City Council - Regular Meeting

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e e first yep it's for the stitches okay [Applause] well good evening and welcome to the City of Bristol Virginia City council meeting today is Tuesday March 11th 2025 we're going to start out with a moment of Silent prayer please join me in St for the Pledge of Allegiance Al 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 well good even everyone it's great to see a large crowd here tonight I know that we have a a packed agenda so I'm excited to uh jump into it I will ask if there's any comments that would like to be made by Council uh yes thank you I I do have uh one thing I'd like to discuss briefly and that is that uh March is National Kidney Awareness Month kidney disease awareness month and uh you know there are hundreds of thousands of people that suffer with various forms of kidney disease uh in their life um as a diabetic I know I'm at a higher risk for it so it's something I have to keep an eye on uh my mother is in stage four uh kidney failure so it's something that's you know close to home for me uh so you know just take this some time this month to uh worry about your Kidney Health talk to your doctor about it you know drink plenty of water stay hydrated and uh make sure your kidneys are in good shape all right I'd just like to say uh congrats to our boys and girls basketball teams they've done a they had a fantastic season both both sides um didn't quite make it to State this year but they they worked really hard and did a great job in the regional uh championships and then also uh the baseball and um soccer seasons are about to begin so I'm excited to see a few games and uh get into the the barcat spirit again so all right thank you moving into city manager comments no comments tonight all right thank you all right looking for a motion for the adoption of the agenda I move for the adoption of the agenda as presented second all right we have a motion and a second clerk please call the rooll farum yes Holmes yes Osborne yes Pard yes Nave yes okay first item on the agenda

regular agenda tonight is the Pres presentation of the Schoolboard budget and so I'd like to ask Dr Scott if he would like to come forward good evening mayor Na and members of the council and good evening members of the city manager 's office I'm David Scott superintendent for Bristol Virginia Public Schools and I'll be presenting our school budget um whenever we start to engage stakeholders in our budget development process I believe it's important that we take time uh to to read through our vision statement which is preparing all students to thrive in a dynamically challenge changing world and that's something that you will see at the bottom of each of our slides as we go through tonight as we consider what it means to prepare students for a dynamically changing World um that aligns with our budget priorities and keeps us on target for that Vision so we have six budget priorities and these are not in rank order uh but they all kind of depend on each other and and uh lean on each other so we go through these very quickly uh the first thing when we think about the strength of our school system is knowing that our strength comes from having excellent instructors in the classroom and we want to make every effort we can that is fiscally responsible to make sure that our uh compensation ranges are setting the pace for the rest of the region and that we uh stay at the head of that pack um with the budget that you will see this evening I believe that we're going to be well positioned to do that list number two up there is using the all-in funding to continue to implement uh the professional

development that goes along with the Virginia literacy act and this is money that uh came to us last year uh from VOE through um that the governor's funding there uh so we still have money in that Grant and that is going towards making sure that our teachers have absolutely First Rate professional development for that um that new law number three adequate funding for uh science and math proficiencies and providing Hands-On learning we uh acknowledge that our science and math scores have not kept pace with other scores in our school Division and in an effort to address that we're leaning on um best practi practices and and research based practices to make sure that that learning is more Hands-On and more experiential for Math and Science with number four the uh strategizing the funding to keep keep the attendance clerks and additional attendance officers in place these positions started and and were primarily funded through grants but we we know that we along with uh most of the school divisions in the Commonwealth continue to battle High attendance of chronic absenteeism and so we want to make sure that we are showing that as a priority in our budget to make sure they come into the local funding side and we can sustain the success that they're seeing in those positions last year was a big hiring season for us and so one of the things that we did in recognition of that was to uh staff some people in in the current school year we want to continue this into next year to make sure that we have a proper onboarding and mentoring program in place and we really believe that every time that we make a new hire it's an investment in not only our future but the future of that educator and so we want to make sure that they're getting all the proper support they can through a comprehensive induction model and last on our list here is uh Capital Improvements um we know that the city has entrusted us with with four outstanding school buildings and U some of them newer than others but we want to make sure that they all uh remain in tiptop shape and that when we have opportunities to address Capital needs

we do that in a way that not only addresses the Aesthetics of the school but also enhances the security of the school so to get into the fund num stuff um I should mention that this evening our budget presentation is based on the conference committee budget not the governor's proposed budget um so hopefully at uh in a little bit more than a week's time this will be signed into law and we won't see any other changes coming from uh the governor as that gets signed with required local effort um the conference budget has that at $9.1 million from from the city for the cont uh minimum contribution and um that does not add in the The Debt Service there and we'll discuss that in a later slide so as promised here's the the later slide so uh the minimum contribution is is $9.1 million and when we add in that Debt Service of another $322,500 that brings the adjusted minimum contribution to 9.4 million we are not asking for anything above uh the required local effort okay and the footnote there this is subject to change with the final state budget but again we're not anticipating any changes at the last minute so as we look at some of the other funds in addition to the the state and local funds that that come into our budget um our school nutrition fund if you look at the anticipated beginning balance and the anticipated ending you see that that is uh going to be a balanced budget uh the proposed revenue and expenditures are based on participation rates in the National U school lunch programs textbook funds um we are going to be purchasing uh we have

a math textbook adoption coming up and some school devices so we will end up a little bit lower than where we started but but still with u over $500,000 in that account the school construction fund um as Mrs Jones uh my CFO and and Mrs bradin have have discussed uh with the principal payment on the on the new building uh that will take that school construction fund down to about uh $738,000 this year local capital projects um while we don't have any specifically earmarked yet we do want to um show that there's a a $2,000 increase their um for capital projects and if unus that will go back into that local fund um on that note we have um contracted with Thompson and Linton for a comprehensive building study to help us out outline and identify capital projects that that might need to be addressed in the next 5 years and then with the school activity funds um these These are uh you know the money that the schools use that is not necessarily the the big money that comes down directly from the school division but sort of In-House school money um we can see there again another even budget or balance budget rather we've covered that I'm going the wrong way that's what's happening okay so with the increases in the budget that we're looking at uh these are the things that we are um expecting to accomplish this year as far as salaries go the the governor's introduced budget had language in it uh that would have in the first year year of the bium budget provided a 3% increase for um all s soq positions and another 3% in the second year of the bium we exceeded that in the

first year and would have been on the hook for uh a 1.5% increase in the second year of the B budget we're going to exceed that and uhu be able to give a um a step increase on all step scales and then a 3% increase on top of that and we we like to point out that that is always uh derived from the midpoint of each scale so that we don't have uh employees at the top end of the scale enjoying a greater percentage increase or cash value increase there uh so that is I I think very um that is done in a very fair way throughout our scales we also know that with the cost of Health Care um increasing throughout the nation uh that we we had to budget for an increase there and one of the things that we were doing to offset that increase to some degree is to get a little bit deeper into the cost sharing aspects of that uh so whereas in the past we have paid 99% of a single subscribers premiums we are now looking at a balance and um that will be closer to 95 and 5% shares we have two additional School Bus purchases and this puts us closer to a um a replacement cycle for our buses than than we've ever been before uh so we're in pretty good shape right now with the bus fleet biggest problem however is the lead time on those so buses that we purchased at the end of last year we're still waiting for them to arrive uh so we want to make sure that we secure those when we can as we look around our schools um and and are very proud of our schools we want to make sure as I said earlier that we stay on top of them the maintenance and and the care of those schools so in our new budget we are going to be adding a position for our maintenance department and one uh our custodial Department and we're also adding uh one more bus driver this would have us staffed at there's I think this is probably the

best way I can State this but if the number of routes that we have on a daily basis is X this will put us at X plus one so that we always have um a driver ready to go in the event of an absence and that seems to be far worse I'm sure with with everybody absenteeism is worse on Fridays we don't want to start a Friday with a call to say that school bus won't be running and we're also going to be adding a second Arial position at our Middle School uh one of the other things that we have done uh is to modify a program director salary scale and we've added a supervisor scale so some of the employees that had the most responsibility on them were um paid on an hourly scale that was not overtime exempt uh so this is going to rectify that that situation okay the revenue picture uh looks like this that uh in state revenue in General Revenue we're looking at a just over a $1 million increase uh the restricted revenue or the state grants it is pretty much the same about $143,000 increase we do have a show a decrease in federal revenue and that is with the expiration of sr3 funds uh uh unfinished learning and and so forth so some of those grants that have have just run their course uh are coming out of there um local Revenue again this is the increase in the um the city contribution shown there and then uh other Revenue slight decrease and and that's I have it in my note but probably not really important it's $34,000 so how the money will be spent um we have a a pie chart on the next slide that shows this in I think a little bit more visually appealing sense uh but you can see the preponderance of the money is spent on instruction and that's how uh it it should always be our

operational costs uh are increasing slightly um but to a much greater degree the instructional costs are increasing and here you can kind of see what that looks like in in terms of percentages I think this is the the balance that you want to see from every School Division that is to see that most of the money is being spent on instruction and a number that doesn't appear on that um but I think is worth noting is that u in total 73% of our expenditure are related to salaries and compensation and benefits um so there's not a lot of lot of overhead in what we're doing there that concludes our presentation and I'd be happy to field any questions from uh city council thank you thank you Dr Scott we appreciate your presentation tonight um I'll just say I think that in this budget you've been very conservative with um your approach and with us and this is an area that I I don't ever like to um try to run slim on because it's important our investment in our children and our schools is extremely important um I feel like uh one of the things you have in there with the staff uh step increases is super important because um we want to be able to be uh retain the teachers that we have we have wonderful teachers some of the best in the state to retain those we're going to have to to put those incentives and have those out there in order to be competitive even with our neighbors and so CU I know I've watched um other presentations and from other uh school systems and know that there's others in the area that do those increases and so that is important I think also um when you're talking about equipment as far as like the school bus uh purchases um asking for two additional school bus buses it's

important that we keep U that Fleet turning over because um you don't want to come up in 10 years and need you know 10 or 15 school buses so um and I could go on and on um about the other things but those are the top two things that stood out to me and I just wanted to thank you for being conservative and really um coming with what I feel like are the bare necessities for the school and I appreciate your presentation tonight I'll open the floor for any other questions well Dr Scott thank you for your presentation obviously um couple things I want to highlight that I have a couple questions so I do appreciate um that you're adding those support positions you know custodian maintenance um because that's very important and that makes a school system and a school specifically run much more smoothly um I also appreciated your um stated goal to focus on the math and science aspect CU I know I believe there was a study I think it was na that said that Virginia was at the very bottom of the country because of math learning loss coming out of Co so you know I know the problem is not unique to us um but it's definitely something we have to address and I'm glad you're addressing it um my question is on the capital Improvement plans so you know obviously one of the reasons one of the many reasons that we had to build a school um was because three school buildings were in very bad shape and it was going to cost much more to fix them than it would be just to replace it um so so when will I know you said you've contracted with Thompson Linton when do you anticipate a report from them and and what do you see just if you had to guess as kind of the big capital projects that you might have to do over the next few years sure um with with our contract with him we're already inside a

100 day mark from when we should see reporting back from them and some of the things that we know are that uh with with buildings that the high school for instance that had construction at various different times over the past several decades uh there are going to be some places where there might be water infiltration uh foundations that that are proving to to need to be addressed uh so some things like that that aren't necessarily cosmetic but that are more structural um we also know with um that the way that the um Nationwide discussion is around around security and crisis preparedness uh some of what we want to do is to address door locks and then make sure that we uh are outfitting our doors the the hardware that is the safest for our students and our staff uh so that's a big focus of that we also are going into our third year of extensive Renovations at Virginia Primary School where we have taken that somewhat open classroom concept and we have created walls where there hadn't been walls before so continuing to do those to make sure that there's individual uh HVAC controls for those places and that we have uh comfortable classroom settings is going to be a priority for us I I appreciate the work you all are doing that's you know it it costs a lot less in the long run to fix stuff before it's a big problem uh so I appreciate you all are doing that and as a as a former student at Van Pelt uh I appreciate that you're closing those classrooms in because they would get very loud when you're a little kid and you're trying to trying to learn and you hear three other classes all around you yes sir yeah I Sly appreciate the so um staying on top of of Maintenance as one could argue that we could have kept three of our schools if the funding necessary for maintenance and staying on top of them and periodic Capital Improvements had been handled that was before your time so it's not the blame of anyone currently involved but now you're trying to do that and I really

appreciate that thank you I also appreciate that uh you're trying to make to do the be do the best you can with the least that you can get away with as far as making the best you possible use of your resources and um it's obvious that you um appreciate the financial situation the city finds itself in uh with your request um and I I greatly appreciate that as well thank you sir just a quick question since we were talking about school buses um just out of curiosity what does a school bus cost and and how often do you have to replace a school bus just roughly uh roughly school buses are in the range of $140,000 these days okay and uh back before the economy really turned down in 2010 they the state would tell us that school buses need to be retired after about 12 to 13 years now that they're not funding them as much they say that they're good for 16 to 18 years uh but we we try to look at the mileage and make sure that uh that as things age out that we're we're replacing them with something more serviceable okay Dr Scott thank you for being here um thank you for the work you've done um we appreciate having you here in the city um thank you for this budget I know um don't want to rehash what everybody said it's we appreciate the uh the understanding you bring when you you come here today um with the work that we that has happened the last couple years we're hoping we're turning that corner we can do a little more in the future we can find find more things to do um our educational system is very important it's one of the basic building blocks of a locality's responsibility um we want to do it right and you are doing it right but we just want to um help you out as best we can going forward so hopefully in future years we can do more but uh we appreciate what you've brought to us today thank you very much and before I uh step away from the podium I

want to thank Mrs Tammy Jones for all of her hard hard work on the budget and uh would also like to thank Mr eid's office for uh being great partners with with us excellent well thank you so much and and yes thank you so much Miss Jones I know you and miss bradin work closely together and that's really nice that you can have conversations and work together and and I love that so thank you all for your hard work we appreciate you so much thank you all right moving into item number two presentations of non-mandated outside agencies just a reminder before we get started you have a 10 minute um 10 minutes each to present and tonight we have six so we're going to go ahead and get started with the Southwest Virginia EMS Council and I believe we have Mr bowling and Mr Woods here tonight welcome mayor vice mayor members of council City Administration thank you so much for giving us an opportunity to talk with you uh we want to thank you for your funding last year and we've asked for equal amount this year of $5,000 um and we're going to talk about some of the things that we do uh the overarching mission and vision of our organization is to understand the needs of the EMS community and to implement programs that reduce death and disability that arise from emergencies both from medical and Trauma emergencies um and to elevate the quality of prehospital care through all the many services that we offer and we do that in a number of ways um and have been doing that since 1979 so we're moving into our 46th year of service to EMS stakeholders we are a 501c3 nonprofit so we maximize Public Funding through programs that are available to us uh and a majority of our funding comes through our contract with

the Virginia Department of Health as a regionally designated Emergency Medical Services Council uh and as a regional entity we do support uh 13 counties and three cities throughout Southwest Virginia um and that equates to about 80 licensed Emergency Medical Services agencies and, 1500 providers spread across our service area uh our services that support Emergency Medical Services fall into these broad areas that you see here uh Regional infrastructure um providing support to enable our Local Heroes to do their job we provide Regional Medical Direction um in the form of creating medical protocols and destination plans to ensure that prehospital patients receive the appropriate treatment and are taken to the appropriate facility to Ure the best possible outcome uh we're also the lead Agency for regional planning and Regional coordination of the EMS system um and we play a a very broad role in EMS provider education and continuing education in Southwest Virginia among our educational offerings uh we are one of the Region's only accredited EMS training certification programs at both the BLS basic life support and ALS Advanced life support levels uh and we have completed 250 to 300 students through our EMT courses uh that are directly supporting EMS agencies including here in the City of Bristol and of course as a City of Bristol agency uh those are being conducted right here in the City of Bristol and then we've had Advanced student completions of 100 to 150 we're currently completing an em Advance program that allows for advanced pharmacological interventions as well as other diagnostic techniques that are used by those providers and so we're finishing that course right now and then we focus also on Community Education so we are an American Heart Association

