TASM, a county board of supervisors for regular meeting scheduled April 8, 2025, 4 p.m. If you'll bear with me, I'll get the members of the public when we get down the agenda. Item number one, call to order. And then at this time, I would ask that supervisor Pressley lead us in the pledge of allegiance followed by the invocation led by Supervisor Cruey. Okay, two round. We'll go ahead and do it. Our pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, and individual with liberty and justice for our. Everyone, bow to me. Yes, thank you. You're Heavenly Father, Lord, we just come to you in this time, Lord. We just thank you for keeping us safe today, Lord. And we just ask that you just watch everything this meeting tonight. And you let us be a light that shaman, Lord. And that Jesus that you just guide us Lord in the Holy Spirit comforts us and guide us in these decisions that we make tonight. And that the decisions we make follow your word, God. And that Jesus, we just thank you for your death on the cross at this time, Lord. And just let us meditate on that. And thank you for dying for our sins, Lord. and just continue to guide us and watch over us and just keep us safe. I'm just Holy Spirit Philistrum. And you always went and pray, just name we pray. Amen. Amen. Thank you very much. Thank you members of the public. Law enforcement, members of the press for being here with us this evening. I've got a special guest with me here too. I'm is my son Truman. I'm thankful for him as well. At this time do we have under item number four, any additions or deletions to the agenda? Mr. Chairman, we have before you a revised agenda. And we would ask that the board approve this revisedagen. One matter that I would like to change on that is we have item A8 legal consultation regarding Tesla County Volunteer Fire Department. If we can move that to the first executive session, Mr. Chairman, because we're gonna talk about the rich land fire contract, and we need Mr. Brooks for both, and I'd like to go ahead and take care of his business so we can go home. Mr. Chairman, I received an email from Mr. Anderson today, our Commissioner of Revenue, with a request for a personal property of Bateman for IA, Enterprise FM Trust out of St. Louis, Missouri. I would like to add that to 7D on the consent calendar to discuss that separately from A3C. Right? Any other additions or deletions? Supervisor Presley. I was going to add the sanitary cells to my board of terms. Very good. Is there a motion to add both the revisions and the amendment to the agenda? So, maybe. Is there a second? All those in favor of the motion is presented. Please indicate by saying aye. Aye. All those pose. I's have it in motion carries. Item number five approval meeting minutes from March 4, 2025. I trust that we've all had the opportunity to review those minutes. Is there any discussion? Is there motion to approve? Some move. There's motion in a second. All those in favor, the motion is presented. Please indicate by saying aye. All those opposed. I ask you have it in the motion carries. Moving on to item number six, approval of meeting minutes from March 20, 2025. I move that we approve the minutes. All right, there's a motion. There's a second. Motion in a second, my mispressedly. All those in There's a motion. There's a motion in the second. I miss press. All those in favor, please indicate the saying aye. All those pose. I's have it. The motion carries. Moving on to item number seven of the consent calendar. All items on the consent calendar are considered to be routine matters. The following items may be enacted by one motion with the concurrence of the Board of Supervisors. And member may request that any of those items be removed for further discussion. Mr. Chairman, I have one comment on the consent calendar. You will see an appropriation of $75,000 to C-Core. We approved that in the budget this year, but we failed to designate at the time that it would come from the direct distribution opioid funds. So by voting on that, that's not an additional $75,000 that's simply designated where the $75,000 comes from. Okay. And then we also have an amendment to the consent calendar, Mr. Collins. We do, just for the benefit of the public, I would like to discuss that separately. A 70, we can vote on 7A through 7C now if the board is so inclined. I move that we approve the consent calendar item 7A, 7B and 7C. I'll second all those in favor please indicate by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed. I's having motion carries. Okay so 7D. Yes Mr. Chairman. Mr. Anderson our Commissioner of Revenue approached me around noon today to let me know that he would be requesting an abatement on behalf of Enterprise FM Trust, Enterprise the car company. In 2023, they sold a fleet of 26 vehicles to Cumberland Mountain Community Service here in TASW accounting that just got reflected in his office's records of course that would require an abatement of the taxes that would be doing, owing from enterprise FM Trust and reassigning those taxes to Cumberland Mountain Community Services. That being said that would require a refund on 26 vehicles that totals $5,954. That is, even though each individual vehicle is less than the $2,000 authorization set by the board for me to approve those abatements, the total of which I wanted to bring to the board for the board to affirm that I've reviewed all the documentation, all the sales were consummated in 2023. Each have bills of trust or I'm sorry, deeds of sale. Bills of sale, all of them had bills of sale in the accompanying documentation. The reason I wanted to bring it now rather than wait is that's another month of interest that would accrue if it sits in Mr. Anderson's care. So what I would request is to approve the abatements presented by Mr. Anderson for 26 refund requests for vehicles owned and sold in 2023 by Enterprise FM Trust from St. Louis, Missouri. Has he already sent out the revised bills to Cumberland is he is going to do so upon this boards vote. This board has to vote to abate and then he can reissue the corrected assessments to come. And that amount was $5954. Yes sir. $5954. Even miss calls and so we would refund it to enterprise but then we would get the money back from. From come yes. We would refund it to refund the money to enterprise with any penalties and interest that have accrued and then submit the bills to Cumberland for them to pay. Okay so it's just. It's not going to cost the county anything it's just moving around money essentially yes I'll go ahead and make the motion that we do the pavement for inner or the refund for enterprise for $5,954 $4. Correct. Here's the motion and a second. All those in favor. The motion is presented. Please indicate the same eye. $5,954. Correct. Here's the motion and a second. All those in favor, the motion is presented. Please indicate the same eye. Aye. All those pose. Eyes have it in the motion. Here. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the board for indulging me on that one. That was a very late addition on my behalf. Thank you. All right, moving on to Department of Reports. Item number eight, Ken Dumpford, I don't invite you to the floor. Good news, Ken. I've got a piece things that I like to mention and a couple of approvals that I will need for tonight. First thing I like to mention, I did talk to Capitol today. They did find a tire vendor to be able to start accepting tires. They are making repairs to their trailer because they have to use their own trailer. And they said those repairs will be made in two weeks, so they should be taken tires in two weeks. Great, that's great. And I'm marking that date on my calendar so I can call them and say, hey, you're taking tires. tires. But I'll keep you updated on that. Second thing related to landfill is currently working with a third party on the seat of bluff transfer station. She actually sent me a schematic last week. I gave her some comments and she's working on those. The rough idea of the plan is to do away with the setup that we've got now and put something up there similar to what we have at the landfill to make it easier up there. So we're working on that and making progress on that and I'll keep you updated.. Why we're talking about Mr. Dumper, 18 or 15. When we get that, I think maybe Ms. Plaster, Mr. Roddick, we look at that. Yes. I haven't seen it because it's in a very rough state. And I'm waiting till we get a little bit more of a design down to make it easier to understand what we're doing. Because there was a few things that left off that I managed to buy. The five-ster would want to see on the place. So once we have that, I will share it with everyone's. Well, we're on the landfill. I'll go ahead. I have a couple of approvals that I need. We've had a couple of invoices from Bluefield, West Virginia. These are stragglers for the diversion. It takes a little while to get this diversion worked out because they have to get billed from Mercer County. Then they have to go through their books and they have to send it to us. So I have two invoices for Lucio Westford Re version in the amount of $7,490 in 19th sentence that I will need to prove when to pay those invoices. Is this going to be the last one? I believe we've got that this is the last one. Well, I really make the motion that we approve the $7,490.19. All those in favor of the motion is presented. Please indicate for saying aye. All those opposed. I ask I have a motion carries. And we're meeting with Jenny Dawson, Thursday, to go over our FEMA claim. Now that we've got hopefully all of those bills in, we can submit the whole amount to FEMA. They should reimburse 75% of that. I have one more diversion. This is for the JPSA, the joint, Glenn with the JPSA. This is for December and January's diversion. That comes to $8,420.36. This was not in my border report. This came in after I sent my border report out. I'm asking for approval for that. And this will be part of the meeting, the conversation with FEMA as well. You got more asked, Delainer? No, this is the line. No, why? I'm trying to get it off the piece. You're getting to see more separate evenings. I needed separate emotions. I'll make that motion for you. Second. All right, motion to second. All those in favor, please indicate for saying aye. All those opposed? I'll say I have a motion carries. I'd like to let you know that our two projects for IT, the Nobel conversion and the network, have been completed. I'd like to thank my IT staff. They worked very hard on this network to work with the company to get it completed and they actually got it done ahead of schedule. So just like glitching those are done. The last thing, well sorry, the next of the last thing is we will have the painting schedule ready for May. We're currently working on it. We're going to try to have a CST meeting before the next meeting so that we can approve the roads and then we can advertise and start painting. So we'll have that ready for you in May. The last thing I have on my list is to say streets were all. We had interviews, I had the ranking sheets from Mr. Hylisby, but I don't have the ranking sheets from Mr. Crew. We're in kind of a tight deadline on that, so we need to approve an engineering firm for that so that we can get started working on that. We need the sheath. Okay. Okay. We'll get those as quick as we can. That is all that I had. I will mention to you, it's been a really rough winter on roads, especially V-dot roads. The next time you talk to them, you might just drop a bug in there, and there's especially like pounding mill branch and things like that. People are both laying, running in the middle there. I hate to see something bad happen. Yeah, I've had conversations. Yeah, and while we're on that particular issue, I know that we've had some complaints over the news Creek area, but a particular one is Rutherford Drive. Got sent some pictures this week back constituent. It definitely shows that some of the asphalt is cracking and bubbling at this point. Yes, I was just up there. I'm not going to say the asphalt is in good condition, but it's not. In the worst. It's not in the worst. We've got to raise it or worse. I know the constituent that you're talking about and they're bringing dirt trucks up there and he's scared that the road is going to deteriorate and we're keeping an eye. Okay thank you. I actually checked with Mr. Collins and Mr. Young this evening thing we could do about the dirt trucks and there's not. As long as there are not overweight which we're not going out out there and weigh in on, there's nothing that we can do about it. Very good. Thank you. I did get an email this week about 67. Have you heard anything whether they're going to be able to pay that? I think it was at the end of the list last year. in the end they also about the ditches that they were full of stuff. On that I know B.Dot has a plan. They got put a little behind schedule with the hurricane but there were going to address some major drainage issues and some culverts on a big Greek road right yeah and so I know that's on the to-do list I just don't know yeah I was just wondering yeah I think I had pitted on there to do list I just I'll follow up with them Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Dumpford. Let's see. