Town Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening, everyone. Welcome to Monday, July the 6th, 2026, Town of Abingdon Town Council meeting. Note, there will be an opportunity during this meeting for citizens to address the Town Council when the Mayor, I, declare public comments. When requested, that anyone addressing the Council sign up, approach the podium when called, and state your first and last name. Kim, if you'll please call roll.

Mr. Webb. Here. Ms. Quetch? Here. Ms. Pillian? Here. Vice Mayor Austin? Present. And Mayor Anderson?

Here. Now I'll have Council Member Amanda Pillian lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

If everyone will please remain standing, we have Ms. Barbara Farmer from Pleasant View Church to lead us in our prayer tonight. Ms. Farmer, we're glad to have you this evening. Thank you for coming.

Thank you, Mayor Anderson and council members. This is no small privilege for me, so thank you. And with that, let's pray. Father, I was just thinking about wondering how many millions of times you have heard the words, God bless America, just within these last few days, this last week. And Lord, my mind has to wonder, how many times have you heard anybody say, God bless the town of Abingdon, or God bless Washington County, or God bless the Commonwealth of Virginia? Lord, I know that that is my constant prayer, that you would bless our great nation, the land that I love, the land that these standing with me love, But, Lord, I also pray that you would bless our town, our community, our neighborhoods. And, Father, I pray that you would give these standing here the wisdom and the courage to do the right thing for the citizens of this Commonwealth and this local community. So tonight I pray, Father, that as they lead business, that it would be business pleasing to you. And when all is said and done, we just pray that they're It's not just more said than done, that your will would be done. In the mighty, powerful name of Jesus, amen.

Thank you. We don't really have a whole lot on the agenda today, and we are going to move a couple of things around before we get approval of the agenda. We're going to move the motion to amend the agenda to move item N2, presentation regarding community health updates after item H1, proclamation. The proclamation, we have several kids that are on the softball team that are out of town. So I would like to move the proclamation for the softball team to our August the 3rd meeting. After swearing in the Abingdon Police Department, Sergeant, after The community health update will be the next on the list. The proclamation, as I said before, we're going to move that to the August 3rd, and then we will table items R through 1, appointments to Veterans Advisory Board Committee as well. Can I get an approval of the agenda? So moved. Do I have a second?

Second.

Any further discussion? Kim, if you'll please call roll.

Mr. Webb.

Aye.

Ms. Quetch. Aye. Ms. Pillian. Aye. Vice Mayor Austin.

Aye.

And Mayor Anderson.

Aye. Now I need approval for the minutes of the June the 1st, 2026 meeting. If I could get a motion to approve those minutes.

So moved. Second.

Any further discussion? Let the record reflect I was absent. I was traveling on June 1st and 16th. Thank you, Derek. With that being said, Kim, would you please call roll?

Mr. Webb.

Abstain.

Ms. Quetch. Aye. Ms. Pillian. Aye. Vice Mayor Austin.

Aye.

And Mayor Anderson.

Aye. And then I need approval for the minutes of the June 16, 2026 meeting, which Councilman Derek Webb said that he would be abstained from that because he wasn't at that meeting. If I could get another council member to make a motion on that.

So moved.

Second.

Second.

Any further discussion? Kim, if you'll please call roll.

Mr. Webb.

Abstain.

Ms. Quetch. Aye. Ms. Pillion. Aye. Vice Mayor Austin. Aye.

And Mary Anderson. Aye. We have no one signed up for public comments. As I said before, the proclamation will be moved to the August 3rd meeting. And that's going to now take us to public hearing. And first on the public hearing will be regarding the proposed sign. No, no. Excuse me. Are you going to do the swearing in first? Let's do the swearing in first. No.

We actually have valid health presentation first.

Okay. Yes, please. Let me find where I'm at. I apologize for that. So we're doing N2. Yes. Presentation regarding community health updates. We have Ms. Stacy Ely. managing director, and we've got Dr. Jeter, and we've got my main man here as well, too. Good to see you.

