Town Council - Regular Meeting

live. Good evening everyone. I'd like to now call this meeting town council meeting Tuesday, September the 2nd, 2025. Live to go. Kim, if you will please call roll. Miss Quetch here. Miss Pigan here. Vice Mayor Austin present. And Mayor Anderson here. If everyone will please stand up. Uh, Vice Mayor Wayne Austin will lead us in the pledge of allegiance. I pledge algiance 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 rise once more, we're going to have prayer from Pastor Paul C. from the Avenue United Methodist Church. Good evening. Let us pray. Almighty God, we thank you for the beauty of this day and for the gift of another day. We thank you for this town and region which we call home, for its natural beauty, for the beauty of its main street and surrounding neighborhoods and homes. For the people who live and work here, the people who visit here. We thank you for the wonderful arts community in this region and for all who share their gifts and talents and creativity to enrich our lives. We pray for students in our schools, their parents and families, for teachers and administrators and staff. We pray for all town employees. And we remember and give thanks for those who work behind the scenes. We lift up our police, firefighters, and first responders. Please keep them safe. Thank you for their selfless work on our behalf. Bless each member of the town council, their families, and those dear to them. Thank you for their willingness to do this good work and this important work for our town. Guide and inspire the work done here tonight. Be with those who speak and with those who listen. We especially lift up to you all who are most vulnerable in our community and nation. the sick, the lonely, the grieving, the poor, the homeless, the hungry, and the dying. May we all work together for the health and wholeness and well-being of all your children, whoever they are, wherever they are. And may the peace that passes understanding guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus and blessing of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit be with us all. Amen.

Amen. Thank you, Pastor Paul. Thank you. Now, if someone would like to make a motion to approve the agenda for tonight, I'll make that motion. Do I have a second? Second. Any further discussion? Kim, if you'll please call roll. Miss Quetch, I. Miss Pion, I. Vice Mayor Austin, I. Mayor Anderson. I Madame Clerk, could you pass an ink pen down to me, please? Yes, sir. Walked away without one. Thank you.

Also, I'm going to need approval for the minutes for the meeting that took place August the 11th, 2025. If someone would like to make a motion to approve those minutes. So moved. Second. I'll second. Any further discussion? Kim, if you'll please call a roll. Miss Quetch. I. Miss Pion, I. Vice Mayor Austin, I would abstain as not being present at that meeting. and Mayor Anderson. Hi.

Now, we're going to move on to public comments. I see we have several people signed up for public comments. When you are called up for the public comments, um please come state your name and your full address. And we'll start with the first name on here for public comments will be Mike Muny.

Thank you. My name is Mike Muny and I live at 304 East Main Street, Abington, Virginia. I've been a resident of Abington, Virginia for I think now 54 of my 65 years of life. So, I like this place a whole lot. I want to thank you all for giving me the opportunity to speak and I want to thank each of you for the service that you provide this town because uh I know it's it's often a pretty selfless unth thanked job and you work hard. Um approximately 15 to 20 years ago, my wife Margie, who's here with me, and I attended a meeting in this very room. And the topic at that time that we were discussing was mixed use zoning in predominantly the historic district or the downtown part of Abington. Um uh at that time we were talking about the concept that residential and commercial properties could exist side by side and um in this historic town and that that could provide a vibrant and successful community and we supported that concept. However, there were quite a few residents that were here that did not support that. uh it passed as I remember pretty well in that form and um for the most part I think that it's concept has been very successful for our team. We like living in a mixed community with businesses uh and residents side by side. However, the success is really dependent the success of a mixed use is really

dependent on reasonable balance between the needs and requirements of both residential and commercial property holders. There must be balance and cooperation for the two to succeed and thrive. We are both residential and commercial property owners in the historic district in the town of Aington and my family has owned property and operated businesses in the town of Aon for 64 years now. Uh we do not seek to hinder the progression of our town. We love this town and we want to see it thrive and grow, but grow in ways that are beneficial to everybody. Mixed use requires balance and cooperation. And our concern is the noise ordinance and its interpretation by commercial establishments in town. right now. Uh section 3030 of the noise ordinance states that the town's public policy is to provide an environment for its citizens that is free from noise levels which can jeopardize the health, welfare or quality of life of the town citizens. And I I feel like you all feel that way. I hope so. Uh noise pollution is real and according to the World Health Organization, excessive noise contributes to sleep disturbance, cardiovascular disease, cognitive impairment in children and overall diminished mental health. Our previous noise ordinance, as I understood it, talked about quiet time from 1000 p.m. to 7 a.m. It appears that our current ordinance, as I have been able to find it and read it, finds that certain noise is a

problem and prohibited from 10:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m. Then there's other noise that's prohibited from 11:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m., But most concerning is that pursuant to section 30-33, commercial establishments located in areas for mixed use as defined herein are exempt from the requirements of this noise statute. um except between the hours uh of 12:00 a.m. and 7:00 a.m. We don't understand the purpose for this exemption, why the commercial establishments are being treated differently than the other property holders. And we don't really understand why there was a change even from the 1000 p.m. to 11 p.m. for some of the other property owners other than commercials. The vast majority of localities across the US follow the 10 p.m. criteria. Um why are we different here? Now, this does not mean that I think that my family thinks that commercial estab establishments should close at 1000 p.m. I'm not here advocating. We live probably not 150 ft from a commercial establishment that has been operating hours until 2:00 a.m. for the past 12, 15 years. And we have had two incidences when they were playing music outside on their patio late at night and we called them and asked them if they could reduce the volume and they said

that would they would be glad to and they immediately did and we never have had any other problems with them. Now, we had did have problems with an establishment that was across the street in the general store building, the Baja group, because they were playing Bongo drums in the street at 2:00 a.m. And in that instance, we did call the police and the police came and asked them not to do that. And they ended up closing for other reasons. I was told by the um alcohol enforcement people that it was due to their inappropriate actions, but I have no personal knowledge of that. But it had nothing to do with our complaints other than that we asked that they follow the no noise ordinance. Everyone should have the opportunity to sleep. I I think this is reasonable and I don't think that nine hours uh of reasonable noise control is unfair to residents and just because which I think our town in the past has promoted that we wanted residents living next to commercial establishments in the middle of town that now is it our position that we should not allow them the ability ility to have reasonable rest time. Again, the big concern that I have is the open air venue. There is absolutely no guidelines and controls on a commercial establishment's projection of sound, amplified sound from an open air venue on their property. and as it projects back on the adjacent or even further property owners.

Um I just think there should be some objective guidelines. Now um Mr. Huny there's a limit that council places on how many am I at it?

You have well exceeded it but I think if you wrap it up then that that will be fine. Well, again, I want to thank everybody and I want to say, you know, the statute's great in that it in the enforcement section of the statute, it gives officers some discretion to look at things like volume of noise, intensity of noise, nature of the noise, is it usual or unusual, natural or unnatural, proximity to residential sleeping facilities. But the interesting thing is the ordinate exempts commercial establishments from the noise ordinance altogether. So that has nothing to play. Why is that? Doesn't make sense to me. Does not seem fair to me. And I would just ask that the council consider looking at the noise ordinance again and bringing it into a sense of balance to help our community. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. May. Sorry that I Next up on the docket is going to be Margie Muny. If you'll come forward, state your name and state your address, please.

