City Council - Regular Meeting

Urgent investigation into alleged abuses in the Sudanese city of El Ubaid. It warns of a growing risk of mass atrocities as the rapid support forces surround the city.

Richard Kagowe. They have been launching drone strikes which have been targeting civilian infrastructures, hospitals, schools and even markets. And what has happened is that children have also been caught up in this intensive fighting.

And in Britain, Buckingham Palace has contradicted an announcement by Prince Harry's team that he'll be staying there when he visits London this week. Here's Noor Nanji.

Royal sources say that Prince Harry had not formally responded to the offer of accommodation at a royal residence by the deadline, which was the end of last week. And they say that he was told over the weekend that he could no longer stay at Buckingham Palace.

Prince Harry's spokesperson described the decision as disappointing. I'm Tomasin Debesai at the BBC in London.

Support for NPR comes from this station and from the Kauffman Foundation, providing access to opportunities that help people achieve financial stability, upward mobility, and economic prosperity, regardless of race, gender, or geography. Kauffman.org. And from the Lodestar Foundation, inspired by the principle that helping those in need is a path to a happier, healthier and more meaningful life. Learn more at lodestarfoundation.org. This is NPR.

It's Morning Edition on Radio IQ. I'm Jeff Bossert. Recognition of drug addiction as a public health emergency rather than a matter of law enforcement has gained greater acceptance in recent years. But when Hope Initiative was formed in Roanoke a decade ago, the idea didn't have a great deal of support. Cardinal News health reporter Emily Schaubacher has written about the origins of Hope Initiative and what the program offers to the community. She spoke with Fred Eccles.

Emily, what does the HOPE Initiative provide for people who are struggling with addiction?

The HOPE Initiative works to connect people to treatment options. So when someone calls in and says, I'm ready to get help, but I need help getting into treatment, they will be paired with a peer recovery specialist, which is somebody who has lived the same life, who has struggled with addiction previously, and they go through a certification so that they're able to help others. And they help them with basic things, helping them sign up for Medicaid or helping them secure transportation or get their driver's license. All of these things that you kind of need in order to enter a medical facility. And then they also help them identify a treatment option that works for them. Some people might need, you know, like an outpatient option because they have kids they need to take care of. Somebody might need something a little bit more intensive or another town or things like that.

Ten years ago, this view of addiction was not widespread, not particularly popular. How did it come to be adopted in Roanoke?

The former police chief, his name is Chris Perkins, had a vision. He was like, we really need to start thinking about the opioid crisis and just drug addiction in general as a public health emergency. Because at the time, in 2016, we really were looking at it as a public safety problem. And his police officers were just out there every night arresting people who were using drugs, sometimes arresting the same person over and over again. And it just was not making a dent in the opioid crisis that we were facing. So it's like if we look at this a different way as a public health emergency and we start directing some of our resources towards getting people help, then we can maybe actually start to turn the tide here. And so he got together with some of the other local safety nets to kind of start kicking around some ideas. The executive director at the Bradley Free Clinic was at that initial meeting and she attended because she had lost her son to a drug overdose. She wanted to know more. She wanted to understand more and why this happened and try to help. So all of these safety nets kind of came together to make a plan.

If success can be measured by growth, then Hope Initiative appears to have made a significant difference.

When they first started, they served about 45 people in their first year, and now they serve just about 1,000 people on an annual basis.

Emily, you mentioned one of the peer recovery specialists, Cynthia Haley. What's her story?

Cynthia is now over at the Bradley Free Clinic. She does work with the Hope Initiative. She is just about hitting her six-year mark of recovery. And she had a decades-long active addiction. She ended up doing a stint in jail for 10 months. And when she got out, she was ready to find help. And so some family members of hers helped connect her to the Hope Initiative. She got into a treatment center that worked for her. And when she finished with that, she became a peer recovery specialist. with Bradley Free Clinic. And now she is just about finished her master's degree in clinical mental health counseling. Her whole career and her whole life is now going to revolve around helping people who have kind of lived the same life that she has and have had the same struggles that she has had.

Emily Schabacher reports for CardinalNews.org. I'm Fred Eccles.

Cardinal News is a nonprofit online independent news organization covering Southwest and Southside Virginia.

More and more Radio IQ and WVTF music donors age 70 and a half or older have used Qualified Charitable Distributions, or QCD, to support us. This popular option allows donors to exclude charitable contributions from their taxable income. and while still meeting the required minimum distribution from their IRA. If you have yet to take the required minimum distribution from your IRA this year, ask your broker if a QCD to WVTF and Radio IQ is right for you. Thanks for your support.

Support for Radio IQ comes from Commonwealth Savers. Its tuition track portfolio allows families to save for college with savings designed to keep pace with inflation. Details at invest529.com. And from Charlottesville's Paramount Theater. Summer movies at the Paramount continues with the portrait of Pete Seeger down by the Riverside, July 25th. Tickets and schedule information at theparamount.net.

