Town Council - Regular Meeting

Virginia Town Council meeting Thursday, August 20, 2006, now in session. Please note there will be an opportunity during the meeting for citizens to address the Town Council when the Mayor, I, declares public comment open. We request that anyone addressing Council sign up, approach the podium when called, state your first and last name. Kim, if you'll please call roll.

Ms. Quetch. Here. Vice Mayor Austin. Present. And Mayor Anderson.

Here.

Let the record reflect Mr. Webb and Ms. Billion are absent.

If everyone will please stand, I will 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. I don't know if everyone could please rise back again. Mr. Vice Mayor Austin, if you could just lead us in a little prayer today. I know we don't have anybody signed up for prayer today. I do apologize, but I'm going to let Vice Mayor Wayne Austin lead us in a little prayer, please.

Heavenly Father, we bow our heads and we thank you for this day and for its many blessings. We ask, dear Lord, that you would help us as we consider town business today, that we do so in a professional and courteous manner, that you would give us leadership and guidance in all things that we might do. Forgive us where we fail you. Lead God and direct us. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

Yes, sir.

I think you've done that before. He does that. I think you've done that before. He does that at every Veterans meeting. Every Veterans meeting.

Good job.

And now if I could have a motion to approve the agenda.

So moved.

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

Ms. Kletch. Aye. Vice Mayor Austin. Aye. And Mayor Anderson.

Aye.

And now we will open up public comment. I see I have several people signed up for public comment. If anyone would like to speak after I call those names that are signed up for public comment, if anyone does want to speak and your name is not on the list, if you'll just raise your hand and come forward and state your first and last name. The first person signed up for public comment today is going to be Greg Lilley.

I think there's one before him, sir.

Excuse me. Stephen Boor. Sorry, Mr. Boor. If you'll come forward, please, sir. I didn't mean to exclude you, sir.

My name is Stephen Boor.

I live over on 264 North Church Street, right behind the library parking lot.

We've seen as many as 15 deer come down by across the road down the bank. They'll come either down our yard or they'll go down by the library. They'll come into our yard. My wife prides herself on her flowers and stuff and spends quite a bit of money planting those flowers and things. They destroy them pretty much. I tried every kind of repellent to keep them from it. Nothing seems to work. But my problem's Small, there's my friend back here, Mr. Tommy Wise, got attacked by a deer and his wife also. My problem's minor to that, but they do have a field on up across from the tennis courts where they pretty much stay, like a camp for them, I guess, whatever you want to call it. Since that's happened to my friend when I'm outside, now I catch myself looking over my shoulder because I know I couldn't get away from him. One, because I have a disability. I have a numb left leg, and I could never be able to get away from one if one decided to attack me. And that's kind of really got me more aware since that happened to my good friend. And I hate seeing anybody get hurt by anybody. But it is a problem on our street. And you see them all up around in there. Up by the high school, you see them everywhere up. there and it's a pretty large herb or whatever you call a bunch of deer you know there's a lot of them a whole whole big lot and you gotta think about kids too outside playing and things and they could you know i don't know what's got into the deer they're not scared anymore and uh you'd hate to see a kid or anybody for that matter get attacked the flowers like i say That's a problem for me, but it's nothing as bad as somebody getting attacked by them. That's about all I got to say, I guess.

I just want you to know that we know that there is a deer problem. We have some things going on today. If you'll stay after public comment, we have some people from the Wildlife Department here to kind of maybe help us with that situation. Okay. But thank you for coming out today. Yes, sir.

Yes, sir.

Next will be Greg Lilly.

I'm Greg Lilly, and I am at 244 Valley Street Northeast, Abington 24210. First off, on Monday evening, we had about two inches of rain in a very short time and a lot of wind. And I just want to thank the police department, the fire department, life-saving crew, public works. They did a great job. getting things cleaned up. We did notice a lot of traffic coming down the alleys. So I walked up to Main Street and noticed Main Street was flooded. So I'm interested to find out, you know, it was fixed, I thought, but find out what happened and what can be done to keep that from happening again. Thank you.

Thank you. Tom Wise.

Council members, I'm Tom Wise, 335 Bogey Drive, Abingdon, Virginia. About five weeks ago, I stepped out my back door with my dog and I didn't see anything but the face of a deer and suddenly I was attacked and stomped, knocked out on the ground. My wife came to the back door and not knowing what was going on and she stepped out the door and a deer attacked her. And I was beat really bad. I come to and I held this arm up and finally crawled to the patio and got a metal chair and pulled it up over me, and it left. It tore that arm up. You wouldn't believe. And then it ripped her legs really bad. I spent four days in the hospital, and she went back later with infection and spent five days. And like one of my neighbors said, when they eat your plants, you can replace those or spray them with it and be gone. But people, you know, it's like this other gentleman said, you're always outside, you'll be looking over your shoulder, not comfortable, wondering what's going to attack you. And it really leaves you with a phobia. And I've noticed over the years the deer population has grown. And I think they're coming in. A lot of them come in from the county around the mountains. Like in the south of Country Club, there's a mountain. And they come in in droves. And I know you people will plan to look into it and do something about it. I have photos of, if you'd like to see it, if you're interested in what some... If you're interested in... seeing what they can do to a person.

Take your time, Mr. Watson. Sorry about the situation.

You can slide these along with your finger, if you like. But that was the worst picture.

Yeah.

We beat you in the face.

I wouldn't frame that for your house. Wow, that's tough. That had to hurt.

That's what my face looked like when they got through. And they beat my body up as well.

Mr. Wise, I think you told me on the telephone that if it had been a child, you were convinced it would have killed a child.

Oh, I don't know. It would have killed me. I mean, I was beat here. The mouth broke a tooth. If my wife hadn't come out, it would have finished me off, I'm sure. But there's neighbors who say... they're concerned about letting their grandchildren out in the lawns. And I know a certain time of year they're worse than you do, too. But if anyone has any questions, that's a good picture. If anyone has any questions, I'll be sitting back there. I welcome your answer.

Yes, sir. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Walsh.

But that's not why I'm creeping around today. I've got another problem.

I think you're doing wonderful today. Next up will be Miss Betty Watt.

I'm Betty Wise, Tom's wife. And I just want to say we've lived in Country Club for 35 years. We pay county tax. We pay town tax. And now I'm afraid to go out in my yard. I'm afraid to go to my mailbox. I back my car out of the garage to go to the mailbox because the deer have taken over. They used to run when you'd go out in the yard and they'd be there, but now they don't. They just stand and look at you. So I'm pleading and begging for y'all to do something about these deer. I mean, you know, you're afraid to go out in your yard. I enjoy being outside in the summertime, piddling in the flowers and, you know, being out. And now I'm afraid to go out.

Yes, ma'am.

Even to take trash out or anything.

Yes, ma'am.

So I beg you to do something about these steer.

Ms. Wise, we are working on this situation. I just want you and your husband both to know that. You know, we are trying to find a solution for this problem. I appreciate that. Yes, ma'am, and I'm sorry for everything that you all have had to go through. Is there anyone that's here that didn't sign up for public comment that would like to come up and make a statement here in public comment? We'll now close public comment. We have no proclamations. Did someone raise their hand? OK. We have no proclamations today, no public hearings today, no resolutions, no first readings of ordinance, no second reading of ordinance, no consideration of bids today. We do have a couple of things on the new business. I've got a presentation for the Boys and Girls Club of Mountain Empire. Ms. Kathy Lowermilk, CEO, and Ms. Cole, if you all please come forward.

