The Centerville Board of Mayor and Aldermen voted to dissolve the town’s five-ward system with the passage of ordinance 899 on final reading. The ordinance repeals ordinance 478, which established the boundary lines for the five wards in Centerville back in 1985. However, like last month’s vote, the vote on January 14 was not without contention. 

Alderman Derek Newsom reiterated his main concern, that it would make elections more about popularity than actual representation, creating a lack of representation in certain areas. “This is the easiest path I agree, but I think in that easiest path you lose some representation,” Newsom said. “I always hear people talk about ‘Oh the church on the hill runs the city and the county,’ and you’re making it to where that can really happen if you vote for this.”

Alderman Becki Bates also remained opposed. “I think the representation is important. I think we should have done our due diligence and looked into how much it would have cost to reestablish, double-check the populations in the wards since the census,” Bates said.

“If you look, there’s probably more people on this board from Fairfield than from Centerville,” Alderman Terry Barber said in response.

“Well not everybody knows that,” Newsom said. “It has a negative connotation sometimes.”

“I mean we’re a small town and most people know most of us,” Barber said. “I don’t think you have to know what ward you’re in to talk to them about some kind of issue that you may have with the town.”

Mayor Gary Jacobs shared what the town’s attorney had told him in regard to eliminating the wards and how it would affect elections. “He said ‘Consider it as turning the entire town into Ward 1’ and everybody would have 10 aldermen instead of having two,” Jacobs said. “So instead of having to look for a specific two to talk to if you have an issue, you’ve got 10.” Jacobs also said that last month’s vote in favor of the ordinance makes pursuing another option virtually impossible since a resolution must reach the General Assembly before it convened on January 14.

Alderman Wayne Prince believed it would be too long of a process to change to a ward-based system. “I think you’d have to register the people . . . what ward they’re in, they’re not going to know when they come to vote,” Prince said.

“It’d be a long, drawn-out deal,” Jacobs said. “It wouldn’t be completed by the fall elections.”

“But when I go vote on the county level, they look me up and tell me (what ward you’re in),” Bates said. “Why would that seem more difficult for (election administrator Martie Davis) than to do it on a much smaller level?”

“She’d have to register everybody in town,” Prince said.

“We’re talking hundreds versus thousands,” Bates said. “Would all that have to be done before this next election?”

Jacobs said he was not an advocate for one solution over the other, but was presenting “all the information that I have at hand” and that the ordinance was the easiest path to bring the town’s election law within compliance with state law. “We’re forced to make some kind of decision so that we can stay in compliance with the laws of the state of Tennessee, and we’re required to do that,” the mayor said.

Alderman Dagan Bates said it was in the best interest of the town to approve the ordinance and make changes in the future if needed.

“If you make a decision tonight to consolidate,” Jacobs said, “and you decide a year from now this is not what we want, there’s not a thing to stop you from getting with the city attorney . . . and crafting a setup exactly like you want it within the laws of the state. “But my fear is that if we vote this down, if we’ve already started down this path, if we deviate from that and it’s too late to take the other path, it puts us in a position that I don’t think anybody can predict what the outcome will be.”

The ordinance passed with a 7-3 vote. Aldermen Newsom, Becki Bates and Tom Meador voted no.

In other business, the board:

— Unanimously approved Resolution 2025-01 which hires Maury Fence Company of Tennessee, Inc. of Columbia to replace fencing around the Fairfield water tanks for $7,630. “The fencing out there was rotten,” Jacobs said.

— The beer board unanimously approved an application for Emily Blankenship and Caroline Pace to sell packaged beer at Chappell’s, which they now own.

— Unanimously approved Resolution 2025-02 which awarded the contract for 2023 Defeated Creek drainage basin sewer project to Bobby Luttrell and Sons, LLC, for $1,081,500. The company was the lowest bidder.

“This is phase two of the sewer work that we’ve all been dealing with for several years now,” Jacobs said.

— Unanimously approved Resolution 2025-03, which awarded a bid to Bylers Quality Construction, LLC, for $27,414.83 to replace roofing at the Centerville Municipal Golf Course Club House. “The roof out there, from what I’ve been hearing, is that it is deteriorating, and it’s been leaking and there is some rot in the roof,” Jacobs said.

The meeting lasted 42 minutes; all 10 aldermen were in attendance.