City Council - Regular Meeting

I call to order this great session of Vienna City Council. Having taken role and having a quorum, we will proceed. We did not have anybody sign up for the public forum. The reports If not, the minutes will stand as submitted. We do not have any unfinished business. So, no, we don't have a treasury report. No, that's next meeting. Next meeting, yep. Nobody signed up for a public forum. Moving on then to new business. The first two items that we have are of Spencer's Landing. What I would like to do is ask Sam if you would present first and just give the basic or the detailed information about it

Good evening. So you all have two task orders on your agenda tonight. We're going to start with task order number two, and then I'll go over what task order number three is. So the last time I was in front of you all, we talked about getting an amendment to our, not an amendment, but an additional service order in place with our master service agreement. Right now, the service order number one that we have authorized us to design the restroom closest to the parking lot as well as the stage, but did not authorize us beyond design to include bidding and construction administration to see the project through those two processes. So service order number two that I have put in front of you all is for bidding and construction administration with bidding at $8,000 and construction administration at $45,000 for a proposed lump sum fee of $53,000. There is some language included in this that does pertain to service order number three. Another recap from the last meeting when I was here is we were asked to put together a proposal to include design and permitting associated with the concession and restroom building that would be closest to the stage. So that would be an additional design. that was not included in our original scope of work either. We have included some allowance for additional geotechnical investigations so that we can authorize our vendor to do some more borings in that location while they're on site doing the borings for the other restroom and stage area. And then the design and permitting associated with that. So you have additional geotechnical investigation at $10,000. and design and permitting for the restroom concession at $35,000 for a total of some fee of $45,000. Going back to service order number two, I included some language that the bidding and construction administration, if authorized, would... I was trying to do this in a way so that we didn't have to come back to you all and present additional service orders if one got denied and one got approved. um but basically what what we're allowing for is that if you all approve number two and number three we will include the construction administration and bidding as part of service order number two for uh service order number three's design project so it would you know that will cover you for the two buildings uh that were already under contract to design as well as the new one that we have put in front of you tonight So that's kind of an overview of the service orders that we have submitted and what kind of our next steps would be if those are approved.

Thank you. Russ, do you want to go over resolution number one?

This is a resolution authorizing and approving. Do you want me to just? Resolution authorizing and approving service order number two. I think the part that is probably, you all already have a copy of this, but I think the part that the public would probably be interested in is the scope, which, as has been laid out, it deals with the construction administration of periodic inspection services for a proposed restroom building performance stage and associated site work. And service order number two provides for a lump sum fee of $53,000, consisting of $8,000

Having heard resolution number one, do I have a motion to accept?

Second. And a second? Yes. Thank you for being verbal. Thank you, Jimmy.

I have a motion and a second. Is there any discussion or any questions that you'd like to ask Sam?

If I may, I just want to make sure that I understand something. If task order number three is approved, that $45,000 would also cover the construction administration services for that. That's correct. Okay. That's all I wanted to make sure. Joe, did you have something?

That was my question. The rest of it. Sorry. I was cheating on my paper.

Well, you broke it down. You were just cheating on your paper.

Okay.

this is for a separate building that will house westerns and concessions yes and where is that going to be located well let me clarify service order number two is is not for that service order number three which is the next one is and i can plug in here show you all kind of some updates on that hit the middle button

They want to just plug it in. Any insight on grant money? Pull it down. I'll put it back in.

I'm doing this with a jury. Get your computer to work. I've got it all in there.

I swear it worked when we came in. No, they do not. It worked when I came in on Tuesday. It did work.

Oh, yeah. You may have to go the old-fashioned way, Sean and Tal, and bring that picture.

Yeah, we just... But the microphone can still pick me up right? Busted.

We're working that way. We'll just bypass that.

Now that we've been through all that, I almost forgot what your question was, Danny.

Task Order 2, what Task Order 2 included?

So, this is your Task Order... Yeah, I was just trying to clarify about this one.

Okay.

