City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening and welcome. We're calling to order our second and final reading for the proposed budget for 2026-2027 meeting for this year. We do like to begin with our pledge of allegiance. If you all will please stand and join me. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. If you'll please join us in a moment of silence that you can use for reflection or prayer. All right. Council, we do have to consider the fiscal year 2027 budget. Um, we do have the second reading of ordinance 1828-2020 the 2026 tax rate. And we're going to turn the floor over to Todd to get us started here. He's going to do a quick review of everything. Then we will have a good discussion and then we can go into our final reading. Are you going to use the clicker? Okay. All right. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you for everyone for being here this evening. I would like to get us jump-started with a quick review. Just where we've been with the budget. Talk a little bit about how it was built and some next steps moving forward. So, this year's budget FY27, it was built around four values, four public values that we identified. You can see

those on the slide. Effectiveness, efficiency, financial sustainability, and maintaining independent city status. And I do believe that the budget that is proposed and that we're about to to approve is aligned with those four values. I think it does move the city in a direction to provide effective service uh, citizens and residents in the city of Radford, uh, they've become accustomed to a high quality and high level service and that will continue. Uh, efficiency, we try to do it the best we can do it, but we also try to do it at the cheapest cost possible. So, we try to, uh, take a look at all of our operations, uh, expenditures, uh, anything that is within our purview of public service and try to we we work to make it work we work to make things go as efficiently as possible at the lowest cost possible. So, those two values, uh, we don't see them in conflict. We see them as mutually reinforcing, be effective and be efficient. And this budget has resources in there to accomplish that. Uh, financial sus- sustainability, excuse me. Financial sustainability, uh, we want to maintain a healthy financial position. Uh, the city's finance or the city's, uh, fund balances, uh, we are recovering this fiscal year. Uh, the FY26 budget, it was a it was a budget that was built and it has worked. Uh, the cash flows have improved throughout fiscal year 2026. Uh, the year started off, uh, uh, uh, with tight cash flows, but those have improved. Uh, it took the city several months to begin to see the benefit of the revenues that were that were implemented with FY26 to show up on the ledgers. Uh, we had cut staff and made other budget cuts. Well, it takes a while for that to show up on the ledger as well and it has. Uh, here, uh, as we close the fiscal

year, uh, the city's cash flows have improved, uh, significantly. I expect that that will continue into fiscal year 2027 with the budget that that is, uh, before the council this evening. Um, and maintaining independent city status, that's tied with all three of those. We need to be effective, efficient and we also need to be paying attention to the city's fund balances in order to maintain independent city status. And I think that's very important to all the residents within within our community. Uh, maintaining independent city status maintains control of the school system, make sure that that stays local. Um, it also allows us to make more decisions and control our future going forward as a community. Um, and I believe that it's cheaper. Um, it's cheaper to maintain independent city status. Uh, it's a lower cost than than the alternative. So, with that being said, next slide. The budget that you have before you this evening is 80.1 million, uh, dollars. The biggest change has been, uh, we have updated the general fund, uh, balances or the general fund budget and, uh, the water wastewater. And those reflect the rate changes that are before you this evening. And of course, the electric has not changed since the proposed budget, but, uh, there is a rate change proposed for that department as well. Fine. Uh, budget drivers, this is a bit of a repeat or or review of what we talked about during the original budget presentation. Um, the the budget drivers for the fiscal year 2027 budget, uh, we're proposing an increase in the real estate tax from 82 cents to 84 cent per hundred dollars of assessed value. Uh, and just to remember for every penny, there's about $118,000 that we either be gained or lost per penny with real estate tax. Uh, we're proposing to increase the water rate by $3 per 1,000 gallons. What that means for a minimum bill, a minimum

