Mayor and Council - Regular Meeting

Smyrna Town Council meeting, July 20th, 2026. Convene. Chief, will you please lead us in the pledge? 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. Please join us in a moment of silence. Thank you. Please be seated. Rolf Hall, Amanda?

Yes, can you hear me? Yes. Okay, good evening everyone. Mayor Gutt? Present. Councilman Miles?

Present.

Councilman Olsen? Councilman Drew? Councilman Pope?

Here.

Councilman Reams?

Present.

And Vice Mayor, Dr. Upshur.

Present. Thank you.

Thank you.

Additions and deletions to the published agenda. Are there any?

I'd like to make a motion that we accept the published agenda in its current form.

Thank you. Second? I second. Those in favor?

Aye.

Those opposed? Motion is carried. Consent agenda. Motion to accept the council meeting minutes from June 15th, 2026. I make a motion to accept the council meeting minutes from June 15th, 2026. Second. All those in favor? Aye. Those opposed? Motion is carried. Presentation and public comments. If you'd like. If anyone in the public would like to make comments, we ask that you please take the podium, state your name, and you have three minutes.

Thank you, Blair. First, I want to say thank you to the town and the police department for July 4th and all the craziness that happened that night. Great job on the electric. Zoning out for five and a half hours, which to me is a blip in the scheme of life. Police were crazy running. Fire department, crazy running. I think they all did a phenomenal job that night. That was the first thing I was talking about. Second thing, on the website, there's been some noticeable changes. Some good, in my opinion. Some not good. Very hard to find the agendas. If you don't know what you're looking for, there used to be a button across the bottom that you could click and find it. Now, if you don't know that it's called the agenda center and you don't know how to search in the search bar, you're not finding it. It makes it really hard when it comes to transparency. Okay. I happened to find it because I did. Not everybody's going to do that. But other than that, I think the website is more friendly, user-friendly. Press the bottom. I just need, I think that button needs to be put back there or something.

That or to tutor.

Or something, right. Something that explains what the changes are. The event is on the events calendar, but there's not a link to like click it and get to an agenda. So even if they could maybe do that, like click the event and you click it, it takes you to a little blip, but it doesn't really get you to like the agendas or anything. Okay.

And that may just be part of the update that's not done yet. We may need to do an under construction or something.

Okay.

Conveniently. That's all I wanted. Thank you.

Thank you. I wanted to first say thank you to Amanda Sparks for Point me in the right direction and making copies of my proposal to you guys and putting it in the, in all of your mailboxes and the pictures. She really did a good job because I was handling her. I don't know if you had a chance to look over it, but it's. When we had the power outage, we couldn't open the front door. We couldn't open the windows. We couldn't sit on our front porch. So it was kind of like a hell for us because we didn't know what we could do. So we actually had to get in the car and take a ride because the stench was so bad. If I have permission to approach with updated pictures of what I'm talking about, trash bags outside of the... They were stacked up. alongside and see how close they are to the house, which it causes in the warmer months, it's maggots, it's rodents, flies, this stench is really, really bad. And as you can see from the front porch, my daughter and the neighborhood kids like to draw on the cement with the chalk. They can't do that because of the smell so bad. So I'm just proposing that within the city limits where it's possible, You know, I understand that this is an old town and there's buildings that are close together, but I'm less than four feet from my neighbors. So it's not like there isn't other options. It's just there's no clear. And I went as far civilly as I can with the owner of the property, which doesn't want to enforce something that is not in the town code because he doesn't want to force a backlash from his renter that may end up in a legal battle. So I'm asking for you to please look it over, consider it. If there's anything I can do to help, I'm willing to do that.

I'm going to ask our assistant town manager, Jason McNutt, to speak to it because I don't know the actual answer.

I don't have an answer for you right this minute, but give me some time to look into this. I've got to review the code, look into code enforcement, see if it works.

I put the code at the very top, right at the top right-hand corner. The lack of specificity, it just states that it needs to be behind the front of the house. So technically, it's an inch behind the front of the house. But do your own research and see what we come up with. And if we can, maybe you've got a nicer smile and some charm, you can... you know, make it happen. But it's not just me that has this problem. It's about five or six other people in a five block radius of me that have the same issue of the house being so close together. And like I said, if there is another option, it should be enforced. If there isn't, then we understand. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you. And before you leave, please take one of my cards so that I can make sure it's my card. My granddaughter filled it. Thank you so much. Is there anything else? Non-agenda items? Chief?

You guys have my monthly report. It's obviously a little bit late because the last meeting was cancelled. Any questions for me on that? Obviously happy to answer. Nikki touched on it. We had our two big events since our last meeting. I'd like to thank my staff for all their hard work at both Smyrna at night and July 4th where we ended up directing traffic in one of the most torrential thunderstorms I've ever been a part of. Got pretty soaked, but we got everyone out safely. So kudos to them for really a job well done there. You know, Smyrna at night, I know I got some questions from some folks about some additional layers of the security onion that you could see. Obviously, behind closed doors, I warned you guys that was happening. It's all for a reason. We had almost no police complaints. We really only responded to one complaint where a special needs adult got kind of overwhelmed with all the sights and sounds, probably shouldn't have been there in the first place. I think their caretakers were using our event for some free babysitting. Not appropriate, so we did have to deal with that issue. But other than that, a couple minor parking issues, some medical issues we knew going in. With the heat, we were going to have some heat-related issues, which we did, to be expected. But other than that, very safe, smooth, secure event. So kudos to my team on that.

And let's point out that both of those events were from 8 o'clock in the morning until 10 o'clock at night or later.

