Putnam Commissioners To Return To Meetings In Cookeville Community Center

Putnam County Commissioners will move their county commission meetings back to the Cookeville Community Center.

Mayor Randy Porter said that after conversations with Chair Mike Atwood, they made the decision citing concern over rising COVID numbers.

“I know our hospital is feeling the effects and having a lot of COVID cases and is kind of maxed out right now so we just want to do what we can when getting together in a large group of people inside, such as the county commission, to try to protect everyone.”

Porter said that the switch will happen for the September commission meeting, and that they will play it by ear for future meetings. He said that there is no current plan to alter any other county business.

Porter said that he plans on having the technical department aid in bringing sound equipment and the commission’s voting system to conduct regular business.

“We’ll set up the sound system like we had before,” Porter said. “So it shouldn’t affect anything except just be a much bigger space and a lot more room for everybody to be able to spread out.”

Porter said that this is simply a precautionary measure and a simple way to ensure the safety of the county commission and attendees of the meeting. He said that anything they can do to make sure commissioners aren’t as close to each other is an easy course of action to take.