Town Council - Regular Meeting

Mayor Gamble, she had a death in her family, so she's not able to participate this evening. Um, let's all please give her a prayer to her family. Um, if you'd all stand for the pledge of allegiance. So, we do have a quorum. John, Dr. Schultz is on the phone. We need to have language so we can add him to our meeting tonight. Did someone want to provide that language, please?

I want to get it right. Indie, do you know the exact term? Sorry. Pull it up. The attorney is stuck in traffic. You still there with us, John? I am. Can you hear me? Quite well. Thank you, sir.

Great. electronics by the electronics. Hold on. Hold on. Go ahead.

You authorize participation um to personal reason uh by electronic means. I make a motion that you allow Dr. Snol participate tonight's meeting uh via the phone since you got out of town on business. I second that motion. Motion made by Mr. Sto, second by Mr. Hayden. All in favor? Um, the first item up is our consent agenda. Does someone want to make a motion to approve that or are there any issues?

I can make a motion to approve as presented. I'll second a motion. Agenda motion by Mr. Voit, second by uh Mr. Hoodman. Any discussion on anything? All in favor? I I. We will now move on to public comments. We have three minutes per individual for public comments. When you approach the podium, please state your name and address. Um, please also note that we as council members cannot answer your questions. However, we do value participation. Um so whomever would like to step forward and start our public comments.

Good evening. Uh Vice Mayor Coral, members of council, town staff, uh Arthur Hul, 137 South Moon Street. Uh just had a question in regards to a piece of mail that I received. Uh it was directed towards tax assessments in the town. So I just had some questions on the process. Uh maybe some transparency behind the process of gathering that data and I guess the the justification on that would be nice. Bas I'm kind of at a loss on that. My taxes are paid up to date. Everything's registered with DMV and I'm being assessed based off of my DMV record in the town of Bing which is not adequate. So I came in met with town staff didn't get a reservation. So I was just trying to bring it up with the meeting to see what we could do to and I'm sure I'm probably not the only citizen in the town that has that. So what I gathered out of it uh is that the DMV record that I have online was essentially taken and copied on the account letter head and then sent out in the mail to say, "Hey, these are what we are going to assess you as for personal property tax. Uh if you don't respond in a timely manner, we're going to start taxing you on this." So some items that are on there, I've never paid taxes in the town because they don't exist in the town. So my concern is it's I think it was just copied and pasted from DMV which would make sense because all those are listed on the DMV to the state but those are assets that I pay to other locality in the town. Um that was item one. Uh item two, I was going to say wanted to just give some appreciation to town council, uh town staff, police department, uh with the increase of traffic as you all know through the town. Definitely, uh been seeing the

police force out there with the lights on. Uh and so, uh just been maintaining that, you know, awareness for for the speed through the town, you know, citizen safety and everything. So, wanted to say good job. And I also saw where uh there was a a public post about uh I'd say some activity around here. So that that was good. Just wanted to say thanks. I think uh the newer um officer to the town to assist a great addition and I know I played last time his back. So just want to say thanks for that. That's it.

Thank you. Anyone else? Anyone else before we close? public comment. All right, we will close public comment and move on to member comment. M Davis, any comments? Mr. Vo,

I should briefly mention we got clean sweep coming up on the 27th of this month and of course harvest festival in October. Um, and there are several things going around that, you know, I want to be congratulatory about or, you know, be appreciative of like what Arthur just said like that activity. I don't want to steal any thunder from anything, but uh, congrats to our man speak to you later and the other things, but I'll hold my comments there. Thank you, Mr. Alman. Not at this time,

Mr. ST. Just to speak to Dr. Ulie's comment, I I also received a letter and I gave it to Miss Toiver this evening and regarding uh a vehicle that albeit it's away at college, it's my son right now, it is garage bowling green. And I've always been aware in my past on council like when you go to register a new you buy a new vehicle you go to DMV. You got to be real careful because they you know they they'll just work Carolina and you got to kind of say no I'm in the town. So I have a 2021 car that must not have been I mean I've got at the funeral home I got a bunch of vehicles in town. I just didn't didn't catch it. So I assume what so what was that India? Did did y'all or report like names of people in town and they came up with match stuff that you because I think my car is has not been taxed by the town since I've only heard it for 38.

