Council - Regular Meeting

Dear Heavenly Father, I want to thank you for the opportunity to come here this evening as a community. We ask, Lord, that you give everyone in our community, the board members, the concerned citizens, the knowledge and the know-how to work through what's best for our community. And Lord, as always, please look over our soldiers and our first responders. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

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.

For our home audience, we've had a little bit of power outage tonight. We hope that the streaming service and everything that we're doing here is coming through. If there's a hiccup in the service, we apologize for that in advance. Also on the printed agendas for tonight, the printer cut off closed session. However, it was in the agenda packet that everyone was sent. Sorry if there's any misconceptions there, but I just wanted to go ahead and clear that up early in the meeting. We need an approval of the agenda. Any additions or deletions?

This afternoon and said due to the storm they were going to reschedule their public presentation. So the first public presentation will be coming off the agenda this evening.

Okay, and I noticed that the approval of the minutes is not on the agenda, but do we need an approval of the minutes?

No, it'll be at the next meeting. There'll be two sets. Okay. And actually, the one that's in the back, that is what it is.

We'll approve it anyway.

okay um i'm looking at okay well anyway we'll do that next next week nothing procedurally wrong with that right no we're good there okay let's move on with our public presentations and uh since ms booth has elected pardon oh we didn't vote on the agenda i'm so sorry getting confused here all in favor of accepting the agenda as modified Okay, now we will continue with public presentations, and I'm told that Ms. Booth will not be here, so we will welcome Scott Carson, and he has some good news for us all.

Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Scott Carson. I'm a principal landscape architect, project team leader with the CHA Sports Group. We are a national A&E firm specializing in sport. and park and recreation services all up and down the East Coast into the Midwest. And we were very fortunate to be awarded the Callen Drive Recreation Park Master Plan Project here with the town of Marion back in the spring. Seems like a long time ago, but time flies. Anyway, I'm here tonight, or this afternoon, depending on your perspective, to walk you through the master plan, the process, the vision, the program and the next steps so I'm pleased to be here and very grateful for this opportunity So first, we're going to speak a little bit about the Callen Drive Recreation Park site. For those of you who don't know, the property borders Callen Drive over by the Emory & Henry campus. It's also bordered to the east on Staley Street and accessible also by Prater Lane down at the southern tip of the property. Next slide, please. So here's the aerial view looking southward from a vantage point. I think it's over the fitness studio just across the street near the dark part. But anyway, we're looking southward across the site showing some of the initial grading work that had been done during the spring here of 2026. This is a plan view of the project site. Two ways to think about this property. We've thought about it in two phases. There was the land that was identified during the request for proposals that came out over the winter of 2026. Next slide, please. And that's the highlighted portion of this site. It's just over 50 acres of town-owned land that's presently zoned for recreational purposes. As a result of our workshop and process here with the town over the spring and into the early summer, we added some acreage to the park site itself with adjacent town-owned land to the east and potentially a sliver of land to the southwest for some better access to the Prater Lane access point. At present, as you may know, there's an quarry operation or historic quarry operation on the site. The town is also using this for town DPW type purposes. over the last several months some bulk grading work has been done you know up on the upper portion of the property to bring a level ground to around 15 to 16 acres of the park proper right in the core of the property these are just some photos okay Once we were awarded the project, we got right to work here with the town and its stakeholder group. And we had a workshop in late May, a two-day workshop here in this room and over on the project site, during which we discussed the project. We had some fun visioning exercises. We did a lot of collaboration discussing about what this project could be. as I mentioned, the visioning, but it was a pretty rewarding process. CHA prides itself on drawing out the needs and wishes of its clients and helping them create a vision that's uniquely their own, or in this case, uniquely Marianne. So in this very room, with about 12 to 15 stakeholders, we held an afternoon session, used a lot of sticky notes, a little bit of discussion time, a little bit of private time, a lot of back and forth feedback about what this park could really be. what the ultimate vision might want to be, but also using some key words and phrases like active and passive and thought-provoking and inclusive and accessible. It's a really rewarding experience. We visited the project site. It's a very, very unique piece of property. You all are truly blessed to have this land right in the core of the town and so accessible from your existing amenities and right here off of Main Street. We took all that information back. Back one slide, please. and had a little bit of a workshop up on the second floor of the General Francis Marion Hotel. Worked late into the evening and developed a number of different sketch concepts that we brought back to this room the following morning and had a panel discussion right here on this wall pointing out pros, cons, possibilities, opportunities, different ways of thinking about and looking at this property for general recreational purposes. Here's a few shots. some of that discussion so stemming from that two-day workshop I took all that information back to our offices and with our in our internal team we crafted the program for the park And this is right out of our document. It tells you really what the program for the master plan for the Callan Drive Recreation Park really is all about. Serve the entire Marion community. Active, passive, inclusive, recreational components. It's really an enhancement to the town and its surrounding region. And it really has the potential to improve the quality of life, not only for the town, but for the region itself. Yeah, that's high level thinking. But we take that down to primary and secondary program components. you know it's not the best to talk off of a grid of numbers but we we take those primary and secondary park program components we rank them you know we determine whether they're high cost low cost high maintenance low maintenance you know do they have a an ability to be revenue generators for the town like can you rent them can you not And also, what's their overall risk profile? Is it a high-risk program component like, I don't know, a zip line? Or is it a low-impact or low-risk component like a walking trail? Anyway, we take all this together and we make the secret sauce and we come up with our rankings. And ultimately, on the right-hand side of this document, I know it's a little bit hard to read, but we start to define the sort of phase one, phase two, three, and four plus program components based upon the priorities of the town. It's really a town drawn process. so from that program we apply that to the site we had already done some sketching good old-fashioned you know handwork on trace paper just like they used to do it before ai right but through an iterative process with the uh with the town and its stakeholder group we come up with concepts and we refine those concepts and we sketch over those concepts multiple times and ultimately we land on the preferred line drawing which is here. And what this shows is those primary and secondary program components but also on an expanded piece of property. Again, during that workshop, The stakeholder group said, hey, you know, we've got all this extra town owned property directly to the east of the the proper park site. Let's utilize that. And there's some very, very interesting features over on that property that's accessible off of Elm Street existing trails. There's some caves. There's some interesting geology over there that, you know, why not take advantage of that as passive recreational opportunities and link that in with the overall active and dynamic and otherwise thrilling pieces of this park project so we come up with the concept line drawing and upon approval by the stakeholder group we render that into a 2d overall graphic master plan which really depicts a a concept an idea in a state of time that might be years away these parks they take time and they take energy to develop but the vision is what's really important the vision of making the cal and drive recreation park a real gem not only for the town but for the surrounding region this is really a special place again a very unique piece of property so the plan view is one way to look at the project Another way to look at it is from the air. So looking to the southwest, what does that vision really look like? And this is that shot, again, looking over the project to the south. What could this be in 15, 20 years once this is fully built out? But we see active recreational components like the team sport venues, the baseball, the softball, the rectangle fields, a destination zone, amphitheater in the quarry you know what a fabulous fabulous opportunity playgrounds and nature center parking this this park drive that that weaves from Callan Drive all the way down to Prater Lane that's somewhat reminiscent as we discussed during the workshop of the Blue Ridge Parkway or even back of the dragon on some of those you know less harrowing turns up there but it's really a unique space and then towards the south end of the property go ahead One more. To the south end of the property, to the right, picnic areas, a community zone, places for disc golf, maybe archery, mountain biking, bike skills, all sorts of passive and active recreational components. you know, all tied together with the spine of a park drive, you know, that runs from Prater all the way up to Callan Drive. It's really a unique space. And so the master plan, again, it's a vision, it's a framework. But it takes time. So we need to think about the phasing of this project as well. The town has some very generous funding right now that has a little bit of a time span on it too. So you need to think of this project in phases. So here's a shot of the master plan and the highlighted features. That's what we call phase one of the park project. Next slide. which is this zone that's sort of highlighted here with the white, I call them chiclets, but the white chiclets, next slide please, you know, here in the core of the property. And this highlighted zone within phase one, we've broken that out a little bit further into what's called phase 1A. And phase 1A, ideally, based upon the funding stream that's available, needs to be complete about just over a year from now. And, you know, has a funding stream attached to it, plus a timeline. But what we're envisioning here is that Some of the passive park components and a core of the transportation and trail network can get developed in phase 1A. And then in phase 1B, we can bring in some of those active recreational components like the ball fields and the rectangle fields. So the way this breaks out, phase one, it's got a hefty price tag to it. It's around $7 million, but we feel the phase 1A components, portions of the park drive, some parking, picnic facilities, trails, immediate impact for just under $2 million. You'll probably get by within the next 13 months and get that accomplished pretty readily. Town's got some great workforce here, and we feel that that's completely doable. And then when phase B can be funded, we can roll right into that phase and bring in some active recreation components. Then of course, you saw the prioritization matrix. There's a phase two, a phase three, and a phase four plus. We jokingly spoke at the workshop, we could have 17 phases here. It really depends on how funding streams work, what grant opportunities are available, and we've helped the town here too. There's a section in our master plan document about potential funding opportunities, whether it's through public agencies like VDOT or private organizations like Landscape Structures or even Dick's Sporting Goods has a grant program. There's a lot of different opportunities out there to secure funding, especially for a recreational facility just like this. There's a lot of money that's out there. Sorry. It's okay. So we drop these into buckets. The way we look at phasing again, just again, high level is that whatever you have in a later phase of a project should never impact what you've already done. Plan your phases logically so that you can enjoy your phase one A and B opportunities and have phase two get implemented in the background. That way you'll have full use and enjoyment of the park from the get go. All in, the project as we see it is in the 24, 25 million dollar range. That's with a modest escalation factor over the next decade. so the master plan has been a joy to work on we love this type of work we love clients like the town of Marion and we love property like what you have up there it is really truly a gem but there are some next actions that we do need to take in order to make this park become reality So there's a shot of the master plan. Pretty, ain't she? It's really nice. But the next action is really, now that the master plan is complete, we do need to go into a design, a permitting, and a bid cycle for Phase 1A. so that we can build and be substantially complete with that phase 1a just over a year from now. And I think that really aligns quite well with your funding stream and the overall wishes of the town and its stakeholders. So that's it at a high level. We really appreciate the opportunity to be here, to work with the town, and to work on this exciting project. It has truly been a thrill, and you all have been a blessing as a client. Do you have any questions? EPA or right so there's a there's a town process and there's a state process too so the DEQ you know they will want to look at this from a stormwater management and erosion sediment control perspective and then you know there's the town planning process as well so Good set of documents will get you through it pretty quick, but often we find it's at least one, sometimes two rounds of permits and approvals that have to happen for a park or a project of this size. The key is getting started right away, getting good survey, getting good geo, hitting the boards.

