Town Council - Regular Meeting

All right, everybody. Welcome. Thank you to all those that are here in attendance in person and those that are watching online. First, I always ask everyone to take a look at your cell phones and please silence them. Just make sure they're all the way on silent, not vibrate or any other kind of musical noise that sometimes tends to happen. We want to make sure we're respecting one another's time in each speaker speaking. So just double check your phone, make sure it's all the way on silent.

We ask for patience and understanding. We appreciate it as Council deliberates on various agenda items. We do have a very lengthy agenda tonight. We also have open public comment at this meeting and every meeting. You can sign up on the sign-up sheet that's right there by the podium. And please put your name and any contact information so that any of your comments can be followed up on. We do not have a specific public hearing tonight. We will be authorizing one for a later meeting. So it's just general open comment tonight. We want to acknowledge the staff's work in preparation for this meeting. Their insights are invaluable to each topic of town business and appreciate our town manager, Natasha Tucker, as a town operates under the council manager form of government and Natasha handles daily operations and department administration, while the town council provides direction and authorizes policy in accordance with the laws of the Commonwealth of Virginia and our town charter. While each council member has the ultimate responsibility to contribute and vote distinctly, the council does work as a body. We are duly elected to serve responsibly and ethically the citizens of Colonial Beach. Participation of each member contributes to effective leadership. Collaboration is key to productivity in local government. We're going to engage in constructive discussion and remain open to different effective resolutions. And finally, I just remind us that the town council meetings are formal proceedings and are thus recorded. And with that, we will call the meeting to order at 6.03 p.m. on Wednesday, June 17th, 2026. Please join me by standing for a moment of silence, which will be followed by the Pledge of Allegiance. All right, and just in time, our roll call of members. All members are present. All right, not aware of any additions to the agenda. Do we have an approval of the agenda? Do we have a second? Second. All right, all in favor?

Aye.

All right, next up is our consent agenda, some meeting minutes, and the amendment to the school and general fund budget. Do I have a motion for that? Second. Second. All right, any discussion? Yes, Mr. Williams.

Since it's a big item, I don't know what it is, but I was wondering if the town CFO could just give us a quick overview of that half million dollar move that we're making.

Sure.

Since it's big bucks.

The school board has requested to move half a million dollars out of the CIP funds that were committed to the school over the years to complete the front entrance of the school. It's a $1.7 million project and they have some big payments coming up and so they wanted to use some of that CIP money to finish paying for that project. They used some of the money that they had left over from a grant, I believe, and they also had some... CIP account? Not at the moment. Okay. Thank you.

Okay. Okay. I think the balance of our CIP is on the resolution, Mr. Williams. All right, I have a motion and a second. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. Next up is council member announcements. Mr. Wood, I'm going to start on your side today.

Okay.

Planning Commission met on Thursday the 11th and after public hearing they voted unanimously to recommend approval of the cup for the coffee roastery. Planning Commission will meet on July 9th to hear an exception to the Chesapeake Bay Preservation Act related to use of the RPA and other items. And by the way, congratulations to the head of the Planning Commission, Ms. Lawrence, who has achieved the title of Certified Zoning Administrator through the Virginia Association of Zoning Officials. So no further mistakes will be tolerated. Okay, and so for Parks and Rec, let's see, there's the Juneteenth event on Town Hill on Friday the 19th. It's going to be at the corner of Colonial Washington Avenue on Town Hill. Sunday, and I'm sure this will be a big deal to our Vice Mayor, Father's Day Classic Car Show. Okay? So you're in charge of keeping things stocked, right? Okay. Now, this sounds fun. The Saturday, June 27th, there's a Play All Day VA Summer Beach Volleyball Social at South Beach. I don't think we've done one of those before. That sounds like a lot of fun. Sunday, the 27th, Okay, those dates are right, because the beach balls on Saturday. Sunday is the CB triathlon on Town Hill. Wednesday, July 1st, the hunt for the golden shell in downtown Colonial Beach. And Friday, July 3rd, fireworks over the Potomac. The ongoing pre-activities are volleyball and basketball open gym, ages 15 and up Sundays from 2.30 to 4.30 at the gym. Functional fitness class Tuesdays from 10 to 11 a.m. Weight fitness class Wednesday from 10 to 11 at the community center and Hatha Yoga. at Friday from 10 to 11 at the community center as well. And that's all I'm going to say before I make any more mistakes.

All right, Mr. Larson.

Good evening, everybody. I have a few things we wanted to remind you citizens about from the finance team. I mentioned this last time. I'm going to be a little bit more clear this week. The utility bills are out. They're due on July the 1st. Those bills are for the months of July, August, and September. So they're in the new fiscal year. So that's why they're at the higher rate. There was a little confusion over that last week because I wasn't as clear as I should have been when I announced it. Golf cart inspections are required yearly in Colonial Beach. If you haven't gotten your 2026 sticker, you are behind. I was a little late on mine, I'll admit it here. They're $50, you can get them, get your golf cart inspected at Potomac Alternator, the two golf cart places on Colonial TNT and Custom Carts, and the two auto service shops, Beach Service Center and Bill Britt. Once you have that sticker, then your golf cart can park in the paid parking places without having to pay. Without that sticker, you're liable to get a ticket, maybe two, one for a parking violation and one for not having your golf cart inspected. To operate a golf cart, you have to have a valid driver's license. I've seen some people that maybe are a little too young driving golf carts around town, so let's remind our friends about that. You're only allowed on the 25-mile-an-hour roads, which means no driving golf cart on 205. There is a valid legal crossover there next to the McDonald's, but apart from that, stay off of 205. Automobile personal property taxpayers also get to park for free in town, but, and this caught me this year, too, because I got a new car. In the year that you acquire the car, the town has not yet billed you for the license fee. because you just got the car, so you have to take your registration into the service center and pay the fee for the first year, and then it'll be part of your personal property tax bill going forward. So, again, if you do that, then you get to park for free in all the paid parking places. The other thing that caught me, I make a lot of mistakes that maybe will be helpful to the citizenry. I had one of my cars that was in a incorrectly registered in Westmoreland County and not in the town of Colonial Beach. So it didn't come through and also didn't pay the personal property tax for the towns. It wasn't my mistake, I have to say. But anyway, so you have to check those things. Make sure it's garaged in the town of Colonial Beach and then come in and make your payment with the finance team and you'll be good to go for the first year and after that it'll be automatic. All right. The school board met last Wednesday, a week ago, and I know Dr. Addo is here. I thought he had a presentation. I don't see him yet. Okay, so there is a presentation tonight, so I'm not going to speak too much about what I heard there. There was a couple of interesting things that I thought that caught my ear, though. So there was a presentation on the grant applications for Title I, II, III, and IV. that should they get all those grants add up to like 270K that they can apply to teacher and staff salaries. So that's pretty cool. It looked like very well done applications, by the way. And this is just sort of a sign of the times thing. They've made an update to their standards of conduct And there's now provisions in that standards of conduct calling out specifically unauthorized use of AI tools for finishing homework assignments and such. That's just kind of a, huh, I guess we have to do that now. Anyway, so that's all I've got for tonight. I'll let the school board folks speak in more detail about what they talked about last week. That's it for me.

All right, Mr. Williams.

Thank you. I do have a question, Mr. Larson. Is it the end of April that the stickers are due? Because somebody was asking me, and that's what I told them from prior years.

Do you know?

Is it the end of April with the X stickers?

That's what I thought. I just wanted to make sure I told somebody the right thing. Thank you. Thanks. So a few announcements for the police department. Let's see here. The town of Columbia Beach Police Department is proud to announce that Jason Church has been hired to serve as the parking enforcement traffic attendant officer for the police department. Jason previously served as the King George County Sheriff's in the King George Sheriff's Office as an animal control officer. Jason's duties here will be including the enforcement of parking regulations and assisting the school with pedestrian safety. The police department will host the month's neighborhood watch on the 25th of June at the community room. The police department and the topic for this month will be meeting is missing persons investigation. Everyone is invited to attend. The police department would like to thank the Westmoreland County Sheriff's Department, the Westmoreland County Department of Emergency Services, and the Charles County Sheriff's Department, the Colonial Beach Public Works Department, and those that worked together to make the Potomac River Festival a success and a safe event. Thank you all for your help and support. Thanks.

All right. Ms. Grandstaff?

Good evening, everyone. Reporting for Downtown Colonial Beach Economic Vitality. Just some short things to mention. The DCB launched its revamp website last week. You can find it at www.downtowncolonialbeach.org. Please note, if you get an error message, do a quick refresh and the new site will appear. Following the success of the last spring small business breakfast, the date for the fall event has been decided. So please mark your calendars and save the date for Thursday, October 15th from 8 to 9.30 at the Ice House. Last but not least, the new Discover Colonial Beach Rack Card is available, which I've provided to Council. You can also find some in the vestibule on the way out. These will also be distributed in the interstate welcome centers and hotels in the surrounding area. And that's it for me. Thank you.

Thank you.

All right. Good evening, everybody. For NGOs from the Virginia Osprey Foundation, they are proud to report that Jenny Millward, their president, was featured in the June edition of the National Audubon magazine. The article highlights the town's Osprey along with the past disastrous Osprey seasons and brings national attention to these issues. affecting the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries. And then from the Colonial Beach Foundation, they are sponsoring the Dorothy Parton Imagination Library, so children from birth to five can receive free books in the mail each month. And if you are interested, registration info is on the foundation's website. And that's all I have.

Mr. Allison?

Good evening, everybody. Coming from the Public Works Department, we'll start with the infrastructures and utilities. There was two utility installs, two sewer installs, three repaired water leaks, nine cleared sewer backups. They flushed approximately 300 feet of sewer main, repaired one inflow and infiltration issue, began work on the meter component replacement program in the Shellfield Division, responded to a power failure at Castlewood Pump Station, and deployed a portable generator until normal power was restored. Moving on to the wastewater treatment plant, they continued to support the wastewater treatment plant systems and operations, installed drainage piping to improve drainage near the wastewater treatment plant building entrances, and continued roadway improvements around the wastewater treatment plant. Streets and stormwater started cutting right of ways and line of sight areas throughout town. Cleaned leaves and debris from drainage ditches and stormwater infrastructure. Removed fallen trees following storm events and picked up storm debris and sticks from the roadways. Moving on to our buildings and grounds, continued grass cutting operations throughout towns, raked and maintained the beach, repaired the volleyball net, rehabilitation of the picnic tables at Town Hill. performed parking meter maintenance, prepared facilities and grounds for the Potomac River Festival, utilizing all the public works divisions, and also provided public, provided Potomac River Festival support with approximately 6,200 pounds of trash collection during and following the event. And congratulations to all that work, because that is certainly a mess when we have that many people here at one time. So thank you very much.