Yeah, it's good to see you. My name is Brian Maltz. I'm the chief operating officer at the hospital, and so it's certainly a privilege for us to be able to come to the council and do a little bit of updates as far as what's going on at the hospital. We've got some really neat things going on, and we're real excited about it. Obviously, it's our honor to be able to serve the people of Washington County with the hospital, and certainly we appreciate all the support that we get from our patients and the families that we have. We try to do a great job. That's our goal, and I know every day that's what our folks are trying to do, so we appreciate all the support. One of the things we typically get asked is, you know, how's your staffing? You know, that is one area that has been a challenge for us ever since COVID. And with COVID, we actually saw about a, all of health care in 2021 lost about half a million people in health care. which made it a real challenge for hospitals. We were dealing with more patient load but less nurses to be able to take care of them. So since that time, we've really had to focus on what we can do to fix that. Ballot as a whole has actually invested $150 million annually in higher wages and salaries. We've had three major nursing increases Right now, our nursing pay starts at $30 an hour. So it's went up substantially in the last four or five years. What we've been able to see is about a 12% decrease in turnover, which is huge. You can see these are our retention rates. Coming out of COVID, we were running 77%. which meant we were turning over about 23% of our workforce every year, which is tough when you're trying to take care of patients. You can see that's drastically improved. Certainly, the wage increases made a big difference. The other thing we saw is our contract labor actually decreased. It went from 44 FTEs. We're down to 24 FTEs at this point in time. And obviously, we'd rather hire folks that are in our community to work. don't like to hire contract labor just unless we have to so obviously we'd like to get rid of as much of that as possible another thing that we've we've done to help stabilize our workforce we put in a child care center we partnered with United Way and food city and so that's been a huge asset for our nursing staff I mean they're be able to find child care in our area has been a real challenge. So that's been a real plus. We also have the Balladeers Club, which is a free club for our family members and their children. It builds bonds and relationships. And we went up from 500 folks to almost 2,300 children. So patient experience. Obviously, we want to make sure that we do a good job with our patients. Typically, we've used press scanning, and we still use that. But that's getting something in the mail a month later. We really would like to have real-time feedback on how well we do. And so we've been doing the Google reviews. We still do the press scanning, but we've really started focusing on Google reviews so that we can get real-time feedback. In the last six months, we've actually had a 21% increase in the number of reviews. And we've received 245 star reviews in the last six months. So out of five stars, we're running 4.2 stars right now, which is really good. Here's some of the feedback that we've been able to receive. See, we want to make sure that we're doing a good job. We hear that, we round on our patients in the hospital as well as the ones that are getting outpatient procedures. And by and far, we're really getting good feedback from those people. Recognition, we actually have been nationally recognized by Becker's on cleanliness. We got a five-star rating out of five, so it's really good. We also have been named as one of the safest Virginia hospitals by health grades. in 2025, and we also received the Safety Excellence Award from Healthgrades over the last three years, 23, 24, and 25, which is really good. So one of the things that we want to do at Johnston Memorial Hospital is increase access. We don't want our patients to have to go out of the area to get care. One of the things that Dwayne sees quite often at the tavern is us bringing in new physicians and trying to trying to get them to come and join our team. So these are some of the physicians that we've been able to recruit in the last year. We have Dr. Shana Levins. She's from Chihuahua. She's a neurologist. We have Selina Payne, a family medicine doc. Dr. Robert Jones, critical care and pulmonary. He's actually from Bristol, come back to this area. We have Dr. Fry, internal medicine. Dr. Andrew West. And Dr. West is actually coming out of Texas, been here two years now, and has done a phenomenal job. We have Dr. Lopez. He is an ETSU graduate and a general surgeon. Really, really great feedback on him. Dr. Jenna Lynn, one of our residents, has come back doing family medicine and obstetrics. We hired in Dr. Thompson as a podiatrist. We have Dr. Kevin. Chesire, who is an orthopedic surgeon. We have Dr. Rhianna Larson-Birchfield, again, one of our residents has come back. She'll be doing family medicine out at the campus. We have Jessica Elliott, who's a child and adolescent psych. We have two new OBGYNs that just joined us in April and May. That's Dr. Perkle and Dr. VanWinkle, and both of them are going to do complex GYN. Super excited about that. We have Dr. Taylor starting this month, who's in behavioral health, and two medical oncologists, Dr. Talari and Dr. Pajovic. Both of them are residents that were in our program, coming back next summer to join our cancer center. Another physician that I'd like to introduce to you guys is Dr. Kareem Zaki. And Dr. Zaki, one of the areas that we really struggled in the system and in our area is urology. And so actually Mike and Debbie Quillen gave us a gift of a million dollars to start a Center for Excellence for Urology. And Dr. Kareem Zaki is actually going to be the leader for that. He'll be one of hopefully a couple more urologists that will be coming in. Dr. Zaki's been up in Galax for the last 20 years. He's worked with the Duke Medical System, and he's going to be able to do a lot of different procedures. He'll be here full time. So he actually started this past week. So super excited about that. With the grant from the Quillins, as well as from Wellspring, some of the monies from Wellspring, we've been able to purchase about $2 million in urological equipment, which is huge, because that's equipment that we've not had, services that we've not been able to provide up until this point. So we've actually put in a Moses laser. We have an aqua ablation machine, and that's for gentlemen that have BPH. Actually is the latest technique of dealing with that. Obviously, we're going to expand our outpatient capabilities. He'll be in clinic. He'll have clinic every week. We're in the process of putting in a cysto room in the OR, so it'll be a full-time fluoro room that can do cystoscopy, and we have a lithotripsy unit that'll be on site. every other Friday. So there's a lot of different ways they can deal with stone now. So from the laser to the litho. So we're really excited about Dr. Zaki. He actually is going to be at the Chamber of Commerce breakfast on the 14th. So if you get a chance to be there, if