Hello, I'm Margie Muny, 304 East Main Street, Evan, Virginia. I go now. So, um I don't want to be here today. I truly my heart don't I probably was going to say other things I had planned but I'm just going with my heart here. I genuinely do appreciate and respect everything that y'all do for our town. I love this town with all my heart. I wish every business success. I rally for their success. In fact, the part particular business that I have the concern with the day they opened when they were a food truck. I carried flowers over. I spent a lot of time trying to find the right decor that would match theirs because I wanted to rally in their success. I was so happy. I even told the owners I could pee in my pants because I was so happy for them. I continued maintaining those flowers, making seeds, watering. I wanted to wasn't about playing in my playground. I had other things to do with my life. I just wanted to welcome them to the community. I wanted to welcome them as neighbors. I wanted to work. I I never dreamed I would be here. I I I'm blown away that I'm here. I'll be honest with you. I am blown away I'm here. I loved people next door. We had a good relationship and now it's horrible. It's awful. I mean, it's it's it's bad. And and I just, as I said, I never dreamed it would be like that. I haven't been able to sleep. I've cried. I mean, it's just But let's talk about sleep. All right. So, because my time's going to run out. When Michael says amplified music, we're talking sonic amplified uncontrolled music. We have 18inch plaster walls on that side of the of the road close to this this establishment. We don't have any windows over there. There's two little tiny windows at the

top. Our bedroom is on the other end closest to Abby Pratts. The first night that they did the music, I was there. I said it was nice. I It was very enjoyable. It was acoustic. Okay. The next night I uh I messaged them and I said, "It's 12:08. The music actually went past 12." And I said, "You know, it's as you know, it's past the 12:00 p.m. noise ordinance law." And um because I thought it was I thought it was live. That's when we learned it's a 12. Okay. So, um the music I mean, it's coming through our walls. I mean, I can't sleep. Nobody can sleep. I mean, we get up, we got to go to school. I can't even go to go to church. I mean, it's like Sundays. I'm exhausted. I mean, this is a real problem. And it's like there's no control on the application. When we say application, we're talking super amplication. Uh just open application. And then my son's business. I think there's been a little escalation because of children. Never videoed children. However, doing my research, it said I needed to document these things because I wish I had from those other days. So, I started documenting doing the volume the volume out of control. I thought we were Sunday. So, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and then I got hit by a Sunday, a Sunday popup like birthday party. I mean, I honestly nothing more heartbreaking for me. Heartbreaking, heartbreaking. But I felt like I had to record the sound. No video and no children. You know, I got accused of that and and I've and and and come over and cause them problems because they did tell me to leave, take my flowers with me. But um um I because I did do a social post and let me tell you I do social media to promote my friends, my family, the community, local business. I do not do social media to slam people, to talk derogatory. Never. I felt like I had no choice. No choice whatsoever except I had to do a post so people knew what I was experiencing. And

I'm glad I did because I had a lot of people reach out to me privately. They don't they don't want to be here either. They don't want to be here either, but you know, they will if they have to. And I mean, I felt like I had no choice to do that. And I just heartbreaking. I mean, it's really all heartbreaking. But that's where I stand. And there has been some conflicts, you know, and it's going to be a maybe a he said, she said, but you know what? I was put in this situation. I did not ask to be in this situation. I have more things on my plate. I was never asked to be in this. They put me in this situation where I don't have any other choice. and it's affected my son's business. He has a successful Airbnb vacation that he's worked his butt off with a five-star review over there. He is now having to call guest and see if they want to cancel. We've had we had on this night it happened. We had three ladies there. One 85year-old went downstairs, two upstairs. They've been there for three times. Thank God. They've been able to enjoy different times. So, they know it's not always like this. And I mean they say they come to go to our local restaurants to go to the creeper trail to shop you know for the atmosphere for my gardens. Um this was going on and the next day we have to go and apologize and we have to comp them time. We have to you know they say okay we understand we hope that we can you can get this problem figured out because we just love this town so much. We can't even believe that the town would allow such a thing. Can you imagine the carriage house when we have the 18inch plaster walls with no windows over there and we can hear every word? Okay. So, when I have reached out privately, I've reached out privately. I never dreamed I would be in here. I reached out privately. I really thought that we were going to get this worked out. I mean, I just did. So on my porch our mayor said and told me he said u hey that let me see if I'm going to get the exact words

and please get showman please and please get it right and please tell all the whole conversation

he said those people are showman they bring their own sound equipment I can't control that but the karaoke will be at a much lower volume tonight it was worse it was it was a nightmare I could hear every single solitary word, every yell, every hoop, every holler. And then it's it doesn't stop then. Then you have the cars trying to get out of that ditch that they've dug deeper and deeper and deeper. And they scrape their cars all night long. And they gun the gas to get out of there. And I'm scared to death. They're going to slam into my car, the carriage house, or people walking on the street. It is really so out of control. I would never be here if it wasn't out of control. It's so out of control. And just one last thing, when talking to businesses who reached out to me, they tell me they have to have a permit to do an amplified event on their patio. They have to sign for a pennet every night. I mean, I don't know. Are they getting a permit every night or are they just exempt from all this? I mean, it's just it's it's really it breaks my heart. It really does. And and I I'm just so sorry that it's come to this. I wish nothing but the best for all of our businesses. I want to rally with them. I I want I want to I want to be there. I want I mean now I mean for me to be uncomfortable into these establishments is horrible. It's it's it's it's a bad situation. Now I'm just hoping that you're going to help me and change this time thing. It's horrible for all of us. We just we've got to work together here. As Michael said, the last time we were here and the only time we were here, Sam Hurt invited us to come in and to support uh businesses and residents coming together and working in a shared mixed uh area. That's not happening here. And no, no cooperation, no budget, no movement because what I was told was with their they were within their legal rights period. The end.

Thanks. Thank you. Thank you.

I'm sorry. Let me get a motion. It's a motion. Next on the public hearing is going to be Blake Baker. If you'll come forward, please, and state your address. Hello, I'm Robert Blake Baker and I live at 239 Valley Street Northeast in Abington, Virginia, but you can call me Speed Racer. It's been a while since I've been up here in front of the group. Uh the last time I came it was uh 2020 and my wife and I were buying a property over on 313 Tanner um right across the street from the from the park and the and the um fire station and we were trying to get a mixed mixeduse permit to do short-term rentals and it's gone great and I was able to get that. Thankfully, the ordinance has been changed with regards to having to be special use permitted and now it is permitted, but um we have a thriving Airbnb and VBO there. And recently, um, as you've heard, there's been a, um, kind of live band and karaoke, um, venue event at a a close by establishment. And it's been a little loud and it's affected our um, our customers and our clientele. Matter of fact, uh Saturday night I Sunday morning I called and asked the uh folks had they been bothered and they said, "Yeah." And I said, "Well, how loud was it on a scale of of one to 10?" And they said about a eight. So we're removed from the munies probably another 100 ft. But regardless,

it was probably too loud. Um I spoke with um Mr. Anderson and Mr. Cochran about it and I was explaining the legalities of the noise ordinance and I get that and I also talked to the owner about um why they were doing it and how it supports families and employees and it's fun for the community. Um and I get that too all about it. I love me some music. Iron Maiden and uh Metallica way too loud, my wife would say. But um you know, just because it's legal and you can do it, doesn't mean that maybe you should do it. Um I'm an Abington Rotarian. We supported the um we supported the event this weekend, which was magnificent, by the way. Hats off to the town and mayor did a great job on the mic and it was a a fantastic event. And the Rotary Club won, by the way. Hold your applause. Uh and uh again, as a Rotarian, we we we conduct ourselves with what we call the four-way test of the things that we think, say, and do. Is it the truth? Is it fair to all concerned? Will it build goodwill and better friendships? And will it be beneficial to all concerned? And I'm just asking from the ordinance standpoint, does it meet that criteria? I'm not so sure. Um I I certainly think Mike and Margie would say it does not from where they stand, but um let's just work together and see if we can maybe amend the the rules from a time frame standpoint or volume. You know, live music, there's not a lot you can do with whoever's got their amps. I mean, we all know this one goes to 11, right? Sometimes that happens. and you've got um you you've got more control on the

karaoke side. So, either bring the noise level down or bring it inside or let's change the time to 11. 11 is not too early, but it's not too late. Just um find ways to work together and let's keep keep avenue in the best community can be for the visitors, the residences, and the business owners. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. B. Thank you. Next on the docket will be Jeremiah Kaiser. If you'll come forward, please and state your address.