Happy to provide a more um comprehensive update under my town manager report but um and we can bring up Mr. ASPAR piece to helping with that as well. But essentially, as part of our cleanup of our records um and really the historical inaccuracies of some of our records in town um and the staff turnover, I think there's been some some years where some vehicles perhaps that were gared in um the town were not on the town's tax. So, we've been proactively working with our commissioner revenue, Mr. Bassoon, as well as Mr. Watson, and they provided us with a list of vehicles that they believe based on their records to be gared in the town of Bowling Green. and they asked us to send those out so that they can clean up their records and our records as well so that people are not taxed inappropriately but accurately.

Yeah, that's Thank you. All right. Thank you. Um end of member comments. We'll move on to staff reports and presentations. Um please note that number nine actually is not really unfinished business. It's part of um staff and presentation. So you need to do anything official to move that up or just leave it as is. Pardon me.

All right. So, we are going to I'll mention a presentation of the International City County Management Association. Basically, ICMA is the acronym um for credentiing manager certification. Um it is our immense pleasure to recognize uh Miss Jacobs who has um uh over seven years taken courses and um professional um uh conferences etc to uh acquire this accreditation. Um there's a brief uh press release um I'll just read a little of it. India Adam Jacobs town of Bowling Green recently received the credential manager designation from ICMA the International City County Management Association. Miss India Jacobs, MPA, is one of just,300 local government management professionals currently credentialed through the ICMA voluntary credentiing program. Um she is qualified for this credential due to the fact that she has um uh finished seven years of professional local government experience over a decade of local government experience as well serving in county cities and towns before she was appointed here in Bowling Green. She did serve as town manager of Colonial Beach as well as assistant manager to the city of Petersburg. Uh again it is a press uh press release. It will be posted to our town website. Um, but we'd all like to congratulate Miss Adams Jacobs on um, receiving such credentials. I think um, anything credentiing and education is extremely important to progress your professional career.

Vice Mayor. Yes, sir. One one thing I want to say too is I you know in my past life on council I I had never heard of the ICM that and didn't didn't really know uh but you know when we were interviewing people and we had John Yanzino here. uh he he he really uh it's a big deal and you know John was like you know she's she's going down that path to be credentialed and so it's a it's a huge thing for a little the little town of Bowling Green and I'm I'm very proud of it. Absolutely.

All right, we will move on to FY23 audit presentation. Thank you for being with us tonight. Is it on? There we go.

All right. Thank you for having me here this evening. My name is Taylor Stove. I'm with Robinson Farmer Cox out of the Richmond office and I was the partner at Guard for the FY23 audit. I'm here to kind of present the draft audit. I know you guys just received that today, so I apologize for the late arrival there. Um, but I'm going to go ahead and just kind of give you a brief summary of some of the results. Uh, so we were engaged to complete the FY23 audit for the town. Uh, that audit is subjected to what we call generally accepted auditing standards as well as generally accepted government auditing standards. Uh, and then luckily due to the fact you guys do not require a single audit, uh, all the uniform guidance compliance and requirements do not apply to you this year, but typically those would apply as well. Uh, in your audit, we issue two opinions. We issue one opinion on your financial statements overall and there's a second opinion in the back that we're going to issue on basically your compliance with internal controls and any other um compliance in other matters that might be out there. I'm happy to report that we issued an unmodified opinion on the financial statements. That is a clean opinion is the best opinion you could get on that. We also issued a material weakness on that other opinion that I over the internal controls financial report. uh we actually issued three material weaknesses on those and I'll kind of briefly discuss those here in the moment. So the first one is over material adjustments for the audit that go through we came in started doing our work you know we make some accounts that need the adjustments uh so we propose those for the audit uh many of those are clear amount and we hope to get that cleaned up to hopefully you know the smaller fewer number of adjustments there. Uh the second one is uh due to the accounting system difficulties you guys had over the past few years. We were received a what I would kind of call a compiled trial balance where information was taken from multiple systems and try to clean that up and decipher it and get one cleaning trial balance which uh when I say trial balance I basically mean for each