We're warming up, but not like last week. We have right now 74 degrees in Roanoke, Martinsville, 77. Charlottesville and Fredericksburg have 78 degrees, 79 in Richmond. Highs in the low 80s to low 90s today in areas east. Good chance for late afternoon showers and storms. More showers and storms likely tomorrow afternoon. Highs in the low 80s to low 90s for the Danville area.

The rising star in chip making you may not have heard of. Marketplace Morning Report is supported by Bank of America, sponsor of the FIFA World Cup 2026. Dedicated to offering solutions to help businesses meet their goals locally and globally. More at bankofamerica.com slash gamechangers.

From Marketplace, I'm Sabree Beneshour, in for Kimberly Adams. NVIDIA and Intel, you've heard of. Maybe AMD and Broadcom, too. But there's a lesser-known chipmaker that's riding the AI wave all the way into the NASDAQ, where it's about to start trading. That would be the Korean company SK Hynix. It makes specialized chips that are in very short supply right now. And that has sent the company's stock soaring on South Korea's exchange. Now, traders in the U.S. will have easy access to this stock, too.

Marketplace's Nova Sappho has more. SK Hynix makes memory chips and is the dominant source of a particular kind of silicon called high-bandwidth memory, HBM chips. They're in everything AI-related. NVIDIA uses them in its chipsets. Other tech companies building data centers need them as well. The demand for these chips has been so great that it's led to an intensifying global shortage of memory chips. And chip makers are cashing in. SK Hynix's operating profit was up five-fold over 12 months, according to its latest earnings report. Its stock is up 250% so far this year. At one point last month, it even overtook Samsung, a South Korea's most valuable listed company. While some analysts worry about how long the chip boom can last, SK Hynix is hoping to raise $28 billion from a U.S. stock sale to build more chipmaking capacity back in Korea. It is scheduled to debut on the Nasdaq Exchange on Friday. I'm Nova Safo for Marketplace.

The World Cup has given a massive assist to prediction markets. The value of all the predictions on Kalshi hit $31 billion in June, a 70% increase over May. The World Cup reversed the fortunes of Polymarket. Its volume had been declining but turned around in June and hit $11 billion. That's a record. All right, let's do the numbers. Dow futures are down 36 points. That's less than 10,000%. S&P futures are up 0.4%. NASDAQ futures are up 1.2%. The yield on the 10-year Treasury is 4.47%.

Marketplace Morning Report is supported by Palo Alto Networks. Palo Alto Networks delivers comprehensive cybersecurity protection while automating cyber defense to stop threats so organizations can thrive. Learn more at paloaltonetworks.com. And by Schwab. At Schwab, investors get choices ranging from self-directed investing to full-service wealth management all in one place. Learn more at schwab.com.

This week the leaders of NATO are meeting in Turkey for a summit and one of the big issues on the agenda is defense spending. The Trump administration and most US administrations before it have long complained that Europe relies too heavily on the US for its security and they've pressed NATO allies to spend more on their own militaries. The Trump administration, though, has taken those complaints to a whole new level, to the point where the U.S. commitment to Europe's defense has been called into question. Some European countries have increased military spending and promised to strengthen their own defense capabilities. But how much has actually changed? Here to tell us more is Dr. Giuseppe Spatafora, a policy analyst at the EU Institute for Security Studies. Welcome. Thank you, Sabri. It's a pleasure to be here. So first off, when we talk about European defense spending, what are we talking about specifically?

So usually what is refers to is to the pledge that member states make or allies make of NATO to spend a portion of their GDP on defense. And this has been the discussion at least since 2014, when NATO member states, NATO allies agreed to spend 2% of their GDP on defense. So again, it's 2% to fund their own armed forces, not to fund NATO. And since last year, the pledges increased to 5%.

So, you know, pledges are one thing. Has Europe actually changed the amount or proportion it actually spends on defense?

Yes, I would say absolutely that. Europe as a whole has really increased its defense spending. Of course, there's been a lot of discussion of whether this is a result of the Trump administration's pressure, but I would say that this has been going on since much earlier, at least since the beginning of Russia's full-scale war of aggression against Ukraine. For example, I can tell you there's been a 45% increase in European defense spending between 2022 and 2025, which is from about 300 billion euros to 436 billion euros last year. And there's expectation that this year the growth would be even bigger.

How much of that defense spending increase do you think is from pressure from the U.S. versus the fact that Russia literally invaded a country on Europe's doorstep?

Look, it's a combination. In fact, I believe in the past, there's actually research that showed that more pressure from the United States, sort of naming and shaming allies, has not worked in increasing defense spending. More recently, we cannot really tell what is the effect because, as you said, there's been this war. One element is that in 2024, all countries reached the 2% commitment, and that was before Trump came back into power. But then with the pressure from the United States, you can say that this has further increased the urgency of having to spend more on their own defense simply because the American security protection was no longer guaranteed.

So that's Europe. If we zoom out, is the U.S. concretely withdrawing defense resources from Europe?

