Finance Committee recommends mayor pay four recent Hendersonville Library invoices, seeks clearer city–county agreement

The Hendersonville Finance Committee on April 22 recommended that the mayor pay four recently submitted invoices from the county related to work at the Hendersonville Library and seek a revised intergovernmental agreement that clearly defines maintenance and capital responsibilities.

Committee members discussed a county request asking the city to reimburse roughly $24,000 in past library repair and maintenance invoices dating back to 2017. Finance Director Tim Ringer told the committee the county sent the invoices to the mayor in mid-March and that the packet contains a mix of prior-year charges and items from the current fiscal year.

Committee members said the central issue is a change in how the county is interpreting an existing resolution or agreement about who pays for routine maintenance versus capital replacements. Alderman Mark Evans and others said the city historically considered routine maintenance the city’s responsibility while the county covered replacement of capital assets; some members described a recent county reinterpretation as the cause of the newly submitted invoices.

Committee members separated the requested charges into categories. They agreed the three landscaping/irrigation invoices in the current fiscal year (totaling $1,801.28) and a Ferguson Enterprises invoice for a toilet should be paid, because the city’s public works crews perform landscaping and mowing at the library and the city’s public-works budget can cover these items. Committee members said they should have been given the opportunity to perform the landscape repairs themselves.

Members opposed paying larger items they characterized as capital work. Specifically, discussion focused on a rooftop heating-and-air replacement and an associated $700 engineering invoice and a larger heat-pump replacement (about $17,000) that committee members said appears to be a capital expenditure; under the committee’s reading of the existing agreement, capital replacements are the county’s responsibility.

The committee voted unanimously to recommend that the mayor pay the four invoices identified for payment and to continue pursuing a new agreement with the county that explicitly details each party’s responsibilities and invoice initiation procedures. The committee instructed the mayor to withhold payment on the older invoices that the county submitted going back to 2017 until the city and county resolve the differing interpretations.

Committee members and staff said documentation submitted with the county’s request was incomplete in some cases and that the late timing of the invoices — some from several years ago but sent recently — complicated the committee’s response. The committee’s motion recommends honoring the amounts the county requested for the four current invoices but not accepting retroactive liability for prior-year charges without further agreement or documentation.

The committee did not set any binding changes to the underlying resolution; members said they expect further negotiations and possible attorney review to produce clearer contract language. The committee’s recommendation goes to the mayor; the mayor may choose to act on the recommendation or bring a resolution to the Board of Mayor and Aldermen for formal action.