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Dumpford. Next we have Team Venture presentation. So, I'm Rosetta Hell and I'm the new executive director of Team Venture up in the Austin Talktober. And we are working on the four-year prayer beds and the four-year prayer beds. We're mostly the Nurgent Albert. And I'm sure the progress of Team Venture and Lava's organization holds such a special place in the heart. Since its inception, Team Venture has been dedicated to providing a safe, inclusive and engaging environment for the teenagers in our community. Through commitment to empowering the government, the government, the government, the government, the government, the government, the government, the government, the government, the government, the government, the government, the government, the government, the government, the government, the government, the government, the government, the government, the government, the government, the government, the government, the government, the government, the government, the government, the government, connections and discovering their potentials. It's truly heartwarming to see third-transformations taking place right before my eyes every day. And just to go off on that a little bit, when I first met my teenagers, they were like little squirrels. And I thought, they have to learn how to have conversations because you can't just hold a phone, bounce around, play video games in your adult life. So we started doing ethical debates every night. Now it's their favorite thing that we do. They can't wait to do our ethical debate every night at dinner. And I was a member of Team Venture so it resonates deeply with me. I was able to gain a safe community, skills, confidence, and friendship through my teenage years. And by providing our youth with the tools, resources, and support they need to succeed, we can create a bright future for everyone. And I want to express my gratitude to the Board of Supervisors for your ongoing support and recognition of the invaluable work we do at Team Venture. Together we are making a lasting difference in the lives of our teenagers and building a stronger, more resilient community. I brought a book of some of our upcoming things that we're doing. On average we have about 11 members every night. We have 55 in total. And we've only been taking members in Schengwere, so within a little under three months we've been able to sign 55 members up. And it's growing every week. We have a 39% increase just over the last three weeks in the verse. So we are growing and then I brought this if you wanted to look at some of our upcoming events that we're doing this month. So why we're here tonight is we want to make sure that you have faith and confidence in team venture, the things that have been speculated and put out. And we just want to make sure that you have confidence in us and you can ask us questions and we would also like to invite all of you to come out to team venture, you can schedule appointment separately or together so that you can see what we're doing with the kids. And especially, I would like to invite you around 7 o'clock at the beginning of the night that we're open, because the family time with mom and dad that these kids get, that they don't get at home, is just priceless. And it's so heartwarming. You can't help but love these kids after seeing them. So you typically have 11 members or kids come every night? Those are our average. We've had it in those cities. We've had a lot of times we get five or six and then we'll get the leave and then the new ones come. on average. What are your hours of operation? Three to eight. Three to eight. And then also we have some weekend hours as our we don't have it on the website yet but on our Facebook we always update that when we have something so like we've got on the 19th we we've got a skate workshop for young children, so anybody that wants to register their trial to come learn to skate board, we do in skate too, just skateboarding. Or a skate, they can come out and get to do that for a feed so that the kids can learn something. Our kids can teach something and we're able to get back to the community and it's a good way. No, no. Okay. I just wanted to, you know, a yell or a do in a great job, I've been down there, but I also wanted to you all feed them every day. Yes, every day. One of the first things that we noticed was these kids are hungry and they don't have the home lives that our kids have. So we started providing family soundmills every day and that's when we do our health care. Okay, I got a question. I was a president of the weight. You know where the weight center is. I'm blue for West Virginia. Yeah, I'm actually going to your first. I was on the board for eight years by the president of the five. So when you're talking about the food, is the USA improved? Do you get rewondered for that from the USDA or anything like that? Me down in the front. Because I don't think a lot of people understand. All these kids that they don't eat at teen venture, the weight center and if you send a food home, somebody else might eat it. So it's very practical for them to have a meal there at the Teen Venture like the Waite Center. Why so? So I just want to say I appreciate what you do. I can echo that I worked at the Waite Center when I was in college. A lot of kids were reentangled. I a lot of favorite while their grandparents. So it was just curious how many volunteers do you have to help? It's often on. Some weeks we'll have two or three come in and some weeks we don't have as many as we have. We are all looking for good volunteers that don't come out especially for our students. They need that, they clean. So that, if you're an adult and you come in here, they want to know everything about you. They want to learn from you. And they would rather be with you and then all thinking out with other kids. Now do you guys have a background trick for your volunteers on a dating process? They have all underground a background trick and then they also have to do main native reporter training for their to see with our kids. Now, I'll talk about the now-embedded online before the organization, the ideal director, except that we can make sure that everybody feels like this is the same. Yeah, I know that there has been some concerns in the past, and that's one reason I asked the question. And I guess since your the previous maybe issues, you guys have changed a lot. What I've heard, you guys have changed a lot of policies, and I just give you guys an opportunity to tell us what policies have been changed and improvements have been made. So we have revamped pretty much all of our policies and procedures over the course of the 2024 year. So we've updated what volunteers are able to do and how they function in the center, who can be a volunteer, how the process works, and the same report members. We have almost a full new board. We've got four of us from the board, Mark last year. Four of us are from the board, March of last year and everybody else is brand name. And we're being very particular on who our board members are, so that we are able to reach out into the community more. We have also created committees, which we are trying to fill with people from outside of the board so that the kids can have more positive role models, more people having input from the community on what they need. And we recently formed a kids committee and are putting one of our teens on each committee so that they can learn how to run, how to be out of committee, how to be leaders, and also so that their input is heard, and they know that what they care about is valued. Okay, gotcha. Yeah, I was asked that question, said you guys were open in the summer. And one of the biggest problems we have with the weight is if there's kids that come in the summertime, some of them didn't eat for days. So that's a lot of some people don't think about, especially with school kids, a lot of kids, they don't have food during the summer. So it's very vital for programs like this. Thank you guys. Any other questions? Well thank you all so much for your presentation, this evening. Moving on, please do. Mr. Chairman, if I may, I see that the next item on the agenda is the executive closed meeting. However, we do have Miss Jankorl and Miss Adrian Kordel from the TAS will count EPSA. They are under item 10. Would the board be on behalf of my client? with the board be inclined to entertain a motion to suspend Robert's rules of order to allow them to have their presentations? Senator Moved. Senator Moved. And a second, all those in favor? All those those. I was having much cares. We have now suspended Robert's rules until further motion of this board. I would at this time move to item 10 special presentations, subsection, PSA presentation, Jan Cordo, I will invite you both to the floor and let's hear what's going on with the PSA. I'm going to especially passionate about that. No, I would not do meet you up again. Hello. First of all, I'd like to thank you all for everything you do for the PSA. And we love having this pressley on our board. We really do like the content. I'll leave some good comments. We don't put them in the mail itself. No, he really has been a pleasure to have, and he's been interested in what we're doing, and we want to keep him if we can. Thank you. So don't let anybody do this. But we'll go over some updates with our projects. First, the amin', as you all know, is the nothing as far as we know. So there's not much change there. And we do not have a sign use or agreement yet. We've fit it to them, we do not have it. Okay. Town of Richlands of Water Treatment Upgrade and sewer treatment upgrade. That's been put on hold but I think they're getting ready to move forward and I asked Mr. Yann the people on the talk any about that we met with them today. I could just second this term. First on on Jonah the user agreement, whatever debt has to be incurred through that water line, they have to pay as part of their water bills. So we're waiting on the final numbers to them to plug into that agreement. So when we get the second round of bids in and pick a bidder, then they should sign as far as the form of it, I think they've agreed with that. But today's meeting with the town of Richland is I think it's constructive. I think they now understand the importance of the construction. Constructive. Constructive meeting with the town of Richland today. I think they now understand the significance of the VRA financing, you know, 0.5 percent. For $10 million dollars is a lot cheaper than you're going to get it a private bank. So I think they understand that that means you'll see you have to play by VRA rules. So hopefully they're going to make some progress on that. We still have the issue of potential overpayment of the PSO for period time and how we're going to resolve that. But we'll take baby steps and see what they do tonight. I'm shocked that it took some explaining to... Well I spoke to Ron today and Ron Holt and I went through that with Bluecov Virginia and he's very aware how crucial that is. I'm glad someone sees it. I told him I said you know you might get some flack but you're going to have to do the go-through with this. We was kind of trading these in this morning. We did the best we could. Ron's a good one. He understands. OK. The next thing is taster waste water treatment plant. They're moving forward with that. And as you can see down next to the bottom of that, the PSA's debt, we own 40% of that sewer plant. The PSA's debt is 7.6 million, and it's going to be a $19 million project with the rising cost of everything. It's just really escalated. Y'all have me, if you have, y'all start with having questions about any of this. File smells rehabilitation, which is what we call the SSES, 30 years. You all gave us a moral obligation not to see $2 million, 750 which I appreciate. We have took a few items out of that which is we didn't need land in right away we took that out. The trunk line, it'll be better for years to come, we think that's fine so we didn't put that in there either. To limitry, we can do on our own some contingency. So that actually brought the debt down to 1.513, 1,513,000. Although y'all said not to exceed the 2 million, that's what we thought when we were going to be at, but we have got it down to, and it came in and to be at. So that's your point. And that project's running right on schedule. And that project's running right on schedule. Yeah. Okay. Town of Tassel, 460 water bottle. We've got 18 months to complete this and as y'all know, most of you all know Donnie Pruitt was heading this up and he has resigned his position but he has agreed to come back and work for the town until this project is complete he'll work part-time and I and oversee it. With that being said, our construction or maintenance supervisor on the upper end, Darrell Cole, he knows as much about this I feel like as Donnie does. We've worked closely with him and Darrell I called Darrell and I said you may have to pick up if Donnie can't be yourself. We're good on that too, and Darryl said he would. He said he would overseen if Donna could. Pocohana's waterline. We are still waiting on some easements. We're getting ready to do some condemnation on about four out of all my things. And we will move forward. We'll put it out the beds. We're going to advertise May the 21st of this year. We should open mids July 2nd on that one. And Ms. Cordell, if I may, when folks talk about condemnation, there's that negative connotation. But those four condemnations are for homes and what are called the Schim Breyer community over just on the other side of Wolf, which is a part of the Pocahontas system that the PSA took over back in 2019. There are seven residents there that it's necessary to cross, cross a bridge, cross, gosh, how many tents of miles just to get to seven holes. And those are the seven that we're looking to serve by the condomations. And again, that's going to be paid for out of grant funding. All that's going to be taken is just enough to have the temporary construction easement to lay the line, the 20-foot permanent easement to maintain the line thereafter. That's right. Any, if you haven't been shin barier, you need to go. So this is 9.1 million for ShinBarrion? No, it's 9.1 million for the whole project. The condemnation of the four properties are for those specific homes. I just wanted to state that for the public's benefit. I'm going to buy those homes for two million. ShinBarrion is 750,000 for seven customers. Still a little high high. Yeah it is. And that's all Virginia debt. No debt, much Virginia. That's something we don't like, but we think better. That's the price we have to pay to get to our customers on the other side. It is. Files mills waste water treatment plant. That's still in process. Looks like the loan that will be on that will be 1.6 million. Uh, we're on schedule with that. We have not put it out to be it. Um, I think we put that out to be it in August. Uh, Coronado Code, that's on hold right now. Mr. Vod Robert, do you know anything about? I don't know either. Raven Dorian, Hina, Inflo and Infiltration. We got $50,000 grant from Camberland. And we are working, they are working to TV the lines to try to stop the inflow and infiltration. Keep in mind this all goes to Richlands to be treated so that we own 20% of that sewer plant in Richlands. So that's why I'm pushing them so hard to try to get this line repaired. It'll save as many because we're paying for a drop. And when it floods, that's flowing in those lines and goes to rich lands. Ms. Coral, what's the rate of loss down in Raven? Pardon? What's the rate of loss down in Raven? Water loss? Yeah. This month is 62%. How much do we average throughout our whole system? Well, we're supposed to be under 30%. But we can't keep it there. So the airlines are getting old and it's just really hard to do. Um, do you know, Ridge is a problem. Clip of Hill, Wardale is a problem. Those lines are just so old. On the upper end, not so much. We're keeping it in the third floor. That is what this is called. But probably it's a negative system. OK, do you all have any questions about any of this? I don't know. I mean, we can add some people in my district like we talked about last night. Pardon? We can add some people in my district like we talked about last night. Pardon? We can add some people from my district like we talked about. Oh, OK. You know. You want to talk a little bit about that? Well, I just met with a few people. We can change what was in 2000 feet of line. About 2000 linear feet of line is what, you know, from a thousand, you know, from the thousand foot view looking down on it.'s about how much you'll need we're working on plans Air with Meet with people and there she's doing all the work or Adriene about at about 27 homes What areas have an easier care coming on there? But they know there's gonna be costs acquired to that but she said there had to be a six inch line had to have engineering So that might work a lot of the cost comes from And it would be a six inch line, had to have engineering. So that might be a lot of the cost coming from. And it would be a six inch line, it would have to be an engineer. I thought there was 28 homes, 27, 28, something like that. It would be a great project. I think it looks like they're pretty close together. If we could get some funding for that, the problem is nobody's in my house there, I'm sure. That's low-modern income. So I'm sure that you won't get any good funding or grant money. But it's worth the shot. Yeah, we're trying. There's a couple creative funding mechanisms, Mr. Chairman, that can be used if they want to pay over time. For example, it's hard for a property owner to come up with $10,000 in one fell swoop. Just pick it around number. I don't know that it's going to be $10,000. But if you can pay that over time as like a special assessment or something of that nature, then you might be able to space that out over a period of time to allow them to pay for more reasonably and use it over time. Yeah. If Kat has put some money out there, I got an email from the health department. It's very specific to things like generators, just a few things that they've got some money for. We're applying again through the yield to get many for generators. As you know when the hurricane hit we were in desperate need of generators. They got to Cleopelville thanks to Ural's emergency team. I mean just in time before the tanks went dry and that would have meant the nursing home out of water, the clinic out of water. So I went to the nursing home twice. I asked them on Sunday. I said, can you all fix meals like pizzas or sandwiches without using much water? And they did that. They did as much as they could to help us, but they didn't run out of water. Those generators came in, as a matter of fact, while I was in church, I was in the night. And then I went back to the nursing home to make sure they were okay after. And they were. So you all were a lot safer when it came to that. I really do appreciate all your help Appreciate it I think we're good Thank you all. