From Councilman Bill Summers

The city council met this afternoon to look at the proposed agreement that would be signed by the city and the selected marina operator, Mr. Batts. I spent about three hours reading and making notes on the contract in preparing for the meeting.

Here is a recap of the main points:

Initial lease period is 30 years with seven extension options for a period of 10 years for each option.

Rent is $24,000 a year. Gross sales receipts will be multiplied by 5% and boating sales by 1%. If the sum of these calculations amount to more than quarterly rent, then the city will get the extra as rent fees.

The Lessee will not pay rent the first year. In lieu of rent the Lessee will be required to spend $35,000 for advertisement of the Marina and associated activities.

Rent stays the same for 5 years after which it will be adjusted up by the Consumer price Index each year.

The city will not be held liable for anything that happens on, with or associated with the marina itself.

The marina development is set to happen in three (3) phases and this was where I had listed several concerns and voiced them at the meeting. I am unable to copy and paste the phases listed in the lease and they are a bit large to retype. I will list where in the lease where you can find the phase at the Leaf-Chronicle's website.

Phase 1: Exhibit B, page 1 (it should be located on page 36 of the 46 page document)

I did not see any problem with Phase I.

Phase II: Exhibit B, page 2 (located on page 37 of the lease document)

I had concerns with Phase II. It would not start until four years after Phase I. That is too long to wait and build additional slips, if the slips lease out as expected.

Also the five acres that are offered for sale or lease (this is the area around the current Jaycees land) will have sat around for fours years. This will be very valuable land and it is too long to let it set and miss sales and property tax revenues that could be gained over that period.

I suggested that a different trigger be used to add the additional slips such as when slip rentals reached 80% or 90% then new slip construction would take place. Also the land needs to come up for development before four years.

Council members and the mayor agreed on these points and the city representative will meet with the lessee's representatives to rework this.

The lessee gets first refusal on the land offer, which is not a problem, but I do not want to wait four years to find out.

Phase III: Exhibit B, page 3 (page 38 of the lease)

Phase III has the same issues and concerns as Phase II. If the triggers for follow-on action in Phase II are revised, then much of Phase III will be changed or deleted.

I would have attached a copy of the lease, but attachments are not working well lately on the city email system. If you would like to see a full copy, go to the Leaf-Chronicle website on this story and they have the entire lease online.

So timelines and the triggers for doing those timelines are the main issue. Representatives from each side will return to the table to work it out. There were also some typos and name identification corrections needed in the document.

Another special meeting will be called when an updated agreement is reached and ready for our review. That could be next week.

The reason for the end of year work on this is a request by the Corp of Engineers. They want an agreement for the marina signed as a part of their final approval. The city does not want to delay their review.

Another issue that our city attorney brought up was a couple of emails, from folks and Clarksville Online, saying the city was not following Charter requirements in regard to finalizing the lease or dealing with a lessee. They believed the city was in violation of Charter Article VI, Section 8.

This section describes the action required if the city is giving or lending its credit to aid a person, company association or company.

If such actions were to happen a vote by citizens would be required. I have no idea how they perceived this was happening. The city is NOT in violation as it is NOT giving or providing any financial credit to anyone, in the city's name.

The city is legally leasing property that it owns to a marina developer and manager who will build a dock and associated facilities, which he will own. This developer (the lessee) is getting his own funding to build the marina and associated facilities.

If you should hear someone state this concern, please provide them with the proper information.