Cc Meeting - Regular Meeting

Is that new? It must be.

How you been, Mr. Kitchener? I ain't heard from you in a while.

Seems like you got kind of quiet lately.

He's working. Keeps him busy.

What, you got a lot of people?

Oh, okay, you ain't at the funeral home no more. Okay.

It was dead, huh? It didn't take long.

That's my attempt at humor.

all right bring the six o'clock um meeting to order um roll call uh dr johnson mr kitchen yeah yeah thank you i'm sorry man miss copeland and mr beckham all right we're all uh presidents at mr grizzard and um and let's see turn off your cell phones or silence them and What would it look like to have a, um, I'm sorry, do we need to approve the agenda before we go into yeah. Moment of silence. It's not on here, but don't we need to approve the agenda, the, the work session agenda before we go into closed?

We, we certainly can if, uh, okay.

Have a motion to prove the agenda for the closed session for the work session. I have a motion and a second from Ms. Banks. All those, excuse me, any discussion? All those in favor?

Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.

And aye. All right. Do I have a motion to go in closed?

I move that the City Council of Franklin, Virginia convene and close meeting pursuant to Virginia Code Section 2.2-3711A1 for the purpose of real estate slash development and legal matters.

All right. I have a motion. Second. I have a motion and multiple seconds. And any discussion? Being none, I'll take the vote. Dr. Donacity will start.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye. Aye.

Aye.

And aye. Let the record show Mr. Grizzard has arrived. All right. Chief, you'll close them now. Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye. Aye. An aye. Right. Certification? Do you have the verbiage for certification?

I move that each city council member certified to the best of his or her knowledge. One, only public business matters lawfully exempted from open meeting requirements under the Virginia Freedom of Information Act. And two, 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 closed meeting just concluded.

All right. Do you have certification, Dr. Johnson?

I certify. I certify.

I certify.

I certify. I certify. I certify.

And I certify. All right. Sorry, did we actually vote? We did not vote on the, going back into open. Yes, we did. I'm sorry. We did. I'm sorry. Mine slipped away. Ladies and gentlemen, we're still in work session. We're getting ready to have a presentation that's open to the public. So, Mr. Gillespie, if you'll give us the quick version.

Thank you. Mayor Kaplan, members of council, Mr. Manager. I'm going to give you a quick update on the Franklin Utilities Advisory Board. We have a draft resolution that's been prepared by your city attorney. I'm just going to walk you through some of that. The language that you have is in a whereas clause. I've taken out the whereas clauses and put them in just kind of abbreviated form. So as you can see here, kind of going from left to right, power, light, water, and sewer. City Council seeks to establish an advisory body to advise the council on municipal utilities that are owned, operated by the City of Franklin, including the municipal power and light, together with water, sewer, and related utility services administered by the city's Department of Public Works. The charter authorizes the city to acquire, construct, own, maintain, and operate water works, sewerage disposal works, gas plants, and electric plants, managed and controlled as provided by the code or ordinance, and then charge and collect compensation for the services. Charter contemplates that the city's utility functions may be organized into bureaus, divisions, and other units as provided by ordinance or by the orders of the directors, in this case, of one of two departments, public works and public utilities, two different sections of code. Just to identify power and light, that's your power being delivered to Franklin, South Hampton County, and Isle of Wight County. And within public utilities, there are two divisions, water and sewer, also being delivered in Franklin, South Hampton County, and Isle of Wight County. where the words here are in italics like on the previous slide this is in the draft resolution provided to you so I'm not going to read all of it as I've kind of abbreviated some of it already but it would create a citizen advisory board that would assist council and city staff and providing informed review of and recommendations concerning operations planning rates reliability and financial performance of the city's utilities And it's recognizing that other Virginia localities that own municipal utilities such as the city of Manassas were a model to us and have established advisory in that they had established advisory utility commissions of this kind by action of their governing bodies, city council in the case of the city of Manassas. Franklin is in rare company as an electric city. You all know that. There aren't many electric cities in Virginia, so we were able to look outside of Virginia and inside Virginia. We're very fortunate that the city of Manassas has a long-serving utility advisory commission, they call it. Been in place for over 20 years, so they're a good model. among the others that we looked at. So the council action that's requested is kind of a few outlined here. Creating a citizen advisory board titled Utilities Advisory Board. At this meeting or the next meeting of council, we would presume you would want to consider this for more than one meeting, so probably at your next meeting, to assist the council that has a purpose of, I've already called out, assisting the council and city staff to appoint members. Staff recommends seven members that the, recommendation from your legal counsel is that the members be set up to serve staggered terms we have not proposed a way to do your staggering to begin with there are different ways to do it you could set up four-year terms three two and one two different classes of your members or you could set up uh two years and two years of different ways to do that but if it's if it's desired by council to do staggered terms we would appreciate a little bit of direction in that so we can draft it and have our attorney Talk about how to stagger your initial terms. And then the body that's your advisory board would elect their own officers, meet on the schedule that they set. This is in your draft resolution. You could provide for it by code or set it yourself, but it's recommended to you that they do that themselves. and then just in staffing this is a management responsibility but that the city manager designates a staff liaison to the board and provides the board reasonable administrative support and in the experience of others you know any anybody that meets has to be as they said cared for and fed so want to make sure that the advisory body members understand their limited charge they do they're not creating policy for city council they're advising you so we would want to have a liaison who can be consistent and we want to provide reasonable support but not create a whole body that's going to try to you know go off and do things outside of their scope And that's where we are. You have draft resolution for consideration. Any questions for me?

