Council - Regular Meeting

The June 15th meeting of the Marientown Council will now come to order. We will begin with the invocation given by the Chief Testament.

Let's bow our heads. Heavenly Father, we come to you this evening as a community. We ask that you provide care for our workers this summer during a busy time of year and provide our leaders with the guidance to get us through the summer and have Gracious for our citizens to be able to enjoy this summer. And also we ask that you take care of our first responders, take care of the public work, and also take care of our firefighters and our soldiers. And in Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. We'll continue with the roll call. I see that Councilwoman Hayes is attending electronically. Welcome. And we have full counsel with us tonight, so please let the record reflect that. We will need an approval of minutes.

I'll make that motion that we approve the minutes as written. Second.

Any discussion of the minutes? None being heard. All in favor of approving the minutes? And it is unanimous. I see Ms. Hayes does vote. Okay. It means we have a good connection there. We'll need to approve our agenda.

I have one addition. It's going to be to the town manager's report, and it's going to be the... approval of the markings on the new paving. And each of you have, Ms. Hayes has it by email, but each of you have the documents in front of you there to make that decision when we get to that section.

Okay, wonderful.

Thank you.

Do I have a motion to amend the agenda and approve?

So moved.

Second.

Okay, so we will, no further discussion being had. All in favor of approving the agenda?

And it is unanimous.

Okay, I did not see if anyone had signed up. We have no public hearings tonight. We do have a public presentation. We will move directly to that. Thank you, Chief. And we have Beverly Haddock. And please, you have the floor, ma'am, if there's any help that you need. Someone will assist you.

Thanks for having me. I'm here to give a report on Smith County Animal Rescue and Resource Center and Smith County Humane Society. We want to thank you again for your support through the years in this past year. And I see that you're going on the budget approval today. So, Sue, you had sent in our request of $5,000. I wanted to kind of update you about what went on this past year and for those of you who don't understand that we do and how we intertwine with these agencies. I'll just go through that really, really quickly. There is the Smith County Animal Shelter, which belongs to the county government. There is the Smith County Humane Society. We're 501c3, all volunteer, no paid staffers. Our mission is to reduce bay neuters for the community. We're in the transport. Right now we're still using the Universal Humane Society, used to be part of the central clinic. And we also do a lot of trap-neuter releases. Those of you who know Rebecca Curran, she's our trap-neuter release lady and does a wonderful job. This past year we did about 300 of those across the county.

It's amazing.

It is amazing. Altogether, the Humane Society helped with the transport and payment for smay neuters of 1,084 this past year across the county. So we stay busy. Again, all volunteers here. We also, the Humane Society, do pet food collections and distribute food to community members who otherwise would probably have to give up their animals because they wouldn't be able to afford the food in these hard times. And then we have about a $7,000 item in our budget that we do emergency care. If community members call us and say, my animal's been hit or it's sick and I don't have the money to get it in the door of the vet, we usually will give them enough seed money to get them in the door of the vet. We don't pay for ongoing needs, but we can help get them in the door so that they can at least get a diagnosis and see what needs to be done. So, that's what the All-Volunteer Humane Society does. The animal rescue, which is at Exit 47, the barn we refer to it as, our mission is to rescue and rehome animals, mainly those that come from the Smith County Animal Shelter. We have the physical facility at Exit 47. Has everybody been up there, seen it? Not everybody. Okay. Well, we welcome you to come up. We'd love to give anybody a tour. Just call and make an appointment. We'd be happy to have you. We're actually open to the public on Friday afternoons. That's when we do the food distribution and Saturday open for adoptions and then adoptions We have four employees now and we operate on donations, grants, and community volunteers. We have about 60 volunteers because you can imagine this past year we had probably about 750 animals that are there. While they're there, and some of them are there only a few days, and some of them are there for several months, the dogs have to be walked, they all have to be fed twice a day, they have to have their kennels cleaned, all of that. So it takes a lot of volunteers to have this organization function. We were doing such a good job with our animal rescue, which started in 2019, that the county actually asked us to take over the county shelter a year and a half ago. I think it was in the fall of 24. And so we actually contract with the county to run the shelter. That means we hire the four employees there. We make the rules about the policies along with they have to be, of course, under the Virginia laws. And we then take in the abandoned, abused, and lost animals in the county. Those are picked up by usually the animal control folks. And animal control is no longer located at the shelter, it's located at the administrative building under Shawmut's management. A good example, I was going to Whitfield about a month ago and I saw a puppy on the side of the road on the interstate. I called 911 and they called animal control. They went and got the puppy off of the interstate because it was going to be pancaked before long, I can assure you. They bring it to the county shelter where we have it looked at by we have a vet tech there now so we have it looked at by the vet tech they're given shots automatically vaccines they are given any medication that they might need for any injuries and they have 10 days to see if they are reclaimed if they're not reclaimed then The animal rescue pulls the animal usually and then they can be adopted from the animal rescue. Has it been adopted? I don't know.

