FRANKLIN

Franklin’s City Council voted 5-1 with one abstention on Aug. 12 to adopt a memorandum of understanding with Camp Community College, which will govern a partnership between the college and city for the maintenance of the city’s and college’s athletic fields.

According to City Manager Amanda Jarratt, the college has recently hired an employee to maintain the baseball field and training facility it constructed in 2018. The MOU, she said, would allow this person to also maintain Franklin’s fields at Armory Park.

The city had budgeted $10,000 for fiscal year 2019-2020 for the hiring of its own athletic field maintenance employee, who would have been hired on a part-time basis. Instead, this money will now go to Camp Community College, Jarratt explained.

“Our fields are in tough shape,” she said. “Public Works has done their best to maintain those fields, but this agreement would allow the fields to be maintained properly.”

The dissenting vote on the MOU had come from Greg McLemore. The councilman instead suggested that Camp Community College agree to maintain the city’s athletic fields at no cost, citing that Franklin had already increased its local funding to the college at the beginning of the 2019-2020 fiscal year, and that the city already allows the college to use Armory Park as the home field for its Lady Hurricanes softball team. Councilman Benny Burgess, however, said that the college had already made significant improvements to the city’s softball field in return for being allowed to use the field for the Lady Hurricanes. The abstention was from Councilman Bobby Cutchins.