That's a lot of trash. I'm going to keep mine short and sweet today. Just mostly want to give out kudos to everybody who had to come together to make last weekend such a great success. The 75th annual Potomac River Festival. I thought the parades were all exceptional. The events were a lot of fun. There were Although we had rain coming in on Friday, and I know it takes a lot of volunteers, the Chamber of Commerce, and a lot of dedicated people to put on everything from the pageant to the concerts that happened at the community center to lots of things going on, the pet parade and everything else. But I want to give a specific shout out to Chief Parsons because Chief was, and he's already being shy about it, but he was also our acting town manager for the weekend. And it was the best traffic control I've ever seen for Festival weekend. We got everybody out very quickly for the fireworks and the parade route all cleared and lots of officers out and about on the streets. They were very good presence of our officers out and the collaboration with the county and all the other agencies that assisted, I think is a show also of your exceptional leadership. So I just want to say that you deserve a little public kudos for that of all you took on last weekend. And I know you couldn't do it alone and that you also are very thankful for Public Works and all the work that Public Works did involved in that. It's a team process, I know. Coming up Friday is Juneteenth on Town Hill, so I just encourage everybody to come out to the Juneteenth event and come celebrate with us. It's always a lot of fun. There's good music and storytelling and food and vendors and lots of ways to celebrate the Juneteenth event. So just give a shout out to that on Friday. That's all I have. Next up is our town manager update.

Good evening, Madam Mayor, council members, members in the audience and those watching us online. We will begin with the Imboden utility report followed by my monthly updates.

where they come out and worked on it, then it just quit working and they come back out, worked on it again. So we're working on that. That number's not valid. The flow right now is probably more up to the last 700, 750,000 per day mark. So next page, please. So for the month, we had really good sample results. Everything was down pretty good. If you notice that one orange dot there at the very end of the month, when we brought that rental press in to start removing the sludge, when we do that, we press the sludge and we separate the water from the sludge so that water goes back through the wastewater plant and is treated What happened is when we started pressing, we had a built up of ammonia and nitrates, a good loading in that sludge. So that increased the concentration going through the plant and did cause the ammonia to spike right at the limit there. So that was a violation on the very last sample of the month. We made the adjustments, got that back under control. Everything's running pretty good now. Next page, please. That's just continued with the sample results. Everything's well done below the line. And that's really just your nitrates and phosphorus. Phosphorus is literally non-detect. Nitrates, you know, we're working on that. That's also going to fluctuate up and down while we're doing this pressing as those loading values change. Once we get the sludge out of these tanks and can use the plant the way it was designed, you know, we expect to see those numbers drop drastically there. So everything's moving along pretty well. And I do believe that's the end of that report. So one thing I do want to update you on on the sludge press. One thing I want to clarify for everyone is the town did not purchase a new sludge press. That's a huge cost. What we did is we rented a sludge press and it's a very large sludge press. So we've managed to get half of what we're trying to do out of the plant. We've got the real large nitrification tank empty. We've removed right at 520 tons of sludge so far, and we're halfway through. So that's a tremendous amount of solids built up in that plant. We're a little surprised that we're already that high. We've got the press now for another three weeks. We're moving along pretty well. We do expect to be able to complete all of it, and if not, we still have the option to have it for another month if we need it. We're moving pretty good there. Other than that, everything's moving as usual. Does anybody have any questions?

Mr. Williams?

Yeah, so I was just wondering if we have any updates on the fog, what is it, fat soil and grease? I know we were talking at one point about creating an ordinance or bringing something to council.

We still haven't completed all of that. We've been really focused on getting this ARPA stuff completed. I mean, we've had plenty of discussions about the fog, but we're not really ready to present that yet and get that approved.

Okay, thank you.

The ARPA closeout has to be by October, November?

Yes, and everybody's working as hard as they can on ARPA stuff right now because we have to make that deadline.

Yeah.

Any other questions? Okay, Natasha? Yeah.

Okay, as Councilmember Williams mentioned in his updates, we have hired Jason Church as our new parking enforcement and traffic attendant officer. With PD, we are very happy that he has started with us. Next slide. We also have our summer interns. with us. We have four summer interns this year, Noah Foster, Olivia Cook, Haley Smith, and Soraya Davis. Noah is a second time intern with the town. and he was also a graduating senior and he will be attending UVA in the fall. Towards the end of their summer internships right now, we have them rotating throughout all of the departments so that they can get a feel of what it's like to work in a locality because we really do want them to think of public service in their career goals. So I think this is really, really great for them as they rotate throughout all of the departments. Also, before they leave us for the summer, we are going to have one or a couple of them come and speak to council and just tell you all what they've learned throughout their summer. This past Monday we had a community gathering regarding the North Beach erosion control and shoreline resiliency project. our contractor, Kim Lee Horn, was available. We had folks just come in, take a look at the state of that area. Previously, some of the concept renderings that Kim Lee Horn has in mind for the project, we had a really, really good turnout. I was pleasantly surprised. We are having a follow-up meeting with Kimley Horn on Monday, and we will discuss next steps. And lastly, just an update regarding the Water Quality Improvement Fund. If you all recall, last year I presented that we sent a letter to DEQ requesting relief for years 2023 and 2024. Well, this go round, we're also writing another letter to DEQ to request relief for year 2025. And the reason we have to write another letter is because there's just been a lot of movement within DEQ and so there is a brand new group with DEQ who are not familiar with what we did in the past and so we have to just recreate all of that and we'll use information from the previous letter to submit this go-round. And that concludes my monthly updates. Any questions?

Mr. Williams?

Yeah, I was going to ask, we had, I think it was a month or so ago, we had discussed a request for the congressman to bring in the Corps of Engineers, and I know I've spoke with you guys, but I'm not sure if the rest of the council or the public's aware, but There was a little bit of a diversion from that. Can you explain to us what's going on with that? Are they going to come? I know from what the assistant town manager told me that we told them that we'd go seek assistance on our own versus having a congressman involved. I was wondering if you could kind of give us a little update on that and reasoning behind it for the rest of the council's awareness.

Well, the conversation... The conversation with the Congressman's office was we understood the process of working with the Corps of Engineers, and therefore he didn't feel like he needed to get involved. So we're still working on getting the Corps of Engineers to either decide whether or not they want to come down or not. But as we've been thinking through it, we're going to be asking the Congressman's office for some help on this FEMA grant, and we're also going to be asking for a letter of support as well with the Corps of Engineers.

Okay. Thank you. Oh, a question about the North Beach. Is there anything online? Was the meeting recorded, the public meeting? Any kind of notes or anything available for council? In case we missed it?

It wasn't informal gathering. We have a sign-in sheet. There wasn't a recording that took place. There were some concept drawings that were provided. We have those available, but they're not final. So once we have a final rendering, we'd be more than happy to provide it to council and also upload it on our site.

Okay, thank you.

Any other questions? Okay. All right, moving forward with presentation. Dylan is not coming tonight as most of our public works guys. like to stay in the shadows of their service. But I already signed his certificate last meeting, so I don't have it in front of me today to present. But I do want to give him a congratulations for five years of service with Public Works. It seems to have flown by. Don't you think? It just seemed like it was yesterday, and now we have five years of service. So do you want to say anything? Embarrass him some? Put anything else on public record? Okay.

That doesn't look like a public record kind of laugh, actually. All right.

Please let's extend him a thank you for five years of service with a round of applause and just pass that along to him, okay? So thank you, Dylan Payne. All right, next up is the Virginia 250th America Made in Virginia. Made in Westmoreland County, I like to say.

So we just thought that it would be fitting to provide a presentation on VA 250. I know we all have heard all about it and there's a lot of buzz surrounding this because America, I mean, Virginia is the birthplace of America. And since we will not have another council meeting prior to our July 3rd fireworks, I thought it was fitting that I brought this forward now. Next slide. So what is VA 250? For those of you who really don't know. VA 250 is the commemoration of the 250th anniversary of American independence. It celebrates Virginia's role in the founding of the nation. It promotes civic engagement, education, and tourism. And here in the Northern Neck, it's of particular importance because right here in our locality, two of our founding fathers were born and grew up. Next slide. So Colonial Beach's story and how we are just uniquely situated and are part of the VA 250, of course, is our wonderful waterfront heritage community, our rich connections to the Northern Neck, and as I stated earlier, our ties to founding fathers. This is an example of one of the banners in conjunction with Westmoreland County that we will display along our boardwalks. Now, this displays George Washington, who was our first president, and really who was the founder of our nation, and his birthplace was in Westmoreland County.

Next.

And right down the road here, James Monroe, his birthplace is right down the street, and there is a house that commemorates that, and there are tours that you can call and just tour the house. He was our fifth president of the United States, and this is a beautiful banner also that we will proudly display along our boardwalk. And as I was doing my research, I really was not aware of this, and this is just another source of pride for Colonial Beach. Frances L. Karn was a resident of Colonial Beach. She served in the U.S. Navy during World War II. She served in the Korean conflict from 1951 to 1954. She was the first female member of the Colonial Beach American Legion post-128 in 1946. She was a proud Potomac River Festival parade organizer, and she was a Colonial Beach Chamber of Commerce secretary and treasurer. When I learned this, I really, really was happy as a former service member myself to know that we had women back then just really leading and doing great things for Colonial Beach. Now why does all of this matter? VA 250 matters because it just fosters a sense of community pride, our tourism heritage, it spurs economic development and education and engagement because of the rich history that resides here in Colonial Beach and within Westmoreland County. Now Colonial Beach today from our rich historic past, we are now an accredited Main Street community. We have just been awarded the Virginia Holtheimer Award and we continue to be and remain a vibrant waterfront community and we have tourists who come here since we are the second longest public beach within the state of Commonwealth of Virginia. And so we just want to really continue to foster the tourism that we have started. As I've mentioned, we have the honor and the distinction of being Virginia's second largest public beach, our Potomac River destination, and our rich history and recreation opportunities that abound here. So the vision for VA 250, I just encourage you all to celebrate our history. Go and visit the Monroe House. Visit George Washington birthplace. And it's also a sense of inspiration for our future generations. I know we'll talk about this with our summer interns as well. I cannot begin to just express the sense of pride and excitement that I feel to serve in a community that really was the cradle of our great nation here today. And these are just some wonderful pictures that I wanted to share with you all. Next slide. And that concludes my VA 250 presentation.