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you miss Jan and thank you for all the hard work you guys do over the PSA I have the cold severance tax request Just a little kind of real quick. Well, anything else that we can take up before we need to go into executive closed session? I think Mr. Chairman, we're scheduled to go into executive session about 420 some of them on the way ahead. Okay. At this time, we're item number 9 executive closed meeting percentage for genucated section 2.2-37111 to discuss the following 829 contract negotiations with TASW or SOS LLC, 829 contract negotiations with Town of Richlands for Fire Protection Services, a five new business expansion for existing business project DOE. Is there anything else to add to this executive session? How it included that we need invite Mr. Brooks and Mr. Daniels and Ms. Needin. Anybody else that may? anything else to add to this executive session? How include that we need to invite Mr. Brooks and Mr. Danes and Ms. Needin. Anybody else that may find? And Mr. Chairman, the item under A8 that was moved as a- Okay, and then also to discuss A8 legal consultation regarding to have a county fall into your final apartment. Is there a motion to discuss those in executive post session and invite anyone necessary to carry out executive closed session. Submissive motion. Second all those in favor. We say aye. Aye. All those opposed. I have an emotion carries. We are now in the go ahead and call this meeting back to order. We have returned from executive closed session. This time someone mind reading the certification. Whereas the Towskani Board of Supervisors has convened an executive closed meeting on this date, presented to the affirmative vote and in accordance with the Virginia Freedom Information Act, and whereas 2.2-3711 of the Virginia Code requires a certification by the Board of Supervisors that such executive closed meeting was conducted in conformity with the Virginia Law. Now therefore it be it resolved that the Tazokowni border supervisors hereby certifies that to the best of each member's knowledge that only public business matters lawfully exempted from open meeting requirements by Virginia law were discussed in executive closed meeting to which certification resolution applies and only such public business managers as were identified in the motion convening the close meeting were heard Discussed or considered by the Towson County Board of supervisors the chairman called for a roll cove out with the following votes here by recording a supervisor Provotic supervisor crew. Hi chairman votes on a supervisor press Supervisor Plaster. Thank you. I believe we have at least one motion coming out of the executive closed session. I move that the board approve real and personal property tax incentive packages for James River equipment being values above the current real and personal property tax rate for year 2024 as the basis of those values and as set forth as follows. Year 1, 100 percent, is that allotment? Abatement. Year 2, 80 percent abatement. Year 3, 60 percent abatement. Year 4, 40 percent abatement. Year 5, 20 20% abatement and I further move that the board approve a 500 500 dollar Mr. 500 dollar grant per net full time equivalent job. I created over a five year period not to exceed $5,000 in total after After each employee's subject to this program is on the payroll for the same James River equipment. Is there a second? Second. As there, all those in favor of the motion is presented, please indicate by saying aye. All those opposed, I's having the most carried. I want to say no on that one. OK, so we do have four eyes, one, for the record. Are there any other motions or discussions to be had? I'm fortunate to executive close session. None at this time, Mr. Chair. Okay, thank you. Moving on since we are a little bit behind schedule, I'll try to catch us up. Mr. Chairman, if I may, state for the public's, item 829 contract negotiations with TAS will horseshoe's LLC will be moved to the second executive session. Thank you, Mr. Collins. Moving on to special presentations. This is item number 10 of the agenda. The first that we have is the GHS Chair and Leaders Resolution. They will want to come in June and allow the kids or on field trips are a lot of games going some moves that to our gym meeting. Scott Stilton or resolution. Yes, Mr. Chairman, do we have to read that resolution tonight? We have a date to have it presented. We'll be presented the family on Saturday. It is Memorial Service. We'll talk talk to Rita in the record. Yeah, I'll read it into the record. This is before I read it, just one of the saddest things. Scott Stilner was adept at you with the task and sheriff's office. He worked as a detective there and also with the talent of the task. Police Department before that, doing cyber crimes and before they was with the Virginia Department of Corrections. He's passed away in this resolution. It's going to be just to honor him and all his years of service. So, one one do is I'm going to head lead into the record and then on Saturday we'll be presented to his family at the Memorial Service. Resolution committing Sabian Scott Stiltoner. Whereas Sabian Scott Stiltoner was a native of the Buchanan County, Virginia, and attended Grundy Senior High School, whereas Sabine Scott stillner became, or began his law enforcement career as a correctional officer for the Virginia Department of Corrections at King Mountain Correctional Center, and was one of the first employees to be there as it opened in 1990. Whereas in 2009, Sabine Scott stillner became a member of the Tazzazzle Police Department and was instrumental in the implementation of the first internet crimes against children eye-cacked program in Tazzle County and surrounding counties. We're in 2012, the eye-cacked program was moved to the Tazz County Sheriff's Office, and Sabine Scott-Stilner was sworn in as a deputy sheriff and served as a detective with the sheriff's office, where he continued to do work with and be a member of the Southern Virginia Internet Crimes against children task force. Whereas during his career in law enforcement, Sabian Scott still received training in and developed expertise in cyber investigations, dark Web Intelligence, undercover, chat, Cyberstalking and other training for technology, forensics that he used to investigate crime has been committed against children through social media. Whereas Sabine Scott Stillner was also a conservative piece through the Department of Criminal Justice Services and assisted with the concealed web and classes that were offered through the Taus County Sheriff's Office. whereas the county of Tazzle wishes to post-humilously recognize Sabine Scott's still there for his dedication along force in his community and to safety of children. Now therefore, be it resolved that the Taos County Board supervisors hereby commend Sabine Scott's still there for his distinguished service and dedication presented this the eighth day of April 2025 and I would put that in a form of motion Mr. Chair. All those favor the resolution by motion is presented please indicate the same eye. Hi. I ask that question here. Thank you. I'm Price, for creating and certainly appreciate Scott's dedication in service to our county. I know that members of the Sheriff's Department of New York has here with us as well as other members of our first responders. I certainly appreciate heat and it's down for us. At this time I would now move forward with special presentations that Labor love and at this time I will invite spot steel to the floor. I'm getting a go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. Thank you, the channel for your service. You can hear the volume. See you. Some of you. I'm going to give you a quick outline of what we do and things like that. Again, my name is Robert Steele, I'm the executive director of Lakeville's Vision. I was asked to come here tonight and Mr. President and Mr. Boyce, and I greatly appreciate that. I will not pay for Mr. Presley for coming to the Labour Love Mission. And seeing what we were all about, helping the citizens of the county, love the people who have. A lot of people who have. Yes sir. a lot of people have. Yes sir. Labor Foundation is a once more unjust food bank. We started in our home where we quickly grew up through the fortillity of CAC in the dollar bank. And we appreciate, we approach you. We approach the Dan Moore suit by, or the county, or county building. Mr. Carl Griff at that time, it's on the Moore suit by, and also when we're finished down to the anti-actuals. He suggested that we move into our, into their completely empty wire rack, which had most many use as anti-versus, versus the whole wire rack. It was a perfect fit for us. And also when I already had an extramarcial refrigeration piece of course, it was a big blessing to us. Ladies and gentlemen, we're in to buy a commercial free store or a cleaning, which helped us start more people with more donation. Then my brother and I, along with my children, a couple volunteers, we build labor-loved missions off the storage area inside the warehouse, building inside the building. We have been there for 21 years. Labor-loving has been an existence for a total of 23 years and we are proud to put the library with wonderful apartments like WBDA's one-long tow drive, the Town of County Sheriff's Department's Tax School Bad, and the White Christmas Edition, the Town of County Overs, Burrign and Hothville, and so many more. We are still in the department, shipped with two other organizations. And every other week we've received donations of 30 pound food boxes, which include fresh, firm, investment, and meal that need to be that help nourish the whole county. The labor of other missions has become a life model in this community. We also have joint forces with organizations like Community Probation Program, DSS, Community and Skills, among others to provide essential services to all residents of South County. In all the years, we have tried to make a meaningful difference in the lives of those we serve. For example, in October, 2010, between We gave away 48 watermelon beans of apples to anyone that won the debt. That equal 40,000 pounds of apples was $116,000. We'll give you a few more examples of some things that we've done this year also. Food with an in-time value of $607,450,000 products, hand sanitizer, $253,000. Paper products, cups, matkins, plates, or just a few $200,000. After back to school bags with the Sheriff's Department, we worked with them in the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation and gave away free interest tickets. And swim passes to any Virginia State Park, for child, for children, a child in the family in a almost school supplies at a $15,000 dollar. Other items, totaling $290,000 dollars, air purifiers, furniture, personal hygiene, clothing, clothes, and load of the meters, just a tiny few. Also, debt goods. In 2024 for all our efforts called to estimate 1.5 million or more of income value in South Carolina and its surrounding areas and helps across the young 190,000 people. In 2018, the Labor Law Mission Office called fire and and everything was sold off. So all of our exact statistics are gone. But we work able to find numbers from 2016 to do a little bit faster. In 2016, we distributed $4.7 million in fine merchandising food to over $1,500. We have always tried to give what we can to whom we can. We understand that this year is a good day for our brothers. And the taxes made for the greatest of order to provide for our EMS, which I'd like to say, I'd like to tell you which sports you want to have. Want to have a thing. The labor-on mission we'd like to get, we're supporting 100%, 100%. The labor-on mission we'd like to do is fire share. To help, as we have tried to do for the last 43 years. And I know the same as 200 dollars is not a lot in the grand scheme of things. But as we can tell, we're going to publish every penny note. So with that being said, we would like to do our part as a team member, as we are, to help everybody in the community. The Labor Law Commission would like to give back the same $200 that shows in the budget being incorporated for us this year. I thank everyone for your service. May God bless you. Sparta, I have to make one correction. You've made the statement that you will try to make a difference. I think the better way to put it is that you all do make a difference in our community. Thank you, Spock. Brigade. Moving on to audit presentation. Mr. Young, I'll kind of let you take this one over. Yes, sir Mr. Chairman, Ms. Bars can't be with us this evening so... Mr. Wickham is with us this evening. And I guess before we get this kicked off, whether or not it is a politically popular thing to throw around on Facebook or social media platforms or email about what independent audits look like. This is part of what the independent audit process looks like. The county goes through on an annual basis and it is in fact independent in the sense that we hire a third party company that maybe they have employees that are from Tassel County, I don't know if you all do or not, but certainly of no significant relationship other than you look at all of our financials. So I just want to thank you for all the work that you all do and floor to works. Mr. Wicke. Is it mute? Thank you. All right, again, my name is Scott Wicke. I'm one of the partners in the Blacksburg RFC office. So from Blacksburg, we're closely with Emily. I have worked on the taskbar audit before it has been a few years. So I have reviewed the audit and I've got some information to go over with you, but Emily was the detailed in charge, so there are questions I'm not able to answer, I'm happy to get that information to get back to you with that. But first I'll go through the overall audit results. Within the report you have the French statement, you have three opinions or three reports that we issue. The first is the Independent Autor's Report. That speaks to the numbers presented in the report, and