Council - Regular Meeting

I want to welcome everybody to the June 1st meeting of the Marion Town Council. We will begin with the invocation given by Chief Tester.

Let us pray. Dear Heavenly Father, we're proud to be here in your presence, Lord. Please remember the Carroll County Deputy and his family. and also their surviving deputy. Lord, we ask that you lay your healing hands upon them. And Lord, as a community, we ask for your blessings and your safety that only you can provide us, Lord. And in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. We'll go ahead and have roll call. I see that all members are present except one. If the minutes will reflect that, please. We need to approve the minutes of our May 18th meeting.

Some minutes.

Second.

I have a motion and a second. Any discussion of those minutes, changes, alterations? Motion and second being had, we'll take it to a vote. All in favor? Aye. We need approval of our agenda tonight.

So moved. Second. Are there any additions or corrections to that?

Not from staff.

Okay.

Okay. As I do see on the closed session, it is marked as none. So that being said, all in favor of approving our agenda. And tonight we have a public hearing scheduled on the budget for the fiscal year 2026 2027. I'm going to turn this over to our town manager. Thank you.

I'm going to quickly run through a PowerPoint slideshow. Again, this is going to be just a pared-down version of what I spoke on at the last meeting. And then we'll open the floor up to any questions or comments if they have anything, both our visitors or from council. So the goals for today, again, are to go over what we've got in the 27 budget. I want to take a close look at our revenues, our current expenditure plans, then go over the rest of the budget calendar and take any feedback from anyone in attendance this evening. So again, the revenues, our revenues are again sustainable. They're projected to increase slightly. That's really just going to be inflationary. Our major revenue streams include, of course, first water, the meals tax. Water has had a lot of activity lately as we've transitioned over to radio read. We've adjusted rates. And then also there is a 5% rate increase for sewer and water in this budget, reflected in this budget. Meals tax, we hope to see, like I said, sustainable growth there over the next year. We do have a couple of new restaurants that are slated to open. We've got increased open hours at some of our fast food restaurants. So we hope to see at least mild growth there. And then, of course, as menu prices increase, of course, our taxable collection will increase with that as well. Fund balance reserves, they remain high. Those are primarily from our ARPA allocation. Cindy does a lot of work to keep those in the highest interest rate that they can, and that's right now at a 3.35 rate. So in this kind of era of declining rates, that's still a very favorable rate for our investment portfolio. We do need to spend this money, but we need to spend it down strategically. So we've talked a little bit about there's some money that's allocated for the Callen Drive Rec Park, things of that nature. So we want to earn the money while it's there, but we also need to use these. These are the one-time funds that we need to allocate towards strategic one-time spending we don't certainly don't want to balance budget operationally but use these towards one-time purchases capital or something of that nature what's on the horizon as far as revenues are concerned potential increase in meals tax I talked about above and potential increase in sales tax so whenever we see more meals tax that translates to sales tax so of course our Our received rate isn't nearly as high as meals, but as gross receipts grow that's reflected in both meals tax and sales tax increases. And then our declining revenue source is going to be cigarette stamps. We've seen that kind of drop year over year as people either stop smoking or turn to other tobacco products. This again is not an all tobacco, not an all tobacco tax, but on just cigarettes. So as people get away from that, we see that revenue drop and it's something that we anticipate year over year. Looking at expenditures, operational expenditures are largely flat year over year. Our personnel expenses are of course the largest part of our budget. This budget houses a 3% COLA for all of our town employees as well as an 11.7% increase. on our health insurance premiums. Again, these numbers are very largely, but I wanted to just point out again that the 11% increase in health premiums is only on the employee. They will only fill the employee. We pay about 85 to 86% of employee premiums. So that 11.7% increase only reflects their 14 or 15% payments. So the 3% COLA for even our lowest paid employees well overrides what they will see in a health insurance premium increase. For major expenditures of note, we've got big expenses in capital, which I'll talk about on another page, Cal and Drive Rec Park, as well as snow removal equipment annual paving again we've got 600,000 budgeted for that as we move into the new fiscal year then it's a calendar at Breck Park What's on the horizon as far as expenditures, one of the things that we know is coming but can't quite nail down what it looks like is fringe benefits. So this 11.7% increase is one of the biggest that we've seen, probably the biggest that we've seen, Samantha, since 2015. So we see it there. We see it all kind of across our benefits. But we know that's going to grow, and it's something that we're going to have to assimilate to as we move forward. Capital improvement investments, we've got $1,582,000 budgeted here. So just to run down the list, we've got a payroll machine in here for $35,000. We've got $120,000 allocated for new police vehicles as well as outfitting some police vehicles for road use. The fire and EMS department has some extrication tools that are budgeted here that will assist them in EMS activities. We've got a public works wheel loader for $216,000. We've got general fleet vehicle replacement here for $120,000. Then we've got a snow removal fleet allocation for $425,000. This is the line item that I spoke about. at the last meeting where we're budgeting 45% of a potential $945,000 expense. We're very hopeful that we're going to get 55% or $520,000 of that total expense paid for with CDS grant money through the federal government. Samantha's worked very hard on getting us through that project and with that grant. We're optimistic about that and that we'll get nearly a million dollars in equipment for a cost to us of $425,000. To go on, we've got an asphalt recycler for $120,000 and then $500,000 which is going towards a grant match for Callen Drive Rec Park. So again, just over 1.5 budgeted with a potential yield of 2.1 depending on how the CDS grant plays out. uh... i think the the highlights of this budget that three percent raise for each employee we're we're investing in personnel that investment capital one point five million chicken could take up over two We have got four loans in this budget that are budgeted to be paid off if our revenues hold steady and our expenses hold steady. So we've got accelerated payoff of non-SERP debt. Again, our SERP loans are very low interest, so there's no reason to accelerate the payoff of those, but we do have some existing non-SERP loans that come at a higher interest rate that we really have the ability to pay off if we are fiscally responsible here. Investment in Parks and Recreation, again, we've got this $500,000 match for calendar at Rec Park, and that is a matching grant for a grant that's already been awarded through the Department of Conservation and Recreation. We're going to aggressively pursue grants for Calendrive. We don't quite know what the total cost is going to be there, but we know it's going to be lofty, and we certainly want to realize those goals. So we're going to go after those as hard as we can. Again, with capital, you see this in the CDS grant, both the police department are firing EMS, are actively pursuing grants almost on a daily basis. And then lastly, conservation of one-time invested funds. So again, we talked about needing to spin these down in a responsible way, but also while we have them, they're housed in high-yield portfolios that contribute to our revenues. Again, just the end of the budget calendar here, so tonight's the public hearing. Hoping to do the adoption at the next meeting on June 15th. And if there is any interruption to the June 15th meeting, we have one last opportunity to adopt the budget on June 30th when we close the books.

