time for a palate and appellee.

There's no need for a rebuttal.

So you may discuss this and make motions as you see fit.

Councilmember Adams.

Thank you.

Um, and I appreciate the applicant being here and sharing some of the backstory on this appeal.

Uh I've seen the BZA case, uh, watched it a few times.

I'm very familiar with this area and think the real hardship here is topography.

The height of the structure, while measured as three inches taller than the maximum, does meet the intent of the code, which is to ensure that the secondary structure not dwarf the primary structure.

And this one doesn't.

The topography is what makes it not dwarf that.

Um the build uh to the build to issue is unfortunate, but the only real issue that BZA raised uh with the build to was whether or not it was a problem with the neighbors, and they didn't have what we have in front of us tonight, which is the neighbors saying we have no problem with this.

Um, so uh since we're only hearing those two issues, the build two and the height, and I think that topography is the real hardship there.

I'd like to make a motion that we go ahead and approve these two variances.

Second, okay.

Motion made to approve the appeal, it's been made and seconded.

Uh any uh council member debater label.

Just quick discussion.

I I want to understand just how it happened, and it's three feet four inches higher.

And then I so I understand how the property line happened.

How did we go so much higher in height, though?

So much higher, three feet four inches.

I watched me or you asking the I was gonna ask him, the applicant.

Mr.

Carter, if you could come back up and uh address this question if you're able.

So you're asking basically why is it too tall?

I understand that you chose to move it to the property line, not knowing that that wouldn't allow, but then why the height?

How did that end up?

If you actually look back to the the drawing, because I'm prepared for that question as well.

You actually can't see it really.

I um it is a link to style building.

Um the way zoning with the city of Knoxville, a lot of code they they take their measurements differently according from my lean to versus to a house.

I am 18 foot.

I when we when we built it, I mean we built it, it happened.

I am it is a the second story, it was a couple more feet at added as it went.

But if you measure from where the true height of the house goes into the top of the house, we have we're losing like probably 20 feet from what they're actually allowing us zoning-wise.

Uh, structurally, it's built sound.

Um it's just a vaulted ceiling open in there.

That's the answer my answer.

Okay, I see no further lights.

So all those in favor of the motion, please say aye.

Any opposed?

Motion carries.

Thank you so much, Mr.

Carter.

Thank you all for your time.

12 A D is a resolution approving the facility geographic diagram and general plan for Boyd Sports LLC and Boyd Property Development LLC for the sale, service, and consumption of alcoholic beverages and beer around the multi-use stadium as it is defined in Tennessee code annotated sections 57-4-1023 6th district.

Okay, council members.

There is okay, motion made to approve.

And the seconded, um, there is one person here to speak in favor of this, Michelle Hummel.

Ms.

Hummel, if you could come to the podium and state your name and address for the record, and you'll have up to three minutes to address council.

Good evening.

I saw many of you at the beer board for my volunteer job.

So it's good to see you here for my real job.

Um, my name's Michelle Hummel.

I work with Downtown Knoxville Alliance, address 100 South Gay Street, Knoxville 379 02.

I want to thank you for the opportunity to speak today about the Dora, the Outdoor Refreshment Area Program.

I appreciate the city's willingness to look at this program and explore what a pilot program would look like.

Many of our downtown merchants and visitors have expressed interest of this type of program for quite some time.

I've seen firsthand and I've heard from other downtown colleagues who have found programs similar to these initiatives to be successful in other cities by increasing foot traffic, encouraging visitors to stay longer, and boosting retail sales, while also maintaining a family-friendly environment.

And I think too, that is a key part.

I heard your concern, um, Councilman Grant, about ensuring that it is a safe area for children, and as a mom and as a downtown um advocate, I would want to maintain a safe area for children and everyone in this area.

But I think advocating for public places are consistently creating positive energy for those.

I think it would be a benefit for the stadium and for market square, and I appreciate your consideration of this.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Uh Council, this item is about approving a plan to allow Boyd Sports to manage the sale and consumption of alcohol and beer in the area immediately surrounding the multi-use stadium.

Uh the state legislature approved beer and alcohol sales outside the stadium, leaving city council to sp set the specific geographic boundaries and approve a general plan.

If approved, the designated outdoor refreshment area or DORA will begin operations about mid-July.

Um, so at the same time, uh we are implementing a DORA on Market Square, which um you know has been something that local businesses in that part of town have been asking about uh for many years.

So the vote on the stadium Dora is because it was given a special designation by the state of Tennessee that is different from the state law that allows this on Market Square.

So it's a little confusing.

That's the way alcohol laws are in our state.

But the Curtis Harrington, but um the attorney who helped void sports with this item is available if you all have specific questions.

Council member Grant.

I actually do have a couple questions for the attorney, but then also as I voiced earlier, just in terms of of safety um first question I would kind of like to direct towards Chief Noel.

In terms of a plan for the downtown corridor and area, your guys, those individuals of law enforcement who are going to be assigned to this particular these areas of consumption.

What is the plan?

Is there training?

How are your guys going to be able to police and set those boundaries and compliance for for the downtown and the multi use stadium?

Chief?

Well sure is is for us it's I think you know from a law enforcement perspective not much is gonna not much changes we don't tolerate drunkenness or disorderly conduct or anything.

That's what officers are going to be looking for people that are disorderly public intoxication we enforce those laws now.

This is a program of stadium I don't I don't think any of that's going to change at all.

We have officers that work the events at the stadium and we don't toler we don't tolerate public intoxication now and we won't either before this or after that after this if this does pass before or after.