So for task order number three, I'll go back just to the original master plan. So this is the structure we're referring to that is outlined in service order number three. So it would be concessions and restrooms in adjacency to the stage that would help support that space for events. So what we also agreed to at our last meeting prior to any authorization of scope on the design of this is just to throw together a floor plan that would kind of illustrate the design intent of that structure. So this is a 30 by 60 footprint, which is what's shown on the master plan. Would allow for men's and women's restrooms on both sides with a centralized entry point here that has kind of a privacy screen. We have nine water closets or urinals in each of those. And the other thing we've included in this, which we do at EventSpace, get used for both large events and just everyday use. We've included a divider that you guys could actually keep this door shut on both sides from a maintenance perspective. You wouldn't have to keep all of those restrooms active and open to the general public throughout the year. You could still keep this front half open and available to them while closing this off, which just eases your overall maintenance since you're only going to have events so many times a year. The other side, we have a concession with two windows that would face out to the field area to going back to that master plan. And real quick, just to show you kind of where I'm talking about, those windows would be kind of here, facing out in that direction. This actually would show that better. So you have your concession windows here, and then your bathroom entrances here. One of the things I mentioned to Jack before we got started today, that's just an initial stab at that. That thing can be rotated and positioned in different ways, and we can continue to work through this floor plan. But I do think from a From a standpoint of what we talked about last time, we're close square foot-wise to where I thought we would be on this. And I think while it's not sized for an event that would have 3,000 people, you're still going to probably want to have some port-a-johns available because general rule of thumb with these types of events is you want a restroom within 500 foot walking distance to a spectator. Obviously, that's a big field. You guys could still bring in port-a-johns to help with the overflow, but this would take a lot of pressure off of that need as well. That's kind of what we've come up with so far. Certainly, you know, can answer questions or talk about feedback. And then I've got an update just on the stage and what changes we've made to that since we last met.

And this only applies to service order number three. Service order number two that we're currently voting on is the stage, the bathroom, and the rest of that initial work.

Can you clarify something for me? I apologize for not being here last time for a month ago, whatever it was. It was really hard to hear, so I missed some of the things. So if you explain this, I apologize in advance for repeating it. But originally, I think when you came to us for all the steps, the design permitting, geotechnical, conceptual paint, all that, I think the cost was $255,000. Is that right, originally?

I think the combined cost was at that ballpark, yes. Because I still had two service orders originally. I had one for the restroom and one for the stage. But your combined cost was at that threshold, yes.

Okay. So where would the, not with service order member community, but with the restroom and the stage only, where are we with costs in relationship to that $255,000 originally?

So service order number one, we have executed version of, you're at $150,000, and that was for the stage and initial restroom. That was survey mapping, geotech, and design permitting. And then with our proposed service order number two, You're going to be at basically $203,000 with the bidding and the construction administration.

And when you talk about intermittent on-site inspections, I know at one time it was talked about that would be like every two weeks that someone would be here. Is that the same timeframe that you're looking at now?

as far as intervals so we would on a project like this we would have bi-weekly construction meetings that doesn't mean that we won't be on site more or less in a given month depending on their progress and what they have to report on so if they if like if we have a summer like we've had this summer and they haven't worked for a month because you can't because of the weather we're probably not having on-site progress meetings we'll probably do quick like microsoft teams meetings where

going through rfis and pay applications and that sort of thing but yeah i mean generally we have bi-weekly construction progress meetings so that's that's assumptions not changing for this and then the other question i have and it's always been a concern we're going to look at developing the entirety of spencer's landing at some point and i know one time y'all talked about keeping in mind you know when we're doing the stage and the restrooms the needs of the multi-purpose part is there anything that the city needs to be doing or we need to be doing in order to take all that into consideration so we don't put the cart after the horse before the horse on that section of the multi-purpose thing that we've got everything in place we need as far as infrastructure and geotech and all that kind of stuff