So it's not survey as of now?

believe he's directing correct speed is that most important thing we're going to complete it September 27 we are the sports and recreation group and as we mentioned during our interview this is literally all we do I make a motion we approve this master plan and continue to work on calendar second

I'm not sure, but we need to ask the FOIA officer if we can actually vote on this tonight.

Well, I believe that was in the agenda that got sent out. It might not be in the agenda that got printed out. But Mr. Long, it was included in the agenda, correct?

yes it's included on both the agenda packet and the credit back so okay so it looks like that's a valid motion thank you very much and we have a motion in the second this council was to discuss this further sounds exciting okay second part will be the revenue There will be if if I'm not mistaken, there will be several times the council will need to vote on different specific different parts of the project and the funding sources and things like that. So this being an ongoing project, what what Spencer's motion is, is that we accept the phase one part a Or are we accepting the entire plan?

We're accepting the plan as presented. And then the monies that are to fund Plan 1A have already been appropriated by the council. So it's to accept the plan as presented and also move forward with 1A. And then to your point, yes, as grants become available, council will have to vote to appropriate those. And then, of course, if Council chooses to place any money in any subsequent budgets, that'll be voted on in the budget process as well. So this is just to get through Plan 1A, and then as opportunities present themselves in the future, that'll be another discussion.

Just want to make sure that we're all clear. So, Council, do you have any questions that you'd like to ask further? We're all pretty much familiar with this project from conversations that we've had. So are we ready to take it to a vote? All in favor? And it is unanimous. May I say you've done a you and your team, of course, have done a masterful job. It's been wonderful working with you. I'm sure that we will be working with you as we progress through these things. So thank you. It's been a pleasure. And this has been a wonderful process. You know what you're doing.

Thank you, appreciate it.

Thank you, sir. Being no more public presentations scheduled, we'll move on with public comment time. The first person that I have listed is Greg Taylor. Gregor, you'd approach the podium, give us your name, address, and the floor is yours, sir. You can adjust.

My name is Greg Taylor. I live at 604 East Poynter Avenue here in Marion. Sir, can you pass this to members of the council?

It's the generator over here. Yeah, it's difficult. There's nothing we can do, sir.

Thank you. That's not even ours. We don't have any.

Oh, but we can't cut it off and we can't turn up the mic. I don't get it. It is difficult for everyone to hear, but Mike, you in the circumstances, there might be feedback. The levels aren't said.

Give us a mic check.

Can you hear me now? Thank you, sir. I've sat back here for the past about year. We've had problems with the water here in Marion for a while. Our household, our average water use has been between 2,000 and 2,500 gallons per month. And we've had some problems. Number one, we've had impossible negative usage on January 27th. The Badger meter documentations state that a negative consumption values indicate a data corruption or communication faults, not real water flow. The beacon AMA documentation also notes the negative usage values will occur when an endpoint transmission income. Is incomplete or out of sequence. We have a negative water usage. On that day. Water only flows one way through those meters, not backwards. So there's no way that you could have a negative read. We also have single day spikes. On May 14th we had 465 and a half gallons. Most of that was at 2 to 4 AM. We've me and my wife or my wife has talked to. Samantha, I've talked to other people in the town. The go to answer is you have a leaky toilet. If my toilet was leaking between 2 and 4, I had not fixed it. It should have been leaking between 4 and 8, 8 and 10, 10 and 12. If I have a leaky toilet and it doesn't get fixed, it still should be leaking. The Badger Meter E-Series Ultrasonic Manual states that there's air in the lines. that you can have false high flows. It'll have a false read. If you put more through it, then it's going. A lot of my spikes that we've had are days that our water's been cut off due to water being fixed in the town. We've actually went on vacation on July 11th through the 18th. I cut the water off at the meter. went to lowe's got one of those things you can cut the water off i cut it off we still had water flowing through the meter with the meter cut off or at least that's what the data showed through the the system that talks with it When air moves through the meter, it counts as water going through it. It's not counting real water. So something's going on with the system here in Marion. It's not just the Taylor household. If this is happening to me, it's happening to a lot of other people. We've had people come to council multiple times and ask for someone to look into it. I know that. The outages we we get those on Nixle and that's usually when our. It shows we have high water usage. When our water is out, but saying we have a spike reading. When the water is cut off by the town. So. I know that you have charts they passed out to you all. You can see that there's negative water usage in January. You can see our spikes we have. everything here. I've referenced the Badger E series manual that you can find on their website. There's no way that this is happening. It's something wrong with the system and it's not just the Taylor household. I know the mayor has asked a while ago to look into it and he's been voted down. The core responsibilities for a mayor is represent the town. He does that. He goes to events. He's there with a smiley face greeting people to Marion to work with the town council and to preside over meetings. You can see he's doing that. Also, he is to manage city town services like the police department, fire, sanitation, public works, also known as the water department. How can you manage something when you don't have access to it? I'm asking for the council to allow the mayor to do his mayoral duties. Let him look into it. He's supposed to manage it. Let him do his job. If you have any questions for me, I will answer them. If not, what's the problem?

