Correspondent

Members of the Claiborne County Industrial Board and the County Joint Economic and Community Development Board met in the Claiborne County Hospital conference room on Friday, Feb. 10th for their monthly meeting.

Steve Lewis opened the meeting for the Industrial Board by welcoming five members of the 2005-2006 Leadership Claiborne Class and Phil Layman from the East Tennessee Development District.

Lewis directed member's attention to the December meeting minutes and after review, the board voted to approve the minutes. He then asked for an update on the Industrial Access Road. Betsy Maples informed the board that the utilities impacting the Industrial Access Road are in the process of being moved and that there needed to be some discussion concerning when the Industrial Board or Claiborne County Utility District would actually pay their part of the matching funds. CCUD is actually the source of the matching funds that are funneled through the industrial board. After some discussion, the board approved a motion to establish a written agreement to support the transfer of funds prior to releasing those funds.

The board also conducted a preliminary review of the budget report. Recent county audits resulted in a recommendation to separate county funds from industrial board funds. This change was reflected in the financial report presented on Feb. 10th. Tom Mottern made a recommendation that the board consider hiring an auditing firm to check the accounts now that the industrial board is responsible for their own bookkeeping. After some discussion, the board voted to approve creating a request for proposal to seek the services of a qualified auditor.

With no other business to discuss, the industrial board turned the meeting over to the Joint Economic and Community Development Board. Board members for that board also conducted a review (and approval) of their previous month's minutes and got down to business. Their first topic recognized a newly re-vitalized Adopt a Highway Program in the county. Members of the Leadership Claiborne class have made this a class project and so far, 10 local organizations have volunteered to keep Claiborne County beautiful by picking up litter along a specific section of public highway. Current Adopt-a-Highway participants include: the Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors; the 05/06 Leadership Class; the Claiborne County Tourism Commission; Citizens Bank; England Inc.; First Century Bank; Harrogate Garden Club; Home Federal Bank; the Overlook newspaper; the Realty network, and the Wilderness Road Kiwanis.

This program lends support to several local counties (including Claiborne) who have banded together to support a common effort to get U.S. Highway 25E designated as a National Scenic Byway. Success in this effort will allow counties to apply for certain grants that will support projects within a 10-mile radius from the highway's path.

The board also discussed the planned county growth plan. Cities have held their public meetings and tentatively decided what each city will request. Herschel Beeler reported that New Tazewell expects to request that the Heritage Baptist Academy (currently adjacent to city limits) be incorporated into New Tazewell. The purpose of the incorporation was to improve fire protection coverage for the school. It was reported that Tazewell expected to request more extensive changes to their city boundaries but details about those requests were not available at the meeting.

The final business item on the agenda was a report that the state was considering a county courthouse square re-vitalization program. Mayor Steve Vass was seeking to have Tazewell chosen as on of the pilot projects under this program and that the city would be following program requirements closely.