Community training center and so over the last year we've taught uh through our network of instructors that are about 140 basic level instructors and well over 120 Advanced instructors taught more than 9 100 emergency cardiovascular care courses offered more than 246 Advanced Cardiac Care courses and that equates to about 5,000 uh certification cards those are individuals who have a cred credential that shows that they're equipped to assist with cardiac emergencies uh both as lay uh responders and as practitioners in the field so our community Training Center uh not only focuses on EMS agencies but we support local colleges hospitals doctors offices um nursing homes um dayc carees um and anyone who has a desire to become a lay rescuer we offer those courses in our office on our on a continuing basis and then we provide some other services that are aimed at supporting our Region's First Responders uh one of those is our critical incident stress management team so we are a 247 365 uh day a year team that is uh able to be requested to support in any critical incident to provide Mental Health Services for EMS responders that is offered uh free of charge and we do have Pathways for continued care for individuals who are experiencing uh post-traumatic trauma as a result of their service uh we also operate as a Field Print fingerprinting site that supports both EMS agencies but many other employers here in Bristol as well we provide grant writing assistance to EMS agencies um every year there are two cycles of the rescue squad assistance fund that provides support for needed equipment to EMS agencies and we assist with that and we support other Regional Educators and training programs right

now we have about $20,000 of equipment that is permanently on loan to the Southwest Virginia Paramedic program to support their training efforts um and then we do lots of of other programs um that are needed and at request so that's an overview of all the things that we do we're happy to answer any questions that you might have well thank you so much what an excellent presentation and we appreciate all the work that you all do in our community and surrounding communities and um from the training that you do to um all the other services and I think uh from year to year I I hear this and then I forget all the many things that you offer along with the training so thank you so much for what you do for our community thank you thank you for your support I'll open it up for any other questions or com I I'll just say that's that's quite a list there that that's pretty impressive so thank you for for offering all those programs and trainings and doing it here in the city too we can say that selfishly I think and um for for what you're asking I think that's a pretty good bang for our buck so I appreciate what you do thank you yeah we we do appreciate uh everything you all do I know that you were kind of a new Organization for us to begin funding and uh I think not only is it good for us to fund it it's also good for the informational awareness for people to know that that this is here in our city and I think it's a testament to the quality of work you do that you've got the former Fire Chief and the current fire chief right there both of you in support and you know as as far as what EMS does those folks would know better than anyone so we appreciate the work you do thank you yes come on up Madam mayor members of council I would just like to offer my support to the EMS Council some of the more recent projects we've worked with them we have firefighters that go over to the council and get credentialed as instructors and then they can come back and teach CPR at first aid to our city

Workforce so that's been a big benefit they mentioned the grant writing assistance you know our first ambulance was purchased with a grant so that's been very beneficial for us and you know has had a very positive impact on our taxpayers so I definitely offer them my full support wonderful thank you so much for sharing that yep thank you all we appreciate you being here tonight okay next on the list uh we have the Bristol Regional tourism marketing Corporation explore Bristol and Mr Matt Bolis is here with us tonight Welcome Matt good evening hello welcome thank you appreciate that y let me see I'm going to push a button there's one in three chance I'm going to do it correctly I did it correct correctly okay um I just wanted to thank the council and thank the city for your all support I wanted to just talk a little bit about ourselves as an organization uh Bristol Regional tourism marketing Corporation that's our long name that's our official tax ID name but we're known as explore Bristol so that's the brand that the community and uh visitors know us as we that was pretty long of a name to to be too cool to get people to visit here so we came up with explore Bristol um just to let you know how our board works uh in terms of representation I'll just quickly go through that there's a one voting seat it's 1000002 voting seats these come from lodging taxes uh our goal is to drive more people to come here to spend more money on lodging to spend more money on shopping dining and those tax rates that are on uh the meals tax and the lodging tax the goal is to continue to grow that so it benefits the city and improves the quality of life that's the whole goal of tourism program um we have other opportunities for ex

officio seats as well for representation we appreciate the city um you know your support of of being active and within our board um so that's just a little bit about how we are we're also a 501 C6 nonprofit organization so we operate like any other nonprofit with our board of directors you all assign who the seat is and then it's voted through through that board uh this is a current list of our board I thought well haven't showed that lately and just to so we have our our directors and you can see the ones that are voting directors and also ex officio um you know there's a wide range uh birthplace of Country Music Museum you know different hotels Hard Rock Hotel Casino in Bristol if you don't know Christine she's amazing doing an amazing job there she's their vice president of marketing Matt lavender at Bristol Sports plex we work with everyone but these are our our board members you'll I will note on the bottom left Matt slagel who's commissioner svin County Tennessee svin county has come on as a supporter as well and has a voting seat as well um beginning uh actually this month so uh uh they they are partnering with us as well um and that's just a little bit of of who our board setup is and I'll get into the fun stuff and I'm going to go quick because I have a lot of slides so don't panic um there's a I'm just going to show you some of the the highend stuff there's a lot of things that we're doing that probably not on there uh like we're working with um you know Bristol Rhythm soccer right now we're working with a plethora of individuals but I'm just going to go over some of the highlights we are in the Tennessee and Virginia travel guides there's hundreds of thousands of these that are are sent out what I do want to point out I like the opportunity in Tennessee where we can list the casino so you can see that in the ad and you will see Virginia attractions in the Tennessee guide and conversely in Virginia which they allow us to do an avator style ad that's why

they look different um there is you know the track and it's in Tennessee but what that does is it drives traffic to all of our hotels no matter what side of the street it's on and that's where the money comes in from hotels lodging meals so that's a great opportunity we've a we've been able to work with both states that they view us a little differently um so I think we're the only entity that promote the casino in Tennessee so that's a that's an opportunity I just want to show another marketing piece this is one that we just started uh this past uh this beginning of the year uh with outdoor recreation they took a little bit of a hit as we all know with hurricane Helen a lot of our um our Outfitters and some of our outdoor recreation folks have have struggled a little bit we're trying to do some push there um our fall wasn't as great as you all know because it just we didn't have that fall Beauty and those Travelers because the more important thing of responding to the crisis that was going in was the most important thing with a lot of those line teams staying in the hotels and whatnot um social media we still lead the the region and the greater region so we have the largest social media following and we push that a lot um I'll get into some of the stats behind that about why that's important but this generates a lot of travel for us and a lot of expenditures in our community uh when you look at social media and this is I started for the fiscal year July 1 through today uh end of February the most important thing there's two things on this slide it's the ROI on based on how many Impressions we get which we about 4 million impressions year to date that conversion is about equivalent to $48,000 in advertising and that in that is just based on industry standards of how you look at the cost and the value of an impression but the the other point I'd like to to uh point out is when we

do social and you look at our social we don't drive people to our website necessarily expor bristol.com if we're doing something that is promoting let's say Rhythm and Roots we're driving straight to their website we're not one of those entities that tries to get clicks on our site if we can drive them straight to buy tickets from the person who's selling them so when you see our ads for the concerts at uh hard rock it goes straight to Hardrock we don't want them to go to a landing page on a different site and you all know when you all see this you click away so the most important number on there is the the post clicks and the other post clicks we're generating clicks to those other sites of almost 200,000 187,000 so that is a per that is a strategy that we will continue to follow we're going to drive them to the actual entity whether it's a restaurant a hotel um we're continuing our display advertising the tric City airport we get a ton of uh uh comments about this we've had people that have tried to buy it from us um we're not selling it we have the space um and we kind of did it as like the state line so you'll see some Virginia attractions on the left side and some Tennessee attractions on the right side um we've updated this just a little bit to freshen it up but uh this has had a a huge uh impact for us because these are individuals that are flying into other cities that may not be Bristol and we want them to come back and and explore our city the next time they come through and if you've been in the airport it's pretty big so it's pretty cool we like we like it we hope you do too um Christmas we love Christmas I want to give a shout out to the city manager and the staff is so easy some people don't know we help coordinate the the lighting of the Christmas tree so we hire a company that does that they that do work for Ballad and for metav View and for

Southwest Virginia Harwood to help decorate that tree um and we appreciate the city because it is spoton uh allowing us to bring in the lifts and to do it professionally um it takes them a day or two to get it up there and usually about a day to to get the lights down and then we put that arch up there as well that is a good photo spot and the hotels seem to like it but we do a lot of Christmas push you'll see us do thematic pushes whether it's in fall or whatever and I'm going to click this I hope this isn't too loud I'm not going to play the whole video of Santa Claus but we do a lot of boosted video that we'll do inh house video we create this content we push it out um Santa Claus is going to tell you all these things and we drive ads on YouTube on Facebook on Instagram um we send them out to uh media to to get more people that will come to Bristol this is a the long form version so uh I won't go through the whole thing um but the long forms 90 seconds but this is just one little example if you want to see all of our videos you can go online and check them out any of this content you all need please let us know we'll be happy to share it for free um that's kind of the whole point of what we do so a lot of our partners use this as well so I'm going to skip through see how this works on the clicker here H casino brist is open H oh it worked okay we did uh through some of our grant matching grants that we do we do uh vent driven digital billboard um we get some of those complimentary in the Tri Cities CU we purchase without throughout the region but we also target areas like Western Carolina and Bluefield and Knoxville um trying to get people to come to event driven Billboards some of the Billboards are square some of them are your traditional

um horizontals so we try to push out different things to get people awareness and in those areas that we run Billboards we also run um uh search engine marketing tactics and as well it's also layered with social targeted social um so there's some more examples of them we we specifically push on events um that seems to drive well to hotels again I talked a little bit about hurricane Helen we we had to switch a little bit um in the fall so we were able to create this the very next day I'm mentioning this only because we did have some struggles in the fall we did put some pauses on our fall camp caign it just wasn't the right time we didn't have the beauty there was a there was a crisis going on in the greater region a lot of our hotels were full because of construction and and line people that were coming through that did negatively affect retail and some restaurants that we've talked to and our outdoor folks so that's why we were looking at others but we did put up travel alerts of how to get to Bristol as roads opened um the cities and I will say our our regional tourism Partners in Northeast South in Southwest Virginia we all over this so um we we jumped in on there and tried to do that that did affect one of our bigger projects for the year we launched the PSL Trail I will tell you the PSL Trail was supposed to launch the Monday after the hurricane so we were able to stop all advertising because we can't launch a trail that is themed around pumpkin spice latte because we know how amazing that is and we had different participants throughout from Union 41 to your different coffee shops as a hook to drive people to do fall travel we did it lightly we just let it be native and then we pushed those funds toward Christmas and then the campaign of outdoor recreation that we started in

January um but we're going to go bigger and better in in the fall next year but um uh we also work with Group Travel we partner with uh different attractions that will attend American bus Association is the biggest one that's our new Bo Booth cuz we now have the new Hard Rock in there uh we were using the closeup of uh roulette now we can actually show the building so we're able to push that out there and bring in more bus groups bus groups spend a lot of money a bus usually has 45 to 55 people on it and uh sometimes you may see the bus parked out here cuz they're going to the birthplace of Country Music Museum but no when you see those buses at the hotel they are spending thousands of dollars each night and they're also spending thousands of dollars in meals and shopping each time they come through Karen Hester is a huge bus person if you want to know the bus business in Bristol she is out there selling fudge to the world um and those buses love her so she she is an ambassador for sure ibma uh we were able to do ibma again this year thank you Virginia tourism uh they do a great job in putting that in there putting that there birthplace of country music sessions Hotel also attend um it's always a great opportunity to push our music heritage um in front of thousands of thousands of people it is moving from Raleigh to Chattanooga this year I will let you know that so we're in some new territory explore Bristol Visitor Guide we that's the new version that you're seeing up there it just came in earlier within this past month um we split up our print of 85,000 to 40,000 and 45,000 the reason is we wanted to wait for the casino to come open and get that imagery in there and so now instead of it saying coming soon it is open it is fully open so we purposely printed in two drops in the past year um so we just have our new version now so we changed the cover a little bit so you'll know and we updated

all the content and I will say the day that we went to print we will able to stop the presses and get Cameo Theater back in there at Theater Bristol and so Samantha is very happy I've already met with her um trying to help her with uh some things that that they're doing but it is uh update and um this thing is flying off the shelves we've actually had to print print 10,000 more than we anticipated because of demand so that's a good problem uh Google analytics again this is in our past year you can see what those c those pages are again we drive to other people as much as we can through a lot of our marketing um and then you can see some of the Cities if y'all need to see these these uh data sets Atlanta Nashville Northern Virginia they always run in those top three I think they've been in the top three for the last 3 years um but you can see some of those Emerging Markets or or how how things are looking um in terms of uh different cities and regions that um people are interested in Bristol um I'm I'm almost done the visitor center you can see it it's building uh we had a little bit of pause as you all know with uh we found railbed it was a fun fun little time I'm looking at Jake he's smiling he knows we have talked a lot about old railbed in our meetings and our board meetings and we've got it all out no one knew it was there um it's hard to get rid of railed um and it's not an easy process but if anyone needs an anvil please let us know um we have we have lots of rail on it but that Visitor Center looks like uh the train station it's on purpose um to let you all know that space is owned by the City of Bristol Tennessee and our rent is a dollar a year for 40 years so that's the partnership that we are utilizing in that space um and parks and wreck will handle the outside so um inside I just wanted to show you one of the reception areas we have some of these display cases that will drive

people to different attractions um hard rock is one bristl M Speedway birthplace of Country Music Museum downtown um those are some of those that are in those display cases it's kind of hard to see I don't have a pointer but in that bottom area those are all display racks uh for visitor information there'll be digital screens looping video the goal is to drive people people throughout the region and will have weakened hours as well and that's been something that we've we've dreamt about for 15 20 years um I just wanted to point this out from Virginia tourism and this is my last slide I just want to show the amount of growth that you all had and those lodging taxes meals taxes those changes of those increases that you all had on that had a great impact I think we're number two and mayor na you can correct me if I'm wrong we're number two in the state in terms of growth based on collections um it's neck and neck with the Portsmouth area so um those decisions that you all made are starting to bring those in and this is through 2023 those 2024 numbers should be out very soon I don't and um I think you're to see yet another huge jump so especially in employment um and local taxes so that's what I have and I went quick I I hope hope I went quick and thank you so much Matt and thank you for the work that you and um John do in your office it's hard to believe that this much work comes out of an office of Two And so just remind everybody of that um thank you so much for um all the promotions that you're doing unique promotions that's really capturing the eye I feel like of those new visitors that are coming to town um I will say the TriCity airport is brilliant I don't know how many times I somebody will send me a picture of that and say this is awesome that you know are coming to Bristol for through the airport for the

first time or something so I love hearing that Christmas I love how the the tree and the selfie area all of that I think you do a great job on that so thank you for the the work you do on that I think it's um important to point out that the money that we give to explore Bristol and all these things that they're doing Matt has been very proactive in applying for grants through Virginia tourism and other entities that um he's able to then leverage those dollars so the more money he has the more he had the more he can get and so um and the more promotion you can Doh and um you do a great job going to the shows and I will say that display the picture doesn't do it justice there are people that will walk up just to have their picture made by that it's it's an attraction in itself it's pretty bold yeah but it looks it looks amazing so thanks again for all that you do and I'll open it up for any questions from the council well I'll say very quickly really incredible stuff you all are doing obviously appreciate the focus on buses i' I've talked to Karen about that that's that's she's a big fan yeah and with good reason I mean you bring a lot of people all at once who are specifically here to spend money so love that and um my only my only criticism okay is uh pumpkin spice latte I'm not not a pumpkin spice man I recommend apple cinnamon I'm with you on that I shouldn't say this because I'll give I give the pumpkin spice to her get an apple cinnamon thing going I'm in I'll tell you though Aroma makes a killer pumpkin spice latte they do they do so I would check out I'll give it a shot yeah but no in all seriousness though you all are doing a great job and we appreciate everything you do I was wonder when he finished his presentation I was thinking is it appropriate to applaud

