Plans for a new Tusculum City Hall building were reviewed during a strategic planning workshop held Wednesday afternoon in Tusculum that included city officials and members of the community.
The plans for the new building were designed and presented by architect Dave Wright.
The current City Hall at 145 Alexander St. would not be demolished as a part of the project, rather the new City Hall would serve as an addition to the existing facility.
Concrete plans for a new City Hall began being discussed in Feb. 2025.
Tusculum Mayor Alan Corley said that the current City Hall was constructed in the early 1960s, not long after the municipality was incorporated in 1959.
The current City Hall is about 1,200 square feet in size and houses the police department, the recorder’s office, bookkeeping, a small meeting room and every other administrative function. Officials say that the building has been stretched beyond capacity.
The new City Hall facility would be 7,000 square feet in size in total, but could be built in three phases.
Wright designed the new facility so that it could be built in three parts. The first part, which is about 2,768 square feet in size, would include police department offices. The second part of the building would be 2,194 square feet in size and house administrative offices. The third section of the building, about 1,963 square feet, would house a large board room that could also serve as a community gathering space. The boardroom would be about three times larger than the current meeting space, and could be accessed by the public without entering other portions of the facility.
If the entire new facility were built with the current building included as planned, Tusculum City Hall would be over 9,000 square feet. It would also be fully ADA compliant.
Wright noted that the new facility was designed to fit into the traditional architectural style of Tusculum and Tusculum University.
The total construction cost of the new City Hall is estimated at around $2.4 million. The section housing the police department would cost about $850,000 to build if built separately.
Wright said that it would likely be cheaper if Tusculum were to build the entire new City Hall at one time, as construction costs are only likely to increase.
He noted that it would take 9 to 11 months to build the entire new City Hall, weather dependent, and about six months to build just the first phase alone if that option were pursued.
Tusculum Mayor Alan Corley said that city officials and residents had been discussing building an adequate City Hall for quite some time, and now those conversations are progressing.
However, no official action was taken on the City Hall project on Wednesday. The matter was simply a topic of presentation an discussion.
In other business during the meeting, officials and resident came up with a vision statement for Tusculum which was “to be a standout community that a variety of persons aspire to be a part of and where city services are superior and technology and education lead the way.”
Tusculum Recorder Randy Harley also provided a brief financial presentation path the beginning of the workshop. According to the presentation, Tusculum has a budgeted revenue of of a little over $1 million in state shared tax revenue, such as sales tax and gas tax, for fiscal year 2026. The city budget $219,500 in revenues from other sources such as police fines, permits, interest and other sources.
Tusculum has no property tax.
Out of those revenues, $454,434 is allocated to the Police Department, $367,936 is allocated to general government, $297,363 is allocated to the Public Works and street maintenance, $92,193 is allocated to Solid Waste and trash pickup, and $23,800 is allocated to the Tusculum Volunteer Fire Department.
Harley said that equates to a benefit of about $1,218 per household in Tusculum. Tusculum contained 1,014 homes as of October 2025.
Other priorities other than a new City Hall discussed at the workshop included fostering sustainable and suitable commercial development, employee wages, public safety and other matters.