Yes. I have one question. That is, getting back to staggered terms, one, why would we do that? Two, how would we formulate that?

Sure. So like I said, on the why part, the reason is so you don't have seven members all come in in 2026 and then exit at the same time. So that's the reason to create it. How you do it would be up to you. The draft resolution proposes four-year terms. Of course, your four-year terms, if they began in August, for example, if you had your members are not coterminous with your election period. So you need to sort of consider if that's important to you or not. But often there are classes set up where there's a four-year term, a three-year term, a two-year term, a one-year term, or two-year terms at four and two. So somebody is on a short term to begin with. That's usually how it's done. The first one. On the initial. That's usually how it's done. Again, you may not want to stagger. The disadvantage is everybody's going to come up at the same time.

Might I suggest that, can we go around the horn?

Anything?

I didn't see this in our packet, could we receive a copy? Okay, thank you.

I'm sorry, I thought they were there. I will make copies while you're in, I'll make copies while you're in the meeting and hand them out. It's, it's a, um, Mr. Eldridge did a very nice, uh, simple, you know, advisory board structure resolution. All right.

Yeah. Um, I agree. I think they should coincide with the council members terms. But I do have, it didn't mention whether these people will be appointed or selected by the prospective council person for their representative. I think we talked about that in the past. Yes, we will pick the person from our ward that we would like to represent us. I think that needs to be reflected. Also, I have a concern, again through experience, with the planning commission. When you talk about the staff liaison, I would prefer if whoever they elect as the chairman of this advisory board, they bring their findings and results to us opposed to the staff liaison. Perhaps the staff liaison can give them input as they make their decisions as to which they want to advise us on, but have the representative from the advisory board be the one to deliver their recommendations or advice to council because we had a thing in the past where the Planning Commission would make one recommendation and then staff's representative would make an opposite recommendation to council. And we naturally would go with the recommendation of council when it was not the recommendation of the planning commission. So by having the chairman of the advisory board make the presentation or recommendations to the council, we would be getting more from what the advisory council really their wishes are.

So noted. And I would just add, when it's appropriate, you may want to have this commission take the time in their deliberation to have a draft report presented at a meeting and adopted at their next meeting. And so the report you get from that council, from that advisory board would in fact be a report in writing. And so at that point, there's no question about what the feeling of the utility advisory board is because they voted on it. So I would just add that sometimes you'll want to have a staff liaison you know, present some information, research some information. Sometimes you may want to have a chair of a board, in this case advisory board, deliver it or present it to you. And there may be other times where that board feels that they want to really get down the points in writing and deliver them in a written report.

