Council - Regular Meeting

The meeting of the Marion Town Council shall now come to order.

We will begin with the invocation given by Chief Hesterman.

We want to thank you for providing a safe community this weekend. Lord, you looked over everyone. And also, Lord, thank you for guarding our first responders this past week as they was in a house fire and one of them got hurt, Lord. And with your protection and your healing powers, Lord, we know he'll be okay. Also, Lord, it's a privilege that we have Ms. Hayes back here in the audience tonight. You're working with her every day, Lord, and we know she believes in you, Lord. And in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

Amen. We'll continue with the pledge to our country. 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. Again, I'd like to welcome everybody that's here and everyone that's viewing remotely tonight. We will begin with the roll call, and maybe we can take that roll call. Present.

Here.

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Here. Here.

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Here. All right, we definitely have established we have a quorum. We need the approval of the agenda for tonight. So moved.

Second.

Motion and second. Are there any deviations to the agenda? Any additions? None being said. Do we have a vote for the approval of the agenda? And it is unanimous. We need to approve the minutes of our June 30th and July 6th. Can we group those together?

You want to do them individually?

Separately?

Okay. Make a motion we approve the June 30th minutes as written. Second.

Any questions about those minutes, council? All in favor? Do I hear a second motion?

Make a motion to approve the minutes of July 6, 2026 minutes.

Second. Motion second. Any discussion or questions about those minutes? None being heard. All in favor? Okay. No public hearings are scheduled today. We have no public presentations scheduled for today. We'll move directly to public comment time. Chief, do you mind handing me that? I did forget the clipboard. We have three people that have signed up for public comment tonight. And the first one is Rose Likens. And if you please, you have the floor.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of the council. I'm Rose Likens, and I live at 812 Chinquapin Road. But I'm here tonight to talk to you about the library and what's been going on. We've had a very busy summer. I'm happy to report to you that we had 398 children who signed up for summer reading this summer. We are in our final week. This is week six. We have done ten programs a week for six weeks. In the summer, we love it because we see a lot of children we don't see during the school year. So it's been a really wonderful summer reading program. We have a few more events to go. On Thursday night this week here in Marion, we have an indoor petting zoo at 6 o'clock over at the library, and they have the little animals, so rabbits and hamsters, since we have to do it indoors. On the 28th, over in Chilhowee, we have an outdoor petting zoo and pony rides. And that's Tuesday from 11 to 1. The other thing I wanted to call to your attention for summer reading on Thursday of this week, over in Saltville, we have a traveling dinosaur museum. You may have seen that our theme this year was dinosaurs, and so we've had a lot. It's been very popular. Dinosaurs are always popular with children. But we have a traveling dinosaur museum that we'll set up in the Wellness Center over in Saltville on Thursday of this week. So that's also going to be very special. The other things going on, I wanted to mention to you that we have on Saturday this week at 4 p.m. at the library an author talk. John Copenhaver, who's a native of Marion, will be here, and he will be delivering the first annual Martha Hall Copenhaver lecture. His mother was Martha. As you know, she passed away last year. The library board, in recognition of the tremendous contributions she made to the library, decided to create an annual lecture series in her name, and her son John very kindly agreed to be the first presenter. So we're going to be delighted to welcome him back to Marion, and he's going to talk about his books. As you know, he's an award-winning author, and he tells me he'll be happy to sign books after his presentation. So that's Saturday at 4 o'clock in the Copenhaver Room at the library. Tomorrow night, we have the Marion Friends meeting at 6 o'clock at the library. And in August, the Friends Group will have book sales on Saturday, August 1st and Saturday, August 15th. Susie and Sarah have been raising a lot of money and we're very appreciative of their efforts. Our makerspace is thriving. I invite all of y'all who haven't been over to Chilhowee to see it yet to please do so. Our facilitator, Christy Berry, does one-on-one sessions for anybody who would like one, and we also offer classes. This week we're doing Christmas in July, so they're making Christmas ornaments and Christmas stockings. and gift tags for Christmas. Our recording studio is under construction and we hope it'll be ready to use by the middle of August. So we're very excited to offer that to the entire Smith County community. Oh, I should have started by saying the Board of Trustees is meeting on Thursday this week here in Marion at 5.30 in the library. And the last thing I wanted to mention to you all is a new series of online author talks. The Library of Virginia has subscribed to it for the entire state. They're focused on health and wellness and well-being. And so the one for August is scheduled for the 5th of August. It's by an author named Jane Marie Chen, and it's her memoir. She was a corporate CEO who had a bad stress reaction and kind of fell apart and she writes her memoir of falling apart and finding herself again. So this is the second one. You can watch those author talks live online or you can also, they archive them and record them so after the fact you can go in and watch them. So that's a new service that we're able to offer thanks to the Library of Virginia.