You're all right. Take your time, sir. Jeremiah Kaiser, addresses 103 Rainbow Circle, Bristol, Virginia. Thank you all for having me here tonight. Though I'm not an Abington resident, still feels more like home than Bristol does to me. So, thank you for that. Um, I come because I am, um, one of the co-owners of a restaurant in contention here tonight. Um, and I'm here just basically as an advocate for four groups in my mind about our decision to stay open later and have this music. Uh, the first group of I would like to advocate for is the town of Abington. With the extended hours, um, our sales have been considerably more, which is going to generate more revenue for the town in the form of mills taxes we pay every month. Um, second group I would like to uh advocate for is a local restaurant and service industry employees. The only way they can usually ever catch a show or do anything fun is to give up a shift and miss out on money to actually attend and witness something like that. So, that's definitely a value ad for them. So, they don't have to miss out on money. They can they can get off their shift, have somewhere to actually watch live music and have a little bit of fun on that. Um, third will be the local artists. Um just exposure is one of the best thing for artists and we're giving exposure um you know some people even play two shows a night they will play somewhere else and then come and play with us. So um I know it's a striving to keep a very good art scene and I I feel that we are um helping with that and probably my biggest advocacy is for our wonderful staff we have there. increased hours and um increased sales allow them more hours and um more money. I mean, most of our staff is either college students trying to get by or family members trying to support a family. And um that's definitely a value ad um for that as well. And I see if we're growing the way we are now, we will have to hire

more people. I'll give a more chance for more people be able to support a college um college or uh their family. Thank you. Thank you, Jeremiah. Thank you. Next on the docket will be Josh Fuller. If you'll please come forward, Josh, and state your full name and your address, please.

Hello, my name is Josh Fuller. Address 279 East Main Street, Abington. Um, I'm here also as a representative to uh a business in town that plays a lot of music. Um, to kind of play off what Jeremiah Kaiser was talking about, our main goal for extending our hours was to provide an experience for the community, there was a another restaurant that had recently closed down some of their late night music. Um, and we, none of us involved in the restaurant ownership part are really late night people, but we heard the crowd, people saying, "Where are we going to go? What are we going to do?" So, that's when we kind of stepped in and said, "You know what? We have a lovely courtyard area. Let's step in and kind of fill that need." Um, we also decided to, you know, make sure that we shut our business down at midnight. Um my parents always said nothing good happens after midnight. So I wanted to make sure that we kind of you know kind of shut up shop and and hit the road after that. Um again um I have two businesses on Main Street and combined I employ nearly 50 people um in the surrounding areas. Um, I hear every financial concern from every individual that is in business with me, as well as all the people that I employ. Um, again, the more hours that you're open as a business, the more opportunity those employees have, and my focus and heart is going to stay with those people that I know that they're working to try to provide for their families. Um, again, you know, I have children of a young age as well. Um, I definitely have concern and want to make sure everybody stays kind of happy with the noise ordinance. Um, what I will say, we want to stay in compliance with the

ordinances that are there. If those ordinances do change, I would be more than happy to adjust our business hours. Um, however, until it does, that's kind of where I want to kind of keep my business. Um, and again, I'm not saying that it would be a good thing for businesses to have a reduced hours. I know for years, um, Main Street Abington would approach businesses begging for somebody to stay open past 10 p.m. Um, and live music was always one of the things that they would kind of push. Uh, there was even grants in place for those businesses to try to stay open later. So again, I know Avenue is no longer part of the Main Street program. Um again, my consideration would be to try to get that program back. Uh it does uh does add some funding for different businesses here in town. Um but again, I want to reiterate that the purpose and reason that we do this is not to harm families or upset people, but provide opportunity for people in this town and employees that work in this town.

Thank you.

Thank you, Josh. I think that we that will be the last person that we have signed up for public comment. And with that, we will close public comment. Now on to proclamations, which we have no one signed up for proclamations, which will lead us to public hearing. And we have one thing on the public hearing tonight and that is to the appeal of the planning commission certification of the approximate appropriy discussing to uphold the motions originally approved on October the 23rd, 2023 and re reaffirmed on June the 23rd, 2025. This decision concerns material used to clad the existing awning roofs on the primary north and rear south elevations of the property located at 266 West Main Street within the central business district B-3 and entrance to the corridor. And I think we have think Mike Cochran is going to be speaking on that or

this public hearing. Do we have any um anyone signed up to speak or I don't think we have anyone signed up to speak on that. Go ahead and close it. Well, I'm going to open up the public hearing if if anybody would like to speak on that. If not, we'll close that public hearing on that. Nobody jump all at once. So, um Isaiah is hiding in the back. Um we um Where's Gabe is there? Gabe. Gabe, if you'll come up

a summary. I'll give a summary. I guess if you want to jump in. This is something that had come uh to planning commission and then they had complied and then Uh, so uh I'll clean it up after.

Sure. Uh, so at 266 West Main Street, it's in our entrance corridor and they were looking to do a whole renovation of the building. Some of it included painting the exterior and then what's here before you tonight is the the awning pladdic. Um, originally had a crimped tin roof with no striations and everything. Um it was presented uh to the planning commission to match the existing uh asations and everything except it was going to be steel instead of tin because we use steel now for that. Um the applicant had some issues getting an encroachment permit just because it's on Main Street. There's a lot involved with that. Um and then so as we as Main Street was getting some work done with the alleyways and everything, they decided to install the roof since they had the closure in place. Um upon just uh doing our drive rounds and everything, we saw that as they got the awning kind of prepped for the cladding uh that the cladding had striations in it. Um and so that's where that came from. So we told them that doesn't match for what was presented and everything. Then they went before the planning commission on June 23rd just to see if the plan commission would reverse their uh ruling in October of 2023. They reaffirmed the COA that it had to be without striations for that planning and so I think that covers kind of snapshot of where we're at.

You want ahead? Well, the actual certificate didn't have that limitation. The actual certificate stand approved as requested without modifications right and there was a great deal of time between the two that was just uh I think the call was 17 months

yeah and that's and that goes to the encroachment the encroachment's the thing where it's on Main Street so it's a major road and it just took a long time for them to they weren't they were sure they weren't sure they were going to be able to get the encroach approach when work was happening on Main Street with the alleyways and other things that we were doing. Uh they went ahead and did it since they had that closure in place that was near their businesses there. Yeah. Just cuz the the awning that he's dealing with sticks out over six feet. I understand that would require like the wood it was going to cost him $9,000 to uh to do the bypass.

I mean it was going to cost him way more than than it should and so ultimately that just led to a delay. he couldn't get it uh done at that price point. And then when we were doing the the alley work, Isaiah went out and spoke to him and then since we were already going to have it closed and he was able to to work around those regulations and so we got it finished. But the 17-month delay is uh probably was a slight contributor to the situation. Yeah. And everything else was done in accordance COA. It's just the uh the roof took some time just because the encroachment and the and the cost of everything. I think that covers it. So, as we stand right now, where where are we at with the council or

So, this is an appeal to council and and it's later on to consider it, but whether the council wanted to uphold the planning commission or or what I understand the property owner is saying is it's already built. The only remedy would be for me to tear it down and and build a different one with striations. And so, they're asking council Let it be as it is. So, are we making the decision on that today? Not today. Gotcha. Can I ask a question? U Mr. Austin, I know that you're on the planning commission and I think the planning commission has discussed this. Can you update us on how that played out, please?

Yeah, be pleased to. Uh I was not present at the at the June 23rd meeting. Uh but thereafter I heard what the issues were and the decision that was made at that time and uh after it was appealed to council, I had the opportunity to speak with each member of the planning commission individually to seek their input and what they thought about this issue. Um, and I spoke with them obviously individually, not in a meeting. And each one of them expressed understanding and concern uh regarding this situation, understanding the time period that had passed, understanding the fact that the work had been done and also with understanding that the end product was certainly far better than what they started with there. It's very nice, very attractive. Uh and prior to that time it was uh shall we say somewhat rough. Uh all of the planning commission members uh expressed to me and I talked with them from the council standpoint also. I said the council has always been very supportive of the planning commission and I just want to seek your input on this appeal and how how you feel about it if uh if we reverse that decision and all of them agree that that was acceptable to each of them and when it comes up under new business. My intent is to make a motion that we reverse the decision of the planning commission and approve the awning as it exists.

Thank you. And with that being said, do we have anyone else that would like to speak on the public hearing? If not, we will close the public hearing. We'll now move on to resolutions. We have one resolution today and that resolution is in supporting of an 8week road closure for Thompson Drive Stanley Street roundabout and we have the town manager Mike Cochran to speak on that.