Thank you.

Oh my go ahead so my next question would either be for um the attorney or the administration in terms of the economic benefit that this is going to bring obviously there's going to it's going to be an increase of you know generated revenue from the stadium.

What are the what are the numbers in terms of you know how it's going to benefit the administration.

Well I'll just say in general local businesses have been asking for this and and just as a a point of information this does not uh enable people to bring their own we this is clearly in support of local existing businesses that already have a license to sell alcohol and people would be complying with you know the regular all the beer board and and state of Tennessee alcohol provisions they can't sell to underage drinkers and they would have to have a clearly marked vessel to carry the you know the alcohol in so law enforcement will be able to you can't just bring your own bottle of Jack Daniels in the brown paper bag and drink it on market square you have to buy it from an existing entity that that chooses to participate in the program and that'll be the same process that happens outside the stadium.

Mr.

Harrington did you have anything to add?

Yeah mayor it's a pleasure to be here and before you council uh Curtis Harrington counsel for board sports uh 1427 Englewood Circle North Nashville although I hate to say it Tennessee it's a pleasure to be here in terms of specific activations in the plaza areas of the immediate area surrounding the stadium you know we foresee this as largely for uh really three you know scenarios um pre-game you know and pre-event you know activities at the stadium um where individuals can come down park come early um we saw a tremendous you know activation in the plaza area no alcohol uh for banana ball events such as that um also uh watch parties you know for various events where perhaps there's not an actual uh uh concert or a game activated inside the stadium but having watch parties for uh you know world cup events uh events such as that and then also when individuals are down the days that the stadium DORA will be activated, which we do not foresee activating the stadium Dora seven days a week, three hundred and sixty-five days a year, you know.

Um, because there there is an increase, we will have as as the population in the plaza increases for various events, uh, we will increase, you know, private security as needed through access, the security, you know, personnel that we use at ingress and egress points into the stadium.

Um, but while it's activated, uh, and when tenants start to come online and the Delaney buildings and independent tenants in the areas, you know, if you're waiting for a table or just spending time outdoors, um, access in a limited, very controlled manner in these in these tight areas, plaza areas surrounding the stadium.

Okay, thank you.

Um, that's I mean that's that's all I have.

Okay, thank you.

Uh Vice Mayor Fugit.

Thank you.

Um, I don't know that you can answer this question, but I'm gonna give it a shot.

So um the main revenue that the city would get off of this is sales tax revenue that is generated by the restaurants and uh the other vendors that are there, anybody that uh you allowed to also be a vendor on the plaza during the days that you had it open if you choose to do that.

So that would be our main revenue source, which would be the entities that pretty much already exist down there, but the th thought being that they would have increased traffic and a longer time for people to come down before or after an event and stay in this zone.

Now, if they walk out of this zone, they must surrender their cup, correct?

That's correct.

Okay.

That's absolutely so this around the stadium it ends and I can we can see where it ends.

So I can't take that up into the old city.

That's absolutely correct.

Okay, I just want everybody to understand that this is just around the plaza when you are there for an event at the multi-use stadium.

That's right, when it's activated, and you will not you will also not be able to carry that drink inside the stadium.

Okay, if here's just a question for those who might want to know.

If they are leaving the stadium, can they carry their stadium cup out into the plaza after the game would probably I'm assuming not because it wouldn't be a DORA unless you choose to do Dora inside the stadium.

That's right.

And the most recent discussions we've had are are avoiding DORA inside of the stadium, right?

And you've got a third-party concessionaire in there, that has a lot of transactions, a lot of sales, and um and and they certainly would be interested.

Right, exactly.

Got it.

Exactly.

Because and as we see with the Dora manual and the rules and regulations that the city has developed, um, you know, outside of the Dora, if you're a a liquor licensed establishment and you sell to a minor, whether it's a sting or however the ABC or beer board finds out about it, monetary fine, you usually don't face a suspension of your license until the second offense, third offense, but here in the Dora, you know, it's a bit tighter, and beyond that, every tenant participating in the stadium Dora will also be subject to a contract with Boyd Sports where we are going to take that extremely seriously.

Well, I will say I like hearing that Boyd Sports will have its own additional security if need be to monitor the the perimeter.

I think that's good, so it's not putting an additional um task on our officers.

You may see some of our officers there if it's a second job, but um, because I see that.

So the reason I ask about leaving the stadium is they let me leave with my diet Pepsi, but I see them asking other people to pitch their drinks and that will continue.

Right.

Okay, thank you.

Councilmember Thomas.

Yes, I'm gonna support this just in the context of the baseball stadium and the perimeter and you know uh beers drank a lot at baseball stadiums and all that, so it sounds like you've got a good way of controlling it and making it a little bit more friendly.

Um the question I had uh actually was the relationship between this Dora and the one in Market Square.

So this is just on the agenda for the uh stadium area.

Is there another DORA that's gonna be become for us on City Council on Market Square or No, that's a been a separate process.

Uh basically this was passed in the legislature a year ago, but we you know, we thought the it would be strange if you know the stadium had uh this opportunity, whereas Market Square who'd been asking for many years didn't get similar timing.

So that was moved moved forward through a different path through the state legislature, and it doesn't require any further action by council.

And by the way, these are pilots, you know, we're starting off with baby steps.

We'll see how it goes.

I just so the decision to make uh market square a DORA was made at the state level and not with approval of the city council.

They gave us the authority to create that that DORA.

Is that uh accurate?

Yeah.