i'll stop talking there and see if y'all have any questions for me sounds like a lot going on doesn't it sounds good it's unbelievable what rose and her staff do at the library how lucky we are to have such a great library in our town and then two other great additions in one in july and one in saulville thank you you are very welcome thank you thank you for being here too

Next we have Sarah Taylor. And please give us your name and address, and you have before.

Sarah Taylor, East Coyner Avenue. I came up here tonight to mention some concerns with my water billing. I have written down September through this month what my usage has been, what I've paid in bills and things like that. And it seems very inconsistent. I have come up here to speak with people in the past. I think it was probably in April or May. I don't remember which month. But we did have some very elevated use during those months. And just to give you an example, I have several months in here that had the minimum charge, which is $56.70. And I think there were three in here. And then we noticed... February this year, the usage was 1,840 gallons. March, it jumped to 2,314 gallons. April was 3,408. So whenever I spoke with somebody about it, it was explained away as maybe a leaky toilet or a supply line that was just running all the time and things like that. We checked everything. We didn't find anything like that. The times of the day were very inconsistent with any type of leak or explanation along those lines. So then in May, the usage went down to 3,128. And in June it was down again to 1,976 gallons. So it went up and then down after I mentioned it. But the billing for these is very inconsistent. We have a month that we used 1,787 gallons. We paid $61.38 that month. The previous month, we used 2,269 gallons and were charged $56.70. We have several instances like that, but I noticed from September to March, the highest usage was 63 for the usage, gallons. $63 was charged for that. The lowest was $56. So in that average, then we have three of these months being exactly $56.70. But the usage was different. Some of it was higher. Actually, most of it was higher. So I have a day in January. On January 27th, I was able to look back, and we have a negative 19 gallons of usage. The day before and the day after were very consistent. Then there was one day that was not consistent. It was extremely elevated, about double what it normally was. That was not explained. Again, there's been no leaks found. So this past week, between the 12th and the 19th, there was nobody at our house. We shut the water main off. We turned the water heater off. We turned off everything in the house as far as water is concerned. We had zero usage on the 13th, 14th and 15th, but there was usage clocked on the 16th, 17th and 18th. And then of course, when we came back on the 19th, we turned everything back on. So with that being turned off, I don't understand what's going on, but it's not a leak. We do not have a leak in the house. We've had this checked out. We've checked ourselves very thoroughly. Um, but I believe that I've removed the variable that it might be a leak of any kind. Uh, I know that the town was asked to come and check for leaks outside. They didn't find anything. Um, so, I am asking for more transparency with this water billing because we don't know what's going on. The billing is very inconsistent. A lot of money has been spent on these radio read meters and this represents citizens and I know I'm not the only one. Citizens pay money to a municipality to pay their water bills. But in return, we get these fluctuating water bills that make no sense sometimes whenever we look at that and chart the numbers and chart the usage and what we're actually paying. So I know last year that the mayor asked for information on these water bills because of these types of inconsistencies that were being brought to him. And I know that Councilwoman Jennings, I believe, moved for that to be a closed session discussion. So now that I'm seeing the same problem, I'm coming to you asking for more transparency and accountability with these radio read meters, with the water billing, with everything that's going on with that. I'm asking for a revisit. So, you know, because there is a problem with it, obviously. So people are still experiencing these inconsistencies. It represents money that people are paying. And there's still questions. And they're valid questions. There's apparently problems with the system. I don't know what the problems are. It's not my system. I don't know. But it necessitates an investigation. and you know i just hope that everybody at election time will remember in november that we have the opportunity to vote for in favor of more transparency and accountability thank you thank you for your comments i know we had a problem at our church and sam and anna and tony got in and we found it didn't you remember they can they can pinpoint

the max and i correlated back to our baptismal being having a problem uh i remember that yeah so i think this day and time should be pinpointed pretty accurate shouldn't it tony we're checking them every day yeah but i mean on the individual case like ours at the church it was with those two help we found it right off the bat and with my memory of what happened on that date so we corrected that problem and the usage went back down to normal would anyone have any suggestions or motions that we could move towards greater transparency i i have a motion that we can look into her problem

