Business carries on in mayor's absence

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HUNTSVILLE — As Mayor George Potter recovered at a Knoxville hospital Monday, it was business as usual for the Board of Aldermen.

Potter, who suffered a heart attack on Thursday and underwent quadrupal-bypass surgery Monday morning, requested that the board not postpone its scheduled meeting on his behalf.

With pressing action needed on a potential grant application, City Recorder Wendy Buttram said Potter—who is in his fourth term as Huntsville’s mayor—asked board members to go ahead with the regular session in his absence.

“He called me Friday and said, ‘I don’t want to see any of you over here Monday; go ahead and have the meeting,’” Buttram said.

As the meeting—presided over by Vice Mayor Mark Love—was called to order, alderperson Sharra Crowley offered Huntsville residents an update on the mayor’s condition.

“The doctor was real pleased [with the outcome of the surgery],” Crowley said. “We thank everyone for their prayers and ask that you continue praying.”

Potter’s empty chair was notable; it was the first meeting of the Huntsville board Potter has not attended since being elected to his first term in 2002.

As the meeting proceeded, the board did indeed act on the grant application, voting 3-1 (with alderman Charles “Buster” Sexton dissenting) to apply for grant funds from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The Rural Development grant, funded by the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act, would provide up to a 75% grant for the Town of Huntsville, provided its application is successful.

Tom Bennett, an engineer with McGill & Associates, informed the board that the town’s 25% match could be financed on a 38-year, low-interest note. “We’re talking a couple of percent (interest),” he said, pointing out that the town’s note for the matching funds would probably be no more than what the town will already need to borrow for critical sewer repairs in the near future.

The board also approved application for a Community Development Block Grant, an 85% grant up to $500,000. Acting on a suggestion by Love, the board opted to seek the CDBG funding for housing needs, rather than adding it to potential stimulus funding for sewer upgrades.

Meanwhile, a previously discussed possibility of scrapping a grant-funded trailhead at New River in order to apply those funds to another project was tabled after the board agreed to reconvene the town’s Recreation Board and seek its input on how to proceed.

The trailhead was funded in 2006 by a $112,000 grant administered by the Tennessee Department of Transportation. Under the proposal, those funds would be added to the $219,400 connector trail project at Scott High School. That project, also funded by a TDOT grant, will see a sidewalk constructed along Scott High Drive from Baker Highway to the parking lot at the SHS ball fields. That parking lot would be paved, and 1,000 feet of sidewalk would be reconstructed at the Lafollette Housing Authority development.

In other business Monday, the board approved the first reading of a rezoning ordinance to change a tract of property at the U.S. 27-S.R. 63 intersection—owned by Joe Potter—from residential to commercial, and approved annual Christmas bonuses for the town’s employees.