Hi, I'm Kathy Loudermilk. I'm the CEO of Boys and Girls Club. I hope you all know that we run clubs here in Abingdon. We serve about 200 kids a year between our summer program and our after-school program. We serve kids at Watauga Elementary. We serve kids at Greendale, which I know is outside town limits, but we have our Abingdon kids, Abingdon Elementary school kids there. So we're serving a lot of kids in your area. We just want you to know that we're here, that we're here to help all the kids that we can. We want to be a resource for the kids in Abingdon. We are open until 6.30, so we try to be open and available for parents that work outside the normal hours. And we're doing programming every day, so we're doing homework help and healthy habits and character and leadership building and workforce development program. So we're really here to be an asset to the town and the school system and our kids. And I want to introduce you to Gary. He's one of our Watauga Elementary students, and he has something he'd like to tell you.

Let me pull it up. Hello, I'm Gary Hess of the Boys and Girls Club of the Mountain Empire. I go to E.B. Stanley Middle School, and I'm in seventh grade. I got the opportunity to be the Youth Advisory Council President for the Boys and Girls Club of the Mountain Empire. I've been attending the Boys and Girls Club for around two years. We're having a program called 4-9-11 Day Service Leadership and Remembrance on September 2nd. It's at Watauga Elementary School from 4 p.m. to 5.30 p.m. The Boys and Girls Club members will be packing and sorting care packages to help provide items to those in need in our community. They will also work on a quilt for first responders. We would like for you to join us at Watauga Elementary for our 4-9-11 Day Service Leadership and Remembrance. Thank you for your time and have a good rest of your day.

Thank you. What time does that? I know it's September the 2nd. What time was that?

It was 4 p.m. to 5.30 p.m. if you would like to join us at Watauga Elementary School. Thank you.

We'll leave a flyer for you all so you have that information. Wonderful. Well, again, we just want to thank you all first for letting us be here, but also just for your support of the club here in Abingdon. And if there's ever anything that we can do for you all, please feel free to reach out.

I've got a quick question for you. How many kids do you have in that program right now?

At Watauga?

At Watauga, just, you know, from Watauga, Greendale, E.B. Stanley.

We're serving about 100 kids in Washington County, Virginia. We also have Ray Valley up near Damascus.

Does Ray Valley come, are you all connected, Ray Valley connected here with the Abingdon kids?

We have seven or five. So at Ray Valley, we do serve Ray Valley kids. At Watauga, we serve Watauga and ED family. And then at Greendale, we serve Abingdon, High Point, and Greendale. So we try to serve as many kids as needs us. Obviously, Keith Berrigan is a huge supporter of the club, has been on our board in the past. So very, very nice gentleman and very helpful to us when we're looking to expand up here. It's been, Abingdon's been great to us, and the club is one of our larger clubs up here.

All right. I just want you all to know as well, we have three council members here, Donna, Vice Mayor Wayne, and myself, and we have two others. If there's anything that we can do for you all, the town manager is Mike Cochran. Don't hesitate to reach out to any of us or Mike Cochran if there's something we can do for you all.

Thank you very much.

All right. Thank you all. Thank you. Hey, we have no old business. We have miscellaneous business and communications from our town manager, Mike Cochran.

Sure. Thank you, Mayor. To start off, I've got, it's Cat Black. Okay, Cat Black. Sorry, I was trying to catch that. It reminds me of the exhaust that's going on in the car, the Cat Black exhaust. Anyway, it's Cat Black with the Division of Wildlife. for the state. She's a biologist. She works out of the Marion office. And she's got a presentation to go over some of the deer concerns more statewide and then more localized. And as much as people don't like PowerPoints, sometimes they're effective to communicate information. And so I just have her just to present the basic information for this area. And then there is a biologist that's assigned to this area specifically. But he's addressing a bear issue. Two counties over right now, but I'm trying to work on them for next month. So, okay. Female Speaker 1 Thank you.

Thank you for having me.

My name is Katherine Black.

I'm a District Wildlife Biologist with the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources. you were on my watchers hi my name is Kathleen black I'm a district wildlife biologist with the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources as mister Cochran mentioned I'm here today covering for Brandon Bernhardt your local biologist who is dealing with an all hands on deck bear situation Being down a hand, I am here. So I'm happy to be here. The good news is he would be telling you the same thing I am, just a little more eloquently. And before I transferred to our Blacksburg district, I did used to cover our Marion district, so I am familiar with the area. I'm always glad to be back. So this is a bit of an in-depth talk. It sounds like there's a lot of interest surrounding deer management. in this community. So I'll start off giving some background information just about our agency's approach to deer management across the state, some useful context. This is just kind of a quick summary of our basic management tools. And then go into specific options for urban area deer conflicts. So there are a lot of other things you can do to manage deer at a small residential scale. This is more of a big picture, things that we would recommend that you all consider given the extent of the problem. And then we'll have time for discussion as much as you all would like to have. And I guess before I start, I would like to acknowledge you all. I'm really sorry you had the experience that you did. That is something that's becoming, unfortunately, more common across the state. I'm here as part of the town's resolution to try and fix the problem. So we really appreciate you sharing your experience. All right, so moving into our approach to deer management. So across Virginia, all of our deer management activities are guided by our state deer management plan. It usually spans a 10-year period. We're currently revising it for the next 10 years. And so this is developed through stakeholder input, technical experts, so the biologists typically, public surveys, and it works to incorporate the interests of all involved folks. So not just hunters, not just wildlife watchers, everyone in the state who might interact with deer has a chance to have some input into this program. There's a lot of information on it. So there's a link to it online if you would like to do a deep dive. But the short version is it kind of outlines our objectives on a county by county basis and lists different strategies for meeting those objectives. So the two key topics in that plan that we work as an agency to balance are biological carrying capacity. So this is the number of deer that an area can support long term, just based on the amount of habitat available and the quality of that habitat. And so when we're thinking about urban areas, one big component in biological carrying capacity, if we can advance to the next slide.

Maybe.