so we are taking that much more into consideration with this concession and restroom than we were just the stage if you put the stage there and you left just a blank canvas after that i wasn't nearly as concerned but as you start to add a restroom you start to think of and going back to that plan if i can you start to think about how does this structure interacts with this space and the stage itself. And that's where I think there's some fine detailing of that as we get into the design of that. It may get rotated, it may get pushed a little further away from the canopy. The other thing I was mentioning to Jack before the meeting started this evening is going ahead and getting some of those tensile structure vendors to provide us a design because one of the things with this performance space that will be a challenge, if you do a structure like what is shown in this plan, like some of the case studies we looked at from the Dayton example, it has to be a certain height minimum or you're not going to be able to see the stage from way back in the lawn space. And we think that's about 20 feet is what that clearance needs to be. So that's something, you know, they can do designs that have a bunch of columns and posts that are going to create visual obstructions and get to that height. But what we really need them to kind of start looking at is what can they manufacture that would not have those obstructions and maybe only a couple posts or columns on each side that can span that space. So that is something we're taking more of a look at with this new service order, number three. Up until this point, if all we were doing was the stage and the faraway restroom, I wasn't nearly as concerned about future phases. Other than some of the things we talked about in the last meeting that I was here is leaving stub outs for utilities. If we don't do, for example, if we don't do this concession and restroom right now, we're going to be putting a water line in and a sewer line in, and we want to go ahead and leave stub outs for those to tie in in the future. Same with electrical, leaving junction boxes in appropriate locations. that's all got to get to your point like we don't want to come back and tear pavement up two years from now when you get money to do your next phase so part of this design and bid document package is going to leave like spare conduits and casings for future development where we know we're going to have pavement that we have to dig up if we go back and develop more so great thank you so much anything else i have a motion in the second in no other discussion all those in favor of

acceptance and approving resolution number one signified by raising the right hand the resolution passes moving on to resolution number two this is a resolution authorizing an improving service order number three with pressure incorporated for geotechnical investigation design and permitting services for the spencer's landing concession restroom building project as i stated before the i think primary interest The scope of services under service order number three includes additional geotechnical investigation, design, and permitting services, including preparation of design documents necessary for permitting, bidding, and construction of the project, and then the cost. Service order number three provides for a lump sum fee of $45,000, consisting of $10,000 for additional geotechnical drilling and $35,000 for design and permittings.

It's in the way of discussion just so that everyone is clear When we approve this or should this get approved It will be wrapped up into service order number one and there will be one set fee paid for

This is service.

We're on service order number three. Resolution number two.

Resolution number two. Service order number three. Package. You're doing great.

Terry, go ahead. And Mr. Sasson hit on this just a few minutes ago. And I know I'm going to rewind us back I don't even know how many months ago it was, but originally whenever we were talking about kind of getting this service order together, from the get-go it was create a design, a package that would go out to bid, and at that point in time, once we had that package ready for bid, it was at that point we felt like we might be able to start looking for some grants that were available for the

those grants or looking for matching funds or anything of that nature yeah so basically we are we're probably beyond the point where we should be doing that if I'm being honest with you and here's why I'm saying that With what we have now, you guys could go out and apply for funding. We could give you cost estimates. We could give you concept plans, enough that a funding agency will accept, knowing especially that you're working on shovel-ready plans. The one caveat to that is if you already have the shovel-ready plans and say, I have a project that's ready to go, it makes those funding agencies more likely to fund your project because they don't have to wait on... permitting, environmental, design, which takes time, as we know. So I think it's never too early to start looking for funding, but I think the reality of where we are now is you guys are inching closer to being in that top tier of consideration just because you're further along than most applicants the funding agencies are going to get because you're investing your own dollars in design and upfront costs to hopefully be able to entice construction funding. Now, one thing we have to be careful with is if we go ahead and put this thing out to bid, no grant source is going to work as a reimbursement after the fact. You're going to have to get that grant before you award a contract. So we can put things out to bid, see how our pricing comes in, and you guys are not obligated to accept those bids. We intend to bid this project where you could basically identify what's the stage going to cost, what's each of the restroom concession area going to cost, what's the site work going to cost, so that you could even basically award a contract based on not all of the above, but one or the other. So this is all basically trying to set you up to, if you go out to the effort of putting this thing out to bid, you have options to award it, but not necessarily the entire

contingencies waiting for funding. If funding source takes too long, your bid prices could change dramatically enough.

When we put it out to bid, just so everybody understands, contractors, it's standard industry practice that they will only hold their bid price for Either 60 days or 90 days. We always defer for 90 days, especially when we're working with public entities because this stuff takes time to get contracts signed. But 90 days in the grant world is not very long. So that's where I think if we're going to try to use grant funding to pay for any of these pieces, and it doesn't hurt you all to put this out to bid just to get a gut check on where things are. It's actually from the contractor market that's going to build this, not just an engineer's cost estimate. You don't have to accept any of the bids. You can deny all of the bids. Now, you have the cost associated with the advertisements and running the pre-bid and going through that process, but I want everybody to understand that we can't put it out to bid and then get the grant funding retroactively because most of those funding agencies are going to want to approve your bid documents before it actually goes out.