I have no problem with them delivering it in a written form like that, but I just think that opinions, because this is advisory, opinions can be persuasive and the person making the delivery being from staff that won't be from the citizens basically that the perspective of the citizens who we've charged with giving us that advice understood excuse me i have uh one more question and that's um i'm familiar with um manassas and so forth um

But one of the things I'm not familiar with is what are the qualifications of council selecting an individual? Did they give you some qualifications?

Yes, so Mr. Eldridge actually drafted this from one of the models, kind of adapted it for Franklin. So on the membership and appointment, members shall be selected with a view toward relevant knowledge of or interest in utility, financial engineering, or business matters. That doesn't mean that interest in does not necessarily qualify to be a professional you know they don't have to be a professional to be qualified but i would i would certainly advise you to have the preponderance of your membership have some experience with the matters at hand again if their business matters then they don't need to be utility business matters to be a business expert all right thank you if you'll get us the if you'll you'll get us we'll bring them right back so we can

Yes, we'll get the draft to you. The intent was if it's the council's pleasure, we could get this before you on the 27th for consideration, whether you want to vote on it or take more formal action, if you will.

On the 27th? Yes, sir. Anybody in disagreement? All right.

I don't disagree. Speaking to that last point that Councilman Johnston made in regards to requirement, I think that when you say a business background, citizens do business when they're paying these light bills. so they have somewhat of a stake their stakeholders so rather than select people based on their utility knowledge or their business knowledge i would hope that my colleagues will appoint someone who is a stakeholder who has some some rationale citizens but not putting restrictions as to they have to be familiar with utilities what they're familiar with is what they have to pay every month. And that's one of the reasons that we formulating this board is so that citizens can have some input into recommendations and advice on how we can deal with utility matters.

If I may, I'll just respond to that. Franklin is in a good position with your population. You're not a town of 500 people with very limited talent in town. You are a city of almost 9,000 people. So I would expect you'll have stakeholders who do have some experience. Maybe they worked at the power company when they were 20 years old and they have that knowledge of having been online and talked to a customer, maybe they have customer service. So I think you're gonna be in a good position when you look for those stakeholders. Thank you, sir. All right.

I think I was looking at the point that we need citizen involvement, not per se a business aspect. I agree. I agree.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you for that.

So just so that I have a clear understanding, what qualifications do you all want? I mean, we can draft it pretty much based on whatever you all want. So we just came up with that, but that was just for the draft. So if you want it just to be citizens and nothing else, that's fine. But what qualifications do you guys want?

Customers of the system? Customers of our system? Yes. Yeah.

citizens who are customers of the franklin power and electric well utilities in general ask the question they are if they're in an advisory board then i do think that they need to have a little knowledge of what they're at that like there should be some type of fundamental knowledge about how it it works like councilman mcelmore you always talk about experience always So it's hard for me to kind of fathom that tonight you're saying that they don't have to be experienced, they just have to be a paying customer.

I'm not knocking that, right?

but I do think that if we're going to put this board together, like I know Dr. Felicia Blow, she reached out to me because she thought that I was her council person, but it's actually Mr. Kitchen. I know that she has experience in this, at least in this arena, right? She may not know everything about electricity, but I would feel confident putting her on a board like this because of her knowledge. I think that there should be some type of qualification in order to be on an advisory board. They will be giving us advice, recommendations, studying, taking polls, whatever they're going to do from the citizens that needs to be defined, in my opinion.

I agree with what you're saying. I think we'll be able to find people at every ward that meet those two categories, being a customer and having some knowledge. They don't have to be don't have to know how to work a line crew or but you know they have some and some because it can't just be people that are upset about the about the cost of electricity because that's a it's it's really and truly a uh it's a consumption business and the more you consume the more you pay and and and people don't like that uh because when when it gets super hot or super cold the bills are going to be high well that's just a sad part of it yeah

they would need to be people that would have to come up with strategies to help. We don't need people that would just, like you just said, just gonna complain about how high it is. We need a solution at this point. If we don't have bankers to be at the table to help with the solution based off of what the citizens are saying, then it's kinda like what's the point of having an advisor

Well, I think that that's one of the reasons we have someone from the staff a part of the board to help them explain to them the different aspects. Wait a second. If there is a member from staff who is familiar with the utilities, they can give them information to help them make decisions that they need to make. I don't necessarily think they need to be from the cable industry, which is in the same arena. as far as electric or wires is concerned, I think that citizens who pay the bills, who have an interest and a basic operating knowledge of business, they know how to balance the checkbook, they know that if you buy electricity, you gotta pay for electricity, basic common sense citizens, they shouldn't be restricted, well, what do you know about electricity?