I mean they're doing so much with the small investment that we give them and they're just knocking it out of the ballpark uh I I really appreciate what y'all are doing and I'm looking forward to uh y'all finishing up the the new uh location there especially with weekend hours cuz we have so many people that come in right now and they're coming in on weekends because they're working during the week and right now we direct them to some of our local shops where they can pick up the the Collectibles and stuff but now they're going to have an official tourist uh office where they can go to and they can get the official materials and they can get direction to other places uh and I'm I'm just totally excited about this thank you so much thank you I appreciate those kind words thank you and I just want to thank you as well I appreciate all that you've done it was a pleasure serving on your board for a year and a half hated to drop that but um appreciate the work you do um those numbers you showed at the end were impressive because it wasn't just a CO uptick it was before Co too you saw the increase very dramatic so that was great and on a personal note I want to thank you for how you all you and John both handled the the hen stuff yeah um you you still promoted Bristol but you helped other neighbors I'm I'm a bristolian Now by grew up in Damascus and there were several posts you did and support of Damascus and it meant a lot so I appreciate how you handled that we're still going to help our neighbors anyone that's coming to Damascus or Avenue they're going to come through Bristol and vice versa y so it makes sense to all work together and I'm glad to hear some of the updates that you know the the challenges and and whatnot of getting that back online I think they're down to 26 miles left on the trail but that's it's a huge Improvement they come a long way thank

you all right thank you Matt we appreciate you being here tonight thank you okay next on the list is believe in Bristol and I believe Maggie is here welcome Maggie hello good evening mayor members of council thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today my name is Maggie Elliott and I'm here on behalf of believe in Bristol to discuss our $70,000 funding request for fiscal year 2026 as many of you know believe in Bristol is dedicated to the economic development and cultural vibrancy of historic downtown Bristol believe in Bristol is a 501c3 nonprofit organization and an accredited Virginia Main Street program our mission is to unify and strengthen downtown Bristol by promoting its history facilitating future growth and fostering a Vibrant Community built on Arts culture Heritage Music and economic development did you all get new microphon since the last time I was here it's throwing me off our work aligns with the city's strategic vision and we serve as a vital link between the city business owners and community members which helps to create a thriving downtown district that benefits everyone so why does downtown matter I'll be brief because there's many many reasons but a strong downtown is essential to the overall success of Bristol it serves as a center for small businesses a hub for arts and culture and Gathering space for the community independent businesses in downtown contribute significantly to the local economy by keeping profits within the community supporting local families and fostering entrepreneurship additionally a vibrant downtown helps attract and retain businesses across the city by creating a positive image of Bristol as a place to live work and visit downtown Bristol is also an employment Hub currently ranking as the third largest principle employer

in Bristol Virginia but beyond job creation the area supports the city's financial help through tax revenues tourism and private investment a successful downtown strengthens property values reduces economic leakage and encourages reinvestment into the city making a making a crucial component to the Bristol's long-term growth strategy believe in Bristol operates under the Main Street fourpoint approach which includes organization design economic vitality and promotions organization focuses on building strong Partnerships between businesses local government and volunteers to ensure a coordinated effort in revitalizing downtown our work is made possible by a dedicated board of directors engaged stakeholders and a network of volunteers who help execute events and initiatives that make downtown a better place to live and work you can see um in terms of those um private dollars that are leveraged um we have contributed $750,000 of Grants leveraged and we have over 350 of Grants planned for in progress for the um current fiscal year leading into next fiscal year the visual appeal of downtown Bristol is a key part of it of its success and that is our design committee public art projects streetscape enhancements and beautification initiatives help create a vibrant environment that attracts visitors and new businesses alike continued investment in downtown design ensures that brusso remains a welcoming and Visually appealing destination our focus on economic Vitality supports business retention expans and recruitment the downtown entrepreneur Grant competition has provided critical funding to help new businesses open and existing businesses expand in 2024 nine businesses received grants totaling $50,000 and 20 entrepreneur entrepreneurs participated in our six-week training program by fostering a strong local economy we help

create jobs fill vacant storefronts and ensure a thriving downtown district believe in Bristol actively markets downtown through events social media media and digital Outreach our event programming including the Border bash summer concert series which is leading up to celebrating its 25th year attracts thousands of attendees and provides a major boost to downtown businesses the July 4th parade State Street trick-or treat and the Halloween parade and Christmas tree lighting all Drive significant foot traffic and spend spending in The District in 2024 our website attracted over 36,000 unique visitors with social media content reaching over 300,000 people our work is Guided by two key transformation strategies food experience and arts and entertainment this helps our organizations stay on lined um to our specific asset asset based programming and prioritize our work plans downtown Bristol is more than just a historic district it's a key economic driver for our community currently it is home to a 1,195 full-time jobs with 493 of those located on the Virginia side this makes it the third largest employer in Bristol Virginia following Hard Rock and electromechanical Beyond employment downtown contributes significantly to the city's tax base generating generating over $684,000 in restaurant food taxes $899,000 in lodging taxes and nearly 96,000 in admission taxes in 2024 alone I would like to point out that this is just within the downtown district um that emissions tax was amazing to see that that um nearly doubled downtown success has a direct impact on Bristol's overall economic health a thriving downtown attracts new businesses retains talent and improves our quality of life it also plays a major role in the city's tourism sector and more than with more than 250,000 visitors each year exploring our shops restaurants and

cultural attractions the city's support of believer in Bristol is not just an expense it's an investment in Economic Development our organization serves in his extension of City departments by facilitating business recruitment tourism promotion and Community engagement all while leveraging volunteer support and private funding in 2024 alone downtown Bristol Virginia saw $1.2 million in private investment matched with 61,000 in public investment demonstrating the power of collaborative funding by approving this funding request the city council is ensuring that Bristol remains a competitive business friendly and culturally Rich Community believe in Bristol would continue to maximize every dollar invested to create economic and social benefits that extend beyond downtown and into the greater Bristol area believe in Bristol leads several initiatives that drive economic growth and Community engagement in 2024 our efforts resulted in the creation of new businesses net seven to be exact increase tourism and enhanced support for local entrepreneurs and we had some big wins that we can't help but brag about the entrepreneur Grant competition which awarded $50,000 to nine new and expanding businesses while providing training to 20 entrepreneurs through the facade Improvement grant program we supported local businesses and property owners and upgrading storefronts and making the area more inviting we are able to leverage public and private funding to revitalize five downtown Bristol Virginia storefronts totaling $25,000 invested just from the believe in Bristol Grant funds downtown gift card program launched at the end of 2024 with over 25 participating merchants this is a great Economic Development tool that offers a direct benefit to small business owners while making it easier for consumers to shop locally we look forward to Growing the marketing and benefits of the program this year we also got Oh wrong way we also got a little CR creative with our

holiday um promotions and it really benefited with our reach if you didn't see Beetle Juice where were you for Halloween this is a project for 20 24 I would be remiss not to highlight and that is the um Johnny Wood pedestrian plaz project um brought to believe in Bristol team and the City of Bristol Virginia by a passionate property owner this area in downtown Bristol had been forgotten and neglected and was in desperate need of some TLC believe in Bristol acquired Grant funds to apply to this space which included repainting of the art in public places statue um that was on site purchasing and installing an overhead light installation and commissioning a vibrant mural thanks to the City of Bristol Public Works Department um on their assistance with landscaping and electrical needs as well as removal of the unused fountain in that space um that space has already been used for several community events including the kids zone during Rhythm and roots and a Taylor Swift inspired dance party benefit community members have also been spotted doing some morning yoga and throwing around some sports balls this public private partnership has been so important to us if you didn't laugh at that what are you doing you're not paying attention this public private partnership has been so important to us and we look forward to seeing the space used more um we continue to update the area for better utilization so what's next for believe in Bristol all that Where Do We Go From Here elevated seasonal and holiday atmosphere and you saw some increased atmosphere during the Christmas season we want to see that during all of our Seasons um so looking for additional opportunities um where we can really Stand Out Among the crowd during those um special Seasons our downtown public art and placemaking projects um these are ongoing we have an installation coming this spring of a long-term um public art project um as well as some additional opportunities for murals as well um community events uh familiar

favorites and new sticking to our transformation based strategies for those events our first Friday monthly themes um really growing those First Fridays having the um having that participation from our downtown Merchants has been really beneficial the downtown gift card promotion um this blew us out of the water um we launched it later than we had initially planned um there were just some Supply um delays on that but um it blew us out of the water our Merchants have been really really pleased with it and we're excited to be able to give them this added benefit beautification in downtown this includes a downtown cleanup and some parking improvements it also includes the small area planning Grant um that believe in Bristol has acquired through Virginia Main Street for uh Cumberland which we're working with City staff um on that planning and looking for additional funding um for execution of that plan once it's complete and then um potentially restaurant week and some um new transformation strategy focused special events we are in the process of um new strategic planning which could come to light new transformational strategies for our organization um and adapting to those as our downtown grow for fiscal year 2026 believe and Bristol's requesting $70,000 in funding for this from the City of Bristol Virginia this funding will be used to expand the Border bash series to attract 10,000 people for the 25th anniversary that lineup reveal is coming in April um launching our new transformation strategies and asset based events as well as continue our community favorites continue the facade Improvement grant program to help Revitalize more properties we had an abundance of demand for this program unfortunately we only had the 25,000 in Grant funds on the Virginia side of town so looking at additional grant funding opportunities to be able to support this initiative in supporting our entrepreneurs with business training and

mentorship um we have gotten so much success on our entrepreneur Grant business competition and growing that every year as well as our made in Bristol brand specific opportunities through those smallscale um producers and ways that we can leverage their businesses this investment will allow believe in Bristol continue to continue its mission of supporting local businesses enhancing downtown spaces and fostering economic growth a reduction in financial support would mean fewer business resources decrease event programming and an overall decline in the progress we have made in revitalizing downtown Bristol the momentum we have built over the years could slow impacting not only the businesses downtown but also the city's economic Outlook as a whole thank you for your time and consideration I welcome any questions regarding our programs and impact at this time all right thank you so much Maggie and thank you for the work that believe in um is doing and I know being a designated Main Street is super important to a community and we're proud that we are Virginia Main Street and I want to say also I think you've done a great job at also going after those grants as you mentioned whether it's through dhcd through the Main Street Grants or facade improvements and also the community business launch um grants I was just wondering on the the entrepreneur um section yeah the 15,000 so would that be I know that you all usually apply for the community business launch is that going to be something you apply for again this year yes so our schedule currently for our egrant is to make sure that we have adequate grant funding um we have a baseline of $50,000 um to be our um our award pool um so in order to acquire uh that Grant those Grant funds we're on an every other year basis so we anticipate our um that contribution being towards our existing business support um that's

mentorship opportunities um some business trainings and those sorts of things during this calendar year and being able to launch the egant um at the end of this calendar year when we've acquired that Grant okay but yes community business launch is on our list as well as the downtime investment Grant um for the facade Improvement okay all right excellent um and I'll just say I think you all did a great job in also getting a grant to redo the Johnny Wood uh Plaza and I think it looks fantastic I'm glad to see that area cleaned up and I think it makes a huge difference in that area in downtown so thank you I will open it up for any other comments or questions I'll I'll go first thank you for being here Maggie we appreciate that um I I love the gift card program that you all are doing that's really cool and it's a great way to um make things a little more accessible to folks I great work on that that's been cool to see that roll out and do so well and then also I think we'd be remiss if we didn't talk about Halloween just how how big that has become and just how nobody else in the region really does anything quite like that so that was a great um great thing to tap into so great work on that and looking forward to this year's events so thank you and um I think I made eye contact with a couple people during the Halloween parade and it was a blur and so I'm sorry if I look like a deer in headlights cuz we did come around that corner and I was not anticipating that crowd so thank you to anyone and everyone who attended well say first to the vice mayor I I think that around Halloween parade time all five of us should commit to dressing up and coordinating our outfits and being involved this is a public meeting this is a public meeting public noted I like it this is publicly noted take note uh so I will say a couple things so obviously I love I love the results of the facade Improvement program and and I've only heard good things about the entrepreneur Grant from not only from people who receive them but from businesses that did not that appli but did not receive them they've had good

things to say about what a nice opportunity it is and you know hoping to be able to do it again um incredible work on the Johnny Wood Plaza I've I've went down there and walked through it not only during the daytime but also at night and if if anyone listen to this has not done that especially at night it is really a sight to see you know with very simple you know the light thing over top of it you know it makes sense it looks great you know I maybe I'm biased I've been I guess I was in 15 or 20 big cities across the country last year for work and I went to all their downtowns and most of their downtowns looked exactly the same as the next one Bristol has a unique downtown and you know again maybe I'm biased but I think it's the best one so we appreciate what you do and we look forward to what you're going to do this coming year thank you and just a quick thank you again for everything not to reiterate what everyone else has said um Halloween's great Johnny Wood Plaza is great thank you all for everything you're doing cuz um it's it's busy and downtown's busy and what you guys do it brings more people down so that's great thank you thank you I'm looking forward to seeing what some of those new events turn out to be yes we have many good ideas I'm excited as well thank you all right thank you all right next on the list EO we we have Shauna Tilson here tonight welcome Shauna and I believe it also shaa has provided these handouts as well at your seats the lime green handout y yes so thank you so much for having me here I'm Shauna Tilson I'm the director of development for EO um I've brought you all just a copy of this that you can have and also our organizational

brochure to keep so so I'm with IO we are a local nonprofit organization that serves the entire region of Southwest Virginia 21 localities in total uh including the City of Bristol a lot of people ask me uh what does EO stand for what does that mean something you know uh and EO is actually Latin for go and we feel that really represents the action oriented um way we approach the work that we do we are respectfully requesting $110,000 in uh support for our programs and initiatives which I'm going to go over with you tonight our mission is to research pilot and scale Big Ideas into solutions that increase the quality of life um and we believe that this change happens when people work together when coordinate when efforts are coordinated collaborative and bold so why do we do that what are the reasons behind this work um several years ago there was a study done uh and it showed that if you live just 6 hours up the road you were likely to have an additional decade to live um people in our region live on average about 8 years less than people who live in Northern Virginia and so we thought that really needed to change and we started looking at solutions to help change that another major issue in our region is that there are 7,000 children under the age of five who lack access to high quality care and the education that they need and then also our region has a Workforce participation rate of only 55% and the emerging Workforce uh is

leaving our region uh in very high numbers um I think the state of Virginia is expecting an increase in the workforce by 26% while our region is seeing in the next year 16% leave uh and we want to change this and we know that the well-being of people increases when they have access to educational opportunities and economic opportunities so how do we increase these opportunities uh our approach is simple yet powerful we listen we we research we build and we measure uh so we listen we pay attention to emerging issues uh we bring the people impacted by these issues to the table when we start looking into Solutions we research uh everything we do is incredibly data driven uh we have an entire department that's just uh research and analytics so that we can really understand what's going on in the community and then we build so we create new programs and when we build these programs uh we make sure that there are measures in place so that we can then measure and see what's working see what's not working adjust come up with new approaches and make sure that we're having an impact and so by doing that we focus on three areas uh our pillars are Early Childhood care and education Workforce Innovation and thriving communities so with Early Childhood care and education we feel like that has a a double impact really uh the children in our region are getting a quality start uh they're in a safe place and also when you increase access to child care you're removing another barrier of Workforce participation Workforce

Innovation um we take a very unique approach to Workforce Innovation and I'll talk about that a little bit in a couple of minutes uh and then thriving communities uh we bring people resources and data together to come up with solutions to our most complex challenges and so our three pillars of work come together and follow along our Cradle to Career framework so as you can see we start with babies and toddlers And ensure that they have safe quality care and we work towards kindergarten preparedness so in in the City of Bristol 43% of children entering kindergarten are not prepared that's a pretty big number uh when you start out and you're already behind it's really hard to catch up and we see that Trend continue when you look at third grade reading proficiency levels um again there are 44% of third graders in the City of Bristol that aren't reading at grade level and the reason that that that's such a big number and that third grade is so important is because up until third grade you're learning to read then once you pass that threshold you're um reading to learn so once you're behind at that point it's really really hard to catch back up so a lot of our work is in that early childhood education piece making sure that children get the best start possible then we move into the workforce preparedness and you say oh look but those are little kids still in high school our Workforce Innovation programs we start with youth um we really think that that's where you can have the change and we can really drive

those numbers about I want to say uh and again so Workforce participation rate in the region is 55% in the City of Bristol it's 50% uh and when we think of Workforce participation that's people who are able to work but aren't working uh and a few years ago there was a study done by the Annie E Casey Foundation that showed that a huge percentage of uh young adults weren't participating in the workforce they were graduating school they weren't going to college they weren't in the workforce they weren't joining the military we thought what so what is happening uh and that's where we kind of started researching we started listening and there's a big percentage of students who are growing up in homes where they don't parents get up and go to work every day for different reasons maybe they're living with their grandparents and their grandparents are already retired but they're not having that exposure to what it is to be in the workforce or what careers are out there and that's where our career Commons program and our ignite program comes into play which I'll go into in a little more depth just here in a second then you can see we have adults at the end of the spectrum uh and this is where our shared services and our program pathway really comes into play so we actually work with people to um get them credential in early childhood education so this is a group of people that were able to help get um skill set get them into the workforce so right there's the workforce participation increasing while also improving quality care and education for our early childhood uh experience um and then that in turn increases is childhood slots because you have more people able to work in that field which then removes that barrier for parents so then they're able to be a part of the workforce so it's this full

cycle uh and all of our work is underpinned by our well-being programs so again making sure that people have the resources they need to be successful and so here is a list of our programs I'm not going to go in depth into all of them uh we have our ready region Southwest which that's really that early childhood education piece um so we work with child care centers we work with day homes we work with uh prek um headstar to make sure that their quality help them get the professional development needed to improve their quality um help them find uh child care workers uh then we have um kind of you can move move down further and you see our career Pathways program and our shared services Alliance so that's where we're training new Child Care Professionals and upskilling professionals that are already there uh then career comments internships uh that's our Workforce Innovation piece and then the rest of that down the list is really where we're bringing communities together and providing those resources so that people can be successful and I want to focus on Career comments um let's see yeah so I have a video up next we'll see if it'll work I hope it does it's not working that's okay I'll paint you a picture with my words um so imagine you're a seventh grade student and you've you know you've maybe been to the doctor so you know about being a doctor doctor and you've gone to school so you know about being a teacher but you hear everyone saying oh if you want to live in Southwest Virginia there's really nothing here if you want to be successful you're going to have to go to college you're going to

have to leave there's nothing here for you um or just graduate and don't do anything and so we bring every seventh grade student in Southwest Virginia including Virginia Middle School they were all here in November they come to our Center they walk walk in the doors and you're in a mini town and there's 20 storefronts um you have tourism represented you have uh Food City and all of their careers Pharmacy um the warehouse forklift simulators you have CGI where you can code and really work from anywhere and be a part of that you have wise Solutions where you get to engage with robotics you have new people's banks where you get to learn about all the different banking careers you have a um where you get to learn about all of the jobs in energy you have V Dot where you learn about engineering um and that's just some of them valid health is there and one thing about this you get to visit all of these different storefronts and do activities where you get to see oh I could use this skill set oh I you know what I've never um measured anything before with a measuring tape or or built something out of Lincoln Logs in our berries part I'm actually pretty good at that I never thought of that and then these ideas are being sparked and the thing that's so special about it is every storefront in this location is something local so not only are they getting to be see themselves in these roles as adults that maybe they would have never seen before but it's stuff that's here local so not only can they grow up and be successful and be an engineer or or learn that they can survey roads by flying a drone but they get to see that they can do that right here in Southwest Virginia they don't have to leave to be a part of that

and so that's what we've been doing the last several months is we've had the seventh grade students come through right now we're starting with 11th grade but we're taking it a step further with them they get to do the career exploration but we're going over resume writing we're going over um what it's like to be in an interview uh those types of skills that you can't really get unless you do them uh and then next year we're expanding that even more uh so third graders will come because it's never too early to kind of get an idea of of all the things that you can be in life uh and then we'll expand to 10th grade also which they'll go through and do the whole thing but with a financial literacy piece tied to that as well so that they can grow up and be successful adults who also know how to how to spend their money so it's not as good as the video but hope you maybe got an idea of of what we're doing and why it's so important uh and then we follow that up with um internships for high school students so then we we work with these businesses we place students they're paid internships so there's not a barrier there for people who maybe come from lowincome backgrounds um you know a lot of people can't just go get an internship they don't have family connections or they have to be paid they can't they got to work in the summer and so this is making sure that everyone can participate so here are some of our 2024 highlights uh so just this fall we had over 2,000 7th graders come through career Commons again there was uh over a hundred of those were Bristol City school students um we had uh over we trained over 200 new Early Childhood Educators uh so that's helping that that that filled there more spots uh we opened our uh Regional Workforce and Child