Thank you. Next up is our annual Marina Way report. Phil Bolen, welcome.

Thank you. My name is Phil Bolen, for those who don't know me. And I'm here being a spokesman for the eight marinas in the town. And we've decided that an annual little five-minute presentation would be good to make sure that you all know what the marinas are doing and that we care and to get any feedback that you all may have. With me, I want to introduce Chuck Woodruff, who is the owner of the Ice House Brewery, Cafe, and Marina, and Bill Bowman, who is the owner of... the Boathouse Marina, and Patty Woodside, who's an employee of him working, and they're here to support me. The others are getting their marinas ready for the summer. And you all may know that we had a fairly significant event last month when the Colonial Beach Yacht Center, after many, many years in operation, was sold, and the owners have retired, and we now have a new marina in town. It's called Stringer's Marina and Yacht Center. And so I think we'll see a lot from them. They're very excited. We've talked to them. The face of the family that bought that marina is Mark Donovan. He wants to come by and meet everybody, but right now he's on the other side of the state. But we'll start to see him around town. And I think it will be a pleasant and nice and good for us. Okay. I think the most important thing right now that we'd like to let you know is that the marinas of Virginia Beach are really deeply invested in the success, the identity and the future of this town. We operate here because we believe in the community. and we work every day to strengthen it by attracting visitors, providing jobs, supporting events, building partnerships, and supervising fundraising activities. Our business is a part of the town's economy, but more importantly, we are part of the civic fabric of this town. We appear before the council today to demonstrate that our commitment is not symbolic, but active and ongoing. Through coordinated advertising, community partnerships, charitable efforts, and operational improvements, we are working every day to support the town that we call home. MarinaWay is a unique asset within Colonial Beach. It provides eight marinas, three restaurants, a brewery, a motel, and a boat ramp that anchor a vibrant waterfront and they connect seamlessly with the town, Main Street shops, dining, and the year-round activities that help define our character. Our goal is to continue strengthening that connection and expanding the value we bring to the community. Now, the remainder of this presentation will just be a short cut of some of the things that we are going to do this year and some of the ways that we support the town, and then give you time to make comments if you would like. The first one we'd like to talk about, wayfinding signage is very important. We have been working with the town manager, Natasha, the director of economic development, Charlotte, and public works, with success. We have a short-term solution to wayfinding, three wayfinding signs to get people down into the Marina Way area. And if you are not familiar with the confines of Marina Way area, I've given you all copies of the presentation and the last page shows a graphic that the town made that shows where Marina Way stands. But we have this short-term fix for three signs, and we're going to work diligently with the town to come up with the themed approach that you want. And I think that will be fine. Okay, next, the waterway guide. If you'll raise, I've given you two packets. The second packet is your, those are Xeroxes of seven pages and waterway guide. And whoever has the waterway guide, if they'd hold it up, Okay, that's the guide itself. We bought an advertising package with the help of the town and the chamber, and there's eight of those books out, and four of them, those seven pages that I've given you, are a great write-up of the town and an advertisement. And we've got this year, 2027, to prepare, and we're gonna do it one more time. And that was a $9,000 package bought for $4,000. each for two years. So I think that is going to help out the town greatly. And I know I'm running out of time.

I had an eight-minute pitch and I got down to five, right?

Go to the next page, please. The next page will show you... Okay, there it is. We're going to be reviewing... what we can get out of the northern deck and state tourism. We're gonna support the Sail 250 activities. We're supporting the September Colonial Beach Music Festival and also the Potomac River Yacht Club Association float-in. And that float-in itself will be bringing 50 to 60 boats to walk around the town with all their people. So with that, I'm gonna have to kind of quit because I've got the end of five minutes. But just know that we're here. We're part of the town. We're supporting it. Appreciate any feedback or questions you may have.

I have a question. The signage for Marina Way is very exciting to me. Will we get to see what that's going to look like?

Oh, yes, ma'am.

Okay.

Yeah. No, it'll all go through the proper channels. It's just we're working it up We've worked with Charlotte and and Natasha and we know we need it and we're trying to get it out And of course, we're going to go through the approval process the town approval process to put them up

And we just want to make sure we stay consistent with the branding. We've spent a lot of money and time getting that together for the town. We want to make sure everything is...

The short-term fix is the signs will not... There will just be a modification of what's up. The new signs that we'll be working on will be exactly the theme that you have that Fraser Associates came up with. They will match that identically. And no other questions? Feedback? Okay, that's all I have.

Hold on, Mr. Williams has a question.

Yeah, I was just wondering, do you have any updates or news, anything new happening, upgrades for any of the marinas, like charters or anything coming that the public could know about for the summer?

I don't have anything that we can, no, I don't have anything right now, but if you're interested in that sort of stuff, we'll make sure next time we come by, we'll have that as part of this package. All right, thank you. You're welcome.

Have you done the tiki boat cruise yet, David? It's really good.

Huh?

The tiki boat cruise.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I just did one two weeks ago for my friend's birthday. Highly recommend it.

Okay. Anything else? Okay.

Thank you. All right, next up, I believe Mr. Trivett is out of town this week, and so we will move right along to the Colonial Beach Public Schools. Dr. Sarah Schmidt, welcome.

Good evening, Madam Mayor, council members, and everybody else present tonight. Thank you for giving me this opportunity to speak for Dr. Addo. He's out of town, starting a much needed and deserved vacation. We'll begin with the fiscal year 27 budget. The governor's biennium budget has not been approved yet, as I know you all are aware, and we hope for approval by the end of the month, and we're waiting for our final approval until the governor figures out what's going on with the budget in the state. As you know, we ended the school year on a high note and gained momentum into the summer months. We've had a few vacancies that we're trying to fill with high quality people. We have one special education position open at the high school, two instructional assistant positions opened at the elementary school. We need a bus driver. If anybody wants to drive bus, we will train you how to do it. and a full-time custodian. We're always looking for substitutes. We've had a great group of substitutes this year from the community, and we'd love to have a few more. You can visit our website, click on HR, and then on the vacancies to complete an application. We're very excited that this summer Ms. Cassandra Dickerson is going to be operating our book van at several locations around the beach. Last week the book van was at Riverwood Apartments to read and distribute books to our students. It will be parked at the Juneteenth Celebration and stop by with your kids to get a free book to read if you'd like. You have a update on the front entrance and the renovation. The project is on time and on budget. I'm sorry Mr. Trevor, it's not here to hear me say that. But it is on time and on budget, and we anticipate the renovation of the main office, the interior part, to be completed by the second week of July. All they have left to do is put down the flooring, the painting's done, the ceilings, drop tiles have been put in, the toilets need to be installed. But other than that, things are moving along well, and we expect the front entrance to be done by the first week in August. We've been waiting for some materials to come in, and they're supposed to be in at the start of next week, will be making visible progress very soon. We also received a school construction grant of $420,000 for another project upcoming, but it will require evidence of project progress to the Virginia Department of Education for us to receive that. We'll have a better understanding of where our CIP funds are after June 30 and at the end of the high school renovation and front entrance project. Does anybody have any questions for me?

No, I think Mr. Trivett says on time and under budget.

Under budget. Oh, I think you're right, under budget. Hey, that was a good effort. I did the best I could. Thank you all very much.

Thank you. All right, next up is our public comment. This is general public comment. During all public comments or hearings, we ask that certain guidelines be followed. We're gonna ask that you come up and stand at the podium and for the record, please state your name and address. If you'd like to be contacted, please provide that contact information to the clerk on the sheet. If you did not fill that out on the sheet, you can always just let Heather know. and just make sure you get it to her. Make your comments to the council as a whole. Be brief, state your position, and provide facts. And you may provide written statements or other supporting materials to the clerk for distribution to the council and the town manager. Debate is prohibited. We do follow up on comments by the town manager. We do ask that you speak clearly as we want to hear what you have to say. And council will try to hear everyone who wishes to speak on any subject. The comments are limited to five minutes. Time cannot be transferred to another speaker. And if you represent a group, you may wish to identify the other members of your group who are in attendance today. And after public comment is closed, I encourage you to stay as the council engages in dialogue and deliberation of additional agenda items, which may sometimes answer some of the questions that come up within the public comment. With that, we'll open public comment at 6.49 p.m. I have.

welcome mr long madam mayor town councillors um i actually part of what i was going to talk about was already been covered by the town manager that north shore meeting was really exciting when i think back to was it october 2024 when we were in the kobe space um sort of a number of people tearing their hair out about how on earth we could save the North Shore from falling into the Potomac, and all the suggestions were to get back onto the Army Corps of Engineers. We saw plans as to some things that could happen, and to me that was very exciting that we have the opportunity to not so much grow the town, but prevent part of the town from disappearing. In that, create a potential boardwalk, create flood barriers within the boardwalk. As that develops, because I realize that was only a conceptual discussion, and as the other challenges of how this could be done and more importantly how it can be funded. I think these are really exciting things that you as town councillors can work on now and which probably will not be executed till some future town council. But these are the things that you can do to move the town forward. Another thing I was going to mention, so it was very exciting. Another thing we heard about back at the meeting on, was it May the 20th, where the Potomac Crossing Development Authority had raised its head again. I'd just like to suggest that you may want to ask for regular updates on what is happening. Maybe you're getting them. but regular updates every quarter, every six months on what's happening on that Potomac Crossing site. That's 490 acres of potential development and thousands of people who could be added to the town at one end of the spectrum. Clearly the golf course that was planned for there is not gonna happen, but these are important things that you need and will and are looking after for the town. And I think as residents, we should all appreciate that. Obviously, you have oversight roles, and I see you're again going to talk about, I'm not quite sure what, because the scuttlebutt, although I shouldn't advertise a restaurant in Cobb Island, the discussion was about people, about the town manager or somebody giving discounts under the table to developers. That was the talk and I want to be clear that there is no suggestion, no authority that that happened by anything that's been made public to us residents. Our town officials, in my opinion and for what I'm allowed to see, represent the town in an honorable and above board way, and help grow the town under your direction. And I think that's a wonderful thing, and I think it's important that everybody here in town, I know you as councillors recognize this, but that everybody in town understands that. I'm not saying oversight isn't important, but I want to make sure that those things are made clear as you get into the nitty-gritty of how many water meters need to be attached to a particular three or four bedroom condo unit or whatever it is that's important in your oversight. Thank you for that. Madam Mayor, I would just say I'm glad you got the cream and white memo. Thank you.