Do you know what kind of puppy it was? I don't know.

No, it was kind of a blur as I went by. I just saw it running around playing. Anyway, I'm hoping it was adopted. If it is not adopted locally within the county or surrounding counties, then it goes to one of our partners that we, rescue partners, and they're usually in Northern Virginia, well throughout Virginia, and sometimes outside of Virginia. And we run vans along with some of our colleagues from bordering counties and that kind of thing to get them to where they can be in an area where there are more people that are willing to adopt.

So that's basically an overview of what we do.

This past year, a year and a half, we have made some major changes at the animal shelter, the county shelter. We have applied for grants. and have as a result been able to put in a dog exercise area. We microchip and vaccinate all the animals that come in there. We do some adoption application and checking before somebody can just walk out with an animal. And we have gotten a grant for an emergency generator. and made improvements to the isolation area in case one of the animals is sick. And we have a brand new dog washing station, which they've never had out there. And very well needed, that's for sure. And procedurally, we've made a lot of changes since we took over. And one of the things is about adoption applications. Everything is online. And if people need help with filling out the applications, they can come up to the animal rescue and we will assist them with that process. We have SAR. the rescue has actually surpassed 5,000 animals rescued since we started in 2019. And I've already given you statistics for the Humane Society this past year, but SAR and the animal shelter together have, I have a total of put through a total of 1,194 animals just this past year. So, and the thing that one of the things we're proudest of is that we have gone from like 20 years ago when I first joined the Humane Society, a euthanasia rate at the county shelter was about 85%. Of all the animals that walked through the door, came through the door, that euthanasia rate was about 85%. We have it down to 10%. And those animals that go down are either very sick or they're dangerous or by risk. So budgets are always an issue. We're always asking for money. A lot of you have come to our fundraisers, whether it's spaghetti dinners or whatever else we just had with Wolfstock the week before last down in Chilhowee. That was successful. So we appreciate any and all support you can give us, and I'm happy to answer any questions you might have.

Council, any questions?

I will say thank you for what you do for our furry friends and family. It's very important.

It's an amazing organization. We have just amazing folks and to have so many volunteers. You know, volunteers can be hard to work with because they're doing it because they want to do it and not because they have to. But we have amazing volunteers and And of all ages, from kids up through older adults. So they're very dedicated animal lovers and they get along real well and we do a great job.

Do you all prefer a certain kind of dog food? I mean, like... I'm not in charge of dog food, so I can't tell you.

We will take anything, I will tell you that. We will take any kind of dog. We really, this time of year, it's kitten season, so if anybody wants to donate food, kitten food is very helpful. because we have a slew of things out there. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

I'm sure it's a great volunteer opportunity as well. Our next public presentation is Andrew Keen, our town manager.

Right. I'm going to go back through the budget really quickly, and it's going to be a very, very quick presentation because this will be the third time that you've seen it. But taking a look at expenditures this year, Again, the total operational expenditures in the departments were largely flat year over year. There weren't any major operational increases. The changes to personnel is, again, that 3% COLA raise to all of our employees. And that's aligned with the other localities in our area in the state. And then 11.7% increase to our health insurance premiums. And again, the town pays 85%, 86% of this, depending on which plan the employee has. And even our lowest paid employees will see an increase in their check, the 3% COLA, given the amount of money that the town spends or pays the portion of the premiums for the employees. Major expenditures to take a note of this year, big investment in capital, which will be on a future slide. Of course, the $600,000 allocation to paving. Callen Drive Rec Park, we'll talk about that on a future slide. And then... was a water and sewer increase of five percent um capital improvements an ibm machine 35 000 police department vehicles totaling 120 000 fire department extraction tools 46 000 public works wheel loader 216 000 fleet vehicle expenses of 120 000 Snow removal fleet of $425,000. Again, this is that budget, the congressional direct spending budget, which has a potential of a $520,000 match. So we're hoping to see just shy of a million dollars in equipment to the town for our investment of $425,000. Asphalt recycler for $120,000 and then $500,000 geared towards the Callen Drive Rec Park. And this is also... part of a matching grant. The accomplishments in this budget, again, a 3% raise for employees. This is investment personnel. Capital investment, $1.5 million across the board. Again, that has an opportunity if the CDS grant is approved in our favor of being a little over $2 million. We've got an accelerated payoff in non-SERP debts. There's four loans to be paid in full in FY27. So if our revenues stay as predicted and our expenses stay as predicted, there are four loans that we hope to pay off early that are non-SERP loans in an effort to free up room in the next budget for other expenses outside the debt service line. Um, investment parks and rec get again, a $500,000, um, grant here. 500,000 is the town portion, um, that we get a, uh, a matching amount from the department of conservation rec. Um, and then I always talk about the aggressive pursuit of grants, um, police department, our fire department, um, and then just the, um, uh, the, the core group with calendar drive and, um, and capital, uh, has been amazing. Samantha, um, tony just everybody's worked on this calendar drive effort even prior to my being here it's it's pretty amazing so we're excited to see how that comes to to fruition and then lastly conservation of one-time invested funds so we do have about three million dollars three and a half million cindy left of what started off as arpa funds that we've got in high yield savings so again we want to treat this as treat this money as one time. We don't want to invest in ongoing expenses with this, but while the interest rate environment is favorable and a high yield environment, we want to do what we can to capitalize on interest earnings there, but also strategically spin that down as one time opportunities present themselves. Lastly, we've got the budget adoption that you all can consider this evening. And if there are any changes that need to be looked at, we can push this to our June 30th meeting. But other than that, I'll take any questions that you all have.

