Town Council - Regular Meeting

an up sheet up here that says general public comment or open public comment. And then on occasions such as tonight, we have specific public hearings. And so tonight we do have a specific public hearing. And if you're here to speak on that particular topic, there's a separate sign-in sheet for that. So just make sure you pay attention if you do sign up to speak during public comment times that you pick the correct sheet. And you're welcome to sign up for both as well. We want to acknowledge staff's work in preparation for the meeting. Their insights are invaluable to each topic of town business and appreciate our town manager and council manager form of government.

Our town manager is Natasha Tucker, sits right over here.

accordance with the state code, 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 one body, all duly elected to serve responsibly and ethically the citizens of Colonial Beach. Participation of each member contributes to effective leadership, and collaboration is key to productivity in local government. Let's engage in constructive discussion, remain open to different perspectives, and work together for effective resolutions. And finally, I just remind us that the meetings of the Town Council are formal proceedings and are best recorded, And with that, I'll call the regular town council meeting July 25th, 2026 to order at 6.02 p.m. Oh, July 15th. What did I say, July 26th? July 15th for the record. All right, with that, please stand with me for a moment of silence, which will be followed by the Pledge of Allegiance. All right, next up is, I don't have any additions to the agenda. Is there approval of the agenda as written? Is there a second? All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Next up is our consent agenda, which is the approval of some meeting minutes, as well as the amendment appropriation of an annual grant we get for the fire programs. This one's a regular item. Is there a motion for the consent agenda? Is there a second? Is there any discussion? All in favor say aye. Any opposed? Moving right along, next is our council member announcements. And I'm gonna start on Lisa on your side this time.

Good evening, everyone. As liaison for economic vitality in conjunction with tourism, I'll report first on the tourism side of things. This Columbia Beach tourism sponsored a special, sorry, sponsored a social media influencer, the Virginia Hype Girl, for the Potomac River Festival weekend and received a significant amount of exposure through this effort. The tourism also began running a TV and digital marketing campaign in the DC metro area, including Northern Virginia and Southern Maryland. campaign targeted specifically to the military audience began running at the same time. On economic vitality, yesterday's meeting, the recent connectivity study was the main focus. The study, which was featured at a recent meeting of town elected officials and staff, also will be presented as best practice example at the upcoming American Planning Association's Virginia chapter meeting in Danville later this month. As reported by our town manager last month, this project is the winner of the APA's 2026 Holzheimer Award, economic development which serves to recognize and promote the best in planning throughout the Commonwealth. The Economic Vitality Committee will also be working to help update the economic development section of the town's comprehensive plan. And that's it. Thank you.

All right. Good evening, everyone. So for NGOs in town, from the Virginia Osprey Foundation, they'd like to report that they have 37 osprey nests in Colonial Beach. and they are determined to be active at the beginning of the season. Of those 32 nests, only 11 nests have produced chicks. So they currently have a total of 20 chicks in their first fielding or fledging. This may sound great, however, in 2023, which was the last successful year, they had a total of 55. So science tells them that the to sustain a population of 1.15 chicks per nest, and they're currently at 0.5 chicks per nest. So hopefully they get better results and they will continue to monitor throughout the season. And then from the Colonial Beach Community Foundation, they are accepting nominations for the Community Impact Award. So, um the colonial beach community impact award recognizes an individual whose outstanding service leadership and dedication have made a meaningful lasting positive impact on the colonial beach community so um areas are criteria The evaluation criteria includes community service and volunteerism, impact on community leadership and initiative, commitment and sustainability, and character and community spirit. So if you have somebody that you'd like to nominate, please do so on the Community Foundation website and the deadline is August 15th. And that's all I have.

Mr. Allison. Good evening, everybody. The Public Works Liaison. We'll walk through our typical thing here. So we'll go through infrastructure utilities. They had three cleared sewer backups. They flushed approximately 1,100 feet of sewer main, jetted approximately 400 feet of culverts, investigated and replaced the fire hydrant, installed manhole pans to reduce inflow and infiltration into the sewer system. Moving on to our wastewater treatment plant. They continued daily operations, maintenance, and repairs, assisted with the cleaning of nitrification tanks 1A and 2A, cleaned and flushed the aluminum tank, and vacuumed the sludge pit using the jet truck. Now moving on to our streets and stormwater. They repaired storm drainage pipes, failures, clean leaves and debris from ditches and stormwater infrastructure. Continued ditch maintenance throughout town. Repaired two drainage inlets on Beach Avenue. Jetted storm drainage pipes along the beach to improve drainage, remove storm debris and fallen trees following the severe weather. Responded to localized flooding after heavy rainfall events. Now moving on to building and grounds.

