The item was not on the printed agenda. It took a suspension of the rules to be heard at all. Three commissioners voted to advance it.

MEMPHIS, August 19, 2026 - Shelby County commissioners voted three to nothing to send the full Commission a contract with CS3, Inc. and an emergency purchase order of up to $69,524.10 for temporary chiller service at the jail annex at 271 Poplar Avenue, covering a cooling failure the administration said happened in May 2026.

The item was not in the agenda packet filed for the meeting. It arrived as an add-on during Committee 15, Facilities, Real Property and Capital Improvements, and the parliamentarian told the committee before it could be read that the item carried no routing sheet, which meant the commissioners had to suspend their own rules to put it in front of themselves. They did so without objection.

What the administration told the committee

The administrator of support services, who told the committee her office is responsible for chiller maintenance across county facilities, said the jail annex chiller failed and that the county responded immediately by placing a temporary chiller on site. She said the temporary unit remains in place while the county works through an agreement with Trane for the permanent replacement the Commission had already approved.

Asked by the committee chairman for the time frame, she said the work took place in May 2026 and covered roughly two months of service plus setup. The resolution as read requires the appropriation and expenditure of fiscal year 2026 general funds, meaning the county is now formally appropriating money in August for a fiscal year that ended June 30.

She described the vote as an effort to properly account for charges that had already been incurred.

The payment question, asked and answered

Commissioner Amber Mills asked whether payments to contractors under the county's new system were going through without problems, noting there had been issues in the past. The administrator said she was not aware of any payment issues with this vendor and that a purchase order was already in place to cover invoices as they arrive.

The vote

The minutes clerk first reported aye votes from Commissioner Mills and Commissioner David C. Bradford, Jr., then corrected the tally on the record to aye votes from Commissioner Mick Wright, Commissioner Henri E. Brooks and Commissioner Bradford, for three aye votes. The item moved to the full Commission with a favorable recommendation.

What happens next

The full Commission approved the contract and the emergency purchase order on Monday, August 24, 2026, on 12 aye votes. No commissioner asked a question before the vote. The three-month gap between the May service and the August appropriation was not raised at either meeting.

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