that being said i'd be able to be happy to take any questions or comments from council well if being a public hearing will allow the public to express their comments sure at this time if anyone from the public would like to address the budget you're more than welcome to come to the podium thank you very much thank you sir

Charles Wasson of Sona Park. And I would like to thank Tony. He sent four guys in orange outfits, and they cleaned up Althea Street. Really nice. You did a great job. Thank you, Tony. Does the city get any money from the Bristol Casino?

We do not. The county does. The town does not.

Does the county share any with you, with us?

Not specifically through their revenue line.

Really? Okay.

Andrew, do they earmark that for EMS? They earmark that for the countywide EMS.

It's already been earmarked for that?

Yes, from the county. Previously. I don't know what they're doing this year.

I haven't seen their budget, but previously.

Okay.

Okay. Cindy was saying that the county has allocated their funds generally for safety education and one other item, but I'd be happy to get that information to you.

That's okay. Was there a budget in the newspaper, a line item budget?

For this budget? Yeah. There was a synopsis of... Not the detailed budget. It's 200 and some pages.

Oh, right, but just the one page.

Exactly.

Okay, I must have missed it. Saturday the 23rd. Saturday the 23rd, okay. A piece of information, the federal government is $37 trillion in debt. They pay $1 trillion a year on interest. And I don't know where your grants come from, probably the federal government, state government, somewhere, but they come from somewhere, you know what I mean? But last year I mentioned that it's always good to be out of debt. I think you're better off when you're completely out of debt, when you're not beholden to somebody else that levers the debt over you. And a lot of these Some of these grants, a lot of these grants, I know I was talking with Chief Testerman, a lot of those grant monies that come with strings attached, which if everybody knew how deep those strings were, they probably wouldn't like it. But anyway, I just want to close by saying thank you. Get out of debt.

Thank you for your comments. Is there anyone else who would like to comment on the budget? and if there are no other uh comments we'll turn this uh budget uh over now to the town council and any discussion comments questions that council may have i would just like to thank andrew his staff and the committee for working on the budget absolutely good job thank you absolutely they've done a wonderful job We, am I correct, we need to vote on this budget by the 30th of this month? Is that correct?

