City Council - Regular Meeting

Good, Seth. How are you doing?

Hey, guy. How are you, sir?

Good evening and welcome. We're so glad to have such a big crowd to start off the new year for the city of Radford. This is our first meeting in the new fiscal year and we're glad to have you all join us this evening. So welcome. We always love to begin with our Pledge of Allegiance. So we'll ask Gary Harris from the VFW to come forward.

Present arms. 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.

Thank you.

And we ask that you would join us in a moment of silence that you can use for silent reflection, prayer, or however you plan to prepare for the meeting. Thank you all very much. Council, you have the minutes from the June 8th meeting. Are there any corrections or changes you'd like to make? Do we have a motion to approve as submitted? We have a motion. Do we have a second?

Second.

A motion and a second. Any discussion? All in favor, please respond by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. Oh, we're doing it over there, gotcha, okay. At this time, we'll open the floor for citizen comments on public matters. We'd love for you to come down if you have something you'd like to say or a question you'd like to ask. Come down to the podium. Be sure to put the microphone up close to your mouth so that we can hear you. State your name for the record and limit your comments to three minutes or less. The comment time is on the screen. So the floor is now open for citizen comments.

Hello, my name is Bill Fleischer. I'd like to recognize a group of people that don't usually get praise, and that's our police department. I watched them on the Fourth of July down in that hot park wearing those black uniforms and the vest with all that equipment, and I know they had to be sweltering. And then I saw how efficiently they handled the crowd after to get everybody out safely and quickly. And I just, I really appreciated their professionalism and their courtesy during that time. So just wanted to bring them.

Thank you very much. Certainly agreed. Absolutely. Does anyone else have any comments for the public record? Come on down to the podium.

Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you, Mayor and City Council. I am Amanda Hudgens, and I am the Director of Research and Innovation for the College of Nursing at Radford University. And I just wanted to bring to your attention one of the new business items is our Radford University Cares Mobile Health Clinic, which is going to be venturing out into the communities of the New River Valley, Southwest Virginia, and hopefully the city of Radford. This is a faculty led student run clinic that is gonna be offering free care to our citizens and training our next generation of healthcare providers. So we have lots of services to offer and a service line to expand as we go along. So we would really appreciate the city's support so we can bring this to the community in the places where people live, work, play, and enjoy their community. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Maybe we'll all get applause this evening. That's a good thing. Is there anyone else who has a comment for the public record? Okay, seeing no one else, we will go ahead and close that portion of the meeting. And we do have some things to address this evening. We've got a couple of presentations. First, we have a representative here from Brown Edwards to give us an update on our forensic audit. We started this process a good bit of time ago by first issuing the invitation for bid. We had several bids, Brown Edwards was selected, and since the spring has been working toward it. So welcome. Thank you for being here.

Thank you, Mayor. Again, I'm John Aldridge with Brown Edwards and Company. What I want to do tonight is just kind of give you an update of where we stand on the project. As you recall, when we started this working with you all, there were approximately 28 different areas we were going to look at throughout the city, and those went back a couple of years. So to date, we have finished seven of those 28 tasks. So for those seven, we've met with staff, we've gone over some preliminary findings, observations there. So we're gonna continue to fine tune that before we issue that. The other open 21 items are in process. We've requested information from your staff. They're getting it back to us as they can because honestly they're trying to fit this in between an audit, the budget, and everything else they do. So this is just one extra task. But they've done a good job. They've done a good job getting us information. There hasn't so far been any situations where we've been stonewalled or anything like that. to date as well. I was counting before I came. I think we have right at 26 recommendations already of things that you can do better. Again, with looking with new staff and some changes, this was the perfect time for y'all to look at operations and how to do things more efficiently. So again, we've only finished seven and I've already got 26 recommendations for you. So I feel pretty good going forward. This will be wrapped up fairly timely. However, a lot of this is on your staff. So I could tell you if it was all on me, here's when it would be completed. But again, it's a lot of things they need to fit in. But some of the biggest areas we've already completed would be related to utility billings in that area. Some of the big things left will be personnel-related payroll, some disbursements, and then the budget process. Those are kind of the big things on the horizon we need to wrap up.

So thank you so much for that. You mentioned you had the seven that are completed at some point. Will you release those with some of the recommendations sometime in the near future before you complete all the rest of the work? We certainly could. Okay.

Yeah, that would be fine if you would like to do it that way.

No, I think that would be helpful because I know a lot of folks have wanted to know is there something that has gone on or is there something that should change and something we can actually start doing better now. Now, all those recommendations, have those been communicated to the staff yet?

Not all together yet. Just a few here and there.

too, because then we can begin to incorporate some of that in our process and go from there, because I think that's one of the more valuable portions of this. Of course, the biggest component that we feel we wanted to look at is the budget piece, and that has not even been touched at this point.

It's been started, but it's just very preliminary right now.

So it'll still be some time on that is what you're telling us? Very much so. Okay. Thank you so much for that wonderful presentation. I know it's not a lot of detailed information, but it's where we are and what we're working on. Council, do you all have any questions? Okay.

All right.

Yeah, thank you so much. And I do think it would be good for us to be able to do a short release. So if you will help us with that when you do the seven that you've covered and whatever the recommendations are. We want to be really transparent with that and share that with folks. So once staff gets it, can digest it, then we'll figure out how we want to share that with the public at large.

All right. We'll plan on that hopefully by the next, when's your next meeting? August. Hopefully we'll get it wrapped up by August. That'd be fabulous.

Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

All right, and we now have our school superintendent and the school board, they have a request for additional match funds. And I'll just start very briefly by saying, normally we would do this significantly earlier in the year, but the way the state's budgeting process worked, we didn't really have a state budget until right at the end of June. And so we're revisiting some things that we would have typically talked about during budget season. And with that, Adam Joyce, our superintendent is here. Dr. Joyce, welcome.

Thank you, Mayor. I appreciate the time. Thank you, Council, for having us here this afternoon. I have a real short presentation, and you're right. The budget sort of drifted through the spring, but then once it became a bill, we've been moving it at lightning speed. So that's why I'm here tonight. A lot of the budget was, you know, we were treated fairly, I think, by the state. It comes with some contributions in the form of matching funds. So that's what I'm here to present tonight. Now I can click or you just, I'll just give you the click wink. Okay. The recently released state budget includes adjusted funding for a number of categories, including special education, class size reduction, preschool initiative, compensation supplements for staff, and our at-risk students. But as you know, in order to receive those funds, the locality must provide a matching contribution. For Radford, our LCI means that we're responsible for slightly less than 16% of the total amount. In order to unlock these important state resources, local required match totals about $205,000. That is all the categories combined. And I think that might be all of it. So I am open for discussion with you guys, questions, comments, whatever it is I can help with.

Well, thank you so much. There are a lot of questions. And can we go back to your slide about the, yeah, we'll come back to that one in a minute, but this one. So just for clarification on this, this is $205,209 that the city would provide on top of the approximately half a million dollars that the city has already budgeted for and is provided as the local match prior to June 30th.

This is on top of the local required effort and local required matches that you guys appropriated for us back in the spring.

And once we have done this and once we go into this, this is the new local match moving forward. So it goes from about half a million to 700,000 in perpetuity.

There are some variables there like enrollment, things that may change. It won't change a lot. So you're right. This would probably be the new amount going forward, plus or minus. Carrie, would you agree? Okay.

So just to clarify what Kerry just said, and thank you so much for that, sometimes the state changes the allocations which could affect the local match. This year, you did have some savings that you could carry forward. Can you talk about that a little bit?

About a budget ago, we budgeted at the school level some monies for folks who aren't in VRS. we were going to budget money for them to have a retirement fund individually so that it was more of an incentive or retention or recruiting tool. So folks that aren't in the VRS, for whatever reason, we would deduct some money from their payroll for them to have some retirement funds. We didn't get that completed this year for a couple of reasons. I won't bore you with those, but that money is still there. So what I asked your folks to help us with was to take that money, hold it for us, and let us have it back this budget season so that we could in earnest start that program. That's about $70,000. I think it would be fair for you as a city to take the $70,000 that you're holding for us so that we can start those non-VRS retirement funds and make that part of the 205, which would be a new total of 135,209.

So the 135,209 would just be for the first year, and then once we revisit this for budget season next spring, the total's 205,209 plus, you know, ish, and plus whatever that other rest of the local match is, which is about half a million.

That's a fair statement.

Okay. Can we go to the slide that was before this? So these are a lot of things, and I know we talked about them a year ago when we were working through with Mr. Meadows when he helped us develop the budget for fiscal year 26 that just ended, about some of these areas. How much of this is impacted? Like, would the compensation, and I believe the compensation is to go to 4% for raises as opposed to the 2% that we're budgeted for?

Right, the state has made funds available for a 4% increase for SOQ positions. we are now at a 2% increase, so that's an increase of 2%.

Explain what the difference is from an SOQ position versus someone else working for the system.

Standards of quality positions are what the state believes is the minimum staffing you should have in a school division to deliver the education, but the city of Radford and the school division has always gone above and beyond the SOQs. We're not asking for the city to fund non-SOQ compensation increases. Carrie Long and I and the school board have found ways to extend that 2% to non-SOQ personnel. I can't imagine not doing that. Someone that you could work directly beside in your classroom wouldn't get the raise while you did get the raise, so we've worked really hard to come up with funds to make it 2% right now, or four, if things go well, for everyone.

So, and I appreciate that. How much of the match is the compensation component? Oh, boy. Is it, I mean, 80%, 20%? Oh, no, no.