You've obviously done your research, and I appreciate that. And I guess that there are some questions about the data transfers and at different times when that data is transferred. I don't know about the downloads. I don't know about that. We can look into the software. We can look into download times and incomplete downloads, which could explain some of the things. that and I would ask again that we reopen this case and look into his specific because I don't believe that it was explained by leaky toilet. I do believe that there's something going on. I don't believe it's intentional. I don't believe that it's just a ghost in the machine, something that we need to work out. So I think maybe we should look into this again with Badger, with the billing company, take it through the entire process because on the town end, There's a little bit more involvement than on the user interface that they can see specific information. There's a lot of information that the town can pull down and we can work with Badger on this and see if similar situations ever occurred. If there could be something, I did not know that air flowing through the meter registered as water.

It works off pressure. So if there's air going in through it, It's still showing pressure, so it's going to clock it as water usage.

Yeah, that got my attention. So I would ask that we look into this at some point in time. We don't need to make this a motion or anything else. I just think that maybe we need to continue looking at the system, see what might be happening. I want to work with Greg and every other water user that we have in the town of Marion, because we want them as customers. And we want them to be happy customers. Thank you for all the data that you pulled down. It's too enormous for us to look at while we're here in council. But I will endeavor to do this. As your question about my responsibilities as mayor, that is questionable under the current Virginia code. And we're working through that at this point in time. I would love not to be tasked with all those responsibilities, but that's the job I signed up for that I intended to do that I will do if called upon to do that. So I intend to do my job. I'm sure council is doing their job and staff is definitely doing their job. So we'll all work together and we'll figure this out as the best I can give you right now.

thank you for your comments as well um we have yes you may you may i'd love for comments when this was discussed before uh i think our staff did look into it is that right yeah so is there anything new that you found out the last time you looked in

So when they come in, this can be shared too.

We can run it by them. In fact, I spoke with Ms. Taylor in the back after a few meetings that we had. I reached out to Beacon who does the the reporting specifically on their account and asked for any anomalies, asked for anything that might show. I followed up with what I was told. They didn't see anything that was, you know, appeared to be a software issue, appeared to be anything that was wrong. Now again, you know, we're... The town's only as good as the information that we're getting, so I'll certainly look at any of these that come to me. But I'm limited by what I get from our vendors.

Is there any information that you've been deprived of? we'll enter that at another point in time if it becomes relevant well I would like to make a motion that we open up the books and give you any information if you felt like you've been deprived I don't want anybody to think that we're withholding information from you or anybody else I'll second that

then I would I would be more than happy to make my requests and work with staff and find the information that I'm looking for motion in the second is there further discussion by council all in favor of giving me access to the books And I believe it's unanimous. Okay. I'll make an appointment.

Can we figure out if indeed the airflow will make that anomaly? Yeah, I think that came directly out of the book. I mean, the manual on our meters. Except Tony was saying that this is based on an ultrasonic meter and what's at their residence. It's not that meter. So... We can dig into it and see what they've got at their house and how it would affect that.

Has there been a huge spike in the billing amounts? That's usually a tip-off.

No, we sit down and look at every account. In their particular account? Yeah, there was some fluctuation in April and May. Like I said, I reached out when Sarah came to the first meeting. I wanted to see if there was anything that I was missing or that didn't appear, you know, that appeared out of place. There wasn't anything that they could tell me from the software side that was incorrect.

The only thing I'm just sort of at a loss on is I don't really feel like that you guys have ever withheld any information from any of us. So that's why I want to make it very obvious and clear that we don't want to hold any information from anybody.

I don't think there's anything being withheld. In fact, the mayor reached out on another account a couple weeks ago. I printed all the information on that and took it to him. We looked at it together, so...

yeah i may ask some deeper questions as we go forward sure but i'm sure that we can find the answers together anything that we've got access to i'd be happy to share that's that's great i feel like that's already been done if we request it but i just want to make it very clear that that we're willing to share that with any and everybody especially our council members i mean If any of us need any information, I'm sure that staff is going to give us anything and everything that we need, as I've never seen any of you withhold anything. So I just want the general public to know as well that we are forthcoming with that. Absolutely. If there's anything that we're not providing, I would like to make sure that we are if the information is there to be given. Thank you.

I appreciate that. Okay, any further discussion on that topic or shall we go ahead and proceed with the public comments?

Proceed.

Okay. Our next person for public comment is Jim. Jim, welcome. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you, council. I'll preface my remarks with saying that nobody likes to be told their baby is ugly, but I'm going to tell you a little bit about an ugly baby we've got here in our community. I'm going to give you a quote from Benjamin Franklin, 1775. Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. I'm also going to give you a quote from the CEO of Flock Safety who said that people who are against the Flock cameras, that they are terroristic organizations and they're closer to Antifa than they are to anything else. I'm going to leave you a bunch of stuff here. I'm old. Back in the day when I got my MBA, there were no computers. You had to do case studies. So I've got some stuff I'll leave behind to illustrate a couple of points I want to make. No community that's got flock cameras has been immune from problems with the flock cameras. The biggest problem, the most devastating impact on a community is when they get felony traffic. The police officers go out, they pull their gun covers, pull them out of the car, take them down, book them, because they got a felony traffic stop going to fly camera, reported their car was stolen. And hours, sometimes days, depending on the circumstances, these people finally communicate to them that the camera did not distinguish between a zero and the letter O. And they've been locked up. So, What they do is what any of us would do in a natural circumstance like that. They sue. And they win. And they get millions. So this is not a people made a crappy decision moment. This is one of those public information moments that everybody can find stuff. I mean, it's daily. You can pull this stuff up. Right now, we have a paramilitary department in our country that's larger than the United States Marine Corps. I'm a veteran of the United States Marine Corps. It appalls me that there are people out there using information, and we don't know what information they're getting. There's reports now that they can put cell phone data, all that, with the flock cameras. None of us know. I'll tell you, these guys, it's AI. They can change it. They can fool with it. They can do what they want to with it. They can find you if they want to for whatever reason they want to. At some point, they're working with the federal government. They might tell you that you might vote to take the cameras down. And they'll tell you they're not going to take them down. And they don't take them down. In the information I'm going to share with you, there are cases where communities asked to have them removed, and they said no. So I'm just telling you, there's issues that ought to be looked at. As the mayor knows and some of the other folks on the council know, I'm very active in the community. I have been blessed. to move here and be embraced by the community. And I try to be as active as possible. I'm not saying these things to, like I said, tell you your baby's ugly, but things that would need to be considered for the future as a risk assessment. Thank you very much. By the way, I adopted a shelter dog last week, so I'm not going to be able to stick around. She's having problems with these thunderstorms, so I've got to run home and make sure she gets her cuddles. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. I can give them to the chief. And thank you for adopting a shelter dog.