account you just have one number at the end to see if the total is for the end of the year. uh because of how that was compiled, there is not an accounting system, pardon, there is not an accounting system or uh you know general ledger that we could go to to then look up the detail for all that information that supports that. Uh which creates difficulties during the audit going back and researching if you have any questions on anything. Uh from my understanding, you guys are going forward with Keystone. So hopefully all the information now being in one system will eliminate some of that difficulty. The third one is going to be uh this year we kind of noticed you have no written formally written and adopted financial policies. Uh so we're going to recommend that you guys get together and develop a number of policies you know governing you know purchasing policy, fund balance policy, cash management. Uh additionally uniform guidance which is the what controls your federal programs we have to audit there. They also have a specific number of items that they want you to address in your policies. uh and when we do a single audit, we need to review that to make sure that they're in compliance with those as well. Um so I think that would be a good step to the town to get those you know written down somewhere so that way there's just federal control everything everybody knows what needs to happen and you know the steps in the processes there. Uh so I think that would be important for you all. Uh just to briefly kind of walk you through a report. I don't know how familiar you guys are with local government reports. Uh so exhibits one and two as well as the proprietary fund exhibits. So those are going to be exhibits seven through nine that deal with your water and sewer funds. Those uh five exhibits are going to be a full acrruel exhibit. So those are going to be similar to kind of what you would see with Coca-Cola, you know, financial report. You're going to it's going to include all your financial capital assets, all your debts. It's going to include all your pension and oped information that's in there. items that you normally not see in your fund balance statements or pardon me in your

in your fund statements. Um so your just to briefly go over those numbers because I don't think they're as important as the fund balance information there. So your net position for governmental activities increased $365,000 this year. So you're now sitting at basically 1.09 million. Uh the net position for business type activities decreased approximately $550,000 this year. Uh so besides those five exhibits that I mentioned, the rest of the financial statements are on a modified approval basis. Uh so those are the statements that are going to be more useful for you all when you're developing your budgets and kind of forecasting going forward where you can kind of see the actual results that that took place in the town. So to go over some fund balance, I mentioned there's uh modified acral statements. So in the general fund, the US started the year with 618,000. uh we increased 410. So you ended with about uh $1.025 million in fund balance this year. Uh that amount is actually a great number because your general fund balance covers 89% of your general fund expenditures. Basically guys looking to say here's the total we spent this year as well as uh you know here's our fund balance. The GFOA recommends a minimum of 18%. So you guys are sitting at 89%. You're doing very well in that regard. Uh capital projects you guys had no change this year. That is still actually a little negative fund balance of about $47,000. That just kind of represents money that's owed over to the general fund is all that's going to be. Uh so in total, you guys started the year with $570,000 and you ended the year with 981. You increase fund balance $410,000 this year. So I commend you all on that. In addition to the material weaknesses that we discussed previously, uh we also issued a management letter. So a management letter is a letter for us to discuss items that we discovered during the audit that do not arise to the level of either being a significant deficiency

or a material weakness. They're just items we want to communicate with management and by presenting here communicate to governance. Uh just to let you know there's some items we think need to be cleaned up. Uh we had a couple repeat comments from last year's management letter. Uh the first one is that we still have outstanding uh checks that need to be ready to tread to Virginia for unclaimed property. Uh, so anything over a year old needs to be submitted to the treasurer. Uh, you send in the form there and basically do your due diligence, see if you can find who the payment is due to and see if you can go ahead and get that taken care of. If not, then you're going to submit that money to the treasurer. They track all that on their website. I don't if you guys ever looked out to see if you have money from anybody that you can do that. Uh, and that is what that that is for. Uh, additionally, we just think there's a few accounts. Um, and again, I think it has to do with the accounting system difficulty that it's just difficult to kind of be reconciling the refunds payable and the deposit liability account that you guys have. Uh, most of that's related to the water and sewer system. Excuse me. Uh, additionally, we had a couple other comments this year uh during our credit card test. Uh, again, I think just doing with the the timing delay of the audit compared to everything and changes in staff, uh, we were unable to uh, locate some credit card receipts for the test we were trying to uh, perform there. So we just recommend that all those credit card receipts be retained with the rest of the documentation. Uh just so that can be reviewed for the audit and also for your records. Uh we also noted late payment of invoices. Uh I think that kind of maybe even goes back to you know having good policies and controls there so everybody knows the process of how that needs to go and there's just a routine for how those those invoices are processed. Additionally for the bank reconciliation you had what I would call an immaterial variance there. Uh so there was a little bit of a difference between you know what the reconciliation showed versus the actual cash on the books but again it was not enough to rise to the level of you know being a concern uh or material weakness but I think it's one of those things that hopefully will get cleaned up as we you know get through these accounting system issues that we discovered.

Uh so so with that um that was my brief presentation on there and I know you folks have only had this briefly so you may not have any questions for me yet. Um but if so I have my contact information here for you all uh that I'm more than happy to share and obviously India can uh forward that to you as well if anything comes up. And at this point I just ask you anybody has any questions.

