Board of Mayor and Aldermen - Regular Meeting

She'll be 89 in November. She's getting some years on her. He's been gone 20 years.

That's good right there.

Good evening. It's 6.30. We're going to call the BOMA meeting to order. Do roll call, please.

You're the only one not here. I can't get mine to work.

Probably trying to tell me something. Mine won't let me sign in, but if I have to vote, I will voice vote.

Okay.

Everybody's present. Number two is invocation and Pastor Billy Levengood. Thank you.

Let's pray. Father, thank you for your kindness. God, we are thankful to call Manchester home, that you would be so gracious that you could have put us anywhere at any point in time. And Lord, you've been kind to call us to this place in this time and for us to call Manchester home and have times and roles and opportunities in just contributing to its flourishing. So Lord, we thank you for the assembled. alderman and mayor tonight who will gather, Lord, this body as it will meet for the last time before elections. Lord, we pray that you give them wisdom as they work through this agenda. Pray that you help them have just wisdom to know how to lead our city well. Give them opportunities to work together, opportunities to just create environments for our families and businesses to thrive. And Lord, we thank you for all that you're doing in our community. Pray that you'd be honored in all of those things. In Christ's name, amen.

With liberty and justice for all.

Okay. Item number four is approval of the agenda.

I want to make a motion to amend the agenda on ordinances A, Let me go ahead and defer that to 9-1-26. So we have a motion.

Do we have a second? So we have a motion and a second. Any discussion? Let's vote, please.

Yeah.

Did I have a little discussion on this? Yeah, please do.

Why? I understand we didn't get the publication in time.

Okay.

Yeah. I'm sorry, Ryan, I didn't. The publication wasn't posted in time.

We didn't get everything published in time for this meeting, and so we had added it.

So we could send out the meeting, but it'll be on next month. Okay.

So we have a motion and a second. Let's do voice voting, please.

Alderman Amerson? Aye. Alderman Crosland? Aye. Alderman Freed? Aye. Alderman French? Aye. Vice Mayor Messick? Aye. Alderman Parsley? Aye.

Okay. So now we need a motion and a second to approve the Agenda as amended.

I'll keep my motion.

I'll keep my second.

So we'll keep the Alderman French and Vice Mayor Messick. Any discussion? Let's vote, please. So we will do it by voice. Sorry about that.

Alderman Anderson? Aye. Alderman Crosland? Aye. Alderman Break? Aye. Alderman French? Aye. Vice Mayor Messick? Aye. And Alderman Bursley? Aye.

Motion carries six to zero. Next, number five, is the minutes from the 7-7-26 BOMA meeting. Looks like tonight we're going to do vote, voice, motion, seconds, and voting. So we'll entertain a motion to approve the minutes.

I'll make the motion.

So Alderman Parsley makes motion. Do we have a second? Seconded. I have a second by Alderman Crosland. Any discussion? Any changes? If you're none, let's vote, please.

Alderman Anderson. Aye. Alderman Crosland.

Aye.

Alderman Freak.

Aye. Alderman French. Aye.

Vice Mayor Masick. Aye. Alderman Parsley.

Aye. Motion carries six to zero. Item number six is citizens' comments.

Come on up.

Mayor Hobbs, I just want to take a minute and I wanted to thank BOMA and Mayor Hobbs and all of the city. Manchester City Schools started this week. It's been a really busy couple of days, but the support that we've received from Ms. Kim, Conference Center for opening convocation. Had a tremendous day, one of the best we've had. Mayor Hobbs and his wife have been out and been in our schools, and we appreciate that. Chief Floyd, Assistant Chief. Where'd he go? Robertson back here. They've been very visible from taking kids out of cars today to helping with crossing guards. Chief Chambers and his crew been present. Mr. Foley in the water department. They collected items for our We Care, which was a really good event. But I just wanted to let them know and you guys know how much we appreciate All hands on deck. And I will also say, in two weeks, the traffic will settle down. Two weeks. Two weeks. I said a word. I'm just saying, two weeks. But again, I thank you all very much.

