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Video recording (YouTube) — Transcript — Meeting began 4:00 p.m., City of Lebanon Administration Building
Attendance: Present — Jeff Baines, Regina Santana, Jody Vance, Tom Clemmons, Phil Morehead, Camille Burdine, Caleb Thorne; engineer/consultant Steve Jones (ex officio); the mayor. Absent — Joey Carmack, Dave Dixon, Randy Lane. Minutes of the June 29 meeting were approved as corrected (a wording correction regarding future access on one site's description).
Following the June 29 vote to forward 12 sites, the mayor's office contacted the property owners to determine willingness to discuss selling. Results, in the committee's ranked order:
| Site | Willing to discuss? |
|---|---|
| 13 / 13A / 13B (Rockwood, Cedar Farms apartment parcel, connecting sliver) | Yes (all three parcels) |
| 13C (fourth parcel of the Site 13 assembly) | No |
| 14 (Permapipe) | No |
| 2 (Mann Road) | Yes |
| 7 / 7A (Horn Springs area + entrance tract) | Yes (both parcels) |
| 5 | No (owner not reached; long understood to be a no) |
| 16, 1, 8, 3, 12, 10 | No |
| 22 (Maple Hill Road) | Yes — with a caveat (see below) |
Net result: four sites with willing sellers — 13, 2, 7, and 22.
The mayor stated on the record that for Site 22, the person he spoke with is "the person who has a contract on that property … not the actual property owner." The willingness to sell was expressed by the contract holder (understood to be the prospective residential developer), not the owner of record. A public commenter later asked whether the actual owner will be consulted before the site advances to city council; per committee practice, public-comment questions were not answered.
The mayor noted the original resolution asked the committee for no fewer than three potential sites, that two councilors have said they want a willing seller, and suggested the four sites could be studied for cost by the chair, the consultant, and the utilities director and taken directly to council. Tom Clemmons agreed, arguing the committee's charge is essentially complete: "we can rate those sites as a committee but pass that on … they should be evaluated based on cost feasibility and then those should go directly into council to make that final decision." Other members preferred that the committee still rank the final four (without cost) before handing off. The committee proceeded on that basis.
Steve Jones distributed an updated packet (with 11×17 maps) adding new information for the four willing-seller sites. A recurring new element: a state law effective July 1, 2026 gives property adjacent to a sewer main the right to request service from that main — likely a reference to HB 2385 / SB 2057 (bill status), which amends T.C.A. § 7-82-710(a)(1) to grant that right to property with an existing gravity sewer line on or adjacent to it. The maps therefore show, for each candidate site, the acreage that would become adjacent to the repurposed effluent force mains and thus gain connection rights. Jones noted the law is ambiguous about the level of service that can be demanded (one house vs. a 500-home development) and expects clarification in the next legislative session. Members also noted annexation implications, since several affected areas lie outside the urban growth boundary.
| Site | Key points from the updated packet |
|---|---|
| 2 — Mann Road | Closest to the effluent force main: only ~1,000 ft of new pipe, roughly $1M — the least piping cost of the four. But: hilltop requiring heavy mass grading; smallest site and smallest buffer; ~14,000 ft of new three-phase power line needed; no geotechnical data, with sinkhole potential a stated concern; 2,730 acres would gain right-to-service adjacency. Significant county-road improvements anticipated (Mann Road narrow and curved); grey-water return to the city considered challenging from this location. |
| 7 — Horn Springs area | Repurposing existing force mains cuts required piping to ~15,000 ft of 36/48-inch pipe, estimated $15.79M (down from >$20M). Three-phase power, water, and gas already at the road. ~2,950 acres would gain force-main adjacency; ~332 acres could drain by gravity (about 100 of that is the site itself; most of the rest already developed). Two pump stations (Summerset, Plantation South) could be eliminated. Site sits at the edge of the urban growth boundary — partly in, partly out. |
| 13 — Rockwood / Hartman Drive | Loss of parcel 13C forced a layout rearrangement: final clarifiers move east onto the Rockwood property, with minor, mitigable floodplain impingement. Line work estimated at $9.85M. Utilities already surround the site; Carver Lane parcel is graded and pad-ready. Open question: geotechnical composition of the Rockwood fill material. Access assumed from Hartman Drive with a new bridge across the creek. Opens only ~102 acres of new gravity service area — it is nearly adjacent to the existing plant. |
| 22 — Maple Hill Road | Extensive due-diligence documents shared by the developer: Phase 1 environmental clean; small family cemetery near a property line (requires buffer and maintained access); streams/wetlands confined to the north and south edges with minimal impact on the buildable area; rock within ~3 ft of the surface (typical for Wilson County). Requires the most piping: ~20,000 ft, estimated $24.9M. Three-phase power ~1,500 ft south. Opens 605 acres of force-main-adjacent property and ~1,330 acres of gravity service; up to eight pump stations could eventually be eliminated. In the city limits and growth boundary; county road may need improvements. |
Common to all four options: the existing plant site remains in service as a transfer pump station with screening, grit removal, and septage receiving — all 17 septage haulers would continue delivering to the current location regardless of which site is chosen.
The committee debated whether it could meaningfully score the "cost" criterion (item 2) of its adopted matrix when land cost, site development/grading cost, and off-site road improvement costs are all unknown — only the pipe-run estimates exist. The chair argued cost is one of the most important factors but that members cannot responsibly guess it; others noted the known pipe costs alone range from ~$1M to ~$24.9M across the four sites. A motion to remove the cost criterion from the matrix passed on a roll call: Baines aye, Santana aye, Vance aye, Clemmons aye, Morehead aye; Burdine no; Thorne abstained. A revised matrix (dated July 21) will be issued without the cost item.
The committee's final ranking of the four candidate sites will now exclude cost entirely — at the same meeting where the engineer presented hard conveyance estimates differing by a factor of ~25 between sites ($1M for Site 2 vs. $24.9M for Site 22). Two public commenters challenged this: one suggested splitting the known "hard" costs (pipe estimates) from the unknown variable costs rather than discarding cost altogether. Cost evaluation now passes entirely to city staff and council, outside the committee's scoring process.