again, you all received an unmodified opinion. That means the numbers in the report are not really accurate, so it's a credit to the staff with doing a good job of getting those books ready for audit. The second report that we issue is the yellow book opinion or the report on gas. You all do have two total control deficiencies noted, similar to prior years. The first being material proposed audit adjustments, and the second being the timeliness of reimbursement requests at the school board for federal grants. Those have been findings for a number of years, and I believe they are heavily related. So, I really want to push to get those grants submitted timely. It's not unusual for tassel County. This is a common issue. I think it was exacerbated with the additional, as they're funding, the additional funding during ARCO time. But regardless, it is a federal requirement to have these grant requests done timely to ensure the revenues, mature expenses. So, do we believe that's happening now in this fiscal year that we all are to? It was much improved during the year. Thank you. Still worked to be done to much improve from where it had been in prior years. From looking at prior audits, you also have a finding in prior years related to ESR and the inability to reconcile that to the financial statements. This all kind of goes into hand and hand. You should be able to reconcile a report to expenditure explained and do that in a time of manner to make sure those funds are back in and you're not relying on accounting money for those expenses for a long period of time. So just the same two material the Fishing C.C. have had in the past. The third reporting issue is the report on compliance for federal funding, uniform guidance. This is an unmodified report with no issues noted during our testing. The second page, page three of the handout that I pass out to the board, has some trend information for you. Along with other governments, you'll see property taxes are increasing in the annual birth rate of about 3.7%, which is significantly less than the intergovernmental rate. A lot of state and federal funds have increased over the last five years. We expect that to decline moving forward. So we do expect localities to be more self-serving as far as that goes in future years. You'll see increase in total operating expenditure just below 5% per year right around inflation, the last couple of years there. And you'll see a significant growth in fund balance, the bottom end, about 27 percent. Overall, it's a great year for the general fund, a big increase to the fund balance. Kind of give me an idea of what that means on the next page. So on page four, you have a calculation of operating reserves. One thing that I like to look at, and I'm speaking mostly to the second blue line that bottom there says ending assigned fund balance. The county had ending assigned fund balance as we're saying, is operating expenditures are 25% during the year. GFOAs, a national organization, and they have some generalization policies and recommendations minimum on a side fund balance. Their minimum recommendation is two months or 16-17%. That's a very minimum and also doesn't take into account a lot of different pieces. That's a national organization. More rural localities have less ability to generate tax income than large cities. That's one thing to take into account. Look at that. Also, that is not taken into account. The fact that you all do twice your tax collections for real estate. And so a lot of your receipts are right there in June. So you should have a stronger fund balance in June and you would have it other month. So that's a point of reference, but also take that with those. Kind of put in a slang that's kind of like looking at your ATM the day you hit your payday instead of after you've been running. Correct. Yeah. It's a good point. Let's wait a minute. For sure. In this wrong position, as far as I guess, in the general fund, but doing a point that is cadets to you, I also want to point out that on an annual basis you all do have to fund, the landfill fund, so initially each year from that, that general fund as well. So that would be something to think about as you do that. The third piece is a lot of localities don't have a super well-defined capital plan with a projection of when you plan to use those funds. If you do you could look at putting those funds into a signed funds and add on a signed funds because you have plans for those. So just some ideas as you look at your own signed fund balance but a good year for the general fund. On page five, you have the current 2020, 2020 year general fund revenues where the revenue came from by function there. General property taxes made up about 41% of the total general fund revenues. Intergovernmental was about 38%. So almost equal parts, property taxes, and state and federal grants. You can see a significant increase in that state and federal grants as opposed to 2025. On page six, a similar chart here, a function of expenses, by category there. You will see a decrease in that school board funding there, education, as they have a significant carryover at the end of the 2022. Page 7 is summary of long-term obligations. We always go over this and I want to make sure it's really clear that this is accounting debt. So this is beyond what your bond debt is. This includes sick leave and vacation leave and these liabilities and things that you haven't invested before to pay that bond debt. Also accrual liabilities from actuary such as the net pension liability. The net pension liability is nothing that the school board accounting has done wrong. It's an allocation from the state. So it's not anything that you pay with BRS tells you to pay. And then either the stock market does better than they expect or less than they expect. Or they don't give you the right rate to pay and it generates this liability. So this is an example pension liability like. So this is an example, pension liability, like everybody that worked for me decided to retire tomorrow. That's a big check to rock. Right, we are as, as, as, as, as, hold your money for you. So that money's not here. It's held at the state and the rich and the rich. Right. And if, if everyone retired today, they would not have the money to fund the check. right. That's essentially what that is. Very common allocation, you know, say nothing that you all go wrong. But that is included in your liability here because it's required to be reported on our gasry standards. We also include it in this spreadsheet because the depth or capital across the bottom is calculated based on the APA state average, which is also included in that number. So to be fair a fair comparison, we did not have 2024 data yet. That should be out very soon. But looking at 2023, the state average was just over $4,000 per capita in debt. And Tazzle County was just under 2,400 per capita debt. So well below that average as you should be, because that does include no-during the areas which have a much higher income personal. On page eight, we have a much higher income personal. On page 8 we have a me case one governance that goes over various parts of the yawded. Several significant estimates include the appreciable assets and lives of those assets. The second being that deferred inflow of OPEB, a couple of liabilities, and attention liabilities your actuaries calculate, and then discount rates on your subscription and these items. The rest of the letter is pretty bullet-play, not a lot of smicking issues. The auto process, as I was told, went really well, so we appreciate all the parties uploading things to our software, and a talent manager, and helping get the auto process done. And then it goes on to include the material adjustments that resulted in that finding by phone player secrecy. On page 16, we also issue a recommendation letter. These are items that are best practice or non-material non-compliance. A few items there that we would like to be cleaned up a little bit but nothing with supercinogens. We include it here because it is required to be sent to the state ADA as well so let me show you all how to copy. The last part of the presentation is starts on page 17, upcoming accounting gas with announcements. I mentioned mentioned that that mentioned liability. If we could pause just a second, we should go back to 16. Sure. The school board recommendations, the health insurance payments. Yes. So what, as I understand what you're saying they were doing is they would pay something in June that wasn't due until July. Yes, that's right. So what that would effectively do is make their ending balance at the end of the fiscal year appear lower, probably than it actually would have been, had they waited until July but made their payment. That's correct. That's correct. And for a clarification too, that's not completely unusual, but you do want to try not I'm 13 payments All right, I'm paid 17 18 and 19 these are upcoming announcements Statement 101 from gas be compensated absences is in full in play in 2025 First one to point out this does not change your operations. This doesn't, this will change your reporting liabilities for compensated absences. Primary is sick leave. The current standards sick leave is accrued in liability based on what some of the repay that they retire or leave, which could be a lower amount than what they are owed and you factor in the time they will use. So it will be grossed up for time the day will use taking off as well. So it will increase that for much all localities and school boards across the state and country. But I want to point that out that that's a significant change to your financial abilities. Again, as I mentioned that is beyond what you're required to pay back. But it does impact that liability debt number. Statement 102 will change some disclosure items in the report but nothing super significant. Statement 103, the financial modding, financial reporting model. When that started out that was a significant sleeping change. They were planning to change the entire structure of the French statements and then COVID hit, and they had a lot of priorities, and then people couldn't agree on what that new model looked like, and ending impact is not nearly a city. So that's good for us as it is not so significant. But there are some changes that could impact the reporting. You'll see a third column in your budget to actual statements. So it'll be beginning budget changes in budget and final budget for those statements and a few other changes to MDNA and various items but not nearly the significant groundbreaking changes that they necessarily disfated. Let's all probably have you over. I want to point out that the audit report looks pretty good, a better report as far as fewer findings than prior years. I really want to keep improving those federal grants. It's just important to make sure that you have received that money in the town and you want to make sure you're doing that. But, Chairman, in fact, I could ask a question about the grants. As I understand what we're talking about is the school system has spent monies for which there's a grant and then they report that and then they get paid back from the state or federal. Is that what we're talking about? That's correct. Okay. So when that money is repaid, then that's unrestricted money. Is that right? Yes. Okay. So it's unrestricted. Now if they wait until a subsequent fiscal year, let's say they spent the money in FY24 and held that and didn't ask for the reimbursement until FY 26, if that's not reported to you or to us, then it's not budgeted and it's not appropriated money. Is that correct? That's correct. It's usually a temporary borrowing from the county essentially by delaying that request. It is common. You'll have salaries for August and then you normally request those in September. So there's you but when you point seven months technically in the grant award to do that But we need to make sure it's included in the audit So it has to be done at least time enough to be included in the audit when your pre-oriented consultant firm comes in to make sure You've got those and that's where that interior weakness comes in is that a lot of them were not done. And repairs for a 5.3 million dollars is a little high. Yes, I have to hold that in. I assume three years it's a little long to see some of my health goes. Correct, yeah. I don't know the details of the times on this but for sure, I would like it to be on each month. I will let you have a you have the salary for that month the next month you request that reimbursement. I know that that can be administrative challenges, but it'll be support. I think I think your audits, your firm's audits have reflected for at least seven or eight years I'm aware of. My understanding that that practice has been going on. Yeah, my understanding that goes back to the 15 years. Yeah, and the school board has been advised to that as well. That's fine. By your front. At least three emails for us on them. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Wickham, I have a question. From time to time, this virus and province of farmer cox has made recommendations that we adopt certain policies and procedures by resolution of this board. You've noted GASB 101 through 104. Does the board need to take any action at this time with regards to ratifying or resolving to follow those procedures? That's a very question. No, those upcoming standards, I don't see a policy change. But I see a procedural change as far as calculations to provide for us. One thing being providing the budget in a manner that shows the initial crew budget and then another column for all the cumulative changes during the year and then a final budget. we're only getting a current and a final one getting that column that will be very helpful. And then also we'll be sending out a client on the board of the Compton Advenson's that should give a set up for staff to calculate that. Wonderful, thank you. I know you have to be in the blue field this evening, Mr. Wrenner. I do. I do. I'm good. There you go. I don't have any questions. All right. Thank you very much. Thank you all. We appreciate your firm. We appreciate all you do and send in to our best, okay? Yes, I will. Thank you. And it's a lot of information. If you do have questions as we review the report or any other information, feel free to send in the email or send me any number. So it has my email as well. So thank you all. Thank you. Thank you. I think that's the crown for the next part of the ink of ink. We'll call you for the next. All right. Moving on to the next item on the agenda. We're still under 10 special presentations. Tatham County Public Schools, Question of Fund Status Report, and I find Dr. Stacey Goodford. Thank you, Dr. Stacey. Yes, sir. I don't know if you might have a phone number, not particularly. And I will apologize. front, I'm not sick, but I don't know what's belonging. I don't know what's after. So I do have a cough drop in my mouth. Me too. I empathize with Dr. Stacey. Water. Oh, I've got a water, but I popped in a cough drop. So if you hear it, clankin, nobody's going to get sick for me. I promise you. But I do appreciate you, Mr. Chair, Mr. Vice Chair, members of the board. Mr. Young, appreciate you giving us this opportunity to come and talk to you this evening. Mr. Young has sent me a letter last week and it offered us a path forward. It offered us a path to be successful together. So I appreciate him sending that and it's our