We don't have to do it, but then we are choosing to do it concurrent with this one, so both small business, you know, both the local businesses who've been wanting this have the opportunity to try it out with the cities in partnership with the city.

So are we voting on just the stadium DORA?

Okay.

And the geographic area.

Right.

So the market square DORA.

Will that come before city council at a later thing?

Where when did the city council approve that?

How did that get approved?

It it went through the General Assembly, it's a little bit different path.

I'm you know, I'm not sure exactly what the uh what the the different legalities of that were, but that was the path that was uh recommended to us.

Again, alcohol rules are a little obscure to me.

Yeah, I was just curious how I'm not necessarily saying it's a bad idea.

I'm just trying to understand how Dora for the ballpark came before us and we made decisions on whether or not it was a good thing, and how the Dora for Market Square doesn't seem to be under a purview.

No, it's actually more under a purview because uh what could have happened is, you know, thanks to the partnership with Void Sports, they could have gone forward and said we're just gonna do this without collaboration with the city.

Um, but thankfully they're really uh good partners because they've you know and they knew that we would be better off if we partnered together because you know, KPD and public service and the you know the impact on surrounding businesses and so forth.

So um that's sort of my best description of it.

Ms.

Ball, do you have a a little further clarity that you can add?

It's it's a little confusing to be honest.

So state law trumps what we do here often times.

I know that's not a new conversation for uh city council members and so no other action, and actually between Charles and Curtis is very familiar with this as well as this is you know, definitely directly in his space are also perfectly capable of providing a more detailed answer, but it's it's really down to the way that these two pieces of legislation both went through the state legislature, and one required this and one did not.

So the state legislature could uh approve a DORA for market square, and we didn't the city council or city didn't have any.

No, we knew about that legislation and we were finally.

I think we knew about it, but uh it seems to me like it should have come before council to authorize it, whether it was a good idea or not.

I'm just wondering how suddenly we get a DORA passed in city council and it didn't come before the city council.

I mean, I'm sorry, in market square, but we had no say in authorizing it or encouraging it or denying it.

I just uh I don't quite get how this happened in Nashville and is going into market square, and you know, some of the issues that uh councilman rant.

We might have wanted to discuss those issues about people coming out of bars with cigarettes and beer in the street.

I'm not saying it's a bad idea.

It's just, you know, sounds like we kind of lost our sovereignty somewhere about what we do in market square.

That's why we created the the legislation from the state does not have any mention of a DORA at all.

That's why we created uh that particular program.

To have those regulations so that we could put into place how we want how we felt like would be best for Knoxville to manage this based on how we manage other events like that.

But who is we that we thought that you know we should institute this?

Who's who's we?

Oh well, well, we're we created this in response to many years of input from Market Square merchants.

I know, but were you the administration?

Were you the decision makers that decided that Dora was appropriate for Market Square?

We're launching a pilot uh and you know, we'll see how it unfolds.

And uh we also wanted to just make sure that we were treating market square merchants uh you know uh who'd been asking for this, not letting uh the stadium uh get ahead of other businesses that have been around much longer.

It was sort of um that was sort of part of our thinking.

But again, this is a pilot, and you know, we'll see how it unfolds, and if we uh collectively think that it's not working well, we can suspend it, or certainly not expanded, all of those things.

So if the administration basically basically unilaterally decided that we will implement this pilot, and uh what opportunity would the city council have to say this is not working and we want to um revoke it.

It sounds like it was completely implemented without by the administration without any input or authority by the city council.

That's what I that's why I don't understand.

It's not necessarily that it's wasn't a good idea, but it's just like how can the administration decide that they're going to put a door on market square without any input or uh authorization from from city council?

I don't I don't I don't it doesn't set very well with me to be honest about it, even if it's a good idea.

Okay, well, thank you.

I'm welcome.

Council uh Miss Ball, did you have something to add?

Uh any further questions or discussion?

Again, the vote is about the stadium.

Uh the general plan for void sports.

All those in favor, please say aye.

Any opposed?

Motion carries.

Next item, please.

12 AE is a resolution authorizing the mayor to execute an agreement with Rogers Group Incorporated in and amounts not to exceed 4,583,319 for the 2026 resurfacing phase two project districts three, four, and five.

Motion made to approve seconded.

Any questions or discussion?

Seeing none, all those in favor, please say aye.

Any opposed?

Motion carries.

12 AF is a resolution authorizing the mayor to sign all documents necessary with Knoxville Knox County planning to conduct the Taswell Pike corridor study in an amount not to exceed 250,000 dollars.

Council District 4.

Motion to approve.

Motion made to approve and second it.

Any questions or discussion?

Seeing none, all those in favor, please say aye.

Any opposed?

Motion carries.

12 AG is a resolution authorizing the mayor to execute an agreement with SCU bus lines LLC to provide transportation services to participants in various programs sponsored by the City of Knoxville Parks and Recreation Department for an annual contract amounts not to exceed $70,000 per year, plus approved annual escalation capped at 3.5% annually.

Motion made to approve and seconded.

Any questions or discussions?

Seeing none, all those in favor, please say aye.

Any opposed?

Motion carries.

12 AH is the resolution authorizing the mayor to execute a contract between the city of Knoxville and Taylor's lawn Service to provide grounds maintenance at Shahowe Park for the first nine-month term not to exceed fifty-nine thousand three hundred ten dollars, and for successive terms as an annual amount not to exceed 82,020.

Sarah Motion move to approve.

Motion made and second.

Any questions or discussion?

Councilmember Grant.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um some concerns.

Um I feel like I've we've had certain contracts come up.

