Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening and welcome to Marian Town Council's March 2nd meeting. The meeting will now come to order. We would like to start with the invocation followed by the pledge of allegiance to our flag. And I would like for Mark Cheney to lead us in that pledge. We'll start with the invocation by Chief Testament.

Let us bow our heads. Dear Jesus, we come to you this evening as a community. Would you please wrap your healing hands around Councilwoman Hayes? Keep an eye on our military deployed overseas at this time and and abroad, everywhere within the world. Lord, we all need your blessings and your healing hands be placed upon those injured. Please keep an eye on our first responders. Keep us in your prayers and please keep our community in your prayers. We want to lead our community uh in the best way possible and under your guidance. And in Jesus name we pray. Amen.

Amen. I pledge algiance 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 everyone to our meeting tonight. Want to welcome everyone that is in attendance and we'd like to welcome everyone that is viewing from home or somewhere else tonight. Um, we'll start with our roll call and I believe we were all present except for Councilwoman Hayes who we will remember in our prayers. I know she's on the bend. Uh we will need an approval of the minutes and the agenda. [snorts] Make that motion to approve the minutes. Second the agenda. Second.

Uh we'll take those in separate. Sorry. No, we're good. Um we have a motion and a second. Uh anything that uh needs to be discussed in the minutes from our last meeting? If we're all in agreement, we'll take it to a vote. All in favor? And it is unanimous. Now, I'll need a motion to approve the agenda. So move. Are there any additions or corrections before I guess before I make the motion? Well, we'll usually make the motion, second, then we'll discuss if there's addition. I'll make a second. Second. Okay. Okay. Now, are there any additions or uh deletions that we need for the agenda?

Not from staff, sir. Not from staff. Council, anything? Then we'll move to uh I mean we'll vote to approve the agenda. All in favor and our agenda is set. We have no public hearing scheduled tonight, nor do we have public presentation. So, we'll move directly to public comment time. And the first person that I have wishing to comment is Mark Cheney. And Mark, if you please approach the podium, give us your name and address and the floor is yours.

My name is Mark Cheney. I'm the commander of uh Post 18 Marian American Legion and uh our address is 107 Laurel Springs Road, Marian, Virginia. Uh thank you for having me here tonight. I just want to quickly give a couple uh uh flyers that uh things that are going on at the post in the month of March. And the first one is Saturday, March 7th, we will have a breakfast, community breakfast. And we do this, we try to do it first Saturday of every month. And we uh operate by uh donations only. So uh we've had people come in and and and put a good amount of money in uh the bucket. and we've had people in hard times that have not been able to uh put money in, but that's okay. It's about um raising awareness and helping our community. So, again, we have a fundraiser and that's a community breakfast on March 7th and you all are invited to be there as well. Uh an Easter egg hunt on March 22nd. And again, I'll give these flyers to you and uh mayor, if I could get you to step out for a minute. I have a presentation for you,

sir.

Mayor, and I don't know if I call you mayor or sons of the American Legion. Uh I was just got back from Fort Smith from uh Virginia uh late Saturday night and I was discussing with the uh Sons of the American Legion director who's out of state and I told him uh that we have uh you that joined and and he said you got a mayor. I said, "We've got a great mayor." And he really reminded me how important not only where you're at, your position, but just who you are as a son of an American Legion member of, you know, that you're uh the son of a veteran. And so we appreciate that. And on behalf of the American Legion Post 18, I want to extend to this to you and give you this shirt, Post 18, Marrying Virginia with the American Legion emblemed for you. All right. Thank you so much and I will wear it with honor. [applause] [applause] And uh one more little thing as a token of our appreciation for you belonging to the sons. And again it's uh American Legion is a big family. We're a family of legionnaires which are the veterans auxiliary which are spouses. Some people think oh you're a spouse must be a female. You must not. I'm in the auxiliary. My wife spent 10 years in the Navy and that that enabled me qualified me to be her spouse being married as into the auxili auxiliary. So I'm a member of the auxiliary. I'm a legionnaire because I'm air force and I'm also a part of our riders program because I have a motorcycle and I'm also a member of the sons of the American Legion because my father fought in the Korean War. So, we cover a whole gamut of different uh places and people to help uh make up the American Legion, and you're an important part of that. And so, part of that, I want to give you this pen that I hope you'll wear with pride. It says, "I want you for the American Legion." Thank you, mayor.