oh, thank you, is that urban and suburban areas make surprisingly good deer habitat. So when a lot of us think about deer habitat, we think about open forest, miles away from any roads. And at one time, that was most of the deer habitat in the state. But now, more and more of our state is looking like those pictures on the right. We've got a mix of rural, urban, agriculture, kind of this mosaic of habitats, which for deer translates into a mosaic of different food sources, good shelter you can hide out in different places. So in creating these suburban and urban islands for ourselves, we have unintentionally also created a deer paradise. And so Abingdon is not the only area that's been struggling with growing deer populations. This is an issue statewide. So y'all are not alone in this, but the good news is we can learn from a lot of different localities, what has worked there, what hasn't, and apply those lessons to this situation. So the other part of that plan that we are working to manage is cultural carrying capacity. So this boils down to the number of deer that people are willing to tolerate in a given area. So this is completely independent of habitat between hunters, farmers, gardeners, wildlife watchers, everyone in between. What is our ideal number of deer from a human perspective? And this is often much harder to estimate and gauge than the biological carrying capacity. So some of the things that we do at the state level are specifically because people are just not willing to tolerate as many deer as there are, even though that habitat could support more otherwise. So as far as our current population objectives, this is a map of Virginia. We use counties as our management unit. And you can see that our objectives for Washington County and areas surrounding Abingdon is relatively low. But if we compare that on our next slide to our current status, we're a little bit above where we would like to be. So on our third slide, we have combining these two. So you can see, not just in Washington County, but pretty much the vast majority of the state, we are above or well above where we want our deer population to be. And so looking at this, this color gradient is based off of the number of antlered bucks harvested per square mile of available habitat. So habitat estimation includes pretty much everything except large parking lots, malls, places deer clearly wouldn't go because it turns out deer are surprisingly flexible in their habitat need. So most of my district and most of this district, we are actively working to reduce the deer population. So the primary tool that we use to do that is regulated hunting. And so every other year, the biologists get together, look at our current population status, compare that to our objectives, and then make specific adjustments on a county by county basis to the harvest regulations to try and meet those objectives. And we really focus on antlerless or female harvest. And the reason for this, if we look at our next slide, is that female deer are really, the key for reproductive potential and the population growth. So one deer over its lifetime, if we start at the top, that one deer starts as one deer. The next year, if that does successfully bred, which most are going to be around here, she'll likely have one deer fawn in gray. Moving down to the next year, if conditions are good, which they very much are around here, she'll likely have twins. And then each year, add more and more deer to the population and getting up into triplets in her later most productive years. So that one doe has the potential to contribute a pretty large number of deer to the population in just a few years. When we look at the buck side of things, though, bucks are a little less important. So we love them dearly. A lot of people really get excited about bucks from a hunting perspective, but from a population growth perspective, one buck is pretty similar to 100 bucks. You know, you only need one buck to do the job as long as there's at least one hanging around. that output in population is not going to change with the number of bucks. So that's why we really focus on antlerless harvest opportunity rather than on buck harvest, just because that has the most bang for your buck, pun intended. So yeah, I think when you're looking at the regs, you're like, man, why are they so obsessed with does? That's because looking at population growth long term, the change in your does and their survival and reproductive output is what's going to predict your deer population just a couple years down the road. So when we're looking at trying to meet our objectives, there are a couple different management levers we can pull. So when we're making our harvest regulations for the next year, the easiest thing that we can do if we want to decrease the population is increase the number of doe days. So increase the opportunities that hunters have where they're allowed to harvest a doe. Historically, throughout southwest Virginia, we were trying to grow the deer population, and so does were pretty restricted. There were only a couple of days each season where you could harvest them. Now we've gone the full opposite end of the spectrum where Washington County, for example, every day is a doe day. And most of southwest Virginia, either the vast majority or the full season does their fair game just because we are so high above our population goals. Next thing we can do, if we're still not reducing the number of does enough through recreational hunting, we can implement a tool called earn a buck. It's a bit of a misnomer. A lot of states, you have to harvest a doe before you earn the opportunity to harvest a buck. Virginia is a little more flexible. So your first buck is free, so to speak. But if you want to harvest a second buck in a given year, you have to take a doe. And it may not be very popular with hunters, but it is highly effective in increasing the number of does harvested. So that is already in place, I believe, in all cities and towns across the state, with very few exceptions in the Virginia Beach area. It's not yet in place in the Washington County level, but our next reg cycle, we likely will be considering it. Uh, we can also extend the firearm season. So right now we have a four week firearm season. Uh, you know, looking at the numbers and talking with Brandon, your local biologist, he is already considering extending that season next year. And if that regular season is not enough, we can add in an extra antlerless only season. So that will add anywhere from a couple of weeks to a couple of months to the duration in which those can be harvested. And so once we get to the end of those levers, things get a little bit trickier. So this chart shows our deer harvest from roughly early 1920s to the present. You can see that for a while, there just weren't a lot of deer in Virginia. Harvest was relatively low. If you went out hunting or your grandpa went out hunting, you were lucky to see a deer, let alone bag one. We have definitely changed that, especially starting around the 1980s, gone the opposite way, where there is quite a lot of deer harvest. But when you look at the last decade or two, it's kind of plateaued and even dropped in some areas. And the proportion of does that are harvested is dropping. And as we discussed, that's really what drives your population change. So you can harvest a ton of bucks, but if you're not harvesting any does, you're still going to have the same or more deer. And so it's kind of a concerning trend we're seeing across the state. Generally, a decrease in the number of licensed hunters, decrease in interest in hunting. It's not everyone's cup of tea. I respect that. But just because our deer population model has been historically built on hunting, it's been creating problems. So in addition to the loss in hunters, other challenges we have looking forward, Private land access. The vast majority of property in Virginia is going to be closed to hunters as private land. So even if you have willing hunters, they may not be allowed to hunt where they are. A lack of deer processors. Most people want to not waste what they shoot. So the fewer processors we have, the more work it puts on our current hunters to process their own deer, especially if they're wanting to donate their deer to venison donation programs. There's only so many processors who can take so many deer. Chronic wasting disease is another concern. It thankfully has not hit Washington County. But overall, just as it's moving closer and spreading throughout southwest Virginia, we are getting a lot of comments from concerned hunters and folks who are like, you know, maybe just I'll give up hunting and not deal with this, which is the exact opposite of what we want. And so the biggest challenge in my mind and what brings us all here today is urban deer management. So we're going to shift gears and start talking about some strategies to address this problem. Alright, so first up, non-lethal options. These are usually your most publicly palatable, but may or may not be your most effective. Our biggest recommendation, any area that's having issues with deer overabundance or deer that are just not scared of people, is to implement some kind of feeding ordinance. So this is already in place in Washington County due to chronic waste and disease. But you all do have the option of creating an additional ordinance just to add a little more teeth to it and really hammer the point home to the public that feeding deer is not needed and it actually goes counter to a lot of our objectives. So feeding wildlife generally increases the spread of disease, causes animals to lose their fear of people, and so what we're seeing in a lot of areas where we have people who are intentionally feeding deer or even hand feeding them, those deer start approaching other people expecting food if that food doesn't appear the deer are not very understanding so most of the time when we have a deer that physically attacks a person it's because that deer is being fed by someone very close to that house usually next door neighbor a couple doors down or worst case scenario that deer has been kept as a pet and turned loose we do see a depressing number of those throughout southwest virginia it's something that we as an agency have been trying to get the word out on but just you know if you all Anywhere in town, get a report of a pet deer. Let us know. Those situations never turn out