Madison Co. leaders meet for last County Commission meeting of year

JACKSON, Tenn. — Madison County leaders met Monday for the final County Commission meeting of the year.

Some of the major topics were concerns about one local school as well as zoning requirements for gun ranges.

County commissioners discussed plans for Beech Bluff Elementary. The school board would like to turn the school over to the county.

“The County Commission will accept that they were a little reluctant to do it today,” Chairman Gary Deaton said. “It will go into next month. We’ll take care of that and have more discussion about it.”

There were mixed emotions from commissioners regarding a gun range proposal designed to create zoning guidelines.

“There was some concern about that,” Deaton said. “We’re going to look at it in a deeper process and that will be taken care of, but we need more time to put that together.”

Madison County doesn’t have any processes and procedures in place for shooting ranges.

“We didn’t have a process that would abide by state regulations, so that’s why we’re trying to get the zoning properly done in the proper way,” Deaton said.

Director of Planning Stan Pilant presented an option that’s done across the state in various jurisdictions, but county leaders want to go about it differently.

“Commission decided that they wanted to look at the possibility of creating a zone for that so that it would have to go through a rezoning process so that the County Commission would have the final say on whether it was approved or not,” Pilant said.

Pilant has started to get requests from shooting ranges that are already in place.

“You have to give somebody due process,” Pilant said. “So there has to be something there for them to go through for them to either be approved or denied.”

Chairman Deaton said they may have a joint commission to look at the zoning issue further as well as more discussions regarding Beech Bluff. Deaton said there will be a decision by the next meeting in January.