Once again, this specific days, I mean, if she set this system off and there's water flowing through it, someone has obviously tried to use it or something. I don't know if it was an outside spigot or cuts off. I don't know any of the particulars, you know, I just like, I'll make a motion that we just check into Sarah's case.

I'll second that motion.

I agree.

As far as the transparency part, I don't think that, you know, she's bringing it to us now. We're doing it. Maybe she didn't get what she wanted beforehand, but we're going to look into it now.

Let's do that. Let's look into it then. That's a motion and a second. yeah um so um all in favor of uh well let's see cindy what do you need in a motion there uh do you do you need it sent to specific uh tony do you do you want it i can look at it i can look at the usage in the water side you can look at the radio okay um we'll just refer to staff then is that is that okay because we don't have access to all this right yeah we we can't we can't get there but okay so your motion is to refer to staff to investigate that okay all in favor okay we'll get eyes on that next we have uh charles hayden

I really want to address a pet peeve of mine. And that is the loss of our privacy is the main subject. And the not, with all these cameras that the town already approved, now we've got flock cameras. There is no constitutional law that gives police the authority to film the public. And that is exactly what they're doing. We have the constitutional right to film in public. But law enforcement does not. Now we've got cameras everywhere, invading our privacy. Or it's tracking us. They say, these we got can't. Well, that's not true. Because I can go through this intersection right here, and my vehicle would be on that camera. They could pull it up and see it. I can go through the intersection at Commerge. They could pull that camera up and see it. That's tracking, any way you look at it. They're not allowed to track the public. Now, what needs to be done in my book, if we're going to the communist police state that we're headed, our police officers need body cameras and car cameras that can be looked at, speed limits concerned, All the red lights, turns they make without signals, just like the Pope, unless they had their lights going. Our officers, and it would help him, track what his officers are doing. But I could be driving the speed limit going up towards Walmart or somewhere, and the officers will pass me, I know, 20 or 30 miles an hour faster than I'm going, and I'm going that speed limit. No lights, no siren, nothing. They have the habit of driving any way they want to drive. But the cameras definitely is an invasion of our privacy. But if we're going to go that route, the police forces need the cameras on them. So get by the cameras so it can be documented, their speech, where they're at, why they're at where they're at. Because that's what you're doing to the public with the camera that's up, and especially the flock cameras. Kevin can't be everywhere to see what his officers are doing on duty. He don't see when they make a turn with no signal. He don't see when they pass the public doing 20 or 30 mile an hour over the speed limit with no lights or no sirens. The cameras could record all of that and he could do corrective action. That's the way I see it. If we're going to the commonest way of doing things, let's do it full heartedly. Thank you.

Thank you for your comments. Chief, since that affects you directly, I'm not asking you to respond. But if you would like to respond in any way, you're welcome to.

OK.

Thank you, sir.

And as far as the clock hammers go, your tag will not be in that unless we have a police officer or a police issue that we need to try to locate that. several months ago a similar thing happened over and a couple jurisdictions over there's a little girl kidnapped a little girl they located a tag number put it in she was found like three counties away they rescued her sadly she had already been sexually assaulted but she is living today because of flock And I can't lay my head down at night and sleep right unless I think I'm doing our citizens right. Yes, we look out for our constitutional rights. We cannot just run anything. We have a transfer portal on our website that you can look up and see what we've done in a month. Records are eliminated after 21 days. unless it is an investigative reason that we need to keep up with a certain vehicle or a certain tag. We all know that it's a privilege to drive. And out in public, you have no really much of an expectation of privacy. But it's been very successful. There's a bank robber to come into town. We had his tag number. He was arrested. You can't say he's going to get up and rob a bank the next morning. So I stand by FLOC. I know what our officers are doing with them. They have strict policy and guidelines that if something is done out of character, it will be dealt with and dealt with swiftly. And we've seen other jurisdictions where similar things have happened, and it's been dealt with swiftly. We already have things in place as far as VCN and NCIC to where if we run a tag and we don't need to be running a tag, and if it's called upon, not only the town of Marion would lose privilege to run tags, the entire county would because we run up under their umbrella. So we keep an eye on everything. But sadly, there are human beings, and some human beings do get out of line But we are prepared to deal with it if our officers do. It makes me sleep better at night knowing that we're protected. And as far as the rights go, we want to protect people's rights as well. So we'll do everything in our power that we can. And if we see somebody's rights has been violated within our agency, they'll be dealt with.