well. Once a deer has lost its fear of people, it's not a matter of if but when someone gets hurt. And so all of the deer attacks that I have personally responded to have been a direct result of pet deer turned loose or someone who's hand-fed a deer for so long it expects everyone to produce food. So another set of non-lethal options. These questions always come up in similar talks like this, so I'll touch on them briefly. But the long and short of it is there's a lot of really great research out there. In reality, it's just not an effective long-term option. So in Virginia, surgical sterilization and chemical contraception are only allowed to be used on deer for highly restricted research purposes. These methods are incredibly expensive, ranging from a couple hundred dollars per deer to a couple thousand. And especially for surgical sterilization, there's a lot of mortality associated with captures. So deer in general don't handle the stress of being caught on and put under very well. So for every deer that you're able to sterilize and turn loose, you may have one or more that just don't make it through. So if you're trying to keep deer alive and be humane, that may defeat the purpose. The chemical contraception options, there is a growing body of research, but they're not really available to the general public. Again, they're very expensive. So far, the research has only showed them to be somewhat effective in isolated populations. It sounds like you all have deer coming in from all over to live the sweet Abingdon life. So I think that would probably create an endless vacuum of going out and doing these treatments on deer and not seeing much change. And so generally baseline, in order to be successful, you need 80% or more of females in a herd to be treated. You need to be able to sustain that level of treatment long term. As soon as you stop, the new females entering that population are more than capable of reproducing to fill the void. And so I think a lot of people think it's a magic solution, but at least on the ground for free-ranging deer populations, it just doesn't seem to do much good. And so that brings us to lethal options. So as a state agency, we're always going to encourage recreational hunting wherever possible. For a couple of reasons, our funding model is based on the sale of hunting license, so shameless plug. But from a more logistical perspective, if you have people who are willing to do for free something, then we would recommend letting them do that rather than pay someone to do that same thing. So it's just a lot more cost effective for localities. There are options already in place throughout a lot of the state. And we do have urban archery options. If recreational hunting is not feasible, then kill permits are our next recommendation. So we can dive into each of those a little bit more. All right. So recreational deer hunting, by default, it's allowed unless it's specifically prohibited by local ordinances. So what we see in a lot of areas is you may be allowed to hunt deer in theory, but within town limits, you're not allowed to discharge a firearm. You're not allowed to shoot a bow or shoot a crossbow bolt. So could you harvest a deer? Sure. Are you allowed to do it with any weapon? No. And so I think that's really the first hurdle that we see when we're working with localities. But the good news is you all control your local ordinances. You have the power to change that and adjust it to allow for controlled hunting if you wish. We always recommend focusing on harvesting mature does, again, just given the sheer number of fawns they can produce over their lifetime. And different safety considerations, things like limiting it to archery only or requiring hunting from raised stands or certain times of year or locations that are closed to the public. There's a lot of ways that you can make it safer all around. So an example, local ordinance, town of Blacksburg is where I'm based, so I'm most familiar with them. They only allow the use of archery equipment for hunting. And so this has to be during seasons set by Department of Wildlife Resources. They've specified certain zoning areas where based on population density and land use, they feel it's safe to do so with archery only versus denser residential areas. It's off limits. So you all have the power to make those determinations for your locality if you wish. They require using elevated stands. So that is always one of our biggest recommendations, just to be sneakier and increase your chance of getting deer since they get smart really quick. But also, it increases your viewpoint for hunters. And generally, this is a lot safer. restrictions on how close to a building, sidewalk, property lines, that sort of thing, and hunters have to get written permission from that landowner. So these are just a couple examples of things that you all could do if you wish to change your local ordinances to allow for limited hunting. There's a lot of different options out there, and you all kind of have as much flexibility as you would like in that. So other options already in place in city and town limits, with the exception of a couple places near Virginia Beach, there is no daily bag limit. So if you did have hunting, hunters could take up to their annual bag limit in one day. If they want to go past that annual bag limit, we do offer bonus antlerless tags in most counties. So Washington County does qualify for those bonus tags. It's usually $18 for six of them, so three bucks a deer. That's pretty affordable. Earn a buck is already in place by default within this area. So all of the things that we would normally do to try and maximize doe harvest are either in place or already on the table should you all wish to pursue hunting as an option. Um, that said, you know, hunting seasons can also be a little bit short, um, especially for archery seasons. So we do have an urban archery program specifically aimed at localities that are having issues with deer abundance. So this allows for extended archery only seasons within town limits. There is a minimum population density requirement. I'm pretty sure you all meet that. Most localities do. This can allow for an extra four months of hunting opportunity, either on the front end or the back end of hunting season. It's limited to antlerless deer, again, just to maximize the impact on the population. And localities can set any additional requirements they want. They can't charge for an urban archery permit unless that is on locality-owned property. But to apply for this, it's relatively easy. You just contact your local district biologist, say, hey, we would like to enroll in urban archery. We're having too many deer. We'll coordinate with the CPOs, get you all listed in the books, and kind of go from there. So it's a pretty quick process. This is usually our next recommended step if a locality already has recreational hunting in place but is still not seeing the impact they want. We also understand that recreational hunting might not be feasible in all situations. Some areas are just enough anti-hunting sentiment that that's not going to fly, or it just might not be safe for the average citizen to discharge a weapon regardless of setting. And so we do have a provision in our kill permit code statewide that allows for localities that are looking to reduce deer vehicle collisions or address other human safety issues to apply for a kill permit. And so this will let the specified folks hunt outside of season on town or city property or with written private landowner permission on those properties as well. So this kind of expands your options outside the normal hunting season. And this is what a lot of the localities in Southwest have been leaning towards. This is what Blacksburg does, Radford, Roanoke. So the weapons allowed, date and time, usually that's at the discretion of the officer issuing the permit. So in Blacksburg, for example, they only allow it when the students are gone on break, just because there's a lot fewer people in town. But you all can make pretty much any request that you believe is reasonable, and it's up to that officer. But in an area where we've already had documentation of issues associated with overabundance and safety, it's going to take a lot to get one of these denied. It's usually not a matter of whether we'll approve it, just what conditions are in place to maximize safety. And so most localities that go this route will either have their local law enforcement get volunteers with them who enjoy hunting to conduct those operations. It adds an extra layer of safety because your average police officer is going to have a lot more firearms experience than your average hunter and just be a lot more aware of considerations in a densely residential area. If local law enforcement just doesn't have the bandwidth to cover that, you are also allowed to hire sharpshooters under a kill permit. This is what city of Roanoke typically does. It's not cheap, but it is highly effective. And so if for whatever reason there's just not enough public support for hunting, you don't have enough people interested, or you don't want to put anything else on your local law enforcement plate, that is another option. And so with the kill permits, regardless of who's doing that hunting, We highly recommend public outreach ahead of time and participating in venison donation programs. Even folks that aren't big fans of hunting, when that meat is actually put to use, given to food banks, stays local, it can really go a long way. So people might not be enthusiastically for it, but they may no longer be against it. And so those are all things that other localities have done and have had success with. And if you're interested in going this route, I highly recommend talking with the town of Blacksburg. Lieutenant Craver was my contact I think he's still running their program but they've probably of all the localities I've worked with they have had the best luck as far as effectiveness in reducing the population but also getting the public on board and so if you're interested in this you can contact your local district biologist they'll work with the local conservation officer to guide you through the kill permit application process and you can start down that route That's a lot of information at once. I don't know how much discussion you want to have, but I do have some questions for you all to help guide next steps if you're open for that.