Sure. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Uh yeah, the VOTE, this was originally approved, I believe, uh when they applied for it several years ago, uh for this roundabout. And I just got the artist ren or the an artist the architect's rendering of it today. Um and this is Thompson Drive. So, um where the roundabout is is it's set up so that the buses can get in and out. That's a really problematic area for traffic, especially if you're on the in the bus trying to get out Stanley Drive. And uh so what they're requesting is that I think it's going to go to bid in November and start at the end of the school year. Uh and they'll this is to put the circle in up there and it's going to be 2026. Yeah. Summer of 2026 is when uh uh when they expect to get it done. So next summer it should be done. Um anyway, it'll be a huge improvement. It's an $88 million project. But before they continued on um even though we had originally supported it, they wanted to know that we'll support it with the uh road closure. Now the good the good news on the road closure is the sewer work will be done by then. Uh so uh no that'll be done actually much much sooner hopefully. Um but on this one here they needed just just to know before they close the road for 8 weeks but it's should be over summer break is when they actually will do it and the end result of it will be a much better product and better for traffic all around. So

does anyone on the on the council have any questions for Mike Cochran? Well I think that uh Mr. Cochran answered the question that was of greatest concern to me. I don't think there's any question about how nice it will be and how helpful it will be. But I know that that Mr. Cochran and each person on council has fielded many concerns and complaints about the problem we're having now with school traffic

and the desire that we try to get that project completed before school commence this year. and just were unable to due to factors beyond the control of us and beyond the control of the contractor. So, as long and I read through this certainly before the meeting tonight, but as long as it is clear that that closure will not be during school uh session. Yeah, I can verify in favor of it, but I want that to be clear. Yeah, I can verify with them. But I mean, Mike, are you are you familiar with them when their timeline on this?

Yeah. All right.

Yeah. But that eight weeks is during the summer school break. I would want that to be included in this. Sure. Yeah. No, I think that that's a good idea. I just think that, you know,

Oh, it's been a it's and let me also say this while we're on this point. Everyone I've talked with about the the road closure and the school problem, the first thing that they say after their complaint is thank town administration for the traffic uh control and everyone out there helping get people in and out and they were everyone was very complimentary of that. But I don't want us to be in that situation. Have to do that again if we can. Yeah. No, that's a

I think I think that me and Mike Cockin has spoke about that and you know as the as the project was getting more towards the finish side of things, they were running into problems down towards and me preferably and I think Mike Cochran as well too. We both had talked and we would rather him do it right the first time than to have to go back and do something again. And I do apologize for the inconvenience of the time with school starting, but I think that we've got a pretty good grasp on the traffic control. I think public works, the fire department, everyone's been out there trying to help out and do their part, but I do apologize about it taking the lengthy time to get it done. I think it's getting done the right way.

Yeah, staff has been outstanding with helping out to make sure it flows. But, uh, it's kind of like if you can live on cake for a couple days in a row, if after a while you get you get tired of it. Yes. So, uh, they're they're looking forward to being finished. And the one thing I would like to ask, Mike, um, excuse me, Don, next week,

they're about 100 ft short of Grey Drive right now. And then what they need to do, Gray Drive is where it's going to end. And that'll be at that's at the retirement facility or rehab facility, the place there. Uh, and then they have to demobilize. So they had like the metal tube they have there that's all bypassing the sewer stuff that they have going through and it's pumping through. So they have to demobilize and then they have some pavers out there today and they need to finish paving and they just can't pave over the gravel. They have to dig it up and then fill it in and then patch it and that'll come back in probably within 6 to 8 months and actually pave it uh once once that gets finished. And then the last thing they have to do and it will be a short term is they have to they're making the head walls. What they call it the head walls over the creek. Right now the creek has a temporary uh two uh temporary culberts in there that going over the creek and they have to take the temporary ones up, put the permanent ones in. But they're making the head walls off site and then they'll come in and install them and then pave that also. But that'll be a very shortterm.

Yeah. Yeah. We're looking for a holiday to do that over. Um, but it's been a tremendous amount of work, but unfortunately there's a lot of rock down there and it just really has caused delays. Um, but they've got a rock solid crew uh on there. I think they're doing a great job and I I just appreciate them taking the time to actually get Valley Street straight, you know, to get the right way that needs to be for sure. Continue on. So, do you want to amend that? be it further resolved.

Yes. Uh I'd like to make a motion that we approve a resolution that's contained within in the packet with the proviso that it is amended to provide the 8week road closure that we are supporting is an 8-week period of time between the time school is out and school recommences in 2026. Do I have a second on that? Second. Any further discussion? Kim, if you'll please call roll. Miss Wletch, I. Miss Pion, I. Vice Mayor Austin, I. And Mayor Anderson,

I. We have no first reading of ordinance today. No second reading of ordinance. We have a consideration of bids. We have one, and that's consideration of bids for the 2025 fall asphalt resurfacing. and we have Mike Serret with the director of public works to come up and give us a little briefing on that.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Yes, sir. Members, uh it's a great lead into my consideration of bids. Uh as you know that uh you know, one of the things we said back in the spring is we're going to try to follow our asphalt paving with uh reservicing in the fall. So, we're kind of doing it twice a year now instead of once a year. Uh so on August the 6 uh we've had an an invitation to bid to kind of follow the the sanitary sewer work that's going on Valley Street uh Mont View Gillespie Arnold and those areas even on some of left on Clark Street to kind of put our roads back to where they were from the construction and them just patching it and we didn't want to leave them like that. So we put out an invitation bid on August the 6th. Uh we'd had a bid opening on the 26th. Uh we did get one bid and it was from WL Construction for $41,5812 which is basically what we estimated in our engineers estimate to resurface those roads and put them back to operational form. Uh

you think that's a fair price, Mike?

Yes, sir. I mean it it it's generally when me and Kevin calculated it's within a less than 2% of what we calculated. So they they were the lowest bid. Uh this is going to come out of our urban maintenance funds. So it's no impact the general fund. Uh we looked at all the road sections where they had been doing construction work and these are the ones we're going to put back uh with new asphalt, new striping and they should be completed. We are however going to leave out a small patch section right there where those covers are. So either this spring or this early summer we can come back in and put those covers in and then we'll resurface with our forces. But it is the recommendation of the staff to award the bid to WL paving uh construction and paving for $41,5812.

Does anyone on the council have any questions for Mike? I I I would Can I just add one more thing to this? Yes, sir. So, uh, since we're talking about Valley Street and Walden Road, our intent with the contractor is to resurface that road while the school is out on fall break, which is October the 9th through the 14th. We've already talked to them when we did the bid opening and it is in their contract that that is a stipulation in the contract that that has to be done then to lessen the impact on school traffic on a daily operations.

Thank you for that. Thank you. Thank you for that. Mike and I said before, sorry to interrupt you, Mike. Does anybody have any questions for Mike? I'd make a motion that we award this to Wel Construction 41,05812. I second. Any further discussion? Kim, if you'll please call roll. Miss Qu. I. Miss Pian. I. Vice Mayor Austin. Hi. And Mary Anderson. I. Thank you. Thank you, Mike. Now, we're moving on down the list to new business. We have an update from the tourist department. Mike Cochran is going to lead us on that with the new business.

Yeah. actually and I uh was able to uh recruit um Isaiah

Isaiah, he actually volunteered. He was super excited uh to step forward with us. So Isaiah's role is he does um business development and also works closely with with tourism. And one of the things that tourism does some really cool stuff and so does uh economic development. But he put together a couple slides to help explain what we do. And uh one of the things that we used to do a lot more of is was print advertising and things that um that worked well for the for the era that they were being used in. But anymore there's so much stuff in a digital world and we use a lot of different resources in order to help identify where where our uh customers come from and then we also market to their area because a lot of times people will tell their friends about stuff. So we with the way technology works nowadays, we're actually able to be very precise about how we advertise and how we direct the the advertising. And it also allows us in and that we still do some cooperative advertising, but but a lot of times rather than doing cooperative advertising like most recently, we put one an ad out for uh I think the ad 16,000 a page. So we spent eight and the uh Southwest Virginia center spent eight because if they're coming there, they're coming here and vice versa. And so try to work cooperatively there and allows us to spend extra money or other money elsewhere. And then but the the key is is by using the digital uh platform, we're able to actually show quantitatively that we're bringing like people come to our website because we send them stuff. they they go to our website and they click through and actually have a list of like the sites that they go to and they go to our restaurants and they go to other things in town. It's pretty neat technology. Um and so with that

the one of the more difficult things that people ask me to do is to talk about what I do and keep it brief. So I will try to You're all right. Okay. John has that PowerPoint push through. All right, Adam.