Development Hub in Abington uh that was the old Kmart if you're not sure it looks a little different in that picture so we'll be serving 30,000 students including the City of Bristol schools uh and we provided 300 Child Care slots there uh Bristol City there are some Bristol City children at that childcare facility and we did over a th developmental screenings so I think that's a really good example of our um thriving communities work where we're bringing different people together we're bringing parents together we're bringing Child Care Centers together and pediatricians together uh to help make sure children are helping those Meeting those developmental Milestones um and making sure there's early intervention if they're not and so as far as uh how we align with the City of Bristol uh we feel that there are the five these are the five strategic Focus areas from the city of Bristol's Vision that we support with our programs and our outcomes uh we feel that our Visions align pretty well our vision is that communities are thriving and people are well um and I think it would be wonderful if we could work together to to really see both of our Visions through that's it all right thank you you shaa um what a great presentation um I'll tell you I've been um through the EO building um up at if if you're not familiar with it it's in the old Kmart at exit 17 I believe um and it is amazing if you haven't had an opportunity so thank you for going through that presentation and explaining all the offerings that you all have there um and thank you for all the work that you're doing because you're right from from starting with the child care center that's there and then walking through all the opportunities

that the youth can see when they go through that building and see all the jobs that are available right here in this region is amazing so thank you so much for the work that you all are doing and and for that presentation it was great so I'll open it up for any other comments or questions well first I want to say thank you for your presentation um I've been a little bit familiar with with the work that you all do and and kind of where it grew from out of United Way I believe um you you really are and I think I heard some of the some of the key words you know you all seem to understand trauma informed care Aces those type of things that are so important that present barriers to Children early on that you're almost um you know playing behind the eight ball uh you're you're starting off at a disadvantage and and you all are able to kind of help people bypass those barriers and and that's a very big deal because if you're if you're set up for Success young you're going to it's going to pay off later so um I appreciate your presentation and I appreciate what you all do thank you but they also help with uh reducing barriers on the other end with people who are trying to establish their careers and they've got kids they don't have anyone to take care of their kids they provide uh child care for a lot of those situations as well then they'll help uh with arranging to meet family needs so that people can just go to work to pay the bills uh because a lot of people in our area we hear a a lot of our uh lower income individuals they want to work but they have so many uh complications that make it hard to work and EO really helps with things like that just practical day-to-day things thank you

thank you Shauna for being here I appreciate the presentation um and I I will say I had an opportunity to volunteer the day that VMS went there and got to see the kids um explore the space they did assign me to the automotive booth and I I feel like those kids are not prepared to look at cars and like that was a poor choice on your all's part there sorry um just tossing that out there um I I do appreciate um sorry if that's me I do appreciate all the all the work you all are doing the goals that you have and kind of the vision for um responding to some of the issues we have in the region um I I do I let me let me frame this some way so it's not not a bad question um with with EO kind of branching out from United Way um coming out from under the umbrella a lot lot more possibilities a lot more potential there um including other possibilities for funding streams it did kind of surprise me to see you coming before Council to request funding from the um from the taxpayers um I guess with all the other potential funding streams and sources why are you seeking locality funding as well yeah absolutely we are for the first time ever really being able to expand our programming into the City of Bristol we've been able to do a little bit here and there um but most of our programming or our funding comes from other sources uh and we're wanting to really be able to expand into br and so that funding will go to help expand those programs into the City of Bristol more when we were part of United Way uh we were restricted geographically so we weren't able to do really anything over on this side um you know you got to the Washington County Line and that was it uh and so now that we're out from under that uh we're working to to grow where the funds are coming from you know diversify our funding as well uh and

fill those gaps as we're doing doing that expansion for for clarification on that correct me if I'm wrong because United Way of Southwest Virginia had it was a different operating model but but it did not serve the City of Bristol because we have United Way of Bristol which specifically served us and that's why you didn't previously offer services here now you're independent of them so that's yeah correct so uh the United Way system the way it's built it's very geographically different uh and United Way of Southwest Virginia was a very very different operating model than the United Way of Bristol uh so we had all of our own programs which are programs that uh I just spoke about and it got to the point where it didn't make sense to be a United Way anymore they're still United Way of Southwest Virginia but they're their own entity um and also part of the reason of trying to grow the funding is as United wave when we were Southwest Virginia a big piece of that funding model was workplace campaigns so they've kept that and we've created this whole other organization that's building an entirely different funding model and so those funds we don't have anymore okay thank you thank you so much for coming tonight thank you okay um next on the list is the birthplace of country music and I believe Melissa Roberts is here welcome Melissa thank you mayor Na and city council City staff I appreciate the opportunity to come talk to you this evening about birthplace of country music um a lot of you might know something about it but I wanted to make sure that you knew the totality of it um I feel like Matt B is I'm going to take a 50/50 chance here that's the right way okay um so the birthplace of country music respectfully requests

$50,000 in funding from the City of Bristol Virginia for fiscal year 2020 6 and I will say we have some exciting things that will be the 25th year of the Bristol Rhythm and Roots reunion so that's a really big celebratory year for us you can see our mission here um the birthplace of country music seeks to perpetuate promote and celebrate Bristol's Rich musical Heritage I won't read it to you but I want to say that it goes deeper than this we hold in trust the Appalachian story that started with a collection of stories that were pressed in 1927 they went onto the the hills and the hollers and pulled people who were picking on their porches and pressed it into a record and that was the Big Bang of country music we continue to hold that in trust to this day and give our young folks something to be proud of for those who have been outside this region sometimes the narrative is written for us and so we contest that narrative because we have a rich and storied history here so we do you have three branches at BCM we have the birthplace of Country Music Museum which uh you all all know it is um 10 years old it celebrated 10 years last year we have radio Bristol which is celebrating its 10e uh this year and then we have the Bristol Rhythm and Roots reunion as I said we'll celebrate um 25 years next year Co kind of threw us off otherwise it would had been really cool to do it in 25 so I want to I want to talk about each of these branches and make sure that you have a holistic view of them radio Bristol has been programming on a low wat FM um radio over the air 24 hours a day 7 days a week we also have digital that is online that you can listen to that is broken down into to various kinds Americana classic country

um but we have listeners in all 50 states and 140 countries um the US is our number one list ship Germany is a close second um interestingly enough and we had some kids who came in from Clemson the other day um that were from Egypt and one of them grew up on country music and was super excited to tour our Museum farm and Funtime is a recreation of a WCYB program from years ago that we have rebuilt partnering with WCYB we just um revised a 2-year uh coordination attempt with them but farm and Funtime is available to more than 155 million people and when you watch farm and Funtime on YouTube or PBS you can see clearly in the background of everyone Bristol because that's where we want people to come from we had somebody come from Wyoming the other day because they had watched farm and Funtime on YouTube and wanted to visit Bristol um it is PBS more than 143 PBS channels and 80 markets air farm and Funtime through Nita we're getting ready to upload more so there will be um even more that are available this is a video I too wanted to show a video because I I wanted to share the excitement that we create for Bristol do it working my over time got [Applause] so I will say that we have our full

lineup will be dropping on March 31st so we expect there to be uh a real Buzz about that because we've got a very cool lineup this year but Bristol Rhythm and roots reunion has over 170 million combined audience through media that's through Rolling Stone Tennessee and travel and Leisure NPR saving country music those Publications we also um have been invited to submit our second um our second uh to Teen Vogue so we're going to be doing an article for Teen Vogue we did an original one this one goes along with our women in oldtime music so we'll be featuring Dolly Parton and and some of the other things that is $16 Million worth of advertising equivalency in Combined media so we are bringing Bristol um you know that $16 million we have a little under 20,000 Festival attendees we have actually invested this year in a program that's going to give us a much more accurate number it's called Placer AI um that will be able to tell where people came to Bristol from where they went when they were here and where they left um after they left the f FAL so we'll be able to share that with you all next year we also have 5.2 million Festival media Impressions and we have a $21.6 million economic impact from non Regional visitors that isn't adjusted then we have our birthplace of Country Music Museum which is The Shining Gem of Bristol Virginia we have visitors from over 2,000 cities all 50 states 11 countries we are now at um preco levels with our bus tours that have come back and our our school tours that have come back so we worked really hard to do that we're also a Smithsonian affiliate um Museum and there are only a

couple of those across the United States we also um do museums for all which is a program for people who might get SNAP benefits or Wick benefits they get free and reduced access to the museum so it's a great thing for them to do with their kiddos this again is the educational programs with the tours and the visits we have speaker sessions Square dances that sell out really quickly um I haven't Square danced since fourth grade to be honest with you all but a lot of fun we do a songwriter Circle a pick along along summer camp Jam which is the junior appalachin musicians so we're really kind of focused on those kiddos and bringing them into the history of Bristol and into the history of Appalachia um you can see we do after school programs for Bristol Virginia Public Schools teacher inservice training and adult education and Community Pride the perception that we have is the important thing that we create so we have if you have not been through the museum I encourage you to do so but we have kind of a green board it's not a white board but people can write messages on there and this is one of the messages from Ben tally which I think everybody here knows Ben tally um that the museum makes him proud of his town and his Heritage and so we work to create that cycle of residents and tourism um that create positive social impacts so when they leave Bristol after visiting BCM um they have a much different view of what Bristol is our economic impact cannot be ignored and so Marcus McCall is the president and hotel developer for um the Bristol Hotel and he has told us time and again that the the key factor in him building downtown was the BCM museum being downtown so he took the Executive Plaza um which was in sad shape for those of

you who don't know and made a $20 million capital investment to build the Bristol Hotel Lumax Vivian's table which is you know hopping every Friday Saturday Sunday night in addition the sessions Hotel how kratic said that the birthplace of country music with its events and and Museum is the primary reason that he chose to locate in downtown Bristol so really what we're bringing to Bristol along with others but what we're bringing to Bristol cannot be ignored when we hear that from people who have made major economic investments in our town tourism um you know we don't just sit around waiting for people to come to Bristol although we like when they land in our lap uh our staff has attended motor coach conferences we just got back from one in Philadelphia um we partner with organizations like crooked Road you heard Matt talk about um AMA that we just got back from so explore Bristol and we bring visitors from all over we've had folks from Australia and Ireland um and we're accessible to all so we've had people who have come in who um are you know deaf or heart of hearing and it doesn't impact them any less because we make sure that they're welcome um we welcome Bristol Motor Speedway and Hard Rock Casino visitors to downtown Bristol we attended the vrlta which is the advocacy days where we talked about tourism in Bristol we were part of that um in Richmond so with that I'm happy to answer any questions but thank you all for your time for your attention and for your support of birthplace country music thank you so much for that presentation and I just want to thank you for all the work that you all do for Bristol I know you're out promoting the museum but you also promote Bristol and I appreciate that at the shows that you go to I know you all do a lot of the whether it's the

bus tours or even like you were saying advocacy day on the hill you not only you know talk about the birthplace of country music and that Museum and the festival and radio Bristol but I've heard your all spill and thank you cuz you do represent Bristol and you sell Bristol not only just the museum thank you so I want to thank you for that and you're right how lucky and blessed we are to have a Smithsonian Affiliated Museum right here in our city um it is one of the most beautiful great museums um that I've ever been to and I'm not just saying that because I'm the mayor of the city but it is a fantastic Museum so I and I've been surprised at times how some of our own bristolian have not been through it before um and it is such a wonderful place so thank you for the work that you're doing thank you for putting on also a wonderful Festival Bristol rythm and Roots has talked about across the Commonwealth but also through many other states as well as it is a huge draw for this area so thank you again for all the work that you're doing thank you so I'll open it up to any other comments I'll just hop on that that train there and thank you for all that you do um BCM is such a fantastic organization all three branches do an amazing job I remember when I first learned about the the sessions before the museum even opened just the the the impact they had and just the way you well preserve that history promote it and kind of bring it to the next generation is just incredible so thank you for what you do and I'll just say that you know I remember being 12 years old at the Bristol Mall which is now a casino with a tiny Museum in the corner of very small yep storefront space and not only how much the casino how much the mall is changed but oh my God how much the museum has changed you know it is I you know I plug it to anybody that I talk to who's not from around here say we got a

Smithson Museum go check it out go look at it and it's really it's incredible what you all do as far as not only tourism and marketing bringing buses bringing people but but also education uh for children in our area um because we have a lot to be proud of in Southwest Virginia Northeast Tennessee and you have to rewrite the narrative sometimes and and being proud of this part of our heritage is a very big big aspect so we appreciate what you do thank you I remember going to the old Museum because it was right by KB Toys exactly it was in the corner yep all right thank you so much for being here tonight Melissa all right uh next on the list is feeding Southwest Virginia and I believe that Rachel is joining us via Zoom tonight yes ma'am can you all hear me okay yes we can okay wonderful um thank you mayor Na and Council for the opportunity to present to you all today can you see my screen okay yes great okay um so I'm going to be telling you all a little bit more about feeding Southwest [Music] Virginia um so we are a nonprofit organization that operates across 12,4 100 square miles of Southwest Virginia uh we've got a picture here on the screen for you of our service area you can see um the map dot in Bristol Salem and our community Solution Center those are the three important tiers of our work Al together that helps us oversee over or nearly 400 partner feeding programs which source inspect house and distribute millions of pounds of nourishing food every year um the last

fiscal year we saved our neighbors about $34 .4 million in grocery costs all in all we serve 26 counties and nine cities including Bristol so a little bit more about how our food banks work uh we rely a lot on food donations either ones that are given to us by um the average person or um governmental agencies such as the USDA and retailers are a huge part um of the food that we source that will then make its way to our distribution center either in Salem OR in abon where the food is sorted and prepared and is then um transported to our feeding Partners to be served to aberson need um and as mentioned those 394 feeding partner programs could look like soup kitchens they could look like pantries um children's programs hunger and health programs we have a myriad of services we offer so that we can touch anyone one experiencing food insecurity and meet them with a program that works best for them um so unfortunately uh Southwest Virginia does experience a higher rate of food insecurity than Virginia um our most recent data suggests that we are sitting at about 14.4 as opposed to Virginia's 11.11 um I think a lot of the previous presentations we heard this evening touched on why that might be the case um whether due to negative Health outcomes which can absolutely affect food insecurity um a lack of employment or Workforce ability um it all has a very cyclical effect and is contributing to a higher value um to touch more on that need a total of

165,00 Neighbors in Southwest Virginia are food insecure which includes over 40,000 children um in looking at that in a different sense one in five children are food insecure and the average individual of every seven is food insecure um and these values absolutely have a relationship with health so what we're looking at here is the county health ranking and road map um from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation um and their data on health outcomes and disparities in Virginia um so you can you can see from the map that the closer we get to the state lines um the more those Health negative health health outcomes become more pronounced um as well as food in security so they absolutely have a role together and can um usually increase the negative effects of one another so I talked a lot about how um food insecurity is very prevalent in Southwest Virginia as well as negative health outcomes but we do um a lot to try and help so we have our wonderful feeding Partners all across of Southwest Virginia that serve Neighbors in need we also have a direct service program um those that are mobile mobile Marketplace in the Mobile Food Pantry um that are really popular and help get um food to Neighbors in hard to- reach locations especially ones that are rural uh we have amazing children's feeding programs I'll touch on one of them a little bit later um our summer feeding programs are huge and a very very busy time of year but super rewarding we also have senior programs um such as the senior box kitting here in Salem and the Harvest