They prepared...

For consolidation, four demolitions, one general zoning, food vendor, 113 Washington Avenue Food Court, one water sewer availability, two additions, so a total of 32 permits in June. That's a busy day. There's more busy than before. We've received 111 short-term rental applications so far this season.

color or clarify some things on the report for next time, reach out to me. I'm happy to sort of pull that feedback together and work with the town staff to get that done. That's all I got.

Great. Thank you. Somehow I breezed past the roll call of members. Mr. Williams is absent today. He's out of town. So in his absence, he's a liaison to public safety. I'm going to read his PD announcement report. The next Worship Watch crime prevention meeting will be on Thursday, July 23rd at 6 p.m. at the Morning Star Baptist Church.

That's located at 4648 Cicada Road in Montrose.

Everyone is welcome to attend. This coming Saturday is the Explore the Shore 5K and 10K run, which will be held from 7 to 10 a.m. Please drive carefully as there will be event traffic and runners in the roadway. The Kids Fish On event, sponsored by Kimmy Ann and Bait and Tackle, will be held on Saturday, July 25th from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. on the Town Pier. That event sold out very quickly. Hopefully they'll do it again because I think there are a lot of kids that still have interest and weren't able to get in on this round. This is going to be a great event, and we wish all the young anglers the best of luck. And just a reminder that there's no neighborhood watch meeting this month. The next meeting will be September 24th, 2026 at 6 30 PM. I have a few additional announcements. Um, I definitely want to give a shout out to, um, the police department and public works for the Fourth of July, which went very smoothly. And I know it was a very heavily trafficked event. And going through, I could tell there had been a lot of coordination and a lot of thought into it. Also, though, a big shout out to Parks and Rec, and I don't see Sally here right now. Oh, she's in the back. We did have 50 golf carts attend the 4th of July 250th anniversary celebration golf cart parade, and I will say the town citizens decked out. I was so impressed with the enthusiasm to celebrate our nation's birthday together. It was very impressive and a lot of fun. Sally did dress up as Martha Washington with her husband George, who is also really named George. to be Martha and George Washington to cut the cake. And I just thank them for going an extra mile on a holiday, Fourth of July weekend.

You know, all the town staff is working through that holiday weekend.

THE TOWN APPROVED A RESOLUTION IN SUPPORT OF A GRANT APPLICATION TO FEMA LAST MONTH. THAT IS IN COORDINATION WITH THE COUNTY AND THE NORTHERN ED PLANNING DISTRICT COMMISSION TO BUILD A NEW RESCUE SQUAD AT THE 700 COLONIAL AVENUE LOCATION AND REDEVELOP THE uh... current rescue squad location for an appropriate use of the floodplain uh... that application is in and we are working with the state currently on some additional information they need but uh... it is moving right along so it's not everybody know the application on what's needed and the backstop up is it is up at the sandlot if you um the little t-ball baseball field by the community center needed a net as the additional last 10 feet in height over there and i just want to give a thank you to david swanee if you know swanee for donating it and rc norris rc tree service for putting it up for us and also there's a shed to store the things to maintain the field um which was a big help by a donation from Imboden, so we want to thank for all the community support to get these things done in town, especially for our kids. And one more thing. Oh, next up is the Torrey Smith Back to School event. They want to make sure everybody knows that Level 82 is excited for the third annual Back to School event, which takes place next week in town. We look forward to seeing everybody there. And I think that's all my announcements. I had a lot of notes over here all over the place. I think I've checked them off. With that, we'll move forward to the town manager update.

Good evening, Madam Mayor, council members, members in the audience, and those listening to us and watching us via Zoom. Facebook. Tonight, my town manager updates is going to consist of the second quarter public safety report, the fourth quarter financial report, followed by the sewer plant update from in Bowdoin. We'll begin with the second quarter update of public safety update with Chief Parsons.