Thank you, Dr. Vaughn, for nice comments. Any other comments? Okay. Item number seven is comments from error. Just like to thank everybody for being here and everybody tuning in at home. Number eight is committees, safety.

Good evening, good evening. Give you our stats for last month. We had two fires, one electrical fire at South Spring Street, and a fireworks fire at the extended family care. We had no vehicle fires, we had two illegal burns, we had 29 EMS calls last month. We had nine motor vehicle accidents in the city, two in the county, and one extrication in the county. Responded to 17 fire alarms, one CO alarm, did two smoke investigations, two gas leaks. We installed smoke alarms at six homes, put 24 alarms in their homes, and two CO alarms were installed also. We did two car seats, did a public service for 10 times. We had 35 burn permits issued during the month, and we had 106 responses during the month of July, which was 48 more than July of last year. A whole lot more. Just some highlights. As I said last month, one of our EMR responses resulted in CPR. That patient survived and she's at home now, recovering. We assist the callers with their ALS challenge in an extrication incident in bowel marker 106 and 105. They had a battle of the badges. It was really in July, not June. It was in July. The police department won. They did a great job. We'll get them next year, hopefully. Stood by for a fireworks play for the city. Did the Fourth of July parade in Wellington Place again this year. It's always fun to do that. Went down to the high school band for their last day of band camp. We did a show and tell for some autistic children this month. We sent to the local business for their flags and flag issues. We had some weather-related responses on the 3rd of July. We installed 212 hardwired smoke alarms in Magnolia Glen for the residents of that community. Yes, sir. We've got, like, three more houses to do. We'll be finished with Magnolia Glen this year. Fire Marshal Wood attended the Fire and Life Safety Educator Course at Tennessee Fire Academy, and Firefighters Carter, Seppi, and Pennington attended the Fire Instructor Course at Tennessee Fire Academy.

Thanks, sir. Good night.

Yes, sir.

Good evening. So for Manchester Police Department, for the month of July, we reduced our calls again. We had 1,799 calls. That's down. July of 2025 was 1,955. That's 156 call reduction. A few highlights. We held our CID staff and command meetings last month. We had a pretty good storm last month, and we had to call our night shift in a little bit early to handle all the traffic intersections. Power went out for about an hour, hour and a half in both of our shifts. Did a great job dealing with that. We've got two officers that started the police academy. They're in, I believe, week five. They're doing a great job passing everything with their great scores. Myself and assistant chief attended the TCAT open house. Had Shannon Smiles came in. We had a full department. First time in several years we'd had all of our officers had some professional photographs made, which was nice to do and get a full department pick. I was invited to speak at the Kiwanis meeting. We had a great conversation and dinner. ALS challenge went well. I think he's talking to you. We had SWAT tryouts on two days, and we'll be picking officers to be on our SWAT team based on those tryouts. We had a great meeting with District Attorney Northcott about officers in court training and on-scene chain of command between the DA staff and the police department. We had our ELISO audit, which was great. We had great findings from that audit. Director Vaughn Thank you for the kind words. Assistant Chief Robertson and Captain Sneed spoke with Director Vaughn about our crossing guard situation. We currently have two openings. That's a really hard job to fill because it just breaks your whole day up. So we're trying to come up with some ideas to make that a more lucrative position. We've got a solution temporary until we can find some people interested in that. SROs and Assistant Chief Robertson and Captain Snead attended the city school convocation and that was a great event. And since I was promoted to chief, Major West has taken over the city's GovDeal accounts. And just to give you an idea of what he's done since he's taken that over, from May to August, the city sold $72,879 worth of equipment year to date for the fiscal year, which really, in a month, $13,227 surplus that we've recouped back. He's done a great job of that. Officer Sam Pennington celebrated anniversary. We had a couple projects. On the agenda tonight is our cloud-based storage for our cameras. Be glad to answer any questions about that. We're also working, our PSOs up front are working on a program We've about got it completed and ready to roll out. It's gonna be a SOS, Senior Outreach Service, where we put, you can volunteer your senior citizen, anybody in the sea limits over the age of 60 can be put on a roster, and we'll call and check on them once a month. The ladies up front will do that. There's an application process to get on that and a procedure if they don't answer or if we feel like something's wrong, we'll send a welfare check out to check on them and call their family members that are on the list. So we're excited to get that ready and rolled out. We had a lot of training. We accounted for 211 hours of training last month. And the next safety committee is next week, Monday the 10th, right here.