All right.

They're hard to place. all right we of course everyone that has spoke we appreciate that as is my custom and habit if anyone did not sign up and they wish to speak this is your opportunity and none being said we will

I'm sorry?

You may. You may. Just give us your name, address, and you may speak.

My name is Gregory Graham from 343 Brushy Mountain Road, Marion, Virginia. I just want to sort of back up that guy's sort of fears and opinions that technology is not always our friend. getting framed in 2020 because people used Facebook as the you know lineup for me that I was never called in for an official lineup but I got locked up for a malicious wounding on a police officer because they looked at a Facebook photo where I had long hair in the Facebook photo however for three weeks prior to the crime I've been running around town with my head shaved completely bald but These tools, these technologies, they're fickle. I hate to sound, I don't know, just sort of weird, but I'm very nervous about those sorts of things. I'm certain all of you all have given these considerations. We've read 1984 if you've been through high school. Strange things can happen from sourcing out old ways. Just have police officers walking the beat more. Something else. All right. I appreciate you all.

Thank you. Thank you for your comments. As with any new technology, there are things to work through. And I hope that we're here. While that's going on. It is now time for council members reports.

And we'll start at the other end this time and let Mr. Carter, Councilman Carter don't have a report but would like to make us ask Tony and today we're every day especially on Friday, Saturday, Sundays, campers go to Chatham Hill Road and they go over Lake Road. And today, Deb, of course she's a park ranger out there, she hasn't been home. There was a 42 footer pulled up by my house there on Sprinkle and was getting ready to turn right. And he had a Subaru, had a long trailer hitch and a Subaru outback. So it made it over 50 feet. And we told him there was no possible way he could make it. GPS sends those people that way. Yeah, and it's just a huge tragedy getting ready to happen. I mean, if any of us met that vehicle, there was no way, because he would have taken up that entire road. And there's been many a time with farm trucks, I've always had to get in the ditch. So I'd like to have a sign at the top of Chatham Hill Road. Well, actually, our last place they can turn around is on Marion Minute Mart. Perhaps they're blocking it because I called the Chamber of Commerce today. They were going to get in touch with Richmond, which people have. But that's the other solution is to get them to, when people book it, to tell them they can't go that way. But it's just a regular occurrence. And it's dangerous. I called BDOT today, too, and they said it was towns. So we need to act on it as soon as possible before some family gets run over over there. As you know, it's just like a snake going out through the area of the county. You wouldn't be able to see it. that vehicle coming to you right on top of it. And then nobody can back off. So let's address that as soon as possible.

Would you like to make that in the form of a motion to send that to committee or do you want to?

No, it doesn't need to go to the committee. It just needs to be action. I'll make that motion. Make the motion that we put a sign there at Really, right before you get to Marian Minute, Mark, is the last possible place they could turn around?

Well, we can motion, we can second, but we'll have to table the vote until the next meeting because it was not on the agenda. So that's the new FOIA outline. Am I correct in that, Mark?

Yes. Is that right?

Yes. When did they change that? August the 1st. I mean, July the 1st.

Yeah. I don't see the wisdom of it, but we'll have to do it. So I'll make the motion to the table to vote, do you say?

Yeah, we'll make a motion second.

And then we can discuss, but we'll table the vote until... If that guy had gone today, he would have... Are you saying it's an emergency circumstance? It is an emergency situation. A 52-footer would have blocked the entire traffic.

I don't know if it quite rises to the level of emergency.

It is if you're coming from the opposite direction, it is.

If you believe that to be a public safety issue?

I haven't observed the circumstances since the first I've actually heard of it, so I'm not comfortable voting on changing something that I know nothing about.

I think a sign would be great. I'm in favor of a sign. I think it is a safety issue.

Unless you live there, Avery, you're not going to see it.

I know, unless someone brings it to my attention. Is this sign restricting use of the road, or is it just a sign that warns that...

size limit. No campers period.

You're looking at making a restriction of use of the road which we cannot vote on tonight as a council.

No campers period because it occupies the entire roadway.

Well I think that I'm going to have to refer to staff on this because I have no depth of knowledge on it.

I think we've discussed it in the past about putting directional signs on the main street.

We're talking two different things, directional signs and restrictions that actually apply that the PD can enforce.

Well, actually, we need one at Hardee's right there before they get turned up Chattanooga Road and then a second one out there.