Sure.

All right. Um, so what are your all's primary concerns related to deer in town? It sounds like human safety is a big one, just aggressive deer. Yeah.

I mean, we hear it from, uh, they're, they're hungry as daylights. Uh, they just about anything that they can. And, um, And then we also have a lot of vehicle collisions with them. The police chief back there has some statistics. Let's see if we can step up. Yeah, because between town vehicles and then private vehicles, there's a lot of contact.

Sure. Mayor, members of the council. I just ran some quick data. We can get more of the details because we've got reports. 2026, which is this year, we've had seven deer-related crashes. 2025, we had 19, and 2024, we had 13. And looking back at 2024 and 2025, the crash seemed to pick up in October, November, and December. And also looking at our data in 2025, we had 14 other deer-related calls from deceased deer on the side of the road to dispatching an injured deer that was out and about. In 2026, we had six so far of just others. Um, and then we, of course we had, um, the critical incident of the deer attack and as well as we had one instance where an officer rescued a deer from trapped in the fence.

Um, so that's pretty much, um, what we've had just looking at the data.

If you all want to do a 10 year look at that, I could always pull all that data, just whatever direction you all want to go with.

Thank you. Thanks. Thanks.

This might be a moot point, but does the population seem to be increasing, decreasing, or stable? Increasing dramatically. Yep. That was my guess, but figured out.

I think they're on fertility drugs, honestly. They may well be.

All right. And then have you all tried anything particular so far? And if so, how did that pan out?

We've had this, so I've been here a little over four years, and my understanding was prior to my coming here, this issue had come up before, and there was always a lot of opposition to any kind of removal program. But in recent years, we've just noticed a lot, and I actually live in the same neighborhood as Mr. Wise and his wife, and, you know, there's, of course, it's right across from the county line, and deers, they can't read the lines, so they just come in anyway, so... Yeah, it would be easier. But that said, there's quite a few. I mean, I get between 14 and 17 every morning in my backyard, which is a lot. They do eat some of the weeds, so I don't totally dislike them, which is helpful. But yeah, there's quite a few. And they're everywhere, it seems like. And we also get calls to public works. Sometimes folks will have one that got hit somewhere, and it will die in their backyard. And, you know, our public works will come get it with their equipment as long as it's at the right of way. But we have like 26% of our population is over 65 and dragging a prone deer out to the, yeah, it's not easy. So sometimes our guys can go help them out, but it all depends. And then sometimes people wait until they smell. They pour lime on them for a little while and then they can't handle it and then they call us. And then the train also hits quite a few of them when it comes through town. So there just seems to be an awful lot of them and I had talked to some other folks around the state about different ways, just exploring what the options are when I heard about Mr. Wise's incident. And it was just part of due diligence, trying to understand the problem and understand the scope. And if you have the numbers, I thought it was around 1,400 was our target for the year and how many were actually taken last year. Yeah, through that were targets for hunters.

I don't know Washington County off the top of my head since it's outside of the district. Yeah.

Yeah, I think our target was around 1,400, and then we actually only took around 900. And then the problem is that we have 500 extra hanging around. And then I did get the numbers from VDOT, and they have over 600 that they've got removed from the side of the road. in our district. They pick them up from mainly the interstate, but the sides of the state roads out in the county where they get calls, so they pick up quite a few as well. It's a lot. It is. It contrasts with what we're seeing, too. Was that? Yeah.

Yeah, I think our conservation police officers and biologists get a lot of calls from this area. Just like you all said, your vehicle collisions, sick or mostly injured animals that aren't quite dead yet. So I think it's not a surprise to hear what you all are seeing.

Yeah, so I just wanted to see what our options were. And then just put it up for, you know, community input and then council discussion to kind of just do our due diligence to see where we wanted to go.

We had a similar presentation, Donna, six years ago.

I remember it was Chief Sullivan, you know, when it came down to actually archery and sharpshooting and, you know, he was against it.

That's understandable. I think not everyone is really interested, and I know a lot's changed in the last few years. There may be more support now.

I think the most vocal opposition we had, and some of it was on a person who was on council at the time, was if someone has permission on private property and they shoot a deer and don't kill it dead on the spot, how do you handle where it ends up?

uh and particularly if it's someone who does not support what you're doing for sure yeah i think that's an issue that hunters run into everywhere but especially with archery hunting it's always good to know ahead of time we get similar questions all the time so our recommendation is always to try and recover the animal if possible you know you can request landowner permission if they're not willing to give it You can call a CPO, see if they can mediate, but at the end of the day, if that landowner won't allow access, you're not legally allowed to recover that deer. And so even though we don't want any meat to be wasted, we can't supersede the rights of a private landowner.

I think it was more the concern of the person who didn't want the dead deer on their property and weren't the ones who shot it in the first place. How do you? The push and pull that you had on your slide.

In that case, I would hope that any hunter that's doing this would be responsible enough to want to recover that meat rather than just let it lie. I think normal hunting ethics, all sorts of stuff, we do have a want and waste law in Virginia. So if someone can make a reasonable effort to recover a deer and just doesn't, we can pursue that as a legal infraction.

Well, I'd just like to point out as counsel, I feel like it's irresponsible of us if we do nothing.

It's an unfortunate reality. Not everyone likes hunting, not everyone wants to see deer removed, but looking at the science, unless you've got apex predators on the landscape or something controlling that population, it's going to keep growing.

Plus we have people that's afraid to go out in their yard.

That's the last thing we want.

You know, when other people hear what's happening here, they're going to have that fear too, just knowing that it happened to someone. I don't really know all the details of Mr. Wise until today. So, you know, I'm going to think twice when I step out in my yard now. For sure.

Well, is there any way that you know that people can warn? run deer away from their property without killing them? Is there a simple solution? Is there something that, we got a lot of seniors in this community that maybe don't want to shoot a gun or don't want to shoot a bow. What do you suggest that they do to keep deer off of their property or maybe out of their community?

Yeah, a lot of different options. I didn't go into them just, um, since most of that is on a smaller residential scale, but quick summary, oh, fencing is your gold standard. It's expensive. A lot of time and effort goes into it. Uh, motion activated sprinklers are really effective in suburban areas. Um, deer don't like getting sprayed unexpectedly anymore than we do. loud noises, air horns. I'm not sure if local ordinances allow for it, but it is legal to paint bald deer as long as you're not doing so in a way that injures them. I was thinking maybe a slingshot. You can use slingshots on deer.

You know, that sounds crazy, but I do have a slingshot. It's not. It's effective. But if you're not accurate with that slingshot, like Mr. Austin lives beside me, if I shoot something and it ricochets off that and it hits his car, now...

Yeah, and so that's where it's really setting dependent. He knows a good attorney.

Yeah, I know. I just would like for some civil solutions for seniors who don't have guns or don't shoot bows, like what they could do in their yard or they could have around that would help them

Well, they can't do any of that right now even with guns or bows.

Well, I mean, I'm just saying the simple solution now. Sure. Maybe the air horn. I haven't heard that. Air horns. I was thinking myself the slingshot, but everybody's not a perfect shot.

For sure. I think my favorite recommendation for deer, bears, any critter that's near your house that you don't want to be near there, most cars these days have a panic button. You press that, I jump about half a foot out my skin. Most wildlife will, too. So, you know, starting with noises as a deterrent, most animals will leave for that. If that doesn't cut it, that's when adding a physical deterrent can be really effective. Something as simple as blasting with a garden hose will actually do that if we have a deer stuck in a place that we need to get out without drugs. So you can get pretty creative. As long as it doesn't violate local ordinances as far as weapons discharge go, As long as it does not cause permanent lasting injury to the animal or penetrate the skin, it's fair game. So something as simple as throwing rocks. We don't normally recommend throwing rocks at wildlife, but if you've got a deer that is having to stare down with you and needs some motivation to leave, that is legal. Just avoid the face, aim for the thick muscle on the rump, and that deer will think twice before giving you the stink eye again. I don't know if I want to be on the record saying that, but those are legal options.

Are there any ultrasonic things that are or is it mostly snake oil?

I haven't heard of any that are scientifically proven. That doesn't mean they don't exist, but if they do, it's not really at a level that we recommend. It's either too expensive or just They get used to it too quick. I'm not familiar with anything that's publicly available that really fills that. I've ordered four, so I'll let you know. Yeah, I'm curious to hear how they work out. I've never tried them because usually I switch people.