Well, I think to my colleagues, we have a model that we got from Manassas. I think if we follow the model, we'll be successful in a selection of individuals to move forward. but we're not guessing because we have a model. That's what models are for. You can always change them, tweak it, whatever, but at least get the model, study the model, then let's come up with a solution.

We'll all have the draft in front of us. Yes.

Right now, we don't have the draft. We're just talking from ... We don't need to do that. I agree. I agree with what you're saying.

Keep in mind when you do that, you're going to be putting your selection to the discretion of the rest of the council. If you pick Ms. B or Ms. A to be your representative for your ward and council says, well, we don't think she meets the qualifications. I don't think you just circumvented the fact of you appointing somebody from your ward. You thought that person was qualified to serve. And I think that person should be able to serve on the Citizens Advisory Board because you have selected that person to serve on your behalf.

That's an interesting point.

But what I'm saying is we have not studied the model yet, so we are assuming whatever we say is just an assumption. We don't need to have assumptions. Let's study the model, then we can come up with a solution to what we need to move forward.

And we can hash it out next month.

Yes, yes, because right now it's irrelevant.

All right. Uh, gosh, we get us that. And, um, I know you will, and can you send it electronically too? So yeah. Yeah. All right. Um, we need, uh, is that everything for the work session? Okay. We're 30 minutes behind, but, um, could I have a motion to close that on the work session?

Make a motion to close on a work session.

Okay. A motion to come out of second. And we have motion to second any discussion. All right. I'll take a vote. Dr. Johnson. Aye. Aye.

Aye. Aye.

Aye. And I thank you very much. Um, do I have a motion? Uh, I don't need a motion for that. Uh, call to order on the, uh, very late seven o'clock, uh, for the meeting for July the 13th. Um, roll call, I think was done earlier, but I'll do it anyway. Dr. Johnson. Present. Mr. Kitchen. Present. Ms. Banks. Present. Ms. Copeland. Present. Mr. McLemore. Present. And Mr. Grizzard. Present. All right. Ladies and gentlemen, if you're just joining us, if you'll please turn off your cell phones and stand and join us in the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Uh, chief, do you have a, anybody sign up for citizen's time? Nobody. All right. Um, to have a motion to approve the agenda.

So moved. Second.

The motion is second. Any discussion? I'll take a vote. Dr. Johnson.

Aye.

Aye. Aye.

Aye. Aye.

Aye. And I thank you very much. Um, we have a proclamation. Does anybody hear from the department of corrections? Probation and parole. All right. So I'd like to take a vote without reading. Everybody's had an opportunity to see it. Do I have a motion to accept this proclamation?

So moved.

I have a motion and a second. Any discussion? Dr. Johnson, if you'll start us.

Aye.

Aye. Aye.

Aye. Aye.

Aye. And aye. And we'll get that to probation and parole. Uh, we have on the agenda, the appointment of Franklin redevelopment, housing authority board members. However, we've discovered that, that the board member for ward six is still sitting and has not resigned. And we're gonna work with, work with him, um, to, to find out what his pleasure is. We cannot remove him without a public hearing. So we're gonna see if he's willing to resign. Okay. Uh, did you, where do you stand on your ward two person? Have you. You're still working on that? Okay, so we're gonna bypass that until the next meeting, is that okay?

Wouldn't it just be tabling this issue until the next meeting?

Okay, table, table. Okay, all right. Juneteenth report, Mr. McLemore.

If the IT person would queue it up.

I think it's coming.