Welcome.

Good evening. Eric Nelson, 1321 Lawson Avenue. Madam Mayor, Council, thank you for letting me speak this evening. I have two things on my mind. One of them is related to downtown Colonial Beach. So I have been on the board of downtown Colonial Beach for close to five years, I guess, and I've been the president for two and a half years. And I'm very, very proud of the progress that downtown Colonial Beach has made. while I've been on the board and certainly while I've been president over the past two and a half years. We have gone from second stage now to third stage and even a higher stage with downtown Colonial Beach in terms of our recognition statewide and nationally. but I am turning 70 next year next month sorry I'm turning 70 next month it's time for me to move on it's time for for somebody else to take the reins of downtown Colonial Beach and some new ideas some new energy it's time for me to pursue other objectives in my life so I am going to be stepping down from the presidency of downtown Colonial Beach I will still be What do you call it? Not an ex officio, but emeritus. And we'll be doing sort of special projects for the organization. So I won't be disappearing from downtown Colonial Beach, but I will not be in a leadership position. And Kelly Vaughn has been elected to be president of downtown Colonial Beach. And I feel very comfortable and very happy with the direction that the organization is going. particularly since now for almost a year and a half we have an executive director who really seems to be showing exactly all the great things that she's being paid to do, both as the town's economic development officer and as the executive director for downtown Colonial Beach. So I just wanted to let you know that this will be my last presentation to you as the president of downtown Colonial Beach, Don't worry, you'll still be seeing me. I'm going to be wrapping myself up more closely in the activities of CB Creative. And in fact, I do have the second thing I wanted to mention to you is that we do have a project going on right now at CB Creative. Jimmy and Jennifer Gross have created a toy, beach toy borrow library, I think is what they're called. And I hope they've gotten approval from the town to put it somewhere on the boardwalk. I assume they have. That's not been my responsibility. My responsibility was to get it from the grosses and to paint it. And so on Sunday, this Sunday, Father's Day, between 1 and 4 o'clock, we're going to have a finger painting painting party for this box that's going to go somewhere on the boardwalk. So we're going to let kids of all ages, including myself, a 70-year-old kid, I'm going to stick my hand in paint, and I'm going to put my handprints on this box that's going to have If you haven't heard of these things, they are places where people can borrow toys from them and bring them and leave them after they've used them. So the box hopefully will be full all the time of toys that kids can use on the beach. If you are looking for something to do for Father's Day, come out between 1 and 4 to see Be Creative. Get your hands wet in paint and help us decorate this toy box. That's all I had to say. Thank you. Thank you.

Next is Mr. Randy Hall.

Welcome, Randy.

Good evening.

My comments are regarding item number 11, unfinished business, tab B, follow up. As you consider town attorney Powell Dugan's draft water sewer ordinance updates, here are some concerns to be considered before moving forward. I believe what brought this issue to a head was not only the ever-increasing quarterly water sewer trash bills, but what appears to be possible discounts given to certain developers that are outside the scope of the current ordinance. I don't have any axes to grind. I just want to try to lay it out there, and maybe you can answer the question I have. After reviewing Section 21-73 of the Water Sewer Ordinance for single-family dwellings, townhouses, duplexes, semi-detached units, multi-family dwelling units, apartments, condominiums, and mobile home parks, Ordinance Number 628 took effect July 1, 2012, and it clearly states no connection with the town water system shall be made except after a payment of a connection fee as listed. I'm not gonna go through the list, but you can look at the ordinance that shows the list of how that's supposed to be applied. After that, ordinance number 744 took effect July 1st, 2023, which firmed up the language to read, each unit must be individually metered and associated fees as listed paid prior to connection. So my question, and again, no ax to grind here, but after both these ordinances were in effect, The Dotson Development Group Phases 3A and Phases 3B Memorandum of Agreement, which is drafted by our own attorney here, town attorney, Powell Dugan, was executed on November 17th, 2023 and recorded in the book. So the question for the council and town manager to consider, were these ordinances, 628 and 744, which clearly took effect prior to the MOA execution, ignored for this development? In other words, is it a level playing field for other developers, or is it, you know, it's a perceived discount, but I'd like some clarification. So in closing, I read Mr. Powell's draft and in my opinion, the update listed on tonight's agenda as 21-25 and 21-36 only weakens the ordinances already in place. I'm in favor of strengthening the wording of the current water sewer ordinance if needed and requiring council's approval for any discounts to developers. More importantly, however, the town manager and the town council need to enforce the ordinances that are already in place. So it looks like the ordinances were there, but perhaps overlooked or something else happened and they weren't applied evenly to all developers. Transparency, accountability, and integrity of the town council and town manager is crucial to instill confidence in our elected officials for the citizens of Colonial Beach. Thank you. And I left my email address in case you wanna reply to that. Thank you.

Thank you, Andy. Would anybody else like to come up for public comment? All right, going once, going twice, sold. 7.02 p.m. we'll close public comment. and lead us right into following up to the town council and manager's role determining the types and number of sewer connection or of water connections, connections, meters, all of those things. A follow up from our prior discussion and Mr. Duggan, you wanna introduce us?

Yes. First of all, I'm here to draft what council wants me to draft, but I really need to know what you want me to draft. And there's a difference between policy and ordinances. My concern is that if the town has a policy that conflicts with its ordinance, that the ordinance probably prevails. So in this case, I've given my opinion last time that the town manager has the authority over the types and number of water connections. If you pass a policy saying, If you want the town council to approve that, you still have the ordinance that the town manager has that authority. So I think we just need some clarification of whatever you want me to do, I would prefer to do it as an ordinance. But if you do it as a policy, then it may be good for a net six months because it's policy of this council, not a policy of a future council. If it conflicts with what the manager has the authority to do, that can be problematic. I just point that out. There's been a lot of discussion about discounts. I need to clarify that. What you're talking about here is two different types of connections. There's a commercial connection, which is, my understanding, is different equipment. It's usually bigger pipes. Then there's a residential connection. I don't think there's been any discount given on any of this. The fees are set. You pay this dollar amount for a commercial connection two and a half times plus ongoing fees. it starts making it up with time because the quarterly fees are higher. The residential, you pay a certain amount. So it's not about those amounts being reduced. I understand the gentleman's comment about The timing issue, this negotiated issue started months before I came here in late 2022. What I saw was pretty much negotiated by the time I got it. And I clarified some things and went through some things and made it what I think is much stronger for the town. But the question is, You know, I don't see Dotson as getting some huge benefit here. I mean, maybe there was, but it wasn't a discount. The question is maybe they should have been charged for each individual hookup, but there could be some town expenses associated with that, equipment expenses. So, I mean, this is to clarify what's been out there. But with that in mind, what I... did here was try to address what I understood to be the issue we were talking about at the last council meeting, which was who has authority over the number and types of connection. And as I said, it's rough science, it may not be science at all, but I figured since the commercial connection is two and a half times the cost of the residential connection, and plus it has the usage fees, which the residential connection does not, that it would make sense for a town manager, if you want to make any changes, right now the town manager has the authority over it all, but if you want to make any changes, you could allow, as an example, just to throw it out there, you could allow the town manager to have authority for the first three years that basically equate one commercial meter with three residentials, that she gets to decide for a commercial connection up to three units and the council above that. So that's what I drafted. But again, this is just out there for you to see. I don't know if you want to act on it. If you act on it, we have to advertise it because there'll be a change in the ordinance. If you want me to do something else, I'll be glad to do something else. But I just think it needs to be clear what you want me to do and what direction we're headed here. If you decide you want to do anything.