Wear it with pride. Thank you so much. Thank you, Mayor. [applause] Thank you for everything you've done. Thank you, man. Continue to do. All right. I'm honored. That's all I have. Thank you. [laughter] Thank you. Very honored, sir. Thank you, sir. And next we have Rose Lyens. Rose.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, members of the council. Um, I'm Rose Lyens and I live at 812 Chinkapin Road here in Marian, but I'm here to talk about the library tonight and give you your regular update. The board of trustees will be meeting in Marian this month on the 19th in the Copenha room at the library at 5:30. And as always, every everyone is welcome. Um the Marian the Friends of the Maran Library will be meeting on March the 17th at 6 PM and we'd love to see our friends come out. We're going to be talking about our activities for the summer and our summer book sales. We have a ton of programs going on at the library. I'm just going to mention a few, but please check our website anytime to see what's going on. We have a very dense schedule. I'm happy to report that our maong group continues to be very popular. We got a group of folks playing maong every Wednesday morning at 10 and we've started an evening group for the folks that want to come after work. So, every Wednesday at 6 pm, we have a different group playing maong over at the library. So, if you're interested, please stop in and check it out. Um, love to have you. Um, we have several programs I did want to mention. On the 16th of March, we're doing our first cookbook club, which is kind of a potluck where you cook a dish out of a cookbook and bring the dish and the cookbook and everybody will exchange their recipes and their cookbooks. It's the first time we've tried that this, so we'll see how it works. But 16th at 6 pm is our first cookbook club. Um, on the 30th of the month, we have Lego night. Um, our first two Lego nights of the year got cancelled because of bad weather. So, this will be our first Lego night of the year. Very popular event. Families, kids, everybody comes um and play games and contests and kids get prizes and but the adults play as many

Legos as the kids do. Um, on the 31st in um over in Chilhawi, we have a sourdough bread workshop that I wanted to be sure to mention to everybody. So that is the 31st of March at 5:30. So those are just a couple examples of the great programs we have going on. Um our seed library is also now open. Um so if anybody's looking for seeds here in Marian, we have some Virginia native seeds and then we have other seeds and then our our whole collection is over in Chilhawi at the seed library in Chilhawi. If you would like to have seeds that we don't have here, we can get them from Chillhawi and bring them over for you. Um, our maker space continues to go strong. The again, the weather kind of killed us. A lot of our programs were affected by weather. Um, our next program in the maker space will be on the 13th of March where we'll be making some acrylic bookmarks, showing people how to use different pieces of the machinery, and we'll be opening the maker space for open lab time on the 31st of March. We've added new pages to the website with all the information about the maker space as well as a link to schedule. So, at the bottom of the page, there's um a button that says book now. And so, you can go in and see the various pieces of equipment and schedule a time to come in and use that equipment at the maker space. Um, another new thing that the Library of Virginia has added for us is a platform called Virginia Writes. And it's a free platform for patrons across the state who are independent authors who would like to publish online. They can upload their book. Um there are folks who review the content and review you know that it's appropriate to to be published but independent authors can publish right on that platform and that people can find books by independent authors on that same platform. Um and people can the authors can also be entered into

statewide and national competitions to bring their um works to the attention of many folks. So, that is a great new resource and asset for authors in our community. Last thing I wanted to mention is that we will be closed April 3rd and 4th for Easter. That's all I have to share. Um, I know I'm talking fast. Try to get it all in. Um, do y'all have any questions for me tonight? Sounds great. Thank you for such a robust program and uh the resources that you have there. Uh, need to schedule visually, please.

Absolutely. Please. Now, we are so fortunate to have such a creative staff. Everything they can think of, they they make the magic. I do the stuff like this so they can make the magic. Thank you so much.

