Outgoing finance director Marlow to possibly work in new county position through end of 2026 | News

While Jeff Marlow is retiring from the job of Campbell County finance director, effective Sept. 26, the county commission is considering hiring Marlow for a special temporary position where he would work through the end of 2026, helping to complete county projects, manage debt service and develop policies for hotel/motel tax collection from short-term rentals.

“We’ve been kicking this around for six or eight years about the hotel/motel tax, and it seems like we kick it and the can don’t move,” Commissioner Rusty Orick said on Sept. 8. “And we keep coming back and kicking it. We know. We’ve been told we’re probably missing out on close to $1 million we’re not collecting. It was brought to the table to let Jeff draw up the specific — and it’s a good idea; we’ve not done anything yet. Now with talking with Mr. Marlow, he actually wants to help the county, but he doesn’t want to stay here long. That’s why it’s set up for a year. Once we get these policies and procedures, but not only that, when you go through, you start looking at all the various things he’s going to be doing; we’ve got projects that’s underway, multi-million-dollar projects that’s going to have to be overseen. And I don’t think it’s fair to our new finance director to be undertaking them anyway. So the biggest thing is dealing with this hotel/motel tax. It’s moving forward to where we can control it and actually try to bring in some revenue for the county.”

Marlow has agreed to serve in the role through Dec. 31, 2026, according to a budget amendment, and he would get paid about $4,350 each month to assist with county project management and about $2,650 each month to assist in managing debt service.

“This commission has kicked this around, like Rusty said, for beyond six years,” Commissioner David Adkins said on Sept. 8. “And there’s no clear path that anybody, including myself, has presented of being able to collect what we’re not collecting. We’ve had many people come down here and say that you’re missing out on monies, but we don’t really know if we’re missing out on any or not. I believe we are, and I think everybody in this room believes we are. Now this position that we’re talking about, Mr. Marlow has agreed to accept, is not just the hotel/motel tax. There’s about three-quarters of a million dollars hanging in the balance on these other projects that he knows every in and out of those, that he’s going to collect for this county. That would be hard for any person to come in and pick up and know all of the history behind all those projects and behind all that money.”

Adkins praised Marlow.

“There’s not one person in this county or in this state that I could think of that could create a policy and procedure for collecting hotel/motel tax and make it more airtight than our former finance director, Jeff Marlow,” Adkins said. “Now I’m not trying to blow smoke up his hind end. His work speaks for itself. Day in and day out, he has created policies and procedures. Every policy and procedure that we have in the county right now, guess who wrote them.”

The matter came before the Campbell County Commission’s Budget and Finance Committee on Sept. 8, in the form of the budget amendment.

“I don’t disregard the fact that Mr. Marlow can do this and be well-qualified for it,” Commissioner Dewayne Baird said. “However, I do have a problem with us creating a full-time position, whether it’s temporary or not, and not posting the position to give somebody the opportunity to apply for it. And also can we have an elected attorney that is more than capable of the documents for the policies and procedures to save this county money, why are we not doing that? I mean, that’s common sense, people. That’s two plus two equals four. That’s common sense. If we’re going to be stewards of taxpayer dollars, let’s use a little common sense.”

According to the budget amendment, “the need exists for a temporary position to facilitate efficient completion of the various county projects currently underway and to promote continued effective decision-making by the county commission regarding future projects considered and/or implemented through Aug. 31, 2026 and to develop policies and procedures for the collection of hotel/motel tax derived from short-term rentals not administered through short-term rental marketplaces (Airbnb, Vrbo, Booking.com, etc.), which are to be collected by the property owner and remitted to the county clerk with such collections in addition to the collections made by the short-term rental marketplaces (Airbnb, Vrbo, Booking.com, etc.), which are remitted directly to the TN Department of Revenue and then forwarded to the county clerk, pursuant to the provisions of Public Chapter 787 that became effective on Jan. 1, 2021.”

The Budget and Finance Committee voted 10-3 to approve the budget amendment.

“This isn’t going to be a job that’s going to be temporary,” Dewayne Baird said on Sept. 8. “The temporary-ness bothers me. Not posting the job bothers me. We’re making a full-time position for a temporary position. There’s a lot of flaws in that job right there.”