Good evening, everyone. Madam Mayor, members of council. We can go to the Next one, thank you. For the second quarter of 2026, the Colonial Beach Police Department responded to 2,805 calls for service We completed 101 incident reports, conducted 346 traffic stops, investigated five traffic collisions, and made 55 arrests. I know that sounds high. That does not all reflect physical arrests. Serving summons that starts the court process also is included in that statistic. Next one, please. Okay, this bar graph shows the offenses or the charges that were brought or filed, or correction, investigated during this time and the reports that were taken. The top five were simple assaults, other offenses, and I want to clarify that. The way that the statistics come up is in one of our software programs called Southern Software. and we are always constantly trying to adjust to make sure that we catch all the different crimes and all, but with the various crimes, they're not always in the software, so it'll come up as other offenses. Destruction of property or vandalism, disorderly conduct, and driving under the influence were the top five. For comparison's sake, the next slide is for the same time period from last year. Again, the other offenses is the largest one. If you notice, it's come down quite a bit because we've been adjusting the crimes so we can get them more segregated out. But the top five in that one were the other offenses, vandalism, driving under the influence, simple assault and shoplifting.

Next slide, please.

Thank you. This bar graph shows the arrests that occurred between April 1st and June 30th of this year. The one, again, due to adjustments that we're making in the software, the second bar graph listed is no charges listed or no charge listed. And, again, we are in the process of cleaning that up so that the correct crime statistics should be listed. forthcoming as we move forward. But in this case, the arrests were, the top five again, were simple assaults and then the no charge listed and other offenses driving under the influence and aggravated assault. Next one. Thank you. And then for the, again, for comparison's sake, this is the listing of the arrests that were made during the same timeframe last year. And the top, I'll just list the top four. Driving under the influence, shoplifting, simple assault, and larcenies, which are thefts. The next slide shows, the bar graph shows the offense trends, which is when the crimes are occurring per day of the week. And you can see that Saturday was the highest one, with Friday and Sunday, Sunday actually coming in second, and Friday was one below that. So again, we try to adjust our scheduling to address those times to try to effectuate some crime reduction on those dates. Next one. This just breaks it down by hour, when the crimes are being committed, and if you notice that the peaks in that are 1600, which is four o'clock, 1800, which is six o'clock, and 2000, which is at eight p.m. Those are the highest levels. And then the next one, this is for comparison's sake, this is again from the same time period last year, and it shows the peaks at seven o'clock and nine o'clock. But you can see we have achieved some level of reduction where our peak for this past year i believe the sixteen and uh... and uh... seven o'clock uh... last year that it peaked at twenty seven next complete thank you uh... despite chart shows uh... the the traffic citations that are being uh... or that were issued top five categories for this uh... statistic is uh... exceeding

exceeding 35 mile an hour zone, speeding in a business or residential area, reckless driving, no state inspection, and operating a handheld device while driving. This is just a bar graph that shows the same data, but it shows it in a little different way, and you can see where the, in comparison to the CITATIONS WHICH ONES WERE MORE PREVALENT. NEXT ONE, PLEASE. THIS GRAPH FOR THE PIE CHART AND THE BAR GRAPH IS THE EXACT SAME DATA AS FAR AS THE TRAFFIC CITATIONS FOR THE EXACT SAME TIME FRAME LAST YEAR. AND IN THIS CASE, THE HIGHEST INFRACTIONS THAT WERE CITED We're exceeding 35-mile-an-hour zone, no state inspection, failure to obey a street sign, which can include running a stop sign, reckless driving, and no driver's license. Next one, please. Thank you. THIS SLIDE SHOWS THE STATISTICS FOR THE VOLUNTEER FIRE COMPANY. THIS PAST QUARTER, THEY RESPONDED TO A TOTAL OF 170 CALLS FOR SERVICE. OF THOSE CALLS FOR SERVICE, 55 WERE FIRE CALLS. THEY RESPONDED TO 15 MOTOR VEHICLE ACCIDENTS. 84 emergency medical service calls, 16 public service calls, and worked a total of 389.89 hours and averaged 3.3 members per call. Next one, please. Thank you. This shows the statistics for the second quarter from the Westmoreland Department of Emergency Services. They responded to a total of 287 medical calls in Colonial Beach. Their average response time was 8 minutes 33 seconds, which was down from 8 minutes and 48 seconds last year. And they conducted a total of 180 transports. And that would conclude my report. If there are any questions. Let's keep moving on.

Thank you. Lisa.

Good evening, Madam Mayor, Town Council, those in attendance and online. This is the fourth quarter financial report Move forward. So this slide here is just showing, as Mr. Larson had pointed out, we are redeveloping how we are presenting information to provide more transparency and more information to the public. This explains what we have done so far by showing you trends so we can get a more accurate picture of how you're doing each quarter. The next slide shows how we came up to what the percentages were using this fiscal year. And we're going to start with the general fund. Next slide.