Budget committee will consider Westmoreland High field-house loan forgiveness as part of next year's budget

Rick Duffer, principal of Westmoreland High School, told the Sumner County Budget Committee he and members of the Westmoreland Quarterback Club took on personal loan obligations to finance a field house and asked the county to use funds from the sale of a hospital to help retire that debt.

Duffer described a roughly $274,000 outstanding loan that community members signed for after inflation made a pay-as-you-go approach impractical. "It's unsecured at the bank, so it's a higher interest rate," Duffer said, and he asked whether hospital-sale funds could be used to help pay down the note.

Committee members expressed sympathy for the school and the community volunteers but raised concerns about precedent and a potential "slippery slope" if the county paid private nonprofit debts. Several members and the schools director said county capital money cannot be used by the school system to pay private debt; it can be directed to nonprofit organizations, however, and previous commissions have at times provided capital grants.

After discussion, the committee voted to not immediately forgive the loan but to consider the request and any similar nonprofit debt relief as part of the FY2026 budget process so the commissioners could evaluate all comparable requests together. The motion carried with commissioners voting to move the request into the budget process rather than approve immediate relief.

Speakers asked county staff to compile data about how many similar nonprofit-held debts exist across the county's schools and the total amount involved before the budget committee considers any forgiveness request.