Like to start with thanking Taylor and his team for for this this work. Um, we started working with the Richmond office, I think maybe four or five months ago. Um, and so glad to get this FY23. Can you just share the period that we're specifically talking about because I think we're saying this year and I just want to make sure for the public July 1 22 to June 30, 2023. Yes, we're we're a little behind there, but we do already have FY24 fieldwork scheduled for later this month for preliminary fieldwork. And then beginning of November, we'll be out here for final fieldwork for FY24. Thank you. Um I'd also like to just thank um Miss Oliver who's been new to the team but also helped get this um underway as well as um Miss Morgan who's helped us um as well. Um just to clarify a couple things. I know Mr. Stover mentioned um the Keystone accounting software. The the town did transition away from BAI to Keystone during this period. as he mentioned, there were probably um at least two systems that the town was working with um which resulted in that kind of modified trial balance that he mentioned based on um the two systems that were in place. We have since transition from Keystone to Southern Software starting FY26. So officially as in in terms of our fiscal years being with one system of record that will be starting at FY26. So you all could probably anticipate some of these same findings since follow through 24 and 25 um just for for folks awareness. Um but we have also started a conversation several months ago with our financial adviserss at Davenport um related to the financial policies that we know will be running forward um for you all which hopefully um before the end of the year we can try to get something adopted so it's within this fiscal year to hopefully have that finding um removed or not appeared in 2016's audit. So question. So, um, y'all are getting ready to get started on 24. Yes, sir. How long do you think that will take?

I am I'm not prepared to give that answer. I don't quite know what we're walking into yet. Um, I know obviously we cleaned a lot of things up in 23. I'm excited to get these journal entries over to the town so that we can get those posted and get, you know, kind of beginning balances for 24 started up and see where we're at. Ideally, I would like to have it done by 12:15. I'm gonna kind of keep you guys with what I would say is my FY25 audits where I'm gonna have all those done by 12:15. That's my goal.

I cannot promise that that's going to happen. Uh it was a it was a difficult audit um working with those systems and not having a GL to go back to on all that. And then you know you request a you can request a report and if they it's out of BI you no longer have access to BII so we couldn't even get you know reports out of there. So it was it was it was difficult. Um and that's why it took longer than I I expected to even get FY23 out. So 24 that's the standard. Yeah. Both both systems. Yeah.

Um and I would also mention um during this audit period is when there still was um I would say ample ARPA dollars around. So, I think some of what what we're seeing um those that ARPA funds and those ARPA monies did subsidize some projects along the way um which could also contribute to that increase in the fund balance which was great during that time. Um as well as high staff turnover. So, if you didn't have staffing, you save in some instances on all sorts of um staffing costs and related to that. Um so, I think as we progress, you'll see some of those things um start to trend probably in the opposite direction as you have um full staffing. But I would also mention um as it relates to the credit card statements and some of the other records that we were not able to find just because of that staff turnover, none of the staff that are currently here that have completed FY22 or 23 were a part um on staff during the audit periods in question. So um we have done our due diligence cleaning our back office room back there. Um we actually took an opportunity during Mr. Boyd's clean sweep and I brought staff in. We cleaned out all of the back records room as well as our records um room in the back and to try to pour over any documentation that we could find um and that still to the best of our ability resulted um with not being able to produce some documents that they requested. So we will probably see some of that as well in 24.

I think it's very important because when you listen to this and you don't know you're talking about 23 you everybody thinks you're talking about today and that money is going to skew that big. I would like to point out because I know it's all kind of historical at this point. I'm sure you guys have spent all your ARPA by now, but you had $991,000 left in ARPA at the end of FY2. So that's and that's not included in fund balance because basically how that works is you have asset and cash and you have a liability down there for that unearned revenue. So it's not inflating your fund balance. Just heads up there.

Any other questions? All right, thank you again for taking the time to come and prepare all this. Um, we really, really appreciate it. Thank you so much. And just to give you a heads up, uh, we're probably about two and a half weeks from finalizing the report. It goes to our quality control department. They're going to do their reviews. So, there might be some slight adjustments in here for when you see the final. Uh, but it takes about two two and a half weeks to get them to review and then make the changes and get it finalized. So, approx. All right. All right. Thank you all so much. Enjoy your week. Enjoy your evening.