Home Community Kitchen that um really look out for seniors and elderly populations as those can be especially vulnerable to food insecurity as children are uh We've also had a increased focus on hunger and health and how those two are um correlated with one another um and that has been a big push for our organization as of the past 3 years to really focus on how to not only feed our neighbors but nourish them so looking at Bristol specifically um almost 3,000 neighbors here are food insecure or about 16 or 177% of the population um and 740 children are food insecure or more than a fifth of the population so in Bristol we do operate 16 partner programs including kids farmers markets after school programs backpack programs and food pantries to help a little bit more about Bristol uh in the last fiscal year we dist distributed over 70,000 lbs of food to heal at a value of 120,000 um to help offset the costs of groceries that these neighbors would have had to buy otherwise and this current FIS school year we plan to spend 25,000 in Bristol um and we are seeking an allocation of 2,000 to help keep our work um keep our work efficient and effective in Bristol and an allocation of 2,000 would create the equivalent of 4,000 meals for these Neighbors in need so we have a lot of wonderful Community Partnerships that make our work possible um this past fiscal year almost 3,000 volunteers dedicated hours and

hours of their time um to our organization and helped pack food um sort it for Quality Distribution um packet for backpack programs all across Southwest Virginia and we could not have done it without them [Music] um with the help of Our Community Partners we distributed almost 21 million pounds of food this past fiscal year and served an average of more than 114,000 neighbors every month um this past summer was one of our most successful summer feeding programs ever and we served over 20,000 meals to more than 9,000 children so that was something we were really proud of um and something that we could not have done without our partners um so that's something to look forward to if you were to help fund us this great network of different Community Partners that we really rely on uh and make our work possible so um I was glad to share this with you all I had the fortune of visiting a kids Farmers Market um this is just one of our children's programs but it's definitely one of my favorites um this was hosted in Bristol by Girls Inc if you're familiar here um so every week they put on a kids Farmers Market this time of year and I was able to snap some photos to document the process um on the left we have volunteers setting up the produce that day they Ed kale grapes carrots um potatoes ears of corn that the kids loved um and there's Howard in the middle Howard chaen our representative um for children's programs down in aington discussing um with the kids what to expect um how they're going to move through in line and he's also going to be Distributing um our food bank bucks

which are just a a form of fake currency that helps the kids uh learn math skills sometimes they have to split the bills if they get a $5 bill um it also gives them early skills of budgeting so not only are they experiencing a farmers market style um experience and associating healthy food with fun um in community but they're also getting some more holistic skills of financial literacy um so on the right is a picture of a young girl looking very excited I think something was cheaper than she thought it was going to be so she got to have a bit more than she expected um but that's just one of the things we do in Bristol to uh create a sense of community while also addressing um High food and security needs okay my last thing here um we have plenty of volunteer opportunities available this past fiscal year um 2,668 volunteers helped us out in both Salem and abon they're in our feeding kitchens um which are very well-run very efficient um and a lot of fun our neighborhood Pantry which is located it's within this community Solution Center in ronuk um that's located in an area of high need um and they have a great family of volunteers there um Quality Assurance both in Abington and Salem to make sure that um the food is not dented not spoiled um within expiration safe to consume all of those good things box kitting uh which is also a really fun volunteer opportunity that's great we'll usually get um big teams uh like Delta Dental in who will make it a um a a bonding event for work

um while getting to Kit boxes for seniors in need uh and we do about 2,000 of those every month so it's definitely one of our U more popular programs um our mobile programs are wonderful we have a great team and they need volunteers as well as our kids food truck which everyone tries to volunteer for us so that might not be um have as many opportunities available but that one's wonderful that also gives um underserved children an opportunity to experience what ordering at a mobile food truck might look like um if they are unable to afford um you know the more popular food trucks that have become um pretty prevalent pretty prevalent recently that can give them an opportunity to experience that for themselves um as well as Warehouse assistants we do have volunteer opportunities within the warehouse um so if you're looking at this presentation and interested in not only learning more about us but contributing we would love to have you uh we have two volunteer coordinators one in adamon and one in Salem um so you're just welcome to get in touch and we can we can get you scheduled but that is all that I have for you today um thank you for listening and do you have any questions thank you so much for that presentation that was fantastic fantastic and the numbers are staggering at how many um people you feed um through that process and um year to year so thank you so much um I think also in thinking about $2,000 equals $4,000 Mills that's amazing too um but the work that you do in our community is important and we appreciate you all so much I'll open it up for any other comments or questions I was thinking we we often uh

think in terms of return on investment and just dollarwise a u $2,000 ask when they're planning to spend 25,000 in Bristol yep I just want to say thank you Rachel and to the team at feeding Southwest Virginia y'all do an amazing job um I've been able to visit your Abington location a couple times and just seeing the work that you all do is phenomenal and I got to visit one of the the kids farmer market farmers markets as well and it was pretty cool to see those kids get excited about getting fruits and veggies and learn like you said learning the the the budgeting skills and things like that so just thank you for all all the programming that you all do and just all the the great impact you have we appreciate it all right well thank you so much for joining us tonight thank you for having me and thank you for listening um have a great rest of your evening all right thank you all right we're going to take a break and so um this meeting will now stand in recess for 10 minutes for break

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e e purple shirt and pink T-shirt all right this meeting is back in session we are now on number three of the regular agenda supplemental appropriation of 438,000 and um no one has signed up for public comments and I'm going to ask um Tam Russ bradin uh for a report thank you mayor Nave and members of council this item is a supplemental appropriation in the amount of $438 $438,000 excuse me for general fund um Appropriations City attorney to appropriate beginning balance funds for Professional Services related to outside legal fees in the amount of 300 $20,000 Police Department to appropriate the proceeds of items sold to operating supplies and materials in the amount of $1,837 to appropriate recovered costs received for overtime expenditures in the amount of $111,000 to appropriate insurance proceeds received to be expended on repairs in the amount of

$1,313 fire department grants um to appropriate Grant Monies to be expended in fiscal year 2025 hasmat um appropriations of $1,992 heavy tactical rescue um expenditures in the amount of $46,500 hazardous materials emergency to appropriate Grant Monies to be expended in fiscal year 2025 um in the amount of $1,151 judicial alternative sentencing program to appropriate Grant Monies to be expended Ed in the current fiscal year specialty docket Grant um expenditures of $10,800 and um drug court sustainability um Grant Appropriations in the amount of $15,804 [Music] second all right we have a motion and a second any Council discussion I'm excited that the fire department is getting all these grants yeah I do I do have a question just for for clarification purposes for for the public the $320,000 for uh legal fees for outside legal fees and that's related to the landfill yes it's related to um ongoing um legal fees associated with the landfall F it is coming from um beginning balance funds thank you all right with no further discussion clerk please call the rooll farum yes Holmes yes Osborne yes Pard yes Nave yes

all right item number four request for variance from city code 50- 558 two off street parking requirements no one has signed up for public comment and um looking for a staff report from Jay uh thank you um Madame mayor members of council staff has received a request for a variance from the off street parking requirements in section 50 hyen 582 of the city code from the Bristol Redevelopment and Housing Authority the Housing Authority is planning to construct a new Housing Development on more Street where they will build eight duplexes providing a total of 16 new residential units you can see highlighted um on Mo Street the area where these duplexes will be constructed just kind of a rough um site plan that they've done to show the layout of the property uh these are the four plans it's kind of hard to read from here but this is the information that was provided I thought I'd go ahead and make it available um and then just kind of the outside just a drawing of what they're going to look like so these are to be similar to the sapling Grove duplexes that are are situated on Clinton Avenue section 50 hyen 582 B1 states that there shall be two off street parking spaces per dwelling unit which for the proposed development would mean 32 off street parking spaces because of the size and layout of the property the residential units uh the housing authori is requesting that they be permitted to develop the property with 16 parking spaces so that would be one per residential unit um I've attached to

your packet to the s a justification letter from Mr Rich panel the development director of the housing authority and a copy of the site plan which I had up here for you Mr panel is not available today he ended up having to go out of town we do have Lisa Porter from the housing authority and I I'll just touch on a couple of the points in the justification letter that Mr panel um submitted to us um basically again there'd be eight duplexes with 16 units uh with many he he goes on to state that with many of their Building Product projects maximizing the number of units while working within the constraints of limited land presents challenge in this instance providing the required two parking spaces per unit would reduce the number of units that they can offer and that they respectfully request the variance to the zoning requirement um they do have some explanation that based on their experiences with providing housing of this type they do not believe that two spaces per unit would be used um they make a point that at their development at sapling Grove which is located just to block away this development includes 26 residences in 13 duplexes and they've only issued parking permits for 22 of those um residents and that right there would have required 52 parking spaces so based on the you know just the type of housing they're providing and the location I did reach out to members of staff to get some comments on this um before the meeting and the only the only I heard from uh Jake Chandler the Public Works director stated that the city is considering removing parking from Mo Street either one side or both sides

this is not something that we're looking to do tomorrow but it is a potential um for the future so that it would perhaps eliminate some of the on street parking that they would have there however um Mr Chandler does go on to state that he has no issues with the variance request uh the Miss as I mentioned Lisa Porter is here and she can answer any questions if you do have any but staff does recommend that city council Grant the parking variance all right thank you um before we get into discussion I'll um look for a motion go ahead so move second all right we have a motion in a second so we'll move into Council discussion so I guess the main main thing is we know that based on other residents and the number of parking spaces allowed if it follows suit with that there would be plenty of parking even with only having what was it 16 right one per residential unit so yes so 16 yeah okay and so based on that um you all feel very confident about that and I'll just Leisa I know you're here thank you for for clarifying that we do feel very confident about that yes okay and just being The Devil's Advocate on it what if what if we do not have enough spaces do we have a plan B for it even though we're asking the variance to only require one spot per dwelling unit we do have plans that call for more than that I think we'll actually be about six or

seven spots short so we will have more than 16 okay um any other questions go ahead I I do have go ahead okay so if I'm correct so there are 16 units right yes so and of the 16 it looks like four of them are two-bedroom and then everything else is one bedroom correct so realistically a lot of these one-bedroom units might end up being rented to maybe senior citizens maybe maybe even young single people so so they wouldn't necessarily have two cars if it's just one person living there and if they're an older person they might not have any cars that's what we typically see yeah yes okay okay I have a question for City manager or Mr Chandler whomever um I know Mr Dietrich mentioned we might remove parking on Moore Street what's the parking situation right now on on banan and Clinton as far as the park on be Canon and Clinton I believe it's one side only I'd have to double check that but I'm just going for near so but they do have parking on both of those streets yes yeah okay so theoretically if everybody in these duplexes all through a Christmas party at the same time they could park on the road somewhere right yeah so I know we had talked about this before and I vague on a few details and I just want a clarification I I think at one point you mentioned another one of the properties nearby having additional spots that could be used but it couldn't be used in the application is that correct yes we would rather not not use that other lot but if we had to we could use the other lot for

parking okay it's actually a corner of what used to be VI okay that we now own that would not be our preference understand thank you for that I like having all the details available in the packet uh the um the uh apartment layouts the profiles I really like having those details cuz you can see a big picture of exact ly what's being planned here um I like the idea that low-income residents don't necessarily have to live in a place that looks industrial it's a place that's doubtless intended to be sturdy durable for the long term but it looks nice and I like that I appreciate having those details thank you our goal is to make all of our housing attractive to the neighborhoods that they're in as we proceed with redeveloping and building aside from the parking I I believe these units are one level units they are one level you know there's a a high demand for on level unit I think that's great that that there are there'll be more one level units we're an aging population and we need more one level units MH yep all right any other questions all right clerk please call the rooll farum yes home yes Osborne yes Pard yes na yes and thank you so much uh Lisa for being here tonight and answering our questions yep all right moving to item number five approval of a letter of recommendation to the Virginia Department of rail and public transportation from the city council for a microtransit demonstration project no one has signed up for public

comments and I'm coming back to uh Mr dietr thank you um before I go into the the letter I just want to just do a quick presentation here about microtransit I know the majority of the council um were either involved or notified maybe sat in on some of the stakeholder meetings when our Consultants were down here doing the the microtransit study uh the the study has been completed so now it's like okay what are we going to do with it so I'm just going to hit some of the highlights of what the study said I'll go through the demonstration grant real quick so basically just a few of the questions in here so what is microtransit some of the recommendations and cost estimates that were here I took out the potential funding sources for now because we are using the demonstration grant that I'll just mention briefly um so the study was funded by the City of Bristol Virginia with a match from the Department of rail and public transportation uh the feasibility study assesses the potential integration of microtransit service into our existing Transit operations and it would complement not replace our demand response and fixed route Service uh just a reminder we have three fixed Transit routes in the city they run approximately 700 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Monday through Friday except for the East Bristol route which only which runs 4 hours fewer par Transit service is provided with Bristol Virginia's trans service area what the pair Transit service is you get uh if you have a disability you would get certified from a local physici and then you could call for a ride you get picked up they take you somewhere and then they'll go pick you up when it's done basically the route map of our Transit the one I believe in purple on the east side of Bristol that is the East Bristol route that's the one that

we are mainly talking about here today as you see it goes kingmill Pike Old Airport Road Bottom Road does kind of end there at the bottom Road Food City comes back around Old Airport Road as it on its way back towards the downtown Transfer Center so what is microtransit in a nutshell microtransit is very similar to Uber or Lyft only for public transportation so we would establish a service Zone area in which people who reside ride in that area could call or use an app or any other way that we can come up with to request a ride basically so instead of having a fixed route service that goes the same route every single hour for the entirety of the day you would be able to um request that ride so some of the benefits you have a more responsive service with a shorter weight time you can schedule your trips when you need them and you get improved access to some of these services that take place within that microtransit zone because it widens out the area of service the challeng is you know it's it it's going to require some additional resources at least up front there are the changes any change is a little difficult so there's going to be some adjustment period and um you know we're going to have to find ways besides just having an app for a smartphone because not everybody does have a smartphone so if you can see the Shaded area this area will would be the microtransit zone for the East Bristol area so anybody who lives within this area could call and request a ride to go to somewhere else in this shaded area or they could be taken to the downtown Transfer Center and they could transfer to one of the regular routes either the

route that goes to Walmart or the route that goes to Kroger Casino area as you see though there are are quite a few places where this Transit Zone intersects with some of our existing routs so there's always the possibility where we could drop them off and then they could just pick it up so they wouldn't have to take the ride all the way downtown and those are things that we would work out in the planning stage and some of that would also depend on when they're making that call when they're going to get that ride and you know th those are things that we would have to work out but it it does as you see why wi the area it also includes um the new Elementary School Primary School up there so right now we don't have a route that goes there um so it kind of expands that service area there there was also a request for a pilot program for weekend and evening service and this was the microtransit zone for that we did not apply for the grant for that right now we figure one step at a time the one that we need the most is the East Bristol route but this is a possibility down the line if things would were to go well um so as you see the expanded the middle column the expanded recommendation the service area size is just under 5 square miles and would serve approximately 8,400 people 16% of that is lwi income and 10% of those have no vehicles at all in their home um in this expanded area we have social services we have government offices uh Primary Care not Hospital of course but health clinics in this area laundromats libraries groceries so we do have a lot of things in that area the expanded area that people would maybe want to go to

right now there just aren't a lot of attractions in that East Bristol route to drive ridership um so our cost estimates on this so our this is just kind of the first thing that would show us your annual weekdays your annual operating hours uh about 4,000 annual operating hours running the same time frame they believe that th that this would be a ridership range annually of somewhere around 3,000 to 8,500 Riders um the annual operating cost would be $190,000 software cost each year would be 54,000 this however was based on using three vehicles equipping three vehicles with that software we believe that two would be sufficient so we would take 18,000 off that I just haven't had a chance to adjust some of these numbers um the annual operating savings is what we project that we spend on that route now just running that bus so you kind of have to deduct that from what we're going to go up to so the annual operating cost would be somewhere around 150,000 minus one of those softwares that 18,000 so you're looking at 130,000 basically addition to what we have now and and I do believe that some of these numbers might they feel a little bit high but we don't know unless we do it of course um there's a one-time setup and installation fee on some of these softwares we don't have to purchase a vehicle cuz we did purchase a new van that we would use for microtransit service we don't believe we would have to use one of the larger cutaway B buses that we have we could use um a smaller