Um, and I do kind of find myself being somewhat repetitive, but when I look at this particular contract, the RFP was sent out March 26th.

Um, and I just have an issue with companies outside of the city of Knoxville and outside of Knox County continuing to get contracts when we have qualified businesses here, especially with long care.

I could probably name a hundred lawn care companies that we have here.

Um and I get we have a process, I get, you know, I think our procurement does a great job, right?

They work within the confinement of what they can do.

Um, and I know these RFPs are public, and local businesses do have the opportunity to participate.

Um, but I think we can do a better job of making sure that these companies know, right?

Know that these RPs are going to be coming.

And so when you talk about Chihuahua Park, obviously um, you know, we're we're taking major strides in terms of making it a public space, which I definitely appreciate.

Um, but with that also comes the economic opportunities that local businesses can benefit, right?

Um mentioned public service, right?

Lawn care.

I mean, these some of these contracts that we are putting out, our public service workers could do.

Um, I'm not gonna support this, and I know it's in my own district.

I know the common practices just kind of been um this is the process, um, but I can't keep continuing allowing outside contractors that don't reside in the city of Knoxville to continue to take taxpayer dollars.

In this case, it's Blaine County, doesn't live here, doesn't hire here.

Um, and so I'm gonna stand my ground on this one.

Um, I'm not gonna support this contract.

Thank you.

Okay, council member Adams.

Uh thank you.

Um something that Councilmember Grant said made me think about the um RFP bid process in the field that I work in, and he was asking about the ability for firms to know about the the RFPs or the bids that are going out.

And this, I don't know if the finance department can feel this question, but when um is there a system in place where if I am a particular type of provider, I can go on to the city site and say I want to receive all RFPs that are okay.

You're nodding.

Absolutely, there is.

When is the breakfast coming up?

It's really soon.

I think next Thursday.

Yeah, next Thursday, real quick.

At that breakfast, we invite all members of the local business community to be aware of what's coming up so they can prepare accordingly.

And it's for city but also KUB, KCDC, the airport, and CAT.

Uh and I was familiar with the breakfast and sort of open house, but the I think as a provider, the most valuable thing is having those alerts that say there's a new bid out there, and you know, you can look at it then, and you may or may not be eligible for it.

But Mr.

Evans, does the purchasing department?

We use something called Bid Net.

Yeah, I'm familiar with that.

Yeah, it it notifies people when you've put in and said you do that kind of if you said you do mowing and landscaping stuff, and something comes out related to that, it notifies you that this is out there.

Yeah.

Uh also we we are our diversity outreach office, uh, with Miss Coffham and uh Luis, uh, they also do their best to let businesses know, local businesses, at least within the MSA, know that uh something's out there for them to uh to bid on.

Uh but the truth is when you get down to brass tax on weighing the bids or proposals or however it's put out, you can't use local preferences of as a factor.

We've tried to do that in the past.

You just we're not allowed to.

I understand that.

I appreciate you very much answering the question.

When you said bid net, that told me what I needed to know because that does mean as a provider, if you want to engage in that that government process, then you can sign up for that and get those alerts.

And I think that's correct.

So making sure that as district reps we have the ability to point people to that so they know that they can get in that system is a step in the right direction.

Yeah, if they're registered, they get automatic notices saying, hey, there's something out there for you, you know, based on what you've said you provide, you go look at it and you know that's and I I know that there's eligibility, there's um, you know, the best price, there's so many factors that go into each bid that you're working on, but I'm happy to know that they're you're using a product like that.

Yes, ma'am.

Council member Honeycutt.

Thank you, mayor.

Uh I appreciate uh councilman grant's uh statements regarding local businesses and making sure we you know um show preference to locals and making sure locals have a chance to participate and and benefit from these contracts uh as a local business owner, I I couldn't agree more.

Uh I guess on this particular contract, do we know how many bids we received for this work?

I actually called.

I'm gonna because I had the same question, and uh was told that we had six six bids, yeah.

Uh and and I guess it's low this is the low bid from those six bids.

That's Mr.

Evans, if you could put your mic on, yeah.

If this was what we call a hard bud where price drives it all, then yeah, it would be the low bid wait when I got the purchasing agent.

Uh yeah, okay, we have six, and like I say, if it's a hard bid, then the price is gonna drive the train.

Uh sometimes there's other factors if it was done with an RFP, such as you know, your track record, are are you capable of taking on something like this?

Uh, but this was an evaluated one.

Uh so there were other factors in the evaluation criteria.

So, okay, so it was a qual qualifications base, not just price.

Well, qualifications and price, you know.

I mean, you might be thinking of RQ, like the architecture, it wouldn't be that price would be a part of.

Oh, yeah.

Uh, and I guess so.

Six bids, they came in for you know, based on qualifications and price were picked as the uh as the successful firm.

I get the only other question, or not other question, only question, but there's a the there's one which is where we're executing the current agreement for the next nine months.

Uh, then there's the term that says and for successive terms, an annual amount not to exceed 82.

Is that for clarity reasons?

I guess this voice this could is for you.

Is that basically us saying that we will not only are we approving this for nine months, but we're approving basically successive contracts with the same group that could go on.

Yeah, I and I don't have that is correct.

I don't have the AIS in front of me for this one, but uh a lot of times they're one year base contract with two each, one renewal options, whatever that says is uh what it would be for those subsequent terms.

Right.

So do we know how many years that is that's for this project?

I do not have that right in front of me.

Yeah, I believe it's two at least two.