All right, moving on to number four, police report. Chief Cecil, not here. Did you want to just fill in for

Sure. Um yeah, unfortunately, Chief Cecil could not be here tonight. Um but just like to echo the sentiments that have already been shared um related to Officer Irving, who's been doing a great job. Um he did uh end up in a high-speed chase which resulted in um an arrest of someone who had outstanding warrants and I believe felonies. Um and so that gentleman is off the street. Um and then there has been some at least two cases of missing persons in the community that you see. So has been working um in collaboration with the state police as well as the sheriff's department um Caroline County Sheriff's Department um actively through the last several weeks. So the BGPD has been very active and we thank them for their support as well as um preparation for harvest festival which is underway. Um but there has been some increase um as well on um traffic enforcement. Um officer Irving is really focusing on that and cracking down on Main Street particularly on the weekends as well with the speeders um as Mr. Worley mentioned earlier. Um so I think that would conclude the um police department's report. Great.

Public works department Mr. Good evening. Good evening. Any questions? I'm doing just great always. So Sean has his report included. Um there have been I'll highlight a couple things that have um been completed since the last meeting. um they've been working um with a contractor to get some beautifification efforts completed um including the gateway signage into town. So those two have been repainted and replaced and next fiscal year we'll probably work on a few others um and then plan in our future CIP to have those replaced probably in the next four to five years there's some warping of those signs as they are wooden signs um but they've worked on that. Uh we have signage um on our AED machine as we should for risk purposes. Uh we also have implemented a new lock box outside of town. Um if you'll see that is ADA compliant. Um so if you happen to be in a wheelchair and need to drop off something after hours, uh you don't have to try to come up the steps. We will be decommissioning the dropbox right outside of the office. And then that black black dropbox outside will be the official dropbox moving forward. Also to improve uh communications and customer service, uh we worked on um new uh leak alerts that will be um placed at residents that we see based on our system. Our meters will alert uh Mr. Fortune if there are uh believed to be leaks at properties or high usage based on water. So that um if you get one of these on your doors, you should email or call a town hall and then reach out to a plumber probably to fix your issue so that you don't end up with a high bill um later on down the road. Um and then you can work with our department um to work through that um if if that is in fact the case. Um so if you see this door hanger, it'll be because our systems have alerted us that you probably have a leak on your property. So that is a process improvement and I

thank Mr. Fortune for bringing up the idea um and working to get that out to our community. I think he also patched a spot near the hardware shop as that was kind of a hold over from our main street work um as well as working um internally on our uh GIS system with Sirap. So, a lot going on in the public works and utilities world. So, thank you, Mr. Port.

And u we also replaced the uh range in the kitchen that was bad. So, uh we have a new range in there and next we'll be working on replacing the refrigerators in there. So that'll be our next thing probably this month coming up. We'll try to get those replaced and uh get it fixed up in there for people to start renting the building a little more. And thank you bless that. Uh next up finance.

Good evening everyone. Um, I don't want to rehash too much, so just let me know if you have any questions, but the most important thing on here, other than um the audit, which um Mr. Stover went over, um is that we got the real estate and personal property data files from the county. So, we've started the mapping for the new system. Uh, so we should be able to get that started pretty soon, hopefully with no issues. Um, I'm pretty sure also a person can speak if he comes up. Um, in regards to the letters that we sent out for the personal property, uh, we received a good bit of them. Um, I know this says about 33, but it's probably around 50 now that we've gotten. Um and then for the front desk, we've had about 80 front front desk customers come in as well as um they have been doing a really good job with working with a lot of the customers who are not familiar with the new PSN system and how to pay online. So they've been very helpful with that. Um we had our IT person put in a computer on the outside here um in order to assist them. So that's been really good. Uh we've had three town hall events in August. And just as a followup from some of the other sorry from some of some of the other requests that we had um the public works department is now showing in the budget. Um it wasn't showing before and that was an issue on the back end. So that's showing. Um and then the miscellaneous expense has been moved. Um that was from Dominion Energy which we get that every single month um for utility tax. So that is in the right code. And then the fuel is also always split between the public works and the police department. Are there any questions?

I'll also share I'll um be sending council memo um some of the cleanup process that we've been working on. U one of our I think previous audit conversations was related to um late payments pertaining to our 941s. And so we did finally get some communication from the IRS on that um and did have to pay those uh penalties and fees pertaining to that from some of these prior audit periods that we were discussing and I think it's about in the amount of $3,000 um and that is in the report under the late fees and penalties. So if you see that line item that has changed from the previous month um that is because we have um paid that. There may be some more in the future but we will bring that to you all once we um get it. Uh but we'll obviously actively continue to work uh through some of those um challenges and clean up um from prior administrations. So thank you all for your understanding and patience.