intentions to address the document as numbered and there's a FOIA request in there that we will honor and get those documents to you. There's some other things in there that we will obviously be taking some action with but again I appreciate you giving us the opportunity to even talk about these sequester funds. It's obviously within your purview, any excess funding for the school system that the board of supervisors has that right to take. And it's good those to you or thank you to you that you're even given us the opportunity to come forward to you tonight to even talk about possibly spending some of those funds. Because everyone's aware you don't have to do that. So we appreciate your goodwill to us. We appreciate your giving us the opportunity to talk about it. So I know one of the things in the, one of the path score was facility improvements and we talked about restrooms and primarily are restrooms at our high schools and so I had given I met with Mr. Young, Mr. Presley, Mr. Robotik and we had a I don't want to I don't know what the proper term has had a rough quote it's not an official bid but I had a gentleman contractor say this is about what you could expect and so I gave you a number that day and I thought it was for several bathrooms but it was for four bathrooms which would only be enough for one school. So what we're going to do, we're going to go out on an official bid but the official bid will be for all bathrooms, excuse me, two female bathrooms and two male bathrooms at each of the high school. And most of our high schools are constructed in a single manner. There's a main boys' bathroom downstairs, a main girls' bathroom downstairs. There may be a few other restrooms for special needs or something like that, but this is primarily to address the main bathrooms. Unfortunately, on the estimate I gave for those four bathrooms, that did not include asbestos abatement. So all of our schools are 1950s construction, they will have as best as it will be. But anyway, that would be part of a bid process. That would be included. So what I would like to ask is, after we go through the bid process and I have official numbers, serious numbers, that you allow me to come back and present that to you in the quote for it. And before we do anything, we come back and say, hey, this is what we've got. This is what we need to make this happen. With the understanding also, too, lots of times when we have construction be it's our geographic area. We may not have tons of construction folks come in and sometimes whoever gets the deed they may be limited in work crews. So it may take time to do all 12 bathrooms and sometimes they will designate an entire crew to this school but they don't have work on or at the other schools at the same time. They'll have to pretty much finish one area. They move on to the next and then move on to the next. So when I come back to you with those numbers, it still may take the entire sum or well into the fall. I don't know to do this because of those. But again, I don't know what contractors will be on this. I appreciate being here tonight listening to the audit. And obviously there's still things that we need to work on. He did say we were doing better. And that's what we wanted to do. We want to be good stewards or good partners with you to make things happen. And so that's, I'm here tonight. I apologize for the last month missing being here. I told Mr. Yon that it's a bad pun, but I was finally getting work finished from the storm from September. So it was almost a perfect storm for me. I finally had the contract to make a B building managers or building inspectors there. So in no way that I'm not going to be here with you, but I appreciate you giving me some leeway on that one. But again, Mr. Young has stated, in meetings in the past, COVID was another time a perfect storm. The amount of federal grant dollars they gave, and I'm going to give you copies of all the grants that we've had. It was public knowledge. It was on our websites. But sometimes it's kind of mind-boggling to see how much money came through here. And again, COVID was not a good thing, but the things that COVID allowed us to do to our facilities was truly remarkable. And at times, maybe even life changing. So that is why I'm here tonight was to see if I could answer any questions, but also to ask if I can already ask for a return invite or a return spot on the agenda once we go through a big process and do those things. And then at that time also you should, you will not have to receive your point of documents. that will have all those things with it too. And then that may lead to more discussions or more more more that received your point of documents. That'll have all those things with it too. And then that may lead to more discussions or more debate. Or whatever I'm trying to say that. But again, I'm here with my board members tonight. They're here because we want to work with you. And we're going to work with you. We're a small county, a small school system, but we can do big things. We can do good things. So I don't want to be the center of opposition to any of you. I don't want to be a point of contention. So, you know, again, I'm here to work with you. And again, I do appreciate you giving us the opportunity to even come to this board to even talk about the money, because you were under no no eric your legal person. You're under no, you didn't have to do it, let me just put it in my words. So that's greatly appreciated, it's greatly respected. And so that's that's kind of where we are. Well, there's a couple of attorneys up there, I wanted you but anyway. So again, I appreciate you letting me be here, I'm happy to talk to you. Mr. Chairman, if I could say a couple of things out. I think it was a good meeting that we had a couple of weeks ago at the Career and Technical Center. I think we made some progress. I think it's important for us to communicate what we see as the priorities as far as how this money should be spent. We said last year in the budget process and then last August when we met that we felt like bathrooms were important and I'm glad to see that we're making some progress on that because I can tell you any business that comes to the county and thinks about located they're going to go look at your schools and if they go to the bathroom right now it's not a good selling point in the county. And I think it's important for the health and convenience of our kids to have functioning restrooms. A couple of things though that I think my board wants to be clear on what we're talking about and the money we're talking about this evening and I think my board members have some questions. But the money we're talking about this evening was money that was sequestered. It was the ending balance the school system had. We appropriated it for school facilities but froze it. And this money was essentially money that was discovered in a supplemental audit in FY 24 and it was grant reimbursements. And as I just asked Mr. Wickham with the auditor, he worded it better than I could have. It was a loan from the county. Essentially, we've funded the money and you all spent the money and then were reimbursed by a grant. So we see that as our money. And it's not, you know, money, you know, to be further away. This is our money, their money, that we have been reimbursed for by the state. So I think when we talk about, you know, with something paid for with grant reimbursements, that's not grant. That's local. That's the way we see this, local money, that's our money. So when we see budgets for things like this stadium and this much, this rent reimbursement has been spent, that's local money that's been spent. I think that's important for everybody to understand. But the money we're talking about are reimbursements that accumulated in 21, 22, 23 that weren't reported to the audit, that to the auditors that weren't reported to this board in the budgeting process, and therefore were not budgeted and were appropriated as required, and could not be spent by the school system. So we sequestered those funds and held them because basically even though there was some hard feelings here that we had been somewhat misled as to how much money you all had. So nevertheless we said we still want to use it for schools but they're going to have to come and ask for what they're going to use it for. Rather than have it just sort of floating there in this, keeping the desk drawer and pull it out when we need it, kind of situation. Because we feel like it's important to make it part of the budgetary process that the public can comment on and when you have public hearings on as it's supposed to be done. So that's the money we're talking about this evening and that's kind of why we're here. So I just wanted to explain that for the benefit of the public that's here before the board starts asking some questions as to why we're so in the weeds on what the school board's doing with the money. It's because we wondered why we didn't know it was here to begin with. So with that, Mr. Chairman, I'll be quiet and let you all ask the questions that you have. And again, I do appreciate you guys letting us even come because you didn't have to do that. Well, Dr. Stacey, thank you for coming. Yes, sir. Also, at Goa, Mr. Young had talked about as far as communication goes. We did have a good meeting with Mr. Robinson and Ms. Mullins there and the four of us. I would encourage us to kind of keep those dialogues open and continued. And you are right that we, it's a small county. There's no reason for us to work against each other. We need to work together for the benefit of, benefit of our children and our future. With that being said, beyond the bathrooms, what else do you have in like any kind of long term planning and scope of that? Well, and I talked to Mr. Young. I think I said this in our meeting the other day, but if I didn't apologize, we have a structural issue at TASWO High School that's not a danger, but from the structural engineer within a year, we've got wall gauges on cracks right now, and we're keeping an eye on those. But according to the engineer, within 12 to 16 months, we're going to have to make a decision. Are you going to build a new task with high school, or are you going to fix this wall? And so he did not, again, get into the quote-unquote weeds with this, but he said, you're looking at something that could be a million dollars or more. Could be. Didn't mean it necessary has to be. So that's one thing I could see down the road. To talk to Mr. Young, one of the things that I had listed was possibly security cameras for classrooms. Well, we've got some grant money for that. So whatever the grant doesn't cover, then we may come back and ask for some of that. For security doors, we do have some grant money that we've got some doors with, but not all the doors that we need. So some of those may come back. We have two cold boilers that are functioning, that are working, but they are aged and it's almost one of those things at the end of the year, while I would say after the end of winter, but we turn get cold again, but it's kind of one of those we made it another year. And so just in talking to, trying not to get an official quote, but they said it could be close to $1 million for those. So that's something that I think could be held for those things. And again, like I told Mr. Young, those were big priorities and things of that nature. We will always be searching for any grant that we can get to do. They'll never be funding like COVID funding again. But there's usually school security grants and things that we can get for some of those things. So I think going forward, those are the facility projects that we've about. And again, the bathrooms, I'm just on the rough quote that we had, times 12, or excuse me, times 3, you probably looking at a million dollars there or more. I don't know until we get it. So you're holding, you know, the $5 million that could be gone in three projects, four projects. But I think, and again, Kudos to you for allowing that money to sit there. But there are some needs coming and some unknown cost for those needs. Thank you. Yes, sir. All right. I appreciate you being here, Darfur, saying that I appreciate now you're willing to work with us. Sure. You know, I think the public here, they've had a lot of questions since last time we spoke with you. Yes. You know, I mean, we're talking about millions of dollars that last time that we spoke, that you said you chose, or that you did not inform the board of, and that was your choice, correct? choice correct Thank you. They were they were in our mega system, which again was not reported to the audience right and that you were aware you were required to I was aware that I had to have it in a maybe yes, okay, and that was your decision not to report that Again, it was in the Omega which I understand what you're saying. It was in there. We had, again, we had $29 million worth of grants coming and going. And so some that are hanging there, I'm not going to offer you excuses. I'm just saying that they were in the Omega. OK. And for Europe, and I know you know this, but I'll say to you, public, a makeup is our grant reimbursement system through the state of the Virginia Department of the head. It's an acronym, but that's where it is. Okay. And so one of the positive things that the auditor did tell us tonight is that you guys are being more timely with your reports. Doing what? Yes, doing our best. Can you let the public know what steps you guys have taken to make sure that's happened? And I think this is an opportunity to help rebuild the trust with the public. Yeah, well, one of the things that we've done, we created a grants position. And the position is, and it's got other duties with it, but primarily it's managed these grants. And that includes what we do are granted. And I'm not talking to you like you're down. I'm just saying that for everybody's benefit. There's a lot of steps that goes through that. And once you get the approval that how you can spend this on a name plate, then you go out and you buy that name plate, then you submit back to the reimbursement. And you show where you bought it from, the check number or actually the copy of the check. All those things go through the federal requirements. out and you buy that nameplate then you submit back to the reimbursement and you show where you bought it from, the check number or actually the copy of the check. All those things go through the federal requirements and then the buttons are pushed. So we do have a position just again not only do these but that's a primary, a big part of it. And what I'm going to give you tonight is her work as far as the each grant, how much it was and then categorically what it was spent on and all those kinds of things too so you can see all that. And again that was on a web page during the time which was required by law but it's not there anymore. So I'll give it to you tonight to have. And so some of this money now that sounds like you guys are going to be using or requesting to use to improve the facilities and also with some security features and stuff. I know you guys are looking for school security grants as well, you know, like for the doors and the camera system, but some of this money may go to that now. But if you had this money prior and it was reported in timely function or timely manner previously probably could have used it at that time for those much needed issues. Correct. Probably