Can you tell us who the new face greeting us downstairs is?

Yes, I'm glad you mentioned that. Hannah Gallo is our new PSO up front, and she's doing a great, great job and has hit the ground running, and we've had a lot of great comments on her. People coming in, that's the first face and voice that greets them, and she's been a great hire for us, for sure.

Thanks, sir. You know, Adam, can I ask a question?

Yeah, absolutely.

Adam, could you explain a little bit about the cloud base and the reason we're changing over as far as the data in the five-year period? program that we're having instead of it just being $35,000. Yes, sir.

I'd be glad to. So as technology is getting on everything now, it is becoming cloud-based to store data. And currently, our data is stored in-house on a server. Those go bad. They can get corrupt. There's a lot of risk in storing that data. very sensitive information in-house. So the body cameras and the car cameras we use offer a cloud-based solution. And like most of the technology that the police department deals with, a lot of it's long-term contracts multiple years. This program that we have that will work with our cameras is a five-year contract. It's easier for me to budget that a year at a time. So it's basically a $35,000 a year commitment. But we're committing to five years, which is $175,000 to have that cloud storage. It also renews our warranty on our cameras. And our body cameras get replaced at year three, I believe. So year three, we'll get all new body cameras, which That saves us a lot of money just not having to buy and replace those, so it's expensive, but technology, that's just where it's going. I don't see ever getting rid of the body cameras or the car cameras, so this is pretty much something we need to do. Thank you.

We need a data center for that, very small. I'll let you find that. Hey, if you need one, it's not coming here. We don't need data stored.

Okay, next is finance.

Good evening. The Finance Committee held its regular meeting on July 21st. Predominantly some funding requests in that meeting, such as you're going to see these tonight, tractor and boom mower for public works. As the Chief just discussed, there's a few items for police, a couple vehicles, those web-based cameras, and that cloud services agreement. were also discussed. A couple of excavators and trailers for water and sewer and the purchase of 10 acres from the Batesville manufacturing was also discussed. And then an amending ordinance to section 10 of the original budget ordinance, which section 10 just states our property tax, which is being reduced. all of these items you'll see in your packet tonight under the resolutions and ordinances. The finance department itself is fully staffed. Our two good news is our 2027 budget was accepted by the state without conditions. That's excellent news. We're dotting the I's and crossing the T's on 2026 and preparing to submit that for state audit. We received our $10 million bond, water and sewer revenue bond. for water and sewer. I'm sure Director Foley has a few places to spend that, but it's sitting safely in the bank. I want to thank Scott Gibson at Cumberland Securities. He was instrumental in helping us get that funded at a decent rate and get that money quickly so we could get going on these capital projects. And lastly, the finance department and HR department are working to convert us over to ADP. which we're getting real close. There's just a lot of activity right now. The next Finance Committee meeting is right here, 4 p.m., August 18th. Thank you.

Thank you.

4.185, and most commercial paper on revenue bonds like that are going from 4.1 to 4.4 on 30 years right now, so 4.18 was towards the lower end.

Yeah, and I mean, if everybody remembers correctly, right, Scott told us it'd be 4.25. He felt very confident about that, and they were able to do better.

Thank you, Anthony.

Street?

I handed out a monthly report for July for the public works. We have hauled 110 loads of brush from the storm cleanup. We're still hauling every day. We've hauled 50 and a half loads of household debris, like junk, they call it. We've had 100 complaints on trash cans, four on red lights. Roads and streets had 14. Two signs and eight high grass. And I won't go over all of them unless you just want me to. Our maintenance department for the vehicles, the water department, they spent 43 hours working on vehicles, 20 for the police. Nine for the codes, recreation, two and a half, and 51 on the street, 51 and a half, and sanitation was nine and a half, and shop for miscellaneous. We're still working on our sidewalks, still cleaning up storm damage. We helped some down at the parks, cleaned up trees. We helped with the Fourth of July festivities. And if you'll notice, I don't have animal control on mine. That'll be under another department, thanks to Brittany. That's all I have.