you get a chance to meet him, he'll be talking about some of the services that he's going to do. But again, some of the things that we'll be able to do with aqua ablation with some of the other things that he'll be bringing to the table. It really is going to be a big difference for us here in JMH. Another thing that we've been able to do is we have a fellow, Dr. Cody Fuller. He's from Honaker. He's in his first year in urology fellowship up at West Virginia University. He signed to come back here when he's finished with his fellowship. So he'll be a partner with Dr. Zaki once he finishes up. So we're really excited about that. We also have signed a, we're in the process of signing a GI physician, Dr. David Berry, that will be coming here after his fellowship. He's in a fellowship down at ETSU. So both of those will be coming somewhere in that 28, 29 time frame. All right. So some of the other technology that we've been able to do, In the last two years, we actually added the da Vinci robot. I know a lot of you folks have heard of the da Vinci. But when you're looking at surgeries, you've got open surgery. Going from an open to a robot is huge because it is truly minimally invasive. Typically, they went from a robot to laparoscopic surgery, which was much better. But now with robotics, what we're seeing is is you're actually, your recovery time is about half, the time in the hospital is about half, and again the pain level for the patient is much less. So it really is a home run for our patients that are having general surgery. You know, typically the types of surgery that they'll do on the da Vinci, you do gall bladders, you'll do appendixes, you'll do hernia surgeries, and you can do colon surgeries as well. So Dr. Dorn, Dr. Cummins, Dr. Hitchcock, Dr. Lopez, all of those are able to do surgeries on the robot. So really, like I said, it's been a real plus for our community. The other thing is the ion pulmonary robot. We were actually first in the system to get the ion The ON is made by the same company that made the da Vinci. It's intuitive. It's the name of the company. But you're able to do sub-centimeter lung biopsies. And the importance of that is you're actually able to go in and get a sample before it gets, before it stages up to stage three or stage four. So if you're able to get it at an early stage, then what would happen is they typically would go in with a da Vinci. Now that would be done by a CVT surgeon down in the Tri-Cities, either Johnson City or Houston Valley. And they'll actually go in and take that piece of the lung out. And so typically like a three day hospital stay and really at that point the patient, there's nothing else you would do. You wouldn't have to go through the chemo and all the other stuff. So just really, really neat. program that we have with that. Dr. Jones and Dr. Adata are really the two pulmonologists that are doing that. And we started actually February two years ago, so we were first in the whole area to start doing the thion robot. We also have Mako orthopedic robots for our orthopedic surgeons when they're doing their hip or their knee replacements. The other thing that we've been able to do is replace our CT scanner to a 128-slice CT scanner. The new scanner, we're actually able to do coronary CTAs on. So instead of having a diagnostic cath, you could actually have a CT, which would show all the vessels as well, which would let you know whether there's a blockage. We also upgraded one of our MRIs to a new 1.5. We have a couple of things coming up. We have a cath lab that's been approved, so we're going to be putting in a brand-new cath lab. We're going to have a linear accelerator that's going in, which is we have a linear accelerator now, but we'll get the newest version of that this coming year, and also our sterile processing equipment. The cath lab, the good thing about the cath lab, right now we have one cath lab. When we're able to add the second cath lab, that'll help us from going on diversion sometimes with the cath lab being down. So that's certainly a good plus for us. Some of our community partnerships are with, of course, the Washington County Chamber. We're partnered with Barter Theater. We love the barters. William King Museum. We work closely with a lot of the students in the area. Emory and Henry Hills Program as well as Virginia Highlands Nursing Program. So we try to stay tight because we want to recruit those folks to the hospital if at all possible. Some of the community involvement, we actually partner with Tennessee Donor Services, which you can see this picture of us in May during the Donate Life Month. 2025 we had three organ donors, five lives were saved, and there were 30 tissue donors that receive tissue. Every year we do a Celebrate Women. I don't know if anybody's been able to attend that or not, but our cancer center actually sponsors this at the Higher Ed Center, and it's dedicated to women's health and wellness. And so they do a lot of screenings, have a lot of vendors there. So it's a really, really neat event, well attended. This year will be on Thursday, September the 17th. And then last is our Appalachian Community Dental Center. One of the things that we started back in 2020 with Dr. Scott Miller. A lot of you guys may know Scott, but the dental residency program was brought to JMH and asked whether or not we wanted to be a partner with him on that. And it's been a huge success. Before, a lot of the underserved or People that had no insurance at all or no ability to pay would have to go out to, like, the RAM projects, and they'd be in a hot, you know, airplane hangar trying to get your teeth pulled, and it's just really a tough situation. With the Highlands Dental Center, they've done a phenomenal job. You can see since 2020 they've added 10,811 new clinic patients, and almost 50,000 clinic patient visits since then. The amount of money that they have actually, I don't know if you'd say donated, because it's the time that they're spending on taking care of those patients, it's up in the millions. It really is pretty neat what they've been able to do. The other thing that's come out of that program is we actually have eight dental residents that are there this year. They've typically had seven when we started. I think it may be started at two or three, but it's built up to now they're at eight. And a lot of those dentists are actually staying in this area. So we're seeing not only are we able to train them that year, but they're also actually staying. And, again, these are dentists that are fully licensed. They come into that fellowship program. It's to learn how to do implants and dentures and those types of things. So it's not like they're still trying to learn how to be a dentist. I mean, they're a licensed dentist coming to learn advanced techniques. So it's been a real plus. And you can see the different counties that we serve with that, a lot of it being Washington, Tazewell, Smith, and Russell being the majority. Any questions for me? Anything that you guys? We do appreciate the opportunity to come up here and let you all know a little bit about what's going on. Certainly if there's anything that you'd like to see, we'd be glad to turn you around. Thank you all so much.