Okay, I'm sure there's a lot more we could discuss about this, but I want to clear the understanding of maybe what had happened in the past or what it is happening or how this came about. As far as I know, I don't know that the council at the time in 2023, There was nobody upset about this in 2023, so I sort of feel like all of a sudden bringing it up two years later because we have a budget shortfall in operational costs was misleading. I say that not being that it was intentionally misleading, but that it ended up, I think, having this idea, this cast of discounts or something to that effect. My recollection in 2023, and I was here obviously, although I don't remember everything that was said three years ago. But we had many meetings which we meet in closed session about for all development or new business issues about the MOU with Dotson and changes to the contract throughout many years from 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023. In fact, you go back in the minutes, we went into closed session for Dotson twice in February and March before passing this ordinance. And so I guess when we included that the old ordinance applied for everyone who was in that permitting process up until July 1st, It naturally included Dotson too because they had been in negotiations with us and with these permits, negotiations about all of this, the whole building project, for years. Now I do think there's a different interpretation that has been out there about the prior ordinance. So when I read the prior version of the ordinance before we made the changes, it says A, meter a connection a it says a connection to an apartment condominium single family home blah blah blah right it says a connection does that say a connection per condominium unit per apartment unit per separate unit it says per condominium per apartment But what we're really talking about with Dotson is a mixed-use building. It has commercial on the bottom and the condominiums above. And so that would fall under the commercial, which is under one roof, and that's where that language was before. So I think this is all in how can you interpret the prior code. Is it clear? Maybe it wasn't that clear. And we obviously didn't think it was that clear because we revised it at the time. But under that prior code, a lot of things were, fell under that prior code for all those years. And we have other buildings in town that are single meter on multiple uses because of that same code. So I don't know that it was evenly applied across the board for, way before my time involved in that for a decade or more, I do think that the way that legally it was interpreted was that it was a connection fee per condominium, condominium being a building of condos, a connection fee per the building. and not a connection fee per unit and so in that case that's why it was not interpreted as you know per unit metering that metering per unit would mean you put in a physical town meter every single unit which can happen and now is what's in the code but at that time nothing including beach was really getting done that way and there may be You know, it wasn't if it was taken to court and it said a meter per that, you know, condominium and a condominium could be defined as the building of condominiums because it doesn't say per unit or per individual apartment. We needed to fix that part of the code and we have done that. I wonder if there's kind of two ways to solve this problem. We have already fixed the code. I think the code is much stronger. I don't think it is necessarily, I think it's getting a little in the weeds for council to hold up meter and water utility connections at a council level. But if we wanna be more informed about what new utilities are being applied for, then I think we should just direct our town manager to give us more information on her, you know, biweekly updates on what connections are being applied for so that we have more information. I think if part of this all stems from, you know, maybe not being as informed about things or not feeling like there was enough information about it. I wasn't aware when the MOU was signed and in effect, I wasn't necessarily a part of all that, but we were talking about dots and those agreements a lot back then for all kinds of reasons. So I don't, I don't feel like it was something under the rug in that sense, but I do feel like this coming up three years later has been more related to the fact that we have to sustain our utility bills today, and those were one-time fees three years ago, and actually the DOTS and units have added 40 monthly billing connections per, so it's actually added quite a bit of additional revenue into our annual budget. So what I'm saying is, do we just need to tell Natasha that we wanna know more about connections and who's applying for connections, or do we wanna go down a whole process of changing the ordinance after we already bolstered it? And that's, I guess, the first step, because if we just wanna be more informed and feel like we have better information, and I think a lot of this happened really under the prior town manager, I do think Natasha will, you know, understands, you know, Ms. Tucker understands If we want more information, she'll give it to us. Or do we really want to go down the whole thing of rewriting the ordinance again and going through the public hearings? And I guess that's the first direction of council as a body, how do we want to handle this? Where are we leaning at as a body?

I personally don't see how it benefits the town, because that's really what we're talking about here, because this is the solution in search of a problem. As we just discovered, there was nothing underhanded about what happened. The ordinance was the ordinance when Dotson got their fees, just like other developers at that time. And we grandfathered in people who had already had bids in. We gave them six months to close the deal. That's been said, I think, in council three times now. So I don't see how it helps us to say over and over again so that we have people who are hearing on Cobb Island about underhanded things that are going on here in Colonial Beach. That doesn't serve us. By trying to recreate the wheel Again, searching for a solution to a problem that doesn't exist. We're spending tens of thousands of payroll dollars dealing with this, spinning around in circles, and not solving anything. So I don't see how it behooves us to, as far as speed for the developers, as far as giving us better service, that we tie the town manager's hands and get more involved in a granular basis on something that frankly we don't have the training or the degrees to handle. So that's my particular feeling.

Yes, I'll say my piece. little flabbergasted here this sounds like groundhog day same things over and over but so one of the comments was no one was upset in 2023. i don't know how many times i have to remind everybody that in 2023 in september i asked the assistant time manager at the time how many connections was Dotson getting and how much was he paying and no answer and a couple months later the negotiations were done and I finally got my answer in April of 24. So how is, that's one thing I don't quite understand is nobody was saying anything because it was kept from us. So I don't know why a little bit of transparency and maybe council attention to these things would hurt Like I said earlier, the negotiations were done but without any council knowledge. The old ordinances, I mean, this has been brought up numerous times. this per condo, one apartment would only get one connection, that notion, I just, I don't even get it. I've been through these ordinances numerous times. And just because it doesn't, I swear it doesn't say a condo, I think it says condos and apartments, but I don't know if you have it in front of you or not, but I don't think it said a condo, a apartment.

It says a connection per, it says a connection for, I think not per, condominium apartment, single family home.

Everything else is spelled out in the ordinance though. It says housing units per, housing units and different dwellings, duplexes, all these things are listed out and it says the fee per. And so I don't know how anybody can interpret that condos, you could have 100 of them and it would be one connection. I mean, I just don't know how anybody can even interpret that, but that's beside the point. It's obvious that several people up here don't really wanna have any kind of policy in place, but to the concern raised by the town attorney, what was proposed in this, well, one question I do have is policy. You're saying that policy's only good as the council acts it, so like, what, it's over in three months or six months?

Well, I mean, I think you, you'd be hard pressed to say that a policy adopted by this council binds a future council. I think an ordinance is different. You go through that and a future council can change that, but I think of a policy as more, this is what we're doing now, this is what we expect. Now maybe that's my own interpretation, but we really, people look at ordinances more than policies.

So I sent a sample policy and basically what it laid out was requiring council votes, requiring regular reporting and all those things. You're saying if this council voted for that, a future council wouldn't continue with it? They wouldn't have to like, rejected or voted out or overturned?

What I'm saying is my preference would be that if this council wants to have something codified, wants to have something that people look to and can depend on that's not just a policy of this council in relation to the manager, then you need to set that out in an ordinance. Mr. Williams, I'm not saying that if you adopt a policy and it's not changed, that maybe there's an argument that's still good for the next council, maybe so. I'm just saying it's a whole lot weaker than what an ordinance would be.

Okay, I do get that. I'm not sure the choice of choosing three connections and also throwing in residential when it's not even included in our current ordinance.

Let me just say that that's my own just throw out there because I didn't know what y'all wanted. So I figured I'd throw out something for you to talk about.

I personally, if we were gonna enact something like this, maybe the commercial piece of it, but not include residents as commercials. I do wanna set the record straight. At the last meeting, we were told that the old code did require, it specified that units under one roof were all under one connection. That is not anywhere in our code that I could find.

Did you look under the commercial paragraph? Because it's still in there.

Yes, I looked.

I can, I don't, I'm not bringing up all this code because that's not what the agenda item is and if we want to have the agenda item over that specific code then we should be including that code in our packet and prepared for that. I haven't read a policy that is out there. I don't know anything about this policy. I mean, if you want to get somewhere on this, I think as a council, and I want the whole council, we operate as a body. If you're asking for something individually and it is not given to you, bring it to the body. The body acts. That is how the government works. So I can't do anything, you can't do anything alone, right? So where are we as a body on resolving this issue Do we just wanna ask the town manager to give us more information up front so that we stay, we feel like we have our hand on the pulse of what's going on with this stuff, or do we want to continue to have an attorney work on ordinance changes and go through public hearings? Where are we as a body?

Okay, can I finish? This is my opinion. I feel like we should have a policy. I understand what the town attorney's saying, but I would like to see a policy. I don't see anything wrong with transparency where council would vote on discounts. I know I've heard it numerous times, trust the staff. The staff, they're lawyers and we're not and all these things. But at the end of the day, It is about transparency and it's about protecting the citizens of this town. And I don't think I need to remind everybody what happened just a few years ago when a pastor of a predominant church in town and also the president of rescue squad stole money from the rescue squad. So nobody's beyond reproach. I mean, I'm not saying that anybody on town staff would do anything, but I'm saying that If you put rules in place and checks and balances, that just keeps everybody honest. It keeps questions from being asked about who's doing what, who's getting discounts, who's getting favors or what's happening. Nobody can say anything because it'll be all out in public. It'll be published. Council will have it before them. The public will have it before them. I know it was stated previously that I don't want to be as a politician approached by people and bringing this into politics. Well, you have to convince at least four people. Somebody would have to come to at least four people and convince them. It would have to be put out in public and we would have to explain ourselves if we gave a discount. So I don't know how that makes it less secure or less public and not like a political favor. So to me this would be common, what I forwarded to council, I'm not sure if everybody had a chance to read it, but it was just done by AI and it was very succinct. It gave a breakdown of what kind of, what the policy would do. It outlined what a discount was and it included something about reduction in connection requirements as one of those things that would be reported and voted on. it would require disclosure to the public, which is to me is always a good thing. Um, and like I said, transparency. So my suggestion would be to have a policy. If the town attorney says that we would be better off with changing our ordinance, then I'm fine with just putting in the ordinance that the town manager would have to come to council for any reductions. So if a residential building, needed more than one meter or connection per unit. In fact, one thing we could do, I guess, to the mayor's point, is we could strengthen the, because I don't even think that the current ordinance says per unit as far as condo and apartment, even though it says each dwelling unit. If that's something we may want to consider strengthening as well, I would support that. Oh, and just one last point I wanted to make. I know it was brought up last time that they weren't really getting a discount for their connections because, say for example, they're only getting one meter, so one meter costs the town less money, so therefore it's justified to give them one meter and one connection and charge them one connection fee. but there's a lot more to the connection fee. I'm sure people that were in the meetings a few years back when we updated this, we were told by town staff the whole part of the reason for increasing the fees was because of the extra drain on the system and to help with the maintenance of the system. So if you take that per unit and reduce it, those fees, you're taking away not just the connection cost, but you're also taking part of the cost of maintaining the system and upgrading the system to handle the extra load. So I would like to, I guess, ask the town attorney to, draft some sort of policy and if council sees fit to edit the water sewer code to require approvals for any reductions in residential unit hookups.

I'd like to hear from more council members.

Mr. Williams, in reading the information that you provided, and from what you were speaking to last council meeting. If I can have a moment. to read some of this. So here it says, no fee discount shall be granted unless approved by an affirmative vote of the governing body at a public meeting. No reduction, waiver, modification, credit, or adjustment of any utility connection requirement shall be granted unless approved by an affirmative vote of the governing body at a public meeting. Administrative officers and employees shall have no authority to approve, negotiate, promise, or implement a fee discount or reduction of utility connection requirements except as expressively authorized by ordinance and approved by the governing body. Finally, any agreement, memorandum, permit condition, development agreement, staff determination, or administrative action that purports to grant a fee discount or reduction of utility connection requirements without governing body approval shall be void and of no effect. Is that basically summing up what you were originally asking, that anything any reductions or discounts is brought before the council?