I sent it to him very late. Um, so yeah, what Mike was saying, it's really hard to have print um, information out there and collect data back on it. The only way you really can ever get data back from print information is you pick it up off the street and because they threw it down. That's really the only time you ever see it again. So with the digital media, um, we're able to track where people are coming from, what they actually looked at and interacted with, and where they went after that. Um, so a lot of, especially on our own site, and I have some numbers here. Um, so on our own site, we had active users um, year to date is I don't if they have it up or not. I sent it to him late, so it's fine if he doesn't. I He's going to grab it a second.

Yeah, my fault. That's on me. Um, but active users, which is essentially someone who came in and repeated this occurrence, which is they're not just coming to a website accidentally because they clicked on it, but they're actually there to see something. Um, my bad. Here we go. There's a nothing worse than someone telling you data that you can actually see because then it doesn't make any sense. The numbers get jumbled in your head. They get jumbled even when I read them. Thank you, John. You're the man.

Thanks, Joe.

All right. Uh, yeah, you can just go to the next one. Yeah. So, active users, um, to year to date, we have 88,000 and 16,000 in August. What this means is this is people who are coming back and reoccurring their visits. So they're not just clicking on it accidentally. They're actually interacting with the site. New users or anybody that comes to our site and and have never their IP's never been registered before. But we have 137,000 to date and 23,000 in August, which is roughly 17% of our total this year. Um active engagement, this is or average engagement, this just means how long they're on the site. is, you know, a minute 41 seconds, which seems small, but that's when you're playing on your phone, you don't realize how quick time goes by, but that's actually quite a bit of time when you're on there. Um, a little bit of a dip. And then event count. So, this is anytime someone does something on the site, anytime they watch a video, do a playback, click on a site, click on a event, like an actual thing that's on the site, and interact with it. We had 1.2 million today, and we had 166,000 in August.

Can I ask a question before going, do we know exactly what what are they looking at? What are people looking for? Are they looking for restaurants? Are they looking for Yes. entertainment? Are they Look here. Look here. All right. It's like I fed you that question. Here we go.

So, um, our homepage is where you land. If you ever been in our visit avenue page, it's a really nice page we have there. It kind of directs people um, where they want to go. We have 41 48,000 year to date, 8,000 in August. The calendar is one of our uh, most popular things. That's all events in town and the surrounding areas. is we automatically pull and put in that. We pull them from different things. If it's a Google uh calendar event, if it's a Facebook event, we put all those and host them on our web page. And it's the the most collaborative thing and the most comprehensive calendar in the area for what's actually happening and not just in admin events, but all events as a whole and the surrounding area as well, not just in town, but everything within mostly Washington County. Um, and then things to do, um, is a page that we have that, um, hosts retail shops and other things. And then that's the food and drink one you're talking about. And that's our food and retail map and has a a map of everywhere there is that's got um, retail space and also has a map of everywhere that's got food and beverage. And we keep that one's the most up to date. And this goes back to why print is a difficult thing. Every time we print our retail food and beverage maps, they're out of date. The moment we print them, someone opens a new one and it's completely out of date. This is always up to date. And that's why that's the hard part about print versus digital media is you go to the interactive map, you can zoom in and out, you can see where you're at, it'll ping where you're at on on your location. And you just can't do that with um print media. Um and then the biggest thing that happens is anytime we have major events, you we usually see bumps in our site traffic. Um the drivers if this uh month were the town wide yard sale and then the soap box derby

1300 of those were were Baker. Yeah. Um these are the interesting things when you get in this data that's always kind of like well don't really think of in that scale. Obviously Abington is going to be our biggest one because people were trying to see what they're doing in their own town. Um then Nashville um Bristol uh and New York which is

surprising. Yeah. Um these are so and what this allows us to do is when we look at marketing and pushing ads and doing um collaborative marketing with other um businesses or bartering, we can pull this zip code data and it's easier to generate traffic from places that are already looking for you. This allows us to target our marketing to those areas. Um and the New York one's always surprising to me. I know there at one time I was on the the TAC and I thought a lot of our people coming in were from Northern Virginia, Virginia Beach area and I guess that's kind of like

we we still get a a good portion of it and it es and flows. Um this is just our traffic. So this is just web traffic. Okay. There's a so this is like people who are looking for us. And then we have our zip code data for people who actually arrived and we pull that from a lot of sources. That's a thing when you're in this is there's not a there's not a one place you can go to find if we're doing a good or bad job. You kind of have to pull all this aggregate data and then filter through what you think is worthwhile and what's not. I had a an business analytics professor tell me that statistics are the only math that lies. So we just make up what we want to say.

Um and then these are the traffic sources. Google organically means someone Googled something. Usually we do a very good job of keeping the visit Abington town page that top link that you see. It's a um pretty hard thing to do, but we're you know top sources. So whenever someone Googles Abington where you visit Abington is the first one that pops up and we get a lot of our traffic from that direct which means someone just went and typed in the visit Abington page. The Facebook page, this is where we push ads. So if you've ever been on Facebook and you see the playtime and Abin ads or anything, that's where these links come from. Um advanced display is another version of an interactive ad. And then the progress is programmatic. Those are some other interact inter interactive things and then the Bing is organic for Bing. Um so the key takeaway is we had a pretty good August. Um uh the events boost most of our things. Anytime we can have good programmatic events in town, it makes it very easy to push people to our website. Um the uh hardest thing for us is when people come into me and they're like, "Well, I didn't know anything about that." Really not an excuse not to. we because everybody the events page is just trying to get people to understand if you want to find out what's going in town. Go to our events page in Abby. It's got everything you could possibly have on there. If it's going on, it's on that page. Um and then our regional reach is obviously you saw the Knoxville and New York. Um still yet our biggest markets for people who are coming here is what you were saying which is the Northern Virginia and those regional markets. Knoxville is obviously one of our larger ones. Um and the Barters zip code data shows the same thing. and then engagements drop 20 seconds and there's some lot of lot of ways you can go about looking at what that means. Um, usually it just refers back to it's got to be easier for people to find things and maybe they just weren't seeing what they wanted to see within that. But that's how you get longer engagement. And then I just want to give a brief overview what we're working on right

now. So, um, economic development and tourism is the most broad definition of what we do. Uh, I have a hard time explaining it sometimes because it it starts at businesses but then expands to, you know, giving people sewer access to why is there a raccoon on the road? It's very encompassing. So, within that, these are the things that we do that are easy to point to as we want to give everybody the best chance to be successful and develop communities and build that community in town. And it's really leave it up to the private sector to follow up with it. um this cultural heritage strategic plan. We got a grant for this and it's going we just signed the contract on it. We should have deliverables May of next year um June we should have a the actual plan in place. The goal of this one is to take Abin has a lot of historical assets. We have lots of them right we talk about them all the time. It's very hard to market the individual pieces. You know takes a lot of work to market each individual thing. So the goal of the heritage plan is to take all these properties at the town homes for in all the old historic district, Sink Spring Cemetery, Mustard Grounds and put them into one marketing plan that allows us instead of trying to pull all these pieces and market them to market the whole and attach those and how we're going to do that. It's going to look at what we think it's going to look at is, you know, kind of a tour, how we put tours together in town that takes you to all these cultural assets instead of if you hit the old historic district, you might completely miss the fact that the American Revolution was pretty much started and ended right out the road. Um, this Festival Street farmers market study, I'm think I might have a fun lined up for it. We're still working on it, but the goal of this one is we don't ever want to do anything that's beneficial for most but still a detriment to others. And every time we close Rimsburg, it it creates a great vibe. People love anything that happens on Rimsburg, but it makes it difficult for all those business owners to have

parking to the rear. Um there's no way to access it when they close Rimsburg. So this study will look at not only how do we increase the farmers markets capabilities, looking at, you know, is there a way to put a stage in there? Is there a way to have more vendor spots? But also, how can we leave this Rimsburg Street open and have parking where they can access their parking? Um, and then the Avenue and door is approved. That's a designated outdoor refreshment area. We had a a soft opening on it. How did that go? Can you share that with us?