Thank you, George.

Water and sewer.

Good evening, Mayor and Aldermen. Brief update for the activities of the water and sewer department for the month of July. Our department continues to make progress improving the water and sewer system through proactive maintenance, doing some strategic planning, ongoing system improvements. During the month, our crews completed 53 total repairs across the water distribution and wastewater collection system, of which 26 water system repairs, 27 wastewater collection system repairs. to highlight five main breaks, eight service line repairs, 14 manholes, five sewer cleanouts, three fire hydrant replacements, 38 water meter replacements, and 12 new water meter installations. And we continue to inspect our entire distribution fire hydrant system, which we did 198 preventive maintenance inspections last month. At the wastewater plant, our staff completed several major maintenance and rehab projects, including completion of the clarifier rehab, UV system maintenance, digester improvements. We're in the process of completing the SCADA upgrades and updates to our operating procedures and regulatory documentation. Our daily operations, we continue advancing several long-term initiatives, including a new pretreatment program for fall, Our City Works implementation, GIS asset management, lift station improvements, sewer rehab projects, and capital improvement planning. In the month of July, we also welcomed a brand new assistant director. His name is Scott Hamilton to the team. and we continue investing in our employees through training and cross training. As we move forward, we'll continue prioritizing the capital improvement projects that will help improve reliability, reduce water loss and infiltration, protect our infrastructure, and ensure we're making responsible investments that provide long-term value. I'd also like to take this time to thank the employees of the Manchester Water Department for their continued dedication and professionalism. Their hard work is making a noticeable difference in the reliability of our system and the level of service that we provide to the residents and customers of Manchester. If there are any questions, I'd be happy to answer. If not, next Water and Sewer Commission meeting is Thursday, August the 6th, right here at 6 p.m. Director Foley, I don't know what street that is, but I don't know.

It's over there, I guess, off of Meadowlark. I've seen the pipe and everything laying there, and I've seen where y'all got it marked out that you're coming down that street.

Y'all are putting a new sewer line there. Is that the St. John, Belmont area? Yes, St. John. We're replacing all the sewer lines in that subdivision.

Yes, sir, and that's going to go all the way to, well, it'll go all the way to that street and then attach to where y'all cleared out.

Right. We've already did one half from Belmont. McArthur, behind the Speedway, to I guess that's Belmont or St. John.

But we will do that in-house.

Yeah, we're doing that all in-house. That has been done, and we're going to complete the neighborhood next, and then we'll jump over to some other projects. I'd seen the power plant there, and it looked like y'all was getting prepared for that. Yes, sir. And that's not a part of the $10 million that I plan to spend.

Well, I wouldn't ask. I didn't know if that was or not.

No, that's operating funds that we already had set aside.

Okay, that's good. That's great. Thank you. Yes, sir.

Thank you.

Anybody else?

Recreation.

Good evening.

For the month of July, we had 11,051 guests enter the recreation center. On the Saturday of July 25th, we hosted an open house. We had 523 visitors. On Sunday, July 26th, we had an open house as well. It was 831 visitors for a total of 1,354 visitors for that weekend.

We also hosted 35 open swim and private swim parties.

Our renovations to the rec center are coming along. Volunteer Paint has almost patched all the EFIS around the building, and they've started the painting work on the pool side of the building. Delivery of our pool basket strainers are scheduled for tomorrow. We're still waiting on the HVAC units for the wellness room and the pool pump room. And we have accepted delivery of the ADA pool lift chair. We're just waiting on the counterweights for that unit. Programs for the month of July, we hosted our summer swim lessons. We had 110 enrolled in those sessions. And then for our year-round swim lessons, we had 80 participants. We hosted a July 4th pool party, first event we've hosted during the 4th of July festivities. We had 126 participants. And then also in the month of July, we hosted a Sensory Sensitive Saturday, and the members only swim both with 50 attendees. The next Recreation Commission meeting will be on August the 12th at 4.30 here in the boardroom. Any questions?