There were fears at the beginning that the United States would just immediately pull out a significant amount of forces from Europe. Now, that has not happened directly. And let's say that the withdrawal hasn't been that major and not that sudden. There was one from Romania last year. And then earlier this year from Germany, at the same time, there has been a withdrawal of certain capabilities. So not just troops, surveillance drones, some aerial capabilities, one third of F-16 and F-15 fighter jets will probably be removed. And the point of this is that it wasn't a major withdrawal, but it was partial and without end. The point is that Europeans cannot see when it's over.

Dr. Giuseppe Spatafora is a policy analyst at the EU Institute for Security Studies. Thank you so much. Thank you. My pleasure. In New York, I'm Sabri Beneshour with the Marketplace Morning Report. From APM American Public Media.

I'm Tanya Mosley. And I'm Juana Summers. We've got your back when it comes to reporting the news. And one of the things this station counts on to keep it all going?

Contributions.

Including that vehicle you no longer need. Donate it. Help us bring you the news you count on. Learn more by visiting this station's website. And thanks.

Go to RadioIQ.org and click the vehicle donation banner at the top of the page.

You're listening to Radio IQ on WVTF Roanoke, WRIQ Charles City, Richmond, WVTU Charlottesville, WVTW Charlottesville, WVTR Marion, WISE FM Wise, WQIQ Spotsylvania, WIUR Lexington, WEHC Emory, HD3 of WURV Richmond, and on 92.5 Richmond and 94.9 Fredericksburg. Radio IQ, a listener-supported community service of Virginia Tech, on your smart speaker and online at radioiq.org.

Welcome to NewsHour from the BBC World Service. I'm Regina Vaidyanathan. More than 17 people are killed in Russian ballistic missile strikes on the Ukrainian capital. President Zelensky's called for more air defences from allies.

When we see the ballistics approaching the city, you should know, like, the first thing that comes to my mind is that, OK, so I have, like, 10 seconds and then I can hear.

More on the red card row at the World Cup after President Trump phones FIFA's boss to reverse a ban on Team USA's top striker. And Australia's Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, apologises to singer Kylie Minogue after comments he made on a podcast.

I think it does betray a deep, laddish culture in Australian politics that is clearly going to take much, much more effort and work to stamp out.

All of those stories coming up after the BBC News.

BBC News with Emily Thomas. Ukraine's air force says a serious shortage of interceptor missiles meant that none of the 23 ballistic missiles Russia launched at Kiev overnight were shot down. At least 17 people were killed in and around the capital. The mayor of Kiev, Vitaly Klitschko, spoke about these latest attacks.

Regarding Putin's claims that the targets were military facilities, what we see instead is the destruction of residential buildings and apartments in our city. Among the dead and injured are women, children, and elderly people. There is no other way for this than genocide. We are seeing widespread destruction, and we cannot rule out that more victims may still be trapped beneath the rubble.

At least 25 people have been killed and more than 100 injured in two days of prison riots in western Sri Lanka. They were sparked by a clash in the Gombo prison, reportedly over an inmate informing on a drug trafficking operation. The clash on Sunday left two dead and dozens injured. Good morning and welcome to our 9 o'clock a.m. City Council informal session. City Council meetings will be televised live and replayed on RVTV Channel 3 on Thursdays at 7 o'clock p.m. and Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

and video stream through YouTube Live at youtube.com slash Roanoke VA. Council meetings are offered with closed captioning for the deaf or hard of hearing. This time, I'll invite our clerk, Ms. McCoy, to please call the roll.

Ms. Powers.

Here.

Mr. Hagan.

Here.

Ms. Sanchez-Jones. Here. Vice Mayor McGuire. Here. Mr. Nash.

Here.

Mr. Vollison.

Here.

And Mayor Cobb.

And it is good to see everyone. I hope everyone's 4th of July was fun and exciting. I know it was hot. And we had a couple of rainstorms that could have lingered a little longer. Yeah, glad to be here. So we have several items for action this morning. First is a communication from my office requesting that council convene in a closed meeting. to discuss vacancies on certain authorities, boards, commissions, and committees appointed by the council pursuant to section 2.2-3711A1, Code of Virginia as amended. All of the boards and commissions that we're considering vacancies for are listed in the agenda for reference. I'll entertain a motion and second.

So moved.

Second. Thank you, Council Members Hagan and Volusen. Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll?

Ms. Powers? Aye. Okay. Mr. Hagan? Aye. Ms. Sanchez-Jones? Aye. Vice Mayor McGuire? Aye. Mr. Nash? Aye. Mr. Bollison? Aye. And Mayor Cobb?

Aye. And the motion is adopted. Second is a communication from the City Attorney requesting that City Council convene in a closed meeting to consult with legal counsel pertaining to actual litigation regarding a potential settlement where such consultation or briefing in an open meeting would adversely affect the negotiating or litigating posture of the public body. Pursuant to Section 2-3711A7, Code of Virginia is amended. I'll entertain a motion and second. So moved.

Second.

Thank you, Council Members Vollison and Powers. And Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll?