Thank you. Uh utilities report Bodm.

Good evening everybody. Um everything was really quiet again this month so I'm going to keep it short and sweet unless you have questions. Um, we maintain safe drinking water and nothing really out of the ordinary in usage and for waste water. We maintain compliance and we are still maintaining lower ammonas. That's just monitoring. It's not enforcable, but they just want to make sure that we can do that. So, everything's going really good with the wastewater plant. Everything looks great. Any questions? Thank you so much.

And we are still monitoring the gross alpha and that has been sent off and we are awaiting results for this court. That's it. All right. Town manager report. Miss Adams proof.

Thank you, Vice Mayor. Um at our last meeting, you all appointed members to the BCA and the EVA. So, all of that information has been sent off to the appropriate uh parties. Our attorney has sent off the BZA to the district court. Um and I've contacted both the BZA members as well as the EDA members um to notify them of their appointments. Under infrastructure and developments, our USDA project coordination for our waterline project continues. Uh we have a couple of meetings upcoming with both VOTE USDA as well as Web and Associates, the contracting engineer on this project. Um under our GIS um progress, we have met again with SIRCAP. They did a number of uh fieldwork and assessments in the month of July. uh to produce our GIS system which will enhance our municipal mapping and data management capabilities for appropriate asset management and infrastructure um maintenance and we will hopefully be able to launch that internally in the coming months. Um but that work is progressing under grants administration. I uh have worked to close out uh at least one project. So, we have officially received our first funding from um our 10% of our IXA. Um and hope has been working with the finance department through the base. Um as well as uh myself kind of as PMing this uh with our base partners over at Fort Walker. Uh we have one bid that closed last week. So, we'll be working on that and then one that will close the month um of September 9 the September 19th. Uh so, we'll be working with our town attorneys and um AP Hill on that as that moves forward. our V B VDH grants, our um hydro geological source evaluation grant from 2024. We're finally closing out. Um SNAC came and presented that last month. Uh there's a lot of procurement follow-up that's required to send to the state so that we get that $45,000 reimbured, but that has been officially submitted last week um to their offices. um under community events and permits. We met today um with public safety partners uh at the county fire

and EMS as well as Virginia State Police and our public works and as well as our chief of police um with our event coordinator to go over plans for harvest festival. Uh we are doing an official kickoff that Friday night um for the our music on the green to lead in um to Harvest Festival. So that will be a change this upcoming year. um under major developments. There's some included in the report uh most notably the permanent relocation of the 29th Infantry Division for the National Guard to Fort AP Hill um which will bring over 200 soldiers uh back to the base I think after more than uh 20 years. So that will be a significant addition to our local community both in presence and economic impact. for at a future I think economic development um meeting authority meeting will discuss um that on a broader scale as well as our main street efforts. We're also closing out um the technical assistance grant and I'm supporting our main street group in that effort as well. That was a $3,500 grant uh to get our main street kind of back um moving forward in terms of a nonprofit compliance. Um, I attended a Virginia wastewater uh and rural authority uh leadership symposium uh two weeks ago along with Sean. So, we got some great takeaways from that um as it pertains to work orders and service orders and better service delivery. Uh we also have two new business that will be opening soon. Uh the first is Ladybirds. They will hold their grand opening this Saturday at 10 a.m. And then Smoothie Haven will uh be opening soon. We don't have an official date, but that will be beside uh the Fit by Kai and the Goodwill um in that shopping center. So, very excited for the new businesses that'll be coming to town. At this point, I think we are at 100% capacity. I don't think we have any retail spaces open in town, which is a good problem. Um but also, uh something to consider moving forward as uh we want to continue to track um some amenities to to support some of the new growth as

well. So, uh very excited. Um and if you have any questions uh here to answer. So the exha was the the job was completed and army pays that they pay us. They pay the contractor they pay us and then we pay the contractor and we keep 10%. We keep 10%. Yes. I said that's all happened on the first project. Yes.

That's all. There were the first project, but there were kind of two in that first project. So, and we are including that funding um in the there was a joint land use fund that was left over from the previous budgets from like the BAI era. So, we're putting that uh we renamed that joint land use so that that's delineated from everything that's in the general fund so it doesn't get coalled. Cool.