It's usually one base and two one-year options, but they are optional.

Okay.

Yeah, we always we always have the and we used to have to do that a lot of times with you know, lawn service companies have to terminate for you know, poor workmanship or whatever.

So that's not an automatic renewal.

Okay.

If I mean I guess if one thing, of course, is to um, you know, to turn down the resolution as a whole, um, which means, you know, obviously not servicing the mowing in the park for the next nine months or making it more challenging.

I guess is there an option where you basically just remove the successive terms so that you can approve the first contract for nine months and then it will be rebid.

I presume you could do that, we'd just be bidding it up.

I mean, just so you know, you we do lawn contracts uh for many parts of the city, it's pretty, you know, so and we are always looking for the best value, and uh we do have uh purchasing staff specifically who spend their days trying to do outreach to local small businesses, women-owned businesses, veteran owned businesses, um, and that is their job, and I'm sure they did their best to do that uh on this as well as all the other contracts.

So I'm just uh you know, there's a lot of work to go into every little contract, and sometimes there's benefits in terms of efficiency.

Uh you know, that we do a lot of contracts and a lot of purchasing and and having those uh ability to renew uh can just get make us give our attention to the next contract.

Right.

But it is optional for the city to renew, correct?

Yeah, okay.

Thank you.

Um Vice Mayor.

Thank you.

I just want to double check on the record, one more time, it is illegal to give preferential treatment to local contractors.

In the state of Tennessee, you're not allowed to provide uh local preference.

That is correct.

Thank you.

Councilmember Adams.

I wanted to say that again that I appreciate what Councilman Grant is saying, and I had some questions as well because I thought about um local providers that uh do robotic uh types of mowing when I thought about some of the areas in Shilhowie Park that are large and I thought, oh, you know, maybe that's one of the places that would be appropriate.

I I don't know that it is, but it just came to mind.

Um and I I called uh Ms.

Butzler to to ask, like, is that something that's considered just in terms of options for agreements, you know, meeting sustainability goals and that sort of thing.

Do you have any comments uh on this contract uh as it relates to what we're talking about right now, uh in terms of impact with this or selection or or anything about the the mowing contracts that could be beneficial to our conversation right now?

You actually just turned the mic off.

Yeah, thank you.

If you could just say state who you are for us.

Rachel Butzler, director of the public service department.

Um there is nothing in the contract that would specifically preclude exclude um robotic mowers, but we're gonna go through and make sure that there's anything that we could encourage for alternative means of mowing in the future.

Um and I guess I just wanted to clarify about the make sure it's clear that 59,000 is for the first year, and that's because it's not a full mowing cycle, because we're not starting until July, and then that increase is because that will be a full mowing cycle.

Um and in in the past, if they've done a fine job, we typically um extend it, but I think that if there's any issues that we would not have to um uh accept that extension.

So but I I guess too, in terms of um we would we have folks that typically will submit for mowing contracts, but we've had really hard time with lawnscaping landscaping contractors.

So that is something too that, you know, if they would sign up on bid net, we would love to have more people handling um the landscaping.

And typically we we uh contract out the mowing because that's a little bit more basic and it's the landscaping that's a lot more complicated, like all the streetscapes and the specialty landscapes, you know, down at um Fort Dickerson and Baker Creek.

Um so that's where, you know, if we don't have enough folks to handle everything, we'll contract out the more basic stuff like mowing and take the more complicated jobs for internal internal work.

Councilmember Grant.

Yeah, um, and I appreciate Councilwoman Adams.

Um but I, you know, I just want to be clear, I do not have a problem with the process.

I understand that we can't prioritize local businesses.

What I do feel like we can do is a better job of notifying and equipping these local businesses to get involved in the bidding process.

Because the more local businesses we have, the more that dollar stays home and it circulates throughout the community.

And so while you may have low bid here outside of the city of Knoxville, and you have a bid that's a few more dollars, but it's local, that dollar is going to stay here.

People live here, people work here, people shop here.

That's not the case when we use outside companies.

That dollars, those funds are gone and it's not circulating.

So I'm just wanting us to think about that in the future in terms of how we can better equip our local businesses to just be a part of the process because there is a stigma of we're not going to get it anyway.

I hear that from companies, right?

And so of course you can say, okay, well, that's that's you making that decision, but I think as a as a city, we can just do a better job of equipping local businesses so they can have an opportunity to compete for these local dollars.

So that's that's just my stance and where and where I'm standing on that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And and council member, if you have some ideas on how we can improve that outreach, uh let us know.

We're we're all ears.

Um any further questions or comments?

Saying none, all those in favor, please say aye.

Any opposed?

Motion carries.

Next item.

12 AI is a resolution authorizing the mayor to execute any law documents necessary to award a total amounts, not to exceed 117,790 from the historic preservation and facade improvement program to McCarty Hall South and McCarty Architects Incorporated for the restoration and reuse of property located at 760 Stone Street 6th District.

Move to approve.

Motion made to approve and seconded.

Um, mayor, sorry, uh, if you don't mind.

I was gonna call in.

I thought, yes, uh, Councilmember Honeycutt.

Oh, thank you.

Sorry.

Uh I because of my relationship uh to the applicant, I will recuse myself from the vote and discussion.

Thank you.

Okay.

And duly noted, Councilmember DeBartley.

Um I am the listing broker for this building, so I will recuse myself as well.

Okay.

Now we're down to there's only eight presents, eight present, so we're down to six voting members.

Um, okay.

Uh councilmember Grant.

I would move to approve.

Okay.

We got it.