Thank you for taking the time out to come here to explain what you all do and what your progress has been. So we appreciate you showing up today and giving us a little brief rundown.

Thank you.

Thank you. Next we'll move into the swearing of the officers, and we have Chief John Holbrook here for that.

Sounds pretty rough outside. It does. Mayor, members of council, thank you all for allowing me an opportunity to come in this evening and talk about The two recent promotions that we have, we wanted to formally recognize them so, one, you all can meet them, and two, so they get recognition for all their hard work in earning this promotion. It was a competitive process, and these two did very well through the process. So we have officers Andy Self and Alex Gardner, and they were recently promoted to the rank of sergeant. That rank is critical for our agency. It's the first-line supervisor. They set the tone every time an officer comes to a call. They make sure that the standards that we set in the agency are relayed. They're teachers. They're mentors. And they handle every day the daily tasks that we have. And a promotion is more than just a title. It's that trust that we have in them to lead the other officers and to make those good decisions under pressure. And they are under pressure every call. But these two will represent our agency extremely well. And I'll introduce you. The one on the right is Andy Self. Andy was hired with our agency January 1, 2024. Before that, he had six years of law enforcement experience before he came to our agency. And since he came, he's had an immediate impact. Teaching, guiding, he's a field training officer, and he has jumped in there and has helped out. He's also been to a couple leadership schools already and has taken on a role of a lot of our tactical training to make sure that every officer is safe when they respond and And the most critical of times have the tools to succeed for that. He comes from a family of law enforcement. His dad was a conservation officer in Bland County for many years.

How many years?