chief thank you sir we appreciate you i just have one question just for clarification so if we go through the flock cameras our license tag is not seen unless one of your police officers has a reason for correct so so people who go through the cameras don't automatically get there we do not get an automatic notification unless your car is in there for a reason okay

i just want to ask mr hayden do you understand what he just said that uh well thank you you're welcome well chief thank you very much and uh thank you for responding on the spot like that i think it was warranted and i appreciate that council uh do you uh well have any action no no no i mean we voted to have the camera you can't hear what he explained um i think he could hear that i don't i don't think he could hear um the other comment um i'm not sure are are you satisfied with what you heard mr hayden were you able to hear what unless they put body cameras on the police officers so they can be tracked like we are Okay, well, council in the action.

There's just cameras everywhere. McAdoo's has got them all. They can see all the way out into the back parking lots, and it's just fact of life.

Kevin, do you have any response on body cameras? And if I may, I'll respond to that as well. As far as body cameras go, we have been looking at body cameras.

it's a significant cost we have been looking for grand avenues on that and i've spoke with the town manager about getting body cameras it is something that we do wish to have but then they're only activated when you get out on the call doesn't track our movements if we have in-car cameras it doesn't track our movements it just if we activate our lights or if we get out on the call we activate the body cam it does maybe can go back like 30 seconds or a minute whatever you said it but it's not actively rolling an entire time because if we get body cameras and especially to county gets body cameras it's going to cause the commonwealth attorney to hire another attorney because they have to review every inch of footage so i mean it's a big it's a big project to undertake but we are actually looking for grants and ways to purchase okay thank you sir if uh if even if you did have in-car cameras they would not document speed and you would not see if the officers had turned on their turn signals or anything else correct You can get them to activate speed if everything is hooked up. There's like another program that you have to hook up to like the transmission and stuff, best I recollect.

So it would be an additional cost burden. Yes. So, but then even on top of that, would you be able to see if they were signaling the turns and stuff like that? That's not going to be in any kind of footage, is it?

On the car cameras that I've operated in the past, we did have four or five in our fleet years ago. I do recall that it showed brake lights if you were to brake, and it shows if your emergency lights are activated. But as far as a signal... Unless technology's changed, I'm not sure if it does show that you've actually signaled or so. And on signals, I don't know the circumstances they've been in, but under code, you don't have to signal unless it's affecting somebody else as well. So I don't know the circumstances where maybe they've been observed and what's happened. But I'll speak with officers about driving habits as well. I'm glad to do that. And we'll go from there.

I think we took a lot of that stuff out of our cars a few years ago over the cost of it. Yeah. When Rush was town manager, if you'll remember, the GPSs and all that, the cost got prohibited. Right. AutoZone, I drive for them, they've got all this stuff. And, you know, they can tell how you brake. And it's just, you know, crazy. It's hard to tell what's costing them.

They can hear you cough. They can hear you cough.

Oh, they can break it if you break hard. I mean, it's got to be hundreds of thousands of dollars to them. Why they do it, I don't know.

Well, anyway, that's question for our better drivers. Question for another day if the police committee ever wants to look into any of these things. All you have to do is schedule a meeting. Thank you very much for your responses. Mr. Hayden, thank you for your comments. That is all we have scheduled for public comment tonight. However, as my habit is, if anyone would like to speak, and they did not sign the form and didn't know to now's your chance. This is pertinent to cameras.