bill is 4,000 gallons. So, the minimum bill will increase from $24.32 to $36.32. And we're proposing an increase in the electric rate by 5%. And those are driven by these next two bullets as well. Uh, the city is the city is projected to lose approximately $1.3 million in electric revenue due to Radford University switching to their own co-gen power source. Uh, and of course, the loss of approximately $200,000 due to Pulaski County not honoring the revenue sharing agreement. Next slide. Uh, we have, uh, reductions in expenditures. Uh, I would like to talk about those for just a second, um, or just a minute with you. Uh, in fiscal year 2026, uh, we proposed, uh, the budget was balanced by reducing, uh, staff size by 17 17, uh, positions. Uh, how it was balanced, that was a credit back to the city's budget. It was shown on the revenue side of the ledger as a million dollar credit back to the budget. And it was to be achieved, uh, as people through attrition as people may have left their positions that we would pull back 17 employees. We pulled back further, uh, than 17 employees. We actually have went as far as to to go over 30. Um, the thing to to keep in mind when we talk about the number of employees, I know that you see 20.5 frozen positions on the slide before you, uh, some of the positions we have put back in because they're funded by the state. Uh, they're completely funded by VDOT. Uh, it's revenue neutral or or not revenue neutral, it's budget neutral for the city of Radford. So, those have been put back in. To cut those, there's really no gain for the for the budget. Um, it's only a loss of of of human resources for for, um, um, providing services.

Um, so, with 20.5 frozen positions, we're going to carry those into 2027. That is that that approximates $1.7 million that otherwise would have been in that budget. So, through those personnel cuts, we have we have, uh, essentially saved the taxpayer $1.7 million moving forward. Um, we have put we we postponed the North Radford, uh, river crossing project in the electric department. That we we had budgeted approximately $500,000 total. We've pushed that back to the end of fiscal year 2027 and that cost can be spread out over two budget cycles. So, you can mitigate the need for those funds in the next fiscal year. And just a few more, uh, points to make about that project. We are going to continue to assess it. Uh, we we're we're going to put it back out to bid. We're going to look for grants. We're currently working on a grant opportunity as well to try to to try to reduce the cost of that project. And speaking of grants, we are pursuing grant funding for other expenditures that are in the fiscal year 2027 budget. Uh, while they're in there, we are we are going to continuously explore opportunities to obtain other sources of funding to save the city, uh, money and and resources as we continue to, uh, move forward into implementation of the 2027 budget. Um, just a couple that are on the radar, um, we're pursuing a grant to help fund the, uh, New River the North, uh, New River river crossing. And, uh, other training professional development opportunities as we move forward. And that's to reduce the burden on the, uh, Radford city taxpayer. Uh, the fiscal year 2027, uh, proposed budget does accomplish the following. There is a 2% cost of living increase for employees. Uh, we're fully funding the schools with the local required

effort and local required match. Uh, that's $5.9 million. Uh, we are projected to prevent the erosion of fund balances. If everything goes right, we should prevent the erosion and potentially grow some fund balances. We're we we we potentially are going to take a incremental step forward, uh, in with the next year's budget. Um, and the fiscal year 2027 budget, uh, is fully funded on its own resources. I think that's an important accomplishment. There's no debt required to balance this budget. It is budgeted with with revenues, uh, generated, uh, within the city of Radford. And moving forward, just a couple points to make. Uh, moving forward, the general fund, we we need to continue to work on getting the general fund balanced and to remove its reliance on enterprise funds. Now, you're looking at 40 cent when I put that up there, there there are multiple revenues in the general fund portfolio. The 40 cent represents what it would take to get off of what it would take in real estate taxes to to get off of the transfer from the from the enterprise funds. Um, of course, that doesn't mean that the solution is to go up 40 cent on the real estate tax, but looking at that revenue portfolio, um, that's what it would equate to. So, um, and we need to work on the restoration of fund balances, that's in all accounts. Um, um, we need to continue to make sure that we're meeting minimum fund balance requirements, uh, for stabilization for one because when we talk about those unforeseen things that can happen, we need to have cash in those fund balances moving forward. And to date, uh, the city has struggled to maintain fund balances, uh, in those accounts. Um, the the other important part of maintaining a good healthy fund balance is infrastructure projects, um, um, any unaccounted for expenditures as well, uh, natural disaster,