I haven't been able to get back to the restaurants. What we did is we gave them all a lotment. I'm going to go back around and see how they did with it just to test it out. We didn't really advertise it because we weren't still figuring out all the metrics and making sure that Chief Hull Brook's okay with how we did this. You know, every the signage and everything kind of followed. But I was eyeing one cup on the street and then someone came back and picked it up. So I think it all seemed to went good from from my standpoint of you know the business that I operate that I thought that it went very well. I mean we had several people come and join in on the door. I just don't know but I've seen other cups from like you know 128 pan and Will's coffee shop. So

I think the feedback that I got that the door is it's in full effect. I mean it's working which just long as we can keep it under control. I think it's beneficial and that's a that's one of the things of like what what we do as a town for the businesses is we're not there

to drive the businesses. We're try there to give them all the opportunities we can and then allow them to run with it. And this is just one of those things where they can it's more collaborative allows people to, you know, cross-pollinate throughout town and it doesn't keep them so isolated. Um the facade grants open. I already have three applicants for this. This is a a grant that you guys budgeted for us and allows us to keep the streetscape updated and looking nice and fresh in downtown. Um, retirement muster grounds. We're about to close the contract on that one, which is going to be a huge step forward and in revitalizing that area of town and activating the muster grounds and it being an asset instead of something we just have to mow and spend money on. And then we're about to roll out our open in a series which is where we go into um similar to like the grand opening but we allow the businesses to tell a story and we're going to help them promote it and shoot this production of it but allows us engage with the engage with the public and tell them who they are. Often we have a lot of people that do their grand openings but it's very difficult for them to get out there because they have a very small social media following. The town has a very large one. So what this will do for us is allow us to use our uh online presence to their benefit and then it's an evergreen promotion they can have into perpet perpetuity whatever that word is

forever forever into existence they can keep using it and using it as free promotion then uh one thing too thanks for that presentation on uh the Google one of the things that that uh is always really difficult if you have things on your website if it has like people's names and hours and all that stuff it's very difficult to maintain but Google has something that we subscribe to. So if you have a website and you change your information on your website, then it will change it on ours and that cuz there's nothing worse than going one place and getting one time and going another place and getting another. So it allows all the information on our site to be current. Uh which is good. Y so

I'll say that I was asked to help create a calendar for a group um of people who were in town for a short time and wanted to know what was going on in September. And that is a great feature on the website. It was easy to navigate. All the information was there. It was it was really helpful for me just to make sure that I included, you know, everybody's business and everything that was going on. But I mean, you can go on there and find something to do pretty much any Yep. day or night. It's my favorite feature that we have on all of our all the things we do. The calendar events calendar is my favorite. Especially when people say, "I don't know what's going on." I'm like, "Show you some."

Time on it. It's really cool. It's very well done. And then on the shorts, um, as you know, Chad, uh, Chad got a different position outside of the town. Um, and we still have on retainer to help, uh, keep some of his knowledge local. Um, but we hired a person who was, uh, responsible for some of the really good shorts and social media and some of our uh, big events that are in the area. And she now works for the town. And I think she's really going to bump it up a notch. She's got some great ideas. She's a very smart individual. So, and she's now a third generation Abington employee. So, yeah. So, I think she'll she'll fit in well. She started today, so give it a couple days to to get just dating, but it'll be good.

Yep. Thank you guys. Thank you. Well, do I have a motion to proceed with the grant if awarded? Would someone like to make that motion?

Oh, yeah. This is this Let me explain this one real quick if I could. Yeah. So, uh, we have two grants that we had put in for and we got to the second phase of the of the, uh, of the grant. So, now it's before we, uh, push it any further, I wanted to make sure that should we get the, uh, the final funding that the there's a town obligation. Uh, there's two grants. One is the um um if you'll notice uh after the the most recent floods, a lot of the area jurisdictions went ahead to do a uh the u what do they call the mitigation plan uh to to see what was wrong with their with their stuff. We we already did that the uh for the uh flooding. And so what this is is this is the next next generation of that having the emergency management plan in place. and we have several areas that they want to be able to study a little bit further. Uh, and the nice thing is is we're first in line on this one. And so this is a $250,000 grant that we're applying for. There's a state and federal and it's a $12,500 local match. Um, and so if we get awarded that, we would have to come up with the $12,500. But what this would do, we have certain areas of town that we know are repetitive flood areas repetitively, you know, we all get calls on them. This would allow us to look for solutions on those. And that's the first one. And then the second one uh is also one I believe we have a very high probability of getting the funding on uh is the um as the town uh when power goes out, town hall doesn't have power. Uh and we have other uh buildings in town that don't have power and this would fix that. And uh so if should we get awarded this one, the town match would be 49,110. But this would allow us to have power at the Kum Center, at public works, at the public works uh uh the garage, um and you know, other places in town that don't have power town hall. Also, as you know, we had a generator donated, but the electrical work from the generator that was donated, that was still like $90,000. So this would provide funding for putting the automatic backup

generators on the critical facilities here in town. Uh something that you would love Yeah. something you would love to have but we don't have. And so this would allow us to you know all in it's it's you know 982,000 but 50 of it would be ours and the other one is like 250 with 15 of it being ours. So it's our way of trying to leverage um someone else's money against ours. But it's to carry out the objectives. As you know, after the storm last year, you know, we plowed forward and continued to operate and it it helps to operate when you got electricity. So, this would just allow us to do that. And then the kums u you know, as we use that let people take showers and all that didn't have power out in the area, but we still need power there. And so, this will allow us to do all those different functions.

So, just a question for clarification. Um I know that um you know, we've already done our budget for next year. Where is that money in where does that come from in the budget? We would have we have a fund balance. A fairly fairly healthy fund balance. So it would come from the fund balance. Yes. Okay. Yeah, that's fine. I'm fine with that. I think it's great. I think it's great that we are able to spend so little and get so much. Yeah. And um I love I love the fact that we've been going after these grants and getting them. So I wasn't asking that question because I wasn't in favor of it. I just wanted you to clarify where the money came from in the back.

Yeah. Because that that way if you recall last year we got a couple grants mid year. uh this this allows y'all to be aware of them as they proceed through the process, but also be aware that it's going to cost a few dollars. Um but yeah, both things are in line with what we're trying to do as the town because you know it's uh storms, you know, you can't plan them. Uh but we want to be ready when they come. So, do we need to vote on this? Just uh what do we have for just a motion to proceed with it? I'll make that motion to proceed with the um with the acquisition of these two grants. I'll second. Any further discussion? Canfield, please call roll. Miss Quetch, I. Miss Pian, I. Vice Mayor Austin, I.

And Mayor Anderson. Hi. Okay. And I think we talked about the We can go ahead and Yes, sir. Next will be the consideration of appeal for the planning commission certificate of appropriateness to discuss and uphold the motion originally. Since Mr. Austin already has a motion. Yeah, I'd like to make a motion that we reverse and hold the decision of the planning commission of October 23rd, 2023, which was reaffirmed on June 23rd, 2025 regarding 266 West Main Street here at Navy.

I'll second that. Any further discussion? Cam, if you'll please call a roll. Miss Quetch, I. Miss Pian, I. Vice Mayor Austin. Hi. and Mayor Anderson. I next we are moving on down with discussions regarding the proposed ordinance regarding blasting. We have the town manager Mike and discuss that for us as well.