CAN YOU GO TO THE SLIDE SHOW PRESENTATION, PLEASE? THANK YOU. OUR SLOGAN THIS YEAR WAS STRONGER TOGETHER. NEXT SLIDE, PLEASE. THIS WAS, AS YOU WILL SEE, I WANT TO PASS OUT THESE SURE This was the back of the brochure, which as you will see later on in the presentation, was part of the agreement with the nonprofit. Next slide, please. Back one. It was four days of Juneteenth, Stronger Together 2026. Next slide, please. This is a picture of the things that occurred on Thursday. We had a reef laying ceremony, followed by the speaker, national speaker, Dr. Umar Johnson, followed, that was at the hospital. Then the picture of Dr. Johnson was at the college. and then we went to Barrett's Landing so Thursday covered three locations and um we had a live band the mayor opened the ceremonies at the Barrett's Landing and I began the ceremony at the uh SLAVE MEMORIAL. FRIDAY WE WERE AT THE WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT CENTER. WE HAD A WONDERFUL TIME THERE. I WANT TO THANK COUNCILLOR BANKS and Council Lady Copeland, Vice Mayor Copeland for their attendance, as well as the city manager stopped in with us for a while. We were at the, again, at the Workforce Development Center. We had Michael Jackson, Emma Tater. We had recording artists, Praxton out of Chicago, Illinois, as well as Chester B's party band and show. These little girls were phenomenal. In that picture up there, anybody who saw them thought we're looking at the future Destiny's Child or something. They were nine years old, and boy, did they perform with energy. Next slide, please. Saturday, we had events going on at the Martin Luther King Center. Again, our slogan, Stronger Together. We had the Community Leadership Roundtable. where you can't really see them very well. We have them up in the right hand corner. We have the mayor, the police chief, our city manager, and other citizens. And we discussed issues that we think are very relevant in the community that we could tackle. THE CENTER PICTURE, YOU SEE THE MAYOR IS THERE WITH THE AMANRAS SCHOLARSHIP RECIPIENTS. WE DID GIVE SCHOLARSHIPS TO THESE YOUNG LADIES, AND NONE OF THOSE FUNDS CAME FROM THE CITY FUNDS. THEN WE HAD LOCAL ARTISTS, DOMINIQUE CARR, AS WELL AS RECORDING ARTISTS WHO IS ALSO LOCAL, MR. ANDRE CROSS. AND THEN WE HAD A BAND, WE HAD A FASHION SHOW, WE HAD A CAR SHOW OF THREE WHEELERS AND WE ALSO HAD BOUNCY HOUSES AND ENTERTAINMENT FOR THE CHILDREN. SO WE HAD AN ACTION-PACKED SATURDAY. AND WRAPPING UP NEXT SLIDE WITH SUNDAY. SUNDAY WE HAD A GOSPEL EXPLOSION. WE HAD A GOSPEL DJ. AGAIN, I WOULD LIKE TO TAKE A SPECIAL MOMENT TO THANK SAM SIOS AND THE CHIEF PARTY. who supported with their departments or chief party. He was outstanding. He attended all four days and Ms. Bailey, she was there on two days, but her staff was represented all four days. We did have a Reverend Dr. Eric Majette delivered a service under the a big tent we had water slides bouncy houses for the kids we had vendors as well as a gospel dj so we had an action packs sunday as well completing the four days next slide please this reflects on the uh the original PROPOSAL THAT I MADE TO THE CITY. THE ENTERTAINMENT BUDGET WAS FOR THE ENTERTAINMENT ADVERTISEMENT WAS $3,000. LIVE ENTERTAINMENT WAS $8,000. SOUND AND LIGHT, $25,000. WE SET ASIDE $1,500 FOR MLK uh day and uh activities and then we had a brochure sure ad of one thousand dollars for a total of the sixteen thousand dollars contributed by the city next slide please this is a breakdown and all of these receipts were uh gone over by the vice mayor for confirmation OF THE ALLOTTED NUMBERS THAT TOTAL TO 16,000 FROM THE CITY, WE HAD AN ACTUAL SPENDITURE OF 18,000 ON THOSE PARTICULAR ITEMS WITH THE OVERAGE REFLECTED THAT WAS PAID FOR BY AMANRA AND THOSE PARTICULAR AREAS. NEXT SLIDE, PLEASE. This is as of the 8th, the numbers added up across to give the totals and without breaking down each individual one, the event total came to $34,000, some $14,500 was contributed by the city along with the $1,500 that Amon Ra still has for the MLK Day and Amon Ra's contribution to the Juneteenth was $18,866. Next slide, please. This is just a collage of all the things that happened throughout our Juneteenth cultural celebration, touching on a little bit of everything. Next slide, please. And Stronger Together, this is a picture the mayor and I took at one point, and we also had a picture of the banner. And Stronger Together, it was the spectacular Juneteenth cultural celebration for 2026. and we hope that we will be able to have a stronger together event next year. This one was better than last year, and each year, being our fourth year, gets better and better. And we thank the city, and again, special thanks goes out to the council members for their support of the Juneteenth event, those that made it and those who didn't. but thank you for your votes that allowed us to be able to put this event together. And I can't thank enough Chief Pawtee for his daily participation as well as Ms. Bailey from the Parks and Recreation. and again thank you to the council members in attendance and that completes the conclusion if you like the slide last slide is the person who put together this presentation for us and i just wanted to put a plug in form that's all and that completes our financial uh breakdown of what happened with the juneteenth cultural celebration are there any questions or concerns any questions council

