Jackson City Council approves agreement with county; makes one change

JACKSON, Tenn. — The third and final vote needed to seal the deal between Madison County and the city of Jackson has been made.

“We felt like we did the right thing, and really we had a good agreement at the end,” Jackson Mayor Jerry Gist said.

Tuesday, the Jackson City Council approved an agreement to split $12 million the city originally gave to the school system but not before making a change.

“It will take care of a situation where the city school system, after a school being used, turn it back over to the city to have it demolished, and we would have to pay to have it demolished. So the language put together on the county side and the City Council today elected to strike that altogether,” Mayor Gist said.

Simply put, the city will still own the property located inside of the city.

Mayor Gist says the decision making isn’t over.

“We’ll probably have some more hard decisions,” Gist said. “That’s why you have elected officials that have to make hard decisions. You’re not going to make everyone happy, and at the end of the day it’s about business.”

Gist says growth can now begin.

“We were giving $12 million to the county each year, and in order to grow this city we needed additional revenue to do it, and it could not be done with no funding,” Mayor Gist said.

The county says the relationship with the city is strained, but Mayor Gist doesn’t necessarily agree.

“They may be strained, but the city’s not,” Mayor Gist said. “We know what our job is, and we moved in the direction we felt like we should in order to move the city forward.”