um, just making sure that we have the required, um, fiduciary resources to address it the any unforeseen challenges that come ahead or planned infrastructure projects. And that brings me to the last point, funding infrastructure projects. The city of Radford, we really need to continue to assess our infrastructure, water, electric, roads, general, wastewater. We need to continue to assess those and fund infrastructure improvements. Some of those it it's it's been, um, a significant number of years since since they've been tended to and we need to keep that on our radar. Okay. With that being said, I'll turn it back over to the council. Thank you, Todd. And and I just want to say one more time, thank you. Thank you to Trish and the finance team. Thank you to Melissa and everybody on the staff for putting together this budget. I know we've spent a lot of time really going through it deeply to try to determine is there any efficiency we can find. It's hard to find that, you know, it was commented that we were able to find $400,000 in in efficiencies and reductions, but that's not easy. A lot of that is stuff that is put off that doesn't go away. It's just maybe not done this year. And so I think you've done amazing work to try to get us to this place and we're appreciative of that. Council, we need to consider a couple of things. We need to look at the 2026 tax rate. Um originally it was proposed as a 5-cent tax increase from 82 to 87 per $100 of assessed value. We made a decision at the last meeting to support 84 cents, which would be a 2-cent tax increase on the real estate tax. Is there any additional discussion on that or do we have a motion that we want to move forward with ordinance 1828 in the amount of 84 cents per $100 of assessed value? Motion to move forward unless there's any discussion. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to Yep. So, I'm still at the same place

that I was our last meeting, which I don't think anyone's terribly surprised. The the sentence that bothered me the most from our presentation is if everything goes right. If everything goes right, we're in we're in decent shape, but we still are working with financial sustainability. We still want to be independent and keep our steady status, but what this budget isn't going to do, it's not really reducing our transfers. It's not making really any strong effort to restore our fund balances. And our infrastructure needs, we're either going to start dealing with this stuff preventatively or we're going to be in crisis mode, which is going to be more expensive. So, personally, where I sit is and I've said this before in the past, um we didn't raise taxes. We didn't raise them to even match inflation or get close to it. So, we're sitting here in this position. I feel like if I go with this budget, then I'm repeating the past and I'm remaining a part of the problem. So, I'm just not comfortable with that. I feel like we have to be more solvent than this. Um I'm glad it that we we have it where it's balanced, but I think we need to do a little bit more than balance. I think our citizens deserve to have their streets maintained. They need to have our, you know, our water systems maintained properly. And we can go on and on and on because all of our infrastructure needs some attention. So, I am still not going to be able to to vote yes for this budget. And that's all I have. Well, yes on the tax rate. Right. Yeah. On the the tax rate for the budget. Right. Is there any other discussion? We'll have comments at the end, correct? Well, we'll have comments, but with every motion we offer time for discussion and and any debate that anybody wants to participate in. I mean

I mean I'll speak. Jesse, I completely agree with everything that you're saying and I'm struggling with very much with going two and three. And and I do appreciate that, you know, your your willingness to say that maybe we should have raised them a little bit more before, but hindsight is 20/20 and you can't, you know, you can't do anything about that. You just have to look for the future. And I I see Yeah, you learn. And I see exactly what you're saying. Um I I think I think the other side of that is we have raised them a bunch. And I I'm I'm physically struggling, you know, on what to do, but I feel like knowing that we will more than likely have to raise them again next year and and for who knows how many years after that. I hope that we don't, but I I definitely foresee that we may have to in the you know, in the next budget cycle. So, I'm trying to do them slowly to catch up. So. And I just want to add, I don't think that there's anything short of going up 40 cent on the real estate tax that would put us in a position to be ready for something catastrophic. We don't have a a reserve balance. We don't, you know, we are relying upon those funds. It has to be incremental. No, we're not um in a place to be able to sustain something and that is something, but I do think especially over the last 3 years, we have really taken those steps. So, I completely agree. It's a vulnerable place, but I don't know other than something very very drastic that there'd be anything we could do tonight that would put us in a place that would prepare us for something catastrophic. And I I hate hoping too, but I I I couldn't take a a drastic step that would potentially save us from from having to borrow money, unfortunately. Is one additional penny a reasonable step or a drastic step? I am good to proceed with the 2 cent as as voted on at the last budget. That's me personally. There's I'm just opening it up open up the floor to ask.