Commissioners Dewayne Baird, Beverly Hall and Scott Stanfield voted no on the measure.

“The best person that needs to be drawing up the guidelines would be our attorney,” Stanfield said. “Like Dewayne said, we need someone that’s going to be able to represent us in court. That’s our attorney. I mean, $84,000 a year, when you come from a position that you held for 30 years and you get put into another position for $84,000, hell, that’s not bad in my book. I mean, if you’re going to do this, you can draw up all kinds of guidelines. We could’ve bought the program to tell us how to achieve it, how to accomplish it. Hell, if you don’t have anybody to go collect it, why buy the program? Why have guidelines? If you’re going to do something, have one person that’s going to collect it, going to get the guidelines to make sure they’re being followed. Why create this position and have to have somebody else to do another position?”

Commissioners Erica Simpson, Johnny Bruce, Charles “Goat” Baird, Dewayne Gibson, Tyler King, Derrick Sharp, Dewayne “Mailman” Kitts, Rusty Orick, Zachary Marlow and David Adkins voted yes.

“I don’t think, Dewayne, that we have to advertise for a temporary position,” Orick said on Sept. 8. “The county commission has always advertised for full-time positions. In my eyes, you couldn’t find anybody else better to draw it up than Jeff. Jeff is not one that you have to worry about getting the projects done. He hasn’t since I’ve been here in 20 years. So I’m going to support this because it’s going to help us get revenue in.”

Commissioners Mike Douglas and Chris Paul were absent.

“This position — like Dewayne said, and Richard answered it — it’s a full-time position, and all full-time positions are posted,” Stanfield said on Sept. 8. “Contrary to what you might believe, they are posted.”

The Campbell County Commission’s Delinquent Tax Committee approved the measure 3-0 unanimously at its meeting on Sept. 3.

“There is also a need for managerial assistance of the General Debt Service Fund in the County Mayor’s Office,” per the budget amendment.

The measure will also have to go before the full county commission at its regular monthly meeting on Sept. 15.

“The hotel/motel tax, the thing that we’ve talked about, I don’t think there’s anybody more qualified and better suited to develop a policy and set the procedures for it to get us off on the right foot,” Delinquent Tax Committee Chairman David Adkins said on Sept. 3.

If approved on Sept. 15 by the full commission, Marlow would start his new job on Oct. 1, Adkins said.

“Jeff kinda took it on his own over the years, and me coming in 2006 as a commissioner, I thought that was his job was be over all these projects,” Orick said on Sept. 3. “That is not the finance department director’s job, but he took it on and tried to help the county. And I said it in that meeting that night when you interviewed him. We’re going to end up having to hire a human-resources person down the road, a project manager that keeps up just in finance with what projects are going on to fund, and then Mr. Pearson’s got to find two replacements shortly, a purchasing agent and Richard’s position. I wouldn’t want to be in his shoes, by no means. But anyway, I’ll be quiet. I’m sold. I know this is going to pay for itself in a few short months.”

Marlow would work four days, 32 hours per week, per the budget amendment.

“It’s not about the money for Jeff,” Adkins said.

Marlow told Adkins that Marlow could have stayed as finance director longer if he wanted to, Adkins said.

“He said, ‘But I don’t want to leave the county high and dry,’ ” Adkins said. “And he said, ‘I want to help see these things to fruition.’ He said, ‘I could make more money going home.’ He told me he could draw more in retirement than we’re going to be paying him. So I think he wants to see these things through, get them done, be of assistance what he can.”

Marlow would work 12 hours on debt service management, along with 20 hours working on county projects, per the budget amendment.

“The hotel/motel tax took place before I got here, and I’m sure there’s policies and stuff in place, but times have changed — and we’ve still been kicking at it,” Commissioner Rusty Orick said. “We know we’re missing out on a lot of money.”

Several organizations have told the county that it is losing more than $1 million in hotel-motel tax collection not received, County Commission Chairman Johnny Bruce said.

