Council member Tony Aikens made the motion, seconded by fellow member Mike Henline. It carried unanimously.

In October, the council learned the city is in violation concerning several components of its stormwater management system following an audit, which is still ongoing, by the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation. Codes Enforcement Officer Leslie Johnson said recently she received the anticipated "notice of violation." 

"It's scary when you get a notice of violation," she said. "A lot of times people just automatically associate that you just have to get your checkbook out and issue the state of Tennessee a check and they go away. Not in this case." 

The city has not been fined for those violations.

"I'm happy to say, at this point, it does not look like we are receiving fines," Johnson said. 

"That's a wonderful aspect considering what we did receive in the violation," Mayor Matt Brookshire said. 

He attributed TDEC's not fining the city to Johnson's initiative and efforts to comply with the state agency. 

"I certainly have to think that the reason why that (no fine) happened is because Leslie had engaged state officials and a consultant engineering firm weeks in advance in anticipation of this, and already started so many different ways of rectifying this, that I think they (TDEC) did see, early on, that under her department - her leadership in her department - that it was going to be addressed and everything was going to be brought to you the way it needed to be," he said. 

Johnson simply said TDEC has recognized the city has been very positive and proactive in its measures, and it recognized the city has already spent some money to try to get the program back in line. 

"So they will give us that flexibility to push forward," she added. 

Brookshire also mentioned the street and parks and recreation departments have been involved as well in those efforts. 

"It's a citywide effort to rectify this and keep it moving forward," Brookshire said. 

"Mandated by Congress under the Clean Water Act of 1987, the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) Stormwater Program is a permitting mechanism used by the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) to require the implementation of controls designed to prevent harmful pollutants from being washed by stormwater runoff into local streams, rivers, lakes or coastal waters," according to information Johnson provided to the council last month. 

The first work order was approved to give the city some professional assistance during the TDEC audit, which was performed back in October, Johnson said. "Work order number two was pushed through to provide us some professional assistance in our clean-up effort, which resulted from the audit that showed us our street department had some areas that needed to be tidied up - so that's what that authorization covered."

Monday's authorization, which is number three, is proposed to carry the city through the rest of the fiscal year, taking the city through the end of June 2010, she explained. 

"It helps me get it back onto a budget year, so we can plan for future services," Johnson said. She said this work authorization will assist the her department in implementing and correcting the state mandates listed in the notice of violation. 

"All together we have 14 violations in our stormwater program," she said. "That was not a complete audit. I think by this point, we realized our stormwater program was in trouble, so TDEC is giving us the opportunity, by this notice of violation - in conjunction with our efforts with professional services, as well as staff inhouse - to get our stormwater program back in line where it needs to be," Johnson said.  

She said her office budgeted $25,000 for this budget year. 

"To date, we have contracted out $11,000 of that," she said. "This work order number three would be a maximum of $7,500; so when we do the math, year-end I'm still going to have $6,500 to play with, depending on, as we go through, what else may be required in order for us to come into compliance with TDEC."

In other business, the council amended its minutes to reflect from where the funds are coming in the purchase of a new police car, replacing one wrecked last month. Chief Don White explained the police department has received a check from the insurance company for the wrecked car. 

Part of the money for the car is coming from the Loudon County Metro Narcotics Unit drug fund, which was dissolved last month, and the rest is coming from the insurance check, which had to be placed in the city's general purpose fund.

City Recorder/Treasurer Bobby Johnson Jr. explained the wrecked car was not purchased with drug fund money, so the insurance check had to go into the general fund. 

"We got to take that money. We can use it from the general fund to help purchase the police car," Johnson said. 

White explained $20,317 will be paid from the state drug fund while the remaining amount - $5,083 - will be paid from the insurance company. The total amount of the car is $25,400. The city is purchasing the car from Alexandria Ford Motor Company.