I would just point out that on 16... there are signs that limit tractor trailer not traversing but it's set it's accepted for local delivery and just for information there has been years back but when WMEV replaced a transmitter up on Walker Mountain, they had concern as to whether or not a tractor trailer could go up there to deliver and meet up and call them local delivery that's accepted, but they may have given them hours that they could go up there. So a tractor trailer did go up to the top of Walker Mountain.

Yeah, they did the same thing in Broadport. They moved those transporters over there.

Does anyone from the street committee want to chime in on this?

Well, I'm on that committee also.

It is a danger, yes. I think it's harmless. I think it'd be harmless to have a sign. But I would think a sign would... It'd be harmless. Yeah.

Just not recommend... We do not recommend...

blah blah blah well I mean that's pretty harmless it is pretty harmless but it's pretty ineffective too if we're just recommending then they don't have to obey that so we're not eliminating or making any penalty for someone that goes ahead and disregards the sign I'm looking at it from a enforcement of code or statute whatever we decide to do there and I think that I don't believe that the town council can just vote on this and change the usage of the road. I think that that's probably something that needs to go to a public hearing at least.

VDOT has no jurisdiction over it, they told me.

It's town matter. Did you talk to the driver of the vehicle?

We just told him he couldn't make it. for his own safety and everyone else's. And they were thankful because GPS sends them that way because it's the shortest distance between point A and point B.

um we've had a motion we've had a second um i am going to table this and not bring it to a vote until the next meeting because i don't believe that it qualifies under the emergency statutes i think we'd be using the emergency statutes to go ahead and produce a law or a ruling if you're just wanting to put a sign up that says hey it's a bad idea because it's a tight space, that's one thing. But if you're talking about restricting use of that road for that purpose, that's another. I need clarification as to which one of those you're talking about.

Well, what I was saying, if you go across Bloodhunger Mother Park toward Bridge Valley, there's sign up there that's the last possible place you can turn around. They just tell you there's no tractors or trailers.

Who put those up?

VDOT. But that's VDOT's jurisdiction. VDOT doesn't have jurisdiction. They told me about signage in the town that that was that was their recommendation to put it out there at Merritt-Menemar and one down in Hardidge. But whatever you want to do, I just want to head off a serious problem because those people were from out of town and if they'd have got over to the bank, it would have cost them $2,500 to get it out. Attractive problems.

Well, I am going to table it. Council can override that with a vote to override my decision. But I'm going to table it until the next meeting. In the meantime, I'm going to pull in a little bit more information. I'd like staff to take another look at it. And that way, before we make our vote, we can know exactly what we're talking about here and whether we need to make a regulation or whether we need to just make a warning. I hope the council will forgive me for that, but that's my recommendation.

Is this something that maybe we need to talk to VDOT about?

The only thing I would say is it's hard to restrict that because we only own a half a mile of Dennis VDOT. So I don't know that we can restrict it.

yeah well i don't know if we can restrict it either what i'm saying is it's a warning i think the majority of people would be thankful because when they get out to the lake they tell horror stories the campers do trying to get there and uh are you just wanting a warning sign yeah that's all that's all that's all it is yeah it's a it's a warning that Marion Minute Mart is the last place you can possibly turn around. Because I travel that road a bunch, and when I go to the valley, I always take that shortcut. And I couldn't tell you how many vehicles I've almost had to get in a ditch.

If your motion is simply for us to produce a warning sign...

Warning sign, one at Hardee's and one at Marion Minute Mart.

Okay, these signs won't obstruct anybody's vision of turning vehicles or anything like that. They'd be properly placed in places where people can avoid that. Would that also be something that you would tell Google about? Tell who? Google or any map company?

I think the Park Service has gotten in touch with them before. They're like everybody else trying to deal with YouTube, Comcast or whatever.

I would still like to review the sign, the actual verbiage of the sign before we place that sign. I would like to see what it looks like, at least. I'm still uncomfortable voting for something that I haven't seen.

I haven't seen the... Well, we'd use the same model that they used on 16 going up the mountain.

I have not seen that sign. I don't haul trailers, so I don't know.

But it's just a glaring problem.

Okay, so Samantha, can you tell me what Mr. Carter's motion is?

Put up a warning sign.

Yeah, warning about campers en route.

Did the power come back on? On Chatham Hill Road and Old Lake Road. Chatham Hill Road runs into Old Lake Road.

this is highly irregular um it really doesn't meet the threshold of uh emergency i mean that that's your opinion i'm just telling you just don't come from so as i say council can override that that's the exception if it's an emergency i i don't believe it meets that threshold a warning sign i mean

I don't know that we've had any issues in the past, which would tend to make it not an emergency. But maybe there is a link.

If you don't want to do it, I just advise everyone to go and travel that a couple of times a week and you'll see what I'm talking about.

No, it's not that I don't want to do it. It's that I don't believe FOIA allows it. This is a good test of FOIA. I don't believe this meets the criteria of an emergency circumstance where something that's not on the agenda can be brought up that's fine but we can just simply postpone this vote until our next session the public is informed and we've met the obligation for you okay whatever you want whatever so i would like to postpone the vote on this you do need to go and observe i believe you but i need to look at it and you do and uh

Because try it on a Friday or Saturday.

Staff, if you would, please gather any information you can.

So I'll add this to the agenda for the next meeting and then bring options for signage? Please, yes.