That's correct. I was going to have another opportunity on the next budget to actually adopt. I thought if there was any feedback or questions, council could use the next two-week period to consider that. Okay, thank you, sir. We could do adoption on the 15th.

okay so um i'll turn this over to council now is there any action that council wishes to take on this at this time do you all think you're going to make any changes between now and the 15th you're looking at the budget i don't i think it's a good budget i'll make a motion we adopt the budget so what you're saying we're about 15. we can do it tonight oh seven days after okay so historically we've done it on uh the third year

Or the 50. We can do it on the 50. No, we close out the books on the 30th. Maybe we've had a special call. We could if we had to. Well, we always have. I just wondered. That's fine with me. I like the idea of going with it. For some reason, we always had those at that period of time.

Okay. So if there's no further questions, we'll close out the public hearing for the budget.

Great. Thank you.

And we'll move on now to public presentations, which we have none. So we will go ahead with public comment time. I have one person signed up, and that is Lucy. Lucy, if you care to make any comments, please come to the podium, give us your name and address, and let us know what we can do for you.

Can everybody hear me?

Yes.

OK. Good evening, Mayor and members of the Town Council. My name is Lucy. I'm the owner of Katie's, located at 212 East Main Street, otherwise known as Sisters. And I am fully invested in this area, bought a home. I've got a signed lease for the spot. I have decades of industry experience and a projected business model that scales from an operational baseline of 135,000, growing to 197,000 annually. This is real revenue brought directly into our local economy We have a really good plan to offer commission to local artisans, sell the work, creating jobs. And yet, for the second time in a year, the gap between small business reality and local economic processes has stalled this project. I was told before that if I ran under an existing brand other than my own, I would receive all the help that I needed. And I would receive no help if I ran under my own brand, and that building is now empty, it is storage space. And that's just one example of how certain mindsets are not helping this community. There are businesses closing left and right. It's interesting for me because I've attended a few meetings to hear about loans and other programs and other assistance given to other businesses in the area. And yet when I ask for my business and my plans, I get told I get to wait till October. I've not heard from anyone in regards to the council reaching out to me for a solution. And yet another business is closing in town. This one directly affected by my cafe not being open because that business was looking forward to increased foot traffic. I am hoping that we might come to a solution. That's it for now.

Thank you for your comments. Council, do you wish to address anything?

Well, I just have a question. Does any new business coming into town, do they have to go through the pop-up or whatever?

They don't have to go through the pop-up. I think what Ms. Wolf is referring to in October is the grant program. We do have the RBIG program that can be applied for at any time. So the grant is, of course, not going to be a payback, I think, as long as you're in business for 12 months. Is that correct?

Now, right now, it's just a big grant.

OK. And then the RBG is a low-interest loan that is available to anyone at any time, assuming you meet the requirements.

So she could open her business any time?

Absolutely.

Oh, OK. That sounds really great. It's the first time I've heard about that particular program, that loan.

I have reached out to you and left a voicemail offering anything that I can do to help. It was on the Friday before the last council meeting. you would send me an email asking about how to get on the agenda. And I'd reached out by phone to see what I could do to assist.

What's that loan? Call again, please.

What's what?

What is that loan? Call again, please.

It's an RBG loan, R-B-E-G. It's a USDA product that we administer through the town. Awesome. It's a $15,000 low interest loan that's paid back over 60 months.

OK.

And I'd be happy to send you all the application information if you'd like.

All right. I'll look forward to it.

Certainly. I'll get it out to you tomorrow morning.

Is that it? All right. Thank you. OK. Thank you very much.

We've only had one person that signed up. We have a couple of minutes. If there's anyone else that would like to speak tonight, this is your chance. and none being heard, we will move on to our council members' reports. We'll start at this end, if that's okay, Dr. Gates.

Sure. A couple of sports-related items. The Marion Boys soccer team is playing in the regional semifinals tomorrow, and the Marion Boys tennis team, once again from last year, that basically the defending state champs were second in the region, so they get to go on and will play Friday at Floyd County and hopefully get a chance to go back to the final two. So they've had a good year, and you all know me as a sports person, so I'll try to keep you updated. I think the girls soccer team got to play in the region, and I'm not sure their outcome on that. Other than that, I don't have anything else.

Thanks for keeping us up to date there.

No report.

Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Spencer.

