Brownsville mayor addresses State of the City

BROWNSVILLE, Tenn. — The City of Brownsville presented their annual State of the City address.

In it, city leaders discussed the monumental task of upgrading the city’s infrastructure to accommodate the predicted population increase due to new industries coming to Haywood County.

“We’re prepping. We’ve been prepping. That’s the key. See a lot of people didn’t know that there was work being done behind the scenes to develop the community to make sure we were taking care of the people here and the people that will come here as well,” said Brownsville Mayor Bill Rawls.

Rawls says some major projects are being done to prepare for the increase in population when BlueOval City opens in 2025.

One of them is improvements to key roads that lead in and out of Brownsville.

Anderson Avenue and Hatchie Street are both being resurfaced, and Mercer Road is receiving sidewalks.

“We know most of the traffic and the travelers are coming from I-40. The interstate will be coming down one of those particular routes. So with that high traffic volume, with safety being an issue, we’re going to put forth grant funding to pave an restructure and make sure they’re safe,” Rawls said.

The city is also putting a focus on upgrading their existing sewer systems.

Rawls says they have invested grant funds into the sewer to increase the capacity from one million gallons a day to two million gallons.

They will also leave room for add-on reservoirs in the future if necessary.

“If you don’t have the sewer, you can’t build the industrial park, the schools you need, or the housing. No matter what scale, you have to have sewer capacity,” Rawls said.

But with all the new jobs and people coming, where will everyone live?

Rawls says they are using the LRK Architecture Firm to consult with the city and develop plans for single-family homes, multi-family homes, and other community housing as well as community design plans.

“We’ve had community meetings that have gotten input from the community about, ‘What do you want the designs to look like for your community? Which one of these images are most appealing for your future community?’ So we put images on the board and people got to vote through text messages and through their phones so we could say you had a part in developing that,” Rawls said.

One of the things Rawls was proud of was how the City of Brownsville is debt free and how the majority of these changes were from various grants.

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