I think it's worth noting that the open house that Director Fox is talking about We invited anybody who lived in the city of Manchester or in Coffey County to come visit the facility in hopes that we can get them to buy a membership. And I think it went very well. As he said, he had over 1,300 people for two days, and the window was like one to five. It was a very short window each day.

So that was very good. Good job. Thank you.

So tourism, everybody knows we've got Miss Kim hired now. She came on board last Monday. There's not a whole lot to update, but at the next meeting, she'll have a lot for you. Planning and zoning.

For planning and zoning, the August Planning Commission meeting is scheduled for Monday, August 17th at 5.30 here in the boardroom with the Board of Zoning Appeals meeting to follow. Both of those agendas are very short. The annual Planning Commission member training is scheduled for August 13th. I had mentioned that last month. It's still on the schedule. Staff members will receive eight hours of training. Planning Commission members will receive four hours of training. As far as the codes department is concerned, the department received a total of 94 complaints. This includes both property maintenance and animal control complaints. 150 construction inspections were completed. This includes both building inspections and stormwater construction inspections. Several of the codes department team members, including myself, attended some continuing education courses provided by the Tennessee Fire and Codes Academy this past month. Manchester Animal Control received the No Kill Award from the Best Friends Animal Society. This is simply a reflection of the dedication of the animal control officers have put into their work. I was able to obtain some pretty good employees from the Public Works Department for that. Also, thank you to the adopters and any rescue partners who helped with that achievement. I'm happy to have them on my team.

Good. Perfect. Historical zoning.

So the regular called historic zoning commission meeting is scheduled for Thursday, August 6th here in the boardroom. Some members, however, are in one way or another involved in the election that takes place on Thursday. So in the event of cancellation due to no quorum, we will likely schedule a special called meeting to review a certificate of appropriateness application in waiting. Due to that possibility of cancellation, I'm working to reschedule the certified local government that was supposed to take place at this month's meeting as well. That certified local government standing helps make the downtown eligible for grants, so we absolutely want to be sure that audit gets done, but it will likely be rescheduled.

Thank you, ma'am. Any questions? Okay, hearing none, item nine, resolutions and ordinances.

Resolution A, a resolution authorizing the purchase of a new Holland tractor with boom mower and accessories at a price of $174,054.34 for the use of the street department of the city of Manchester sponsored by Vice Mayor Messick.

So your machine, we believe, is trying to work again. So if we could get a motion and a second. So we have a motion and a second. Any discussion? I think it would be appropriate to announce, George, what was the year model of the one that we sold? So we had an 06 model that we put on GovDeals, brought $30,000, so we'll put that toward this $170,000 purchase, and it was actually a pretty good deal for us. Any discussion? Comments? Let's vote, please. Motion carries 6-0.

Resolution B, a resolution approving a contract for custom signals web-based system and the corresponding five years of cloud-based services with a total price of $175,175 for use of the Police Department of the City of Manchester, sponsored by Alderman Parsley.

So we have a motion and a second, and I think it's also worth noting there that is what Chief Floyd was talking about. It's in his budget to pay $35,000 a year, but that is the life of the contract, and then they actually get new body cameras in three years, which I don't know what the cost of those would be, but I think it would definitely pay for part of this. So any discussion from BOMA? Let's vote, please. Motion carries six to zero.

Resolution C, a resolution authorizing a contract to purchase two Dodge Durangos with patrol equipment at a cost of $57,576.95 each for use by the police department sponsored by Alderman Parsley.

We have a motion and a second. Again, I think that this one here is worth noting that we are buying three total. One fell underneath the requirements of... It was less than $50,000, so that one we've already signed off on. And the other two are over. But I also would like to acknowledge the fact that this is the first year in four years that we've bought vehicles out of the drug fund. So thank you guys for the willingness to do that. It helped us balance our budget across the board. So thank you for that. Any discussion? Let's vote, please. Motion carries, six to zero.