I'd like to begin by saying thank you for producing an excellent budget. And thank you, Sam, Tony, Cindy, and all the supervisors, all the staff that's worked on this. I think you've done an excellent job. Cindy, I will ask you, is there any portions of this budget that need to be voted on separately, or can you take a motion to approve the entire package?

Yes, you can take a motion to approve the entire package.

Then, uh, leave the council to question anything or make any motion.

Are we still putting in a rainy day? Same amount. Okay.

I'll make a motion again on the floor to approve the budget for the 2026, 2027 year. Second.

Okay. Um, any further discussion? We've had this budget before us for quite some time. I think we've all had plenty of time to look at it. And are we ready to take it to a vote?

I think it's a good, I appreciate you making it public.

Yes. Okay. So all in favor of adopting the budget.

Oh, okay. Yes.

Yes.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Thank you.

Any further business, Mr. King? That's it. I appreciate you all.

Okay. Thank you very much. I'm glad to have that done and complete. We'll move on with public comment time. The first public comment is Lucy. Lucy, if you care to Come to the podium, give us your name and address, and the floor is yours.

Hi, I'm Lucy. I live here in Marion. So I want to actually talk about a different thing, which is to do with our waterways. I have little kids. I take them down little streams and creeks in this area. I guess they're actually rivers. But anyway, there's glass, there's metal, there's branches that are stuck up on these bridge pylons. And I've seen lots of communities get just wiped out when these waterways aren't cleaned up. So we have some money set aside for conservation. I think it might be good to help get that stuff cleaned up. Something else I wanted to bring to attention is on the Marion's GIS system. You can actually find that there are fire hydrants in our community with zero PSIs, which indicates there's no water in them. Hopefully we can get that taken care of. And that's it.

Okay. Thank you very much. Council, is there any action that you would like to take on these items?

I'd just like to answer. I think, Tony, don't you think the SERP program is working on that? We don't have water. Can you explain a little bit the pressure type thing?

fell into there. They haven't tested most of them. Correct.

So they've got water, they just don't have the information. Correct. We're following the service, they install patterns and we're testing them. Because if we test it out, we're going to place it next week. That's not going to give us any information. We've been tested since the replacement program averaging a minimum of 20% increase in water flow than what we had prior to the CERB program.

Nice. Thank you.

OK. And the next speaker that we have is Dr. Charles Wassam. Dr. Wassam.

Thank you. Charles Wassam, Wassona Park.

I'd just like to say a few words about how we ought to commemorate in Virginia, particularly Marion, Virginia. We are in the month of the anniversary of some really important events that happened in Virginia, and a man from this area was there at these events. I'll start with May 15th, when Virginia declared their independence from Great Britain, from King, British Crown. And about that time, well, they were in the middle of the Fifth Virginia Convention in Williamsburg, where elected delegates from all over Virginia, different counties, came to Williamsburg. And there was actually no government at the time. They had renounced the British government, and they didn't have one of their own. One of the first things that they did on June 12, just a few days ago, 250 years ago, They made a Declaration of Rights. It was written by George Mason. And it eventually got its way into the US Constitution. But that was the very first thing they did. These are the rights that the people have. This was two weeks before they even formed a government. Two weeks later, on the 29th of June, they had made a constitution, built a government to protect the rights of the people.

And they elected on June 29, they elected who governor?

