Brandon Donnell Appointed to Fill Third District Vacancy on County Commission

January 28, 2025
By: Dwayne Page

The third district has a new county commissioner.

During Monday night’s regular monthly meeting, the county commission appointed Brandon Donnell to succeed Susannah Cripps as a member from the third district. Donnell was sworn into office by County Mayor Matt Adcock after the meeting. He will serve out Cripps’ term which expires August 31, 2026.

Six people had sought the appointment along with Donnell including Johnny Croom, Eden Nokes, Tim Perricone, Stuart Colwell, and Len Dickens.

The appointee had to get at least seven votes from the remaining 13-member commission in order to fill the vacancy. Donnell received 10 votes from the commission.

The names of Croom, Donnell, and Colwell were placed in nomination from the commission and the vote on each was taken in that order. Commissioners were allowed to vote for more than one candidate.

Croom, nominated by Commissioner Tony Luna, received five votes including from Luna, Larry Green, Beth Pafford, Myron Rhody, and Mathias Anderson.

Commissioner Tom Chandler nominated Donnell and his 10 votes came from Chandler, Larry Green, Greg Matthews, Andy Pack, Mathias Anderson, Glynn Merriman, Daniel Cripps, Jeff Barnes, Sabrina Farler, and Tony (Cully) Culwell.

Colwell was nominated by Commissioner Andy Pack and he received votes from Pack, Tony Luna, Larry Green, Myron Rhody, Mathias Anderson, and Tony (Cully) Culwell.

Donnell, a Smithville Police Department Detective, formally introduced himself to the county commission on Thursday night, as did the other five candidates, during a committee of the whole workshop meeting.

“I am a Christian and attend the Smithville First Freewill Baptist Church. I align myself with conservative values. I am a Republican and a lifelong resident of DeKalb County. I graduated high school here in 2005. I currently work at the Smithville Police Department as a detective. I have been with the department for 14 years. Before that I worked at the DeKalb County Sheriff’s Department for a little over four years. I started working there when I was 19 years old. I have been serving the people of DeKalb County pretty much all of my adult life. My wife is Kaylah. We have been married over 18 years. She is an assistant manager at Wilson Bank & Trust in Smithville. She has worked there over 18 years. I have two children. My son Carson graduated high school last year. He is now a student at Tennessee Tech. My youngest son Collin is an eighth grader at DeKalb Middle School. My whole family lives here. I am going to retire here. I care deeply about this county. I want this county to thrive. I want my kids to graduate here, go off to college and get a good education, come back, start their families here, raise their kids here and be proud of DeKalb County just like I am. I don’t know everything there is to know about all the issues this county is facing but that’s the reason why I would like to serve, to learn more and do more for the betterment of this county,” said Donnell.

The 14-member county commission (two from each district) is made up of nine Republicans, Tom Chandler, Sabrina Farler, Brandon Donnell, Tony (Cully) Culwell, Greg Matthews, Larry Green, Glynn Merriman, Andy Pack, and Mathias Anderson; three Democrats, Jeff Barnes, Beth Pafford, and Myron Rhody; and two Independents, Tony Luna and Daniel Cripps.

January 28, 2025
By: Dwayne Page

The election commission will soon have a new home.

The county commission, during its regular monthly meeting Monday night, voted to relocate the election commission headquarters from the first floor of the courthouse to the unused office space at the county complex. A budget amendment in the amount of $110,000 was also adopted. The money will be appropriated from the fund balance of the capital projects fund. The commission had previously considered taking the money from the general fund balance but Commissioner Larry Green said capital projects is a better alternative.

“The general fund balance should be used for year to year expenses. This (relocating the election commission office) is not a year to year expense,” said Green.

Bids will be accepted to make proposed election commission office renovations at the new location along with the purchase of new office furniture, and setup of the IT network, etc. It could take months before the move is complete but election officials want to have the headquarters relocated in plenty of time before the start of the 2026 election cycle.

The reasons behind the move of the election commission office to the county complex are to tighten security at the courthouse while providing more office and storage space for the election commission. Even though the county complex has been in operation for 12 years, this particular location, originally intended for use by the county mayor’s office was never finished and remains unused.

This issue was on the agenda in December but it was postponed after some members of the county commission questioned whether the county might be acting too hastily without considering other factors. There was a discussion at one point about possibly relocating the election commission to the vacant arcade room and history room at the county complex. Others suggested making the history room, where the county commission holds monthly workshop meetings, an actual history room which is what the new county Historian Freddy Curtis has suggested.