We consulted with our, we've got a grant writer that the city uses. Have we talked to her about any of this?

Yes, in part. Right now, the monies that are being awarded in grants are projects that are job creation or tied to coal field reclamation and those various things. There are very few dollars that are available for event venue space. It's just the way of the world right now. Things that do economic development that would be to put something in for a particular project, yes, there are funding. But in the way of a project like this, what we have researched and looked at is that there are not many dollars available for people that are putting great money into these types of projects.

That's not what we said at the beginning when we started this process. Say again? That's not what we said when we started it.

in the way of what's being awarded. And even grants that were long-standing grants for agencies and programs that had been in existence for a long time have lost funding just in general. The funding streams have gotten tighter, they've gotten much more narrow, and they've gotten much more focused on very specific programs other than development of what would be considered recreational or

17 and a half months. That's correct. And the world has changed in 18 months. I mean, so it was changed before we even started this.

And all that stuff is taken into effect.

Mr. Rich, are you aware of any brownfields, grants, and agencies that are looking to develop sites such as this?

Most of your brownfield-related money, especially from EPA, is going to be assessment and cleanup-based. So they're not necessarily going to pay for post-land use improvements. Some of the funding sources that were mentioned were like the Amler program, abandoned mine land economic revitalization. This is not a mine site. Wood County doesn't have very many mine sites, but they changed that to be more open-ended so that basically if you have a mine site in your county, which Wood County does, you can apply for that funding source. And it was because they were, I don't think, getting the quality of applications when they were just focusing on sites that were being developed that were pre-law mine sites. They weren't getting enough applicants to spend the money or to have good applications. That is a potential funding source. There's no match required, but match is also heavily favored in those applications. But it's a once-a-year thing. So that's one we would be looking at next year's cycle to apply for funding for. And that's where they also like to fund second phases once proof of concept has been established. Looking at the shelter, the multipurpose venue, I think is where we need to gear our focus for the AMLR grant. Because they will. I mean, they awarded Oxford County this year $12 million. It was actually a justice award combined with a Morrissey award because it was two years. That's how they got $12 million. They got two funding years from AMLAR for their record complex in Buchanan. So when will the next year cycle begin? It will probably open up in spring of 27.

Is it more attractive to funders since This is a riverfront property, so there's some extra possibilities that go along with riverfront.

And you all have had some of this funding before, like Eastern Federal Lands Access Program, I think, was helped to pay for a kayak launch or something here in town. So there are programs that focus on river development. There's the Land and Water Conservation Fund, but it would not pay for a facility like this. It would pay for some of the recreational improvements, but it would not pay for a performance venue. They focus more on playgrounds, aquatic facilities that are more for health and wellness benefit, not so much about the type of economic impact that this would make. And it also, it's a 50-50 grant program and you all have to have 50% of the funds. And then they tie your property up forever. They put it into a restrictive covenant that basically says it's got to be used for recreation and perpetuity. While that may be the case here, it's just got some restrictive covenants that would limit you from doing any kind of private development on this property in the future if that were ever of any interest.

Okay. out of 30 or 40 years ago took money and ended up with a restrictive covenant that ran with the land. And he's exactly right. It can affect your ability to do something with the property of the way it is.

And I want to clarify, too, you know, I would say the funding for things like trails, green infrastructure was heavily favored under the previous presidential administration. It's going more toward energy development. Obviously, there's a lot of focus on that. AI infrastructure, not only in our state, but nationwide. So I think that the funding climate changes with every presidential transition and some positives and some negatives. Trails and that type of stuff is not being heavily weighted with the current administration. Not that they're not still awarding projects that cover that type of stuff, but it's going more toward their traditional programs. I'll give you an example. USEDA, Economic Development Administration, in 2021 launched a program that paid for projects just like this. But it was a one-time thing. They haven't done anything like that since. They're back to focusing on things that create good-paying jobs that can be documented. Tourism projects are very hard to demonstrate job creation. You can have economic impact studies done that show the benefit to the community at large, but it's harder to pinpoint, I'm going to create 20 jobs that pay $50,000 to $75,000 a year. I think there has been changes in the funding climate. There are still opportunities, but... I think to the Mayor's point, nobody out there is jumping up and down wanting to fund an event venue that's going to generate revenue. They would look at that more as a, is this really a community need or is this an opportunity to create a destination? And typically federal and state grant funding does not go toward that stuff as much as it would like a community playground or a pool.

