County sets tax rates, eyes new shelter
The Anderson County Commission has approved different property tax rates for different areas.
New rates for the 2026 fiscal year, per $100 of taxable property, are: $1.4889 in the city of Clinton, $1.4065 in Oak Ridge and $1.5037 in Oliver Springs, Rocky Top, Norris and rural Anderson County.
Commissioners approved the new rates during their meeting Monday (July 21).
Library Board
At the same meeting, the commission voted 11-3 to confirm Commissioner Shain Vowell to a seat on the Anderson County Library Board.
He was the choice of the nominating committee over two other candidates, commissioners Anthony Allen and Ebony Capshaw.
Previously, Commissioner Joshua Anderson held the position.
Commissioner Denise Palmer made the motion and Commissioner Tim Isbel seconded.
The only no votes came from commissioners Capshaw, Stephen Verran and Phil Yager. Commissioners Robert McKamey and Michael Foster were absent.
Animal Shelter
At the meeting, Anderson County Mayor Terry Frank gave updates on a new animal shelter.
The city of Clinton Planning Commission, she said, has approved a site plan for a new shelter on Carden Farm Drive near its existing dog park.
At the old shelter, Frank said that workers had set posts and the concrete was curing for a new fence that will keep the shelter and its dogwalkers separate from the nearby recycling center.
She also said the shelter hired a new employee, Taylin Thomas, allowing it to focus more attention on communications than it has previously.
A U.S. Department of Agriculture loan for the new shelter, she said, is also in progress. The county however, cannot yet go to bid for the new shelter without a permit from the city, she said.
In response to questions from Commissioner Tracy Wandell about pursuing a joint shelter with Oak Ridge, which is also building a new shelter, Frank said a previous attempt at combining the shelters had failed, and she did not want to delay the process any longer.
“I don’t want to put the shelter on pause again after we’ve gotten this far,” she said. “It’s taken a very, very long time to get this far.”
Mineral
severance tax
The commission turned down a proposal from its Operations Committee to increase its tax on quarrying or mining sand, gravel, chert and limestone within the county in order to help the county pay for road work.
The increase would have raised the tax to 20 cents per ton.
It failed to get the nine votes it needed for the type of vote it was.
Commissioner Phil Yager made the motion, and Wandell seconded. Commissioners Verran, Capshaw, Wandell, Sabra Beachamp, Yager, Tyler Mayes, Anderson and White voted for the measure. Commissioners Vowell, Tim Isbel, Shelly Vandagriff, Robert Smallridge, Denise Palmer and Allen voted against it.
Isbel said he viewed it as a tax that would hurt developers. Anderson, however, said that Anderson County has high property taxes precisely because it hasn’t looked into these other forms of revenue, and Wandell said the county hadn’t raised this tax since the 1970s.
Fossil fuel tax
Passing unanimously, however, with a voice vote and little discussion was a measure to have county Law Director James W. Brooks draft a resolution for a tax on fossil fuels extracted from the county to pay for water infrastructure.
The commission, however, will still have to vote yes or no on that resolution once Brooks drafts it.
The idea came from the Operations Committee.
Commissioner Robert McKamey explained at that meeting that the drilling or mining of those fossil fuels had damaged local water supplies in the past, so it made sense for those industries to help with water.
At the earlier Operations Committee meeting, Commissioner Tracy Wandell stressed getting water to the Briceville Community even if it didn’t have that many people.
“If there is one person there, that is enough,” he said.
“I think we owe it to them to bring them water,” McKamey said.
Robocalls
The commission approved having Brooks draft a letter to the state to enforce its law against unwanted, spoofed and robo calls.