No, it's not as much as you might think.

Well, that's what I wondered, because we were trying to figure out, you know, if, for example, the city could do $10,000 or $50,000 or $100,000, what does that mean we can have? What can't we have? You know, how does that impact it? Right. Sorry. It's probably better if you come to the microphone. I apologize. I think these are important questions to ask, though, as we have this discussion. Well, don't worry.

Anytime Kerry can join me at the podium, I feel a lot better.

Okay, so what I'm looking at is the CALC tool, which is available on the DOE website, which we've shared with, not this particular one, but we have shared one with you all in the past. So under compensation, a supplement for the 4% is 158,729. So approximately half of that is for the additional 2%.

So out of the 205, you're saying that's the total for the additional 2% raise? So it's about 50%. So the special ed add-on, the class size reduction, the preschool initiative, and the at-risk students is about the same then as the raise?

Is that accurate? I have not looked at it in that particular detail. So I would think it probably isn't done that way. It's probably got some other type of formula that it's figured on.

OK. All right. Just, you know, these are questions that I had when we first were told, okay, hey, this is something we need to talk about because this literally just happened 13 days ago. Yes, sir. So there's not been a lot of time for discussion on that. Counsel, what questions do you all have?

I guess my one question would be with the budget that was passed, all these things were in place, right? Yes. So these weren't at risk of going away? No, sir. Okay. So with this supplemental money, what exactly is that other than the salaries?

All of these funds would be increased. Special education add-on would bring us closer to, you know, it's a federal, special education is federal. We want to make sure that we're exceeding any kind of federal standards or state standards. We want to be above and beyond that as far as case loads. and things of that nature. Class size reduction, we always, you know, that just means smaller classes, which means a better ratio for your teacher to students. We always kind of want to be out front on that. Preschool initiative gives us more funding to accept more kids to the program, maybe have more aids, more materials in the program. compensation we've talked about, and our at-risk students, which are kids that are identified based on income, things of that nature, we're able to support them better with counselors or tutoring or more material, things like that.

And I know you guys have done a really good job of being able to find that 2% for the other positions. Would you be able to, if we, if the city was not able to do this, would you be able to, would you have the funds available to be able to pick up this initiative? I couldn't say right now it would be a 4%, no. Right.

So, just...

walk me through the math here so we were looking at the next slide you're asking a total of 208 205 and then you're saying the increase the four percent increase that is how much of that uh about eighty thousand about eighty okay so i guess where i always said is when you were talking about when you're in a classroom and you have one person that gets a raise and then the person working beside them they don't get the raise i kind of feel like that's where our city employees are they're sitting next to the schools who consistently get raises and they've had to hold back from raises and so everyone is worth a raise but under restrictive financial environments we have to make choices so It's a hard sell. When you guys came to us before, all these things were covered pretty much to your satisfaction, and now you want additional funds.

The only reason for that is because all of our neighbors have the same calc tool and are looking at the same raise potential. I just don't want to be the person that lets Radford slip behind because I mean, you know, I get the variables here. I get why. But it's hard for me to recruit teachers from other neighboring counties when their compensation may already be better than ours and they're not going to get the same raise. I know you understand that. It's the same for your folks.

Right. It's the same for our police officers and our firemen and EMS workers. We're dealing with the exact same thing on this side as well. If we gave you your 70,000 back that you've requested, what could you cover? Could you cover some of this with that 70,000 or is it an all or nothing initiative?

No, it's not an all or nothing, but it would take us more time than tonight to figure how we could disperse that fairly.

If you choose not to participate in one particular program, whatever it is, you're going to lose the state revenue from it. So it is a little bit more impactful for us than just the difference, you know.

Right. So to that, does that mean out of the 500 we've already done, if we don't participate all the way to the 200,000 level in a category, that you lose all of that?

No, the 500 or the number that you're using is the local part. Right.

So that would not go away? No. It would just stay where it is.

So what we've already, you know, let's say the state hadn't done this additional 200. What we've already budgeted will happen regardless. These are just additional, additional on top of that. Okay.

And see, I mean, I don't want to speak out of turn, but this is the state's way of showing the K-12 world some love. The problem is it comes with matching contributions. that may or may not be considered in Richmond. I mean, it sounds great that they're giving more funding to the schools, but what it does is it burdens you and I and the city and the school division to come up with the matching funds.

Can you ask them if they'll show the locality some love? We need some of that love.

They show us the tax increases where they show us.

I guess I go back to the reserves with your reserves because we're trying to build our reserves as a city because for you to be healthy, we have to be healthy. We're trying to build our reserves. I guess I would go back to, I'm sure, I would assume before you came to us, you evaluated your reserves to see if you could cover this. If so, are you not able to?

We can't cover this ourself, the 205. No, ma'am. This has to be new money that the city puts in the budget. Right, because otherwise then we start taking from other pots, so to speak, and then they're left short.

I was talking about like your reserve pot.

So your reserve account with us, you're not allowed to take reserve money from your account with us that has almost...

We really wanted to be careful with that.

We want to be careful with our money as well. So this is a pot that is not touching your cash. It's in reserves for things like this that come up that may be burdensome on the city that are also burdensome on you. So this is kind of an in-between pot that we can pull from. I mean, I would support sounds like that may be a suggestion. I would absolutely support that. I want to support the schools and give them all the raises. But I have to also think about other departments that we have. You know, the school is one very important, huge piece with the city. But we also have other pieces that we have to think about, too. And I think this reserve account may be an option to help both ends and not burden either of us as much as as we would want to and still make this happen.

It's kind of, I think it's to your point, Kelly, it's kind of the same concept we came up with last year for fiscal year 26 where the half a million was found out of the reserve funds that you all would donate that back to help the budget and that the city would go on and make its local match of the half a million. So I think that's the concept. And I know everybody's kind of on the spot tonight. The one big issue is we don't have to make a decision tonight to get the funds, correct? Okay, so this is something we could work on and come back with, okay, here's a proposal to see these are some options that are available to us.

And in the meantime, Todd, what would that look like from our budgeting standpoint? I know we did a 2% real estate increase. If we do this, that would negate over a cent or so. How would that affect us? Would we just have to continue to increase taxes? I mean, how could we substantially fund this?

So the 205 represents approximately two cent on the real estate and that's what we went up this year. So it would essentially use up that or the equivalent of two cent on the real estate. If the $70,000 is used to fund the retirement accounts for the non VRS eligible employees, you're looking at about a little bit over a cent, like a cent and a quarter of a cent on the real estate. As far as what it looks logistically in our budget, the general fund cannot support $200,000, it can't support 138. What it would look like, the city would have to transfer money from one of the enterprise funds, water or electric, or solid waste, one of those, most likely water or electric, into the general to fund this, to then turn over to the schools for the local match. So, you know, the only thing I will advise council, just keep in mind, you know, those transfers, we're trying to get away from those. And the funds that we do transfer out of the enterprise funds are, it's reducing the amount that we have available to tackle infrastructure needs. And that's the ultimate long-term danger of continuing to transfer those funds out is that we're not addressing infrastructure like water tanks, water lines, sewer lines, electric pole replacements, et cetera.

or existing debt that we're trying to whittle down and get our interest payments down and eliminate.

That's correct, existing debt as well.

I've still got a question in my mind. Out of the 205, you said there's these different categories. So can we, I guess, if one category's a $50,000 and one's 100,000 and one's 150, then we're on the hook for 16% of that?

It's that, it makes a whole. So it's the 16% plus the 84% to make 100%.

But if it's 50,000 for one thing and we say we can't do our 16% on that, that 50 goes away.

Well, that 50% that we're asking you for is 16% of what the state would do.

Okay, I'm talking about if 50,000 is the whole thing.

Oh.

Our part is 16% of 50 and we say no we can't do that 16% then the whole 50 goes right. Can you give us or I would like to see a breakdown of the categories and what that category represents out of that 205?

We can, not tonight. Right.

So, you know, I'm thinking maybe what we do is say let's revisit this for our August meeting and get some of that information together and some of the answers and talk about how, what that looks like, if it's going to be, you know, we think we can do 30,000 out of water, we think we can do this out of sanitation, whatever that looks like. and have something more concrete in front of us to look at and see what this looks like. Because this is a big deal. And I actually think it's a good thing we're having this discussion. So one of the biggest things we've talked about as a locality is how did we get exactly where we are with some of the fiscal challenges we have? This is a great example where the state says, hey, we can do this wonderful thing. And it's a wonderful thing that I think everybody looks at and says, yeah, that's amazing to be able to do. but it's basically past this year, it's a two cent tax increase or the equivalent budget reduction to be sustainable. And that's the hard part for the city to get to that sustainability. So I think coming back to this at the August meeting makes a lot of sense to get all the information we can. to talk about what each of these categories represents out of the 205 so that we understand that and then to talk a little bit about how you know if we were able to do 135 this coming year because we have the special savings we could do what does it look like in out years because again even though we may not have a crystal ball and know that we're pretty much saying this is baking that in the cake and we move from a half a million-ish dollar match to a $700,000 match and just understanding that.

Since it's a two-year cycle, I think we're pretty safe. Yeah, at least one more. One more, yeah.

Right.

I'm still a little uncomfortable with that because I don't see a route to make that happen. I'm not comfortable taking money out of these other departments that we know have infrastructural needs. I'm more inclined to say the 70,000, of course, return back, that was the money you invested, and then to see what you can do with the reserves. because that is why we have the reserves, and I just don't see a logical path that's fiscally responsible to do it any other way at this point. We felt like we went in pretty knee deep and didn't push back on the budget as it existed when you brought it to us, and that was hard. There are other grants as you're gonna hear tonight that we would love to be able to take advantage of that we can't that would help the entire community as well. I'm not sure for me if waiting is going to matter because I just don't see a responsible path to provide more than that, other than allowing that 70,000 to return and having the reserves. But that's just where I currently sit, especially with hearing from our city manager.