Yes. Okay. It wasn't just, I know that mostly been made up about water and sewer connections, but this is in general.

Okay. And in pertaining to commercial and residential and or residential or both?

If it's a reduction, I believe it should come before council. I know our ordinances are pretty concrete when it comes to connections and commercial. Usually it states very clearly that multiple commercial units can be under one roof depending on the situation. So I acknowledge that and I have no concerns with that. Honestly, my whole problem with all what's happened in the past is the residential

aspect of it okay so what was written here or i guess what was proposed is this in line with what you ask or you need um a policy revision per what mr dugan was saying a policy revision that anything is it looking for a dollar amount or is it in general across the board what's stated here any kind of reduction any dollar amount or whatever is brought before council because i want to understand where you are to get it clear because last week we had so much over talking so much flip and dismissive and disregard and so many voices that a lot was lost last meeting so i want to be clear Say specifically do you want a policy or do you want an ordinance change? Encompassing all of these things here that you shared with us That it comes before Council which has been stated in many ordinances before anything will come before Council and that way We get to vote on that Policy or ordinance?

First, I would like the policy. And secondly, if that's the town attorney's recommendation to strengthen the policy, then add that language of any reduction in residential connections would be approved by council.

Okay. All right. Thank you. I just wanted to have that clarity there to go forward. So in searching based on what you mentioned, brought up last meeting and what was said, it is in line that any kind of reduction as it states here or discounts should be brought before council. So my question is, are we looking at a certain dollar amount? Because I remember in a separate discussion with Ms. Tucker, remind me, Natasha, I think you said you can make decisions up to 30,000 without, come into council and anything over that comes to us? That was separate, that was related to the small purchasing policy. Okay, so this would have to take a different dollar amount caveat or something like that if it comes before you. So, Mr. Williams, are you looking then for a dollar threshold amount?

That was suggested at the last meeting. I'm fine with either a dollar threshold or none. Some council members seem to have significant heartburn over small amounts. I would like to see those reported, even if we set a threshold. Say, for example, if we set a threshold for 5,000, that it would be publicly disclosed and brought to council.

Okay, Ms. Tucker, with the water and the sewer and the different connection fees, what in your opinion would be a reasonable threshold that would come to council? Because we want to be able to have transparency. We want to have it on all sides. Transparency for the town that we are aware of what's happening, and I'm asking this suggesting no kind of clock and dagger activities. This is just for clarity. What would you suggest would be a dollar amount from dealing with these different connections and what you have seen that would cause, that would say require coming to council? Can you give us an idea of a dollar amount threshold?

I don't think that I could give a dollar amount because each situation would be unique and different. And so I did not negotiate nor deal with Dotson directly. As Mr. Duggan mentioned, He and I both came in on the very end of negotiations and we reviewed and signed 3A and 3B, but we were not a part of any of those negotiations. So there have been no negotiations in the three years that I've been town manager to even have an idea to bring to you as to what an amount would be.

because I'm seeing it from both sides, from being private sector, budgeting, and stuff like that. It is good to have oversight. That way, like I said last meeting, whether it's you that's the current town manager or anybody going forward, any kind of reductions, even if it's a case that you have to, in your reports to us, tell us this was before you. There's good to have oversight, but I don't want to also see that we are in a place where every thing comes to us where we kind of impede progress. But I don't want to see the haste creates waste where it's like we are giving stuff up and then it gives the appearance that we are going to balance something on the backs of our citizens, which is what we don't want to have. So I think it's the positioning and the transparency of what we want. And I think to Mr. Williams' credit, we can have a policy and per Mr. I don't know, I say Duggan, but per Mr. Duggan, we can enact a policy then that will probably last or the next council will not uphold. So my thing is maybe Mr. Williams, if you want to go back and give an ordinance, I guess that's what will stand and what is best, but create the language where it's clear and It also allows the town staff to still, you know, function efficiently, but with not a lot of undo back and forth, which could hinder progress or thwart or retard what the businesses we're trying to get in because I know it's, I've walked around, visited many businesses and we're just hearing, we're not business friendly. So we're trying to ear on the side of caution for everybody. So a policy or an ordinance is a good thing to have in place for checks and balances and to mirror transparency. And that's my 25 cents on that matter.

Ms. Grandstaff, I wanted to add more to the question that you posed. If I heard Mr. Williams correctly, he said all reductions to be brought to council now. for members in the community who are facing any kind of hardship with their water sewer bills. I do now have the authority to work with them in terms of providing any sort of payment plans or anything like that, and now historically, that's not been brought before council, that's always been within my purview and my authority to have those discussions with those residents. So as I understand you, Mr. Williams, just for clarification, would instances on that level,

also um be brought because that happens um on any given day or anything and also um i'd like to add no okay and i'm in agreement with that i don't want any okay if we're helping our citizens who are in financial constraints i don't want sure that being something that's broadcasted because they're already in a certain sensitive situation. And I think no matter what, we retain people's dignity. So I would not have that as part of any of the reduction to be brought before council.

I think that could be specified in there as well as a threshold of dollars. Obviously every hundred dollars we don't want to come in, but I said a thousand last time and people got pretty upset, but I mean, we could, I'm sure we could agree on it as a council somewhere in there. And if they're all disclosed to the public, I'm personally willing to set the threshold higher.

Anyone else?

Okay, I'd like to hear from all of our council members. So we've got four people. We've still got three people. Can I get some feedback on what the body is thinking? Now none of you want to make eye contact with me.

No change.

All right. That was something. Mr. Larson?

So for sure, I couldn't support a policy that would bring $25 discounts to council for approval. That just seems... So we have to have some kind of a, if we're gonna go down this path at all, it has to be a dollar limit that's material, and not material due to, you know, my wallet, but at the town level of material, right? So that first thing, gotta have a dollar threshold, got to. And I'm wondering though if, If the things fall below that threshold, your idea is, well, let's just report them out, but we don't have to vote on them. Could we do that with all of it? This is really about transparency in your mind, I think, Mr. Williams. And so is there some way that we could sort of have a reporting infrastructure in place that makes all the charges for water-sewer connections and discounts of other sorts available for public inspection, for council inspection? Do we really need to vote on them? Because if they're going to be publicly reviewed, I think that's a pretty good deterrent for bad actors that might otherwise want to do something that they ought not do, the discount. And I don't worry about that with you or your staff, but the future staff that has bad intent. That's where I'm at. I think we need to sort of pull way back on how many things that would end up coming to council for vote in this scenario, but I'm happy to see more transparency in fee discounts and reductions and things.

Do you have a dollar threshold in mind? If you said you, obviously $25, no. $1,000, $5,000?

Okay, before we go further down into writing a policy that we don't even have a draft of in front of us, I just want to see where Ms. Sanford and I get here from.

I don't think we need to get in the degree of like $25. I think it needs to be just a discount. It's a discount.

I have a question. Does the council today see that if we ask the town manager to bring forward her interpretations of water and sewer connections that we would have a problem with that? Like, is there a problem today, right now? Is there a problem right now that we're concerned about that is threatening the citizens of the town? Or, yes.

You asked a question, so I got an answer.

Yep.

We've got Lenar coming. That could be millions of dollars.

Correct.

Hundreds of millions.

Lennar has a huge PUD process with all kinds of legalities that are gonna have to happen. We're talking about today, right now. Lennar's not on.

No, you said a future.

I said today.

Well, they're coming to us now, so that's a potential situation in the future. Near future, possibly.

I think a big reason we rewrote the code to be individual units is for Lennar. I think we've solved this problem anymore, and I think we're going around and around and around about a problem that's already been solved.

If they build a 100-unit building or whatever the limit is, and we give them one connection for the entire building, that could be millions of people.

That's not what our ordinance says today. Lennar will have to use the ordinance we have today.

But the town attorney says the town manager has the ability to decide if they get one connection for 100 units.

She has the authority to, but we changed the ordinance so she no longer has the authority to do anything other than a single connection per unit as written in the ordinance. Is that true?

She has the authority to determine the types and number of connections. So one per audience? I mean, negotiating. I mean, like Lenar, you know, was for Phase 3A, it was one commercial covering all the residences and the two commercial things. So that's... They're charged quarterly on that. I mean, so it's breakdown.

But that was under the old ordinance, Mr. Duggan. Now we have this changed ordinance that says explicitly one meter per dwelling unit. And dwelling unit is a condo, an apartment, a townhouse. That's what it is, a dwelling unit. And it's defined in the definitions of the code.

I don't see that under part of the ordinance dealing with connections.

2173, it's the last line and it's in blue and we added it in 2023.

And what we also added was the part where the incentives where that would have to come back to council. So if Lenora comes and they build 100 homes and we give them one for free, then that would be the incentive that would come back to council and we would have to agree on that. It's not the town manager saying I'm gonna give you all for free if you come build here. any of that kind of stuff, from my understanding, it's the ordinance that we wrote was to identify each of those dwellings to have a set fee, whether it's commercial or for the residential, and any incentive that we would do, just like if you build 10 condos and we're gonna give you one for free, that incentive come back to council to verify that we vote on that to say yes, we can do that. The town manager has the, authority to make those negotiations that then comes back to us to vote on it's not that she just goes off and does whatever she wants on those because the ordinance specifically says We do it per dwelling.

I see what you're talking about now, but you've got other ordinances that conflict with that somewhat.

I think if there is a direction, we can just solve this right now is what I'm trying to say. I'm trying to say we have a lot of things in July. You guys, we already have the work session canceled because it's the 4th of July. Our main July meeting is CIP heavy. We will be starting our next fiscal year. We have multiple things still on this agenda that we haven't started to talk about today. And I really just think there's a solution to solve this right now, which is that if commercial entity is negotiating water and sewer fees that falls under the economic development incentive the code is already there all we have to say is confirming our direction as a group as a body if that direction is confirmed to the town manager that's what she's directed to do that is a policy right there and i think we just have to use the code we already have which is strong and just say we second that, we back that, and we wanna use the economic incentive section of code where it says that anything like this has to come to town council. That's what that code says. All right, I saw both your hands go up. Go ahead, Ms. Williams.