That's right, Patrick Henry. This man from this area, I mean, he was amazing. If you ever read his story, we ought to do more to celebrate his, honor his life. There is some honor in Marion about his life. When he was 15, well, he was born in Augusta County. When he was 15 years old, he was carrying a gun fighting Indians. Well, he got captured, taken up to Ohio, Michigan, somewhere up there, where he spent two years and got to be really good friends with the Indian chief. but they were out in a hunting party one time and the British were somewhere in the area. He just escaped and left and came back. And he was awarded, he fought in Lord Dunmore's war also. Eventually along in there were the British people. The governor gave him some land in I think Kentucky or somewhere. But anyway, at the time of the convention, the Fifth Virginia Convention in Williamsburg, he was living somewhere down below McDonald's here, right? And the information that I got, I read from this guy, Larry Fleener in Bigstown, who did a history of the town or the settlement, the fort. And at the time he said, he claimed it was actually called Goodwood. The reason for it was it was originally a settlement on the middle fork of the Holston River and it was called what? That's right, Royal Oak. But along about the time of the American Revolution, people didn't like Royal.

So they changed the name to Goodwood.

So that's a little piece of information that kind of gets skipped when we talk about the history of Marion. But Royal Oak was a big area that had been given to somebody, I think Buchanan, and then somebody gave it and then somebody then, supposedly a Campbell bought it and one of these, his son, he bought it and he was living there at the time. He was a delegate from Fincastle County, that's where we were in 1776 in the early part, And they elected him here and sent him to Williamsburg. He was also over at Austinville, in that location up in there, where he signed the Fincastle Resolutions. These were 13 men that signed it. There were three Campbells that signed it. He signed it, and it was one of the first statements by the colonists that said they would die in fighting for liberty. They didn't mean to be slaves to the British crown. Anyway, you know what his name was? You know what his name was? He also participated in helping with the war at Kings Mountain, which was a very critical battle, which pretty much was the death knell to the British rule here in America. His brother-in-law, William Campbell, was a hero over at Kings Mountain. He fought really well over there. But this man was named Arthur Campbell. You don't hear much about him. Arthur Campbell. I think, you know, 200th year anniversary of his living here in Royal Oak. Next few years, maybe we ought to do something to popularize his name. Build a little cabin, say this is where he lived or whatever. I know when I was in France one time, we went by this, on this road, this friend of mine was taking me, and there was a forest over there, it's called Brossillon. And I said, what's that? He said, well, that's where Merlin the Magician lived. And he said, it's just a big hoax. That's what the travel people do. They say that's where Merlin lived. But Arthur Campbell really did live here. There are deeds and all that sort of stuff to prove it. So I'm just putting in the word for Arthur Campbell. Thank you.

Thank you for sharing that with us. That's always nice to hear a little bit about our history. Find out more and more about it all the time. Okay. That's all I have signed up for public comment time. Everyone's familiar with signing the sheet, but is there anyone that wants to say anything before we move on? Okay. We will go with council reports, and we'll start at this end with Vice Mayor Gates.

No reports, Your Honor.

No reports. No reports.

I'm conserving time here. Councilman Atwell.

I just wanted to give everybody a little bit of a notification as a follow-up to our Planning Commission meeting that right now if you go on the Town of Marion website and go under public notices, there is a tab to where you can go and do comprehensive plan public input submissions. So for anybody that wants to have any input as far as how we're developing the new comprehensive plan, if there's anything you've seen that you don't like that we've been doing, if there's anything we've been doing great that you want to continue seeing, just any kind of input that you want to have that would go towards our new comprehensive plan, I would encourage everybody to go in there and look up that submission form. and submit anything that you'd like for us to see or go over as we're mulling over this comprehensive plan over the next few months. That's it. Thank you, Councilman.

Councilman May. I'd like to formally thank Andrew and team for taking care of the Back of the Dragon sign so quickly. So it looks great. Thank you very much. Councilman Carter.

No report.

And Councilwoman Hayes. Thank you, ma'am.

Yes. I forgot. Once again, the Marion Boys tennis team, Samantha's son and Caden Burchard won the state doubles 2A. And I don't think we've ever had a chance to get it. Samantha, do we have a sign up for the boys saying they've won the?

We don't have the last two girls or the boys.

Okay.

Tony's working on the new design. Okay. Tony's working on it. To eliminate those green signs and have them.

It looked a little shaky after the first set, but the boys played hard and came back and won. So it was nice for them. Caden Burchett had played one player from Richlands 20-some times. This has nothing to do with the state championship, but just for perseverance. He had played this young man who was a freshman when he was a freshman, and they had played over the course of four years plenty of times. 20 plus times in singles and Caden had never beaten him. And then he played him a number of times in doubles. And this year he finally beat the fellow from Richlands and they got to go to the state tournament and won the tournament. So that's perseverance.

It is, truly.

All right.