Any questions? Could I just add um mad vice the specific questions around the personal property registration initiative is at the end of my report. It's the second to last paragraph um as it pertains to those letters that were sent out to residents. So, um if there's more clarification needed, it's included um at the end of my report. Great. Thank you. Thank you.

All right. Um underne uh first up is special events application for 5K and youth onem race for May 2nd 2026. Um we do have a memorandum in the back page 84. Um just to give some background staff completed a comprehensive review of the special event notification form submitted for a 5K run. The application involves anticipated participation exceeding 50 individuals, thereby triggering a municipal notification requirement under established special event protocols. We will require a uh motion for this.

Yes, we have the applicants here to speak a little bit about the the race. Um and they have also um proactively been in contact with the sheriff's department and had their um approval. We've also met internally with BCPT PD and Chief Ceil has also um pledged his support and approval as well. So um I'll allow them to go ahead and take over and share a little bit about the race. Hi, my name is Shera Twiner. I'm the executive director of the Caroline Family YMCA.

And my name is Diana. So, um, a little history. Um, the Y has worked with Festival of the Seat in the past many years ago, and they've desperately wanted to bring a race back to Boto Street, especially to help revitalize your main street. Um, it is very popular racing right now. We have races in Richmond as well as Fredericksburg and Caroline's just fallen short. So, with the history of festivals of the feet and the wise involvement, we would desperately wanted to bring awareness to mental health. Uh, Miss Lewis reached out to the YMCA as we're looking at the impact the Y can bring to all of Caroline County in this area and we realized that we can't do it on our own. So, with her nonprofit partnered with the Y, we thought it would be a great time, especially in May to re revitalize racing and bring awareness um to mental health and resources to Caroline County. Um, we're partnering with Arsenal Events, who is a professional race company that runs our turkey trot as well as the great train race in Fredericksburg. So, with her history and um, experience in racing, we feel that it will be a professional well sought after race and that will grow for years. So, we are looking to contract with her for three years. The first year to let her company fully run the race. The second year for us to be involved with the shadowing and then the third year for us to shadow a little more. and then the fourth year it to be run fully by the Y as well as her organization. So with the experience that Kristen Loser and Arsenal Events bring um I think we will be able to put on a great race and heighten Bowling Green as well as bring in local businesses to get coupons and things in our goodie bags if you will that will encourage people to come back to Bowling Green and support local business.

You have a a planned route yet? Yes, we do have the onem fun run that we're looking at doing down Main Street. The 5K we are working um with the sheriff's department and we will look at the best way to incorporate that as the festival of the feet I believe was a 10K. So that is our long-term aspiration once this race is popular to bring the 10K back to Bowling Green in probably four to five years. But we do have a onem run course and the five mile we are still mapping out. I mean the 5K, not a five mile. Yeah, we're still mapping out. I've had people ask why wasn't it longer, but you just answered that question as well.

Yeah, I think with it being the first time in a long time to kind of build the interest and then get people who want to do a longer distance, we'll make it more successful. What will it be called? It's going to be called Mindful Miles and we're working with um a graphic artist to come up with our logo and things of that nature. So once we have that information, we'll be happy to forward it on. When are you going to start marketing for that? We um are hoping that once we get your approval that we will be able to have a booth at the harvest festival. We plan on having the website up and registration open by the harvest festival so that we can highlight the town and the race and invite people to come back in May. Very organized. Great. Thank you. Any other questions?

And you will have a big media presence on this like in Richmond and Fredericksburg because there's a lot of runners that'll go out of town to run. Exactly. And that's what we're finding. And so like I said, people either go to Richmond or Fredericksburg and there's just nothing here in Caroline. So Kristen is very versed um with the Fredericksburg's running clubs as well as the Richmond um community. So we will market to all of that as well. And you're anticipating almost 400 people according to your Yes, ma'am. That's our goal for the first year and we as staff have also provided them with the application that's required for with DOT. So we'll work with them through that as well. Thanks, Mayor Cole. I move council vote to approve the special within application 2025-070.

I second that motion. We have motion from Mr. STO for approval with a second from Mr. Hagerman. All in favor? I. Any discussion? All right. Well, we're very excited. Thank you so much for your support. Have a great evening. um town council member appointment to planet commission. Um M. Jacobs, do you want to give us some background on that?