“The hotel-motel tax is one of the biggies that can save this county in the future from a tax increase,” Orick said. “And we all know that. We know that if we’re missing revenue, we’re missing revenue. And to me, as stewards of this county, money in this county, we know we’ve got a hole in our pocket — so we need to patch that hole and the only way that I can see is getting a policy and procedure set up. And then if we want to go further with it and hire somebody just to do, we discussed that in this committee, in the commission, just hiring somebody just to go after hotel-motel tax. They’ve been talking about paying them so much money for what they bring in. Well, this right here should set it up.”

Orick said the new temporary position would help, not hinder, the new county finance director Eric Pearson.

“I talked to Jeff about that specifically, and he said, ‘David, I was the finance director and still could have been finance director if I wanted to be,’ ” Adkins said. “He said, ‘I have no reason whatsoever to interfere with Eric’s administration of the finance office.’ He said, ‘In fact, I want him to succeed, so I’m going to be there. If he needs any help, I’ll be glad to help.’ ”

Marlow’s new office would be at the EMS building, Adkins said.

“All he had to do was say he wanted to stay on, and he could have kept the job,” Adkins said. “He wouldn’t have any reason to try to run the rails off this new guy.”

Adkins also spoke with Pearson.

“I went another step further, and I talked to Mr. Pearson to make sure, to see what his thoughts on this was, so that he wouldn’t feel threatened or possibly threatened or feel like that we’re trying to back-door his position,” Adkins said. “And he said, ‘Absolutely not.’ He said, ‘Quite the contrary, I want him to be around here for any questions that I might have.’ ”

Adkins said he has done research on the hotel-motel tax issue.

“I could not come up with any list of people that were paying versus people that were not paying,” Adkins said. “I mean, you can pull a few receipts out here and there and say, ‘Oh, there’s Johnny. He rented this place, and there’s a receipt.’ But as far as a master list of people that have paid, as far as I know, it doesn’t exist. Along in that research, I know that about 40% of the houses in Deerfield that are rentals are not reporting. That’s just in that one area. We have got a lot of those.”

Adkins said that Marlow could return and say the county is getting the majority of what it is owed from hotel-motel tax.

“But if he does, at least we know that somebody that we can trust and have confidence in to know that we’re getting all we can get, as opposed to somebody coming in here and trying to sell us some software for $20,000, right?” Adkins said.

Bruce said, “And plus, they monitor it for us and charge you a fee and all of that, so, hey.”

Adkins said, “He may develop these policies and procedures and put them out, and it’d be something that the entire commission adopts. One way or the other, we may say, ‘Hey, we want to do this.’ Now we’re not the regulatory authority on that.”

Orick said, “We’re the policymakers.”

Adkins said, “We’re the policymakers, and we’re going to make it. And then we’ll decide what we want to do with it and put it in Todd’s hands and let those guys handle the collection of it. And we may want to fund a position for him to do that.”

Adkins was talking about Campbell County Clerk Todd Nance.

“I think when you develop something strong enough, I think it puts a little teeth in it,” Orick said. “And people come in and they apply for their building permits and they have to sign. And that’s what some counties have already done. You sign an affidavit that it’s going to be a residential home. It’s going to be a short-term rental. It’s going to be a variation. You sign that affidavit stating that. Then you’ve got something to come back, but you’ve got to have those policies and procedures in place.”

After the vote on Sept. 3, Bruce added a statement.

“The policies and procedures that we get, I want to see them put in place immediately,” Bruce said on Sept. 3. “And I’m not talking wait under December ‘26.”

Bruce and Adkins said they think the money is out there to be collected.

“And if it is, then, hey, we need to be collecting,” Bruce said. “The citizens deserve that much because, hey, the money that we collect from that, would help us offset any taxes or anything of that nature.”

Orick recounted that Sevier County Mayor Larry Waters had told him that they weren’t missing out on much hotel-motel tax, only to months later, go back to Orick and tell him that he was wrong — and that Sevier County was missing out on some of the tax revenue.

“Like you said, Rusty, let’s get some teeth in it, and go to work,” Bruce said.

Adkins said, “And I don’t think there’s any better suited for the job, to get it laid out in policy and procedure, than the person that we’re discussing here. So I think it’s a win-win.”