I'd like to just say that we are so lucky to have Rose and her staff. It's a great library. I put it up against Stanny Big City Library. And just to what you said about the friends, we'd love to have you all come to our meeting. We need extra bodies to help us with book sales. And thank you. All right. Um, council, if we're ready to proceed. Um, I have the mayor's report. Um, no council members reports. I'm sorry. Jumping ahead. I'm in a big hurry. We're going to go like it says on the agenda tonight and we will begin with Vice Mayor Gates.

Thank you. Uh, I think both uh, Councilman Jennings and myself went down and saw maybe somebody else did. uh Deborah Hayes and she is in Embark uh which is a uh it's a 20 or 24 bed uh rehab home in Bristol and she would like any guest she seemed in pretty good spirits. Uh she could move her hands and feet a little bit and she could turn her head to one side so she has some some movement with her limbs. So hopefully it's going to get better quickly for her. Uh something that was brought up to me just a minute ago from Dr. Wasam was if uh Chief Tester, if you could contact all the local uh agencies that use the range and ask them to watch their speed on that road. His daughter was almost run off the road. So, uh, if you could alert them that they need to be careful out there,

that would be a nice touch. And other than that, anybody could be patrol because all sorts of people other than that, I don't have anything else. Dr. Yates, thank you very much. Councilwoman Spencer, no report, sir. Councilwoman Jennings. Uh

I've given everyone the newsletter for March from the Lincoln Theater and we're having lots of good uh events for March. Hope that everybody will come. I have some extra ones if anybody wants to have one. Uh tomorrow we are having uh a book signing at the Lincoln Theater and it's Dina Lander's daughter. Do you can you remember her first name? Christy. Christy. Christy. and she is writing a trilogy about her her her life, her family. And tomorrow she will be signing the second book. So, everyone's invited one to four at the Lincoln Theater. Who is it?

Uh, it's Dena Landers. You know, you probably everybody knows Dena, I guess. And it's her daughter Christie, and she has written uh her well, at least her second book in the trilogy. It's the second. Yeah. so that she's going to sign the books tomorrow at the theater. And uh I will uh attend my first uh Mount Rogers PDC meeting on April the 2nd. Uh that's coming up soon. So that's all. All right. Anything else? Uh no. No, that is okay. Councilman Owl, no report, sir. Thank you, sir. Councilman May,

um actually working with Mr. my on the um recreation pool floor um in the building. We were thinking of taking the carpet out and going to like finishing the concrete. So, we think we could do that all in house a lot cheaper and that's the plan right now. All right. Save us money. We like that. Anything else, sir? No, sir. Thank you. Councilman Carter? No report.

Thank you, sir. uh under the mayor's report. Um I do want to report that uh myself and uh a few other members of council attended the health trust gayla um Saturday week and uh it was very well done. The food was great. The company was great. It was well attended and I don't know officially but the health trust is almost ready to achieve their goal of fully sustainable scholarship programs. So, um, it is a great event, uh, great cause, and I hope that someone will come to council at some point in time and, uh, and tell us a little bit more about that. But that will [music] happen at another date. Other than that, that will conclude my mayor's report. We'll move on to staff reports. And, uh, under our staff reports, we will have our attorney's report.

No report. Thank you, sir. And uh moving on, the town manager report.

Absolutely. Um so I had a few things that I wanted to touch base on this evening. Uh one is going to be the fiscal year 2027 budget timeline. So we're well into that process with our departments. Uh we're thinking staff is going to continue to um work on the budget as those come in from the individual departments and we're going to work on revenues and uh continue to see how those look so we can have something uh present to the budget committee. Um so we feel like staff will be working on this through March. Uh around the end of March, 1 of April, we'll kick it to the budget committee. Um then we'll have those discussings um with our budget committee through the end of April. U we're hoping to have a balanced budget submitted to um council sometime by miday. I'm hoping to have a budget public hearing by June 1st, be the first June meeting and then hopefully adopting the budget at the second June meeting on June 15th. Um if for some reason there is a hiccup there, that does leave us um a couple of weeks to go back to the drawing board and adopt by June 30th. Um wanted to update quickly on the calendar drive rec park. um activity there has been slowed due to the contractor working at the new food city location. Um but we're working behind the scenes on getting the architecture and engineer services squared away. So an RFP was submitted a few weeks ago. We had nine submissions. U we'll be meeting this week with the um uh the RFP committee to uh break down um which ones we want to move forward with and um at that point we'll be reaching out to the the three or four of the nine that we've chosen and um have them submit more finalized RFP for the projects itself. So at this point we're still in the planning stage and trying to

