Several neighbors have complained about what could be further violations of Cookeville’s zoning ordinances at the quarry site along Spring Street and Interstate 40.
Cookeville Planning Director Jon Ward will ask City Council Thursday night for permission to spend up to $20,000 more in legal costs on the issue. Ward said the city codes department will investigate the complaints.
“At the planning department we work with the codes department because they’re the enforcement arm for the zoning ordinance for the city,” Ward said. “They’re going to look into the complaints we’ve received and then we will continue to work with our attorney on what steps we need to take. They’ll obviously try to gather what information they can investigating the site.”
Cookeville City Manager James Mills also said an investigation might be needed based on complaints.
“We’ve had complaints that they’re back operating the quarry, so if we have to pursue any legal measures, we’ll need to have legal representation and that’s what Jon’s doing here,” Mills said. “We’ll have to do more investigation but Jon’s done some but we’ve had complaints that they’re ignoring our zoning code again and we’ll need to pursue that.”
Ward said the city will likely face very technical decisions on what it means to operate a quarry. RQ Development said it planned to continue removing debris from the site to get it ready for construction. The technicalities involve what they can do to the rock on site.
City Council voted down the rezoning of the property two weeks to quarry/mining. That would have allowed the owners to continue cleansing the material on the site.
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