A couple of weeks ago at the meeting, I mentioned that I was down around 20 Watermill Road, which is the town pump station. Here's the bridge. Here's the pump station. The road is a right of way. And this is the town property. There was a car parked on town property and on the road. And he approached me saying, what was I looking at? And I said, well, I wanted to see what you were doing. And this was a guy who had tattoos all over his head. chest and abdomen and arms, and he was vaping one of those electric handheld vapors or whatever. But anyway, he threatened me. I called 911. He didn't touch me or anything, and this woman with a child in her arms said, come on, let's go. He refused to go. I started writing down his license. He flipped up his license plates. Well, okay, I didn't want to do anything more because some of these people are absolutely crazy. They don't mind killing you or shooting you or whatever. Okay, so three weeks go by and I might say I'd put a Stop sign, stop, no trespassing sign on either road where 693 ends and Watermill Road begins. It's right close, very close to the mill and the pump station. You know what I'm talking about. And I came back three weeks later to that place because we maintained that lot. I released it from the town. We've leased it from the town for 70 years, a long, long time, 40, 50, 60, 70 years. And as you drive up, there's a stop no trespassing sign here and a stop no trespassing sign here. The first day I saw this guy, those signs were there. Three weeks later, this sign had been taken out. So I've been checking it to see if whoever did it is going to take out the other sign. But I just mentioned it because I was going to see Chief Testament tomorrow about the possibility of putting a camera down there. I know the sheriff has done this a couple of times when I ask them, have a camera down there for about 30 days or so, see if they see anything. But I don't know whether I'd have to run it by the town council or whether I can just talk it over with you. Okay, but this is this issues come up before and we've talked about having a gate there and I think Mr. Fennec, we were going to put a gate up there about 20 years, well 15 years ago, but we never, it never did happen for one reason or another. But since there's town property there, it's a water pump station, It's something that I'm thinking about in the back of my mind if we could come to some agreement to have a gate there where the town could use it. I could use it to get in and out, but I hardly ever use that road except to maintain the property, mow and everything like that. So that's just something in the back of my mind. I'll bring it up with you tomorrow. Thank you.

Thank you for your comments. Anyone else? Then we will move on and next we'll move to council reports and again, I do want to welcome back Councilwoman Hayes. It's nice to have you here and you go first. Do you have any report? I sure don't. Well, thank you. I'm sure you will in the future.

In the future.

Vice Mayor Gates.

Nothing other than good to have you back.

Good to have you back, Deborah. Thank you. Same thing, Deborah. I'm so happy to have you back. You've done so well. I attended a discussion, I guess it's been two weeks or so ago, at the Methodist Church about the Carnegie School. The county had some information there, and it was interesting to hear that there are quite a few people interested in what to do with the school. So I just wanted to let the council know that those talks are going on. And I've got to say something about the books that the Friends of the Library are selling for the library. If any of you have any books that you want to get rid of and donate to the library, to the Friends, we'll take them, and then we have two book sales a month. And all the money goes back to the library. So go through your drawers and closets and so forth and bring me your books.

All right, bring me your books. Sounds good.

Councilman Apple. I just wanted to say thanks to all town staff, fire, EMS, and everybody for another successful downtown event. Kevin, good coordination, keeping everybody safe and sound. And Deborah, welcome back. I'm glad to see you. And just thanks to everybody and appreciate all you guys do. And also thanks to Brian Reed, Ken Heath, and everybody that helps put on these things for everybody to come out to enjoy.

absolutely thank you so much councilman carter uh glad to see you back deborah uh i thought the town event worked really well and uh we were uh well thank you there kid and uh well represented downtown i saw you know andrew and sam and tony out in the mayor and uh kid course coordinating and ellen so we were kevin uh Public Works Police did a bang-up good job, I thought. The other thing I have to say is Monday, last week, we had an ordinance committee meeting, Councilman May and myself. What it was about was coordinating our, as you know, Todd and Mark Fittick are working to revise the code to correlate with the state code, which we approve first meeting of every January. So if you're gonna approve something, you need to have your codes, your own ordinances up to date. So what this meeting was about was to clarify the role of deputy town manager. And it's, I think everybody had on their iPads, didn't they? Or synopsis of it, didn't they, Todd? think it's the they had a synopsis of the ordinance on their own. Not on this one. Okay, we have a copy here, we can give you a copy of it, maybe before the night's over. But what I want to do is set a public hearing for August 3, to go over it. And the council will approve, hopefully the changes but All it is is defining the role of the deputy town manager as per the state code. It's necessary that we coordinate everything with state code if we're going to vote over January.