so, no, yes sir. So I guess what I'm just asking is, so if everything was done on time, like it should have been all along, a lot of these issues may have already been able to be addressed. Correct? May it be? Yes. Okay. All right. That's all the questions on that right now. Yes. Supervisor Cressley. Okay. Hey, Coach, how you doing? Well, I'm glad we had the meeting another day with Ms. Moles and Mr. Robinson and you know where my concerns have been the whole time. The general public of Bluefield's football stadium. Yes. And I've been getting and I told you air that people are coming to me and saying you're holding all the money for the football stadium. Yes. And I've been getting, and I told you there, that people are coming to me and saying, you're holding all the money for this football stadium. And I've shown these people the paperwork, and I've showed them the squestered funds are like, so where's this money for the football stadium? And so what I would like to ask, and like I asked in that meeting, is that you publicly shows that, hey, this money sequestered was not for Grand Football. within within our own budget have to finance this stadium. And this is not a boarded supervisor and Chuck Pressley has nothing to do with it. Because the misconception as a, I've been 19 years of Grand Soccer as a coach, nine years as a staff member of the football team. Like people are asking questions as they know I'm tired. I know you bleed, Grand, I do too. We love I'm for all school sir. I know you are I know you are but I think the biggest misconception is as my board has do have concerns They see a football stadium and they know the school wants to be a football stadium about as you say tazel has issues rich Land schools elementary schools horrible shape security issues So I'd like to have that publicly from your school board to have messages out there on social media on the news that hey this is what we're going to do. This is our plan for to stay in the future for ground because I do get upset when I see not just schools around this schools in our county have a stadium and we can't play football games there we can't. The band, they don't have lights to do band now. We can't do track meet. So I also, I would like to say, if you can come up with a plan to the show to public, what you're going to do with those all the scoring events, it'd be good for the school board as you show that this is funded from you guys, not from the board of supervisors. And I would love to have quarterly meetings because this last meeting was very good with Irene and Eric there. And I went down the rich side as I met Miss Moire and Miss Alguennton and we looked at new school locations. We want to build new schools, but it's hard for us to build a trust when we can't 5.4. We have to sequester and we want to spend $100 million on schools. Right. So we have to build that trust with us and the people out here because if you look back in this room, Labor to love they do lot they need help share for yourself fire yourself it's just not the school board we have us and the people out here because if you look back in this room, labor to love, they do a lot. They need help, share for yourself, fire for yourself. It's just not the school board we have to deal with. So I would just like to see more communication, more publicity out there in your end today. The board of supervisors didn't hold our money to build a football set or a grant. We have to figure out how to do this and we will in time. But this is the steps we have to take. And maybe we're willing to help you. We don't know. But I'm glad that we met two weeks ago, because a lot of this stuff is cleared up because it was contentious forever I would meet with you guys I'm like why is this so much hate like what is this going on I don't understand this well let me say something that respect I've never told anybody to ask you anything and just because I was on Facebook Facebook, don't mean I said it. I never said it. I'm saying it. So I don't want to be contingent. I really don't. Now speaking of that, I will say this. At some point in time, I really would like for us, for somebody. Right now, Graham High School is the only place that doesn't happen for a bus day. But take that home away from them. They're the only place in your soccer coach. You can't play soccer at home. We have a light bar from Richlands right now with soccer practice that only lights up about 20% of the field. Right. Right. So if we had lights and forget finishing a whole stadium, forget any of that. If you had lights right now, now some of this is contingent on having a good season. Fortunately for Graham High School, the past few years they've had successful seasons. You're on the staff, you know this. After things are kind of okay until the time changes. And then when the time changes, Graham's not allowed to go to Mitchell Stadium to practice. So they have to knock off practice, maybe go inside and try to do it, and have an indoor football practice as a conversant to say to the ladies. Exactly. Flash forward to your soccer season. Until the time changes, you can't really practice at home. You have to go somewhere else. And then where you go, the Easter of soccer complex, no fault of their own, it's a grass field. And sometimes don't want you Terran if they're things so I think down the road it would be who've Graham high school We've those kids up there and I'm not just talking football. I'm talking soccer band Little league all of it if there was at least lights there that that would allow them to do practices still go to Mitchell State Stadium, play their games, you know, all those good things. But I think lights would go a long way to solidify that as their home place, at least for practices and soccer games. Entrackments. I just wanna see my grandkids have the same opportunities Tazzle and Richlands have. Yeah, and that's the thing. I mean, really, Graham, and it's just their location part of it and then I hate when people say this but it's what we've always done. Graham is the only school that doesn't have a softball field. Graham, he and can't play soccer at home, and can't play football at home. So not take away the expense of grinning the mid-Jostainian. But as a superintendent, and as a parent, and I love my son, but I can't say he always is the best at driving from Graham Hospital or Mitchell Stadium for practice. I want to be better at being but I'm just saying. Exactly. So to think that we've got kids who almost daily have to get in a vehicle to travel somewhere else for practice, Mitchell Stadium is closer than the East River Soccer Complex. They travel from Graham Hospital School all the way up to almost on the inner state. Lots of things can happen between them and for veteran drivers, much less high school kids. And so that's a big concern for me. This is not your school board's fault I want to let people know this should happen a lot about how to get it. I hate to say it, but people say that's what we've always done. And I get that. I really do. But I think adding lights to that complex would go a long way for the kids up with that area. And it would allow them to have at least some of the amenities that the other schools have. We play a lot of little league plays there too. Yeah, little league, I'll go a little league. There's something or so. And we're kind of, that's something to be proud of in Tassel County for the school board members and myself. And again, it was before me, I can go, literally. There's something we're saying. And we're kind of, that's something to be proud of in Tassel County for the school board members of myself. And again, it was before a man can't take any credit about it. But if you look at some of the surrounding counties on the West Virginia side of Virginia side, not everybody, not every school system lets literally have their facilities. And so we've always proud of ourselves the British Lands to Hasowand Graham to use our GMS, to use our fields as needed. And they've been good stewards, they've been good partners. But we are more than just a school, we're the community. And so that goes a long way before that. Well those football games are a little kids last from eight to morning to eight at night. Right, that's what they're saying too, that we've altered their ability to have a full day. They've spilled some things over from Saturday to Sunday. And usually I'm not saying that they never play on Sunday, but they usually try to keep the window smaller. But in the blue footer, they've had to extend that because they have to come off the six o'clock. Whenever time starts getting dark. So yeah. So I would say that publicly, that is a goal, is to come back eventually, whether it's these or some other funds to try to add lights at the Graham High School football area. I just want that put out there and let everybody know specifically the supervisors in school board are two different entities that this is a school board issue. In years past predecessor people will call me for legal advice because they thought I was Charlie Stacey So I give the confusion on the two boards and I'll say this at the end I may have given some legal advice I don't know but yeah, but again, I want again to say this publicly we don't want to be contentious We don't want to be misleading we don't want to be anything but good partners with you guys You mentioned building schools that that's that's a that's a goal as well I Actually, Mr. Young and I have spoken many times over the years about the possibility of building the school. And we didn't even say which area we just said, we need schools, let's try to do it. So that's been a longstanding goal. I think Richlands has the most problem. Well, they do, but I'm just saying way back when, before and how can we ever do these things. That was something that we always talked about doing. I'll echo that sentiment. I think the temperature of this board is very desirous of seeing new schools built. I guess the oldest school we have in our county is Dudley Primary. It's over years old now or close to 100. It's I think some sections were maybe in the 20s but like 20s early 30s. So if it's not it's close. 1931 Mr. Chair. I'm sorry. 1931. Just a close. Chase remembers. Following a couple questions that Supervisor Presley presented. You know, it's my understanding that the City of Booth of West Virginia has over a very significant period of time steadily increased the amount that the school board would have to pay in order to play at Mr. State. I mean is that fair? Yes, I went and I know how I can certainly get that for you but about maybe 10 years ago we used to pay about 20,000 and then kind of them blinking of an eye it went to 50 and 60,000 And then it started adding Per playoff game 5,000 more dollars. So if you had a good season you were paying more and so They've changed it from time to time, but there was a there was a period here again, I'll find it for you, but there was probably a $30,000, $40,000 increase. Rules have also changed with ticket proceeds and vendors or food and who gets to share in those fees as well, is that correct? See, there was a long period of time that whichever high school, and I'll say us, and Bluefield High School, they rent the same facility, you're in usually both schools, the band work concessions. And so the city charged them 25% of their gross, whatever they made on concessions, 25% of that went to the city. There was a time period too that 25 cents a ticket went to them for parking. And so we've long argued that there was more people there than actually drove or you've been to some games. Lots of times people don't actually even park at Mitchell State in Hill Park across the street at the Rennall Bill's buildings or the park over Bluefield College. And so that was always contentious to you charging this part ticket on parking when not everybody's driving. But and again some of those things have been added some of them have been taken away from year to year. The city of Bluefield, West Virginia met today to decide what fees Mitchell State of the Charge makes here. I don't have that contract yet. I'm supposed to get it and present it to my board on Monday. But I don't know. I can't tell you did it increase this year, did it decrease, did they add another feature? I don't know. But the two high school principals, athletic directors, assistant principals, myself, we met a couple months ago. And the feeling was that if things get too contentious with Mitchell Stadium, they're willing to play their games at Tassel. I'm talking about Grand High School. And so they worked on the schedule, what would it look like playing at Tassel? Well, we're away this week, you could be home, y'all got to, y'all got to. But I don't think that's the best practice. I don't think it's the best thing going forward. No offense to anybody from Tassel, but they probably don't want Graham on their field every week. Graham probably doesn't want to anybody from Tassel, but they probably don't want Graham on their field every week. Graham probably doesn't want to come to Tassel every week as well. But for the history and again, that's what we've always done. Every home game Graham has ever played is an away game to an effect. We have to hire bus drivers, we have tap buses, everything goes and then sometimes you run into some of those issues policing you're in the West, you're in a different state, somebody acts up and you know you get into those you're more legal than I am. But it is led to some issues over the years being in another state. And again, I don't have the numbers in front of me, but Graham is either the only or one of only two high schools that play football that doesn't have their own place to play football. And again, it's unique. You can throw all those things out, but they are one of very, very, very few if not the only one that does not have their own being. Thank you. Yes sir. And again, I'll get that contract hopefully tonight tomorrow. Well, I'm just interested. I mean, I can only speculate that the school board saw this as an opportunity as long-term cost saving, because I get it, I'd kind of get tired of riding a big fat check every single year to use one night a week for one season, a year, kind of situation. but at the same time, you know, a full, you know, blown out stadium, either comparable to Mitchell Stadium or comparable to TASWOL. You know, the numbers I'm looking at is how many years would you still pay the city of Bluefield to achieve the same goal? And my guess is it's a whole lot of plans still at Mitchell Stadium before you even get to what it would ultimately be, playing right next to the high school with. I mean, I don't think I that at all. I don't think I that. And again, a lot of it goes back to also safety for travel and those things. And this is no disrespect to any of the other entities, but you have two colleges that they get almost first dips. And as far as that's why when Graham, when the time changes, instead of being able to go over to Mitchell Stadium and practice some of the lights, they can't, because that's the time one of the colleges is practice. And I don't know which one. And then over the years, and this part has gotten a little bit better, but used to, when the schedules came out, if Graham and Bluefield were scheduled on the same night, Graham always lost. They had to move their game one way or the other. Now, the past two years, they've let Graham have a couple of Friday night games instead of