It was announced at the Lookout Mountain city council meeting Thursday, Feb. 21, that council member Blair Ramey was resigning, effective immediately.

Ramey’s resignation is due to an upcoming marriage and subsequent move to the Tennessee side of the mountain.

Saying it was really important to move quickly to name a replacement and that he thought it would be a good move to get someone off the town’s zoning and planning board, mayor Bill Glascock immediately asked for a nomination for local property management consultant Beth Soloff as a new council member.

With this done, Soloff was named unanimously as Ramey’s replacement. Soloff did not return phone calls on Friday, Feb. 22, for comment.

The council also decided to move ahead with possibly creating a board to advise the council on future sewer issues. City resident Jimmy Campbell said, “The purpose would be to study issues related to future sewer expenditures, but not be related to the day-to-day operations of the sewer department. To set-up a board with fiduciary responsibilities is almost impossible and we don’t really need it.”

The consensus is to have a five-member board, possibly chaired by the city manager, with a member from Covenant College and three other residents.

In other council business, there was minimal on-the-record talk regarding the proposed new town center for the city. Mayor Glascock did say there had been “lots of conversation over the past week concerning real estate issues with the center.” The mayor went on to say, “We are going to press to get ourselves a town center, but being in the middle of negotiations makes it very hard to make any statements.”

Apparently this was to be the topic of discussion at an executive session scheduled at the end of the regular meeting, as the meeting was adjourned in order to have closed-door discussions regarding the “purchase and disposition of property.”