Well, I'll go back to uh Kelly's comment. I think personally for me, I'm trying to take some steps over the next now, I'll only be here 2 more years, but I think we're looking at 3, 4 years of making certain steps to get us out of this. And we're just going to have to pray to God that we don't come up against a catastrophe that's going to cost us millions of dollars. So, I'm good supporting the tax rate as it is. Any other discussion? Council, if I may on a on a related note, your current tax rate ordinance ordinance 1828, it only specifically addressed the real estate tax rate. And I think that was because all other tax rates were remaining unchanged.

Correct. But I would ask as part of the motion that's been made that it be modified somewhat to include um that there be an amendment to ordinance 1828 to add the following statement, that personal property, machinery and tools, and all other tax rate shall remain at current assessed rates. Simply so you're addressing the other elements of taxation in your tax rate ordinance in setting your tax rate for the fiscal year 20 well well, for the current taxes that you have in the city. So, the only thing I'll I'll say, I I would like it if there was a way we were able to find a unanimous solution to this to be able to get a little further along. You know, it is a baby step and the reason that it can be supported is we did go up a little bit higher on the water rate, which was a needed piece as well. We'll get to that in just a moment, but that provides some additional revenue that was not in the original budget and that does give some ability. I think there's two big issues certainly that we have to move to a place of sustainability on the the taxes. Whether again, as Mike mentioned, personal property, machine and tools, other various taxes that the city has available to it. We are a Dillon Rule state, so we're only limited to certain things by the Commonwealth of Virginia, but it doesn't always have to be that 40 cents. That's just the equivalent of it. I know one of the pieces that we are all dedicated to working on and and really hopeful for is an increase in the economic development piece, which would increase taxes, not necessarily rates, but sales and meals and lodging and and other taxes along that line. So, that would help offset some of the costs. I think the whole point of this discussion before we get into the vote is to really bring clarity to the fact

that at some point this is going to have to be addressed at an even higher level, whether it's through that economic development, whether it is is through the additional revenue pieces, whether it's a rate adjustment, or whatever that has to be looked at because the sustainability that was talked about and the ability to remain an independent city is reliant upon the general fund being more independent of the enterprise funds. That we need to use the revenue from the enterprise funds to be able to support the enterprise funds. And that's been a challenge the city has faced for decades really. You know, we enjoyed significant benefit from the electric fund for many many years, even the water fund for many many years as we had heavy users in those areas. So, I think that's part of the challenge. So, from what I'm hearing, we have a motion. I'll add to it an amendment to that all personal property, machine and tools, and all other taxes remain the same while the motion is for the real estate property tax levy to rise from 82 to 84 cents per $100 of assessed value. So, we have a motion. Do we have a second? Second. A motion and a second. Is there any further discussion? Would you call the roll? Mr. Tret. Aye. Mrs. Foster. No. Mr. Gillespie. Yes. Mr. Wolford. Yes. Mayor Horton. Yes. Okay. And we we have that for now, but again, everything stated is something that's going to have to be part of our community conversation over the next few years as we move forward and work toward that. We also need to have a second reading of ordinance 1829, which are our fiscal year 2026-27 rates and fees. Um there are two big changes here, but there are several other significant fees that I'm going to talk about. The two big changes are raising the water rate