Saturday. Well, they can't play Saturday anymore, because the causes, they've let Graham have a couple of Fridays instead to play on Thursday. So it's always one of those things you're always contingent on some other entity allowing you access to the facility. And so over the years and Mr. Press that can speak to it better than I can. I have a coast in years, but there's been times Graham just couldn't practice. They couldn't get their kids together. They don't have a venue. So now the turf field has alleviated some of that as far as whether it's pouring down the rain or not, nobody cares. You go out there and play on turf. And that's the same thing they could do with soccer if we had the lights. It doesn't matter how much it rains. They can go out there and practice or play again. Yeah. But again, I appreciate it. I'm sorry. I would know. I wish it. Yeah, but again, that's... I have a couple more questions. And something I'd like to say, well, I've got most of my school board here. I hear what you're saying about all the inconveniences of, you know, we don't have football for you or what have you. But when I went from that chair to this chair, I see things much more globally. And I know you all see it from your perspective, okay? We were just in here earlier with Jan Cortle to PSA. She's going to have to issue, I tallied up about $19 million in debt to keep functioning water plants in this county. so people can have drinking water. We're about to go out borrow $19 million. I have long-forced officers that need decent vehicles to drive on patrol. I have fire apparatus that are 20 and 25 and 30 years old. And if you take a tour, one of the most depressing days I've had in this job is touring some of our fire stations because we ought to do better than that. So I appreciate inconvenience of having to drive to a different football stadium. compared to the other issues I see with our foster care program and all these other issues that we have to spend on is really difficult to set here and say we're going to spend money on football. That's really hard for us to do because every time we put into that and as Mr. Wickham said, this grant reimbursement money is this board's money to allocate from these people that have these needs and to say we're gonna put that on a football stadium that's really hard to do and then even within the school system you've got structural issues you say as a high school. We've got mold in schools. We've got schools that flood. We've got restrooms that are in really sad shape at all of our schools. And the places where our kids learn and our teachers work. Need work. So I see the need for the football stadium, but I see a thousand other needs. They probably come before then in a real world. We're not an affluent county and we're not in a good economic position. And I just hope that you all realize that we're not just trying to give you all a tough time or make, you know, flex or muscle and play politics. We've got real needs in this county and this money is set in here and we have to be sure that it's used to address real needs in the county. And the other comment I was going to make or the question I was going to ask is how much local money of these grant reimbursements have you spent already on the stadium? That's what that's for local people. It's the only good thing. The US, the Indian Air and the Indian will and actual construction. So I'll put that all together. I'm putting that all together for you. Well the exhibit I saw showed about a million for local money. Yes. For a million, $493,000 of grant reimbursements that you all got back, there were spent on this football stadium. That's in addition to the grant for the stadium, the extra grant, which was another million sevens. It's 3.2 thus far in the stadium. And that 1.493 could have gone a long way towards these other things these Cameras for security and the doors for security so It's a real tough call from my board to release this money to spend on That was my first comment. I appreciate you even giving us a chance to give me a chance to fit up here and speak to you Dr. Stacey, I have one question. You've mentioned the necessity of procuring renovations to the bathrooms in our local high schools. Now you and I both know it's not as simple as going to the Sears catalog and picking out this restroom and picking out the marble tabletops and the golden faucets and all that. Just for the benefit of the public, would you mind to explain what the procurement process looks like in terms of how do we advertise this? How do we get the bids? Once the bids come in, what do we do, and then what steps do we take to pay for? Right. Well, again, for something like this, we'll have, you know, that could be part of the procurement. When we put our ad out, we'll do it on our website, we'll do it on, in like the daily telegraph, newspapers. And sometimes you can put it on the state thing as well. Sometimes for contracting, you don't get people wanting to come across a state for those. But again, what we would look at is the number of urinals or the number of fi fixtures and those kind of things. And again, when you get into that, you can build a house before. You know you can go down the rabbit hole on those kind of things. But we would put, this is the square footes that we have. And we know we want a new floor, a tile floor, we may put like tile floor, plaster walls, those kind of things. So once that all gets together, then we put that out on our big page and then whoever bids on it, we usually have sealed bids that come in at a designated time. And the people who supply the bids are off of the bids. They're allowed to come to bed openings. So they can be there. So then once that's open, then we get into, they say, here's, know, that's when they say this is what we would charge you to do this. And as long as it meets what our requirements are for X number of fixtures, certain flooring and those kind of things, then that's where we've got to go. Yeah, we call that being material to the bed or. Right, right, right. Right, right. And then again, for this process, then we would come back to you and say, okay, this is what this is a quote we've got. This is what it would include in that quote. And then the board could say, yeah, that means our criteria doesn't. And all of them bathrooms, again, most of the schools will build probably within a 10 year period of each other. They're all pretty similar. If you go into Graham, Tazzle, Richardson's high school, they're a little different, but overall, they're the same. So once we get the dimensions pretty much, you put that together, number of fixtures, and then ask for new flooring, and it may be the same ceramic tile, just newer, those kind of things, and that's how we would go. A couple of follow up questions with that. How soon do you estimate putting that project out to bed? Working on getting the details together now, hopefully we could put it out to bed next week, and in the next week, maybe the beginning of the week after that. And then of course, it's got to work around the 10-day period and those things. So you guys meet, with this board meets the second Tuesday of every month, I would hope that we could have everything together to come back to you and say these are some quotes that we have and this is the bids that we received and you go from there. Right. Would it be fair to say by June? Potentially if you've if you haven't ready to put out to bed next week. Oh yeah, yes. I mean the goal would be to come back to you in May. Right. I don't know. It's April 8th. Sometimes there's some turnaround on that. that but yeah I would hope to come back to you whatever day your May meeting is but by sure by June and honestly we'd like to get it going too because June, for us, regardless of project, is a big month because we're not in school. And so, you know, that's times that you they could almost have free reign of the facilities without kids. We try to get as much stuff as we can be done in June and July because in August it's back. School starts again. One other follow up question. Have you checked with any other jurisdiction to see if any portion of that project can be cooperatively procured? Have not. Now we have experienced with state contracts and things of that nature. You know, train always has a state contract and we've done that. That would certainly be something we would look at. And sometimes that's one of the features the contractors will say, hey, we're a state approved. Again, you know, there's EBI, those kind of things. And so we get some of those projects as well, or those contractors. Excellent. Thank you, sir. Any other questions? Just got one follow-up question for you, Dr. Stacey. Earlier you said you guys at the time of the grants had about $29 million in grants out. Not all at one time. Over the past four or five years it's been that much. Okay. So that $7 million, you know, we've been discussing that was not put on a timely manner that would have been about 24% of that $29 million in those grants. So almost a quarter of your grant money out there was not reported in a properly time that this board was not made aware of. What would you say to the public when we're talking about approving schools, $100 million to build schools and stuff? What steps are you gonna take to ensure that public can trust you with $100 million when with 29 million a quarter of that was not reported to this board at the proper time as required. Yeah, I think we've taken steps to have better communication or more communication. And whether it's quarterly meetings or monthly meetings with your kind administrator and you or board members, I think that goes a long way. But also in talking to Mr. Young whenever this happens or whenever this takes place that Arlene, your body structure, I have a big role in that too as far as we expand something. And again, Mr. Young and I will speak for him. I kind of thought that there was a serious catalog of school buildings and you could open it up and say that's the model we want. Well, it's not going to work that way. So once we finally get with the firm, we're going to lay out our desires. And we've made no bones about it. We'd like to be able to pre-K for your seven school. And so that's going to have some unique features in that. We'll try to second grade H groups by building. And so whether it's by floors or by layout, there's going to have to be, because you don't want your pre-k kids with your seventh grade kids. You know, you will share facilities such as lunch rooms or or cafeteria, gymnasies and some things like that. So in talking to Mr. Young, once we start getting down to an actual design part, then we come to you to your board and say, okay, we A and it's fifty million dollars it's a hundred million whatever it is then you guys at that time I was like you know what you don't need the nation blinds let's let's back up and talk about those so I think it's going to be a continual communication process and it's it's probably going to be cumbersome for both boards because this is going to be a monumental task. There's a lot that goes into it. I mentioned like going to the bathroom. It's going to be a whole lot of decisions that you've made. And you guys as the appropriated agency are going to have to play a big part of that too. We don't want to get down to our disagreeing with we want pale blue and you want dark blue. We don't want those kinds of discussions. But, you know. going to have to play a big part of that too. Again, we don't want to get down to our disagreeing with, we want pale blue and you want dark blue. We don't want those kinds of discussions. But if it's something that we're saying, hey, you need to build up instead of out because the cost is under, you know, having one roof versus three roofs is going to be more cost effective, then we'll have those discussions. Yes, sir. Thanks, sir. That's all I have. Yes, sir. All right, no other questions. Thank you, Dr. St sir, that's all I have. Yes sir. All right, no other questions. Thank you Dr. Stacey and thank you all for coming. I just want to say thank you all for coming out and thank you all for coming out. Thank you. This is a big step. We all want the best for our kids and thank you. Yes ma'am, thank you. All right, for purposes of the record we have already taken care of the PSA presentation by Chang Kordle. We did that earlier in the meeting. I think maybe since we are so far behind, should we take up the citizen scheduled and unscheduled comments first? I think Mr. Chair, we need to take the public hearings as soon as possible. That's the way they're advertised. Oh, okay, very well. Item number 11, public hearings, the first of which will be public hearing regarding the relocation of Munditown voting precinct. At this time, I will open the public hearing. I will make a first calling for public comment regarding the relocation of the Munditown precinct. Is there anyone before this board that wishes to provide public comment as to this portion of the public hearing? Hearing none I will make a second calling. Is there anyone before this board that wishes to provide public comment regarding the relocation of the Munditown voting precinct? Hearing none I will make a third and final calling. Is there anyone before this board that wishes to provide public comment regarding the relocation of the Munditown precinct? All right, hearing none, I will now officially close this portion of our public hearing. Mr. Chairman, I will briefly address the public board. The current location of the Bundy Town precinct is the SNK welding building, is it 85.96 Baptist Valley Road right at the head of the valley. And that facility, the owner of that facility has expressed the desire that we not use that facility for that purpose anymore. Thanks to the work by the electoral board and Mr. Earls and alternate site has been identified, it's the site of the former Adriatic Truck and Auto Repair Incorporated that's 1727 Adriatic Road North Tazel, Virginia. And that's the former site of Big Daddy's. It's seven tenths of a mile up the road. It affects 1,627 registered voters. This has been advertised for a period of 45 days, which is required under new legislation from 2022. That's section 24.2-129 of the code of Virginia. That has been met as we've had public comment. This would actually be day 45 on the note. So at this time, I'll be happy to turn the floor over to Mr. Earls, but at this time, this ordinance is ripe for the board to consider and adopt. And I would request if the board does so make a motion that it is contingent upon the execution of a license agreement for polling place with JNS properties of TAS will LLC who is the owner of that facility. We have confirmed with her she's willing to do so for the terms and conditions it's been conveyed to you. JNS properties of TASM on LLC Sharon. Thank you. There a motion. I'll make that motion to adopt the relocation of Lundy Town voting precinct contingent to that paperwork. Second. Motion a second, any further discussion? All those in favor of the motion is presented. Please indicate the saying aye. For the record, the chairman abstains due to a conflict. Moving on to the second public hearing, it's public hearing regarding the closure of the MNOTA voting precinct. At this time I will open the public hearing and I will make a first calling so that anyone before this board that wishes to provide public comment regarding the closure of the MNOTA voting precinct, Please come forward, state