But already was yeah, okay.

Um any further questions or discussion?

Seeing none, all those in favor, please say aye.

Any opposed?

Motion carries six zero.

Two.

Okay.

12 a.m.

is a resolution approving the issuance of a certificate of compliance to Nikittish Liquor and Wine LLC, DBA Concord Liquor and Wine, relative to its application to the Tennessee Alcoholic Beverage Commission for a license to operate a liquor store in the city of Knoxville 5th district.

Okay.

Uh is there a motion?

Mayor, I was thinking there might be a speaker here today.

Um, oh yeah, 12 a.m.

Okay, yeah, we don't hear anybody without an ocean motion.

Is there a motion?

Uh yeah, I move to deny.

Okay, motion is to deny this resolution.

Is there a second?

Second.

Okay, motion has to deny has been made and seconded.

Uh, we do have someone uh signed up to speak on this.

Uh Jamin Patel.

Is that uh you need to turn the microphone on.

My name is Dignish Patel.

Uh, live at 825 Concord Crossing Knoxville.

Uh have applied this certificate of compliance uh to get a legal license from state.

And I have been told that uh the property is located uh across the cemetery.

Uh far as my you know, my research, the cemetery does not have um funeral house or the chapel house, and uh it is uh between the property and a cemetery that is uh state highway for land.

So I've seen other business, you know, the down the road that is a liquor store, it's you know, right behind uh residential area.

So I don't know why uh it's denial.

Uh just you know, if you guys consider or you know, just have some thoughts for that uh denial.

Okay, thank you.

If if council members have a question later in their discussion, they can ask you.

Thank you.

Um there is one person signed up to speak in opposition to this item.

Jiman Patel.

Sorry if I mispronounced your name.

If you could say it's your name and address for the record, you have that for three minutes.

Respecting members of council, um, my name is Jamin, uh 8351 Blockhouse Way, Knoxville, Tennessee.

Um, I'm here to respectfully urge you to follow your own law department's findings and deny this application.

Um I want to be direct about why this matters and why the law is clear, uh, not just based off of complete um other reasons, but just completely off the law.

New Grey Cemetery has stood at 2724 Western Avenue for 133 years.

It's an active cemetery, it performs cremations, it holds memorial services, it buries Knoxville's families.

The Tennessee Funeral Board Funeral Board has licensed it as a funeral and bureau service facility.

The largest mortuary company in North America operates it every single day, grieving families cross Western Avenue to bury someone they love.

The city's law department pulled the official Knox County GIS measurement.

The distance from the proposed liquor store to the New Grey Cemetery's property line is approximately 150 feet.

Your ordinance requires 500 feet.

The location is not even close to compliance.

Now, the applicant submitted a survey letter certifying that this location complies with all distance requirements under section 4-131.

That letter does not mention New Gray Cemetery.

Not once, not anywhere.

I want you to think about that.

This applicant owns the building at 2333 Western Avenue.

He operates a business in that building today.

He crosses that intersection.

He can see New Gray Cemetery from his front door.

He knows it's there.

He has always known it is there.

And yet his surveyor certified compliance without measuring the cemetery, without naming it, without acknowledging it exists.

That's not an oversight.

You don't look over a 68-acre cemetery that has occupied the same block since 1892.

You do not accidentally fail to mention that most prominent institution directly across the street from the location you're trying to get certified.

That omission was omission was deliberate.

The applicant knew this location, does not qualify.

He knew the cemetery was there.

He submitted a certification designed to hide that fact from this council and from the city's law department, hoping no one would ask questions.

Under Tennessee Supreme Court precedent, the burden of proving compliance relies and rests entirely on the applicant.

They chose not to meet that burden.

They chose to hide the reason why they could.

Three Tennessee Attorney Generals have concluded that an active cemetery that sells plots and is regularly visited by the public is a place of public gathering protected under distance ordinances, exactly like Section 4-131.

New Grey Cemetery sells plots.

It is visited every single day.

It has served this community for 133 years.

The law department has recommended that this application be denied based on legal facts.

I don't know if there's much more to say.

Uh law requires that a uh business of this sort be at least 500 yards from a uh place of public gathering and public gathering, according to a couple of attorney generals' opinion, clearly includes an active cemetery and uh the new cemeteries and active cemetery.

So I don't know what else there is to say.

Well, um, I don't either, so that's why I base my motion to deny.

It's just simply um facts and law on this one.

So okay, just to clarify, the motion on the floor is to deny.

So a yes vote will deny this uh resolution.

Any further questions or discussion?

Seeing none, all those in favor, please say aye.

Any opposed?

Motion to deny carries.

Next item, please.

13 AN is an ordinance appropriating the total sum of 4,500 from the community safety and empowerment budget, and nothing same to various qualified organizations for events for youth as part of the Empower Knox event grants program.

Motion made to approve and seconded.

Any questions or discussion?

Seeing none, all those in favor, please say aye.

Any opposed?

Motion carries.

Okay, now we'll move to uh public forum.

We have uh five people signed up.

First is Chris Patterson, Chris Patterson.

Are you present?

Okay.

My name is Chris Patterson, live at 197 Grandview Drive, Manorville.

You find my notes if you don't care real quick, work with me for a second.

Mayor, City Council.

My name is Chris Patterson.

I'm medically retired, Knoxville fighter captain who broke his back while saving a life.

Serving the citizens in Knoxville after giving 20 years to this city.

I'm standing here tonight because once again, Sedgwick, our third party administrators, make it hard for me to get surgery.

