The record
Resolution 2410-15.
On Monday, October 21, 2024, the Sumner County Commission passed Resolution 2410-15 on a unanimous voice vote. It had been drafted and brought forward by the General Operations Committee two weeks earlier, on Monday, October 7.
The resolution did two things at once. It accepted Mr. Brown’s five hundred thousand dollars on the county’s behalf under T.C.A. § 5-8-101(b), the statute that allows a county to take a gift like this one. And it stated that the money had been improperly distributed, and demanded it back.
What it demanded
Four instructions in one resolution.
- That the trustees of the William and Martha Brown Education Trust, Director of Schools Scott Langford and County Mayor John Isbell, comply with the will and the codicil and transfer the five hundred thousand dollars, plus any accrued interest, out of the technology trust it had been put into and to the Sumner County Finance Department
- That the money be held there in a restricted fund and spent on nothing else
- That the Finance Department direct its grant writer to seek state historic preservation grants, which could be matched against Mr. Brown’s money
- That work on the house commence
to be held in a restrictive fund for the exclusive purpose of protecting and preserving the historic Latimer (Brown) home and establishing a park with the home as its centerpiece
Resolution 2410-15, adopted unanimously October 21, 2024
Before the vote
A year of asking first.
The Commission did not start here. The General Operations Committee had been working the question for nearly a year by the time the resolution reached the floor, since the diversion first came to light. In that year it received little response from the trustees and no cooperation in carrying out the will and the codicil.
The house had stood empty for more than seven years by then, neglected, while the money left to keep it standing sat in a fund it was never left to.
The family
The descendants hired a lawyer.
Citizens and descendants of the Latimer family were not waiting either. They retained counsel, and the Stubbs Law Group wrote to the trustees on their behalf demanding compliance with the will and the codicil. The letter carried a deadline. By October 21, the day the Commission voted, that deadline had passed.
What it changed
The point the record stopped drifting.
Resolution 2410-15 did not move the money by itself. A resolution is a demand and not a transfer, and the demand went unanswered for months after it passed.
What it did do was put the county’s own position in writing, unanimously, with a statute cited and a document behind every line. Until then, what had happened to Mr. Brown’s gift was something citizens and a handful of commissioners were saying. After it, it was something the county had said.
The five hundred thousand dollars was separated back out of the education technology trust and returned to the county in March 2025. The house and its parcel were conveyed to the Friends of the Latimer House in August 2026.