Resolution D, a resolution authorizing the purchase of two excavators and two trailers and accessories at a total price of $171,364.04 for use of the water and sewer department of the city of Manchester, sponsored by Alderman Crosland.

We have a motion. Do we have a second? We have a motion and a second. These are all Bobcats. Branded purchases, they're on state contract. One is a larger size Mini-X than the other one. And then there's two trailers to go with it. And this was in the water and sewer budget for this year. So any questions or comments? Hearing none, let's vote please.

Motion carries six to zero. Resolution E, a resolution providing for a land purchase of a little over 10 acres from Batesville Manufacturing for the purchase price of $352,800, sponsored by Alderman Crosland.

So we have a motion and a second, and I'd just like to explain that one as well. This is actually between the Watson's Metal and the entrance to Batesville. The thought process here is to get Public works a new home so that we're not into the school zones and into small roads with big equipment trying to get out of those areas So we're looking at purchasing the land and then coming up with a plan to build Public works a home. It's also big enough that as the city grows you can have other items over there as a Compound could be fire could be police. It could be several different areas any discussion

Is this next to what the school board bought?

So the school board is on around behind there. This is on the main road up close to Watson's Metal.

Yeah, so it fronts the interstate there. No, it's Montegard.

Yeah, it's on Montegard. It's right past Watson's Metal right there.

Okay, what the school board bought is on Montegard, isn't it?

So the school board did purchase a piece of property there for their central office, and it is beside that, yes, sir. But the school school is on around on the railroad.

Right.

Yes, sir.

Well, that's not a bad price, I would say, given today's market.

Yeah, and the good thing is Batesville has been here a long time. They partnered with us. I can't say enough about those guys. They could have. Put it on the market and got a whole lot more, but they wanted us to have first option at it.

That's, I think, $35,000 roughly an acre.

Yes, sir.

Very reasonable.

Yes, sir. For commercial land, that's very reasonable. Any more discussion? Let's vote, please. Motion carries five to one. Ordinances. Ordinances.

Ordinances shown as B on your agenda. Second rating of an ordinance of the City of Manchester amending Manchester Municipal Code 1-111 and adopting rules for public comments pursuant to TCA 8-44-112 sponsored by Alderman Crosland. This is a public hearing.

So we have a motion and a second. Can we get a second? So we have a motion and a second. Now public comments. Does anybody want to comment on this? And all we're doing is is cleaning up all the language to meet the new laws that says that you're allowed to come in here and comment on anything that you would like for your time period versus things that are on the agenda. So it's just cleaning that up so that anybody can speak.

Any comments from board?

Let's vote, please. Motion carries five to one.

Ordinance C, first rating of an ordinance for the city of Manchester, Tennessee, amending budget ordinance number 1779 for the fiscal year 26-27, sponsored by Alderman Crosland. We have a motion.

We have a second. And as Anthony, finance director, alluded, this is something that happened after we passed the budget, and it has to do with the rate. The rate went from 1.52 down to 1.07 for your taxes, and it all is based on the evaluation that was done on your property. You have to be revenue neutral. We can't make any more money when that happens, and that's why the rate has come down so far to meet the evaluation that went up, okay? Any comments from the board? never seen a drop of that size so i guess that speaks to the value of real estate in manchester it does uh i think and anthony you can probably correct me i think in last year's budget we were around 374 million dollars as an estimated value of everything inside the city and this year we went up just over a half a billion dollars i think was what that did Yeah, so as you said, that's a $200 million assessment upwards. So yes, the rate came down quite a bit.

A clever politician would campaign on cutting taxes when actually you didn't cut the bill, but you did cut the rate. I'm not a clever politician.

We'll let you run on that. Anyway, no more.

Let's vote, please.

Motion carries six to zero. Item number 10, old business. We don't have any. Item number 11 is discussion of city school new building of the middle school and the path forward. At this time, I'm gonna ask Dr. Vaughn to come up and talk to us. As we discussed this in the last meeting or so, his board was going to discuss what kind of commitments they could help us with in funding this project, and I think you have some of that for us, right?