That's medically required, medically necessary for me to be out of pain.

This is not the first time I've had to stand for council and fight for treatment.

But I'm gonna be seriously honest with you, it's getting really exhausting.

It feels like Cedric keeps moving the goalpost.

Every time I meet jump through one of the hoops, I'm faced with another obstacle.

I meet all my requirements, I make my appointments, every document gets turned in.

Yet somehow I'm always facing another delay, another denial, another excuse.

Please bear with me, I'm hurting a lot tonight.

Meanwhile, this is happening.

I'm the one living in pain every single day.

I've also been fighting for social security disability since October of 2023.

I was injured in 2022 in December.

The reason I've been fighting for social security is because the terminology that City Knoxville uses when I was waiting to get retired is light duty.

Transitional duty.

They said they showed that shows I can see gainful employment, and I've been denied my social security four times.

I'm not going to federal court.

Probably here.

Now that that's sinking.

I'm at 50% tax-free pay.

Try to get surgery, and I'm paying 100% of my health insurance premiums besides what is covered by working as comp.

I didn't get hurt at home.

I didn't get her doing something reckless.

I got her saving a life serving this city.

I'm asking City Council, please.

I had a lot of discussion.

I've heard a lot about long care.

I've heard a lot about things.

Please step in.

Stop this from happening.

My doctors have said I need surgery.

Now I want to get it.

I'm the one that has to go through this pain.

Thank thank you, Mr.

Patterson.

Next person on public forum sign up list is Famika Elliott.

Is Miss Elliott here?

Okay.

If you could come to the podium, please state your name and address for the record.

You'll have up to three minutes to address counsel.

Um Famika Elliott 37912.

My name is Famika.

I'm the executive director of the Rudy East Knoxville Collective, an agriculture-based community organization.

My work centers on protecting land, water, food systems, and the people who depend on them.

And tonight, I'm asking this body one simple question.

Who are you accountable to?

Because right now, many residents do not feel like it is the people of Knox County.

At the last commission meeting, what we witnessed was not caution or oversight.

It was a public utility, making the economic case for more AI scale industrial expansion.

We heard that massive power users spread fixed costs.

We heard that water use is manageable, but accountability requires transparency, and the public still does not have it, unfortunately.

Because what was admitted publicly is deeply concerning.

No one can fully track how much groundwater may be pulled from private wells tied to these facilities.

That means we do not actually know how much water is being removed from the county every day.

We do not know the long-term impact during drought, and we do not know the impact on surrounding communities, farmland, or ecosystems.

As someone working in agriculture and community food systems, I need the room to understand water, energy, farming, and climate are all connected.

And just because this isn't your backyard does not mean you can turn a blind eye or be complicit.

Unfortunately, it is always our beloved East Knoxville community, never west, never south, never north.

When industrial-scale AI and crypto operations consume enormous amounts of water and electricity, the pressure does not stay inside one building.

It affects our farmers and our food system.

It affects land, water access, it affects long-term sustainability for the people who actually live there.

And history shows us something we cannot ignore across this country.

Heavily industrial projects are repeatedly placing rural communities and communities of color under the promise of economic growth.

Those communities are told the risk are manageable, that the jobs will justify it, that the benefits will come later, and we know those are the biggest lies and crimes against humanity.

But too often what comes later is environmental strain, depleted resources, natural resources, uncertain bill costs and residents left carrying the burden.

Knox County should not become the next example of that pattern.

What concerns me most tonight is not just the scale of these facilities.

It is erosion of public trust.

Residents asked for a temporary pause instead.

This county chose to continue while studying the issue in real time instead of calling your constituents in.

Zero plan, zero answer, zero regulation prior to this establishment of Bit Deer, someone who does not actually live here.

That is not protective leadership.

That is reacting after the infrastructure is already in place.

And your constituents are now paying attention.

Whether people have the capacity to come here or not and speak, people are watching the votes, people are watching social media, people are asking questions.

People want transparency on water power contracts and long-term impacts.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next person is Khalil White.

If you could uh come to the podium, please state your name and address for the record, and you'll have up to three minutes to address counsel.

Good evening.

My name is Khalil White.

I am also a member of the Rudy East Knox Collective, and I am one of the ambassadors for the Black Girl Environmentalist Knox Hub.

As an ambassador, I am tasked with providing education resources and opportunities for black women, girls, and gender-expensive folks about our environment, sustainability, and the climate workforce.

Tennessee is a beautiful state with so many wonders that we have the luxury of having access to, most notably being the Appalachian Mountains with all the amazing wildlife, native plants and trees, crisp air, and freshwater streams.

It's critical that we not only care about the environment we have around us, but the amazing people who live, love, and tend these lands.

Data centers have been a hot topic conversation across our nation, and as many community members have taken a stance against this complete takeover of land, disregard of community and environmental health, and backdoor agreements that pad the pockets of elected officials to go against their constituents' wishes.

We have already seen the detrimental impacts to communities with a facilities like this, specifically the environmental racism taking place in Memphis, Tennessee in the Boxtown community.

There have been complaints about increases in electricity bills, low to no water pressure in homes, chemical air pollutants, and wastewater being dumped in their water sources.

And while I cannot say that we can have we can get rid of them, even though I think that'll be the best for everyone, what I ask for you all tonight is to demand more regulations and transparency on data centers.

Roughly there are 10 data centers currently in Knoxville, Tennessee, and most don't have permission information about the megawatts that they are producing at a full outpower capacity.

Out of the 10 currently, BitDear is the largest operating at 86 megawatts as of April 2026.