Any other discussion?

I have a question that's not really related, but it kind of is. I don't think any of us here has a good deal of construction experience.

You may be surprised at what our counts are, Danny.

When we did the pool, one of the issues was that we didn't have anyone in the city appointed to be like a project manager. There was no one that was really that point person that had the skills and knowledge to be able to work with a contractor, to be able to pull out where things were going wrong, things should have been done some way. How do you see your construction going and what's the best type of person or situation to have to be able to oversee a project like this so we don't get into some of the mistakes that were made with the food?

so i think the easiest way to answer that is it doesn't have to be a construction person that's what our role is is to make sure things are being built right and provide solutions when things aren't going well or to you know work with the contractor on solutions to unforeseen circumstances but we do need somebody from the city's represent representation standpoint to attend these progress meetings to get feedback when we need it when things come up and we need to make changes i've worked with gis people i've worked with maintenance supervisors i've worked with city clerks that don't have significant construction backgrounds but they still are the representative that's been designated from the city's perspective to just be a part of the process and be able to kind of quickly get us direction and feedback when we need it things like You know, and I've brought this up before, we can make recommendations in the design documents on what the stone and the roofing should look like, but picking colors on the fly when we get submittals in, like those are the types of things that unless we're just given the authority to just make that decision, it's hard for us to give that to, you know, come back to a council meeting every time we need that type of feedback. So I do advocate for a city representative to be part of our construction team. That doesn't mean we need...

20 people from the city every time we have a meeting either we we need you know a core team that's going to be commit to being there when we have meetings and so that's that's my feedback on that and i will be an active part of every one of the whether it's solely me or someone else i will be part of every one of those uh meetings in the decision-making process that goes on and i will not be I'm not saying anything about anything required, too, but I will not be an MCT from what will be a very important part of what goes on within our city.

As I stated before, once the design is done and locked, it's done and locked. Because when you do scope changes, that costs extra money. You don't want the same debacle that the Wood County School Board of Education had with VHS football. You've got one side of bleachers because they're in Wolverine.

I am confident that between this council and our city leadership, we will lead this project in the direction that it needs to go. I have all confidence in that and have no concern for misrepresentation or an absentee presence in all that. I'm very confident that we will collectively work together, complete this project, and give our city best facility that we can within a budget framework that we as a city can afford.

And now I'll go home, sir. No, I'm going to be upset.

Well, no, I just want to, can we, I know I relating to what we're voting on. Yeah.

Well, I just wanted to chime in and say too, and this is for anybody listening that we didn't, we didn't hire a slouch company. I feel like Thrasher is going to do their homework. They're going to do due diligence. They've got the core boring. That would be the only concern I would have was what's under the soil. They're doing the exploration to figure that out. I don't foresee there being anything that would happen down there that would cause a major change order other than us making those changes, which I agree we should have all of our ducks in a row before we put out the bid, because whenever they start coming back, those bids are going to be based on the designs that we're putting out. So we don't want to make any changes really post that bidding process.

Well, to an extent, if you have contingency money that it's clear we're not going to spend and you want to add something, let's talk about it. But I think I want to also be very clear, there has to be a very consistent communication change. So where we get into trouble is if somebody that's a council member or mayor comes down and says, hey, we don't like the way you did that. Can you redo it? And then the contractor says, sure. And then we get a change order two weeks later, they asked us to change this. Well, they didn't tell me. I didn't tell you to do that. So I just want to be, that's why I think having a consistent person is important because that contractor is going to be told, you don't take direction from the people outside of this core meeting. We'll take feedback and run it to the right person to make sure. And, you know, any of you could come to me at any time and say, what do you think about this? But I just need to know that I'm not I can get myself into trouble quickly if I just do what anybody just tells me.