In your opinion, since you said that you believe that that's not 100%, what would be a simple fix? Can we just put in the code, which Kenny and Robin already feel like is already in there, something that makes sure that reduction in connections doesn't happen? Because it sounds like that's the only potential way that could happen without council approval.

Why can we not just tell the town manager that's what we want to happen? I mean, I'm serious, Mr. Duggan. Why can't we not just say that?

Well, it happened in the past, so without our knowledge. And even after a council member was asking, it happened. Maybe Natasha wouldn't do that, but maybe the next town manager would or the next council.

But under Natasha, this is not a problem we currently have today. And I will just say we do have a lot of problems. And I want to make sure we tackle them. And I don't want to ignore them for talking about this for another 47 minutes.

All right, well, I'll make a motion then to get it through. Ask the town attorney to draft a policy that requires council votes on discounts, as I suggested in the email that I sent, which also includes the reduction in meter requirements and setting a dollar threshold, whatever council decides is appropriate. And in that policy, it also required regular reporting for transparency, which I think we all agree is not a bad thing for the public.

You're making a motion on a document that you emailed to us that we do not have in front of us, is that correct?

No, I'm not gonna say, that policy is just AI driven, so it's not like an official policy, but I'm sure that it might help the town attorney draft something that would be comparable, acceptable to council. Is there a second? To draft a policy. as suggested for discounts and if council chooses a set of threshold, but all discounts are reported.

That's a really long motion. Can we be very clear and direct to our staff? What is the motion?

Ask the town attorney to draft a policy on discounts, which includes the reduction of meter requirements.

Okay, is there a second to that?

I'll second it. Okay.

All right. Is there further discussion on this? All right. I will start with Ms. Grandstaff.

Aye.

Ms. Sanford. Aye. Mr. Allison.

Nay.

Mr. Wood. Nay. Mr. Larson.

Nay.

Mr. Williams.

Aye.

And I vote nay. I would like to make a motion to reconfirm to our town manager to follow the code of ordinances as instructed in our town ordinance and that to use the economic incentive code that says that all discounts must come to town council as standard policy in negotiating with any new development. That's the motion I make. Second. All right, we'll start. Grand staff.

Do we have any discussion?

Oh, sure, we can keep discussing it.

All right, so basically you're just saying to reaffirm our current policy.

And direct the town manager to use the economic incentive code, which requires that town council has to, all discounts and negotiations have to come to town council for new development.

Including reduction in residential requirements.

Yes, all discounts. What is that? Reduction and discount are the same word to me.

reduction in meter requirements or connection requirements. Is that part of it?

We want her to come to us with any reductions, discounts, new development deals. Gotcha. Is that what I'm talking about?

Okay. And this is going to be in a form of what? A policy or a procedure?

It's a direction to her right now. This is just to direct her to do that. And so long as she is our town manager, this is direction that she has unless a council directs her otherwise.

Okay. It doesn't mean anything.

Okay. Is there further discussion on that? All right. Ms. Grandstaff?

Aye.

Ms. Sanford? Aye. Mr. Allison? Aye. Mr. Wood? Aye. Mr. Larson? Aye. Mr. Williams? Aye. And I vote aye. I'm going to take a 10-minute recess. It's 7.50. Next up, all right, back in session, I got 8.03 p.m. Next is the authorization of the public hearing for the cup for the coffee bar roastery. Coffee bean, coffee bean, small scale production. And the request is, do you have a date? Angela Lawrence OK go ahead.

Yes thank you. Under tabs my memo is under tab C. You may recall that at your last meeting you approved zoning text amendments 26 0 3 and 26 0 4 which allowed small scale production in the commercial districts with a cup. Planning Commission did here had a public hearing last week on Cup 26 0 3 which would allow for a special coffee roastery small-scale production combined with a retail coffee bar. The part of the cup that they need is for the roastery. Anyway, so they voted unanimously on that, and so I'm coming to you just asking you to authorize a public hearing for July 15th, 2026.

All right, is there a motion to authorize a public hearing? So moved. All right, I think that was a motion and a second at the same time.

Yes, sir.

Is there any further discussion?

Sorry, I might have missed it was for clarification. Was it the location of the Peruvian place previously?

It will be where the margarita restaurant used to be. It'll be off Wilder and Hawthorne. The entrance for the coffee roastery will be the entrance off of Wilder. There will be a different business in the front of the building. Oh, okay. And that hasn't been disclosed yet.

Okay. I was thinking there was going to be something different there. So, okay. Gotcha. Thank you.

Okay, all in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right. All right, the next one. is the resolution to support the FEMA floodplain mitigation assistance grant application. And this is on my name because We had this grant opportunity come across our email desk. I always send them to our staff and stuff, and Ms. Lawrence attended it as well as I did. She was out for a couple days, and in the meantime of that couple days, after listening to the grant presentation, reached out to the county and then subsequently out to Jerry Davis with the Northern Neck Planning District Commission and all three entities are very excited and very happy to work on this grant. The Planning District Commission, just like with the North Beach grant, will be the applicant and they will be the ones really doing the major haul of the FEMA grant. but it does help us qualify for additional funds to get the new rescue squad building and to remove the building that is currently in the floodplain. And so there's a very, very short deadline for this. The grant application has to be in by June 30th, and it's the 17th today, so they're looking at 13 days until this grant application is in. And we were just notified around the first of the month or last week, was it, it was last week was the seminar, wasn't it? The week before. So these things are moving very quickly, but there's a short timeframe for them. So I asked to put a resolution in in support of the application. Obviously we, this is just a grant application right now. If we get awarded the grant, there'll be a lot of subsequent actions out of that. But it would be very helpful to the application to have the resolution.

So moved.

Is there a second? We'll open it up for discussion. Is there a second? Second. All right. Okay, so Ms. Grandstaff first.

Question. To move out the floodplain, and this is to, I know you said more discussion will come, So this grant is for the flood mitigation assistance and the relocation. Does this tie into any of the funds that were collected, like donations, to build it somewhere else?

So this is going to be independent of that. So the county has some allocated funds. There's possibly some donation funds from the former rescue squad. This grant is independent of any of those. And it is the basis for qualifying for it is the fact that we have an emergency services vital grant. entity in a legitimate floodplain region. And so it's kind of unique. I've never seen this kind of grant come forward before. It's not an annual grant that comes every year. This is a unique pot of money that was from prior money that's reopened the grant cycle. And it would cover The construction, well, a portion of, because there's a match to it, which the counties and the donation funds would help serve as the match. So the town would not be providing the match except that we are providing the parcel of land. That's the town's obligated portion of the match.

And this is the piece of land at 700 Colonial Avenue? Right.

where we've been working with already the same parcel, the same building plans, the same structure as we've been working on. And the best part about why we may be a very successful grant applicant is because we have all those pieces in place. It's identified on all of these plans we have. It's almost shovel ready. So if we get this funding, we could be going to construction, which would be great. I mean, ideal. Yeah, does that help give some more information about it?

Okay, so it would be the grant plus some of the donations that were received for the building fund to match up with that.

Right, there is a match requirement.

Okay, thank you.

Yes, Mr. Williams.

I just wanted to recuse myself from the discussion and the vote since I'm a FEMA employee, so I don't want to have any conflicts.

Okay, yep, makes sense. Any other discussion about it? Okay. Can I do an all in favor on this one, pal?

Yes.

Okay. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed?

Abstain.

Okay. There's one abstain, but the ayes have it. Great, oh, and I think Whitman is also writing a letter of recommendation and the county will also have a resolution on their next agenda of the same. So hopefully if we get all of these pieces in the application. And then we'll find out nine months from now. Or a year from now, who knows. All right, next up, Miss Oliver, Colonial Beach Redevelopment and Housing Authority vacancies.

Yes, so the Colonial Beach Redevelopment and Housing Authority currently has five vacant seats on the board. At this time, only one application has been received for reappointment and two applicants submissions. If all three applicants are appointed, this would leave two remaining vacant seats. The Colonial Beach Redevelopment and Housing Authority has experienced several recent changes in membership. Two long-serving members relocated and submitted their resignations, which reduced the board to two members with active terms. In addition, as of January 2025, four of the seven seats reached the end of their terms. As a result of these circumstances, the authority currently has five vacancies and two active members, making it clear the board needs these positions filled so the board can fully perform their duties. The member seeking reappointment has continued to serve in the absence of other members and has expressed a desire to continue serving. The board has spoken with both new applicants and supports moving forward with their appointment. It is recommended that the town council appoint the three applicants to the Colonial Beach Redevelopment and Housing Authority to fill three of the five vacant seats. I sent you guys the three applications and I also sent you the chart showing the terms of service. And Ms. Clement and Ms. Feldman are present tonight to answer any questions that you guys have. Thank you.

Okay, we have a resolution for the reappointment and appointment of the new members. Do we want to put that on the table? We want to?

Okay, I'll move that we adopt this resolution.

Okay, is there a second to that?

No second.

All right, is there discussion on this piece? We still have two vacancies after this, right? So everybody reach out to people in the community that could be a help with the Housing Authority. I really would love to see somebody in the construction industry on the Housing Authority. That would mean a lot. One of the programs they run is a very small assistance program for people's homes, and having somebody with some building experience would be really helpful to them.

I have a question. Where do they meet and how often? Because I'd asked questions before and I've got different views where it's not active, it is, don't know where it meets, does it meet in members' homes, so can I get some input?

Hi, Marsha Feldman here. We meet over at the Meadows. Okay. That's where we have been meeting. How often?

Is it monthly?

Right now we do four meetings a year. Okay.

And is this in the Meadows at a person's house or is it?

No, they have a, at the Meadows has a. Oh, like the community center or something like that? Okay. But it's Bay Agent. Oh, the Bay Agent.

Okay. All right. Thank you.

Ms. Ryan?

Yeah, just a question. I was the liaison for a while. I know you guys were working on several different things. What's the current status? One of the things I remember you guys working on was the property across from 205 there.

Oh, that piece of property?

Yeah, did you guys ever do?

It's just hanging there.

Still hanging there, okay.