And they're expected to grow and potentially have higher outputs by the end of this year.

While most of the data centers have here seem to be in small office spaces, BitDear, which establishes itself in 2020 has a crypto mining company, sits on the French Broad River downstream from IMS Nature Center.

And their current plans is to complete phase one of their data center conversions by the end of this year.

While the website says they are prioritizing uh sustainability and looking at green energy solutions, their most recent annual report states that their mining and AI data center operations are energy intensive, which may restrict the geographic locations of their operations, giving rise to community opposition and negative environmental impacts.

So my question to you tonight is what are we doing to ensure that our community is aware of how these down data centers will impact their quality of life?

As an elected official, are you willing to compromise your morals to sell out your constituents?

What are y'all going to demand more regulations in place for data centers before we have no choice?

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next person signed up to speak is Lindsay Jureemco.

Lindsay Remco, 1750, Hillwood Drive.

Um, on May 16th, I sent you all the internal controls manual, which I got from uh public records request.

Um I am curious if any of you have ever seen it before.

It has a lot of very helpful and interesting information in there about our city processes.

Um I asked um you're also city employees, so um it's worth mentioning.

Since on page three of this manual, it says um that management must ensure this manual shared with all of its employees.

Uh I asked around, um, pretty much anybody uh I could ask, uh, that was the city employee, some city council members, if they had seen the internal controls manual, and um, as far as I can tell, nobody has seen this thing before.

Um, and that is why I'm talking to you today about that.

Uh according to the Tennessee Comptroller's Internal Controls Guide, uh, you all are considered management in addition to being city employees.

And so when this states as such management must ensure that the manual shared with all of us and all of its employees, you count as part of as part of uh who should be ensuring that sharing.

And I know that might feel a little bit weird since many of you probably have never seen it before, but surprised, it exists, nobody's seen it, and uh you're responsible for distributing it and making sure it's distributed.

Umilia Parker, Councilmember Parker asked CFO Boyce Evans if um if it was just uh dispersed to all city employees.

And his response was the internal controls manual relates to internal controls within the operations of the finance department as it speaks to things like payroll, accounting, cash management, procurement, accounts payable, the issuance of debt, and finance department functions.

This document has been provided to division chiefs within the finance department, so not all city employees.

Um, I believe that this is important, and I will be bothering all of you.

I think you're familiar with uh with how persistent I can be.

So I'm just warning you ahead of time that I will be following up to make sure that you are ensuring that all city employees are receiving this manual.

And I want to leave you with some guidance from the government accountability office, which they are cited also on page three, um, which is where the comp trolers getting their um their directives from are basing their internal controls uh guide on.

And so that quote from the GAO is an effective internal control system increases the likelihood that an entity will achieve its objectives.

Um, I'm sorry, let me let me skip back to this other one.

People are what make internal control work.

Management is all levels of the entity's organizational structure, including program and staff.

Please distribute it.

I will be in touch.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um last speaker is Piper Vasalo.

If you could come to the podium, state your name and address for the record, you'll have up to three minutes to address council.

Hello, my name is Pip Fasalo.

I live at 523 North Bertrand Street, um, here in Knoxville.

Um, all of us have been experiencing the appearance of AI, and we are already seeing the duality of harm and benefit from this insidious innovation.

Increased efficiency of time-intensive data sorting at the same time that the work of artists and authors is being stolen without compensation and used to train AI models to regurgitate generative work, which is now quickly filling the internet with plagiarized work in the form of articles, music, art, and videos.

It's estimated that more than 50% of new articles posted on the internet are now AI generated.

There are more concerning and disturbing cases of AI usage than I have time to present to you all right now.

All of this is only possible through the explosion of data center construction that we've seen in recent years, now with a new boom due to AI expansion.

These centers are facilities built to house computers and data storage systems that make up the internet as we know it.

The Knox County Commission has approved a resolution to begin the arduous process of regulating new data center construction here, but there has already been a significant lack in addressing important public concerns relating to these matters.

There are around 60 data centers already present in Tennessee, most of which are not specifically related to AI.

In Memphis, XAI has now built a dual facility for running the AI model GROC.

There have been a litany of public health concerns related to the massive amount of energy and water required to run these supercomputers 24 hours a day, and where these resources are being extracted from.

Initially, XAI used dozens of gas turbines, which violated the Clean Air Act, and as of October of last year, they're purchasing 150 megawatts of power from TVA when it is estimated to take more than double that to power the facility.

Increased usage can result in increased costs, and these costs should not be shifted onto the public.

Yet, historically, because of the way our systems operate, they have been.

Despite promises for advancement, our most vulnerable communities consistently bear the brunt of negative effects of industrial progress in the forms of pollution, increased cost of living, illness, and etc.

There needs to be an emphasis on public education when it comes to these matters, especially new data center construction and AI safety.

We need to ensure that environmental concerns, local community impact, and personal safety are all being considered when it comes considered when it comes to regulation.

As city council, I think you should use the power you have to take action while there is still time.

Other states are working to control cities' jurisdiction over data center construction.

Knoxville should consider a moratorium on such construction within city limits until more is determined about the effects.

Public office requires integrity before expansion happens, not after.

Knox County's land, water, grid stability, and agricultural future are not bargaining chips for speculative industrial growth going to the highest bidder.

They are public resources, and the people are watching what you choose to protect.

I urge this body to pause further expansion until enforceable safeguards, educational focus groups, environmental oversight, and full public transparency are in place.

Thank you.

Council members, that concludes the people who signed up for public forum, and without