24 years. He is married and has three children. And of those three, two of which are also law enforcement officers. One just finished the academy and the other one's been out for a little while now. His third one, we're kind of waiting until he turns 21. Before we start recruiting him, maybe he's 20. Get you in there. And we appreciate his family for all their support that they have given and allowed Andy to work a lot. Andy's very dedicated. We're lucky to have him. To his left is Alex Gardner. our other promotion. He was hired February 6, 2023, and since that time he has taken on any role that we have given him. We're a small agency. We got to do a lot of different things. We got to have a lot of different hats, and Gardner never really tells me no. In fact, he says yes, sir, and he figures it out to include going to armor schools so that he can fix all of our guns and keep them maintained and up to date, and that is a huge task, and thank you all for allowing us to and the budget to replace our guns, and Sergeant Gardner's got that task coming up too, so he's excited about that, I hope. But he also is a certified drone pilot as well for our agency, and he maintains that drone program, which can be very beneficial if you have a missing person, and helping us find them. He is a field training officer, and so he also trains our new officers and has trained a number of them so far. A fun fact about Sergeant Garner is he is fluent in German as well, which he is, I think, our only bilingual officer that we have right now. And he is married with two children as well. And, again, I always appreciate the support that they get from home. It takes a toll on our families when we're in this profession, and it's so nice to have the support that they give. So with that, I'll turn it over to Bert Kingsley, and she can officially swear the man in their new role as sergeant.

So raise your right hand, please. Do you, Nathan Andrew Self, and Alex Christopher Gardner, solemnly swear for the Constitution of the United States, the Constitution of the State of Virginia, and the laws and ordinances of the United States? That you will abide by the code of ethics for the law enforcement officers and the rules and regulations of the town of Abingdon Police Department. That you will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all duties incumbent upon you as the sergeant for the town of Abingdon according to the best of your abilities.

So part of any promotion is a trusted person from their family or from their friend group will pin on their badge. If you all want to invite up whoever you want to pin on your badge. So the badge is one of the most visible symbols of law enforcement. It represents public trust. You can come over here. You can do it at the same time. It represents public trust, responsibility, and the obligation of the authority, and to use good judgment with that authority. Thank you all. This time, congratulations, Sergeant .

Congratulations, Sergeant . Let's go for it. I'm going to step down.

You have to stand to the side of him.

Yes, sir.

We're back on track. Yes. Now we will move on to public hearing. We have one thing on the docket for public hearing today, and that is public hearing regarding the proposed sign for William King Museum Art, a Virginia non-stock corporation on town-owned property known as Academy Drive, located at or near 458 Academy Drive, Northwest. The proposed sign will be measured approximately 162 inches by the height of 33.5 width, more or less. And we have the assistant town manager, Kevin Blankenship, here to go over that with us. Good day, Kevin. Yay. Wipeout. Wipeout.

Wipeout. So good evening, everyone. Mayor Anderson. Members of Council, tonight for Council's consideration, there is a proposed easement for William King Museum of Arts. The item topic, as you mentioned, I1, which reads easement for a monument sign of a partial 010-1-34 in the office and institutional district and entrance corridor overlay. And if you would like, you can refer to page G1, which is located. It should be in the council's packet, but we should also have it on the slide for you to view of the renderings of the sign. So in summary, the William King Museum of Arts, who is the applicant, they have requested approval for an easement. to have a 33.5 inch wide by 162 inch tall, resulting in a 37.69 square footage sign. The sign is non-illuminated. There will be no electricity that will be connected to this sign. The sign is double-sided, and it does have a thickness of 5.5 inches, and I would like to bring to Council the tension that there should be if you can go to the next slide. I'm sorry This will actually show the location of the sign which is on Russell Road The aluminum monument sign is to be located on partial 0 1 0 dash 1 dash 3 4 centered on coordinates 36 point seven zero zero nine and negative eighty one point nine seven three six and as shown in Attachment A on page G14, or the current slide. As shown on the map, the monument will be placed, as you can see, or you can't see, but it's 13 feet, approximately 13 feet from the edge of the Russell Road, and it's about 8 feet from Academy Drive. The property owner is, of course, the town of Abingdon, Virginia. It is within the office and institutional district. It is within the entrance corridor overlay and requires an easement for the placement of the sign. Therefore, this requires an approval of the town council prior to the permit being issued. Prior actions, I would like to inform council an entrance corridor certificate of appropriateness application was presented to the Planning Commission to be determined if the request monument sign on partial 010-1-34 would meet the requirements for an entrance corridor certificate of appropriateness for signage in the office and institutional district and entrance corridor overlay as a result the planning commission voted to approve the entrance corridor certificate of appropriateness application as submitted a couple things i do want to mention to council public works they did their research on this particular location the area of which They want to replace the existing sign. There is no issues that they reported, so it's cleared by Public Works. Rick Statzer has approved the foundation as it was presented within the plans. So at this time, I would ask Council if you have any questions or concerns that you may have.