If I may, I wanted to make one more point about the budgeted transfers to our reserve accounts. We still have two payments left to AEP, and while we've made great progress this year, we do still have those two payments out there. It is possible we may have to use some of those funds or close to all of those funds to pay that bill down. I just didn't wanna leave that out.

So, On top of all that, I've never been this deep in a school year without a budget. I don't think anyone has. I'm not sure that I even have the luxury to wait until August because at the end of July, I need to certify that we're operating on a budget. That doesn't even count the look that we portray from central office to our teachers that we don't know what you're going to get. Which is no one's fault, really.

No, but I will say this. We do have a budget. It's just the budget that was passed previously. We don't have the additional match budget. So I will say this. If I'm reading the tea leaves correctly, August trying to figure out a solution is probably the best shot of getting anything. I mean, I don't know if anybody's ready to say we're going to do this tonight with what we don't know and all of that. That's the hard part. If council was comfortable saying let's take 70,000 that's the carry forward and then another 135,000 that would be the equivalent of the current capital reserves and try to use that, that could be a possibility. I don't know if that's where everybody is. It doesn't ultimately solve this problem past this year though. I will say that. That's the really tricky part and this is what everybody needs to really focus in on We have to build this as we're building out the budget, typically, because we have to decide. Do we do a tax increase or a budget cut somewhere else to be able to make that work? So if we're able to figure something out accounting-wise with what we currently have, and that's what's been offered as a possibility, maybe we could do something. But I don't know. What do you all think? Counsel?

Well, I also think later in the meeting we are looking at something that could help address some of these later on with the referendum that could be used. But, I mean, I've said it 100 times 100 different ways. If Radford City is not healthy, Radford City Public Schools aren't healthy. No one stands to lose more than Radford City Public Schools if we lose our charter. RCPS will not exist. We have to get our finance house in order. You could talk to your blue in the face about why we're here, whose fault it's here, should we be here? We're here. I mean, that's what it is. It would be, in my opinion, fiscally irresponsible for us to do that with all the outstanding debt that we have, with all the other things that we have to address. I hate that. I've said this 100 times too. I have two little bobcats on the way. Bobcats run through my veins, but I just feel like I know numbers, and I feel like the position that we're in, it wouldn't be good for us to take care of you guys long term. We have to get our financial house in order. That's not your fault, but it is your problem because we're all in this together. So that's just kind of where I'm at with it, and I know it's tough, and I know that it's not about deserving or anything like that. Those teachers deserve more than 4%. So do our sanitation workers and police officers and everybody else. And in the meantime, I hope you'll work with us so we can roll up our sleeves and get things done. But I just think here and now, it wouldn't be a wise decision for the city. That's just me. I mean, I'd be happy to entertain if... I'm always going to listen. I mean, if you have something to propose, I would listen. I don't know that anything is going to change my opinion that the city... I don't think in August the city is going to be in a better financial situation. I'm not going to waste your time, but I would... respectfully listen to anything that you would, you would have to share.

Where do you stand? I'm the same way. I don't see how in the world we're going to be able to meet that. And that's why I was willing to look at the breakdowns to see if there's any part that we might be able to help with. But yeah, I'm like Seth, you know, we just, they're in such a bind right now that we cannot come up with anything like $200,000. Jesse?

I think I've said my piece, and again, to reiterate, it's not a matter of, you know, what we would like to do. I love our teachers. I love our administrators. I love our school systems. I have three Bobcats, so, you know, I wish that we were in a position to do more, but, you know, we do have to make sure that that our house is stable and not built on cards. And so right now, we just have to make sure that we're stable first to make sure that you're stable also in the long run. And again, I feel like with the budget that you brought us, you had good plans for these things. And at that point, we felt like you could you could manage these things. I understand this would be on a greater scale and certainly in a perfect world I would support that, but I just think right now it'd be fiscally irresponsible for us to do anything other than what we're currently committed to do.

Kelly, do you have any other thoughts?

How much in the reserves are their dedicated funds? Is that broken down?

The capital reserve account.

The reserve account that is shared, that theirs is tracked separately than ours, but there's dedicated money that is theirs, correct?

Approximately 1.9 million.

Okay, so that's 1.9 million of RCPS reserves, or that's shared reserves for all of us, the city and the school?

They're dedicated to the school capital reserve fund. So everything is in a pooled account, but they're school funds.

So why does using some of that 1.9 affect our ability to pay bills and things like that if it's dedicated school capital fund?

So if they want to use the capital reserve account funds from there, it will not affect the city's ability.

Okay, that's what I'm proposing, is that 1.9 million that's sitting there as reserves, or roughly.

Right.

But is that not allowed to be used in this circumstance?

Well, it's my understanding that it is a capital reserve fund, which is if a building needs a roof or a HVAC.

Yeah, I understand what capital. I mean, I'm just saying, is it like not an option at all? I just want to make sure.

And Trish, if I'm incorrect on this, it's my opinion that if they want to use the 205,000 from the capital reserve account, that will present no issues for the city in any manner.

And I think it might work out something kind of like this. If you all said, yeah, we can do 205 out of the capital reserve fund, it would then go into one of our enterprise capital funds, and then we would provide that new money as the match. That it's not a... direct, take it out of the deposit and put it over here, but it would work out the same way, essentially.

It seems like everyone's leaning toward we can't do this. This is an option that will provide the money for you. I know it's not what you want to use it for and it's not technically capital repairs or roof or anything, but that's an option.

This is a slippery slope we were afraid of when we did the $500,000. We just didn't want to make that a thing every year.

We don't want to make it a thing either. I understand. We absolutely don't. But I'm trying to make an option to where you guys get your money and not zero. Because that's what we're faced with.

I think the thing is, this is a lot for everybody. School board hadn't had a chance to talk about it this way and all that. Do you all want to take this back and have a discussion? and then come back again. Like I said, you do have a budget, it's just not the budget with the match. Our August meeting, we could have a little more time if you wanna do that. That would let you say, okay, here's what we feel comfortable doing. Let's see if we go from there.

So we also have a meeting, I don't remember what it's for, on the 22nd of this month at six. Can we tack on a, if we really have to wait and make a decision? I know what I'm proposing.

And one question about your proposal is if we did do that, it would be predicated that we do it again the following year, correct? Because once you bake in that match, not pulling from the capital reserve, but that that amount, we would be on the hook for that. Pretty close. Yeah.

we'd have to talk about it because again, the match, you can either do it or not do it. And that's what I'm saying. So we could say we can match up to 500,000, which we're currently doing, or we can match up to 705 or whatever that total is. So I mean, it is a little bit because you're not gonna wanna say, okay, well, those raises are baked in the cake and then we gotta back off, but it is a discussion that can be held depending on where the city's financial position is at that point in time.

Well, I mean, people don't get raises every single year. Right.

So that's something that is... Well, but once it's baked in, that 4% is the salary. Part of your baseline.

All I'm saying is that's an option. If you guys need to go back and think about it, I'm proposing that we have a meeting on the 22nd when we're already going to be here at 6 o'clock. All of us are going to be here. That gets you before your August, gives you a little bit time to think. Otherwise...

I mean, I think it's the only way to even have a further conversation on it. So would that make sense to at least go back and have a discussion and see where we are? It's better than a hard no tonight. And then we figure out, is this something we can do?

Melissa, is it even possible to do that on this? I don't remember what we're doing. We have to advertise. I just know I have to be here on this.

It's already advertised that we're having a special meeting on July 22. So we're good to go ahead and add the school board meeting agenda item.

Is that feasible? Does that give you? Yes. OK.

And, you know, which would have been, that date would have been fine, except this was the meeting that was next. And, you know, once the budget was approved, then the VDOE had nine or ten days to come up with a calc tool. So, really, Ms. Long's been sleeping with this paperwork for about the last week. And we didn't mean to throw it on you.

No, I get it. And I think the hardest part.

So you can get your house in order, too. Right.

The hardest part with this is I don't think there's anything up there that folks wouldn't like to be able to do in some way, shape or form.

I'll take it that way.

It's just what's practical and what's realistic for our community at this moment, but also long term. And, you know, like I said, this is why this is a good conversation, because let's say the decision is made to go, yeah, we'll do it. That's why Radford struggles with some of the things it has because we bake that in and then you've gotta figure it out every year and basically that's a two cent tax increase or the equivalent somewhere. So these are the hard decisions that we all have to make. Let's plan to come back together for a short, presentation if you can get us information prior to the meeting that's helpful so that we're not hearing it the first time when we're here i think that'll get us to a good place and i do think guys correct if we can know like special education represents x amount of this class size reduction represents that so we can have that meaningful discussion together that would be helpful

If I were to give you the match that the locality is responsible for and then what it triggers?

Yeah, that's fine. That's perfectly fine. And I recognize that triggers a significantly larger number. But it's just, what are we able to do? How do we figure this out?

That's relative. Because I think 205 is large for the city. I understand that.