Yeah, Smyrna at night, my people started at 6 a.m., and we didn't get home until probably after midnight. So some of us got to come in a little bit later, but the troops started arriving at 6 to make sure the event was secure. The drones were where they needed to be. The paramedics were where they – all the stuff that goes into planning that event.

And 4th of July, the guys were out on bicycles for the parade in 100-degree weather. They sure were. Yep.

Today we started our recruit Charles Mitchell started the Wilmington Police Academy. So we are looking forward to his graduation in the next five months. That'll be another member to the team. If you've been following our social media, you see that we have the Junior Police Academy going on right now. It has been a tremendous success. We have 17 cadets, one of our largest groups ever. It's a Had to turn people away. We can only accommodate so many people with the staff that I have. So it's great that we turned people away. I wish we could have taken all 40-something applicants that we had. But it's wonderful that we have 17 of them there. You guys should have gotten your formal invitations for graduation Thursday. So any of you that can make it out to support the cadets and my staff that are training them, certainly we appreciate that. And that's what I have for you.

Thank you. Thank you. Assistant Town Manager Jason?

So most of staff's monthly updates was loaded to board pack. Just a couple things I'd like to go over with you is you notice that the road restoration project has taken place. It started today. You've seen some roadway construction going on in Villanova. And over here to West Fraser, they're milling, overlaying, patching. They'll be paving all that on Wednesday. Thursday, they're going to start milling and patching up here at Market Street on Commerce to Mount Vernon. So we're going to post out to the residents about the parking, finding parking during construction. It will be left unpaved but drivable through the weekend. And then they'll finish Monday, weather permitting, final pavement.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And that leads us to old business where there is none. New business, including discussion and possible action on the following items. Discussion and possible action to approve union labor agreement between the towns of Smyrna and International Brotherhood of Electrical Works Union 126. Okay. We just have, we had discussed it before we went through it. All of the legalities have been done.

I think it's all pretty much at the final stage. We just need a motion to approve and a vote on that.

I'd like to make a motion that we approve the union labor agreement between the town of Smyrna and International Brotherhood of Electrical Works, local union 126. Second.

Is there any discussion? How long was the contract for? Three years. Three years? I think it's three years.

Jason says three years.

I was going to say summer three and summer five, but I think this one was three. Any other discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Those opposed? Motion is carried. We approve the agreement between the town of Smyrna and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Union. Yep, Electrical Works, Local Union 126. Kathleen, financial reporting. Thank you so much.

So this is June 26th year to date financials. Certainly our bank balances, our general fund is at 11.5 million. We did receive quite a bit of our tax money. Our investment accounts for rainy day, we have 3.2 million. Capital reserve, we have 1.8. The monthly interest for the rainy day, I did want to note that that is mostly compromised of CDs that mature every three months. So when we have a maturing CD is when we'll see more interest. Currently, our general fund revenues between property tax, transfer tax, license fees, permitting, investment, and other revenues are at $10 million right now. And then our general fund expenses, which is between the admin, IT, police, public works, planning and inspections, parks, and our debt service is at $8.8 million. This is probably... the only time of the year that our revenue is going to be greater than our expenses. For our water, between the revenue and the expenses, we are currently over by 326,000. Our sewer, we are up 747,000. Our next Kent County invoices will show the new increased rates. I believe it was 11% as of July 1. So we will see a change in the Kent County sewer expenses going forward.

And that was what we voted on. We didn't vote on, but we were told years ago, two years ago, that it was going to go up for three years.

Yep. And this was anticipated with the budget.

Great.

Our trash is currently up 100,000. Also to note with trash, the trash is going to go up in September with this contract. That was also anticipated. So our expenses will go up in October. This is a new slide. This is our debt for the year. I put the difference between general fund, electric, sewer, and water broken down between the principal and interest budgeted and what we have paid so far this year. So far we have the principal remaining of $591,000 and our interest remaining is $413,000. Taxes. Out of everything that we filled this year, we have collected 87%, which is huge. I don't think we've ever collected this much so soon. So we only have 1.3 million outstanding for 26 taxes. Past due taxes, we currently have 79 accounts that owe any sort of amount for 2025. That could be just a few cents. It could be the full tax bill. In 2024, we have 16 accounts with some sort of balance as well.

With the accounts that are sent to the attorney, do we have any anticipation for them going to munition sale or will people...

So we probably sent over like 45 accounts. It was like it was there. We sent out demand letters. And I think that probably about 35 of those either paid in full or entered into a payment program. And so there's about 10-ish that are left right now that are going to proceed to a donation sale. And frankly, I would anticipate maybe one or zero of those going to sell just based on percentages. I've seen usually if we start with about 40 or 50 on a plan to go to munition sale and file a munition, maybe 10% of those actually ever get sold. So we're starting with 10. It's most likely all of them will get paid off and maybe one ends up getting sold. But for the most part, it's pretty effective. Okay. Thank you.

Currently for utilities, we have about 6,600 active accounts.

For the July 6th due date, we have 1,300 accounts with some sort of balance due, about $370,000. And then balances prior to July, we have about 464 accounts with an outstanding balance of 77. Again, those balances could be a couple pennies for the penalties on it or their full amounts. This is a new slide as well. This is what we give back to the community with either utility contributions or donations. I broke it up between what we've paid just this month, year to date, and the donations as well. We do cover quite a few utility accounts around town for the organizations. And then the donations are a once a year donation that we give out. Any questions?

And we have a new form that we'll be starting for donations this year where they'll send in financials for any donations that they're looking for, correct?

Yes.

And when will they start? For January. Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

Thank you, Catherine.

Okay. And?

I'd like to make a motion that we adjourn the meeting.

I second. Is there any discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Those opposed? Thank you very much for coming. Have a good week.