Sure. Thanks. As you recall uh last month we had discussed uh some of the items with lasting and so I went through and u pulled uh some of the information that this um this isn't an ordinance form. This is just for final discussion or for contemplation, but it talks about the pre-blast surveys and we had a couple jurisdictions in the state that have uh that do do uh additional notification on above and beyond what is uh required by the uh fire mar or the is it fire marshal? Yeah, by the fire marshal. And uh uh and so basically what this one would call for is notification if if it's if it is within 150 ft radius of a blast light if you had another structure there. Um and there's additional notifications uh with respect to at least 48 hours before the blasting operation. Uh and no blasting shall occur until the the notification has been made. Um, in in doing the research on this, what I found is um the insurance companies a lot the the and chief can correct me if I'm inaccurate, but they're all required to have a minimum of a million dollars insurance on the blast. And so be and then the insurance companies require a whole litany of things on the front end, which is why how the how it is set up. So some of this stuff is um like can you step up just for a second? Um so as the fire chief he's also acts as the fire marshall on the for the purpose of this and so the state he wears many hats. Ah,

so uh anyway the but with with the blasting so that the state fire marshall pushes it down to you as the local to

Yeah. since we adopted the Virginia state fire prevention code in 2016 those duties of issuing fire or blasting permits, fireworks permits, all sorts of permits come to us. Uh so we adopted that. So we do that. If we had not adopted that in 2016, it would stay with the state fire marshall's office. So we do exactly what the state fire marshall's office does. Um, for your consideration in this ordinance, all we're doing is codifying what we did in the last blasting process, but now it will become part of the permitting process. We asked them to do that, but but if you adopt this or whatever you choose to adopt, then it'll actually be in the process and they will have to follow that. The notice, the 48 hour notice, I did increase it because it was 24 hours, but I did tell them when they did the blasting that they had to give us 48 hours notice. And they did go out and offer to do inspections. A blasting company did. And I think the 150 feet is very reasonable. Uh if if you were there to if you saw the videos or you're on scene to see the blasting, you would see that it was very controlled. It's very minimal to what we saw. Uh that there's just so much mis misinformation when people Google things and they Google blasting and dynamite and none of that happens that That was one of the reasons I put those videos up because I couldn't find a video that showed what we were trying to show, right?

And now you can find it. So, so is this a re I mean I'm I'm in favor of having ordinances when we need ordinances, but I'm not in favor of just making an ordinance because we have one situation that happens every 15 years and so, you know, more government than we need. Is this if we pass this ordinance, is it redundant to what the state requires us to do or are we just putting it in code to head off future problems? It actually adds a little bit to what we don't already have. Okay.

Uh the last time we had blasting was for the Meadows project. Uh the fire marshall then he was out there every day. He he videoed every blast that took place and everything they did there was there were no issues. Uh the same with the blasting we just had. And I think by putting this in our town ordinance, it helps us in case something comes up in five years, 10 years, or 15 years, it just leaves a lasting legacy to know that people today know that tomorrow we're doing the right thing by them. So I I think it's a good thing. And it's not just I don't think it's passing one just to pass it. I think it it's just making us better. Okay.

Yeah. And so the thing is the chief does great work, outstanding work, but he may retire someday. So, we need to make sure that we have the the road paved for the for the the next person. Well, if he says if he says it's a good thing, then I trust him. Yeah, he's he's um came in second, but he's good. I did come in second. Yeah, the Rotary Club had their own accountants there working on the numbers, but that's okay. It was fun.

Chief, this provides for notice to uh within what distance of where the blasting is going to take place? Uh so the initial notice is 150 ft and it can if if I decide whoever the fire marshall is can decide we can make that further uh you know if we're closer to a residential area and the residents are concerned we absolutely can make that a larger distance. But I think what we found with these blasts that we had that we had residents that were 5 to 600t away and other than the noise that you heard, there was nearly nothing to be felt. Nothing happened. There was nothing on the seismma graphs that was recorded. And we looked at Prince William County, which is very heavily populated. Uh they have 10 times the population that we do here. And this is mirrored after theirs. and they have a lot more urban area. So I think this is this is very well for us. I think it would be fine.

Had this ordinance been in place when we had the last blasting out on 75 the line of homes in country club estates. Would this have required those persons to be notified? Would they have been within the distance? No sir. They would not be in this distance that is in this current is what is presented to you tonight. They they are further away than that. So it's measured from the actual sight of the blasting to the structure to the home. Yes. So it's not from property line. No sir. It and and that's in there. Um when we were looking at that actually one of the things that that I recommended to be in there is a definition

of where the blast site is. So wherever they're drilling the holes, that's where the blast occurs and it's measured from that distance from that point to the to the structure. Yes, sir. Give me some idea. The blasting site on the route 75 property to the homes and country club would have been prox approximately what distance? They were 500 4 to 500 ft away. 4 to 500 ft. That's to the houses, not to the property line. That's right.

Yes, sir. Well, I was just surprised and I heard a lot of people make comments, not just one person, but several people that were so meticulous in the requirement to give notice to people if we're going to reszone their property, for example, or if that's coming before the council or planning commission. Yet, you could blast and not have that same requirement with the joining property. I I I like the ordinance and I like the considerations that are in this. I think we ought to give consideration to expanding that notification distance. uh had and of course I do live in country club but I don't live in that line of homes there but had I lived in that line of homes I know and I was president of one of the blasts I would have wanted to have been notified that it was happening

and as that's the same conversation I had with the two folks that I talked to uh talked to them on the phone and and I told them if it was in my backyard I would be concerned too. Sure. you know, and I absolutely understand because there's so much rock in our area that that shock wave could travel. It didn't here. Uh for decades, we've had the rock query, which is across the street, right? And you hear the little siren blast, then you hear a little boom. Uh but, you know, if we think it needs to be a longer a larger distance, I'm I'm okay with that.

What do you What are you thinking, Vice Mayor? Well, I I was going to ask the chief what and maybe you think this is reasonable, but do do you think it could be expanded? I mean, it's simply given notice to people, right? It's not doing anything beyond that, and that's minimal. It seems to me like we we have it as I believe it's 150 with consideration to go to 250. We we could change the 150 to 250. And like I said, all we're doing is giving notice to the residents, right? And and those citizens that live here. And I think that's important that we keep all of our folks informed and we be transparent with what happens. So, you know, I'm okay with going to 250 and then to 400.

Where did those numbers come from? Are those are those standard in the industry? Um, did you get them from other ordinances? I think that came from Prince William. Chief, it might be better to sort of start at the beginning. Somebody applies for a permit and then you have input on how much they can blast to begin with. So if somebody's going to say I'm gonna affect this much something that's going to affect people a thousand feet away, then you're probably gonna say you can't do that.

Oh, correct. Yes. So So the process is like happened here. The applicant comes in and the applicant is the blaster, not the person that owns the property because they hired a contractor to come do that. They come in, they get their application, they fill out their application. If they don't have a business permit for the town, they have to get a business permit to do business in the town. Once that's done, they submit their application, which has all their documents, their certificate of insurance, which is a million dollars. The person that we had here had $2 million. We can change that to whatever we would like to, but a million across the board in the Commonwealth seems to be the norm. And they had a $5 million umbrella, too.

And they did have a $5 million umbrella. So, every instance, they could have had up to $7 million. across the board in the Commonwealth that distance varies from 100 feet to 500 feet is what we've kind of found in what the research we've done. Um it's greater when you have a more more urbanized area, more homes, more people living in that area. That's why that distance becomes greater. So more people are notified once we get the application. and I review the process. I make sure that all their boxes are checked and that's really all I do is a checkbox. I can't tell them how far to deep how far in the ground to dig. I can't tell them what kind of explosives to use. That's not my expertise. I have no idea. I trust them because they're the contractor and this particular company that did this had over a hundred years of experience blasting. So, I trust them to make right decisions. We went on site. We were there to inspect the holes before they did the blasting and then we were there when they did the blasting. Everything we asked that company to do, they did. Had they not done that, they would not have blasted. That's the authority as a fire marshal I have to stop that and I would have done that. U but they were great to work with. I think for us as a town, I think if we want to increase the distance, I'm okay with that. I think that's okay. It's probably prudent to do that to make sure we have a better notification service to our citizens.

I think that that's something that we need to look at. No. Yeah, but also to know that the company that they hired did the notifications. They did far more notifications than we did not require them to to do notifications, but the town did not require that, but part of the standard parts in the Virginia State Fire Prevention Code and the other parts in the National Fire Protection Association standard, they have to notify to that. And that's what they did because our permit says they have to follow those two standards.