Ms. Powers? Aye. Mr. Hagan? Aye. Ms. Sanchez-Jones? Aye. Vice Mayor McGuire? Aye. Mr. Nash? Aye. Mr. Vollison? Aye. Mayor Cobb?

Aye. And the motion is adopted. And thirdly, a communication from the city attorney requesting that city council convene in a closed meeting to consult with legal counsel employed by a public body regarding specific legal matters requiring the provision of legal advice by such counsel regarding a proposed encroachment permit. Pursuant to section 2.2-3711A8, Code of Virginia as amended, I'll entertain a motion and second.

Move the motion.

Second. Thank you, Council Members Powers and Vollison. Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll?

Ms. Powers? Aye. Mr. Vollison? I'm sorry. Mr. Hagan?

Aye.

Ms. Sanchez-Jones? Aye. Vice Mayor McGuire? Aye. Mr. Nash? Aye. Mr. Vollison?

Aye.

And Mayor Kopp?

Aye. And the motion is adopted. This time I'm going to recess our City Council meeting and turn the meeting over to Vice Mayor McGuire to lead us through our legislative committee.

Thank you, Mayor. It's my pleasure to call to order the July 6th meeting of the Roanoke City Legislative Committee. And I will ask our clerk to call the roll.

Reagan.

Here.

Ms. Sanchez-Jones. Here. Mayor Cobb. Here. Mr. Nash. Here. Mr. Vollison. Here. Ms. Powers. Here. Ms. Appel. Here. And Ms. Trigg. And Chairman McGuire. Keep forgetting to call your name. I'm here.

Thank you, Ms. McCoy. Today we have, and thank you, Ms. Appel, for being with us. It's great to see you. We have with us our state legislative advocate, Mr. Preston Bryant, who is going to give us an update on where our state budget sits currently. We're then going to hear briefly from our city attorney with an update on where some of the state legislation that has gone into effect in July 1st, give an overview of that. And then we will get into some updates on some of our upcoming meetings. But at this time, I think I need a motion, please, to approve the minutes from our June 1st meeting. So moved. I'll give you a second. Second. Okay, thank you, Councilman Hagan. Was that you, Mayor? Or Councilman Nash. Thank you. And I'll ask the clerk to please call the roll.

Mr. Hagan?

Aye.

Ms. Sanchez-Jones? Aye. Mayor Cobb?

Aye.

Mr. Nash.

Aye.

Mr. Vollison.

Aye.

Ms. Powers. Aye. Ms. Appel. Aye. And Chairman McCoy.

Aye. Thank you, Ms. McCoy. And at this time, I will gladly turn it over to Mr. Preston Bryant. We appreciate you being here with us today. Can you hear us? Yes, Mr. Chair. All right. Well, you have the mic. We'll turn it over to you. Yes, sir. Can you hear us? I can barely hear you, Mr. Chairman. Well, we can hear you just fine. If you can hear me, we are going to hand it over to you, and you can proceed with the update. We can hear you just fine. I'm not sure why I'm not coming through.

Yes, Mr. Chairman. I can hear you fine now. Thank you very much.

Okay. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, thank you. It's a pleasure to be with you. So, just to continue asking roughly $100,000,000,000,000 per year, 200,000,000,000,000 over 2 years. And there is now roughly 30,000 or so state employees. That's just a review. Next slide.