We don't want you to get into trouble. Ron, what you got?

So I know your drawing can be deceiving. Is that, the stage is number five up there? Yes. And does that include us pushing that back some towards the railroad tracks, that drawing?

This was, this is the pushback.

We had it originally further into the field than this. I just noticed it, and I just want to make sure.

If you see on his drawing, number five, which is that building, if you take the halfway mark, it was all the way out to the corner of Harper Construction's building. That's cool.

did you say you had uh sorry mr rich did you say you had yeah i'd like to hear about this okay so biggest piece of feedback that we took away from from the last meeting was just the the visibility into the stage area from kind of the view shed angle so we did revisit that and we have widened the stage frontage to nearly 60 feet um and it has a 30 foot depth so that is that is you know going to accommodate any major performance you guys would have here and from a view this really kind of points off and cuts off almost at the gold star area. If I can go back to this master plan real quick, you can kind of see, you know, It's going to give you this whole area from a view shed perspective. Anywhere you stand in that field now, you'll be able to see into where that band is. Whereas before we were a little bit, you know, that old design, we were a little bit more, in fact, this plant still shows it. You can kind of see there, we were almost pointing out like that. We didn't have that extended angle. So we've, that is the big adjustment that we've made to that, to just accommodate

wider stage area make it more comfortable for performing bands and then open up those two sheds having a motion in a second and hearing no other discussion all those in favor of passing resolution number two please signify by raising your right hand motion passes thank you sam thank you do we need to do anything in the way of saying those are officially combined

No, it's already in there. It's already done. When he sends them out, he now knows that he has a trouble for password two and three, and he can just send them out together.

So you don't need any additional skills.

Thank you very much. Moving on to resolution number three. It is the approval of the award of the city's on-call master electrician services contract to Jimmy Harper Construction. Anything else on that?

Well, in brief, the city for the last several years has had an agreement with a master electrician to perform as needed electrical services or electrician services. That contract is We sent out an RFP to get another master electrician to come in, or to get not another, but to renew or open up the, I guess, to look for a master electrician to fill that now closed contracted spot. So that's what this is. We've sent out solicitations. We've received two companies back. ProOne Electric was one. The other is Jimmy Harper Construction. The city went through the process of interviewing and scoring and so forth. And this resolution approves the on-call master electrician services contract to be awarded to Jimmy Harper Construction.

And essentially, I'll just go through one through, one through, oh, no, six.

Vienna City Council hereby approves the award of the city's on-call master electrician services contract to Jimmy Harper Construction Inc. subject to the satisfaction of all licensing, insurance, bonding, business registration, and other requirements imposed by the solicitation, applicable law, and resulting contract. All expenditures remain subject to appropriation of the availability and encumbrance of funds, applicable purchasing requirements, and any monetary limitations imposed by the contract or applicable law. Contract is an open-ended repair and maintenance contract for recurring electrical services. Said contract shall not exceed $500,000 as per West Virginia Code 5-22-1 for the life of the contract, Nothing in this resolution guarantees generic instruction in a minimum quantity of monetary amount of work, nor is this an exclusive agreement the city shall retain on rates reserved in the solicitation contract concerning work outside the scope of the agreement. Mayor has authorized and directed on behalf of the City of Indiana to execute the contract with Jimmy Herbert Construction Inc. together with such ancillary documents as may reasonably be necessary to effectuate the award, provided that the contract and related documents are approved as a form of legality by the City Attorney and the Finance Director certifies the availability of funds as required by law. And lastly, the award and all work performed pursuant to the contract shall remain subject to applicable provisions of West Virginia law, ordinances and purchasing requirements of the City of Indiana in terms of the conditions of the City's solicitation and the resulting contract. So that's what we'll have.

I haven't heard the resolution. Do I have a motion to accept? Yes. I have a motion and a second. Is there any other? No. I have a motion and a second. Open for discussion. I have a motion and a second. No other discussion. All those in favor of approving resolution number three, approving the award of the city's on-call master electrician services contract to J.B. Hartman Construction, please stand by by raising your right hand. Motion passes. Item number four is Ordinance on Forestry Rating, amending cert sections of our employee handbook.