$3 per 1,000 gallons, which actually results in a $12 increase per bill because our minimum is 4,000 gallons. So, we'll be moving from to $36.32 per 4,000 gallons. In electric, we are looking at a 5% increase with the following scenario that the customer charge actually moves up to $20 instead of the $7.50 that it has been, but the energy charge actually reduces a tiny bit to 98 9.8 cents and per kilowatt hour. And that takes care of that. We also have several other proposed fees to be considered. EMS standby will go to $171. Animal control, the total adoption fee will be $50. Daily care, $15 a day. Impound fees, $25 for the first offense, $35 second offense, $45 third offense. The library community room is free to nonprofit organizations. So, that is our proposed fees and the rates on our water and electric. Council, do we have any further discussion or do we have a motion to move forward as proposed? So moved. We have a motion. Do we have a second? A motion and a second. Any discussion? Will you call the roll? Mrs. Artridge? Yes. Mrs. Foster? Yes. Mr. Glassby? Yes. Mr. Wolford? Yes. Mayor Horton? Yes. And then finally, we need to have a second reading of ordinance 1830, which is our fiscal year 2026-2027 budget. It is balanced with expenditures and revenues of 80 million 134,960 $86, excuse me, $986. The proposed budget provides sufficient revenues to pay for these expenditures, maintains positive fund balances, provides resources for maintenance and

improvements to infrastructure, supports core customer services and necessary equipment replacement, as well as identifies funds for payments to service the city debt. The funds are summarized as follows. $35,385,562 in the general fund, $3,254,201 in the street maintenance fund, $3,894,213 in the transit fund. The water wastewater fund is $8,350,360. The electric fund, $27,499,650. Solid waste fund, $1,757,000 and $1 in internal services, which is not included, but is brought into this as a discussion because it moves through all other funds, $908,528. We also have the Radford City School Board budget in the amount of $50,404,058. So, Council, do you have any questions, comments, or debate regarding the second reading of ordinance 1830, the fiscal year 2026-2027 budget? Hearing none, do we have a motion to adopt? So moved. We have a motion. Do we have a second? A motion and a second. Any further discussion? Will you call the roll? Mrs. Artridge? Yes. Mrs. Foster? Yes. Mr. Glassby? Yes. Mr. Wolford? Yes. Mayor Horton? Yes. And that basically takes care of the business we had to deal with tonight. Todd, do you have anything else for us? No, I just want to thank staff and the council for all of your hard work throughout the budgeting process. It was a bit unique this year. We had significant staff turnover. We had a compressed timeline to to get it completed and we've been working on two two audits simultaneously. So, I just want to thank Trish and her team and all the department directors and everyone that that brought forth

that information and helped us build this budget. And also want to thank the city council for all of your work on it and and everything that you're taking on with the city budget. So. Thank you, sir. Kelly, what do you have this evening? Thank you, Guy. What do you have? Don't want to put you on the spot there, Todd, but I've heard a little talk about the 90 grand that we put in the budget for the six sigma and I don't know if you're prepared to talk about that again a little bit tonight or if not, I'd like for you to talk about it maybe at another meeting. And I know you're trying to build a culture in our city and our workers based on that model and I'd like to hear you talk about that again. Absolutely. So, I'll I'll speak to that by referencing back the you know, to the slide where we had the personnel cuts. So, we've reduced the city's payroll, which is which is people by significant numbers. Um Lean six sigma it it it has a strange name. I I get it, but lean six sigma is all about doing things effectively and efficiently, which were two of those values that we had on that that second slide there. Um If we're as we pull back and and we're we're achieving savings through through payroll cuts, personnel cuts, it's very important that we learn how to operate at those levels and continue to perform our services at a high level. And that's what lean six sigma is. It's it's a methodology to attack well, not just to attack, but to identify waste and and any type of waste that may be in your system or a quality