identify um the engineering group that we want to move forward with for the the project or the group of the group of firms. Um I spent the end of the week before last the BLGMA meeting which was in Stanton. That's the Virginia Local Government Managers Association. U wanted to talk a little bit about the topics that come up there. We spoke about leadership ethics. Um, a big topic this year of course was AI. That seems to be an ongoing item of interest. Um, we spoke a little little bit about demographic changes in small towns focused on on housing, workforce, and population. Um, talked about private development in small towns. Spoke a little bit about creative employee benefits. some of the smaller localities are having issues with um retaining talent um when their their employees are you know given the option of of working for um in the private industry. So creativity and employee benefits to help with retention and then of course housing attainability which seems to be not only a regional or state um item of interest but but nationwide um And then VH I I received word that um we again received the 2025 excellence in waterworks operations and performance award through the Virginia Department of Health. So um I just want to share that with you all and thanks to Don and his team at the water treatment plant for meeting those expectations again this year. Last thing I've got on my report is going to be um the resolution that I'm requesting

that's going to help us with delinquent collections. So um uh state code section 58.13958 um essentially allows the governing body to apply a 20% um 20% addition onto seriously delinquent tax bills. uh in this this um assessment is is essentially u available there for the locality to um take what they found to be difficult to collect and refer that to an outside source to help with collections. So, um I have uh identified a group out of Richmond called TACS. Um and they are a group of attorneys with city and county treasurer um backgrounds that [music] just work on delinquent bill collection for localities. That's the only type of work that they do. Um, and uh, what I'm asking of you all this evening is to consider um, allowing us to apply a 20% uh, fee on top of seriously deliberate bills so that we could um, have this law firm help us with our collections. So essentially it allows us to remain whole. we get the entire bill that's 20% of you all would would vote to apply if you chose to do so would go to pay for the the bill itself or pay for the service itself collection and I've written a resolution which I'll read here um whereas the town of Marion is charged with collecting taxes and other charges dy levied in order to carry out the proper operation of the town whereas the town manager and finance department staff is responsible for causing all accounts to be paid timely or to initiate delinquent billings and

collection efforts to aid in compliance with these items dually payable. And whereas the county manager and finance department staff may engage collection agencies or collection attorneys to assist in this regard and the certain costs associated with these efforts to collect delinquent billings may be incurred by the town due to no fault to those citizens who have paid their accounts timely. And whereas the town of Marian wishes to ensure that those costs are borne by the citizens responsible for the delinquent town. Now therefore be resolved that the town council of the town of Marian the provisions of Virginia code 58.1-3958 are hereby directed to be implemented the town manager along with finance department staff is authorized to bill and collect administrative fees and attorney or collection agency fees as provided by and to the limits authorized under Virginia code 58.1-3958. Do you all have any questions about

Yeah. How many accounts do you think we have? And what if this doesn't work?

Um, well, as far I I can get back with you with the number of accounts. I know um 2022 to current is what I've taken the the most recent look at. There's about $170,000 in delinquent bills there. I would like to go back to 2020. I haven't had far to go or I haven't had a chance to go back further than 2022 at this point. So, I I'm thinking that there's probably 200,000 that we could be deemed reasonably collected in personal property and real estate. Um, at this point, you know, those amounts are essentially kind of found to be uncollectible. We we've gone through the debt set off process. We've gone through the delinquent billing process. So, this is um kind of the the last step in in a collection. Okay.