OK, I would just like to welcome our newest business to marry and sip and savor. But this Spencer here, it's a wonderful place and it's going to be great addition to the channel.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Susie.

And I met yesterday with or visited with Deborah and she is going to run again in November. So I just thought I'd let everybody know that. And that's all.

Okay. Thank you.

Councilman Appel.

I just wanted to say I've seen a lot of work going on around town that Public Works has been doing. A lot of work being done on Church Street and just seeing a lot of Public Works employees out and about getting a lot of stuff done. So I just wanted to say thank you to all those people and just that their hard work doesn't go unnoticed. And that's all from us.

It's in Councilman May.

The first round of caring for our community will be this Saturday, which we will probably go into that one. So I'll let you, sir.

No, you go ahead. No, please go ahead.

Well, there's there's two two weekends and this one will be the first one. And I believe that we're still meeting at the church across the street and and then we'll be going to different places in the community to do some work. So the second thing I had was, Andrew, can I bring to your attention the back of the dragon sign behind the Little Caesars? Can we maybe do something that would make that a little more permanent? It's leaning over, and I know a lot of people stop there to get pictures, and it looks a little shabby. It needs some love. Thank you.

I'll get with Public Works tomorrow. We'll take a look at it.

Okay, thank you. The third thing is that, you know, we had our fire EMS guys in here last week and don't know we probably should have brought it up last meeting but I'd like to be able to provide a maybe a cookout or something for those guys you know and maybe with the police department in light of everything that's going on in the world maybe we can show all of them some love and even the town officials so if I need to make that in the form of a motion I'll be glad to

Your motion would be seconded by the mayor if you made that in the form of a motion.

I'll make that as a motion that we provide a grilled lunch and you can figure out the details.

Sounds like a point.

I second that. I think that's a great use. That's great. All in favor? Yes. And that's wonderful. Anything else, sir? That is it. Thank you.

Councilman Carter. We had a District 3 Board of Governors meeting last Thursday, and we're going to have several surplus vehicles up for auction for sale, and we'll go through the government channels there because we purchased some new ones. As you may know, the Lynx buses, they're constantly on the go, so it doesn't take long to roll up the mileage on them. tentative budget district three we still don't know what kind of money we get in the federal state so you can't really make it a good one but we did put in there like we did for county employees a three percent increase got a great staff up there and that's real good I had a comment a positive comment for Tony's department from a gentleman stopped me the other day I brought to Tony's attention about Chestnut Street here across from the back of Hungate about falling apart. And that guy had just driven his car by. And they've done a really good job, so I assume they're... Are you dealing with it, Tony? Just got to pay them. But he was commenting how quickly he got on that task. And I had the privilege of Deb and I attending a couple of Hungry Mother... baseball games. We've labored for years to get a team back in Marion. As we add to Marion Mets. So we've got a team and I urge the community and council to attend and support as I urge to support all Marion events. We've got cruise ins. Ken's not here each month. We got her July. So hope to see a big crowd out for these events.

Absolutely. Anything else, sir?

That'll do it.

Okay. Really excited. We met with the engineering firm that's going to give us a little bit more of a plan for Callen Drive recreational property, and we got a little mud on our boots, and we enjoyed a lot of great ideas there. I want to say a big thank you to Aaron Dirth and Dan Beckman from Letters From Home and the VFW Post 4667 for a great Memorial Day. Thank you, Dr. Gates, for organizing the parade for us out in the rain, and I think you even made it stop raining. We had better attendance for the parade than I thought that we would have. And it was a wonderful parade that concluded at Hardee's and we went to the VFW post and we had a wonderful memorial program there. Very touching. And we caught a little bit more of Dan Beckman and Aaron Derp there. The parade, the flags on the courthouse, the public works, the community coming together to celebrate something as significant as those who gave all and the people that have fought for our liberties. That's very important. the main player in that but we participate as well and big thank you to everybody that does that support these groups support them if you possibly can so that we can keep this going from now till forever want to say something about Mayor David Hounds because he was integral in bringing these programs and Memorial Day celebration Worked with the VFW all the time. It's kind of one of his legacies. And wherever you are, the program has still gone on. Yes, we got baseball in Marion. That's great. Wood bat team. And everybody should come out. We need to support. And it's a great time, too. So you can travel to Marion. You can come see the stadium lights and maybe smell a hot dog or two. Caring for Our Community is having their volunteer work days on the 6th and the 13th. Sign up time, 745 to 815 at the Presbyterian Church right across the street. wear clothes you can get dirty and if you don't have clothes you can get dirty we do have some clean jobs that people can do so we have jobs for every ability and every type so please volunteer it's it's a good thing to do and uh... come to Marion to volunteer as well I supported the high school by attending a couple of performances of the Beverly Hillbillies uh... over the weekend and uh... These youngsters at Marion Senior High School that are in the drama department, I guess, or theatrics, I'm not even sure what it's called. They put a lot of time, sweat, and energy into everything from the production of that stage to knowing their lines, and they were fantastic. So just for entertainment value, keep Keep these things in mind. These are things that Marion has that we can take advantage of and support the schools at the same time. That about wraps up my mayor's report.