concern that may be in our system or services. To identify those, find the root cause of what's causing those, either the quality concern or the inefficiency, find it, measure it, eliminate it, and then control it. So, ultimately by investing in lean six sigma, you're going to reduce your costs long-term. And these aren't my words, I'm going to quote someone else, but but I if if you think you don't have the time or the resources to do lean six sigma, you should be doing lean six sigma. So, it's an investment. The $90,000 is an investment to get us set up with a continuous improvement team, to get organized and structured and postured in a way that that that becomes part of our culture, that we become a culture of of efficiency, effectiveness, that we're always tending to it every day. It would create a culture where we could even measure daily daily improvements and track those. That we're that we're not just you know, we see we see something happening know and and it may be an inefficiency in a work process. And that we don't just keep doing it over and over, but that we identify it and get it out of the system because right now, Radford can't afford any inefficiencies in our system. We have got to invest in some sort of a system or program to find any any savings with money, time, resources. We need to identify ways that we can we can do what we're doing at a cheaper cost. So, ultimately that investment will come back to the city. And typically, when when when once you get this built out, what it would look like at a more strategic level, each department will be doing continuous improvement projects forever. You're always tending to quality and you're always tending to efficiency. So, every department would be looking for a project that would in some way make

their operation operate better, with better quality, or operate more lean with less use of time, resources, people. And that that that that improvement would be measured by cost savings to the city. So, typically, an improvement project has a dollar value attached to it. That if we make this change, it saves this amount of money. And and and long-term, it's going to be measurable. And I and I think and I brought this up because of the last meeting when we had some some people speak to inefficiencies and and cost savings and and this is exactly what we brought you, I think, in in to do in this city is to improve those efficiencies and find those cost savings. And I think this program, even though it's a bunch of money, I think this program is what's going to help you do that. So, thank you. Thank you. Seth, what do you have? I'd like to start by thanking Todd and his entire team. You guys worked tirelessly through this whole whole budget process and I thought that the staff did an excellent job. I know that we put a lot on you guys and you guys went above and beyond and I really appreciate everyone's efforts and the the 2027 budget was adopted tonight, but it should not end tonight. I would like for us to proactively in the coming weeks begin to strictly formulate a one-year, three-year, and five-year financial plan that details not only where we are, but the exact steps and proposals of how we plan to get there. Or I'm sorry, how we plan to be a financially healthy city once again. The answer cannot simply be to just increase taxes to generate revenue. You cannot fully tax, cut, or strictly grow your way out of this. A well-thought-out strategic plan that addresses furthering leaning out, maximizing efficiencies, and a full commitment to economic development can mitigate the burden across the board and create a balanced path forward. I would encourage us to look into any resources

for consulting that may be available to us through the APA and local fiscally distressed localities designation. We did take a step forward tonight, but there are still many steps left to take. I again want to thank our staff. I think you guys did an excellent job and to help us through this and I do think that our best days can be be ahead of us with with the help of you guys. The city's lucky to have you. We're lucky to have you and I appreciate your efforts. That's all I got. Jesse, what do you have? Well, I know I'm not going to be very popular in the community. I do feel like I need to say and I've said this before, I realize my stance is not popular. I know that there's a lot of people that will be upset with my choice to be the only no in the vote, but I have to tell you and you've heard me say it before, I made a promise and I'm not running for prom queen, so I'm not trying to be popular. I'm trying to remain a city. And I feel like in order to do that, we need to be a little bit more aggressive, but don't confuse that with my understanding of what's going on in our households. I absolutely from my own experience of growing up in poverty understand what our households are going through, but I feel like my decision is as much based on trying to save money in the long term by not being absorbed into a county. So, I still see it as a cost-saving measure because we know that counties around us charge quite a bit more than we're doing. Um the other concern that I had, I know I mentioned transfers, fund balance, infrastructure, but one of the things that I left out that I do want to point out, we still have a debt to AEP that we have to pay on top of the other things. And so, with those four things combined, I simply had to make the vote that will allow me to sleep well tonight with a clear conscience. And that's all I have. Thank you.