Ms. Carini, I think, followed this fairly closely and can speak to it at a later time. I note that the Greater Roanoke Workforce Development Board received a half million dollars to mitigate the ongoing chronic health care labor challenges in the area. And then there was an item that appeared sort of late in the process. Next slide. This is a language only amendment, but it's of perhaps interest. There's an item that directs the Secretary of Transportation to evaluate options for accelerating large-scale improvements in the I-81 corridor. This is only a language amendment. It does not speak to specific sections of I-81. You'll notice that it is envisioning a public-private partnership I would assume this is a hot lanes or a tight division vision. And this is a quick turnaround. This is only a six-month study just in time for the beginning of the next session. So the Department of Transportation will no doubt be watching this. Next slide. Just to note, this is the item that held up the entire budget, so I'll bring it to your attention. This is the resolution for the issue regarding the data center sales tax exemption. The data center sales tax exemption The General Assembly continues to prepare for and put certain funds away for contingency, both political and economic uncertainty. HR1 refers to the one big beautiful bill, HR1. So there is $225 million set aside just for future unknowns. And then there are various funds for health insurance, funds set aside for contingency or otherwise addressing federal cutbacks. This is $1 billion that could have otherwise been spent elsewhere, but it's being held in reserve for uncertainty, so perhaps worth noting. Next slide. The next number of slides, I'll break down into specific budget Uh, certainly a city council interest area. Um, you should see that there is, um. 60Million dollars worth of housing initiatives. There are, um, 11Million dollars, almost 12Million dollars for eviction prevention and development. Should the city have any undeveloped industrial sites? I don't know that you do, but there's another $10 million in that for eligible assistance. And then I know the Clean Energy Innovation Bank has been of interest to city council, and there is $10 million over the biennium, I guess that's $5 million each year. Next slide. In the public education area, you'll note that there's $2 billion in new spending. That's new spending over and above the last biennium. It's about $720 billion There's another just over half a billion dollars in school construction grants, $160 million more than the just completed biennium. This is in addition to any 1% sales tax, local option sales tax increase that a locality may wish to impose, which I'll address a little bit later. But then the last bullet there, there's an ongoing joint subcommittee to review K-12 funding. The funding formula, consumer, the composite index, rather, are always areas to watch, especially in urban areas. And so this is just over a million dollars to continue that study, and this is something that no doubt Nordic City Schools will be watching closely. That is the joint subcommittee's work. Next slide. As I mentioned, the Tech Community School of Medicine bonding authority is in there. In the role of higher education authority, there's a provision there to replace all the windows in that building. And then the Virginia Tuition Assistance Grant is a state aid for those students attending private colleges such as North and Highlands, and that got a nice bump this year as well. Next slide. For the health and human resources area, I just briefly noted that Children's Services due to federal changes. So that's another little more than $200 million related to SNAP benefits. And you'll see that the free clinics and the area agencies on aging, local area agencies on aging, the local free clinics also getting funds as well. improvements. Next slide. I'll go to the next one, the second one. The stormwater local assistance fund, this $43.5 million is a record. It is a record single-year funding for the SLAAF program, which is a dollar-for-dollar match for local stormwater improvements. I know this has been an interest for your public works or public utilities department. The SLAAF funding is money for a couple of years to assess its environmental monitoring efforts and systems. Next slide. The public safety area. It does not say more specifically than that, so that's something we will have to look into. And then $6 million for sexual assault survivors and domestic violence support programs for local agencies. Next slide. The transportation area, I've already mentioned the I-81 item study, but there's $19 million And then the next slide is on, next slide is just on local government compensation support. So there's a three and a half percent salary increase for state supported local employees. So you can say there's money in there for this year and next year to support those positions. I think sometimes that carries supported positions, and then there's money additional for court-appointed counsel and public defender's offices and local offices there. Then the last two slides are matters of interest The next slide is the last one. have recently renovated or newly constructed schools in which they pay the issued debt. But it's a particular note that you cannot use this new revenue to pay down old debt wish to consider this for November. That's obviously City Council's decision. But if so, there's a lot of work to do between now and November to get that on the referendum. Mr. Chairman, that's my last slide. I hope this has been useful to you.

Thank you, Mr. Bryant. I thought that was very helpful and informative. I did have a question or two, but I will first see if anyone, my other colleagues have any questions or comments. Mr. Hagan.

So I have a couple of different questions, but I can take it as we go forward. So the first one is about the data center electric rate. The slides aren't numbered, so I apologize. But on this, it says the rate is one cent and one tenth of a cent. Is this in addition to what they currently pay, or is that what they're going to end up paying in the first place?

My understanding, Mr. Hagan, is this in addition to what they currently pay. There is an energy consumption tax on the books now, and this would be in addition to that, just for that data center class.

Okay. I have some other questions.

It does not impact other residences or

but if anybody wanted any other questions before we get to that any other question mr volison the question about the one percent sales tax referendum and has the county or i'm sorry not the county school board um has have you guys made a decision on on whether that would be beneficial for the city to do so basically what i'm asking is how do we move this forward um did we have to i think it would be great to be talking with our school board about what we want to do on this But I think if it is something that we want to do, that we should start to look at getting it into the November election.

I would be glad. Ms. Apel, please, if you want to respond to that. Yes.

Sure. Well, this only just became a reality, as you know. And so that's something that we have also a newly constituted school board that will only have our first meeting in about a week. So this is something that will be ongoing conversation. So as of right now, we weren't making any plans on, we were waiting to see what this outcome would be, but necessarily as we've talked extensively with school board meetings in the past, things that are gonna be a long-term investment for the schools, we would wanna make sure that we're very deliberate about how those capital projects would be best served, especially if it's gonna be using taxpayer monies. So we don't have a current plan because we didn't have something to plan on at this time, but it's definitely something that, you know, Dr. Sievert and I have been discussing that the new, you know, the board would be discussing on what would be the best way to move forward. And also that Mayor Cobb and I even just, you know, in passing, we're keeping an eye on on what to do to make sure that it is purposeful and strategic and, using monies wisely that would have a long-term investment. So I don't have a good right now answer, but it's definitely something to put a pin in and something that I think the board and council would be in longer-term communication about, you know, these are these kinds of projects so um maybe like a putting a pin in some of our joint council school board meetings because I know that both of our legislative uh asks have been to have that yes so yeah yep and we're always um in favor of local control so now we have local control and um obviously you know uh a referendum would uh come from you all so now now that we have that local control what's going to be the best avenue to do that in a joint manner for the city so thank you thank you miss apel i'll go next to miss uh powers and then i'll get mr nash after that

So this might be a question for Ms. Cronini, our attorney. As we are starting to talk about this 1% increase for our schools and as our schools start to prepare how they will use this, will we have to send something out or shouldn't we send something out so that our citizens are aware of what's going on so that before we get to the polls to vote, they would actually know how this money would be spent because that is some of the things that I hear is that, you know, we don't get things out soon enough for people to know really what it means if they, you know, to vote on something. So would there be, and would we have public hearings on this?

