If you care about what Tullahoma looks like in ten years, you need to be at the Municipal Building Monday night at 5:30 p.m.
Not because the agenda says so. Because what's on that agenda — if it passes without a single resident in the room to object — ends any meaningful public say over how this city grows.
Mayor Lynn Sebourn and Aldermen Busch Thoma and Matthew Bird are about to finish something they started on April 27th. And the way they're doing it should make every resident in this city ask one question: who told them to do this?
What's at Stake — In Plain Terms
Think of Tullahoma's Comprehensive Plan like a contract between this city and every resident who lives here. It took years to build. Community meetings. Public hearings. A formal planning commission process. It tells developers, investors, and city officials where growth should go, what gets built where, and what kind of city Tullahoma becomes over the next two decades.
More importantly: state law — Tennessee Code Annotated 13-3-304 — says that when a city adopts its comprehensive plan as an ordinance, every single land use decision made by the board, the planning commission, and the zoning board must be consistent with that plan.
That's the point. That's the protection. The plan isn't a suggestion. It's the law.
Sebourn, Thoma, and Bird are taking that away. Monday night.
They are converting the plan from an ordinance — which carries legal force — to a resolution, which does not. Resolution No. 2045, Item 5 on Monday's agenda, says it right in the document. Section 2 states the plan "shall not be construed as a zoning ordinance or independently enforceable regulatory document."
They are telling you, in writing, that Tullahoma's growth plan means nothing unless four board members decide it does that day.
This Is Sebourn's Project
Mayor Sebourn has never hidden his agenda. He campaigned on housing growth. In early 2025, he took a personal seat on the planning commission — not to participate, but in his own words, to "steer the process." He has stated publicly that he will only appoint planning commission members who align with his pro-growth stance. He opposed minimum housing quality standards. He sided with developer-friendly positions at every turn.
When Alderman Bobbie Wilson introduced a measure requiring planning commission candidates to present before the full board before being appointed, Sebourn voted against it. The city attorney backed him up in that same meeting: "He should have the latitude to appoint whomever he wishes."
The mayor controls who sits on the planning commission. He has told you he will use that power to stack it with people who share his growth agenda. And now he is moving to strip the plan those commissioners are legally obligated to follow of any legal enforceability.
Connect the dots. The mayor controls the planning commission. The planning commission is supposed to be bound by the comprehensive plan. The mayor is removing that binding. What's left is a planning commission that answers to Sebourn, reviewing a plan that legally means whatever four board members say it means that day.
That is not planning. That is permission.
And someone is coming to Tullahoma who needs that permission.
The City Attorneys Should Be Embarrassed
Here is where this stops being just politics and becomes outright incompetence — or something far worse.
You cannot repeal an ordinance with a motion. That is not debatable. It is not a gray area. It takes an ordinance to repeal an ordinance. Two readings. Public record. That is the law.
The city attorneys know this. On April 27th, when Thoma tried to kill the plan using a rescind motion, city attorneys Steve Worsham and Brittany Hoskins stopped him mid-meeting and explained it had to be done through a repealing ordinance passed on two readings.
Then they sat at the table while the board voted to do it wrong anyway.
Look at the official April 27th minutes — the city's own document. Item No. 26-57: "To repeal Ordinance No. 1675, the Comprehensive Plan." Motion made. Vote taken. Five to two.
Meeting adjourned.
No ordinance number assigned. No first reading recorded. No second reading scheduled. The board voted to kill a city ordinance with a single motion — and both attorneys let it happen.
Now Resolution No. 2045 arrives on Monday's agenda claiming in Section 3 that its adoption "follows the repeal of the prior Comprehensive Plan ordinances." But that repeal never legally happened. The two-reading process required to complete it was never started. You cannot declare a repeal finished when the process required to finish it was skipped entirely.
Either Tullahoma's city attorneys do not know how municipal law works, or they know exactly how it works and chose to look the other way.
Neither answer is acceptable. Both should concern you.
This Breaks the Planning Commission — and the City's Credibility
The consequences go further than Monday's vote.
The planning commission is a statutory board. State law requires its decisions to be consistent with the adopted comprehensive plan. The commission gave the Comprehensive Plan a formal positive recommendation. Those commissioners are legally obligated to follow it.
What happens now? The board tells the planning commission the plan has no legal weight. Developers submit applications that contradict it. The planning commission either follows a plan the board has declared meaningless — and gets overruled — or stops following it and becomes a rubber stamp.
That is the endgame. A planning commission with no binding plan is not a planning commission. It is a formality.
There is also a credibility problem that reaches beyond city hall. Tullahoma used the Comprehensive Plan to present a vision to the public, to potential investors, and to state agencies. It is a public commitment about what this city is building toward. Stripping it of legal force does not just affect zoning decisions. It tells every investor, every developer, every resident who planned around that document that the city's word means nothing. The plan exists on paper. What actually gets built is decided in the room, by whoever shows up and asks.
That is not a city managing its growth. That is a city for sale.
Who Told Them to Do This
Busch Thoma did not walk into the April 27th meeting with this idea on his own. He added it to the agenda mid-meeting, two city attorneys were on hand who knew exactly how to navigate the procedure in real time, and two weeks later a finished resolution is ready for a final vote. That does not happen without planning.
Mayor Sebourn took a personal seat on the planning commission to steer it. He fought to maintain sole control over who gets appointed to it. He has publicly committed to filling it with pro-growth members. He has sided with developers and against housing standards at every opportunity. He was already on record saying the comprehensive plan should not bind the city to anything.
Sebourn, Thoma, and Bird have voted together at every step.
So here is the question that needs to be asked out loud, on the record, Monday night: what is coming to Tullahoma that needs this cleared out of the way first? What development, what project, what investment is waiting that the Comprehensive Plan as a binding ordinance would slow down or stop?
The public does not know. Because nobody told the public this was happening.
That is not an accident.
Be There Monday Night
May 11th, at 5:30 p.m. Tullahoma Municipal Building. Resolution No. 2045 is Item 5 on the New Business agenda.
You have the right to speak during public comment. You get three minutes. Use them.
Ask Mayor Sebourn how a city ordinance gets legally repealed by a single motion. Ask the city attorneys to explain how Resolution No. 2045 is valid when the repealing process it claims to follow was never completed. Ask Alderman Thoma who asked him to put this on the agenda. Ask all of them who benefits.
Make them answer on the record.
If this passes Monday night without a room full of residents demanding those answers, the Comprehensive Plan becomes wallpaper. Tullahoma's future gets shaped by whoever is next in line with a development proposal and the right connections to the five people who just decided the rules don't apply to them.
Show up.