And like I say, you can look at the one going up to 16. Vita has up there about the tractor and trailers.

and since i lived in rich valley i've seen dozens of instances there where they got in trouble as well well good eye good eye i'm glad you're looking after people but uh we gotta follow the law anything else sir i'm through yeah all right councilman may no reports thank you sir councilman

I just want to remind everybody that the link is still open on the Tanamerian website where we're trying to develop the comprehensive plan for the next go-round. Anybody that still wants to add any kind of suggestions in there for stuff for us to review for the comprehensive plan, please take advantage of that and put anything in there that you'd like, and that's it. Thank you, sir.

Councilwoman Jennings.

No report.

Thank you. Councilwoman Spencer.

Yes, since we're for the next meeting, I'd like to put on the agenda for the loitering ordinance to be looked at again. I think we didn't do anything about it last time, and I'd like to continue that for next time.

Is that a motion?

Yes, it is a motion.

Second.

Yeah, that's a good motion.

Do I?

All three of them.

Yeah, segment two.

For Council's information, I believe you already had a public hearing on it, so you would not necessarily have to have another public hearing unless you want.

I don't want a public, I don't necessarily, not unless we have to, no.

We don't, we wouldn't have to, you've had one.

Then I would, so can we start enforcing our... Well, you've not adopted it. We've not, so I would like to put on the agenda to adopt it, or can we do that now? You... For next...

meeting you probably could go forward and do that now because you never acted after the public hearing you didn't deny it you didn't approve it so that has been something that was given to the public you're not hurting yourself by motion that we adopt that ordinance So you had a public hearing and there were some requested changes if you're wanting to adopt it. Has it been presented without any changes?

I'd like to refer to Todd. Todd, can you pull up how it was written?

There have not been any changes since the last public hearing. I had no direction on what counsel's wishes were.

Can you read it? I'd like to hear it.

Is this fresh in everyone's mind? I don't believe we're ready to vote on this. Well, I'd like to hear it. Just hear the ordinance.

We need it.

We need it. I agree. Then I'd like for Todd to read it, if you don't mind. I don't have it with me right now.

Well, can Mark pull it up?

Folks, you're pulling rabbits out of the hat here. And I appreciate it. But what I'm trying to say is that we need to act as a body that is together. And if we're not aware that this is coming up because we've had a hearing before, I'm going to ask that everyone, if we do vote on it, which is our legitimate right to vote on it, if you're not comfortable with it, vote no. If you are comfortable with the and not hearing it, then by all means vote yes. I would like to hear it and study it.

Yeah, Mark's going to read it. If I can find it.

Andrew, do you have anything you'd like to add? To the loitering ordinance? No, I didn't know if you were going to say something.

I was going to see if I could find it before Mark started looking, so I'd be happy to read it.

If my recollection serves me correctly, the last time we reviewed this was when Billy Hamm was still here.

Is that correct? It's been a while, but it still meets the criteria that we can vote on it because it's come before us.

But my concern is we've not discussed this with Andrew as far as what changes he would have, or I've not read it myself again for months.

No, I haven't.

We have a motion. Councilman Spencer, did you make the motion? Yes. Did anyone second that motion?

Well, Mark's looking it up here.

Oh, several of us did, I think.

Well, but I'm asking a legal question. Did anyone second the motion? I'll second it.

I think.

Yes, please.

All right. There's actually a motion on the floor to add it to next week's agenda.

Did we vote on the... Do we need to vote?

We're talking about the sign right now. Are we talking about the lottery? Okay, we didn't need a motion or a vote to add to the agenda.

I asked if I needed, yes, I asked if I needed to make a motion. I would like for us to, we're not doing anything about our ordinance. I'd like to get that, whatever I have to do to get that started. If I have to, I thought I had to, so that's why I did that. And Mark said I did not have to do that. Okay.

Yeah, we did have a public hearing. I recall that.

I apologize. I'm not finding that.

Oh, that's all right. No, I don't want to rescind that. I would like to add it to the next agenda, please. Yes. That gives everybody ample time to look at the ordinance.

I believe that we can take that to a vote then. Everyone in favor? of putting it to next week yes okay so we've added that to the agenda two weeks in soon our first week first week in september anything else councilman spencer no no todd will you send this to everyone please tomorrow thank you councilman hayes okay I will go with the mayor's report I did not issue a report last time but I do want to thank the PD fire rescue for the night out for the kids it's well done the kids enjoyed it and there were some smiling faces that got a lot of bikes it seemed like so And I think it was well organized and great event. So I want to say thank you about that. I had the good fortune of having dinner with Mitch Reno of Cunningham Recreation. I met him several years ago when I was working on equipment for the playgrounds. He's left me a lot of catalogs and information and things like that. He also met with about the POTS playground here at the elementary school. He met with several people from the town even, I think he met with Beth. But there was no actionable items here. There wasn't any type of meeting other than just, hey, how you doing? let's see what's going on so I had the good fortune of doing that with Mitch and have some current catalogs because we're talking about Kalman Drive Recreational Park in the very near future so I would advise council if you're interested in furnishings if you're interested in equipment if you're interested in ball fields or anything like that let's start familiarizing ourselves with some of this information do our research and And, of course, we'll follow the master plan. Other than that, I do want to say the luau at the lake was great. It was fun. I thought it might get rained out, but it didn't. It turned out to be just fine. The commissioners feed the fight for hunger, wrestling, and it's an ongoing initiative with the Commissioner of Revenue's office. People can donate to that, I think, all the way through the month of August, if I'm not mistaken. But anyway, wrestling came back. to the gymnasium at Marion High School and it was fantastic and a lot of fun. And I just want to say a big thank you for that effort and also for trying to feed the hungry. Speaking of, segue, feeding the hungry, remember the American Legion has a breakfast every first Saturday at the American Legion Hall and it's great to attend. It's donation only so you can give what you want to and who knows. I may be there to serve you. So I would hope that anybody would take advantage of that. That will close my mayor's report and we'll continue with the attorney's report.