Thank you for that, Dr. Gates. We will move on with the mayor's report. And I want to say that Caring for Our Community had two volunteer work days, and they were well attended. work day. We had 79 volunteers involved in that. It was really amazing to see all of this put together and executed so perfectly that we got everything done and our town manager was there. We appreciate his hard work and participation in that. Todd May, we appreciated you and Dr. Gates. I took a picture of you downtown Working on the flowers and things. And I want to thank all of Council for supporting Caring for Our Community and the efforts that we make there. I think we did a lot of good work this year and I hope that we will continue to do that in subsequent years. I do want to mention Juneteenth coming up very shortly. And the Juneteenth celebration will be this weekend. Of course, I believe Town Hall will be closed on Juneteenth. Is that correct, Cindy? Yes. Okay. So it is a state holiday. I did have it on my iPhone, the dates, but you can find all that information. I believe that maybe I should just endeavor to pull that up real fast.

They used to celebrate at the farmer's markets. I don't know.

We have the Juneteenth celebration at Marion Regional Farmers Market, live music by Entice, food vendors, family-friendly activities. And that event kicks off at 6 p.m., and it will move to the historic Lincoln Theater in case of bad weather. And there are other other events surrounding that. So please, everybody attend Juneteenth if you possibly can. It's a great time. And Ms. Jennings will add something to that.

Yes, there's also an event at the the Appalachian Museum. Anyway, they're going to the Lincoln Theater on the 21st. Is that Scrapper Brody? Scrapper Brody is going to do a presentation on Martin Luther King.

Okay, that should be nice.

At 2 o'clock, so everybody please come.

So, yes, everybody come out, get involved. It's at 6 p.m. Saturday. You know, this says that on Juneteenth, and that's all the information I have.

There is something Saturday.

It's usually on Saturday.

It's probably on Saturday.

It doesn't have the date on here. I'm very sorry to have incomplete information, but please, everyone, get involved if you possibly can. And I want to say to all the people that are in the crowd that helped us as well, that paint will come off eventually, and we appreciate everyone's efforts in that. That will conclude the mayor's report. Oh, I do want to thank the high school football team for sending us some big guys to move rocks at the Henderson. That was a good fit, and their fit, too. So let's hope they have a good season this year.

Scrapper was a very good athlete for Marion High School back in our day.

Our day.

When dinosaurs roamed the earth, Larry.

He went to Emory when I was going down there. You're a good sport. Thank you for that. Okay, we will move on now to the attorney's report.

So just to follow up on the comprehensive plan, that is kind of a goal, a future outlook. And as a part of that, there was a drawing of where the town might like to bring in to the town limits. So it's something not happening tomorrow. Could be 30 years. But the public had asked about that and the town manager did provide a copy of that map, though it was also on the town webpage where Mr. Outwell was referring. There is a hearing where the county is asking that a special commissioner be appointed to sell a number of tracks There are quite a number of tracts, but it's basically two property owners, I believe, that have delinquent taxes. And this is maybe a little unusual in that it's just picking up a couple owners, not a huge number.

Yeah, it is unusual.

But what they have submitted are properties within the town of Marion. That's all.

Any questions for Mark?

Okay. Thank you, Mark. We appreciate that very much. And we'll move on to staff reports. Cindy Stanley.

Just a reminder, everybody, that VML has set the conference for October 10th, beginning date. Let me know if you plan to attend, and I'll get you registered.

I can hear you.

VML.

October what?

October 10th is the start date.

Where is it going to be? Norfolk.

Norfolk or Newport? Was it Norfolk?

Norfolk.

Yeah, Tidewater area. I knew that it was Norfolk.

All right.

And then the accounts, please. Okay, folks. Thank you.

And do we have any discussion of any individual line items, any questions on the accounts? Yes.

I don't know the answer to this question, but I'm going to ask it anyway. Number 26, I believe it is. What does that $800 go to? Are the cars paid that enter the cruise inn? Yeah, that's the music.

Lightning Charlie is his real name. Or is he stage name?

So that goes for the band or the music?

I hear he's pretty good. He's an individual proponent.

Yeah. Bristol.

Yeah.

Any questions on any of the other accounts? I just got one quick question. Yes, sir. Do you guys already have a plan in place where A to Z is going to be changing ownership or really just sort of going down on the office supplies? Because we've been notified at utility that A to Z is no more. And they're getting bought out by a different company. I didn't know if they've already notified you guys of that.

They have.

Are we going with the new company or are we doing something different?

I think we can still use them for some of our office supplies.

Okay. Just curious.

Thank you. All right. Are we ready to set the accounts for payment? Yes. All in favor? And it is unanimous. Okay. We will pay the bills. Chief Kiesel.

Thank you, Your Honor. I get to come tonight and brag on three of our people that have recently received some certifications. Ms. Bonnie Blevins just went from an EMT basic to an advanced EMT, which will enable her to do some advanced life support procedures and stuff. That's about 230 hours to get this completed, and she's done it, and she's very proud, and we're very proud of her. We also had two of our full-time, Rebecca Salyer and Tim Peake to recently complete their Firefighter II, which is advanced firefighting. And that's about a 75-hour class, and we've got people that's taking classes all the time and trying to advance, and that's important to help the community and for everybody else. And also, we also have a couple of... Public events scheduled for this week. We're staying busy this time of year. We've got firetrucks going to Grace Christian Academy Friday, Marian Baptist on Friday. It's Friday there. Saturday we'll be at the American Legion for, I believe it's Touch a Truck or Meet a Truck Day. So if anybody has any questions, as far as our calls go, we're still up a little over 15% for the year. So we're busier than we've ever been.