Yeah. Well, and like I said, you know, this is a hard discussion. If we were talking about this three months ago, we may have said, well, we have to do a 4 cent tax increase on the real estate tax if we're going to do that. Right. And that's a discussion to have, you know. And it'll be a discussion that council will have if we go down this path for the 27-28 budget next spring. So these are all things and that doesn't even get us where we need to be fully, you know, for sustainable budget for the city. So appreciate it. Let's do that. Let's plan for that on the 22nd. Thank you for bringing this to us. The good news is you got a good budget to start with. Yes, sir. And then there's a possibility for this if we can figure something out and us to work together.

Yeah, I do not at all want to feel Like, I don't want you guys to feel like we don't appreciate that budget. But once this new budget was passed, you know, we couldn't just sit on it.

Oh, it changes everything. And I think that's the hard part with Richmond. While we appreciate the extra money, when it comes with that string attached, that's a tax increase. The folks in Richmond didn't have to increase taxes to get to the budget that they got to. And they could have made that decision differently. So that's where we go. Thank you all. Thank you. I don't know. All right, we gotta keep going here. We got lots of business to talk about. Council, we have some unfinished business. So going back to 2018, one of the first things we did was we had the Department of Housing Community Development come to Radford with the Main Street program to talk about what could be done to help improve our business district in East Radford. And through a number of years working with the regional commission and working with recommendations of citizens and everybody, we came up with a concept that was going to help improve a number of things. And we got some money for it from the Appalachian Regional Commission, about $700,000. But that was another one that came with an attachment. We had to contribute the city's portion, which was going to be a couple million dollars. We did a few of the small elements of the project, but we've got about 300 and 350,000, something along that line. Approximately. About 300,000 toward the match. But right now, we don't have $1.3 million to put toward this project. And that's a challenge for us. So we have talked with the folks at the Department of Housing Community Development. Could we have a little more time to see if we can get closer along? They said they can't do that right now. They have to see meaningful action. In other words, we have to be under contract for this project in the fall or in the spring, something along that line. And that's not feasible with the budget we currently have and the resources that we have. These are needed things for us to do to get our business district in better shape, but at this time, we need to transmit a letter to the Department of Housing and Community Development declining the Appalachian Regional Commission grant at this time. The good news is we can go back and try to get this funding again, and they've said this is a great project, they recognize the importance of it, and that they might be willing to fund it further down the road. This is a tough blow, because this was supposed to help build up our business district further, which would help the economy, and it's just a positive cycle. But at this time, council, can we have a motion to approve the city manager to transmit the letter to the Department of Housing and Community Development regarding the Appalachian Regional Commission grant?

So moved. We have a motion.

We have a second. Second. Motion to second. All in favor, please respond by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. All right, moving forward. Council, we have some board and commission appointments, the Agency on Aging, Tourism, and the Board of Zoning Appeals. Melissa, do you have anything you wanna share with us based on the notes that we have?

Sure, since our last meeting when you appointed the number back in your June 8th meeting, I do have another vacancy on the Board of Zoning Appeals, so that was not advertised appropriately because we have a new hire in our code enforcement office that he does not now qualify as being on the BZA, there's a conflict there. So I did get a response from Sally, I'm sorry, Sally Ann regarding agency on agent, agency on agent and she is willing to continue to serve if Council so does wish to do so. What I've provided was a historic, I guess, a historic breakdown of what the Tourism Commission has been made up of. I did go through our code to find out what the parameters were. Like I said, the lodging, restaurant, retail, community at large, those are just who held the positions prior. It does not state in the code that they have to fall within any of those categories. But certainly their knowledge of the community and their knowledge of the business and how it might help support our tourism commission certainly is a positive. A minimum of nine members have to be on that board per code with a maximum of 13. So it's certainly at council's discretion on how they would like to move forward. I did provide a shown interest list on the right-hand side of the column, but I also provided a list of citizens who had showed interest in other boards and commissions but had not been appointed who we may want to follow back up on and reach out to.

So with this, we have, and let's just talk tourism for a second, then we can go back to BZA and Agency on Aging. With this, we have these positions that are specific to these areas, council member, recreation rep, Radford University rep, chamber rep, and the school representative. But then the others are all at large, correct? Right now, all of these together wouldn't make nine total, so we need all of these plus some additional at-large folks to be able to operate, correct?

No, including council members, including the chamber. That is nine.

Okay.

What I would say- Up to 13.

Okay, what I would say, my concern is I would want the chamber to make a recommendation, the university to make a recommendation, and of course, council, we can decide who we want and go from there before we make that decision. So if we appoint anyone else, the board can't operate until they get to nine?

Correct.

I'm sorry, Kelly's already.

Am I getting kicked off, David? No.

be able to help a little bit with the chamber rep because Rachel Doyle has expressed interest and she is on the chamber board.

Knocked out those two.

Yeah, I was going to say what we would want to do is maybe tentatively do that pending the chamber just saying, yeah, that makes sense for us. And she wants to, absolutely.

And I believe we talked about Tom Bennett being a representative of the university.

So he clarified he was coming just as a citizen and has not done anything formal. So that could be a question to be asked for the university to say would they want to ask Tom to serve in an official capacity or would they want to appoint somebody else and Tom, if he was interested, may be able to serve as a volunteer.

I can ask.

I can ask Angela. Yes, in my Joint Commission meeting tomorrow, I can ask Angela for recommendations on our RU representative.

Perfect. You'll see that Amanda Winter, she was a school representative prior and happy to continue serving in that manner.

Kelsey, would there be any issue with you being Commissioner of Revenue and serving on the Tourism Board, or is that acceptable? Tara's great, Alba's great, Jessica could serve if you all are interested. I'd like to see if we could get these folks appointed, get a representative for the RU rep, and then maybe come back and revisit the rest of it in August to see what we have. Does that make sense? Okay, so do we wanna go on and make sure, Kelly is our council representative, and then we have nominations here potentially for Kelsey Marletta, Jessica Johnson. Let's hold off on Tom until we find out if that works out. some other way, but he could potentially be a citizen representative. Tara Kipps as a nominee, Alba Alvarez, and then potentially Rachel Doyle, we wanna check with the chamber to double check that. And then Amanda has said she's willing to do it and the schools are here tonight, so. That works. Okay. Do we want to go on and nominate those folks that we've mentioned as representatives for now? Sure. Okay. Do we have a motion to do so? So moved. We have a motion. Do we have a second? Second. Motion to second. Any discussion? All in favor, please respond by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? And if we can try to get the others in place, we can do that and the tourism board can get rolling by the community fest date. So that'd be perfect. Awesome, thank you all so much. For Agency on Aging, do we wanna go on and reappoint Sally Ann since she did express the interest?

Yes.

Okay, we have a motion, do we have a second?

Second.

Motion to second, any discussion? All in favor, please respond by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? We need to advertise Board of Zoning Appeals, correct?

We do.

Okay, so if we could do that, we can come back to that in August or whenever. Do you need that to function pretty quickly though?

I hope not. Okay.

Good. All right, moving on to new business. In addition to the school match and the other parts of the budget, the state gave the localities across the state the ability to add a 1% sales tax to use revenues solely for capital projects for new construction or major renovation of schools. This was something that was done on a community by community basis previously. It existed in the past. Some localities have taken advantage of that, but it wasn't statewide. Now it is statewide where any locality could do it. It has to be a ballot initiative. It would have to be on the ballot this November to take effect as soon as possible beyond that. and it would have to be voted on, obviously, by the community, so there would be a referendum on it. What this would mean is the Radford's sales tax would move up 1%, so basically it would go from five cents to six cents. That's not counting meals tax and other things along that line. So the total tax, depending on the item purchased, would be different. There are certain things that would not be included in this. We're still getting all the clarification, but primarily some personal hygiene products and some food products would not be included in the tax. We have heard from a number of folks. Our commissioner of revenue gave us some thoughts on this so that we would have a little more understanding of it as a council. There are some challenges associated. Also, I heard, I don't know if you all heard from Lindsey Williams, our director of elections. One of the real challenges we have this year is we are gonna have a mega ballot in November that there's three constitutional amendments in addition to all the members of council and the, or the federal elections for the Congress on that. So one of the concerns is that potentially this will be a long ballot and this would be the very last thing on the ballot as part of that. Council, what are your all's thoughts given all of those parameters?

Well, I think it's been brought up, it's a 20 year, And if we didn't do it this year under current, I guess, statute, we could do it next year.

Right. This is a new thing that's not going away. It's not got a sunset clause associated with it right now.

But can it be changed?

You all can be changed.

OK. So I guess my initial feeling was it's up to the citizens. And it could be changed. So my feeling is that we ought to put it on the ballot and let the citizens decide. Do they want to support the schools in this capital effort or not?

I tend to think the same way. I, you know, my endorsing a vote for yes and this, that everyone will have to make that decision at the ballot box. Inevitably the schools do have capital needs that do have to be addressed. And this, you know, those needs are going to come before us. And I think that this is an opportunity to let the people decide if, if, if that's what they, um, are going to be able to do. I do think that some valid concerns have been brought up, um, from from Kelsey and from Lindsey as far as getting it on the ballot. What the appetite for that will be this year, I don't know. But I think to Guy's point, this does give the people a voice on if they support it or not.

What are your thoughts, Jessie?

Yeah, I feel the same way. It really is put it into the hands of our citizens and let them decide if this is the tax increase that they're willing to do at this juncture.

So my concern is, and I'll just share some additional thoughts. I mean, it sounds like we have a consensus that folks want to move ahead with that. I will say here's the risk. We don't know yet for our community what the overall tax picture is going to look like next year and in coming years, whether that's a combination of real estate, a combination of sales tax, whatever that might be, and I think that's a concern that I have. My preference would be for us to wait because we do have the ability to do this next year and put it on the ballot then after we've developed something a little more substantial and we know where we are, or at least the council that's serving in the spring of next year when they're doing the budget knows where they are to go from there. But it sounds like am I the only one who wants to wait? Does everybody else want to move forward this year? Forward for me. Okay. So do we have a motion? So moved. We have a motion to adopt the resolution and a second? Second. Motion and a second. Melissa, would you call the roll?