Um, beyond this, there's not a um there's not a whole lot of of room to go any further, but um these folks do have a lot of tools and knowledge at their disposal that would make things that are probably found by the locality to be uncollectible might make it possible for collection. Okay. The 20%'s pretty good deal. State fee is 30% on on business taxes and 100% on income tax if fraud is proven. So 20%'s a deal plus you can add interest on that. Absolutely. That the code allows plus interest. Yeah. So the 20% and there's several methods that you can use just apply the taxes

on these taxes. But let's try that first and that that was my Bailey Wick for 40 years. So let's go let's go for it. They're robbing the C. It boils down that they're robbing from all of us. We don't Yeah, the the reality is operationally we are um you know we're doing okay. We're making enough to cover the services, but but this is money that's owed to us. It's accumulated debt. It's something that could go towards some of our goals of um you know replacing aging equipment or um whatever you wanted to prioritize with extra funds. I would assume that this would be a problem all over the state. Is it

um certainly 100% collections is not that you see very many places if at all. Um this is just kind of a I don't want to say a last ditch effort but after the locality itself has gone through the process of of delinquent collections um this is something that they can can kind of refer that book of balances due to someone else and allowed them to see if there's any collectibility there. Um it's a great opportunity I think to get our maybe get our money back or at least a portion of it. Would you like to make a motion to accept this? I would be happy to to accept. We have a motion in a second. Does council wish to discuss this further?

I just wanted to ask Mark if if this is something that uh requires a public hearing or it it would not.

And just to inform [music] council the firm that um um Mr. has brought up that is the firm that the county uses for the cheap sales. So when the when the county is doing an achieve on a property within the town then that is when they're getting 30%. The code section that he cited limits to 20%. So the final step would be if we from our perspective got the county to perceive what a cheap Yeah.

sell and actually sell the property for the delinquent taxes. Um to be clear, this is not an additional tax. This is just a penalty. Is that correct? It it is No, no, it's not an this is taxes that are owed. Uh yes. Yes. But the actual 20% the 20% penalty codes the code allows uh that up to 20% for attorney's fees.

Okay. And we've already accepted the code of course which this is part of but it is a good idea for us to formally pass this [music] as a motion that council uh appreciates and um I hope that it results. Thank you for your good work in that. Any further discussion? Then uh we will take it to vote. All in favor? And it's unanimous. Thank you, Mr. King. Thank you. I hope that it is fruitful. Thanks so much. You me as well. And that concludes my report. Is there any further business to come before the council before we move into close session?

Adding to that, I'm not sure, Mark, but they can go back at least six years, can't they? Uh I think seven here from what I understand you can go back as far as can reasonably seem collectible. Yeah. But as far you know the further you get away from a oh yeah a tax period the the less likely it is to collect. So I recommend you at least go back six years. That's what we did. Now when we file um

whether it's cleanup abatement or clean some other type of cleanup. We file that under a specific code. So that is five years. Five. So we need to segregate that then from we would not No, we wouldn't want to turn that over because we at this point that is a tax lean that we've got recorded in the circuit court clerk's office. If we don't collect it within that 5year period, then of course um we could turn it over. But that would be in in this. Um

that figure, would it? No, I would see that as something different because I would too. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Um but uh we've motioned and accepted this so um we can discuss it uh at another point in time. I believe it's time to move into close session. Councilwoman Jennings, will you take us into close session, please?

I make a motion we go into close session to discuss two issues. The first is uh discussion of town council appointed positions is allowed under state code 2.23711A1. The second issue is a real estate acquisition and disposition issue as allowed under state code 2.23711 A3. All in favor? I second. All in favor of moving close session. We'll vote and we will now be in close session. There's no reason for recess. Thank you all for coming. We'll return to open session after close session.

Okay, I make a motion we come back into open session and declare that we only discussed the two uh appropriate issues and this is allowed under state code 2.23712. Second. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Mary and Town Council is now in open session. Is there any business to come before the town council may want to make a motion that we appoint our current town manager Andrew King as town treasurer effectively effective immediately.

Second motion and second to appoint town manager Andrew Keane as treasurer of Maring Virginia. Is there any discussion of this matter? None being heard, we will take this to a vote. All in favor? It is unanimous. Welcome, Mr. Treasurer. Thank you. I make a motion we journ. Second. Motion and second. No discussion needed. All in favor of adjournment. Mayor and town council is now closed.