So, yeah, so I asked David Collins in my office to send y'all a memo and you got that on Thursday and he kind of outlined the entire process. If it is something that you want to pursue, we do need to act pretty quickly because it all needs to be ready for the referendum by August 14th. So, based on on your desire. We would bring a resolution to council on July 20th to start the process and we also discuss having a public hearing that night for this item so that the public can come and comment and we can kind of have that discussion with them. Um, so then it will go through a court process. There's a petition and an order, and that has to be done before the August 14th date and then it would get on the November referendum. If it passes in the November referendum, then we would have an additional process. We would have a public hearing for council to adopt the actual ordinance. approving the 1% so there are several steps that would have to be taken and public comment would be included in all of those and of course we work for the city manager's office and the communications office to to get that message out more fully this would go in effect immediately after council approves it or when it would it be July 1 or I think it's July 1, 2027.

I think that's what I read, but I want to make sure I read so much that I didn't get my dates confused.

Good morning. Under the statute, it cannot be effective any earlier than 120 days of the first day of the month, 120 days after council passes the ordinance. Mr. Collins?

Very good question. Ms. Powers, any follow-ups to that? Ms. Powers?

No, I just want to make sure that our citizens understand that we are going to make sure that we get information out to them. I've gotten a lot of questions on what that means. People have read it, and they just want to know, well, how's the money going to be used? So I think we need to make sure that we have that out to our taxpayers before we ask them to go to the polls and vote on something that's going to increase the tax for them. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Ms.

Powers. Mr. Nash? My question, and Mr. Preston might know this, but... are the funds from the 1% tax for school capital, is that able to be accumulated over time? Or does it have to be used? Because when it's taxed to the locality, the tax doesn't come directly to us. It goes to the state, and then they redistribute it to us into an account. And so is there any language about when that money has to be used? Or is a school taxable? division able to stack that money up and say, hey, you know, we don't have any real capital projects right now, but in five years from now, we might want to build a third high school, and so we want to stack this money up for the next five years. We have a nice little nest egg going into that endeavor. Is that possible?

Mr. Chairman, my understanding is, yes, that it can be accumulated over time, but I would defer to council for a more specific answer.

I believe that is our understanding too. Yes, that it can be accumulated.

Think back, Mr. Hagan. So this might be a joint question to ask to Mr. Bryan and Ms. Carini. In the actual way that this is done with the 1%, is there any checks on that, say this passes a future, and I'm going to use Board of Supervisors in this scenario because I don't I don't want to assume that we would ever do this, but let's say a board of supervisors of some county wanted to reduce the amount of money that was given to the schools by whatever the commiserate amount for the sales tax occurs. Is there any checks in this that would prevent, say, that board of supervisors from actually doing that? Or is it something that is just to the discretion of the governing body?

That's a good question, Mr. Chair. perhaps these details, but I think there is a provision in there on what's called local maintenance of effort, meaning you cannot use this money to offset or you should not use this money to offset the local taxes. I think there's a local maintenance of effort provision there, but I would defer to counsel on that.

I have not looked at that language yet. I don't know if David has looked at that yet. I won't put him on the spot.

My inclination is that the monies can only be used for construction or renovation and no other purpose. So it couldn't be used. So that's my answer on that.

Thank you, Mr. Collins. Good question, and perhaps we can put a pin in that, too, just to confirm and look into that. Ms. Sanchez-Jones.

I don't know if this is a question for Mr. Bryan or for the schools. There is, let me see, $28 million for students at risk. Do you know the programs that those are going to go into? The public education funding. Thank you.

I would refer to others. I do not know the details of that particular grant program.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Sanchez-Jones. Ms. Appel, do you want to speak to that?

It sounds like we don't have the CALC tool from the state yet to know exactly what the particulars of the budget are.

And so and how those will line item out for the schools Also the 4% increase for the SOQ recognized instructional aid and support That's a school has to put up the money or the money is going to come before that Those races are given to the employees So our budget as presented to council include to City Council included a 2% raise We were going

trying to be conservative with the estimates for between the two competing budgets at the time and that was what we felt comfortable with are also being able to cover the local match for the the portion there so that's what we would be doing for this current fiscal year and then obviously this is part of the biennium so part of the budget development for fiscal year 28 that would be the next discussion of how much can we afford to make sure that we're compensating our teachers appropriately for retention and recruitment purposes and things like that with the rest of the items that go into budget development. So did that answer your question? Yes, thank you.

Ms. Appel, Ms. Sanchez-Jones? Mayor?