Have we ever done that before?

For what?

For a staff position?

Well, the code says that the deputy has to be appointed by council.

I thought we appointed.

No. Not officially.

And there are some questions about those roles.

Yeah, an assistant. There's a difference between a deputy and an assistant assistant could be Yes, I'd say manager deputy has to be approved by us.

At the meeting on June 30th, Dr. Gates made the motion to refer to Ordinance Committee, his line of succession for a better term. And through that, Mark and Todd and a few others looked and thought that it would make more sense to have what we consider a deputy town manager, which is a council appointed position and an assistant town manager, which is a staff appointed position. So that would kind of remove the blurred lines between those two positions.

for that council appointed position do we have to advertise that position and take any applications for it or can we just appoint just the code doesn't say anything about advertising Mark's not here to verify what I say but I've read it over I haven't found what says anything about advertising we have to advertise the public hearing i i'm just not sure if um our questions are are completely answered to uh advertise a public meeting with mark not here um i mean you're more than welcome to set a meeting if that's your motion yeah well i checked with todd it's that's correct isn't it todd well that's just for the advertising the advertising of it

Yeah, we could say the second meeting in August. I just thought, you know, I'm one of those like to take care of business.

Up to your committee. Whatever you want to do, sir.

I think August 3rd is fine. Todd's not here. He agreed with me at the meeting.

Do you want to make a motion?

I'll make a motion that we advertise for the public hearing and have the public hearing on the first meeting in August which appears to me to be August third correct second motion second all in favor as it might be I want to

not expand on but or reiterate Councilman Atwell's remarks I really appreciate everything that fire rescue the PD public works over this last weekend over the fire incident as well over the downtown block party that we had the hungriest mother food festival what mr. Carter said about that was was spot-on I enjoyed being at those events and whoever's idea it was to put from the edge believe that's their name up on the courthouse steps as a stage with the flag in their background Kudos to that. I think that I've got a picture of that that should be on the front of a magazine somewhere. I'd be more than willing to share that with anybody, but I really enjoyed that evening. Of course, the Hungriest Mother Food Festival, my challenging days are past me, but I did get a snow cone, so I was very lucky in that matter. um other than that i think the weekend went wonderfully uh kudos to everybody that was involved and thanks uh everybody that came out and supported and thank you council if you even if you couldn't be there those are some big cookies there miss spencer they're delicious i didn't get a piece of one of those but maybe that'll change at some point in the future i like cookies okay but uh that concludes my mayor's report and we will um skip the attorney's report as he's not present and we'll go straight to staff reports and uh cindy stanley okay everyone you have the accounts for you uh would anyone like to set those in motion i'll make that motion second okay we have a motion second we have any questions about any of the uh items that are on that list uh for payment I'll give you just a second to gather your notes if you need to, if there's any questions. And if we hear none, I do see that there are some payments for music, and that is to be expected. And it was wonderful to all the musicians and everybody that participated in that. So we had a great festival and good turnout. I'm just hoping to give everybody a little bit more time. Any questions about the accounts? None being heard, we'll set the accounts. We'll vote. Everybody in favor of paying the bills? And Mr. Carter? All opposed? No. Okay. All in favor? Then it is unanimous. We'll move on to Chief Testerman, who may have already said all he wants to, but he's going to go again. I feel like Ken Heath getting behind the mic.

No, I want to speak a little bit about the lifesaving actions that officers done last week during the house fire. We all know a firefighter was injured by a trade of glass going through his jacket and they got to know some blood coming out from underneath him and stuff like that so they removed his jacket and it's actually like blood was just gushing out. Officer's actions, they took a tourniquet, wrapped it around his arm, The other ambulance was dealing with the victim in the house fire. They were with him. And so another ambulance wasn't there. So we went ahead and loaded him up in the police car and rushed him out to the emergency room. And the doctor said there was no doubt that if they hadn't got a tourniquet around him and got him out to the hospital where they could control the bleeding, that it could have been fatal. I'll get them nominated next year for a life-saving award. I think their actions really warrants that. They've done a fine job.