You know, sometimes I get old information. Did Brett Miller save a dog?

Yes. We were called to assist out at Adwolf for a fire, and the homeowner said that her dog was still there. Brett discovered the dog downstairs. It was missing. sitting on the couch. The smoke was about, I don't know, mid-chest level, and the dog was under the smoke on the couch, and he was just chilling out. Brett said he was too big to carry, so he assisted him getting out the backyard, which was fenced in. So anyway, the dog was unscathed, and so Rebecca Pepin was up the other day, and she took that. She's a big animal lover like we all are. And we got the recognition for that. So we're very proud of that. That's that's worth noting.

Any questions?

Just want to say, please tell the employees that we have proud we are of them that got the extra certification.

Certainly. I believe the paper is going to run an article to done some stuff with her today on that. So I'd look for that in the paper.

Good deal. Good. Thanks, Dickie. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you, everybody, for all they do for us. Yes, sir.

Thank you. I did not see Chief Testerman on the agenda tonight. Is there anything that you'd like to tell us, sir?

Well, we had a couple officers spend last week in Miami.

They went down there through a heat grant, learned about prevention of theft of vehicles. They had a really good encounter, learned a lot of good information, and it's been a really valuable thing. They've gone a couple years in a row now. They went to Nashville last year. So they really liked the opportunity, and we was able to fill a grant out, fulfill it, and get a couple officers down. Other than that, no report unless you have any questions.

Well, thank you for everything you do. Thank you, Kevin. to all the PD. And I didn't mention public works with caring for our community. So a big thank you to everybody that was involved in that. That's couldn't do it without public works. And we had some people bringing the water truck to us three or four times. So it was wonderful.

You know, I did forget I've got and I haven't mentioned it to Andrew because I just got the phone call. Some of the the people that do the flowers would like to know if the town could water them. Because they are carrying sometimes 17, 25 gallon jugs of water to water whatever they're supposed to water.

Yeah, I've spoken with a few of them. Right now we're looking at kind of what we've got statin-wise and schedule-wise to do that.

Okay, okay. I'll tell them you're working on it. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, thank you.

and it's time for the town manager's report so mr kenya had the floor all right so when we discussed the budget i talked about opportunities to um appropriately spin down the arpa funds the existing arpa funds we had we have one that i think would be a tremendous use of this money as you all know our financial software now bright is is a very old system and it's Something that we've been looking into is to upgrade that to something more user-friendly. And the county is in the process of switching over to an admin system, which is a cloud-based system that is just, like I said, more user-friendly, more up-to-date. And we have procured a quote from them, an implementation quote, and it would be $131,800 for the onboarding of this system. Which is, I've been through this process a couple of times and that's a very competitive quote based on what I've seen in the past. Once we get through the onboarding process, it'll be a similar cost to what we're paying now for the legacy use costs of the system. So again, with it being kind of piggybacked off of the county, it gives us easier access to tax records and just the things that we do together with our host county. So unbudgeted expense, but here asking you all to appropriate $131,800 of our ARPA money to start the process of implementing a new financial system.

And what... Town Manager King, as I told you, is the current system is a DOS-based system. If you all recall, DOS, many years back. And so because of that, the town also pays to have an individual maintain it, I believe.

Is that correct? That's correct. So I think quarterly, Cindy, somebody has to come in for backups and... Honestly, one of the things that we talk about that we're only halfway joking about is many of the support folks on our existing system are retiring and it's probably not too far outside the realm of thought to think that once the support staff for this system is completely retired that the, you know, it might cease to function.

I think they refer to that as the end of life. And and we don't want to get caught in that situation. I have personally looked into Edmonds a little bit, spoke with some people that are using it. I've spoke with staff. They seem to be confident that this is a good move to make. Council has the ability to refer this to committee if they want, or we can validate this and give the town manager what he needs to work with tonight.

I'm going to make a motion that we put it out for request for proposals. I think the amount of money that it is, I think by law we have to do that, or do we?

Well, we would either have to do an RFP or bid it out.

So we were looking at this as a sole source because it is, we have the relationship with the county, and the county uses this system. So we're looking at this as a sole source as far as procurement is concerned.

and that is correct since the town piggy banks off of the county we probably it would cost us more if we went with someone that we then had to have the data worked out different so that that other provider could use that information but i i think there's potentially some question that the county has spent 300,000 or more on the admin system already. But there is a question as to whether or not that's something that the commissioner of revenue is wanting to use.