In the advertisement, they claim it's the only thing that does work.

Interesting. I'm really curious to see what you find. If that works, that would be awesome.

I have a gentleman that I've been reaching out to. He's a friend of mine that lives in Damascus. He does a lot of things for the farm market over there. a lot of things that he grows and he's come up with something and I really haven't seen it myself but I'm interested to go maybe take a look and he was like it's 25 bucks is what he has in it but like it sends off a sound I don't know what it is but he has said that like you know even his dog like you know when he goes out to work his garden he takes his dog with him and the dog kind of Like, doesn't go close to it either.

I'll have to get that information from you afterwards.

And I'll give you his name. And, you know, like right now, the thing is, like, his season is over with. So, I mean, he has produced more produce this year than he's ever produced before by something that he's just came up with. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. I don't know. You know, I've got his number. It can't hurt. He is free to conversation. I spoke to him about. things maybe about two or three days ago, and I had spoken to my town manager, which is Mike Cochran here, and we were just maybe thinking about maybe going to check out, see what he's got going on.

I'm sure Brandon would be interested to see, too. I think that could be a game changer for a lot of our residential complex.

Well, I would like to point out, too, that when we've got this problem of only populations, You know, even if we scare them away, we scare them out of our yard. We're not running them back into the county. You know, they're just running to somebody else's yard. You know, we don't want that either.

Yeah. Well, my fear is, too, like, you know, say I'm the guy that's shooting to deal with the buck. Wayne's got his grandkids over there. And, like, that thing leaves my property.

Mm-hmm.

he's outside having lunch with his grandkids, and this thing is just like dying in the yard, and then blood's all over his driveway, his car, and like, you know, now, now we have another problem, like, you know, it's like, you know, I'm helping us both out by maybe getting rid of the deer, but now... He's pissed because his grandkids just seen this deer die in the yard. There's blood everywhere. What are we going to do now?

You've given us a lot of information.

Let me ask you a couple of questions. Let me say prior to this time, I have dealt with deer eating shrubbery and rose bushes and things like that. And that's minor compared to what Mr. and Ms. Wise described here today, to be attacked. And to think about a child being attacked like that is even more serious in my mind. How often does that happen? I've heard their description of it occurring a couple of months ago.

It depends where. And I think that's the first I know of in this area. Granted, I've only been a biologist for a couple of years down here. I know there was a while when I covered everywhere from Blacksburg to Kentucky, and in that time I had three or four in that area, and those were all directly correlated. Someone had a deer fawn, raised it up, turned it loose. So areas where we see more captive deer, we see a lot more of that. I would say ballpark, I typically respond to one, maybe two a year, but it's usually not severe injuries. Deer are capable of severely injuring people, and so I think that, I was surprised to hear it from our local biologists and local CPOs, that to me is not typical. That's something you'd expect maybe once or twice in your career, and there's usually a clear cause. And so in that case, it doesn't sound like it was provoked at all, and that's what concerns me.

Well, I think Mr. and Ms. Wise, and I'm not speaking for them, but based upon what they told me, they think that their dog got between the doe and the fawn, and that's what happened. But I don't know.

That can aggravate it, but even then, the level of response on that deer's part, she might be super mom of the year, but typically, they're not going to be that aggressive. So that's a deer that, if it had still been present when we responded, that is one that we would have escorted to deer heaven. And so that is something to consider. If you have a deer that is aggressive, actively approaching and attacking people, Yeah, there are hunting laws, but there's also self-defense laws. So anytime a deer shot out of season, our CPOs are required to follow up and investigate. But if you've got a deer that's clearly aggressive on your porch, you've got self-defense injuries. you know, we're not going to be asking too many questions. That's pretty clear cut. You've got a 12-point buck 300 feet off your porch and it's shot in the rear end, that's going to be a different story. So I don't want folks to feel like they don't have the legal option to defend themselves as they feel the need. That's obviously not going to be our first recommendation, but you all do have every right.

I have your Urban Deer Management Program information that I printed off today. I think I know the answer to this question, but relocation...

oh man i wish that worked i think bears and deer in general i know previously uh the prevailing thought was oh we'll just take them from a place they're an issue move them to a place they're not an issue but at this point for deer in virginia there's not a lot of places that aren't already overwhelmed with deer and what we see in general with problem critters is once they've associated people with food and started that behavior and realized how much easier it is to make a living do it that way than making an honest living they typically just find the nearest people and start doing the same thing So we're not really in the business of moving one problem from a community to another community. We're really trying to get at the root cause of it and prevent it from happening in the first place. So in this case, Theoretically you could relocate here. It's not currently legal There's a lot of time money and effort going into it, but I don't think it would have the lasting impact population wise Yeah, there's no shortage of deer to come in and take their place Especially in a place that has good habitat good cover. It's the suburban dreamscape for them I think you all would waste a lot of gas money and see very little change The the places where they've done the

Experimental sterilization, I think it was at Fairfax, somewhere they did one for five years. What was the result on that? It just wasn't very effective.

So take it with a grain of salt. I am not intimately familiar with that project, but my understanding is they still do a fair amount of lethal removal up there, either to supplement it or just in areas where they can't reach the target amount for sterilization. I believe that study is either ongoing or in the process of being published. So I haven't seen solid numbers. I just know one of our current biologists used to work on that project, and he told us, you know, even there, you know, there's too many deer, too much movement in and out of the county. They're just not seeing the results they want strictly with non-lethal measures. And I think they started with far more deer than they wanted to begin with. So some level of lethal removal is going to be needed to get that population down to a decent starting point.

And then on the sterilization, the ones I read about were like a two-part. You had to, like, you hit them one time, then a couple months later, or whatever time period it was, then you had to find that same deer again.

Yes, and that's a huge logistical issue. I think the longest running chemical contraceptive I'm aware of, the last two years, But finding that same doe two years later, most markers, unless you're darting them, immobilizing them, and ear tagging, that's going to be worn off. And I believe it was anywhere from 70% to 90% of the population had to be treated, just depending on your specific population parameters, in order for it to be effective. So we're talking almost every single doe within town limits. And just the cost itself, surgical sterilization, baseline cost, probably $1,000 a deer. Chemical contraception, you're talking a couple hundred. And you get enough deer moving in from outside and you're back to square one. So I think if this was an island and they had to swim a good little ways or if you had an impassable mountain range, I think that might make more sense. But in this scenario, that's not something I would recommend unless you're just really interested for the sake of science and doing that research and prepared to spend a lot of money doing it and still end up with a lot of deer. Ask other questions. I can wrap up too if you all have other things you'd like to discuss. Just curious what you'd like to see moving forward and then regarding local ordinances, whether they currently allow for hunting and what public opinion is currently like just as far as hunting or sharp shooting might go. If you all would like to share any insight.

There aren't any current ordinances that allow it.

Okay.

I'd like to hear from our police chief on this.

Can we hear from you on that? I'm really curious to hear your thoughts. I'm sorry we haven't met before now.

I would probably consult with the town manager and Cam about what the definition of a sharp shooter would be.

That would also be something I would want to research and talk to other jurisdictions and localities to see how they made that happen. Anytime you discharge a firearm in the town limits and you have neighborhoods. You've got to worry about all these different things. They do it at night time, daytime. Um, what kind of equipment do they have for this? Um, and then where do they take the carcass afterwards?