I don't think we have any questions or concerns. I think the sound looks wonderful if you ask me, and it's a nice way to let people know what's going on and which direction to go. I think it's a wonderful idea, and it's by the Planning Commission, so you've done your steps to get to where you're at right now, and I think that, to me, everything seems great, wonderful.

All right.

Amanda?

Looks great to me. All right, thanks.

Thank you. Now I'd like to open the public hearing. No one wishes to speak. We'll close the public hearing now. Um, we have no resolution, first reading of ordinance, no second reading of ordinance, no consideration of bids. We have one new business item today. That's the consideration of the proposed signage for the William King Museum Art, a Virginia non-stock corporation on Talanoa property known as Academy Drive, located at or near 458 Academy Drive, Northwest. Opposed sign with the measurements approximately 162 inches height and 33.5 inches width, more or less.

I'd like to make a motion that we approve the proposed sign that Eastman has set forth here tonight.

Do I have a second?

I'll second.

Any further discussion? Kim, if you'll please call roll.

Mr. Webb.

Aye.

Ms. Quetch. Aye. Ms. Pillian. Aye. Vice Mayor Austin. Aye.

And Mayor Anderson. Aye. Now we'll move on to old business. There's no old business that we have to discuss. We have miscellaneous business and communication from our town manager, Mike Cochran.

Yes, thank you, Mayor. I appreciate that. Just wanted to, I'm sure everybody heard we had a 4th of July celebration the other day, and that was It was quite an event, but you just got to see the behind the scenes. We have such an amazing staff between the fire, the police, and public works, and rec. I mean, it was all hands on deck to make those events happen. But yeah, it really was pretty wild to see it all roll out. And then at the very, very end, after that long, reasonably warm day, the skies broke loose and we had trees go down. And so those guys, rather than be exhausted and go home, they went out and cleared trees. In fact, the fire chief, I believe, cleared one himself or cleared out one of the drains for us, that section on Main Street flooding. Yeah, so the problem is when debris covers the drain, it's only as good as the clogged drain. Wow. Yeah, well. I had plenty of discussions on that one when they were building it. There's a whole reason they didn't. But the problem is if you clog the drain, it's never going to drain. But that said, I mean, everybody, even on their way home after the event, they were still out there clearing roads and making it happen. And it's just all hands on deck. But I'm just very appreciative of the staff that we had to help make it happen. And I thought it was nice to see the families, people from all over the place having a good time. And I was pulling into work here this morning, and there was people out there singing our praises. Everybody seemed to really, really enjoy what they saw, so it was neat. Good to have, and I just appreciate that we had the staff to be able to make it happen, and appreciate all the support for funding it. So that's it.

I'd kind of like to mimic what Mike Cochran said. Me and my family showed up on the 4th at about 3.30, 4 o'clock. Public Works was already out there, everyone from the Information Center. Fire Department, Police Department, the police was there on the bicycles as well, too. You know, one of the things that I was really tickled about myself was just seeing how everything, like Mike said, came together and the dismantle of everything and the usage of the Virginia Creeper Trail. There were several people, Derek and Amanda as well, too, and their families. There were lots of people that were using the access on and off of the Creeper Trail there, too. help out with the parking situation. But all around, I think everyone with Public Works, the fire department, the police department, and our information tourist department, Adam Bolton and his company down there, they've done a wonderful job. So kudos to everyone on that. Anyone else have anything they'd like to speak about?

I was privileged to be over at the state Little League softball tournament. All right. And they opened on Thursday night, had a very nice ceremony, continued with play. And we had 12 teams from across the state that were here in Abingdon. And top to bottom, the people I talked with were very appreciative of the things that were offered here. We had some great comments on the fields. and all the other things over at the Meadows. And the only thing, I will mention this. And I'm the world's best at standing and wondering where something is and it being right in front of my nose. So I stand to be corrected on it. But the only flag, they had the national anthem. And the only flag that we had, it Field number four, which is the big one, was one out in center field, but it was temporary. It is temporary.

Thank you.

We're going to have another one.