OK. I happen to have with me the Virginia Public Procurement Act. And under that, to comply with the VPPA requirements, the following documentation must be created and preserved within a contact file for an emergency or sole source procurement. And it comes into a little bit of explanation here that is too lengthy to read into the record here, but I do have that if anyone wants to review it. I believe that this is a situation that does fall under sole source.

We would have to pay extra to have somebody take the information and convert it.

It's fine. I was just asking if we need to be in compliance.

We share a common tax base with the county, so that was at least my interpretation as we'd be doing this.

Is it going to be a problem if the Commission of Revenue doesn't use the same system we are going to.

Potentially, I think Ms. Stanley has looked into that, and we might, if that does occur, we might be paying admins to convert that data.

What would happen if we didn't have the same software as the county? The county would have to provide us a file with all the tax information, and then our software people would have to get it input into our system.

They would most likely send us an Excel file, which would easily integrate into any software, in my opinion.

I'm a little bit confused. So is he his office, the commissioner's office, the only office that doesn't want to use this?

From my understanding, the commissioner and the treasurer are possibly considering other options. The county as a whole for their financial system is going to be moving forward with Edmonds, already in the process.

Yeah, but the taxes are those two offices that aren't going to use it. We'd have to convert.

Well, Edmonds is a whole suite that is better for municipality. There's a lot of financial tools within that suite from my understanding. I'm not a programmer, but Mr. King may tell us more about that.

Yeah, we would use it, of course, for general finance, HR payroll, water billing. So there's definitely a lot of other functions that we would use outside of tax. Okay. um whatever it is regardless they would present us with a file that would upload into our system that would allow us to access what we needed to for um taxable billings and that probably we probably would not be the rare occasion that we had admins in some other county did it they probably would be familiar with converting that i will say i'm familiar with the system that the commissioner and the treasurer are considering and it is not a full suite of services like edmunds so It's not something that we could go to them for financial services. It is solely a tax system. So it's a system called Avenity and it's not something that we could, I guess, replace Edmonds with or go with instead of Edmonds because it's not a full financial suite.

Sounds like you've vetted it.

So explain this to me. The county goes to Edmonds. of Commission Revenue and the Treasurer, which are the taxing agents and tax collections for the locality. They go to something else. It's going to cost us extra bucks, right?

So Edmunds would have to essentially take the information and put it into a file that we could access. So if they choose not to go with Edmunds for tax, we're still going to have that expense. Because, as I said, the system that they're going with is solely a tax system. It's not a financial system. So it's not something that we could access. I mean, if we were to take on that tax system, we would also have to have a financial system. So it cost us considerably more. That's what I'm saying. To house a vanity.

So it would behoove us to encourage them.

Oh, yeah. No, absolutely. To play ball sounds to me like. It would be an additional expense, but it wouldn't be something that's.

Yeah, I mean, it doesn't make sense to me. Everybody needs to be on the same page. Yeah.

Council, would you consider a motion by your mayor?

Our case has a motion on the board. There was no second, yes.

Yeah, I'll rescind that motion.

Oh, okay. Sorry, it wasn't keeping up. I would make the motion that we go ahead and approve this appropriation.

Appropriation of $131,800. Yes. I'll second that.

Okay. I believe we're doing the right thing, and it's a vote of confidence as well. Are we ready to vote? All in favor? Okay. And it is unanimous. All right.

All right. Thank you for that. I'll certainly update you all as we move forward with this project. It'll be a lengthy onboarding, but I think it'll be good going forward. There's a group that myself, the mayor, and Dr. Gates participate in called Smith 12 every month, and It's kind of a roundtable of the governing groups in Smith County. So we've got the CAO, Sean, of the county, and then the board chair and vice chair, and then the town managers of Saulville, Chilhowee, and Marion, mayor and vice mayor. It's kind of just a group that gets together and tosses around ideas. And one of the things that has come up is to look into forming a RIFO, which is a Regional Industrial Facilities Authority. This will be just an opportunity for really all of the localities to benefit if one of the localities participated in some sort of economic development. If there were, say, a housing development or something in Saltville or whatever, it would give the other localities the ability to buy in and participate any revenue that came from that. So I wanted to at least float that idea to you all, and I can certainly send you some further information to consider. But basically it's pretty common in more of the rural counties where the localities are able to benefit from regional economic development, not just development in the host county.

How would that differ from the EDA that we have?