You know, there's nothing simple about any of the work that we do here working with the staff. Everything has impact on somebody. A a cut that may seem really innocuous to to someone is severe to someone else. A a tax increase that may seem fairly benign may be more strict on somebody else and we recognize that. So, there aren't any easy answers. I think the the fact of the matter is we've been working for several years trying to figure out a new system. I think pulling Todd into our team makes all the difference in the world in how we do this and how we move forward. The Lean Six Sigma is is the name of one of the things we're trying to do, but basically what we're really trying to do is reimagine what we need to do as a local government to be able to provide services, to be able to be more efficient, to have better outcomes and to make all the things happen that we'd like to see happen. You know, for the last 8 years we've been working diligently trying to grow our economy. I am pleased that we have several new areas within the city that are growing. We have a corridor on Tyler Avenue that we didn't have before that's starting to develop and hopefully there'll be some more things we'll be talking about with that in the near future. West Radford Commerce Park is something that's a reality now that is very close to a stage one completion and in the next few weeks or months we'll be talking about that. So, that economic development piece is part of it. I do think the power's in our hands as a community. We're going to have to have a conversation to say what is a fair level for us to participate as residents to be able to make things happen so that we can remain independent, we can meet our obligations, we can fund a city and all the needs that are in that city, whether it's for our wealthiest or our poorest or somewhere in the middle. And so, we have to work toward that. I do agree,

you know, one of the things I've been trying to push us toward is some more strategic planning so that we have outcomes that are expectations of different areas that we can measure and that we can tie those into success rates, whether it be with reduced expenses, higher uh results or do new rates on things to be able to bring in more revenue. So, I do hope we can work more on that as we move forward. I think we've made a lot of steps. I want to end on a positive note. This is probably the best budget that we have had in the last really more than 8 years. I would say this is going back all the way to the 2010s, the early 2010s that this is a budget that is not balanced on taking money out of reserves. This is a budget that is not balanced on having to borrow money. This is a budget that is balanced on revenue generated this year. That is a massive step. Even before Jesse and I came to council, before the other members that are here came to council, there was a regular practice of going into reserve funds and pulling that down so that we didn't increase taxes, we didn't increase rates. And we thought we had begun to correct that over the last 8 years. We were incorrect on that. There'll be more about that as we get through the audits that are going on this year and we have more discussion about that. I caution our community not to go down that path again. Once we get this sorted to a better place, we have to be diligent about maintaining those fund balances. I think we need some stricter policies and procedures in place that once we've built up to a level that we don't easily pull down from that and that we do some things that are going to help us preserve what we need to preserve as we move forward. That's been one of our biggest challenges because it makes some of the other answers seem so much easier that you don't have to increase taxes or you don't have to face a difficult cut. And I think we're going to have to work

on that. But as a community, what we hope is that this room will be full and that we'll hear lots of ideas and lots of honest, open conversation. Now, the answers to some of those ideas may not be what we would hope they would be that it's as simple as say goodbye to this or or just do more here, but I think we have to have those discussions and we can and I think there's a willingness to do so. So, we want to thank all of you for being a part of this process and we have good things to come. We'll have our our next regular meeting here in a few weeks. We hope that the same attendance comes out for that because there's good work that's happening and good work to be done. And there's going to be a brighter day in the city of Radford. Every single day we're moving forward in new ways. Positive things are happening. You're going to have a lot of good announcements over the next 6 to 12 months and I think there's going to be a lot of optimism in this community as we move forward. The seeds have been sown for a lot of success and we should really have a bountiful harvest as we move forward. So, with that, we will go on and adjourn for this evening. Uh if we have a motion to adjourn? So moved. Do we have a second? Second. All in favor say good night. Good night. Good night.