Yes, sir. So again, thank you for working with us and looking at the possibility of a new facility for Manchester City Schools. My board has been working, our board is very, committed, first of all, to the faces that will be in our buildings. So that's our first priority. But we also understand that for those faces to have the best that Manchester has to offer, that it is time for a new school. So you ask us to come with a plan that would help fund that facility. So my board has met, and the board has agreed to a five-year plan of $500,000 each year. And that would give the $500,000 the revenue in Manchester a time to continue to grow, establish that it is going to continue to grow, and it would also put a new possible board in a situation where they could make a decision on how much they could help as well. So my board voted unanimously. They're represented here today on that number, and we're excited about the possibilities that that will bring.

Thank you. And from my seat, and I hope the rest of the board's seat, we want to thank you guys for the willingness to work with us. I think that this board specifically is why this is on there tonight. wanted the opportunity to vote to move this project forward. And I think that between your revenue, our revenue, and some opportunities to get some outside funding from different sources, I think we can get this together and make it all happen. I really do. And so thank you guys for that. And thank you, Board, for the unanimous vote to be in here. Okay. Thank you, Dr. Bond. So what we'd like to, and I'm going to let Craig state the motion probably the best, because a lot of it is our way of saying we're committed to it, but we still have some work to do for the next board to approve the actual plan once we get it together.

Yeah, I think the proper motion at this point for this board would be to authorize the mayor and other city officials to move forward with negotiating and working out the final terms of any agreement that can be reached in regards to the building of the new school and give them the authority to do that negotiation or polishing of whatever agreement would be. And then, of course, whatever agreement gets reached and it would come back to the OMA next month or whatever month for a vote.

So that's, of course, you know, That gives the next board the opportunity to actually vote on this as well. But we've been working on this for a while. I know during my tenure as mayor and as alderman, this has been something we've discussed for the last four years. And I do think it is time to get something done. So that's me.

One thing I left out in the results of that negotiation or discussion, would end up in a memorandum of understanding or letter of intent, however you want to do it, which is non-binding. That gives the parameters to everybody involved to be able to talk within those parameters to reach an agreement that can be brought back to them.

And there again, for everybody at home, this is not a decision tonight that we're moving forward. This is a decision that we want to move forward and Hopefully the board votes to give us that permission to get a deal together so that we can bring it back and finalize it. That's what we're looking for tonight. So it looks like we have a motion and a second. Is there any more discussion from the board? Hearing none, let's vote, please. Motion carries six to zero. Oh, that is good news. Thank you from everybody. Okay, item number 12 is comments from the board. Alderman Anderson?

No.

Alderman Crosland? No, sir. Alderman Three? No. Alderman French?

I just want to thank Alderman Messick for his service to the board. He's kind of a pain in the ass sometimes, but he's been a really good alderman for the city, and we're going to miss him.

Vice Mayor Messick.

Well, I'd like to say thank you for the comments. I'll hold them close to my heart for a long time. It is my last board meeting, and I just want to say I've made a lot of lifelong friends, and I appreciate y'all. It's been a good eight years. Thank you.

Alderman Parsley.

I don't think I can beat Ryan on that. I'll just go hush.

Okay, and before we adjourn, you know, we have a couple things we would like to give the three aldermen who have dedicated service and time to the city of Manchester. It's our way of saying thank you. and the longer you're here, the bigger your actual award is, okay? And so this is, let's see what we got here. This one is from Alderman Crosland. I can't give Alderman Parsley a big enough one because he's served several different times, but this is for four years. Thank you.

Yes, sir? Thank you. Appreciate your service.

It was. I picked it out and did it a different way. And this is for Vice Mayor Messick, right?

And this is for Vice Mayor Messick for eight years.

Wow, that's nice. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Appreciate it.

And then my last comment is, of course, Thursday's election day. I'd love to see everybody get out and vote. I hope to see a couple of folks that I've served with back, of course. I think they've done an excellent job for the city in the last couple of years that I've served as mayor. With that, we'll take a motion to adjourn. So moved. All in favor, say aye. Aye. This concludes the BOMA meeting.