She also mentioned using police, right?

We are We do, and that could be something that I would be happy to look into. I've already kind of started looking, and I've had several conversations with Mr. Cochran, specifically looking at Charlottesville ordinance, and I noticed on their Parks and Recreation website that their police department does harvest deer in their parks on a regular basis, and then they post all the stats. It appears that way, they do. So I've already started looking into that. If that's the direction you all want to go, I can continue forward and get some more of that detail and more information for you.

We definitely want to think about the safety of our citizens and everyone involved. You know, when you've got the professionals that know how to handle guns and, you know, that's peace of mind for me, knowing that, you know, somebody you can depend upon and trust.

And I do have a few hunters on staff that... I've already asked me questions about this. Do you have any uniforms that are camo? No, but, you know, we could obtain some equipment, I guess.

Thank you.

Thanks.

I suppose my question is, where do we go from here?

Yeah, so there's two options, as you mentioned, which is the no feeding ordinance. And I know we have some locations in town that that appear to have some people that are feeding them in their neighborhoods. And I think if we pass an ordinance that would prohibit feeding wildlife other than birds, that would help a little, at least assuming that folks are law-abiding, that they would pay attention and not do that. I think that would help because from what I got listening to her was, The, you know, they got acclimated to, if you're feeding them, then they associate people with food, and that creates a dangerous situation. So even in the best of circumstances, we shouldn't allow them to do that. And then on the urban removal, there are some options. And actually, if I can get Jessica, if you could switch over to the... So this is a... This is the GIS system and so the the green and the yellow combined so the the yellow Can you possibly shut off the the background the the elevation picture under the layers? So it's just a white background It's under the layers. I think That one No, no, sorry. It's the All right, forget that. So it's under base layers, yeah. Just put on none. There we go. It's easier to see that way a little bit. So the yellow are all lots that are one to two acres inside a town. A little bit difficult to see. And then there's over 300 of those. And that's largely in our inner parts of town. And then the green are all lots over three acres. And so if you could scroll up just a little bigger on that so we can see the whole town. So you'll notice a lot of your, some of that is like, the community college or the golf course and some big lots. But there's also a lot of lots that are on the outside of town but still in town that are well over three acres. And if you were to allow urban archery in anything over, say, five acres or something to that effect where there's a problem, then, you know, because a lot of times they come into the middle of town but they also had to, you know, a lot of times they head back out of town. So if we were to allow something along those lines in specified zones that aren't anywhere near the residential areas, that would be one option to explore. And that way, the challenge with deer is that even if you hit them with a really good shot, they're still going to run a half mile. And so if you were doing it only on the parts that are on the outer perimeters of town, Probably got a half a shot of them running in or running out, so it limited some. There's no perfect solution. But, you know, we just have so many deer, I just don't know what you do with them absent some initiative other than, you know, not feeding alone will help a little, but it ain't going to help a lot. And I think probably for a couple years you had to be really ardent about removal in order to get the population down because, like she had showed, if you go to the 1970s, you're lucky to see a deer. And now, if you can go a day and not see one, you didn't go outside.

Well, and I think like the chief said, we need to talk to some of the places who've already implemented these types of things. And I'm a little bit surprised, just given the community backlash, that Blacksburg is one of the ones who has that. I've expected its population to be much more on the other side of not doing that. So they must have had a real problem with just what they're like she said, what their ordinance looks like, what they've done, if they have implemented sharpshooters or that sort of thing, where to go from there. But I think that, like I said, the last council that heard this sort of presentation, the pushback was much larger than the... push for limiting it. So I think it sounds like, particularly with Mr. Wise's situation, that the balance has shifted the other way.

Well, I know we do have a problem, and I'm in favor of whatever it takes to decrease this population of deer in the town of Avedon. And I have faith in our people to figure this out. And like Cam said, we just need to see what other people are doing. And then maybe we can adopt some of their rules or regulations that will help us out to maybe fix this problem. But I just want everyone to know that as a resident in the town of Abnon, we are, I think that everybody here, we are devoted to figuring out a problem with it.

It's probably the most pervasive complaint that I hear.

It's one that I hear as well, too, a lot. You know, your hands are kind of crossed with some of the things you can and you can't do. I do thank you for being here today and giving us the rundown on everything that you know. So thank you very much. And I know you'll be hearing from Mike Cochran, our town attorney, with some solutions that maybe they'll reach out to you and see if we can maybe start scratching maybe a few times. Thanks for pinch hitting. Yeah. Thank you. Now we have one other presentation regarding the Apathy app.

Yeah, so just one other. Yeah, no, that's right. Yeah, the Apathy app. Then I got one comment. Well, she's pulling that up. Mr. Lilly had requested, or just was asking about the Main Street flooding. So the Main Street flooding, if you saw how Park Street was done, it has the two, like, six or eight foot wide culverts. The architect originally was, or the engineers were designing that same thing for Main Street. But the challenge we had was it required the taking of a 50-foot wide right-of-way Which would have gone right through two properties where the homeowners were absolutely? adamantly opposed to taking any of their property for right-of-way purpose because they would have removed all the trees and those two homes in particular are Historic homes and beautiful places and if you were to take all their property away It would have been a years-long fight in the courts because I don't think either one of them would have done it voluntarily and so what we what we There's theoretical ways to fix it, and then there's what we could do. And what we could do is what we did. Because it's not a guaranteed fix forever, but depending on which weather you look at, it's somewhere between two and three inches in an hour, which is tremendous. And we get all the rain that comes from the Coombe Center all the way down, floods down that way, and it just overloaded the system. Public works is really proactive about going out and making sure that they clear the ditch lines like if we know the storms coming They go out and take care of the ditch lines ahead of time because long before we actually did the Main Street flooding project People would come up to council in the grocery stores and say well, thanks for fixing the Main Street They hadn't done anything yet. We just changed how we operate We just when you know it's going to clog you go ahead and clear it and make sure it's clear before the storm but in this particular case, there's a It was just so much water that in places that don't normally flood flooded. But with respect to the Main Street, though, that was the whole idea was that what we got done was the most we could possibly get done given the limitations that we had. And if you know the property with Mr. Reese's has the log cabin with the brick or the stone creek through it, it would have required like ruining that whole thing. And it's just so while it's theoretically possible to fix that, In reality, it isn't possible. So what we did, it wasn't a perfect solution, but it was the most viable. So when that storm happened, if we hadn't done what we did on Park Street, which is make it really wide and sculpt it out, you would have had massive back pressure, and then the whole thing would have flooded. So it cleared, I think, in less than two hours. Yeah, about right. But it was just way more rain than, and obviously people like to talk in thousand-year floods, I know someone had talked to an 80-year-old guy that lives in town and says he's never seen anything like it. It just was an incredible amount of rain in a very short period of time, and it got localized right there. And then, like, if you got to the airport, I think their meter read just over an inch, but we definitely had more than that. So it was just one of those situations where it's the best solution that we could actually execute. But it's not guaranteed, but we try to make sure that it's as good as it could possibly get.

And I think that was a good fix with that. I mean, it's an act of God. You know, I've lived on Kings Mountain my whole life, down by Public Works. This is the first time I've ever seen water in those.

Those Kings Mountain floods were in trouble.