Thank you, Vice Mayor. A couple of follow-up questions. One is on the referendum. If we didn't go the route of doing the November referendum, can we schedule this any time as a locality? And the reason I'm asking this is because July 20th and August 14th are very quick. And I want to make sure that the school board, school administration has enough time to really look at this and for us to have shared communication about this so that we're not rushing something. I understand this is a really great opportunity for us that we've both been advocating for So I'm curious with the same Timeline process that you described occur whenever we decided to have the referendum whether it was a special called referendum or whether it happened on a Year from now or I'm just curious about what that timeline might look like or if there'd be any variation to it

That's correct. I only looked at the process just to if if council desired to get it done quickly, how we would have to get there. But yes, you can bring it at any other time. If it was a November referendum, then it would follow kind of that same timeline. If we wanted a special called, I would have to look at those timelines further.

Thank you. The only other question I had was on the public safety It's great to see this amount of funding available for localities And I don't know where this would tie in and miss Ferguson you might know this I'm curious about the safer communities grants because we really benefited from that funding the last several years and I'm curious if that Additional you know if we have the option to reapply for that and if that's a part of this funding

Good morning, Mayor, Councilor, Vice Mayor, Buyer, members of Council members. So Safer Communities, I'm waiting on the NOFO to actually drop the notice of funding. My understanding is that there is an increase coming and it is part of that funding that's listed on the slide. I do not want to say exactly what I've been told ours is going to be until I get it in writing, but we are eligible for it. That's the way... the law was written up or the bill was written up. So this would be our third year for it and it looks like we will have an increase.

Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Well, any, oh, I'm sorry, one other question. Mr. Hagan.

I have some more questions about cannabis retail market. Yep, please. So shifting gears a little bit. Is there a minimum local option tax for, provided in the budget?

If I remember correctly, Mr. Chairman, that said 1 to 3.5 percent local tax, so about 2 to 3.5 percent.

And do you recall what the criteria for where these 350 stores are going to be?

There is a license protocol set up. I don't know how widely distributed or evenly distributed, if you will. the 350 stores will be. There is provision in there for 100 stores, I forget what it's called, micro enterprises or something like that. I'd have to go back and look at that language. Ms. Graney or council may have more details on that, maybe or not. There's that protected language in there also for local governments and land use.

And was there any cap on the agricultural, the farms that would produce this or any other manufacturing, the stuff that would not necessarily just be the sales itself?

I don't know the answer to that. Okay.

Thank you.

That was all my question.

We'll look into that. Thank you, Mr. Bryant. Thank you, Mr. Hagan. I just had one quick follow-up question, Mr. Bryant, and then we'll turn it over to Ms. Carini. Can you clarify for me, or if you have any advice, what would be your suggestions if council was interested in seeing the city of Roanoke pursue some of these buckets of money? that were allocated for like weatherization efforts like 25 million buckets of money for different public safety programs um environmental monitoring what is the do you have any advice on if we wanted to learn more about that and pursue trying to get our um some of that money for local projects do you have advice on the best way to go about that uh yes sir i would suggest that the equipment gotcha okay thank you sir unless there are any other questions I will turn it over to our city attorney Laura Carini to give us an update on legislation that went into effect July 1

Thank you, Vice Mayor. I will be referring to the memo that I sent to you all on May 18th. I shared it with council and the city manager's office. So it's quite extensive. I reviewed many of the actions that were taken. So today I'll just kind of highlight some of them just to kind of refresh your memory and also spur any conversation many of the changes that were authorized and so I'm first going to talk about the ones that we have to do that the city is mandated to do many of those are related to zoning and I've been speaking with the city manager and planning staff and of course in you know, planning staff will do all of the changes that are necessary to enact these requirements. However, of course, state code trumps city code. So these state code are, you know, this is active and effective, even though our city code hasn't been updated to reflect those changes. So that's a lot of what did change July 1st. There's some other ones that relate to FOIA, Freedom of Information Act, You've heard about this one before, that we can't add items to the agenda once the agenda has been published. So the items that we've walked on in the past, we cannot do that except if it's for the subject of a properly closed meeting. we are able to bring those actions on after the closed meeting occurs. There's been some changes to the Conflict of Interest Act. You as local officials will now use the web file filing system that state officers have been using in the past. I think there's some time to kind of get that up and going for the local officials so I think We'll work with the clerk's office to make sure that you get all the needed information on that. Public safety, it requires the city to have an annual gun buyback program. So, of course, we'll work with the police department to get that implemented. There are changes to absentee voting. I've already spoken with the registrar that... We will have absentee voting locations open a minimum of five hours the second and third Sundays prior to any election that will happen this year. There's some changes to the procurement laws. that we will certainly implement. Again, lots of things related to solar, affordable housing, speed cameras, speed cameras in school zones, in highway zones, which we don't really have any of. Lots of zoning, there's one I've spoken with Mr. Nash about, that allows the city to sue a landlord based on inhabitable conditions in an apartment that a tenant is renting. We can kind of step into the shoes of the tenant. So we'll certainly have to work with our code enforcement department to see how exactly that will work. There's, of course, lots of requirements to to notify the landlord of those types of conditions. So again, those are kind of the highlights and Mr. Bryant's already talked about the cannabis and the 1% sales tax. What questions can I answer?