We had talked about putting one on the roof. Before the event, we had a meeting out at the field house, and there was discussion on how we could put one on the roof. That way all teams could see it. When they originally did it, the three that are in front of the white building were purchased, but With four fields, it's kind of odd. So we put them in front of the Meadows building. But I do see when you're playing the sport, it'd be nice. So we've got to figure out a way we can put one on top of the roof. I don't know what it would take, but we'll figure it out. Because that way, it doesn't need to be 30 feet tall. It just needs to be something you can see from all angles.

Or just a permanent one where there's temporary one.

Well, that's true, too. Yeah. Yeah.

Because it was in a good position.

Yeah. We'll figure that out. Yeah. Because it definitely... Because when you're there, you can't see the flags that are in front of the Meadows building. You see the PALS flag. Yeah, I appreciate the feedback. We'll make it happen. Thank you.

And kudos to everyone over at the Meadows and everyone that was on council when we got that Meadows going over there. I think that that is a very nice addition to the town of Abingdon. It's being used very well over there, so. day-to-day usage over there is really great. It is a very nice facility, and thank you, Wayne, for saying that. You know, people were very holly of that facility over there. On Derrick Webb, Donna, do you have anything that y'all would like to add?

No, I was just telling you, that's why we ran.

It's nice to see it get worn out. Love it. Amanda, do you have anything you would like to add?

Is this Council Member Reports or are we talking about just the 4th of July? We're talking about Council Member Reports. Okay. Well, of course the 4th of July was spectacular and I was so proud of our town and enjoyed myself tremendously that I just think that everybody who worked on that deserves all of our thanks because it made me really proud to be here. and to be to live in this town. It was great. But I also want to give a little shout out to the police department because I know that they work really, really, really hard doing important things. But they also will come when you call them for things that are not important. So embarrassingly enough, this is the third or fourth time that I've called them to help me with an animal situation that doesn't even belong to me. But a couple of weeks ago, I called and actually called Central Dispatch because I felt bad reaching out to Chief Holbrook at that time of night. But Officer D and Officer Denton came to the rescue, and there was a little tiny kitten that my vet said was probably about four weeks old and had just gotten separated from its mother and had just been weaned that was inside of my neighbor's car. And we couldn't get it out. And I could hear the kitten screaming from my yard, and so I went on a search, and then So they helped me rescue the kitten, which now has found a home that is not at my house, which is the optimal situation. But I called the chief the next day, and I said, you know, they were so nice, and they were so helpful, and you all probably think I'm the crazy animal lady because I constantly do this. And he said, no, that's a happy thing that we get to do. And a lot of times our jobs are not fun, and they really enjoyed helping you. So I just think it's important that we know that they'll do all the little things for us as well. It was really sweet.

All right. With that, we'll move right on down the line with appointments to boards and committees. The Veterans Board, that item has been tabled. So we'll go to the appointments of the boards and committee, and it'll be the Abingdon Arts Commission that is to reappoint Hadi. and who is eligible to serve another additional term, reappoint Christine Minton, who is eligible to serve an additional term, reappoint Deborah, I can't pronounce that last name, excuse me, but who is eligible for additional term, Darren Crawley, who is eligible to serve an additional term, and to reappoint Kathy, who is eligible to serve an additional term as well. And I think that we can do all this together, Cam, if that's okay. And then for the sustained admin to reappoint John Stanley, who is eligible to serve an additional term. So would someone like to make a motion to reappoint the Arts Commission and the person to the sustained admin? We also have tourism there. Excuse me, Ms. Tina Murray. I'm sorry about that. We have one reappointment for Tina Murray, who is eligible to serve with another additional term on the Tour Advisory Committee.

I'll make that motion that we appoint all of those people listed here that you named.

I'll second.

Any further discussion? Kim, if you'll please call roll.

Mr. Webb.

Aye.

Ms. Quetch. Aye. Ms. Pillian. Aye. Vice Mayor Austin. Aye. And Mayor Anderson.

Aye. And with that said, we'll call this meeting.

Mayor Anderson, we do have an appointment on sustained avenue, and you do have an application.

I'll make that motion that we appoint Joel Boggs to sustain avenue. I'll second.

Any further discussion? Kim, please call the roll. Thank you, Kim.

Mr. Webb?

Aye.

Ms. Quetch? Aye. Ms. Pillion? Aye. Vice Mayor Austin? Aye.

And Mary Anderson? Aye. With that being said, we'll call this meeting adjourned. Thank you.