Were in trouble, but like down by Public Works on A Street, you know, there was six to seven inches of water in the drains. And I mean, luckily we have those drains there. It's the first time that I've ever seen those filled up. But within like an hour and 45 minutes, that water did decrease. And I mean, there's only so much you can do. I'm just glad that we have the people that we have to get what we got done as fast as we did.

Those guys, our public works guys, they're rock stars. They get out there and thankfully they don't mind getting wet because they were out there with heavy equipment as it was still pouring. Exactly.

And there were several people in the town of Advent that were without power for 24 to 48 hours. Some people were calling me, complaining about the water. There were a lot of people, schools started back up. There were a lot of people that were wondering what they were going to do for the next day because they didn't have power. And luckily, AEP was on that as well, too. So we're very fortunate, too.

Yeah, and just want to mention, too, with AEP, they're excellent at helping us out with stuff. When they have big storms they know are coming, you'll see some utilities rolling this way. This was a flash out of nowhere. Yes. So even as critical as Walden Road is by Stanley Street, even as critical as that road is, they couldn't get to it until 2 p.m. the next day.

Well, my power was out from 3.30 that day until about 11, 12 o'clock at night. Oh, wow. Yeah.

Yeah. I'm fortunate to have power and I'm fortunate to keep moving on. Anyway, that's the long or short of that one. And then, so the next one is AptoG. Oh, there she is. So the talent, we subscribed to this last year and we've been finally kicking the tires on it because some people are Instagram people, some people are Facebook people. I don't think MySpace is still active. But we have folks that use different types of social media platforms and we can't well, you can't post to all of them, and then it's a problem keeping up with that. So what App2G is, is it's an app that allows users to sign up. And can we, how do you, yeah, so it allows users to sign up for it. So if you go to the landing page on the website, there's a little subscribe button on the lower right-hand side. And so you can click on that, and what it will take you, take you to the screen here where you sign up. And it doesn't spam you. It just signs you up for it. And so what it does is you can choose whether you want police fire or What is it? Yeah, boards and commissions, all the different things that you would want to be notified about are traffic alerts, different things along those lines. Yeah, sorry, the bigger font. Someone knew that in my eyes ain't all that great. So boards and commission meetings, the scheduled changes, if things happen, special events, town council events, and traffic alerts. So when we post that, so we'll post it, but then it simultaneously posts to wherever else we're asking it to post to. But the nice thing is it's the same system that the school board uses. So if you're familiar how sometimes you'll get a text and an email and a phone call all at the same time from the school board telling you that it snowed at White Top and our roads are closed. But it's an excellent system, an excellent platform. So I had asked CJ and IT a couple years ago to... you know, figure out what they're using and find a way to, we can use it in-house. And so that's what it does. And you can download the app. It's very light as far as it's not a huge resource part. So the smart people have Apples. The other ones have Androids. Sorry, I'm an Apple guy. But it works on either platform. And then when you sign up for it, you search for Town of Abingdon and There's the misspelled Abingdon, which isn't us. And then there's the town of Abingdon, which you'll see our swish. And so when you click on that, it lets you sign up for notifications. So whenever things happen, you'll get a text alert. Whether you want text or the option's on you to figure out how you want to get notified. Some people just want an email alert. Other people like it in a text. I know some people get way too much email or way too many texts, but at least it's electable by the user. And as people sign up for it, it'll just make it easier to push out information, whether it's a road closure or something like that. So, yeah, assuming you have your phone, you can sign up for it. But anyway, we put that together, and it's just something that makes it easier for us to push out information. And for the residents that want to sign up for it, it just makes it easier for them to get it as well. Because I do find it actually works pretty decently. Is there any other slide or no?

Can you send me the link?

Sure, sure. I'll message it over to you. But yeah, it's a separate link. I'll send it to you then. So anyway, that was the whole idea there was to make it a streamlined way to communicate across platforms. And depending on what message it is, it may go out on Recreation's website. It may go out on their social media or depending on who's sending it to social media. But it works and it's pretty effective. So I just wanted to let folks know that we have that. And, you know, there are people that Because, like, we just had the Highlands Festival with the Blooms Festival. Now, that was really well attended, and I thought really well advertised. And we still had people call and say, we didn't know about it. I don't know how. But, I mean, so what I don't want is people not to know what we're doing. So we try to do a lot, do great efforts to push out advertising. So how do we promote this?

How do we make sure it gets out?

You talk about it at a council meeting. Okay. So at different events, we can have a booth set up that we'll let people know. Because we have, like, meet the falcons tonight, but we won't do it there. But anywhere we set up a booth or we have an event, we can certainly push that out there. And similar, if you were at the Bloom thing, the VDOT had a group out there that were advertising digital IDs. So if you have a real ID through the state of Virginia, You can sign up for a digital driver's license that you can actually carry, and it works as a passport, works as an ID card and everything. It's pretty neat. So that's how we get out. They were there for two days telling everybody about it, and it's just very effective. So I think if we go out to enough events that we have, if we push it out there and let people know, it'll just make it easier for folks. And lastly, I know I compliment Public Works, Fire, and Police all the time. They really rose above themselves on Monday. It was crazy busy and wet and all that. And then they were out there. Chief gave a new use. He has a different kind of throw hooks for finding things at the bottom of the river. He was using those to help clear out some of the culverts because they had debris that washed into them. And so it was all hands on deck when it comes to that. And between Public Works and police, everybody really stepped up for it. And I just appreciate what they do. And Public Works, they work hard. Because that storm hit, and they're fixing to get off work. So they'd already worked the whole day. But anyway, I tell them all the time what an awesome job they do. So I just wanted to kind of bring it up again. And if it's the direction of council, I can come up with an ordinance on the feeding. and then the other ordinance based on land restrictions, and then we can discuss it next month if that works. I think that would be okay with me.

Yeah, and everything you discussed in the month before was extending the season. Yeah.

I think that's a great idea. People that love to deer hunt, you know, just think it's a great idea. Yeah, because if the challenge I had there was if our target was 1,400 and we only got 900 and some in the county, It would take a really long season to extend that. But that would be out.

But we don't have a season within the town.

No, correct. We don't allow it at all.

So extending it within the town is not going to be helpful.

Correct. Yeah, we would have to have an ordinance in place. Right. And then we could request them to expand the season. Correct. Yeah. Was that? Sure. And then you said that, is it annual limits where they set based on? OK. Okay. Thanks. I appreciate you coming for sure. And meet the Falcons tonight at 630 at the high school.

At Falcon Stadium, yes, sir. And I just want to mimic what Mike says. Thanks to Public Works, the fire and the police department for everything you all did when we had the tragic rain there. So thank you all, and please keep up the good work. We really appreciate it. Wayne, do you have anything that you'd like to add?

I got notified at 9.30 last night that they moved it from the high school.

I got that today. Actually, I got it from the shaved ice truck today on Facebook.

I got it from 9.30 last night. So, yeah, they did switch it to the high school. I told her if they even have an idea when they want it next year. We can schedule for the farmer's market a year in advance, but unfortunately tonight the farmer's market was blocked off or something else. So if we can just get, I know they don't know there's calendars ahead of time, but we can certainly find a way, because it's really awesome when we do it at the farmer's market.

Wayne, Donna, do you have anything that you all would like to say? I'd just like to thank the people who came out today and give their input.

Thank you so much for this.

I have nothing additional. All right.

We have no appointments to boards or committees. We have no closed sessions, things that we need to talk about today, so we'll call