Well, we can't, the town won't, it's in the county. The county won't let us put water or sewer to it. and they said we have to go through the town. The town says it's not our problem because it's in the county, so we've gone around and around. We're kind of hoping that putts will want the property once they get their thing going, because they're right next door to us, as it looks like. So if their thing, there was just something I saw on Facebook that they are, going through all the processes that they have to go through trying to get whatever permits and whatever else they need to do the miniature golf thing. But if the county doesn't let them get water to the property, they're not gonna be able to do that either. Unless things have changed. I mean, last we heard someone who wanted to put a storage facility was turned down. They didn't even want water or sewer. There was gonna be a storage facility. All they needed was a building and electric.

I think it's more about access to the storage, like building a road. They wouldn't allow them to do that.

Oh, okay. I guess you guys are going to start up meetings again. I know I was a liaison for a while. Do we have an appointed liaison anymore or?

I think it's Mr. Wood.

Mr. Wood, okay.

Yeah, and as a matter of fact, I was going to ask the question if, because I know that we lost Judy and her husband. That was a big loss and realistically was inactive. So my question is this, is there anything to preclude an existing council member from joining the authority?

That's up to the town attorney. Okay.

I would need to look into that. I know that there was an issue before with a town employee being on there. So I don't know if that applies to council members or not. I would have to look, I can look into that and get back to you. Thank you.

Yeah. Once you're not on council, that's not a. Right. Right.

So I can linger as a liaison.

But we've got to get the doors open first, really. So when did you guys have, have you had your most recent meeting since Judy and her husband moved out?

No, it was the last meeting we had, so that was about January. Okay. No, didn't we have a meeting after that?

Okay. TBD.

So if we get some more members for you guys, maybe you'll have your next quarterly meeting.

There's another issue that we have that we brought up before. We get no funding from anybody. So even the money we have right now is... the majority of it is from when we were part of a grant application, what, 20, 30 years ago? 77. 77, so that's 50 years ago, right? And we've been just using it and using it with the projects we've gotten to do. Last year we put in to the, Community Foundation and they gave us $2,500 to be able to do some projects. We get no money. We get $1,000 rent for the billboard. That's our... A year.

A year, $1,000 a year. So you need a grant writer and a contractor.

We need a whole lot of things. We are probably one of the smallest housing authorities in the state. Most of the little ones like us are gone because there's not much we can do without money. Judy had an idea that maybe we could do workforce housing, not low-income housing, workforce housing because we need that here. But trying to get all the pegs lined up when we don't have the expertise was almost impossible. I mean, you need a developer, you need a lawyer, you need things that we don't have, and money. And so we were trying to talk to people, but we didn't have the wherewithal to pursue anything. We thought we had a piece of land, but if we can't get water to it or sewer to it, we don't have anything. So I think that the housing authority, unless it's just going to continue to do little repairs for people who cannot afford it, And they're small because we usually set a budget of $2,500 maximum for a thing. So sometimes we can elevate a toilet because people can't. Because they're too low. Or put in rails. But we just had one that the people needed, the bathroom was too small and you would have had to renovate the whole thing and put in ramps. We can't afford that. We don't have the money and we don't have, and then there's also we have to find a contractor that's willing to do it. And we usually put that on the homeowner because we're not supposed to as part of a government agency, we're not supposed to promote a relationship with some person. Because even the town can't give us a list of the eligible or available handymen, for example. So it's a case of we send the homeowner has to find whoever it was they can get to do it and get prices. and then we fund what we can fund.

We understand that. Right now we have a resolution in front of us for vacancies and appointments, so I want to make sure we stay on track with that point. I'm just filling you in on the status of... Maybe once we have the vacancies filled, we can get an updated status once you've had some time to meet and get some vacancies filled so you have a functioning board again. Okay? One step at a time. All right. Is there any other discussion on the Resolution 2626? All right. All in favor say aye. Aye.

Aye.

Aye. Any opposed? All right. Let's hear back from you again after you've got, and we'll get two more people for you. Okay, great. And then give you a couple meetings and then ask you to come back and report back what you need. All right. Okay. Financing developers. All right. Next up, Mr. Duggan, you are hot on our agenda list tonight.

Jumping, bumping, booty bumping.

Engagement with Gray Mountain. I mean, we've read through it.

Right.

Class action lawsuit. Do we want to add in?

Just that, you know, after I first got this letter, I went to my old law office. I was skeptical about it, whether this law firm even existed. So I did some checking and they were responsive and I talked to this lawyer. on the phone about 15 or 20 minutes who's an attorney out of Houston now, I believe. He and this great Broughton went to law school together at Richmond. That's how they got in touch. But anyway, it sounds like... you know, there's this huge settlement, PFAS, and to, we're listed, we may be listed already as part of the class action. I think it's class two or whatever that we're under, but to, To actually get paid anything, we need to submit a claim. And I think they're going to have to do some water testing and so forth to do that. They're going to front all those expenses. And there's already a settlement. So if we meet the criteria, there's a good chance of getting some money. So you got the original settlement lawyer who negotiated all this, and you got these two. So altogether, they're splitting this 40%. So I don't see a downside to it.

So I have a question. And right at the end, you said, but assuming the costs are reasonable, there appears to be no real downside, like you just said. But you just said the costs are going to be covered by the law firm. So what costs are you talking about?

Let me clarify that. In Virginia, you can't finance litigation. They don't want lawyers out there paying for everything. So even a law firm you see on TV saying, cost you nothing, you're still responsible for those costs. They can be advanced, but it's still ultimately your cost as the client. So here you already have a settlement. So it's likely that they're, assume we qualify, that there could be money. You may have some testing costs they kick back, but I got the feeling any cost is gonna be paid out of the money. But I think legally they have to do that, keep their borrow licenses, to say that the costs are the downs.

Okay, do we have a motion?

Just one more quick question.

Sure.

Do we know what the split is, Val?

The fee agreement was a little different. When I talked to the attorney in Houston, he was telling me that the settlement attorney is getting 20%, and he and this great Broughton are splitting the others. Each of them will get 10% of the total amount. So that's how you get the 40%. Mr. Williams?

I just want to make sure I'm clear. So we're basically voting to join the lawsuit?

No, no, not to join the lawsuit, but to authorize Natasha to engage this law firm, and they will submit a proper claim for us. And so that may protect us now and may get some money now. We have problems in the future. We're on record, so we may get some money in the future. So it's just to protect our interests. And the deadlines, we might wanna understand July 31.

So are we voting to obligate the town to spend any funds or just the town manager's time and staff's time?

No, no, you're authorizing the town manager to enter, engage this law firm, but it's on a contingency fee basis plus potential cost.

and that'll be brought to us before we actually spend anything, the cost, or could we be?

No, they're going to go ahead and advance those to do what they need to do to get this filed. Okay.

All right, thank you. Section 6, the lien. Is that something we can brief easy about? Because when I read liens or mechanics liens or anything attached, and I want to make sure, that this is my son's agreement.

Let me look at that again. I looked at it earlier today. Because liens caused me pause, so I just want to see if you... Yeah, when you talk about liens, there is such a thing in Virginia as an attorney's lien. I think that's what they're getting at, that by our retaining them, that they have a lien on the recovery, that we just can't say, you know, give us a recovery and... Yeah, not pay the attorneys. Okay.

So it's basically for round numbers. If they recover $300,000, they charge us $50,000. Their $50,000 has to come out of that. They'll send a remand in to us. Right.

$300,000 is going to be 40% of that. Right. But they have a lien for that.

Okay. Thank you.

If we don't end up qualifying, do we have any costs?

You may. Okay. I don't know if they ever come back to yet, but there'd be testing cost. I don't think there's really much filing cost involved with this, so I think it would be minimum.

Okay.

All right, is there a motion to authorize the engagement?

So moved.

Is there a second?

Second.

Is there further discussion on this? All right, I'm gonna do a roll call vote. Mr. Wood? Aye. Mr. Larson? Aye. Mr. Williams?

Aye.

Ms. Grandstaff? Aye. Ms. Sanford? Aye. Mr. Allison?

Nay.

I vote aye.

Passes anyway.

All right, next up is closed meeting. Move that the Town Council of the Town of Colonial Beach convene in closed meeting for the following purposes and discuss the following subjects, all of which are exempt by Virginia law from public meeting requirements as indicated, namely pursuant to Virginia Code Section 2.2-3711A7 for the purpose of consultation with legal counsel and briefings by staff members or consultants pertaining to actual or probable litigation. WHERE SUCH CONSULTATION OR BRIEFING IN AN OPEN MEETING WOULD ADVERSELY AFFECT THE NEGOTIATING OR LITIGATING POSTURE OF THE TOWN COUNCIL IN PURSUANT TO VIRGINIA CODE SECTION 2.2-3711A8 FOR THE PURPOSE OF CONSULTATION WITH LEGAL COUNCIL RETAINED BY THE TOWN COUNCIL REGARDING SPECIFIC LEGAL MATTERS REQUIRING THE PROVISION OF LEGAL ADVICE BY SUCH COUNCIL. ALL RIGHT. WE'LL GO INTO CLOSED SESSION NOW. IT IS 8.29 P.M. AND THEN WE'LL COME BACK OUT. Is there a motion to certify that only public business matters lawfully exempted from open meeting requirements under the Virginia Freedom of Information Act and only such public business matters as were identified in the motion by which the closed meeting was convened were heard, discussed, or considered in the meeting by counsel?

So moved.

Second. And each individually certify.

I so certify. I so certify. I so certify. I so certify.

I so certify.

I so certify. And now, Kyle, would you like to present the motion on the table?

The motion with regard to Dotson's phase four property is for the town of Colonial Beach to, is for the town to authorize the manager to enter into an agreement and a town attorney to agree and approve the agreement to the effect that the town will agree to release the $40,000 deposit without any interest in return for Dodson releasing any rights that it has to phase four.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Aye. Do you want a roll call vote? Yeah. Oh, gosh. Wood?

Aye. Larson? Aye.

Williams? Aye. Grantham? Aye. Sanford? Aye. Allison? Aye. And I vote aye. And with that, we will adjourn meeting. Adjourn at 8.48 p.m., ladies and gentlemen.