10 passenger fan which would of course cut down on some of our operating expenses uh each one of these would be equipped with tablets because it would help them you know the drivers have to know where to pick where to pick people up they'd have their app and that's how it would work or if there was a call-in service you know we'd have to dispatch from um downtown to the the van um some promotional activities uh so the total Capital costs there were about $53,000 to go along with the 150,000 that were shown earlier with the operating cost and even though I mentioned it maybe a little bit we think it might be a little lower I went ahead and applied for the funds for the higher amount just in case um the potential funding sources and this is where we come back the department of rail and public transportation has what's called a demonstration Grant uh that assists Transit agencies when they want to start a new project or start a new service and it will pay for 80% % of the expenses operating Capital everything for a period of up to 2 years and so what it does it will help a transit system maybe try something that they were not able to do under normal budgetary constraints because they don't have the money and you know there's a lot of reporting there's a lot of Milestones to meet and goals but we feel felt that this was the best first step when it came to applying for funds uh to try to put a demonstration program for this microtransit so the city has applied for an amount of $23,000 to assist in funding this route

if approved by the state the grant would fund 80% of the amount so 162,00 for the first year to year and a half is what I estimate before because it wouldn't we would not be able to hit the ground running right on July 1 you know we we've got to acquire some things we've got got to educate the public so it's probably looking at about a year and a half more than just a year um as I mentioned the purpose is to lessen the initial cost of implementing a new project while its feasibility is under evaluation um a letter of support from the city council would strengthen the application and show the drpt that the city is willing to look at innovative solutions to increase service and ridership I did attach the the study to your your packet um it's rather lengthy and it goes into a lot of detail this was a this was something that when the transit system updated our Transit development plan that was recommended that we look into and as I mentioned we got some funding from the state to help us to do this feasibility study and it should also be noted that the 20% that the city would be responsible for some of that would be recovered through our FTA grants as normal operating cost at a 50% match rate so staff recommends um approval of the letter of recommendation that is attached to your packet and I can take any questions that anybody might have all right thank you I'm looking for a motion before we move into to council discussion I move for approval of the letter of recommendation as presented second all right we have a motion and a second any Council discussion since there we're currently experiencing some costs with the east

route um and we have to uh cover 20% of the project versus the state's 80% will will we actually effectively potentially be saving money with this grant at least for the short period of the trial it is possible it just depends on the total overall operating cost it's going to be you know as I mentioned we're going to be able to use a smaller vehicle it's not going to be just running on the route all the time if there isn't a call so you do have the potential for some savings as far as that goes as well so which could if this goes longer could make it a little more sustainable because we can put our short-term savings into extending the program uh after the grants expire right and and that's what the hope is giving us that money from the state to to help us find that out it seems to me with the uh current route numbers on the east route that this seems to be an intelligent alternative that will both um reduce costs and improve service both at the same time looks like a very good opportunity to test something out that we don't necessarily have to pay for the whole thing ourselves I did want to ask um have is this kind of this is a very vague question but is this kind of like the future Transit like microtransit other localities are are they doing that there are um it's becoming a lot more popular there are quite a few localities in Virginia that have switched to this at least on a limited scale kind of like what we're doing um I believe the only one that I'm aware of that went full microt train it was Winchester Virginia I don't it's just they haven't been doing it for too long so I I doubt they have a lot of numbers yet as far as that goes but um yeah it's it's something that you know with people becoming

familiar with ride share and it's it's not something that I think is that strange to people anymore that you would call and ask somebody for a ride and and you know if the transit can provide that then we should be do looking at doing that as far as I'm concerned thank you yeah I think this is great I mean there is there is a stigma Associated I guess with with riding the bus you know and people might not want to do that so this gives people who need to get to work outside of certain times maybe they can't get the bus or don't want to get the bus it gives them a good opportunity I know I I was looking I was looking through the packet and I did see a discussion with a couple people that were interviewed um about their thoughts uh it was uh it was Beth Reinhardt from the chamber and Melanie fer from District 3 and Andrea burfield and then they were all talking about like the price point that we would charge users of the service right and that's not something that has quite yet been determined um I think the belief is that it would be a little bit higher than the $1 right now but what that number is it was not something that they gave us as a recommendation well I can I can I can give you a recommendation uh I had I we've been here for seven hours I'm G to tell you a personal story um my car was recently in the shop for about three weeks everything broke and then as soon as that fixed everything else on a broke and um I was using Uber heavily to go to Food City to go wherever and a ride from my house which is not far from downtown to Food City at Exit 7 which was a little bit closer was like $1 13 to $15 one way and then 13 $15 back so you know

if you're if you're in that $4 $3 $5 price range you're more than competitive with the only other option that people have right now like uber and lift you're much you're very competitive with those prices much lower than those prices and my only concern is that once people hear about this program they're going to use it a lot and we're going to end up having to we might have to expand it because it ends up being so popular right and and that's why we would primarily use one bus or one van we do have a an older van that was just replaced for another use that could be used as a backup or perhaps one of our other spare buses instead of getting rid of it you know we could use it in case we needed a second one that's that's why I would like to make sure that we had the software and the tracking and everything on at least two of our vehicles to start with would this not require additional staff um not this one route we believe that we could use it with the exact same people we have right now because we do have people dedicated to that East Bristol route now they would just be driving this um we are also down a part-time driver if we could get somebody hired for that that would also assist okay but the hours would be the same as where they are now so we wouldn't have to have anybody staying any later or coming in any earlier if it worked out well we went to the weekend or the evening service then you're definitely looking at additional Staffing but we think we can run this one with the existing Staffing levels the weekend and evening service I would imagine once we're able to try that out that would be part of our highest demand I think cuz a lot of the people who maybe can't afford a car have to work weekends or nights they need that r on the weekends so that would made be very good correct me if I'm wrong uh the town of Avington I know the

town of aington partners with District 3 for their bus service they they have not a microtransit but like a pair transit system currently where you can call on schedule rides at specific times the majority of their routes are like that they're demand response so you call and you schedule it and and that's kind of what we would be doing as well for this one and they've had good success with it from yeah they they have I mean they have a lot of rural areas that translate better to the demand response than say maybe some of the urban but with the with all the new techn ology that is and how it you know would use just like a ride share service we feel that something like this is available and will work in this type of maybe not overly Urban but you know Urban as far as Bristol is concerned it's almost like on a very limited scale it's like a like a city owned taxi service almost yeah and I think we also we I mean we have Uber lift those things but they're very limited we don't have them like if you're looking for Uber lift you can't always find one I have found and so um we've talked a lot about especially like shuttle services or something like that so I think this would be an opportunity to fill a void that we have in the city and for people who maybe don't have the technology to order a Uber or order something like that um so I do like the idea of having some way either it's a call A dispatch something um other than having it to where it's on the phone cuz I I picture maybe even some elderly people needing to use this to get to appointments or something and they do not have access to an app or they you know they're not familiar with how to use that right so there's a I feel like there's a need to have that where they could call in and and that's our plan you know and we have a lot of

experience in doing that anyway with our demand response with the paat transit system so it's it it's something that we usually that we do on a regular basis is there concern that with a new option we may wind up with as seemed like may have been alluded to here there could be a tremendous increase in demand and as such we may find that those who have greater need of a lowincome service may find that himself squeezed out by people are he using it because it's available um is there concern that we may need to evaluate during this P pilot period exactly how much it costs so that we may need to increase costs to cover ourselves so that we can then expand as necessary and perhaps I'm not sure how we would work but have some arrangement whereby we can still take care of those who need a economic alternative as well well the last thing we want to do is price anybody out of being able to use the transit system and that's not our intent you know it's not transit's not a money maker it's a public service that we provide so you know we're not looking to to make money and and and turn a profit necessarily on it we know that it might have to come up a little bit for the service um but you know this demonstration time period that we'll have will give us the opportunity to okay maybe this rate is not exactly right it might give us we might have to adjust that right even during that period so those are things that we would be looking

at I will say Mr par to your point one you know the business of government is not business and we've we've fallen into that that trap as a city before you or I were in office you know the business of government is helping people and doing good things when you can and you know this this is a good thing I think I think it's very good and I think it will help you all right with no further discussion clerk please call the rooll farum yes Holmes yes Osborne yes Pard yes Nave yes all right item number six uid Avenue State of good repair allocation um no one has signed up for public comment and staff report by Jake thank you madam mayor good evening Council so typically every year the city will get a state of good repair allocation from V do which allows us to pave streets without having to use ourstate maintenance budget we've talked to V do over the past few months and it's highly likely they're going to award us the uclid Avenue resurfacing project from Chester to Commonwealth and if we get awarded this um sgr in June we have until July of next year get the resurfacing completed now in advance of the resurfacing project there's a lot of work that needs to be done there's new uh storm water systems that need to be installed cbon gutter's got to be rebuilt and the sidewalks got to be rebuilt so I presented this presentation a little over a year ago and I'm really looking for some direction at this point because I really got to start working on the project in order to meet beon deadlines so if y'all had any thoughts on how we

want to proceed with the uclid Avenue cross-section y thank you um I know we had had a discussion about putting together a committee of residents along uket Avenue um um to have some input on it and so I think that is uh something that I would still like to see done um I'm not sure how we go about selecting them or asking for their signups uh but that is something I think would be important in this I I have a question for you or the city manager either one um on the on the committee I I know we had we had talked about the committee have we tried to get people to sign up and we didn't have any luck is that what happened I think previously when this first came about I think we had asked for people to sign up but I would have to go back and double check I'm not 100% sure if we actually ask um if people signed up I can tell you we didn't have anybody I know we talked about a committee we didn't have anybody calling saying uh you know can I join the committee so we we didn't have that I would really I agree with the mayor I would really like to see that I I know we need to do these projects and it's in my mind very clear what we need to do to do them um but I think it is very important to have several citizens who live on uclid not not even just in the neighborhood but on uid be you know be stakeholders in this and be a part of this discussion so they not only understand for themselves and have a say in it but can also take the message of what we're doing and why we're doing it back to all their neighbors who might not be civically

engaged and I'm just wondering too I I want to say when we discussed it before we might have just put it on our website or something about it but I think we're going to have to take it a step further whether it's sending a letter to the folks on ID Avenue including it in something that we send out I think it's we're going to have to take it a step further because what will happen is if we do not reach them and get that input but then we're over there starting to cut down some trees and fix the sidewalks and that kind of thing then we're going to have a lot of people reaching out to us upset and I certainly want them to be part of that um conversation I would I would much rather as you said I would much rather people know what's happening and be upset than to not know what's happening and be surprised upset yeah even if we create a committee and they only meet once at least that way we have done our due diligence to communicate with people and they know exact at least those who are on the committee know what's going on even if they it turns out that they have no concerns with it then we can then move forward knowing that we're acting in uh with the understanding of the citizens I I think overall though I think that repairing and renewing uclid Avenue is great I think this will make it'll it'll make UK Avenue safer it'll make our streets sweeper able to clean the roads up you know I think it'll it'll make things better in the long run but I do think that in the inum in the short period it it will cause some some unhappiness but you know I think I think it's very important that we have a group of citizens who are affected directly by this to just see this presentation in a room and and hear ideas no I agree with you and I think if you look at the

pictures that we have here and see the damage that's being done by the trees to the sidewalks and the curb side um we also got to think about making sure it's ADA Compliant and so when you have places that some of these areas I'm looking at in the sidewalks it would be very dangerous actually um so I open it up too did anyone else have any comments about it just uh I'm all for the citizen committee to to get thoughts of of residents that are on uclid especially right there on uid um as far as this project itself I I remember last time we were talking a little bit about how it could be done the sidewalks would maybe be wider um some trees would come out and I'm just to reiterate I'm a bit big fan of that stretch that's in between the curb and the sidewalk which is a mostly a stretch of grass now which is where the trees are and I found myself when I drive down uid trying to Envision what it's like without any trees and I think it would certainly change the look of the street quite a bit um obviously I I love the the dog Woods in the middle but I'm thinking about on the sides Where the Sidewalk is and of course those are the trees that have caused the issues with the roots with the sidewalk so trying to figure out if there's some way to still preserve the look of it where there's not only trees down the middle of uclid but also on the sides on on the sides it'd be very difficult to maintain that look because if you rebuild the sidewalk to be ADA Compliant and the face of sidewalks at back a curb sidewalks got to be 6' wide so there's not a lot of rideway there to work with yeah okay there might be a little bit left on the

back side of the sidewalk but there's certainly not enough on the face of the sidewalk side what I'm going to pitch might be too expensive but I know you and I were talking about let's say the sidewalk was 6 ft and so that essentially eliminates that stretch between the sidewalk and the street and we talked about the parking if if we left the parking and so the lanes were the same size and everything just sort of shifted to the center so there could still be a 6-ft sidewalk maybe a twoot foot strip of grass with trees the lane maybe the the median ended up being couple feet more narrow where there's still grass and trees down the middle if you did that you're most likely going to lose parking on either one or both sides of uid Avenue MH so that is that is an option but you know we need to figure out do people value the parking more than the trees yeah and try and figure out a path forward on that I I think um getting getting that committee together that'll help us drill down on that I think uh Mr eids can we how how do we reach people better on this can we send out letters is that something that's possible I'm actually shooting an email to my assistant and to Rick at the moment to get together an online application uh we can link that to Facebook Twitter other places and we'll make sure that it's people who reside on youlet Avenue whether it's the north side south side of uclid to be members of the committee and um I think no more than seven members would be appropriate you know you can get a committee too big but I'll leave that up for you all as how many you think we should have I think seven would be good M Mr Chandler what's I know you said we're we need to move on this soon to meet the the requirements what what's the timeline that you need to meet the the sooner the better cuz that is a long

stretch of roadway from Chester common well to get ready for pav them well like when when would you have to start when's the drop debt date uh I'd say this summer at the very late very latest okay so if we were say if we were to set this up by like may actually I'm going to have applications due March 21st okay um we'll have uh the committee meet sometime hopefully before April 1st uh do a presentation form that you all have seen previous ly uh let them know um you know what we're trying to do and I'm going to ask for a member of vot to be here as well to explain um you know the significance of of the project and the purpose of the project and what we need to do to comply with the state of good repairs money what would you think about having just a public open discussion if we were here between I'm just saying six and 8 on a Monday night that they they could come in and see what we're doing we could put it up kind of like we did the comprehensive plan and people give input or but we want to make sure that it's going to be folks that live also on nuet Avenue that are being affected um I don't know if we would have time to do something like that but then we would make sure that if they wanted to have a voice heard on it they could share that and then my second part part of this the question would be is this all also affecting the median area the dogwoods there are some dead or dying dog Woods that we would need to replace and we may have to narrow that up that was an option we were looking at especially toward the Commonwealth side narrowing that up a little more to give us some more room to work so under that scenario

theoretically you could I don't know how I don't know how wide the meeting is but you could n you could knock two feet off on either side I don't know if we could knock two off both sides you could knock some amount of some amount off both sides or then maybe in theory you could keep the parking or no it depends where you want the sidewalk if we're talking about moving the curb and the sidewalk out toward the median the parking's going to have to go there's not going to be enough room to do that okay not unless we significantly narrow up that median which I don't think's possible to keep all the trees cuz there's various utilities that run through there and that's why you see the trees are staggered a little bit to avoid the utilities I I think for me just speaking for myself I I think the biggest priority on this is probably the dogwoods themselves in whatever shape or form the ones that need to be replaced I think we need to do that as part of this and just because that is that is a war memorial there that was created long before I was even considered as a human but like it just it has a lot of significance there so I think whatever whatever we we do going forward I think we need to keep that a focus preserved yeah yes I agree with that um mayor real quick in regards to your public hearing I think it would be wise to probably get the committee together first okay and then have a conversation with the committee um in a smaller more controlled scale yes and uh then we look at having a public hearing sometime later uh probably in mid to late April when you when you all are saying public hearing you mean like an open house just an open house not a public not a public just the committee can kind of put together maybe a couple ideas that we could research and kind of put put forward and have have it before the open house or something like that Y and I would recommend that we would hold the open house somewhere in that neighborhood like

maybe we could talk to you avue Baptist Church or something use their Fellowship Hall so you're right there in the middle of that'd be good the neighborhood would you perhaps be able to put together a um a sketch of uclid with the proposed layout that way they can see exactly what you're talking about we can definitely put something together the pictures that we've seen um are mostly of the problems rather than of the proposed layout and I think that would probably be helpful okay all right um does that give you what you need yeah sure does thank you okay so um I have on here a vote is this something we need to vote on no you don't need to vote I was going to say okay this is more of a discussion thank you cuz I was like what are we going to be I will later no you need it now I think sorry sorry all right next item on the agenda is approval of a special events application no one has signed up for public comment and uh looking for a staff report from Jay um okay thank you again Madame mayor members of council actually I don't have a presentation for this one i' I've included all the documents there in your staff report and I do want to start here by saying that the lion Sheriff of this work was performed by our special events coordinator Debbie Denny she was unable to be here tonight so I just want to make sure that she um you know how much she's how hard she's worked on putting something like this together and all the different things we've had to sit down and discuss when it comes to this you

know special events are a big part of the Bristol especially the downtown area um and we've always pride prided ourselves on being very special event friendly however we don't we've never had an a list of written and approved policies I don't think we need to necessarily go to something like an ordinance and that Bristol Tennessee has done but I think it helps staff when we have something that's written down and a procedure that you can follow and that the city council has kind of signed off on so it gives us that ability to tell people you know this is these are the rules these are the regulations and this is how you know we do things here when it comes to special events so the we have created a special events application that just kind of gives just some basic information what's the event where it it where is it what type of event um you know how many people are are going to be there and what we envision is this event so it's going to be you know we'll have it in electronic form on our website if you say yes we're going to close the street what that'll do then is it'll trigger another application another form that has to be done you can see it's kind of like a street closure request application this request would go it'd be sent to Debbie and then with once we get all the documents it would go to public works for evaluation it would go to fire for evaluation it would go to police it'd come to uh Community Development planning and then eventually would be approved by city manager this is kind of their permit as part of this we've included um we've developed a few rules and regulations for what you have to do if you want to request a street closure we're giving 90 days that you have to notify us ahead of time because as you know city council is the

only body that can approve the street closure so sometimes we have to sit down as a staff and figure out the best way to work it especially on new events older events you know we have a pretty good handle on but there's always so many new events so we want to make sure that everybody who's looking at this can say all right we're asking you to notify everybody on your street closure area that this event is going to take place you know that doesn't necessarily mean that one person says no we don't like it that we're not going to have the event it's just everybody needs to be aware of that um you know it'll give you some some rules and regulations as to what happens once the street is closed we're not going to let you move vehicles or around within a closure area you can't bring new things in and out as far as that's concerned so these are rules and regulations that we we kind of do now but we want to make sure that they're written down in part of a policy um as you see we also have our special beverage application so if you are going to serve alcohol at one of your events on city property or city rideway this is a form that we already require so if you mark on the special events application that you're going to serve alcohol then you also have are forced to fill out this form too to get all the approvals so you won't be able to submit an incomplete application and actually have it submitted and you'll have all the documents that you need because the majority of the events that we do have that this would trigger are street closures and a large portion of them do have beer gardens or beverage Gardens of some kind so this kind of gets all that information out to the applicant especially if they're not used to doing something like this you know organizations like birthplace of country music and believe in Bristol they're they know what they're doing they know what you have to submit so having this we think is going to make things a lot