I do want to comment that, again, I was there two nights, and I had a very good time. I particularly want to comment on the little fashion show that was done at the Martin Luther King Center. Those young ladies had, from the youngest to the oldest, had so much poise and so much professionalism and so much grace as they walked across the... They were just so impressive, so impressive. The whole event was nice. I was very happy.

Well, it gave us the members of Amon Ra. It went by the board, and the board did vote to give them scholarships to the two recipients. One is Miss Southampton, and the other, you was there, Mr. Mayor. I couldn't even make it. I was too busy. What was the other one? Miss Virginia or something?

It was Virginia something. It was one of the lead-ups to the Virginia.

Pageant. So we gave them each $250 scholarships. Very nice.

All right, if there's no more further questions, we'll go to city manager's report.

Nothing to report, Mr. Mayor.

That's very sweet. Boards and commissions.

I would just like to say we had, I think it was July 1st, and the mayor was in attendance on the board as well. Retirement of the... Mr. Smith retiring, William Smith retiring from the jail board, basically. Also, not only he retired, but his assistant retired also.

We lost two at the same time.

Yes, it was two at the same time. We have a new superintendent, basically, that will be becoming to to share with us as well. Selection from well, she's from the Norfolk City Jail and she's you know, FBI background and so forth. So it's going to be good. And we have Mr.. The new assistant is the city. He's from the city of Franklin, and that's Mr.. Dupree also. The new deputy? Yes, he's the new deputy. So we're moving quite along with that. Unfortunately, we did have one person, an inmate to demise, that went out today. And as far as we know, there's no foul play. It was pronounced. Natural causes. Yes, natural causes and so forth. So far. So far. Still under investigation, but so far. But don't quote me on that.

Thank you. Let's get you anything from social services? Anybody else? Okay. Okay. Did you have anything else you want to add to council member comments?

Uh, yes.

Yes. Uh, Mr. Mayor, um, the ducks may sound comical. Um, we have on Barrett street. Oh, the, the, the geese. Yeah. Yes. Welcome ducks, geese, whatever. Uh, how were you wanting to find them, but they are poor. I know it sounds comical. Go ahead and get your hat on.

If you've never dealt with them, it's comical. But if they've been in your yard, yeah.

But my thing is, there was a tragedy. One duck was killed because they come over to the pond, basically, and swim in the pond, the pond right behind City Hall. And my thing is, who would kill a defensive duck, an animal, a geese?

Thank you.

But my thing is to our citizens, we need to, I may sound comical, but if it were you or a family member, it wouldn't be so comical. They are animals. They're a part of our community. We need to respect them.

Was it struck by a vehicle or what?

Yes, it, it, the, the body was laying in the road bleeding. The duck, the duck was expired. Yes.

Mr. Mayor, Mr. Mayor, if I could, if I could respond, if you don't mind. Yes, Dr. Johnson, I just want you to know, in response to your concern, we did put up duck crossing signs in that area. So those signs have already been placed. So just to make people aware, to be mindful that there are ducks and geese and waterfowl and others that are coming in the area. So I just want to let you know the signs are up.