And one thing at the baseball games, one night the boys' basketball team ran to concessions.

second night is girls volleyball so you're helping everybody there that's great that's that's super uh and the hot dogs are the same though food was excellent walking tacos they still have those i don't know i had a cheeseburger okay don't tell us about the fries larry don't tell us about the fries okay um attorney's report

Um, just to keep council informed, we're continuing to work on the code update, have less than a hundred pages left to go through. How many pages were there?

Hundreds, right?

Um, for some 500. Anything else, sir? That's all.

Thank you. Appreciate your good work there. Staff reports. We have Todd Long listed under staff reports. Todd, do you have something for us tonight?

Well, Mark stole some of my thunder. It's part of what I'm going to go over. Actually, we've got about 50 pages left. I looked right before we came up. So we're knocking that out. It's taking us on and off less than a year, I guess, if you put everything back to back. We probably worked four months total on it. But everything now in our town code, once we roll it out to you all, will be got links and cross-references straight to the state code where it's going to be easy for everybody to look it up. The next thing I got for you is I got an application for a special use permit on some skills games for Roadrunner. This application has been going on for several months. The owner actually lives in Florida, and we require the owner's signature before we process this thing. I was working with someone out of Arkansas who must be the regional manager for the Roadrunner markets. And they finally got up with the owner. We finally got the application back with the owner's signature on it. So they're ready to move forward. And if it's OK with council, I need you all to set the public hearing date. But I would recommend July 6. That's the first Monday in July, first council meeting on Monday. That will give us time to get the required advertising out and to meet that.

Sounds good.

I'll make that motion if you have to have it tonight.

Second. Motion and second. All in favor of holding the public hearing?

Another net. That's all I got unless you got some zoning or code questions.

Thank you. Appreciate your work.

We have the town manager's report. So briefly, just to echo what the mayor said, we had folks in from CHA Engineering out of Richmond that kind of walked to the site with us and we looked at the calendar op site from every angle. They provided some rough sketches and a lot of the different amenities we can see on that site. So it was neat to look at some schematics and see that kind of come to life and what it could look like. I think the next step is They're going to narrow kind of the thoughts that were given to them to two options and they'll be back in August to present those two options to council where a master plan design can be officially adopted. So that's moving along and it's exciting to see the progress on that. Then lastly the water meter project. I believe we Tony ordered the last of the one and two inch meters, and all the one-incher in the ground, the two-inch, we hope to have in by the end of this month. So we hope to have all of those meters squared away and active on radio read by the beginning of the fiscal year. Other than that, that'll leave some of the extraordinarily large meters that we need to tackle at some point, but that being said, 99% of what we've got in the ground will be on radio read. It's exciting to see that keep moving towards closure. But other than that, that concludes my report. So if you have any questions.

No, but I do have a comment. And I want to say thank you very much for your work, Mr. King. And I think that council will echo these sentiments, that we think that you are doing a fine job, along with the rest of the staff. But we're very proud of our selection. for town manager, and thank you for everything that you've done so far. Like the artillery said to the infantry, we're behind you the whole way. You're gonna do the heavy lifting, we're gonna be there to support you. Thank you, I appreciate that. Thank you, sir. We close the town manager's report. Is that correct?

That's correct.

OK. No closed session is scheduled for tonight, so we will remain in open session. Is there any further business that needs to come before the town council?

So we have a town cruise in the third Saturday this month.

I'm not sure that's scheduled. Yeah, I have it in front of me.

That's a way through September. The July is our two-day festival. It starts on Friday night, July 15th, something like that.

It's summertime. Summertime, so. I hear any motions.

Motion to adjourn. Second.

Motion and then second to adjourn. Any discussion? All in favor of adjourning. Marion Town Council meeting is now.