Yes. Mrs. Foster? Yes. Mr. Gillespie? Yes. Mr. Wilford? Yes. Mayor Horton?

No. And the only reason I'm gonna know I will explain that is I think it would be better if we waited. I don't think we're ready for this fall to get it passed. Doesn't mean you can't work on it and try to make that happen because it's gonna be on there. The motion does carry. But I think this is a big enough deal for our community that this is another tax after we've just increased real estate taxes, after we've just increased other fees and things along that line. We really need to know where we are before we move forward with this and figure out what makes sense. It'll be in the hands of the voters and we'll see where we go. I think it's more prudent to wait, but we're gonna move forward as a community and see where we are. I do think it's a great idea down the road to have some additional capital funds, but we really need to work on developing the most essential needs capital plan for what we would do with those funds over a period of time and have some further discussion on that so that the community can make that decision, because that's an important part of this. that it has to be sold to the citizens of Radford that we're funding improvements at the high school or we're funding improvements that are needed here. And I don't know that we're ready for that at this point in time. And it's a very short window. So we'll see where we go. It's gonna be on the ballot. Council approved it. So we'll see where we go with that. Council, you all heard a little bit earlier about our mobile unit that Radford University has been working on, and they need a memorandum of agreement for affiliation. So that'll be an understanding between us and the university, city and the university, to agree. And this memorandum of agreement has a date of the 29th of May, 2026, and we need to alter that to the current date if we're going to consider it. Can you repeat the question, Mayor? So the memorandum of agreement that's in front of us is entered in as of the 29th of May, 2026. For us to consider it, do we need to alter that to today's date?

Yes.

The event's going to be held in late July, but yes.

Right.

Yeah, right, right. But we're being asked to approve the memorandum of understanding, right? Yeah. Yeah, you can approve it with the change. Okay.

Now, as I read it, I think there's no liability to the city if someone goes into this mobile unit and something goes wrong.

That's a big question. I think that I'm not sure what role that any, as I understand it, the mobile unit is being administrated by employees of Carilion, is that correct? Sorry, Radford University, not by any employees of the city, correct? In essence, the only thing that the city is providing is basically a parking lot for the mobile unit on city property. Now, if there was some type of, I guess, condition there at the parking lot that the city had created and somebody was walking up to the mobile unit and I guess tripped and fell or something like that, maybe then there could be an issue for the city. But as to the administration of the mobile unit itself by RU staff, I think that the exposure's low.

And this is mainly for training students. That's kind of what the idea I got. OK. How many other jurisdictions have you got agreements with?

Can you come up to the podium? Sorry.

Well, some of this is so folks watching on streaming can hear you as well.

I'm sorry. So I just also want to recognize Elizabeth at the Bradford Public Library who's so graciously been one of our community supporters. We currently have affiliations with the Health Wagon down in Wise, Virginia, New River Valley Community Services, VDH. We're looking to partner with Food City and several other local businesses. We have, we've looked at Just several businesses around the area and in Roanoke. We've also started some conversations with the least of these, which is the Homeless Service Center. We plan to expand throughout the New River Valley and Southwest Virginia.

But I mean jurisdictions. As far as? I said Food City and some other places. Oh, I'm sorry. Those are partners.

Yeah, those are partners. Right now, the city of Radford is the only jurisdiction that we have. that we have proposed an agreement with right now. We'll probably expand to Pulaski County and some of the other surrounding counties as well. Because we do wanna be able to be in some community. We're hoping to do the Radford Community Fest in August. have some events at the library with VDH, but also in Pulaski County. So if there's something hosted at Randolph Park or something that encompasses the county and or the city of Radford that we can be there on site and both our entity at Radford University and the city could be covered with that.

It's not based on monetary income or anything like that?

We are free. We've actually put our application in to become a free and charitable clinic. So all of our services, as long as I have anything to do with it, will remain free for our citizens regardless of insurance status.

So you're saying they don't means test. That's what you're asking, right, Guy? They don't means test. So they don't see if you have a test. No, means test. Right. Correct.

And what kind of services is it going to be again? I'm sorry.

So we're starting out with, so we're building a service line, which means we're starting out kind of small, just a pilot with some screening services for hypertension, diabetes, hyperlipidemia, and then we hope to expand out. We're doing some school physicals this fall and summer, and we're hoping to expand out to where we can actually have full encounters for acute care, gap care services, and also connecting citizens to resources. So if they need a referral to a specialist or be established with a primary care provider, we can put that in place immediately. And then we are also looking at telehealth services, becoming a telehealth service provider. So if a patient doesn't have access to broadband, they can come to us and we can facilitate that appointment to a specialist at UVA or Wake Forest or John Hopkins, wherever they need to be seen.

Right now it sounds like you kind of have a mobile unit. Have you thought any about having a permanent facility if this works out on campus or out or something like that?

So I don't want to speak out of turn because you know there's channels that we have to go through through the university. But we there have been conversations about a center for rural health. I don't know that that will encompass a brick and mortar clinic. It would be my my my heart dream to do that. But the purpose of mobile clinics is meeting people of the community where they're at and eliminating that transportation barrier. So in my choice right now, in our university, we are choosing the mobile health clinic so we can immerse our students in that culture of rural health.

Cool. Will you be providing vaccinations by chance?

So that is, in the healthcare world, that is a little complicated because we're not providing insurance. We don't accept insurance. It's a free care. and Medicaid has their own vaccine service line. So if you participate with Medicaid, they ship you the vaccine. So our solution to that is we're partnering with VDH to hold shared clinics so they can provide the vaccine and we can provide alternate services. So we expand those service lines, we expand the resource for the patient in one spot.

Did I read in there that every spot you wanted to go to that the city has to approve? Did anybody else read that?

Do you know?

I think that's just like a verbal agreement that if we're going to the Bradford Library that we would just make sure that Mr. Meredith knew that or if we were gonna be in Bissett Park one day that that would just be a shared communication. with the organizational appointment and myself at Radford University that we would have that understanding before we release that information to the city and the citizens that we would just agree.

And that partnership thing you were mentioning, like if Food City said, hey, you can come to our parking lot,

We have to have the same thing with them as well, a memorandum of agreement with those organizations.

Because you want to be able to go to different spots in the city, correct?

Absolutely. But this memorandum of agreement, if it's my understanding correctly, is just to be on city property locations. So like Radford Library, Bissett Park, if we wanted to host something in conjunction with emergency services, right? Something like that.

And Todd, on our end for city, how much of a heads up would you like, I guess, for that correspondence? If they're going to be at the library, I mean, three days, a week? I mean, what works for that?

I think a week or two in case we had to prepare for the event, tape off an area, or if it's a parking lot, maybe we have to fill some potholes or something like that.

I hope I have that to you in three months in advance, because we run on academic semester. So I have to have that schedule. two to four weeks before the semester starts. So I hope to have that to you in plenty of time, sir.

How many events just preliminary you think of holding?

So right now in our fall pilot, we hope to be out at least one day a week. We have gotten a couple two days a week. And then in spring of 2027, which in academia starts in January, We hope to bump that up to three days a week. We also have a part, an MOU with Radford City Public Schools right now. So we're actually working on a project with them with the mobile clinic and hope to expand that into maybe some school-based care. So we'll kind of see where that goes.

Is it first come, first serve, or is it appointment-based?

We're still working through those logistics. It's gonna be walk-ins mainly, but we are launching our electronic health record, which is gonna, in all of our social media and flyers, we'll have a QR code that patients or anybody wishing to acquire services can scan a QR code and schedule their appointment ahead of time. Awesome.

Okay. Thank you. And it is a wonderful thing because what a great learning tool, but what a great service for so many people who are struggling to get their health care. So, Council, we have this memorandum of agreement. Do we have a motion to adopt? We have a motion. Do we have a second?

Second.

Any further discussion? All in favor, please respond by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right. Thank you so much. Council, you also have the DMV Select Agreement, and that establishes terms and conditions under which the DMV has appointed the agent to establish and maintain a license agency of the DMV, DMV Select, in Radford. And currently, this is with our treasurer's office. So we're glad you're here tonight, Joy. Thank you for being here. Todd, you and Joy have had some discussions and talked through it. Are you good with the bulk of the agreement with how it stands?

Yes, I'm comfortable with it.

So the manager thinks we can work through this. Council, do you all have any questions? Do we have a motion to adopt? So moved. We have a motion. Do we have a second? Second. Motion to second. Any discussion? All in favor, please respond by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, we have another agreement we need to consider. It is a PROCOM repeater agreement. The purpose of this MOU is to allow PROCOM to install communications repeater, antenna, and coaxial cable on the city-owned tower on Prospect Street. The repeater is just for the use of Radford Transit to provide more consistent and improved communications. Melissa, do you have anything you want to share about that from the transit side?

Currently, that repeater is located at Smith Mountain Lake, so it being a little bit closer, we'll have better coverage with our radios. Fantastic. The payment, actually our contractor covers the payment, so this is not any cost to us as a city.

Okay, what does this do from a radio wave standpoint? Is there the risk of putting it on Prospect Street that it will interfere with communications in the city, or does it limit us for any other communication on that tower?