This is an ordinance amending and adopting certainly family and medical leave, paid parental leave, firearms provisions of the employee personnel manual. Without going through the entire thing, because it is long. And I'm sorry if you have a PDF that has everything highlighted. When I started doing this, I was just highlighting the changes to the actual text that I was doing. And by the time I got to the end of it, there were more sentences highlighted that were not. But what essentially this does is that since Vienna adopts its personnel manuals by ordinance, we have to make changes by ordinance. And we do that because there are certain pay rates and so forth that are included in the personnel manual. So we've added a requirement for vacation leave, carryover, special administrative leave to cover those instances where, for example, the governor declares a half a day or declares a holiday that by statute would only be a half a day, but then comes back and says, well, we're going to give you all of Christmas Eve off. And we never really had a policy to deal with that before. So this will essentially take care of that. It also creates a paid parental leave policy. And I'll let the mayor come into that a little bit further if he wants. And as part of creating the paid parental leave policy, I looked at our FMLA policy and went through with the assistance of Ms. Bronfman, who's our HR person, and updated our FMLA policy. I went through the firearms statute or the firearms restrictions in our personnel manual and made sure that that was in conformity with West Virginia code. And then essentially those are all the major changes.

So one of the two big areas, one, as he talked about, is our ability to do that special administrative leave when there are times that we want to award time off around a holiday that wasn't previously authorized without it falling into those special categories. This now gives us that availability and freedom to do that. I believe, a huge step for the city of Vienna, and I don't know of other municipalities, but even before we found ourselves in a position of expecting a little one, when I first took office, I expressed a desire that I wanted to be able to create additional vacation time or leave time for expecting parents, both paternity and maternity side of the house. And this will now give us the availability to, I believe, attract a younger generation in our workforce, which we're going to see. We realize that in the next few years we could see significant change, especially in our senior positions and our department heads and such, and we're going to have younger people coming into those positions most likely. And if they are so blessed with a young one on the way, the city now will have this parental leave in place that will give them the time that I feel strongly that they should have to be able to be with their newborn child at the very beginning stages of life. So I was very happy when Stephanie and Russ were able to research this, work this out,

Just so we're all clear, the difficulty in doing this is you have to find a way to balance, to generate a policy that takes into consideration the special conditions of a mother who gives birth and then also considerations of the father who wants to spend time. So what we've done is created essentially a two-tiered section of meaning. You get two paid work weeks off if you are before bonding. And then in addition to that, the person who actually, the mom, when she gives birth, gets an additional four work weeks of paid childbirth recovery leave. So mom can have six weeks of leave, and dad's going to have two weeks, four weeks basically. And that way you're not discriminating, so you're taking into consideration the special conditions that motherhood comes with and recovery from that, but you're also allowing of the bring home baby, right?

Can I ask a question before we go any further just to clarify this? Like the highlighting on this are all the new areas?

Yeah, like I said, what I started was, when I started this, that very first paragraph, as a vacation leave carryover. And so that was the change to the policy. And then I went through and did the special administrative leave, which ends up being an entirely new thing. And then ended up doing that with the FMLA and the parental leave policy. And the reason the FMLA policy had to be redrafted still going to get paid and so forth, but you're not going to have the full 12 weeks that you would have under the normal FMLA policy. And I thought, well, if I'm going to do that, I need to go through it. And I went through and updated, again, with Ms. Rothman's assistance, just our general FMLA policy. Some of the language that we were using was about 10 years out of date. And that's just one of those things that you just carry over and carry over until you have an opportunity to address it.

So everything else that was in the personality manual that had to do with this will be gone. Yes. And this will be what was in.

This will replace it.

As far as the fire, do we need to make a motion? Did we already?

No, ma'am.

Oh, okay. The firearms.

The reason I did this was not to begin a discussion. Really?

Okay, that's what I was asking.

Do I have a motion to accept? Motion. Motion. Do I have a second? Second. All right. Go on with your discussion.

What? Did the city have a firearms policy?