No report.

Thank you, sir. Staff reports. I'm sure that Assistant Town Manager Samantha White is going to stand in for Cindy Stanley.

Yes, sir. Yes, thank you.

Okay, so we're putting the accounts before you for consideration of payment. Do I have a motion?

I'll make the motion to approve the accounts.

Second.

Motion and second. Are there any items on the list of accounts that you'd like for clarification on?

I just have a question about the insurance. What was the percentage of increase?

On the health insurance? Health insurance. 11.7. I would say there was another locality that had a 42% increase this year. While it was higher than normal. What cause is that? Just because of use? not only that's a small factor that's a factor in that our use place some into the um number of participants and then the bulk of it is just the local choice overall it didn't matter how long or how good of a year we had we were going to see it right medical hospitalizing and insurances are companies are complaining

Give you another couple of seconds. I see a lot of local vendors on our list. I like that. I like seeing it kept as local as we can. I don't have any questions on that. So I'm about ready to take it to a vote. If council has any questions. and let's go ahead and take it to a vote then all in favor of paying the bills it is unanimous and that was the only thing that you have okay um we will continue with todd long and uh planning his own okay

This might be really loud now that the generator's off. I did have two requests for rezoning last week. One of them is a conditional zoning request. We need to set a joint public hearing, and I will have to say that I will not be going to the next meeting. Mr. Fennick and Hamlet, if the council would like to move forward with setting this joint public hearing for the next meeting, I will be back on the 21st if you'd like to wait. Either way, I'm good with it. I do think if you decide to do it on September 7th, that's still going to give us the opportunity We'll still be able to meet the requirements of the agri-pilot, if you want to wait for the 21st, we definitely will. The address of the first one is 415 East Main Street. The property owner is wanting to rezone it from R1 to Medical Arts with conditions. uh the second one is 1025 north main streets where food city is going right now uh the property on the rear of its zone r1 whenever they uh first purchased the property we required them to do a lot of interior line vacations and when they did the zoning did change so they just need to extend the zoning back to the intersection of uh It didn't seem real complicated. I don't see a problem next to me marking a location.

Yes. So with regards to Food City's request there, we use an area for stormwater that had been upgraded. And when we had a conversation with Food City, they indicated that they would be providing us with a survey that I think they told us they already had it done. But their intent was on that that lot that is for the storm water retention that they want to give that to the town. This is a circumstance that we're using it already. So since we're using it, either they maintain it or we maintain it, there's not really much difference because we are using it.

There's a big pool of water out there the other day.

I'll make a motion we set the public hearing for the first meeting. I'll second that.

Motion second for the discussion. All in favor of setting the public hearing?

That's all I have, if you have any questions.

Were there two public hearings that we wanted to set or we only looked at the one? There's two rezoning requests.

There's two joint public hearings. One is for 415 East Main Street and the other one is for 1025 North Main Street.

Did that motion cover both? Yes.

Okay.

town manager's report i'll just quickly say that we have serp crews on college street now as at the end of last week they're encountering less rock than they have in their their previous area so knock on wood that that continues but there will be some disruption in the area college street as they move through there so that is all i've got this evening unless you all have any questions is the rick park up at iron street is it finished now or

All the pain before.

All the pain. That's all we got.

Gross Close, do we have that down for paving?

It's supposed to be paving as soon as they finish Food City parking lot.

Perfect, thank you. Gross Close was actually part of the last paving schedule too, and we held off until Food City was finished so they didn't mess up the new road. Makes sense.

You know, another thing about the Lake Road is our section of it's falling apart there. You notice that, Tony? And we're going to have to address that very, very soon.

One of the things that we'll mention since you spoke, yes?

Tony, did they put the bathroom up there?

No, we haven't done that yet. We're still trying to figure that out.

And that was what I was going to mention, as a matter of fact, that as phases go in all of our projects, completion of a project doesn't mean we're done with the property. It means we've completed the project for that phase. So as with all recreational property, there are more amenities, other things that we want to do, additions that we want to make. um so don't think that when we say we're finished we're pulling off the job we're just moving on to the next phase any other questions we will be moving into closed session then uh councilman jennings will you take us into closed session

make a motion we go into closed session to discuss a real estate acquisition disposition issue as allowed under state code 2.237 11a3 second all in favor

Marientown Council now stands in closed session. Thank you everyone for attending. We will go to open session after the meeting. So if you want to stick around for the open session, you're more than welcome to but Chief Testerman will instruct you work.

I make a motion we come back into open session and declare that we only discuss the real estate issue as allowed under state code two point two thirty seven twelve second motion second poll yes

Yes.

Yes. Yes.

Yes.

Okay. Maritime Council is now back in open session. Is there any business that needs to come before the Mariantown Council?

Motion to adjourn.

Motion to adjourn and second. All in favor? Aye. Mariantown Council now stands adjourned. Thank you everyone.