County Commission meeting schedule, location changing

Mike Taylor is wrapping up his first year as chairman of the Madison County Commission, and the fiscal year of commission meetings – which starts this month – will have a different look to them.

The most obvious change is one neither Taylor nor anyone else on the Commission has any control over. The West Tennessee Ag Center, where the Commission typically has its monthly meetings, has begun a year of renovations.

So while those renovations are going on, the Commission will have their meetings at the Jackson-Madison County Regional Health Department.

“Dealing with this situation, the main thing I wanted was consistency,” Taylor said.

He was referring to a time in years past when the Ag Center was having other renovations and then had to shut down for more than a year because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Commission met in different places during that time. They met at the Madison County Sheriff’s Office in the old West High School gymnasium, the Health Department, the 4-H auditorium on North Parkway where early voting happens and the gymnasium at The Hope Center on Hollywood Drive.

“We thought about using the 4-H auditorium, but we still have one more election this year, and our October meeting would’ve had to have moved,” Taylor said. “And I want things to be as simple as possible.

“So we talked with [Health Department Director] Kim Tedford, and it looks like we can make our meetings work there for the next year or so.”

The other big change is there won’t be as many meetings as usual for the coming year.

Tennessee state law requires each county commission to meet at least four times a year, so anything over that is more than required.

“Madison is a pretty big county, so we obviously need to meet more than four times a year, but there are a couple of months we’ve taken out of the schedule,” Taylor said.

Two months that have been taken out are November and February, and there was a logistical reason behind each of those removals.

“The November meeting is the Monday of Thanksgiving week, and we typically have a low attendance for that month,” Taylor said. “And in February, every year I’ve been on the Commission, that’s usually the month with the lightest agenda and it’s almost to the point that we’re meeting just to meet because we always meet the same time each month.

“Now in both of those months, if something comes up that we need to have an emergency meeting, we’ll call one. But we’re just not scheduling one those months.”

There will be one more change to the schedule as well. The Commission typically meets twice in June and skips the month of July. Taylor will continue to skip July, but there won’t be two scheduled meetings in June.

“We’re not obligated by the state constitution or our own bylaws to approve our budget twice, so there’s no need to vote on it twice,” Taylor said. “But if some of the Commissioners feel we should vote on it twice, I’m still open to that, but the first reading will need to happen in May, which means that every department will need to have their budgets turned into the budget committee even earlier.”

Taylor said that is a discussion that will be had if and when it needs to be before the budget process begins early 2025.

Brandon Shields, brandon@jacksonpost.news