Would you like to share with us who they were? Or do you want to hold that?

It's Officer Tyler Hayes and Mason Waggoner. That was working together there. Officer Self was also kind of in the background about it. Waggoner was able to do the transport out to the hospital. Hayes applied a tourniquet and got the bleeding slowed down and pretty much cut off. So I think it's a job well done. Agreed.

I'm surprised that it was those two. They're both exceptional.

Certainly are.

Certainly glad that we have them on the force, as with all of them. Yes. Anything else, sir? That's all, unless you have any questions. Thank you. Thank you very much. We appreciate everything you did for us.

I'd like for the minutes to be sure and show that the two officers that stayed.

And now we have Todd Long. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

So it's time for reappointments for our Board of Zoning Appeals, and Mr. Hauer is not going to be a part of that board again. And also, Mr. Mark Firestone has resigned from the Planning Commission. So we do need to fill those two spots. I have spoken to a couple people that has been interested. Nothing in stone yet. They're still considering it. For the Board of Zoning Appeals, Mr. Cecil Hicks, who was zoning administrator here for 30 years, said that he would be interested in that position. Well, he's considering it, let me say that. And if y'all remember, the last time we had a planning commission reappointment, if I'm not mistaken, Chris Alexander's name came up then. He works with H.S. Williams, very smart guy. He's pretty busy. I don't know if he would still be interested. But I just need to put that on your radar to let you know that we do need to fill those two spots.

He would be really good.

Oh, yeah, and Mr. Howard's also, I guess he's resigning from that with the tree commission, so we got to replace actually three, which would be the border zone appeals, planning commission, and tree commission.

Question, do these members have to live in the town limits since they're on town committees? I don't know. I don't believe so. Planning commission does.

Planning commission does?

I was on both of them at one time, different times, and I thought the Planning Commission was. But zoning, I don't know. But when I was on it, all the members on the zoning were town residents, I know.

So that just gives you something to think about. Those three boards needs a seat replaced, so...

Can we find out for sure if they have to be town residents?

Yeah, Mark can tell us.

Yeah. We should be thinking about that individually and as a group.

They're good nominees. I agree. I have no problem just as long as we just need clarification.

But we need clarification as to whether we want to consider all possible applicants. And if the regulations are unclear at this point in time, Mr. Finnick,

will need to be consulted on that so we can make sure that we make proper appointments.

I like your ideas and I would like clarification if Chris and Cecil are willing to fulfill those roles if they both qualify.

Okay. And that's all I've got unless y'all got something else.

Sounds good.

Thank you.

I can follow up with each of you all by email tomorrow once I confirm that. Do you all want me to place this on a specific agenda going forward?

It should be put on the agenda for the next meeting, yes, and that way we can vote it.

Fill those positions as soon as possible.

You know, I'd like, Todd, I'd like for you to talk to Diane Hayes. She is, about the Tree Commission, she is such a historian and researches everything and knows a lot about everything and maybe she would be willing to serve on that.

And I know we've got to see if she would consider that she'd be good.

I know that she's very busy, but I think that she would be good. Absolutely.

She does. She's such a researcher, you know, and yeah,

That might be nice. Okay, so moving along, we have town ministers reports. Andrew, can you?

Just to echo what most of you all said earlier, just wanted to thank staff for a job well done over the weekend, a lot of coordinated effort and a lot of fun. So, again, I'm thankful and blessed to be able to work with the folks that I do, and we're already looking forward to the October festivities. So that is all that I've got this evening, unless you all have any questions.

No questions from council? None being heard, we'll move on. We have a closed session scheduled. Councilwoman Jennings, do you want to bring us into closed session?

I make a motion we go into closed session to discuss one item as allowed under state code 2.23711A3, a real estate item.

Second?

Second.

have a motion second to go into closed session uh all in favor moving into closed session our open session now stands closed thank you everyone for being here we appreciate it very much

make a motion we go back into open session and declare we only discuss the one item on real estate as declared as allowed under state code two point two thirty seven twelve second all in favor that's right yes yes yes yes

Marientown Council is now back in open session. Is there any business to come before the council?

Motion to adjourn.

Second. Motion to adjourn. Second. All in favor? Marientown Council now.