So the EDA is, uh, more of a body that helps with, um, uh, economic development in the locality. So the Marion EDA, um, you know, helps, helps facilitate activities in Marion, the County and the County. Um, basically what this would do is, is provide an outlet for, uh, regardless of, of in which locality, some sort of development occurred. Um, it would at least give the option to the towns and the County to participate. um financially uh yes financially so it would there would be a financial buy-in and then of course a reward from whatever tax incentive came from that and each situation is a situational basis so um you know if if chilhowee marion in the county wanted to get into a housing development or some sort of retail development in one of the other localities and Sobel chose not to, they would have that opportunity to not do it. But of course, whatever the percentage of buy-in is, is what the percentage of the tax revenue going back to the localities would be. So I just wanted to float that idea. Again, rural counties where economic development is not quite as, you know, prosperous, I guess, as Northern Virginia or Richmond or something like that. It just gives regional localities an ability to work together on projects that might span town or county lines. I just wanted to throw that out there. Like I said, I'd be happy to send you all some information. But it would, again, be piecemeal. So we could create this RFAA and choose never to participate. It would essentially be a regional body that would allow for economic development across locality lines. But I'll send that to you all and would be happy to answer any questions. that you might have.

Sounds like a good idea. It could help with the issues that the towns have had with each other. It might work better to work together.

Yeah, I think it's one of those situations where if, you know, for us, say Exit 47, you know, the host locality might not have the money to completely pursue, say, a retail development at that location. It would... It just allows the development to grow based on funds from others. And plus, like I said, it would allow others to benefit from the tax base. So yeah, just something that helps with regionalism and going from there. But again, certainly not something that we have to do. But we look at ways to work with our neighbors. And that was something that was proposed. In front of you and to Ms. Hayes by email, everyone had a pavement marking award. So similar to paving, we did a full request for proposals for the marking of the new paving and only received one response from Clatterbuck Pavement Markings. I'm here to request that we award them the contract for pavement markings on the new asphalt we've got in town.

The only thing I have to say about it is we desperately need markings. Chatham Hill Road, Main Street, all the way up through Walmart. You can't see the turn-off lanes. You can't see the lines in the road. Whatever paint they used, Tony, has not stood the test of time, has it?

Well, we didn't get to do it last year.

We didn't? Maybe that's the reason. It seems like in the past, our lines lasted longer than... Are we specifying top grade material? Because it's absolutely Walmart. Todd and I were just talking, you can't see the turnoff lanes. And then we have new business there, and we've got Poot City coming in. I mean, it's going to be a mess if we don't do something pretty soon.

Yeah, so the vote to approve this would basically be approving the, and Tony, correct me if I'm wrong, be approving the expense of the markings themselves. Yeah. and then we can go through and create more of a schedule if there's something that council wishes that we touch outside of the paving group so this is just to approve the essentially the the vendor and the cost of which they do it but we can go back and create a schedule yeah we can just speed it up sure i'm surprised it's not more money what's that i said i'm surprised it doesn't cost more money yeah it's uh

Everything's expensive. So is there action that council would like to take on this proposal?

I'll make a motion that we award the bid to Clatterbuck for the line markings throughout town. I'll second.

In the amount of?

In the amount of.

No.

Just the award. Just the award. Yep. Because like I said, we can go through and create a schedule outside of that.

Okay.

Motion and second. Any further discussion? All in favor?

Okay. Mr. Keene, do you have anything else? All right. Yeah, I just had a couple other things. I wanted to thank you all again for the opportunity to participate in local government conferences. Second half of last week, I attended the Virginia Local Government Managers Association summer conference in just wanted to report back on some of the topics. Collective bargaining legislation was big, gaming was big, and then of course AI and housing for the last several years have been big topics of conversation, but it's always a good time to be able to meet with folks that have similar issues, successes, and things like that, and really just be able to network with other folks. So I'm always thankful for the opportunity that you all provide for that. And then secondly, I'll just say the chance my wife is watching on Thursday, we will celebrate our 10th anniversary. So outside of that. Ten years of bliss, right? Absolutely.

Well, congratulations on that. And we look forward to celebrating your 25th wedding anniversary with you. Sounds great.

Thank you.

Is there any further business that needs to come before the town council, Mary?

Oh, we need to add, I'm sorry, need to add to the schedule the meeting for June 30th to close the book meeting. So if I could get a motion and a second to add that to the meeting schedule.

I'll make that motion. And I want to say one other thing. At 5 o'clock that day is the discussion at the Methodist Church on the school, the Carnegie School.

On the 30th? Okay. Good call.

Yes, that's good.

Good to read. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Our meeting won't be long.

We were a little bit early or something. How about five? Okay.

Okay. Oh, that means that 430, then it's better. So let's do 430.

Okay. Okay. Does that work for everyone? 430 on the 30th?

We don't have to all be here for that meeting. It's not perfect. As long as we have a quorum, we can take it.

Second.

All in favor? I will entertain any motion.

I'll make a motion to adjourn.

Second. Motion and second. All in favor? Marion Town Council now stands adjourned.

Thank you, everyone.