Yes. And what did it say? Well, I mean, it basically said that there are no firearms to be brought into the city, which doesn't, and I'm paraphrasing a little bit because I don't have it brought in. which is not completely in compliance with West Virginia code. West Virginia code allows or prevents cities from restricting firearms from being located in certain areas. What could happen is somebody could come in and violate the policy that we have in place. And then when you try to take disciplinary action, your disciplinary action is not really going to mean anything because you're complying with state code.

So why are we asking for elected officials to be able to carry?

Well, for me, just the general dangerousness of it. It's not so much that we're allowing them to do it. We're just not preventing them from doing something that they can already do. And we're affording the city protection I guess, legal protection, insurance protection, and so forth, in the event that something were to happen with an elected official while they were out in the regular course of their business, acting on behalf of the city. What I would be concerned with is something happening in our insurance carriers, saying, look, you have this policy that says you can't do this. bear the cost of defending itself in the event that there was some incident that may occur.

Does this include other people employed by the city? Because I know St. Louis, for example, has been the brunt of some not so nice anger and hostility and almost threats from some people over time. And, you know, so I'm not sure that it's just elected officials that, you know, have to deal with people. I mean, all kinds of people do. But I guess I'm just trying to figure out.

Well, I'm never going to be able to draft a policy that covers every scenario. Okay? You do the best. You have to balance the state law, which says essentially that the city cannot prohibit employees from bringing a firearm to a parking lot, for example, their workplace, as long as the firearm is secured in the vehicle. You have to balance that against the city's interest in being able to control who or who doesn't have access to a firearm on their property. And so what this policy attempts to do is to take their constitutional rights while they're out and about in the public because, as you know, the real individuals that are out requiring or interacting with the public who are representing the city and doing their job that way. You have to allow people that are out and exposed to be able to protect themselves if they so choose. And what this policy is trying to do is draft it in such a way that the city itself still has insurance protection and coverage in the event that something were to occur.

Was there something that occurred or did someone specifically want this or how did it come about?

I'm not going to go into that. As far as something specifically occurred, We had one instance a handful of years ago where an individual was coming through City Court for a shoplifting ticket. And that individual ended up going to the wrong building and found himself in the Vienna Volunteer Fire Department Women's Auxiliary meeting over here and had to be taken out by the police in a SWAT vehicle and so on and so forth. And he brought with him what he thought was a, what everybody thought was a firearm that ended up being, I can't remember, or an officer here during city court. And so, as I said, this is a policy that is trying to balance everybody's interest while giving, well, balance interest as best they can while giving as much protection as can reasonably be done to the city of Vienna as a legal entity itself.

Any other discussion? Having a motion and a second, and no to the discussion, all those in favor of approving on first reading, what?

Oh, no, you're fine. Oh. I was lower than I intended to be. Oh.

I thought you said no. I was like, what do you mean no?

You're fine.

Getting back to the matter of handouts, thank you. Approving on first reading, key coordinates amending, the city's personnel. All those in favor of approving, I mean, coordinates first reading item number four, please signify by raising your right hand. Now that we can get passed on that. Coordinates approves on first reading. The second reading will be at our next council meeting. In the way of our agenda, that is all we have on official business. Now moving on to reports standing boards or committees. Go ahead, Enner.

Budget and finance meeting is up in the air for next month because first week is out. Second week, I think, people are out as well. So we may have to do something the week after. So Rodney will play it by ear. Anyone else?

Council comments.

We probably don't thank Russ enough for his background, his comments on things. He gives us a little setting of where we need to be. This is a very very exciting day.

And today, I went on my very first date with a woman that became my wife, Rachel.

So, if you're listening, darling, love you, and happy B-A-D-A.

And we're going to alert the authorities right here.

Did you spell Rachel for me? R-A-C-H-E-A-L. So I will see you, and I will raise you fine. As many of you know, we welcomed Ms. Aria Lynn Emmerich into the world last Monday. She decided to come on her own two weeks prior to, but she was born a very beautiful, healthy girl. Thank goodness she looks like her mother. Baby is doing exceptionally well. Mom is doing exceptionally well. We're so very... Thankful for God's blessing in that. And it is just an exciting time in the Amherst household. She's eating well. She's sleeping well. And it's just a wonderful, wonderful joy. And when the time comes, I'm sure we'll be all given the opportunity to meet her. Anyone else? Russ is going to get you.

If there's nothing else, this meeting stands adjourned.