Sure. I think in the last um several months we've been working to clean up our committees, boards and for commissions and boards. Um all of our appointments to our BA is now current. um as well as our planning commission, well as well as our EDA um and obviously town council. Um one of the items um that was brought to my attention I think earlier in the year um I think by the mayor uh was related to the appointment um from the town council which I think we called the liaison but I think officially our town code says appointment of a town council member to the planning commission. Um and Mr. Voits um I think expired in July. So, uh you all as a council need to make a decision to uh make an appointment so that um it is compliant like all the other appointments um through the end of the year and then in January you can make an appointment um in line with the vice mayor and the other roles so that it's it's clean from a records perspective. So with my clerk hat on just asking you all to take an action on this one particularly as we're we're coming up on some comp plan discussions and we just want to make sure everything is squared away.

Any discussion? Any questions recommendation? Do you remember when exactly when it went a speed like that? Was it

It went crazy weird like that when I took over when uh Miss Davis stopped being planning commission appointment and I took over that position and it happened to be stuck in the middle of the year and that's why it happened. Um it's kind of skewed everything up but um I don't see any challenge why Mr. void to not continue until the end of the year and then once we're on target again we'll just have further discussion. That makes sense. So is there anything else we need to do? We don't need a motion for that view. We do need a motion. So I didn't see that through the end of 2025. Does someone like to make a motion to appoint Mr. Boyd um for the remainder of 2025 on planning commission for as a council appointee motion made by Miss Davis, second by Mr. Hegman. Um any discussion? All in favor? I motion passes. There you go. All right. Um, our next item 12 is legislative agenda discussion.

Thank you, Madam Vice Mayor. Um, included in here is our packet from last year. that this was mainly just a recap to just bring your attention that at the next council meeting and I intend to bring um the uh 2026 uh legislative agenda for your consideration. Uh again, last year we did highlight our public infrastructure um needs as well as just supporting uh the base um in any future expansions which now is happening um which is is great for our community. Um I think I would consider um continuing the same priorities as it relates to water and sewer infrastructure. Um as you know uh the past general assembly session I worked with uh Senator Stewart as well as fellowship Kent um particularly uh around our gross alpha issues um and we were called out in the uh budget um in the priority uh for grant funding for the for those um efforts. So uh within the next couple months we'll know how we fare there. But I think um in the upcoming session as well as at the federal level if there are opportunities uh to continue to target uh for our infrastructure needs um as council highlighted at the strategic planning retreat um as well as possibly if you all want to consider it um now thinking about maybe some recreational opportunities but um honing in to no more than three or four is generally they generally yield the best results when going to work with our our legislators. So happy to take any feedback though.

Does anybody have any questions on the legislative agenda that we kind of pretty much reviewed in our retreat? All right. Um, next sectionformational items. I don't think Do you have any information? Mr. Vo, you already told I couldn't sleep. Do you have anything else? One more thing. I didn't forget to mention that we do have the music on the green at the end of this month on the last Friday. Uh that'll be Gloria's in that day on the 26th.

All right. Um we do have another public comment section. Are there anyone who would like to make a public comment? Please approach the podium. Don't all rush. Okay, we'll close public comment. Any member comments? All right. No one has member comments. All right. At this moment, we will go into close session. Does someone have the language for that? I don't I don't have that.

I'll make the motion. Virginia code section 2.2-3711A 2-3711A parentheses one to discuss the performance and compensation of specific town employees. A second. All right. Mr. Haggman has made a motion for the close session. Mr. St has second. All in favor? All in favor? I. All right. We will now go into close session. I John's got a little delay. That was John. I come in. There's a little bit of delay at the phone. Okay. Didn't hear there. All right. Thanks. Thanks, Mr. Roof.

I'm certified.

Hey, a motion to certify. Okay. I make a motion that that we certify that the only things we discussed in close session were those that related specifically to the uh code section. The reason we went into I second that. Um we'll do a roll call for certification. Miss Davis, I certify. Mr. Boy, I certify. Um Cole, certify. I certify. I certify. John. John. I certain I certify. All right. Well, certified. Thank you,

Vice Mayor. I'd like to make a motion uh to approve uh some additional uh employee compensation as we discussed in post session for the two employees that were affected under an old policy. Mr. St has made a motion. Do we have a second? I'll second that motion. Second by Mr. Hegman. All in favor? I

I All in favor approved. Okay. All right. Um, no further discussion or items. Do we have a motion to adjurnn? I make the motion tojourn. a German Miss Davis and second by Miss Eggman. Thank you everybody. Thank you. Thank you. See you next month. Have fun in Nebraska. guns.