easier not only for the applicant but for staff um we also have our Cumberland Square Park rental application as you know people rent Cumberland Square Park all the time for they usually use the stage there's a lot of um the summer a lot of gospel singing a lot of things like that that are down there you know we've had the tri Pride event we have rhythm and Roots there so it's a big part of our downtown so this is a an application that already exists but we just kind of updated it made it a little easier to read There are a few fees associated with it and those are in here as well we've also added some rules the reservation Pro procedures some rules and regulations that you have to follow and we're in the process of um getting some more signs to go down there with rules and regulations and making sure that we have a at least a cabinet or two down there that states you know the park is rented for this day you know and gives you information on who you want to contact as far as that goes because we have occasionally had some situations where people who have paid for and rented the park and then there are so many other people there they haven't been able you know their event experience has not exactly been what we what we had hoped so we hope some of these things will help take care of that and then we've just kind of put together a special event planning guide that kind of just goes through everything here and you know what you have to do if you want to close the street what you'll have to do when you rent Cumberland Square Park so it's just kind of like an informational it gives some names for Virginia ABC if you're going to get the beer or beverage permit um and and we kind of want to see this as a an evolving document you know something that if we see something that needs a change if we need something that's not working or we want to add something that we can make that change

to it pretty quickly you know an ordinance is very difficult and takes a lot of time as everybody knows to go through that process so we're asking that um city council just approve the special event application that we have presented tonight all right thank you Jay we're looking for a motion uh I move for approval of the special events applications as presented second all right we have a motion in a second um I just have a few comments and questions so is Cumberland Park it's the only Park that we charge anything for services right of all the parks we have in Bristol right because it's the only one we have that has say electricity available and water available so that and and those are the types of things that those charges cover staff time to um to do any of those things okay [Music] mhm I didn't realize we have so many parks I mean looking at this list we really do mhm there's a ton of parks um and then also for events I know we don't charge for any type of special events is that a thought that eventually we may move towards that have we thought about that well you know we we we have discussed it and and I think the consensus right now was to not but that doesn't mean that we aren't evaluating it as well um I know our neighbor across the street has begun charging they have a a fee schedule and I don't know what kind of impact that's going to have on Downtown special events cuz now if you have something that was

supposed to take place on State Street and involve both cities if they if in a somebody doesn't want to do it because it's going to cost that event probably not going to happen or it's going to move completely over to the Virginia side but I think the thought process was to kind of take a look at how it works out over there for a short period of time and then re-evaluate that position but um you know that will be something that we'll have we may have to discuss in the near future I'm just thinking about the staff time where we talk about like with camland park it requires the additional staff time and things so I think sometimes special events or parades or events that are not really a Bristol Community that you know others come in and do here which are great but then we don't charge anything it probably requires more more workers than the events at kland Park right and you can you know Mr chanler over here because the Public Works guys do all the street closures and of course fire and police they're heavily involved when it comes to anything like that and it's true that some of our special events probably do generate more as far as a tax revenue and hotel and everything like that but that's a a rare type of event you know it's it's the smaller ones so it you know it's something that we might have to look at okay any other so just for procedural we're going to vote on this tonight it's approved if we need to change it same process we just come back and correct and and you see there are a few fees when it involves cumn Square Park and we have some fencing that we can use um that the city will set up that fee I know we are in the current we are in the process of looking at that one but with the special event season almost upon us I wanted to go ahead and get this in front of you so if we look at

potentially doing a fee change you might see it again here soon okay so I just want to get it yeah get it going with you know being March the event season is we'll be kicking back up within the next month or two yeah I think the application is great I think it's smart to do that and thank you to you and Debbie and the rest of the staff that put it together I think it's fantastic FC I think we we probably needed to do that for a long time we have I believe yeah thank you I like the idea of having an online form where you can direct somebody to that they don't necessarily have to come here during business hours to fill something out and then you've got the brochure that you can hand somebody they're interested in doing an event sure here's the information about it they has got all the contact information as well as the procedures right and and our we do have a staff member that's working on getting all of those online permit applications and everything going now and this will just be one more thing to kind of add to the pile all right thank you all right with no further discussion clerk please call the role farum yes Holmes yes Osborne yes Pard yes Nave yes all right moving into item number eight for year 26 budget Workshop Personnel Department requests and capital plan and um our city manager I'll direct it to you afternoon MERS of council waiting on but I guess before we get started I have 142 slides I've practiced several times this week I think I've got it down to 2 hours and 42 minutes so lovely you yeah we will get through this uh I know we've been here a long time so I don't want to belabor any of these points um first I want to say thank you to all the

department heads that have diligently gone through their budgets to um present to myself and the assistant city manager what they believe they need in order to operate efficiently and to provide the services that our citizens expect uh last but not least I want to thank Tamar Spradlin uh this would not come together without her and her leadership um in in her role as assistant city manager and Chief Financial Officer so uh I appreciate everything that she does to make this happen especially this time of year because she is extremely busy uh wearing two hats this time of year so uh without any further Ado uh we'll start here we'll talk about our budget Workshop schedule uh tonight is our first first budget workshop and then on March 25th which is two weeks from tonight we'll have another budget Workshop which will include a discussion of Revenue we will not be talking about the revenue tonight because it's something we're still putting together to make sure that we have the best numbers that we can as we uh conclude wrapping up the budget on April the 8th I plan on presenting the budget to council and that same night there will be a tax rate resolution where Council will have to vote on what the tax rate will be for real estate taxes uh for uh calendar year 25 on April the 12th we will advertise the fiscal year 20 uh 26 budget uh in the paper uh and for a public hearing on April the 22nd uh for that appropriation ordinance then on May the 13th we will have the first reading of the budget ordinance and then on May 27th we will have the second reading of the budget ordinance which is also the adoption of the budget so in this uh presentation tonight we've talked about the schedule we're going to talk about the process I have council's budget goals in here as

well uh the Citywide General obligation debt that the city owes for uh the various projects that the city has done over the number of years we'll talk about infrastructure projects and we'll talk about the capital Improvement plan and the locally funded projects Fleet rotation health insurance and full-time employee request and then Department requests over $10,000 so just as a reminder um the budget Workshop process is the purpose is for us to receive feedback during the budget development elent process and to communicate where we are at this point in time the budget remains a working document throughout the process based on historical data Trends and projections and we want to have a format for questions and comments and public comment will be received at the regularly scheduled City Council meetings for the public to make any comments they have about our budget by law under 15.2 hyphen 2503 uh the law states the governing body shall prepare and approve a budget for informative and fiscal planning purposes only containing a complete itemized and classified plan of all contemplated expenditures and all estimated revenues and borrowings for the locality for the ensuing fiscal year the itemized contemplated expenditures shall include any discretionary funds to be designated by individual members of the governing body and the specific uses and funding allocation planned for those funds by the individual member so let's talk about Council budget goals um I did not put any names with any of the budget goals and these are are not put in any sort of rank form uh this is just uh put together so that Council can see what other council members budget goals are and the public uh one Council goal is an economic development director next is raises for the fire department three is reduce the real estate tax four reduce the personal property tax five fund Public Safety departments

to the previous fiscal year uh six fund an additional firefighter position seven maintain trees medians sidewalks crosswalks and striping eight Implement a program to repair potholes and make other Road improvements proactively so next let's talk about our Citywide General obligation debt here we see what our funded expenditures are our actual Debt Service the excess or shortfall that we have to meet that Debt Service the 2023 bond issue the committed Reserve funds that would be used to pay any of the debt service and then the funding needed for that fiscal year in order to make up the shortfall so you can see in 2425 the actual Debt Service is 8.9 million uh a shortfall of 2.2 million we have capitalized interest from the 2023 bond issue of roughly $770,000 and we have committed Reserve funds of roughly $1.4 million and no funding was needed for this year's uh Debt Service for 2526 once again the actual Debt Service is about $8.9 million we are short $2.2 million uh we do not have any capitalized interest to put towards the uh Debt Service for this upcoming fiscal year we will use $1.9 million in committed Reserve funds to help cover that debt payment which would leaves us $33,600 short that we have to find in this year's bu budget to cover that in 26 and 27 once again The Debt Service is about $8.9 million again a $2.2 million shortfall and the funding needed is $2.2 million uh 27 and 28 an $8.3 million Debt Service payment uh a shortfall of

$1.5 million and the funding needed is also $1.5 million and finally you can see in 28 and 29 the debt decreases a a little bit to 7.5 million a shortfall of 81,000 and the funding needed to cover that debt service is $81,000 as well uh finally I don't want anyone to forget that in 2728 we have the general obligation Bond anticipation anticipation note due of $30.7 million that was the bond anticipation note that we did to uh fund the landfill projects that have been going on out at the landfill I have any questions about the general obligation debt not yet um we may have to sell some of our parks that the mayor mentioned in order to cover some of this so uh next is our infrastructure projects that we have planned for fiscal year 26 uh here you will see uh Federal funding State funding and local funding many of these projects are covered State funding and just requires just a small amount of local funding for these projects Street and drainage improvements every year we put $75,000 in that line item to cover any Street and drainage improvements the Lee highway exit 5 phase 1B with the off ramps uh that you currently see going on right now at Exit 5 that is funded uh 3.28 Million by the state with local funding a little over $220,000 for a project total of $3.3 million the Lee Highway shared use path from Overhill Road to Clover Lane is $289,000 funded entirely by the state the Goodson Street Bridge replacement $1.2 million completely funded by the state Martin Luther King Bridge $1.1

million completely funded by the state and the Oak Street Bridge of $1.9 million which is also completely funded by the state so we have a total of $7.98 6 million in infrastructure projects going on in fiscal year6 6 and out of that $7.9 million the city only has to pay $953 159 so fiscal year 27 once again you see the $775,000 uh as a placeholder for Street and drainage improvements that we always have in the budget uh the Lee Highway shared use path from Overhill to Clover will go into 27 as well that's $289,000 the Goodson Street Bridge replacement of 1.2 million completely funded by the State the Martin Luther King Bridge $1.1 million completely funded by the state and then the Oak Street Bridge of 1.9 million completely funded by the state that's a project total of $4.6 7 million with local funding of only $75,000 now let's talk about our state maintenance funded projects which are reported Mr ID sorry I had one quick question if you'll go back one slide um do we have any idea when the pedmont Street Bridge box cover V plans I'll turn it over to Mr Chandler you're on you said the pedmont yeah pedmont Street where they they had the open house couple months ago I'd have to go back and look at what V do has sent that project's way out in the future probably like 2031 2032 okay something like that they are still trying to figure out the best way to repair that bridge thank you I appreciate that yeah that's a big project that you know we don't need to I shouldn't say we don't need to concern ourselves with right now but it's not at the front of our mind um VT still has a lot to do we still have to work with us fish and game in regards to the bats that are underneath pedmont and come up

with a solution for the home for the bats as we repair that and uh then just determine what is the best type of Bridge to put back so uh State maintenance funded projects this is from our um State maintenance fund these projects will be budget as funding is available for each year and you can see here these project lists go from 26 all the way through 2030 we have a public works aggregate storage facility that's $119,000 uclid Avenue drainage improvements a little over $1 million uh Osborne Street Dam drainage improvements $393,000 the Reservoir Street drainage improvements $103,000 metagest drive and Independence Drive drainage improvements $5 $186,000 Colony Circle drainage improvements $236,000 Wagner Road drainage improvements of $660,000 Downtown parking improvements of $330,000 those are all in fiscal year 2026 going into 2027 you have the um Public Works signal building of $800,000 uh Downtown parking improvements once again of $550,000 and then the rocket Street drainage I'm sorry the West End salt storage of $500,000 that's in 2027 then in 2028 there was two projects the Crockett Street drainage improvements and then the pedmont Fox Meadow Glenway uh drainage improvements and then in 2029 you have Valley Drive and Greenhill Road drainage improvements of $687,000 Goodson Street and Williams street of $360,000 in 2030 and then the second tailor uh Haden Street Improvement of $1.1 million in 2030 next we'll talk about our Capital

Improvement plan and locally funded projects so here's our local funding plan uh going through 2030 in fiscal year 26 local capital of $763,000 um in fiscal year 27 $1.3 million in fiscal year 28 it jumps to $3.4 million and I will get to why that jumps uh significantly uh here in just a moment uh you can see that will also be 6% of our general fund budget uh we want to stay right around the 3% Mark uh but due to a big project that's scheduled in 2028 uh that is going to jump significantly in fiscal year 29 $1.8 million in local capital and then in 2030 um $1.7 million next you have our local uh vehicle Replacements we budget $893,000 each of those years for local Vehicles Replacements so you have a total of 1.6 million in fiscal year 26 2.2 in fiscal year 27 4.3 million in fiscal year 28 uh 2.7 million in fiscal year 29 and 2.5 million in fiscal year 2030 so the fiscal year 28 jumps simp simply because of the gene Malcolm Stadium repairs as you all know we went through some repairs um this past year for Gan Malcolm Stadium to make sure that the stadium was safe and then in uh fiscal year 28 we plan on doing more significant repairs to Jean Malcolm Stadium to get it back up to the standards as it needs to be and that's at least in these dollars I think about a $2.5 million project but I have that number coming up here shortly so here's our locally funded projects for our Capital Improvement

plan uh the first in 2026 is the fire station alerting system uh last year we removed this project and pushed it to 2026 uh and that was so we did not have to raise the Mills taxes uh plus we um asked for police vehicles that were going to be funded by a grant uh from congressionally directed spending as of today we do not know if we will get that congressionally directed Ed spending and we still don't still do not have those police vehicles um next the interview room for the recording equipment installation it's a $14,000 project that's for the police department uh that is something they need uh in order to interview uh subjects in regards to crimes that are committed in the City of Bristol uh also Courthouse entry doors to make those handicap accessible $220,000 a mobile data terminal refresh for the police department and Fire Department of 3 $85,000 uh gas mask and filters for the police department of $44,000 and then you will see in our uh locally funded projects firefighter personal uh personal protective equipment that'll be funded every year at $50,000 so that they can get uh keep their equipment up to date as far as the clothing that they wear when they have to fight a fire in 2027 um we will have an aerial ladder truck for $260,000 that is a lease uh that we will have for approximately 10 years uh for an aerial ladder truck and that's what we do now with our ladder trucks or any of our fire trucks we uh lease those trucks and then $50,000 for the repeater system for our radio system and then in 2027 a radio system upgrade of roughly 1 million and then once again $50,000 for the firefighter

personal protective equipment for a toal total of $1.36 million in 2028 once again you can see the aerial ladder truck payment in there um 350,000 for uh the maintenance facility and then here's the Gan Malcolm Stadium repair of $2.75 million once again that's in $ 2025 uh you know I would expect that number to probably increase by the time we get to 2028 and then $50,000 for the personal protection equipment for firefighters 2029 once again the aerial ladder truck of $260,000 uh Cumberland Square Park fencing $110,000 that would be for fencing around the entire park however we are looking at different opportunities to get that paid for through grants uh prior to 2029 Sugar Hollow fencing of $124,800 that's for the ballparks to put up new fencing at the ballparks at Sugar Hollow um TP floor repairs of $361,000 that is at the landfill facility where it used to be the Tipping floor there are some repairs that need to be made there in 2029 uh demolition of gel and office reconfiguration we are thinking $967,000 for that demolition however uh Miss bradlin uh is working with a group that may be able to uh put together a plan and potential funding sources for that that to occur sooner rather than later and then once again the firefighter personal protective equipment of $50,000 and then in 2030 the aerial ladder truck of $260,000 we need to renovate the pool area at Waldo miles we think $80,000 should be a good number for that renovation uh the starlink city Network

satellite redundancy that would allow us to have uh internet access in the event things happen uh that would take out our landbased internet system of $72,000 cumland Square Park stage reconstruction of $250,000 Randol field Fieldhouse $165,000 for upgrades there the Randol field third base bleachers and locker rooms an $825,000 project and finally uh the firefighter personal protective equipment as well now what did not make it into our locally funded projects uh there was a tub grinder request the tub grinder would have been used to grind brush and that's a $1.1 million purchase that did not make it into the request Belling room improvements that's at the Belling room at the Tipping floor at the landfill of $875,000 uh the Martin Luther King uh Boulevard and cumin street parking lot $880,000 patrol vehicles of $400,000 gravel lot storage building and parking lot surfacing that's right across the street of $250,000 and Courthouse Lobby benches of $10,000 um I should have went over this before but we started um a capital Improvement committee sometime back in the fall I believe um Mr bradin headed up the capital Improvement committee and we met several times we went through these projects we ranked these projects based on is is it an is it an urgent need based on the fact that it's breaking state or federal law or local law uh and uh we had several different criteria and we scored each one of those and that's how we rank these projects so we went through a fairly lengthy process uh to make sure we rank these projects appropriately and get them funded

appropriately next Fleet rotation uh police vehicles uh this year we will purchase eight police vehicles roughly $600,000 um and then we will have an ambulance for $325,000 this will be the first ambulance we've purchased in a number of years uh so this it's an upgrade for that the sheriff's office is requesting two vehicles for $130,000 uh the fleet cars that we use uh just every day in the city for employees to do their job a replacement of $55,000 collections a dump uh a dump truck with a lift gate of $75,000 a brush truck of $250,000 a disposal truck of $56,000 a disposal mini excavator of $90,000 and a parks and wreck operations truck of $62,000 for $1.6 million this upcoming year next health insurance um as you all may or may not be aware health insurance premiums continue to increase and uh we were no exception to the rule this year we received a 10.2% increase um in our health insurance premiums and how is that going to impact the city moving forward the employer share the city of Bristol's share will increase by 12% and the employee share will increase by 4% so it's going to be an ed estimated budget increase for the city of roughly $360,000 um with the health insurance premiums increasing currently 80% of our employees are on a city plan when you add the library and DSS in there 82% of all employees are on a uh City plan we have four plans that are offered the key