It does not, and we've worked with PROCROM for a number of years, and they help us with all our PD, fire, EMS, repeaters, so they're very well versed in what our current status is with our repeaters, and it will not conflict with any others.

Fantastic. All right, council, you have this agreement in front of you. Do we want to adopt or go another direction? Do we have a motion?

Motion to approve.

Motion to approve. We have a second. Motion to second. Any discussion? All in favor, please respond by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? T-Mobile has requested an amendment to their original December 11th, 2001 lease for 410 Prospect Street. This agreement would allow them to continue use of the tower. I'm assuming the same thing applies that us being able to do the tower on Prospect Street with ProCom won't affect T-Mobile?

It will not. Okay.

Council, you have the agreement for the land and tower with T-Mobile. Is there a motion to approve? So moved. We have a motion. Do we have a second? Second. Motion and a second. Any discussion? All in favor, please respond by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Smart scale application. All right, the Virginia Department of Transportation reached out to the city in October 2025 regarding an opportunity for us to participate in an office of intermodal planning and investment project pipeline study for the city from Lee Highway to Tyler Avenue. which basically runs down Main Street. VDOT identified this area as one of the top study locations within the region we're in, which is called the Salem District, and staff has worked with stakeholders from the OIPI office, VDOT Regional Commission, and the MPO on the proposed study. It focused on improving the roadway and pedestrian safety, multimodal accessibility, so bicycles, pedestrians, and transit, and transportation demand management needs. The project recommendation from the study has been developed into a funding application for smart scale round seven. So this is how you get money from VDOT to pave and adjust roads and everything along that line. We would be looking at a resolution of support. It does not obligate the city to fund the project. Melissa, I know you've worked a lot on this. Do you have anything you want to share?

No, Mayor. We had had over the last six months had a number of opportunities for the community to provide input. So this has been out in the public. Like you said, it does just give us permission to go ahead and submit the application. So we don't know the cost of the project or anything like that or city's obligation if we were to approve. But I just want to be able to submit the application.

Todd, do you have any additional thoughts or are you good with it like it is? I'm good with it like it is. Okay, and just for people's clarification, this is, again, from basically the intersection of Main Street Memorial Bridge East, and so it provides a little work in that corridor for safety. Council, do you all want to make a motion to approve the smart scale application? Do we have a motion?

We have a motion. Do we have a second?

Second. Motion to second. Any discussion? All in favor, please respond by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. Fiscal year 2027 chemical bid. The water treatment plant received bids for one of the significant chemicals, polyaluminum chloride, used as a coagulant in our treatment process of potable water. Suppliers of this chemical are very limited, and we received a bid from Kimara for... 33.6 cents per liquid pound and a bid from U.S. Alco for just a penny or so, or a hundredth of a penny less than that. The cost of these chemicals is included as part of the fiscal year 2027 annual budget. City staff has reviewed this. They recommend the approval of the award to USALCO. Council, do you all have any questions? Do we have a motion to approve? Do we have a motion? Do we have a second? Motion is second. Any discussion? All in favor, please respond by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right, now we have several appropriations here. What I'd like to do is discuss them all quickly, kind of go through them, see if anybody has any questions, kind of explain what they are, and let's approve them all at once so we can get through this grouping. They are all for fiscal year 2026. This is money that has been expended, and we need to now go back and appropriate it. Would you start us off and then we will go line by line into what each of these are. And I know social services is here. If you all want to go on over to the podium, we're going to ask you about several that come up here in just a second. So Todd, get us rolling.

So to summarize, these are FY26 appropriations. I'm going to defer to Vicki and Keith on the Department of Social Services, but I do think it's interesting to point out that the Aranzi appropriation, that's a joint venture between the city and and it's just a good example of how collaboration can help local businesses and job creation. So that was funded half by the state, half by the city.

Absolutely. And that's $25,900 for that Commonwealth Opportunity Fund. Okay, we have several here in a row, Comprehensive Services Act funding, Medicare expansion, social services grants, and social services administrative state funding. What can you all share about that?

So those funding streams have various local match rates. Medicaid expansion has zero local money. I guess the highest local match rate is 20%, otherwise it's 15.5%, so the typical state reimbursement rate. And on there you'll have auxiliary grant. That's the money that goes to pay for people who live at Fairview Home and can't live on their own and need support of an assisted living facility, so that's an example of how that money is used. Dick Harshberger and I sit on those boards, and right now, Radford has the second highest population at Fairview Home, so those funds are being used, and the people there, residents, are being well taken care of.

What's the cost to the city for that?

auxiliary grants um that's 20 local match uh whatever that number is times about 20 percent um the administration one uh it's a 15.5 match okay and by giving us that 15.5 match on that that is stopping the city from having to spend something called pass-through which would require a 67 match So it's a big savings if you can just give us extra money in a different pot of money so we don't have to spend other money.

And the city gets a better reimbursement rate.

So it's not that we're spending extra money. We're just changing the funding stream of where those costs have already been paid for. CSA administration that pays for a small portion of the CSA coordinator salary. The CSA coordinator works with children that are at risk. Some of the children are also school children that are placed in private day placement. Some of them are foster children and different various placements.

And for that, you said there is a local match for the $13,000 or not?

Is that the CSA? Yeah. I think it's about 25% local match. It's mentioned in your handout. It actually shows the local match somewhere.

Okay, okay. So basically what I'm looking at here, if we are able to do these for the CSA, it's about $2,600 additional, the cities contributing, not quite with the add in the total, but that's approximate. 12,000 for the social services auxiliary, if that's a 20% match on that, and then 4,500 for the social services administrative. Are we able to accommodate that, Todd?

Real quick, just for clarification, these have already been expended. We're just making an appropriation ordinance for last year, so I don't know if it's a matter of if we can afford it, because we've already done so, correct?

But do we have to find additional money for that, or have we already spent it?

We have. There is pass-through money that we have not spent. because of vacancies in the agency. So, what we're doing is we're giving up the pass-through money which requires a 67% local match. So, we're giving, I don't remember the exact dollar amount, we're going to give up like $30,000 of pass-through that we didn't spend that will give us the local match money to pay for the other programs.

So the main piece I wanted to talk about was were we going to have to find additional money. So what it sounds like is we will not. That's correct. Okay. That's good news.

All right, great. And thank you all so much. Are there any other questions for social services while we have them at the podium? Nope. Okay.

And then we have a $1 million reclass budgeted personnel savings. And I know we've got to go back. I do recognize I skipped over item 10, but I'll go back to that. For appropriation ordinance 1815.46, the budget was built on the assumption we would have about a million dollars in personnel savings. It's actually likely exceeded that. Since it was not known at the time which departments or funds would generate the savings, the entire amount was budgeted just in the general fund. This aligns the budget to the actual. Todd, do you have anything else you want to share about that?

No. That's summarized very well. I will say that's the million dollars that was budgeted as a credit back to the budget. As we work through the numbers, expect that to grow higher as far as the savings that we achieve from payroll cuts. It's going to be much higher than that.

Okay, Councilor, are there any additional questions?

I just think I'll just follow up on that question. So we are trending much higher than the one million that we projected? That's correct. Okay. Are you starting to see that carry over into this fiscal year as well where we've held the...

We carried over, I believe the one million was based on a 17 employees assumption that 17 employees would be, that 17 positions in the payroll would be reduced through attrition. And we have went, at one point reached as high as 34 in FY26, but we've carried forward into fiscal year 27, 24 vacancies. So yes, that number, We saved it in FY26, and we will continue to have that savings that's there going into 27. The 27 budget was built around that.

Thank you.

Council, we have appropriation ordinance 1815.41 in the amount of $25,900, 1815.42 in the amount of $13,506, 1815.43 in the amount of $75,217, 1815.44 in the amount of $61,862, 1815.45 in the amount of $29,169, 1815.46 in the amount of $1 million. Are there any further questions or concerns or do we have a motion to adopt those appropriation ordinances? Motion to approve. So we have a motion. Do we have a second?

Second.

Motion and a second. All in favor, please respond by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Having heard four affirmative votes, we can dispense with a second reading as so desired. Is there a motion to dispense with a second reading?

So moved.

We have a motion. Do we have a second? Second. Motion to second. Any further discussion? All in favor, please respond by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. Going back to item number 10, the right-of-way vacation for West Main and Rock Road West. Gary Duncan, who has GAD management, has submitted his request to vacate a portion of the right-of-way located at the corner of West Main Street and Rock Road. A public hearing was held on June 9th. Staff requested City Council appoint a three-person board of viewers who are charged with the responsibility of examining this request and making written recommendations to City Council to any inconvenience that results from discontinuing this right away. We have reached out to Bill Fleischer, Jennifer Bondurant, and Abram Williams. They've all agreed, so we need a motion to adopt these folks as our Board of Viewers. Do we have a motion to do so?

So moved.

We have a motion. Do we have a second? Second. A motion and a second. Any further discussion? All in favor, please respond by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? And thank you to Bill and to Jennifer and to Abram for doing that. Okay. So that was a mega agenda this evening. Todd, what do you have for us this evening?

