A request from Johnny James for a financial credit resulted Thursday in the Loudon County Economic Development Agency looking at its contract with the Loudon councilman for land use in Centre 75 Industrial Park.

James for years has been planting soybeans on 89 acres in the vacant business park off Highway 72. In a letter to the EDA board, James said he was told last year to halt planting about 25 percent of the way through after a business labeled Project Z committed to buy the property. The company later backed out of considering Loudon and located in South Carolina.

James’ letter claims Jack Qualls, Loudon County EDA executive director, in June said the business “would move very fast on this and would probably start moving dirt within a month or so.”

Read Johnny James Letter Here

“I told him that was a pipe dream,” James wrote in the letter. “I had already planted 23 acres of the property, which I harvested this fall, and the 23 acres yielded 40 bushel per acre. That means not getting to plant the 80 acres, if you plant 80 by 40, that comes to 3,200 bushels at $9.55 the market price that I received for the 23 acres."

James claims he lost $30,560 in revenue for not planting the entire acreage, but he still received an invoice of $5,395 earlier this month to pay land rental in full. James hoped for a credit of $4,046.75 off the annual rent.

After lengthy discussion about the situation and reviewing the current contract that goes through Dec. 31, 2020 — which was signed January 2016 by James, former Loudon Mayor Jim Greenway, Loudon County Mayor Rollen “Buddy” Bradshaw and former EDA Executive Director Pat Phillips — board members agreed to have an attorney look at the contract to determine if the board owed a credit as well as potentially “clean up” some contract language.

Bradshaw cast the only opposing vote.

“The contract is here, what we see it is, and I guess it’s he said she said or whatever on whether he was permitted to have crops. This says no,” Eddie Simpson, board member, said. “This says the lease was for hay and basically nothing else.

”The contract notes a licensee is granted “agricultural purposes to cut hay and graze customary livestock” on the property.

James said Phillips was fine with other crops being planted on the property. James hoped to have that change in writing, but Phillips left before it could happen.

Bradshaw emphasized “practice makes policy” even though James acted outside the language of the contract.

“If we want to tweak, if we want to fix the contract, I’m fine with that, but where I’m at I’m inclined to agree with Councilman James,” Bradshaw said. “I’d like to continue that lease through the current and I’m not opposed at all, maybe even in favor, of putting the ratio compared to the 23 he was able to harvest versus the 89 coming in, making … it very specific to that to get us back on track for lack of a better term.”

Bruce Giles, board member, “strongly” advised the board consult an attorney before any action was taken.

“If you’re going to modify that contract and put it under different use, you better cover yourself legally because you’ll have others in this community that are going to want to bid on this job, and I can name two off the top of my head,” Giles said.

John Evans, board member, said making a decision wasn’t just a legal matter.

“We’re going to have to determine, and I think a lawyer could say, ‘You don’t owe Mr. James anything,’ and if we were to pay him or give him a credit it would be in good will because he’s been in this county for a long time and we always want to have a good relationship with everybody,” Evans said. “So we need to determine if we owe him, we need to pay him. If we don’t, we can decide to do it just out of good will.”

Board members also discussed mowing of the right of way at Centre 75 per the agreement, which James has not followed. EDA has used rental money received from the agreement toward $7,000 paid a company to mow.

“So basically we’re spending approximately $7,000, we’re going in the hole by $2,000 a year by paying, we take in $5,000 and we turn around and give $7,000 for somebody to mow,” Qualls said. “... At the end of the day the mowing’s inside the city limits; it’s in their right of way. The city should really be the one mowing the right of way there anyway. We shouldn’t be paying anybody to mow the right of way.”

Bradshaw noted James must understand if a business expresses interest in the property that he would be out regardless of crops.

“If I had planted these beans and Z company would have come out there and taken them, I would have been a happy guy and we wouldn’t have been having this meeting right now because that’s good for everybody. But they didn’t,” James said. “If I would have just been allowed to plant them it would have ended fine, game over. I would have harvested them just like I did all the rest of them, game over. But that wasn’t what happened. Now with Pat I knew going in, I know right now, if you sell the property I’m gone, and that’s great.”