I don't have any other council members.

No, I'll just say that, you know, yes, I want us to become a lot stricter on our, you know, I wouldn't call these landlords. I call these slumlords in our city that don't take care of their properties and have people living in subpar conditions and people paying their hard earned money and then not getting some of the basic needs or maintenance requirements met for their dwelling unit so I'd definitely like to see us take action on that and work with our code enforcement department you know as we are always trying to restructure and strengthen that and give that more teeth so that we can be more you know have our carrots but then also at the same time have a big stick as well so yeah but my question was if there are any further items because I have a little list that I'm kind of putting together other things that we could optionally do Should I just send that to you? Should I CC both city manager and the CC both y'all on it?

Send it to me. I'll be doing most of the implementation through team.

Okay. Thank you.

Mr. Nash, I think Mr. Hagan had a follow up.

Yeah. So let's say we step in and provide legal counsel for these tenants. If we win and there's a cash settlement or something like that, does the tenant get the money or does it go to the city or is it some weird hybrid split thing? Devil's always in the details for me, so I'm just legitimately curious.

Good question. I will have to get back to you on that. I don't want to speak out of turn. But yes, I'll look into that and get back to you.

Awesome. With the with that new ability, is there any connection with our rental inspection program? Whereas if they're not passing that, that that would be a almost a it's going to go to this?

Sure, it certainly could. I think that's what we're going to kind of have to work out is, you know, how that path can lead to the enforcement. Yes, I think it's just kind of another tool that they can use.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Any other questions? Well, thank you for the update, Miss Carini. Next on the agenda just is some admin administrative updates on our next upcoming meetings. We have a public hearing on Monday, July 20th here in this room at 7 p.m. where we will take feedback from the public on items that they believe the city should be considering and prioritizing in our legislative agenda to the state. We will then meet again on August 3rd, Monday, August 3rd at 9 a.m. And I believe in talking with Mr. Vollison, that what we would like to do is we're working backwards on our deadline here to have this finalized ASAP. So we're waiting on, I believe, feedback from staff. And what we would like to do is after the July 20th public hearing at the August 3rd meeting, have a draft agenda, draft legislative agenda that we can review at that meeting. So between now and then, I will also be reaching out individually to council members i'm hoping that based off of the feedback that we get from staff looking at last year's legislative agenda any changes that were made and went into effect as of this year will inform what our priorities are and that we will have something that we can share publicly as a draft on august 3rd sorry when i include the school board yes of course we will be read yes absolutely Did any of our school board appointees have any, did you have any questions about that, Ms. Apel? Did that sound okay from your end? You all are also working on your- Legislative priorities, right.

And we do not have, so like I mentioned, we have our next, just also timeline-wise, we have a school board meeting next week. Currently, legislative priorities is not on that agenda. That's our organizational meeting since we start July 1 with each of our, you know, years. And we do not have a workshop in July. So then the next meeting after that would be August. But we have a pretty robust and established legislative calendar. So, you know, we wouldn't have at this time, we wouldn't have something prepared for you all for August 3rd. But Dr. Siebert, can you speak to when we usually have something prepared for council?

Mr. Chair, Mayor, members of council. Yes, we generally, our timeline is to have something to the board to adopt in October so that we have a first reading on that in September. So it's not out of line. Also, the board's approach has been in recent years to use overarching guidelines legislative priorities and then develop position papers as needed. So the priorities piece is pretty easy to spin up. It's the thoughtful deliberation of position papers, which in all candor often happen during session when we hear about a bill coming through that requires some sort of action. So I imagine the board would be looking to adopt. So probably the September workshop would be a presentation and then possibly adoption in October if the board desired.

Sounds good. Thank you, Dr. Siebert. Okay. Well, if there are no other questions and if there is no other business, I will, not seeing any, I will adjourn this meeting of the Roanoke City Legislative Committee and will reconvene at the public hearing on Monday, July 20th at 7 p.m.

Thank you, Mr. Bryant. Thank you, Vice Mayor, for leading us through that very helpful legislative committee meeting. We only have two other items before we recess. One is just a question if there are any items listed on our two o'clock docket requiring further discussion or clarification. And topics for discussion.

Mr Nash, I just thought of 1, since we're talking about retail. Cannabis, but I don't know what the city's policy is around. Cannabis use of his employees, and I know that at the. And I know that at the previous housing authority meeting, I attended for the month of June. They were in the process of updating some of their testing regulations and kind of making like a tiered approach to how they do. They're testing. So I don't know. It was an idea that came to me because now we have retail market. I mean, you know, it's going to be a thing that we have to confront, right? And not run from. So I'm just that we're thinking about updating our policy and that it's, you know, fair, a fair policy.

We wholeheartedly agree with you. And we have been looking at that as well, particularly for for those individuals that use heavy equipment. So we've been looking at it internally, and we'll be working with our city attorney's office on making some substantive changes.

Awesome. Thank you.

All right. We don't have any briefings, so we will be in recess until 2 o'clock p.m. for our closed meetings, and we'll see everyone back at 2.