Thank you. It used to wear a fashion boy. That's where it we have a pawn retention pawn. The city has a retention pawn right behind the parking lot here. And so it extends to Bogart Street. That's it. Very good. It was it was it extends to Bogart Street and there they cross the street and go to the pond to take a swim with their babies and so forth. And then they come back and go into the bushes. But not only the ducks. There are deer we have to look out for in our city. There is quite a number of deer now. If you're driving, you may not see them. I saw them at the railroad crossing. here on High Street. There are deer and there have been reports of some bear walking down the street like they owned the place.

That's all on Pretler Road.

Okay. Well, there's been one closer than that, Bruce Street and so forth. But we must be cognizant and cautious of our wildlife and let's protect our wildlife. Thank you. Thank you.

Not to belabor the point, but if it's, depending on whether it's a goose, duck, some of them are, um, protected species. Protected by, protected by. That would make a felony if it was killed on purpose.

Right. Yes. Um, no comment.

Our Ward 5 meeting will be held on Wednesday, July 15th, 5.30 p.m. at the Martin Luther King Center. City Manager Freeman will be our guest speaker. And also just a reminder, the honorary street dedication and sign unveiling celebration for Brigadier General Baxter, retired Army, is Saturday, August 8th, 11 a.m. at the corner of Banks and Myrna Street. All are invited.

Thank you.

No, for your award meeting?

Yeah.

11 a.m. for your award meeting?

No, for the dedication, 5 o'clock. 5 o'clock. 5 o'clock. Okay. 5.30.

5.30. Okay. Award 5 and 5.30. FIRST OF ALL, I WOULD LIKE TO ECHO THE SENTIMENTS OF COUNCILMAN JOHNSON IN REGARDS TO OUR WILDLIFE. THAT IS VERY GOOD THAT YOU BROUGHT THAT UP. THANK YOU TO THE CITY MANAGER FOR EXECUTING THE SIGNS TO PREVENT ANYTHING LIKE THAT FROM HAPPENING. I would like to also echo that there will be a Ward 3 meeting on the 20th of July at the Franklin Library at 530. Our guest will be the Director of Parks and Recreation, as well as the Ward 3 representative from our Franklin City School Board, and we will have the presence of our City Manager also. So that is on July 20th at the Franklin Library. I'd like to say that the 4th of July ceremony was outstanding. As normal, it was our largest attended event of the year. I think we probably had a couple of thousand people out there. The Parks and Recs did a wonderful job on putting that together, and Public Works, whatever departments were involved, so I'd like to commend them on that. There is something that I sent an email to the mayor about, and he responded, we have a problem that people are not getting utility bills. but yet they're being charged or threatened with being cut off for being late. And according to the mayor, we've had that happen with a few people. And also there is a concern that I was brought to my attention today that somebody got a utility bill for $7,000. It was a typo, but I had someone I came across in my ward a couple of weeks ago who had a utility bill for $5,000. And again, it was a typo. So I think that we need to address some of these concerns that are being dealt with in the utility billing department so that people will be able to receive their bills Don't talk about cutting me off and you never even sent me a bill How can I get a late fee when I never got a bill? so I just wanted to bring that up and hopefully the city manager will be able to assign people to look into trying to address those issues and That's gonna do it for my comments this evening.

Thank you I also want to comment on comments of Mr. McLemore on the July 4th, or I should say Independence Day, spectacular that Parks and Rec, with assistance of the Police Department and Public Works, put on. It was outstanding. I, too, have never seen anything at Barrett's Landing that came anywhere close to the number of people that were involved. But I didn't even go to the car show. There was a huge car show as well. I did not venture down there. It was just a wonderful, wonderful event, and I think Bailey Wilkerson needs particular attention brought to her because she's done this time after time after time with these events, and I say that because Sam says give the credit to Bailey, so I'm going to give it to Bailey. If there's no further, I'll entertain a motion to adjourn.

Second.

I have a motion and a second. If no discussion, I'll assume everybody's going to say aye.

Aye. Aye.

Aye. Aye. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining.