With Yale Locks & Hardware approaching its final days in local operation, Lenoir City Council and Lenoir City Utilities Board postponed decisions Monday evening to market the property for a future industry.

LCUB and Lenoir City Council postponed the decision until City Attorney James Scott examines a groundwater easement between the utility and hardware industry.

The groups will revisit the consideration March 25.

The marketing effort is in collaboration with Yale Locks general manager Dick Krajewski.

"What we are trying to do is get the Yale property on the market so somebody can buy it and bring hopefully additional jobs back that we've lost," Krajewski said. "I live in this community, and I feel really bad about the job loss that has occurred. We couldn't do anything about it here, but I realize how important jobs are in this community. I want to bring back as many jobs as I possibly can for our people."

Yale’s parent company Assa Abloy announced plans last April to consolidate the Lenoir City Yale operation into its Connecticut facility.

"We are losing the 230 jobs that we had here in Lenoir City. We have a remediation project going on. ... The state has informed us if we can get a release from the effective landholders that they won't put in a groundwater well that we can stop the remediation project," Krajewski addressed LCUB about the consideration.

"To be able to put the property on the market it would certainly be a better situation to not have this (remediation) project going and that's what we are here to ask," he said. "LCUB is one of the effected land holders, so we are asking for a covenant that LCUB would not put a groundwater well on that property."

In other business, council:

* Approved purchasing six in-car radios for the Lenoir City Police Department for almost $19,000. Chief Don White said the purchase is part of a series of installations to upgrade officers' equipment as the LCPD transitions to a new communication system.

"We moved into the new system last year. We had talked about adding additional radios over time," White said. "We are in desperate need of in-car radios to give us better coverage in some of the areas around the city."

* Heard from Councilman Mike Henline, who issued a clarification statement from previous comments at the Jan. 28 council meeting.

"I said in the statement that I made, which was an error on my part, that we have citizens that, how can we afford this type of citizens in our community, and a lot of people took offense to that, and I can understand that. I apologize for saying that, but there is a type of citizen that I guess I was talking about," Henline said, asking White to clarify.

"When we have a private company that comes in from another state — and the statistics will show — they are not going to care about our community like we care. When you have a large apartment complex come in we did talk about the vouchers, we did talk about low income, but what I think what we were referring to is the criminal element with a mismanaged complex," White said.

"What happens is with mismanagement we start to see the wrong group start showing up in some of these large complexes, which creates a burden on the police department, fire department," he added. "We have seen in the past that other apartment complexes, not only Lenoir City but in other communities, the stats will show it is a high-call volume area if it's not managed correctly."

"But in no way I meant to offend anyone in anyway," Henline added.