Since the December meeting, the county commission has discovered that the arcade room and the history room, in particular, are frequently used by senior citizens and other groups.

Jan Thomas, speaking on behalf of the senior citizens Monday night, asked that the history room continue to be used by seniors and others.

“The history room is used every day by the DeKalb County Senior Citizens,” said Thomas.” We play volleyball three days a week and on Tuesdays we have a cardio upper body strengthening drumming class. On Thursdays we have a Tai Chi and yoga class. The age range that we are currently serving is from age 62 to 99. Today we have over 30 people come to play volleyball. In addition to the activities that I mentioned, the following uses of the history room have happened in the last 12 months: weddings, bridal showers, baby showers, birthday parties, receptions, meetings of the DeKalb Telephone Cooperative, and even the county commission has met there on Thursday nights. The DeKalb County Board of Education has held teacher in-services. Our DeKalb County Senior Citizens are very active in supporting our veterans. The history room has also been used from time to time as an auxiliary lunch area where we have fed the band and chorus on Veterans Day,” Thomas explained.

“I understand that Mr. Curtis is wanting to honor the history of DeKalb County,” Thomas continued. “When I spoke before the public works committee on January 16 I had the suggestion of the following: Cannon County many years ago formed a Cannon County Historical Society. From there they were able to purchase display cases in which they held the treasured items from families in Cannon County. It is my personal opinion that Mr. Curtis would benefit greatly if he would allow a DeKalb County Historical Society be formed to support him and that it be looked into that display cases be placed in the hallway where the current county offices are starting near Mr. Poss (County Clerk Office) and Mr. Seber (Register of Deeds Office) and down the direction toward Mr. Sean Driver (Trustee’s Office) and Mr. Shannon Cantrell’s Office (Assessor of Property). If you have ever been to the DeKalb County Fair in Alexandria you know that many families are very comfortable bringing their precious family items because they are locked in display cases,” said Thomas.

The arcade room and history room will not be used by the election commission

January 28, 2025
By: Dwayne Page

If you want to rent one of the seven community centers in DeKalb County going forward, you’ll have to pay more.

During Monday night’s regular monthly meeting, the county commission voted to increase the daily rental rate from $50 to $100 at the Johnson Chapel, Belk, Keltonburg, Blue Springs, Midway, Snow Hill, and Temperance Hall Community Centers. The Cherry Hill Community Center is currently under lease. This does not apply to the rental rates at the county complex.

Community center rentals have declined in recent years and so has the condition of some of the centers. The decision by the county to increase the rate is intended to help recoup costs of utilities and upkeep of the centers.

The county received only $6,500 in rental fees from all seven community centers combined in 2024 (140 rentals) and most of that came from the Snow Hill Community Center, which is rented one day each week on weekends by a church group for worship services.

Commissioners have entertained the possibility of selling the centers but are not sure if they can because most of them were funded under the federal model cities program decades ago. Five of them are also used by the election commission as polling locations.

Before the vote to raise the fee, Commissioner Jeff Barnes asked why do that when there is not a demand for rentals now anyway.

“If some of them are not being rented, people may think they are paying too much at $50. I don’t see how $100 is going to make a big improvement in it,” said Commissioner Barnes.

Commissioner Tom Chandler said the county is losing money on the community centers.

“The big reason for doing this is that we have already spent a great deal of money on these community centers in the last year,” said Commissioner Chandler. “We still have a great deal of money to be spent on these community centers in order to bring them up to just basic repair. Even at $50 it is not even half of the estimated cost and at $100 it is still below the estimated expense that sets in front of us. We have eight community centers. One of them is Cherry Hill which we have leased out and we have seven others. Five of them are used as voting precincts. The elephant in the room is that they (community centers) are old. They are in much need of repair. If it wasn’t for the church that is using Snow Hill, collectively these are not getting very much usage. We probably need to be thinking about getting rid of them. Either leasing them out to someone or selling them. The one that might not have an encumbrance on it is Temperance Hall. The encumbrance on the others is that they were built under a federal program that we are probably way beyond the statute of limitations on needing to have it. I don’t understand why we would not at least try to help ourselves in keeping up the maintenance and repairs of these buildings. The alternative to me is to have five other places to have a voting precinct and try to lease or sell them. We have had lots of complaints about the community centers being in bad shape, not cleaned up, etc. To me this is just a stop gap taking this to $100 to help keep these things up but it’s a losing battle,” said Commissioner Chandler.

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