I kind of personally would like to see that number go 150 to like 300. And that's that's it's not too high, that's not too low. That's right in the middle. 300 300 ft would be something that that I'm all in favor for instead of the 150. But, you know, I'm not siding with what the chief says. You know, I go with what the chief says because he's got talent admin in his best interest. But if it's going to be one of those that we change, let's just go halfway in the middle. He said one to five. So, let's say 300. I like 300. Amanda, I'm fine with that, too. Don,

that's something that we could uh Mike Cochran make sure that that's from 300. We need to put it in ordinance form, which is good. We need to notice it in Yeah. Yeah. So, this was more discussion. We'll put it in ordinance form, get it noticed, and bring it back next month. Sure. Yeah. Thanks. So, we don't need to make a decision on this tonight. No, sir. Just call it Chief. Thank you. Thank you. I mean, it's a good discussion to have and the citizens don't know how lucky they are to have people that stand up here, be able to talk to you while you sit there and we have these great discussions. It's important. So, thank you for that. I appreciate it.

We thank you for Thank you. Next, we're going to go to a consideration of banners for the Veterans Day ceremony on Tuesday, November the 11th, 20125, hosted by the Veterans Memorial Park Foundation. Yes. Uh this uh application came in last week, I believe, week and a half ago. Yeah. Week before. And uh it's it's not listed in the uh in on the list already. So, it's from the uh Veterans Memorial Park Foundation. And the application's all in order. and they're just requesting that they be able to uh put a banner up because before they've always put it up on the hillside and now they actually have a banner. So I approve that request.

Do I have second? Any further discussion? Kim, if you'll please call roll. Miss Fletch. I. Miss Pion. Vice Mayor Austin. I. And Mary Anderson. I have no old business. No miscellaneous or we'll go to now miscellaneous business and communication from the town manager Mike Cochran. Yes, thank you. Real briefly, I know we've touched on the soap box derby. Uh if you didn't go uh you got to look at some of the pictures, you missed out if you

if you didn't go. It was really amazing. But uh for you know it this was Adam Bolt and tourism and every couple people coming up with the ideas and uh and looking at it and you know it really was a neat event and when if you're out there what you saw was small town America enjoying small town America for sure and it really was a was a neat event and so and the nice thing was is because of sponsorships and all it really didn't cost us a bunch and we had a lot of people got to see what it's like to have a good time and uh was nice too was there was small children out there and there families out there and then there was folks with life experience out there. Everybody seemed to have a good time and it was really nice event and then uh our mayor was the MC. Um yeah, that was really uh interesting. Um yeah, so now I understand. What was that?

What was that? Who won that? Yeah, that would be a little league. That would be Speed Racer. Speed racer league, I think.

Yeah. Yeah. Chief, he's the silver Mercedes. Uh uh anyway uh so anyway that was a really really nice event and I was glad to everybody out there and u the uh the one the mentioned earlier was the construction on sanitary sewer uh they are working fast but it say about 100 feet left until they get to the end of that project they got to demobilize and then pave but by goodness we're doing everything we can to make sure they're done by the end of this week. uh they know it and thank the two fellas that are in charge of the project came at the football game the other night but I did not throw them in front of the bus. They just said hello and went on in uh because that was the question that came from everybody.

I think I think like you said they're doing a wonderful job. I mean you run into problems when you when you get into doing things in this situation. Yeah. So I mean these should be thankful that they're getting it done and getting it done the right way. Absolutely. Take a little time. Apologize for that. Yeah. know the project is uh it's it's significant but they're fixing problems that are have been it wasn't done 100% right the first time or the technologies today are better than they were before uh but it's gravityfed and it has to work a certain way so they are absolutely working hard and I do appreciate everybody's cooperation because it's really been a long time and so it's happening and then uh on on the noise we've got some research being done on that on that particular issue and I'll send you more information on that and I would like to get to the bottom of this absolutely yeah

because I don't want to seem like that, you know, the business in question and the residents, you know, I don't don't want this to be a problem because we all want to work together. It's just a point of us sitting down and knowing what's what and what's going on. You just can't have someone come in and basically tell you they want it done like this when you know someone is following the guidelines that are out there. So, we just need to to pinpoint what we're going to do with this situation. Absolutely. And then we'll move on from there. For sure. and I've got some some research being done on that and I'll send you uh some information on that so we can have something to consider. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Donna Quinc, do you have anything you'd like to add to that? I do not. Thank you though.

Uh Amanda,

no. Just I'd like to thank um I wasn't so by. It was amazing. So much fun. We had the most beautiful weather. It was perfect day. It was gorgeous. It was hilarious. Um I loved watching the kids. In fact, I asked one of Dwayne's girls, the mayor's girls. I said, "Who let your father have a microphone?" And they said, "I do not know." But it was it was fun. It was um well attended. I thought it was great. And I was out walking my dog early that morning and I saw so many of our public's work and tourism um employees out working early that day and then cleaning up later when I was out walking again. And um without them, we couldn't have all these things happen. So, I wanted to thank them. And I also want to thank all the people who direct traffic because I'm one of those people who um we are always late getting to school in the morning and um it's actually smoother than it is usually by the time I get through there. So um that's not my fault by the way. I'm ready to go, but I have a teenage boy. So um but anyway, you all are doing a great job with that. So I just want to thank all of our employees for everything they do for us.

Vice Mayor Austin, I don't have anything to add to that. Just echoing comments that as Pion just made. It is good to have staff out there. As I said a moment ago, every time that I heard a complaint, the second sentence was, "Thank you for having people out there that are that are monitoring the traffic and directing the traffic and we want to try to avoid that." Yeah. For sure. This next For nobody thinks about their sewer until it doesn't work. Exactly. Exactly. You're exactly right. Yeah, you'll learn real quick. You got a problem.

Well, the one thing that I want to point out is just everyone that's at the the tourist and information from Isaiah to Adam, Miss Blackurn down there as well. Um, public works, Mike Sheret, all you guys. Um, my crew, we were out, we probably got the early start. We were probably there at 9:00. We were there when you were putting the hay bells down. We're there after the fact when y'all were picking the hay bells up. Um, y'all did a good job of setting up the Soapbox Derby and breaking down the Soapbox Derby and uh, I really appreciate that with the flow of traffic that we had blocked off. If I could recollect, I think we had about three I'm thinking maybe about three or 400 people there. Nothing but smiles all day. Um, everybody was feeling welcome and that's one of the things that I take pride in as being the mayor here in the town of Abdin is no one's left out. I mean, we even had the big wheel race to where the people who weren't old enough to get involved in soap box derby. Kids still had a chance to ride the the big wheels down the street. And I think that Isaiah made that a dream come true for a lot of kids because there were probably about 40 or 50 kids once we announced that they came over to ride the big wheel. And that was big kids, little kids, black, white, it didn't matter. Everybody got a chance. And um there were a lot of people that were from out of town that I seen in the crowd that weren't from Washington County, Virginia or the town of Admin that was loving it and saying, "Hey, they'll be back." And with that being said, I had a lot of people like you were saying up here earlier. I didn't even know that was going on. So I think next year, you know, where we had 12 to 13 in the adult, look to have about 40 or 50 in the adult and 20 to 30 in the kids. So, but I think that that this is what we need for the town of Aden to get everyone to unite and come together.

And if I can speak for Chief Estus, he's the uh only emergency first responders that built a soap box. Without a break. Without a break. Without a faulty break. Let's mine that with a faulty break. From a liability standpoint, I'll point out that only Chief Estus and Adam Bolt wrecked their their cars. Oh,

all right. Now, we're going to move on to appointments to boards and committees. And it looks like we have a couple of those. Um, I don't know, Cam, should we take them? Should we go into close session or should we take these one at a time or how do you all want to do that? Well, I think we've just got enough applicants for the appointees and except for the recreation advisory commission, we have two, but only one lives in town. So, we gave we give them preference.

I think that we should give the one that lives in town a little bit more preference than the ones from out of town. So, Donna, with that being said, do you want to uh Sure. I'll make I'll make I'd like to uh appoint Dylan Blavvens to the Veterans Advisory Board, the Recreation Advisory Commission, Win Greer, and Sustain Abinan Hayden Ellison.

I'll second that motion. I'd like to say as you did a moment ago both the applicants for the advisory commission for recreation wellqualified applicants but as you correctly pointed out if we have someone who's a town resident give them priority. Yes sir. Yes sir. Uh any further discussion? Kim if you'll please call roll. Miss I. Miss Billian. I Vice Mayor Austin. I mayor Anderson. All right. And with that being said, we'll go ahead and call this meeting adjourned.