Advantage 500 comprehensive plan um the key Advantage 500 preventative plan I'm sorry the key Advantage 500 comprehensive 40 47% of our employees that have our health insurance are on that plan the key Advantage 500 preventative plan 3% of our employees the key Advantage 1,000 comprehensive 45% of our employees are on that plan and then the key Advantage 1,000 preventative six um% of our employees are on that plan 55% of our employees have a a single plan which just means they are on the health insurance 18% of our um employees are on the Dual plan which means the employee plus one and then 27% of our employees are on the family plan so how did this impact the employee average uh cost for health insurance if you're on the single plan on the average your premium would decrease by 1% the single plus one plan there is no change in the premium there and then the family plan was an increase of 12% so overall uh the city cost for our health insurance for one for an employee ranges anywhere from $918 all the way up to $1 19,683 of the key Advantage 1,000 single and 75% of the 1,000 dual and family uh and then um we're hoping that employees over time time will choose the key Advantage 1000 plan because that is a little less cost to the city than the key Advantage 500 plan any questions about health

insurance all right next uh is full-time employee requests from across the city I will tell you that it is not a small number a full-time employee increased request across the city it impacts just about every single Department that we have as you all know we operate on a very uh slim uh crew most of the time and many people doing different types of jobs just to cover uh the basics that the citizens expect from us so first let's talk about a salary increase the state of Virginia is in including a 3% salary increase uh across uh for Statewide employees if we do the same that's a $65,000 cost to the city uh next the request going forward uh the city manager's office has requested a part-time Department of government efficiency specialist position I think you will already see some of the benefit to that uh we have that as a temporary role right now uh we have a employee who is going out searching for problems on the front end so that hopefully we can get to the problem before citizens have to make the phone call to us that includes the potholes that Mr Osborne was concerned about it includes uh brush on the side of the road it includes litter um houses that need to be addressed for whatever purpose so uh I think that is a big help we are using a team spreadsheet and working across multiple departments to make sure those issues get addressed Finance is requesting an account clerk for payroll and benefits uh this is a we have uh two people in the city who can run payroll and if something happens to either one of those that puts us behind and I it's a very important position just so that employees can get

paid uh the Circuit Court uh judge is asking for a law clerk Circuit Court Clerk is going to have a state funded Deputy clerk position the police department is asking for a captain position and also two part-time positions would be replaced by one full-time officer the fire chief is asking for an assistant Fire Chief and seven firefighters Public Works is asking for a GIS GIS analyst a construction inspector eight partially state state funded Meo 1s two partially state funded Meo 2s an engineering intern two mechanics three custodians and one building maintenance uh meo1 and Clear Creek Golf Course is asking for an assistant Pro we have talked in the past about uh um succession planning in the city I've had that discussion with all department heads over the past year I think we've touched on that a little bit it's important that we plan as a city to make sure we have people who can step in the roles in the event someone is out for an extended period of time or decides to leave the city so a lot of this a lot of these positions here would help with that any questions in regards to salary increases and full-time employee requests all right so next we're going to go to Department request of over $10,000 uh so the city manager Department an increase of $112,000 and that is uh due to the cost of software for Citywide items that we currently use um it uh is in asking for an increase of $71,000 that is software for public works it's also a software for foia and it's also a software to Archive any social media uh things that we put out

uh on social media also it is asking for an $118,000 increase uh for computer work stations and Hardware Citywide uh the 28th Judicial Circuit Court is asking for a $100,000 increase uh for courthouse and uh Circuit Court update refresh uh that is a number that um Miss bradlin and I have talked about the court did not specifically ask for $100,000 they gave us a list of items that need to be addressed at the courthouse and we think $100,000 would be a start and by no means is that $100,000 going to fix everything that needs to be fixed at the courthouse the Southwest Regional gel Authority uh we have an increase of 1.69 million for housing inmates uh this year uh we roughly had 240 to 250 inmates in the regional jail at any given time uh when we went into the Regional Jail we had anywhere between 180 and 200 inmates and the number of inmates has just increased over the past several years um the appalache juvenile commission an increase of $141,000 the uh Street and Engineering division uh for maintenance of building and property that is um for Paving ineligible streets at increase of $110,000 streets and Engineering this is for food and Food Service supplies this is when uh we have staff out plowing snow and doing other things that aren't necessarily during your normal work hours uh a line item of $20,000 to cover food and supplies for that uh the streets and Engineering has asked for $50,000 increase to cover the second half of the Ada transition plan the resilience plan development match and GPS equipment for

GIS and then also uh for storm water management an increase of $339,450 th000 but this can be reduced if there are two mechanics that are hired uh you saw my previous um request uh fleet has asked for two mechanics so if we did hire two mechanics we could reduce this contract labor cost uh Refuge collection contract labor uh increase of $115,000 that's just additional money needed for training people as we bring contract labor in uh to help with collections Refuge collections of $115,000 that's an increase um what it cost to uh have gfl take our cardboard and trash and have that recycled that's a cost to the city um Refuge collection again repair parts and equipment and increase of $445,000 and that's just what the increased cost for repair items are costing us right now the Solid Waste Department uh for maintenance and machinery and equipment a $25,000 increase once again it's just an increase cost for maintenance items that we're seeing across the board uh Solid Waste again an increase of $1.2 million and that's the estimate for SCS fi services to work for an entire year at the landfill uh they are doing a a good job taking care of the things at the landfill that our staff um has not been able to do simply because of the specialized training that's needed for the things that they are doing Solid Waste Disposal uh lease of equipment um this is for necessary items of a dozer a pump excavator and that's all for the

landfill an increase of $67,000 maintenance on municipal buildings contract labor um increase of $47,000 this can be reduced if three full-time employee custodians are added maintenance on municipal buildings increase of $55,000 and that's just for building needs and to upkeep our buildings as our buildings continue to age maintenance on municipal buildings again for maintenance of machinery and equipment and that's $15,000 uh the police department has a boiler issue and then here at City Hall we have a water conditioning issue at here at City Hall and also at PD uh next the health department uh there's a $26,500 increase for the health department this year Highland community services an increase of 27339 Department of Social Services in in ask for an increase of 23 $4,000 that's just from the local funding piece Highland cpmt uh increase of$ 55,0 548 parks and wreck operations that's contract labor for $32,000 and that's for seasonal employees parks and wreck operations maintenance of building and property $115,000 that's to repave the parking lot at Sugar Hollow Economic Development the white site uh as you all know we have an opportunity based on uh language of the contract and the deed that we can purchase the white site back so that would be $15,000 if we decided to go that route Economic Development activities uh this would include new downtown lights uh money for Christmas festival and signage at The Falls development that the city is responsible for and that's an increase of $35,000 Economic Development activities

uh dues and memberships and subscriptions uh for $1,000 increase and that is for software program for economic development uh that is uh based on how we calculate who is going where and how many people are going to a certain destination at a certain time uh Code Compliance this is for mowing and demolition it's an $80,000 increase from what we have put in there previously uh as you all know there are uh quite a few structures in the city that need to be addressed and it's it's costing anywhere between 10 and $15,000 now to tear down one home uh probably more than that for most of the homes so an $80,000 increase to a budget line item $100,000 does not get you far uh when you're tearing down and demolishing homes we also have contracted with several uh local mowing companies to mow yards that are um have not been mowed and then we put a tax Lan on properties when when we have to do that we're currently working uh with uh Chief Ashbrook and uh we'll be working with the sheriff on the way to figure out how we can get inmates to potentially cover some of these um issues for us going forward and then a contingency fund a $50,000 increase in the city contingency fund so that's all the department request of over $10,000 and so what's next any questions you all have uh feel free to ask those now and if I know the answer I'll try to answer it if I don't we'll get you a timely response and um we'll continue through the budget work do you have the total uh sta proposed or requested staff increases you mean for total number and total estimated U cost I do not have the

total estimated cost but the total staff increase would be 33 well thank you thank you for that presentation you're welcome that was a lot to take in and um I think we'll probably all have some questions I don't know if we have them tonight but um that we would like to um to ask you do you does anybody want to ask anything tonight you have the total of the department request increase not at this time no all right well thank you for that presentation you're welcome all right moving in item e ordinances first reading ordinance 25 hyen one first reading prohibiting the use of certain vehicles and devices on certif specified sidewalks within the city no one has signed up for public comment staff report Randy just a okay so uh Council before you I've had numerous conversations with our downtown police officers and some business owners in regards to issues they are seeing downtown as it specifically rate relates to bicycles and skateboards uh we have a um number of people who are using the sidewalks and uh using bicycles in a careless Manner and uh based upon uh state code the city has the ability to restrict bicycles and other types of um Mobility devices on certain streets and sidewalks and this ordinance would allow us to restrict uh the use of those types of vehicles and devices on State Street Lee Street sidewalks and more

Street sidewalks So based on the conversations we've had you know i' respectfully ask Council to approve this ordinance so that we can uh start moving forward with some enforcement issues all right thank you so I'm looking for a motion and second for the first reading of the ordinance I move for first reading of the ordinance as presented by cap only by caption only second all right we have a motion in a second um Council discussion um I'll just say I I've heard some of these same comments too from especially from down town about um bicycles or things coming through there really fast and people on the sidewalks and the sidewalks are not very wide um so I would be in support of this I think it's a a safety issue um as much as anything I I would agree and I I appreciate I see that there's a a piece in there about if someone's under the age of 12 accompanied by an adult would not apply I know there are some issues where maybe a child's on a bike with a parent walking or something and just that's a safety issue too so I I appreciate that carve out there I've mostly heard the comments concerning electric scooters um one person uh was asking me uh if this is basically unnecessary because we're trying to regulate stuff that doesn't need to be regulated because it's already it's already against the law to run somebody off the sidewalk problem is what was thinking is this gives us another enforcement mechanism if somebody's run off the sidewalk you'd have to have a police officer there observing it at the time in order to site them this way if they're on the sidewalk they're already in violation and the find's the same either way it

seems like this would be a lot easier to enforce to cover the same problem it it just gives our officers another tool all right any other discussion all right with no further discussion clerk please call the roll farum yes Holmes yes Osborne yes Pard yes Nave yes all right reading of the ordinance by caption only ordinance number 25 hyen one an ordinance of the City of Bristol Virginia prohibiting the use of certain vehicles and devices on specified sidewalks within the city all right thank you moving into E2 ordinance 25 hyphen 2 first reading updating section 50 hyphen 136 agricultural uses on residential property no one has signed up for public comment uh staff report June hi um so this is the same issue we brought up for the joint public hearing at the last council meeting um won't belabor the point um as the facts are the same we've regard we've had a number of violations regarding this ordinance due to the property line requirements that were in the code from the previous draft of this ordinance uh since our last meeting we made two updates one to correct a minor typo and one to adjust the uh permit fee from $100 to $50 like was suggested by Council so uh there's the offending line that really Drew all of our attention as to what was causing a lot of violations the 100 ft being a very difficult um bar to meet for basically every property in the city uh this being an instance of a violation where it wasn't physically

possible for this property to have chickens but they had them regardless it was brought to our attention due to uh a rooster be on the property that is since gone um with the new ordinance this group of chickens that was otherwise not uh a nuisance to the neighborhood would be a compliant use um similarly this is the same situation on Glenway where again a rooster brought the situation to our attention but Rooster's gone and uh the chickens would be in compliance with the new ordinance with additional screening um again the offending ordinance or the offending part that got the violations and then this is the new update um you can see again the permit being set at $50 and the adjustment of removing that uh unnecessary word in section 2 B so if you have any questions about the ordinance um that is the uh General situation but staff recommends approval of the ordinance as written all right thank you so much all right looking for a motion and second for first reading of the ordinance full or by caption I move for first reading of the ordinance by caption only second all right we have a motion in a second Council discussion uh thank you June for um thank you for your hard work on this and I know that you know we put this at the end because this is what we were all building up to when we were all anticipating getting to talk about the chickens so so we appreciate we saved the best for last um but in all seriousness I think this is very good I think this is common sense I think this will allow people you know especially in the state of the economy today with uh eggs are going to go up things are going to continue to go up with inflation and they're only going to get more expensive so you know this is just a thing that will allow people to be

able to maybe provide some of their own food or as some U citizens talked about at our last meeting this will just be a nice thing for people if they want to have chickens and we make it a little bit easier and maybe get rid of some of the unnecessary regulations absolutely we appreciate your work sometimes when we get into philosophical discussions uh one of the topics is that what is the purpose of local government a lot of that is to protect local residents while at the same time not being overly burdensome and this is an improvement that helps us achieve the intended purpose while well achieving the intended purpose thank you all right there further questions Clark please call the rooll farum yes Holmes yes Osborne yes Bard yes Nave yes all right reading of the ordinance by caption only uh ordinance 25-2 title update to the chapter to chapter 50 land use Article 2 zoning division 11 section 50-1 36 agricultural uses on residential property all right thank you all right matters to be presented by members of the public non-agenda items and we have one signed up Mr Lee Jones and thank you for your patience tonight uh I know you've been sitting there a long time uh 4 hours almost so uh thank you for your patience and for being here tonight for all of us I appreciate you let me talk and I thought well I would leave but I've been here too long I'm not leaving I'm going to say what what I came to say um from my understanding in the state of

Virginia the government has put upon the assessors to bring all property in the state of Virginia up to current value 100% And there's other states that are doing the same thing uh in 2020 I was basically knocked on my backside and some of you may have two with a huge property increase well I have two properties one was at an uh 49% increase and the other was about 45% increase which was a lot okay we just had another assessment well don't need to tell you cuz it probably happened to you all as well I got knocked on my rearend again I got uh a property that went up $100,000 and another property that again went up $80,000 in conjunction with the ones in 2020 that's a lot of money to me uh but I feel kind of ridiculous standing here saying that I feel like a small fish in a big pond after hearing Mr Reids talk about the city budget how in the world the city pce for all that stuff I have no idea but I will say this he did mention about looking at our property tax uh going down and the personal property tax I don't care too much about but it's the it's the assessments that we have received that it's like the state wants the people that are on fixed income which is me to not be able to live in their house anymore because you can't afford to pay the taxes now I never thought that would happen in

Bristol I've lived here all my life my dad lived here all his life um and I like it here and I'd like to stay here i' like to stay in my house but I may be asking Mr dietr for that part-time driving job that he mentioned so I can have an income to help pay my property taxes but what I'm here to ask or to state the casino should be online now for a full assessment for whatever that building is 404 $40 million whatever it is so we ought to be getting a good chunk of money for that plus I heard a lot of good things at the beginning about how much money is coming in for uh hotel motel uh food tax uh venue tax and all that and it all sounds really good there's downtown stuff coming in there's stuff coming in from the uh Hard Rock so I'm really really looking for what I was told 5 years ago or whatever it was that the casino would help us with our taxes our property taxes in specific uh I feel like four years ago we were kind of hoodooed over that but I'm a little bit more uh informed this year so this is just my first bug in your ear that I'm really looking forward to have you know if you got to have a tax increase that's fine but I'm not looking for you know a huge amount of taxes for I'm talking about for anybody in Bristol I can only speak for myself but I'm speaking for everybody here that you know I'm retired and I've only got me so much money to go around and I certainly don't want to dig out any of my investments

to sell to have to pay my taxes to be able to live here um and I that's that's just how I feel about it so I'm I'm really hoping that something can be done to lower our tax rate to where it's you know even though we've received a humongous increase basically I mean I'm I'm up close to $300,000 now which I never thought I'd ever see in my lifetime so ium you all may be there as well but I've talked to a lot of people in a group of friends that I have and I got a pretty good indication that they all received pretty decent assessment increase again this time and I know the city has to have money to run on but we also have to be able to live at our homes and pay our taxes y thank you thank you for your comments thank you all right next item on the agenda is the consent agenda looking for a motion in second I move for approval of the consent agenda as presented second all right we have a motion in a second clerk please call the roll farum yes Holmes yes Osborne yes Hollard yes nve yes and looking for a motion in second for adjournment so move second all right we have a motion in a second clerk please call the roll farum yes Holmes yes Osborne yes par yes na yes and we are adjourned I believe you overlooked

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