I have just a few updates this evening. With regards to finance, staff continues to make steady progress on the FY25 audit. I know we talked about the forensic audit, but we are still working on the fiscal year 2025 audit. Staff's made great progress. That is nearing the end of its, or at least the end of its process cycle. So we have a draft and anticipate having it ready in August. I just want to say that I'm most appreciative for staff and their hard work on all of these audits that are going on right now. I know it's been a lot of work, but they've done a great job and rallied together to get all those documents together and get everything submitted. We also continue working with the APA and our financial consultants as we move the city forward. While there's still work to do, we continue making measurable progress toward restoring the city's financial stability. I just will briefly mention earlier, we finished FY26 two payments behind to AP. I do think that's significant progress, but I would just like to express cautious optimism. We're not out of the woods yet. We can't have any missteps. We're still watching every step we take, but it is measurable progress and I'm glad to be able to report that. And as I report that, I do want to thank all city staff because we wouldn't have been able to do that without city staff taking on what they have done. We have reduced payroll, and I've seen quite a few department directors step up and be able to accomplish more with less. And I think that's encouraging, it's inspiring. So I just wanna thank staff for being able to do that. And I'm pleased to report measurable progress, but also I just wanna, like I said, cautious optimism moving forward. Operations, the automated mower, that's been put into service and we've completed training. We're starting to use that more and more. Just wanted to talk briefly about it and our ultimate plan for using it. We're gonna use it to mow all of our athletic fields. And if we use it for our athletic fields, that means our mowing crew doesn't have to mow those fields. And if they're not mowing those fields, we may be able to ship them to some of these others where we have mowing contracts. So the city has approximately $28,000 annually that we have in mowing contracts that if we were able to eliminate those, the return on investment for the automated mower is less than a year and a half. So we anticipate, fingers crossed, that it should pay for itself. And not only pay for itself, but it can You know, the mowing quality, it's gonna be, it's automated, so it's gonna be consistent. It can also do things that we really can't do by hand. It can mow designs in the field, it can mow a logo in the field. You know, if we wanna do that, we can do it. But I just expect it to increase quality and be more efficient and cost less in the long term. So that's just one example of how we wanna move forward with automation. When and where we can, automation can save money and it can improve quality. Economic development, I mentioned Aranzi. I'd just like to thank staff for all of their work on administering the city's grant portfolio and working on economic development and supporting our existing businesses. I just think Aranzi's a good example of creating incentives and working with the state, managing those, and getting projects in place that can help businesses and create jobs. Transportation, I'd like to recognize the work of our engineering, planning, public works staff, along with our regional partners at VDOT, in preparing the smart scale application before council tonight, or bringing that before council tonight. The approval does not commit the city financially, as you stated earlier, but it does position us to compete for future transportation improvements that, you know, can enhance safety um transportation safety and the quality of our of our transportation infrastructure so just wanted to point that out um uh community partnerships i want to speak to that just briefly uh we continue to strengthen partnerships through community agreements uh i think the agreement we saw tonight with the uh radford university and the health clinic and the dmv select program I think that those expand services and make more services available to the residents of our community. And I just think that's a value add and it's a quality of life value add. So just wanted to point to those and everyone involved in those. I think they're great programs and I think they benefit the community. I wanted to talk for a minute about Munis and our conversion to Munis. The project remains in the testing and troubleshooting phase. It's very close to being completed. City staff has completed the requested modifications to the, it's called the ProVal data export. I think I pronounced that correctly, but ProVal data export. And we're waiting on Tyler Technologies, that's Munis. We're waiting on them to complete several technical fixes within the Munis system. The primary issue involves the system messaging, display formatting for certain tax changes, and validation of the production environment, the data that's in there. There's some data in there that's legacy data that needs to be cleaned up in order to get fully converted over. Tyler has collected diagnostic information, they have it. We're just waiting on them to give us the results and to get us where we can go live. I'm hopeful, I can't make any guarantees, but I am hopeful that that conversion takes place by the end of July, no later than going into August. I can't guarantee that, but that's the goal. and it certainly seems achievable. So I just wanted to update everyone on that. And finally, just wanna thank staff again. I know we're starting a new fiscal year. Everything that you were able to do in FY26, I find it, I just think it's very impressive what some of our department directors have been able to do in their departments. And I look forward to starting FY27 with everyone.

Thank you, Todd. I did want to come back to a couple of things that you said with the noticeable progress. I think that's significant for us to consider. One of the reasons that we've had some challenges is we've had to choose to finance some of our bills with Appalachian Electric Power. to be able to keep cash flow preserved. That's one of the real issues for the city is making sure that we keep cash on hand. And by doing that, that's been a way we've been able to maintain that cash flow. At one point, we were as high as six bills that were being financed and it's down to two. We would prefer zero, always. But that is demonstrable progress in about a year and a little bit of change. And I think that needs to be commended significantly. So we did want to continue to point that out. And as far as the savings go that we've talked about with the employee reductions. That has all been through attrition. I don't think we have laid anybody off for this. We haven't reduced salaries. There was a lot of commentary with that that that was going to need to be done, but I think that's an important piece to bring out as well, that so many people on our staff have stepped up, to take on additional responsibilities, to find more efficient ways to do things, and to continue to offer the greatest service to our community for the resources that we have available. That's stressful too, and we do appreciate that, and we wanna say thank you so much to all the employees. The other piece I just have to point out before we get away from this is our finance department. What a great job Trish and her team have done. I mean, it was a Herculean task to reimagine what we needed to do to get it back in line and to make sure we were moving in the right direction. The discussions with the APA, the work we're doing with Brown Edwards, all of those elements I think are so important. And you come down to this to say significant progress has been made for Radford's challenges. And I wanted to thank you for bringing those things forward. I'll have more later in the meeting, but I just wanted to highlight that as part of what you were saying. Kelly, what do you have for us this evening?

I want to thank city staff for all they did for the 4th of July. I think that to echo what Todd was saying, I really felt like that was us coming into a little bit more of our independence. I'm very proud where we've come. We've tackled some hard expenses and some tough choices, but I feel like us hosting that great event and it was a good turnout even though it was really hot and all of our citizens coming together. all of our staff working really hard that day. It was just, it gave me a sense of pride that what we're doing up here is changing things and really matters. So I appreciate everybody and I hope you guys feel the same way. A couple of things from my Joint Commission meeting. Summer at SALU has been going on. They have a couple more dates left. I wrote it down. Hold on. 725 from nine to five and then 87 from 11 to do is open to the public so you can paint, you can picnic, you can hike and fish and float and meditate or whatever you would like to do. It's a great space that's available for to go and use on those dates and times, so I encourage you to go do that. We are still working through the five-year strategic plan and giving recommendations and looking at that, so that's something that I feel like will help the city and the university. Community impact report is something else that we're working on that will be coming our way that I'll share with you more as it comes about. Community Fest is something that is coming up next month that we're very excited about. It's on the 22nd. I think we have 23 vendors available left, or no, is there 110 available and there's 23 left? Okay, sorry. I was writing notes furiously as I was so excited wanting to listen. Seven Food Trucks, we have a new logo mentioning our heart, which is very, very cool, heart and hands. There is a website if you would like to volunteer. This event happens because of volunteers. It's usually about 100, so if you'd like to volunteer, please go to the website or the Facebook page. and the city website also I think has a link to it as well. Congratulate Radford University on their second year at winning the Adventure College, so that's really great for them, really good tourism thing for us, so we're living where the adventure is, and that brings a lot of highlight to our community, so I think that was great. Enrollment is looking flat, so that's also good. What else do we have? We talked about the mobile health clinic, which we've looked at. Thank you very much for everything you guys are doing there. That sounds like a really great opportunity for everyone involved. National Trails Day went well. It surprised me that there was 74% community members there, so that was a really great thing that our local community went out and celebrated, so that was really good for us. Eric Plummer, who is the chief at RU, has written three books. If you'd like to read about his accomplishments, there's called Crisis Through the Door, Crisis at the Top, and then a new one called called Crisis in the Shadows, so if you'd like to pick up a summer read that's by a local artist, you could do that. And I think that's about it. Other than that, yeah, thank you to, oh, and Sarah at the Chamber of Commerce said that they have a new website, they've got a new member database, so that's great for all of our businesses around. I run the Audit Department for National Bank, so I know how difficult it is sending out the request list, but I'm also on the back end of having to turn in things. And so I can't imagine the laundry list of things that you guys have gotten and weeded through and the nitpicky seemingly questions that come out of those things. So I really do commend you guys for getting both of those done. I know that 28 recommendations seems like a lot just out of seven areas. But I want to stress that those are all good ideas for us, that we don't have to implement them all. They're just good tools for us to be able to look at things from a different perspective. So I'm proud that we're getting that information and we can add it to our already Six Sigma-ing and looking at all the departments and kudos to the department managers for stepping up and looking at things differently and accomplishing more with less. I think that's great. So I think all in all, it'll be good, even though it sounds terrible right now, that number that he said. I wouldn't take it that way, anyone, citizens or city employees. They're all good recommendations that we can definitely improve on. So I'm just proud of everything that we're doing and moving forward.

Thank you, Kelly. Jesse, what do you have?

I attended an amphitheater meeting, and we are so very close. We have the renderings now, and we're just kind of deciding the details like where the bathrooms and food trucks are going to be. So we are very, very close to seeing a very nice amphitheater in Radford on the water. And I want to thank our partners at RU for making that a reality for us. I had a Department of Social Services meeting, a CPMT meeting, and a slight tragic mishap at my house that i want to thank the community for helping me overcome i was on vacation and two of my dogs got out actually i only have two dogs and both of them ran away i was just so very impressed by how the community came together to help me find them and i just want to thank everybody that went out and on foot drones luckily they were both found safely one ended up in jail with adele so i'd like to thank adele for her help in helping me get that rascal home but i was so moved i was actually moved to tears i was literally halfway across the world when this happened and the support that i got from the community just reminded me of why i choose this place to be my home so thank you again to everyone for that We were mentioning Ironsi and I know that they have offered us an air purifier in the past. So we need to follow up on that because they really- And bring them in. Right. And so here I go again, corporate visits. You know I'm going to say our business site visits. We really need to get those going again because through those conversations, we were able to have conversations with Aranzi where they're like, we want to give you an air purifier. We want you to see how it works. We want to educate the community on it. So if we could get those back, I would love to see those going again. And remind everyone that we have the Mary Draper Ingalls Festival July 24th through the 26th. We hope to see everyone out there. It should be a lot of fun. It is every year. and a lot of work goes behind the scenes for that. So thank you to the Heritage Foundation for working so diligently to make sure that that is so popular every year. We get people from literally all over the world have showed up for this event. And also a little note on the 4th, I was able to visit some local businesses and I made a point just to go up and down Main Street a couple times and our little city really came alive. So we were out supporting not only the anniversary of our country, but also just supporting one another and our businesses. So we need to absolutely do more of that whenever we can, build it, they will come, this community shows up. So thank you to everyone who come out to make that a success and work behind the scenes to make that a success. And that's all I have, Mayor.

Very good, thank you. Seth, what do you have?

yeah i'll tie into that and just thank everyone from the parks and rec public works fire and ems i mean the whole list it literally takes pretty much every department to make the uh this year july 3rd event um go so you know it was a hot day but the fireworks were absolutely great it was it was good to see us come alive and i agree with jesse i Looking around town, there was a lot of people out and about, and it was a great day for the community. Hopefully some of our businesses made some money, and I think that a lot of memories were made, and it was a hopeful day. So I was glad to see that. It was a good day for Rafford. One thing that Todd, I was going to ask for an update on is the HVAC upgrade in the municipal building. Do we have it? And the reason I'm asking is if we do have to move anybody around for courts or the voting or anything like that. Do we have a strategic plan in place or what's the timeline looking like for that?

As far as the strategic plan, I do not have that. It doesn't mean that we don't have one. I just can't speak to it right now. It's my understanding that that project should be taking place when we get on their schedule. We would like to do it when it's more moderate temperatures. If we can get that done in like October, around that time frame, it would be best for the city. But ultimately, we're sort of at the mercy of the HVAC company as well.

Yeah, that makes sense. I agree with you. I think fall would probably be ideal if we were able to do it. Thank you. Also wanted to thank Melissa and all the other planning commission members because it has been a long and tedious process on our zoning rewrite and we're getting very close. And so I just wanted to, Melissa, I know that it's been been quite, yeah, several years. And so I appreciate her efforts as well as all the other planning commission members because it has, and Athie from being able to help us. It's definitely been a long process where we're getting near the end. And then Todd, I appreciate the update. There'll be much to say about that in the future and where we're going or where we've been and where we have headed. But it was nice to see us make some measurable progress. It's been a tough road to hoe. And there's still, I mean, you can see tonight, there's still tough decisions and conversations to be had because we're not out of the woods yet and we have to stay disciplined. Fatigue can't set in. We do have some measured progress, but we have a lot of work to do. But I have been very encouraged by the buy-in and the pride of some of our department heads, a lot of our staff, because that culture can be contagious, and to see that starting to take root is encouraging for Rafford's future, and I think you're doing a great job cultivating that, and again, it's very encouraging. From six payments to two payments is measurable progress, and I want to thank our finance department. I want to thank both you guys, and the whole, it's taken a lot to get there, and we have a long way to go, and I do think it's important to take time to acknowledge that, but then it's roll your sleeves up, back to work, because we do still have a long way to go. I just wanted to thank everybody's efforts. Yeah, that's it. Thank you.

Thanks, Seth. Guy, what do you have? I'm not going to take time to reiterate everything that everybody else has said. I did want to bring up the July 3rd event down at the park. My wife and I spent the whole time down there. It was good to be back down there. I thought the band wasn't like Fortune, but they were a good band. They played my kind of music, and I enjoyed it. I wanted to mention Charlie Goins, of course, is the director, but I think Donna Wolfe was the coordinator. head honcho on that thing, and I just appreciate the good job that she did, and I think everybody enjoyed it and liked seeing it happen again, so I hope it's on a new roll, and that's all I have.

Thanks, Guy, and I'll reiterate that as well. I wanted to say Charlie did a great job leading the effort along with Donna doing the work as well as the whole staff. There was a tremendous amount of work to pull off that event. It was absolutely wonderful. You know, July 4th Semi-quincentennial weekend celebration is a central part of the city, and everybody did a wonderful job. The fireworks were fantastic, and that was fabulous. Just a couple of thoughts. So since we last met, there was an article that appeared in several of the local media talking about how we got where we are. It was an opinion piece and where we are and what might happen. And there was a discussion about Radford's future. Would we be better off as a county? What would the tax rate look like? I appreciate all the opinion pieces that are shared and then the thoughts that everybody has because I think it's good for us to have these discussions. Just my personal point as I speak to this a little bit, nobody really knows exactly what things would look like should Radford, say, decide to revert to town status, ask to join a county. That's a negotiated process. So you can't really say it's 10 cents of a tax, 20 cents of a tax, a dollar of a tax. You don't know. And you don't know if... every debt that the city has would be taken on by a county and that some of the debt could be left with the town, so you'd have to service that. I will say there were some very good points to the article that I wanted to highlight that this is one piece of a very, very long process that goes back many decades where The city has been working through a lot of challenges as our economy changed, as we shifted away from some of our manufacturing base that existed. We still have amazing manufacturing in Radford. It's wonderful that we're talking about Aranzi this evening. That's one of the world leaders in air purification and engine motors. You look at the same with Regal Rexnord, Cole Morgan, and they're such a leader in motion control. They're wonderful things that happen, but it is good to reflect on the fact that the city has really changed significantly in the last 40 or 50 years, and those changes have resulted in some of the structural issues that we have as a community. Working to address those is no small task, and I think this council has spent a tremendous amount of time working with staff, working with everybody in the community who could work together to find a pathway to solutions we had hoped to have an economic development update tonight we had to push that off till august because there's a few things that we're trying to get together but in august we do plan to have that discussion and there's room for a lot of hope in the city there's a lot that's going to be happening in the last six months of twenty twenty six and the first six months of twenty twenty seven that should be moving us forward that economic development is a key factor so that we're not just talking about real estate tax. We're not just talking about fees. We're talking about a total picture that can allow this city to thrive. You've heard from several folks about the tourism piece, just like the semi-quincentennial weekend with July 3rd and 4th. That is a tremendous opportunity for the city, working with the amphitheater project, working with the riverfront and adventure activities. the path is there for the city. We just have to fully take advantage of it and move forward. I wanna say so much progress has been made with the Munis update and we're really appreciative of Todd and our entire IT team, very appreciative of our treasurer for all the work that she's done with that. That has been a major issue for the city for at least 15 years and more like decades. And I think that's a huge issue that once that is completed, that is moving quite a big mountain. Now, we're not done yet. We're almost there and we'll have an announcement for you when that is complete and an update. You know, Joy is doing a great job in the Treasurer's Office, and we thank you for that. Kelsey, you're doing a fantastic job in the Commissioner of Revenue's Office. There's so much about taxation that we have to try to understand as a locality, and it's really important that we up here on council get good information so that we can make the best possible decision. And it's not as simple as, well, what should the rate be? There's a whole lot of factors that come into play about how you collect it and what that does to a business or an individual. And so I think that's a big part of where we are. I wanted to explain my vote a little bit tonight on the 1% referendum. I feel like Radford has got so many moving parts, we're just not ready to move forward with that referendum. Now it has passed and council has approved it. And this is just David speaking to you in the community. But I think it is important that we look at ourselves holistically and really examine what taxes are we charging and why? Are we getting to our fiscal sustainability? And what are our liabilities and how do we work on that? All of that has to be pulled together because those are all dollars that impact all of us. And I recognize that. I want to say this progress we've made is incredibly important. But I wanna look at the cost of that progress too. For the city employees who stepped up and done extra work, oftentimes for no additional pay, or worked really hard to reimagine their areas to do more with less, that is a tremendous burden and we are so thankful for you for doing that. The ball has not been dropped in this community with all of those efficiencies that have been found and we're so appreciative that people have stepped up to do that. I do think that the citizens of this city are to be commended for their support. The taxes, the fees, it's so difficult but it's what gets us in a position to be stronger. The issue is the options that are there if we don't do those things are so much worse and could be so much more expensive and what we lose is so much more expensive than the trying to find the savings where we can. So everybody's working really hard and the good news is positive things are happening. We do have much more to say as we move forward, and we will continue to talk about the wonderful things going on in Radford. We do need to go into a closed session tonight to discuss some things. So we're going to take a pause to do that. And Seth, if you will take us into closed session, then we'll be back after a quick discussion and go from there.

I'd like to make a motion. to convene a closed meeting for discussion or consideration of the investment of public funds where competition or bargaining is involved, where if made public initially, the financial interests of the governmental unit would be adversely affected, specifically to discuss electric standby service tariff, contract for appraisal services, and solid waste services, Virginia Code 2.2-3711 , Discussion, consideration, or interviews of prospective candidates for employment, assignment, appointment, promotion, performance, demotion, salaries, disciplining, or resignation of specific public officers, appointees, or employees of any public body. An evaluation of performance of departments specifically to discuss city managers evaluation, Virginia Code 2.2-3711A1. All right, we have a motion. Do we have a second?

Second.

Second. We have a motion to second. Any discussion? All in favor, please respond by saying aye. Aye. All right. Any opposed? Well, we've got to go into closed session.