your name and address for the record. Hearing none, I'll make a second calling. Is there anyone before this board that wishes to provide public comment regarding the closure of the MNOTA voting precinct? I'll make a third and final calling here none. Is there anyone before this board that wishes to provide public comment regarding closure of the M&O to voting precinct? Hearing no public comments, I will now close this public hearing. Mr. Collins. Sure, Mr. Chairman. The M&O to precinct has long been one of the precincts in the county that has needed the most attention. There are several issues, notably mold problems. There's a wet slippery film that occupies the ADA accessible ramp to enter the facility. There are lights in the parking lot that are routinely destroyed that we have to go and fix. Voting's the only activity that occurs in the building where the precinct currently occupies. There's no real viable option for relocation as there was in Munditown, for example. Staffing is lower given the lower pop, or staffing is more difficult to arrange given the lower population of the MNOTA precinct. And it has the highest cost per vote total of any precinct due to the low turnouts. meaning it costs more to fund that precinct in relation to the rest of the MNOTA precinct and it has the highest cost per vote total of any precinct due to the low turnouts. Meaning it costs more to fund that precinct in relation to the rest of the county than any other precinct that we have. This ordinance would accomplish multiple things. One closing the MNOTA precinct and consolidating or assigning those voters to the Bandy precinct, the Bishop precinct, or the Munditown precinct based upon where they live in relation to the existing polling places. And also as a second phase to assign certain voters in the Munditown precinct to the bandit precinct based upon their distance from the Munditown polling place. As I mentioned before, we're moving the Munditown polling place seven tenths of a mile, some of the voters toward the upper end of of the Monday town precinct would be better served going to Bandy rather than having to drive the additional distance. We're doing this for the purpose of the convenience of our voters. Again likewise this is a covered action under 24.2-129 of the code of Virginia that requires 45 days of advertisement prior to approval and remittal to the Virginia Board of Elections. Those 45 days have passed and I would state that this ordinance is right for consideration and approval before this board. Any other discussion? Mr. O'Roll do you mind addressing us one more time on this issue? Thank you, Brown. Understanding is that this particular request came at the recommendation by unanimous voted the electoral board. Is that correct? No alternative location was found to have an anem auto. Yeah, no ultimate location. Do you believe, do you and your board believe continued use of the voting location due to the mold issues and the film over the ramp that you know that just won't go away do you believe those are health issues associated with the continued use? The long issue is certainly election workers. There are 1860 hours a day, and the issue voters can be able to commit to the state to determine. collection workers there, 1869, and the commercial voters can be able to come in and sort of understand the commercial. I don't have any other questions. Is there a motion? It pains me to do this, but with the, I know you guys have done your due diligence. I'm concerned for the health of the people that are not only working their long term exposed to it, but also to the voters, you know, I mean, if they're going into a mold-infested location. And I know that we've discussed this before, but it's not going to add a long amount of time for the people that are going to have to go from Ammanalotted to Band-E to vote. I mean, it's not adding a huge distance, correct? The moment we drive up the media, we'll be in the past one day. OK. All right. I would make the motion to close the M and I voting proceed. Second. Motion and a second any further discussion? Well, I also need to amend that motion to include boundary adjustments. It would be a motion to approve the ordinance to provide for the closure of the Ebonata precinct within Towswell, Virginia, and consolidation thereof into the Bandy precinct, Bishop precinct, and Munditown precinct with boundary adjustments there for to be effective immediately. Versus into sections 15.2-1211, 15.2-1425, 24.2-129, and 24.2-305 at Sequoader of the Code of Virginia 1950 is amended and that covers everything. I would amend my motion reflect that language. That Mr. Collins just said. A second. Okay. An amended motion and a second to the amendment. Any further discussion? All those in favor of the amended motion is presented. Please indicate by saying aye. All those opposed. I's Havott and the motion carries. Thank you, Mr. Earls. And thank you to the electoral board to put in quite a bit of work and had to make some difficult decisions, but certainly appreciate what they do and what the registrar's office does. Moving on to public hearing regarding the implementation of a meals tax. At this time, I will now open this third and final portion of our public hearing section. So I'll make a first calling, anyone before this board that wishes to provide public comment regarding the implementation of a mill's tax Please come forward state your name and address for the record I'm going to have to leave this spot for a while. I'm going to have to leave this spot for a while. I'm going to have to leave this spot for a while. I'm going to have to leave this spot for a while. I'm going to have to leave this spot for a while. You don't want to go is, I don't believe in the part of it. It's a wonderful job. I know they need a great understanding about disagree with the way you get in the money. You're picking out a very small segment of our comes that's drawn in people for us. The reason is it doesn't change the past. small segment of our town that's drumming in thick water. The two raised with the other things, passing, and it's gonna raise their cost quite a bit. Not suggest to be as good as tax everybody. The car tax, or something like that, it's fair. The health and the needs a farmer and the all in the same. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Gole. It's part of first calling. Is there anyone else that wishes to provide public comment before this board relating and regarding the implementation of a meal's tax. We have a microphone. I'm sorry. What was your name? Okay. You. I'm sorry. Okay. You're going to look at your personal now-to-teachers and on your own state. I provide a lot of money. This year, you're asking for another legal tax. What if you won't stop? And how many final has it happened? Twelve. Twelve in the county. When you get that thank you for my show on the book, you're not online, you say it's thanks for me now. When youth of April. Now, three others in the same big time set. You can come online and get your kids. It's pending. It's, back to the ballot. Not to ballot. It's bringing all that in the city where you won't pull them up out of the way. So I'm going to have, what do you want to do? Where are you going to stop? Where? And I bring it up. I see a lot of money that's in white state. The hour or so, I'm going to go to the gas panel and play it with you. A lot of money is going to give up. It's a lot of money being sent by me. So, for bandwidth or for a whole year, for one year before the state, right? So, for management or for our food, or whatever you want to say, yeah, it strikes coming in up out of every home's range. A spring feature, a spring feature, a harvest. That you know. Who's a big number? Who's paying for this? How much do I look like? It's gotten out of the hood. And what can I do? Another certificate. So water is all on the money. So when we try to raise it here, you're warm, and warm together. And you're warm. You talk about it. you make it through. How many restaurants is bigger because of the heat that you don't like? It's where I'm sowing. Point in Tassel and put in a pan. Probably not many, there may be a convenience area that serves prepared food, I'm not sure sure we don't. So, y'all will have to get out of the plane. A better plane will much come up with, the same thing. So we don't have it because of the billboards. And that people need that magic to tear. Appreciate it. It's part of the first calling. Is there anyone else before this board that wishes to provide public comment guarding the implementation mail stacks? Yes, ma'am, floor is yours. I'm even on constant with passes. I understand that if I perform in your destiny I'm going to or they are weak, and all hell, and upgrade, we totally support that. We have two mainstitchisers with a bit of a fire department, so we fully understand how much we need. And I'm just here to see if. There is anyway the budget that can be reviewed and thank you. I can accommodate some of these needs without having to put the new tax on. Or can I say, would you consider a lower rate about focusing for the bargaining net? As you all know, it's tough to be in small business right now, which is so big increase in middle age, good prices, on electric bills, and insurance, we should only be to lose any business because of the new tax. And for people driving to risk of the need because they don't want to pay a six percent of the money. They're just like coming into our business. And no sales tax, which you get one percent out of the same, I would have 5.3% of all say is tax. So, with asking you, if you would consider a little bit of a low rate, to make it a little bit easier on the people, then the will have money to go out of the heat. Some of our customers come from all my way of course they're too strict, they publish, they be getting the tax. But there are a lot of people who can afford to own your go-round to eat. Once a year, on this birthday, on their anniversary, it's a big tree. And that's 6% is a portion, especially for this time of time right now with inflation and everything going on. And that made me the first thing that come up had out is a film about me and that was us. But, you know, for a year in a while, because that 1% sales taxes, so go down, like employees, you get laid off, you get the cows cut. We have 40 of them. They go make from 6 a.m. to 10 11 a.m. So, I'm just asking you to give them a little bit more thoughts. Slow them. and I would be very happy to see that at the end the year that the fire department got a new fire truck because of the small increase in tax. Thank you, Dr. Ongo. Thank you. It's part of the first calling. It's the Ernie one before this board. They would like to provide public comment regarding the implementation of a mill's tax. So here's your leave for me to take that. Is this the touchable plan to the community so that we can? No sir. Thank you. Mr. Chairman for the record. It only applies to the unincorporated portions of the count. Cook, correct. Good evening again, I suppose if you last month, did you know on Fred Warren, I put a 3280 on McValley Road. Since last month, what you can think of this crew for making that look that month, and then came his up position, I hope you have changed your body, huh? I looked at the county budget, my point last month, we get plenty of money. So I went to the passing county website and I started looking at the general fund budget. In fiscal year 2018, 49 million, 179,000, and 156. For this year, this one year, it is 68 million, 500, 8,400, 41 dollars. That is an increase of $19,353,821. $39.35%. Those of you that are here, I've got the number of sunrise, you might a copy of this, but it's epic. Give it to you. I've also got my new group. Digitite. You want to give me an email address. I'll get it to you. Outcome law enforcement and emergency services have not received a 39.35% law. Anybody got that? Yeah, I got it. So let's move your priorities are wrong. They are wrong. You have plenty of money and now you want to impose ELS has been led by Now you're trying to make a factor something and I don't feel whether it's going to go in the general fund or into capital You know I will Take your agenda And I think I know we're135,000 is going to go. Back into the mud over the springboard station. The whole seat is $325,000. That's all I have left. Now, let's talk about the dynamics of this book. Now, I'll pass. I want to talk about an argument that has been made by more than one government official. Don't like the tax. Don't want to pay the tax. Don't support businesses. Okay. Let me tell you what I do. Don't support businesses run by your friends and neighbors. That's an anti-business message. If anybody who has said that or thought bad, you're out of the call, you're out, you're in high-distance. And let's finally talk about the last point of one of it. It's a dynamic to this setting that changed. The time this was proposed, we had five supervisors, all of them, and self-alignant, were going to be accountable for their actions. Since then, two of the knobs that are not going to run. The number of specs that have been in the wall was taken on the God by a preacher. A hard job. It's thank you. But now you're not going to be in a position to be held accountable for this vote among the citizens of Texas County. There was a phrase that was very popular in the 1760s, in the 1770s. There was no tax agent without representation. And it's only take a vote for one or two supervisors that's not running for re life to pass the message. Allow me. Mr. Chairman, if I could address one of the things Mr. Barnes talked about with the monies. Part of the issue that we discussed earlier in the evening is that the supplemental audit that we did discovered about $20 million in carryover that the school system had that was not reflected in the previous years. But one of the conversations we were having earlier is that they had these reimbursements that were due to them that accrued for about three years that they did not report until it was found in the audit and then it had to be reported in one single year. Now I'll go over those numbers with you Fred. I can go over the budget line, I'm a line item, but that $20 million, $20 million bounce skewed our ending balance last year's hole. Correct. Correct. 23 to 24 increased to 4.6 million. And this year the 1.4. That's up to solve the problem. And those money is even in development. Why would they spend on EMS and all? That's the problem. You don't have the correct type of work needs. And now you want more money., and have it considered correct. As part of the first calling, I'll invite anyone before this board that wishes to provide strong support for the emergency response. and I feel that you'd be more praised. I'm sure if I can find any supervisor that has said on this board that it would be the most affordable and of the hours. At that time I used to be on securing two new, great-lot of iron drugs to release purchase ingredients, three year lease purchase ingredients. I wanted to do this a little bit at that time, but that You had to stay on track at that time, you veteran having a meeting. You had to stay on a track at that time, we were stopping by thinking that years were coming. You had to stay on that track, you know, we're continuing to cycle the trails amongst other, the main area, you know, exactly what I'm talking about. Prior to leaving my position on this board, I had saved up my discretionary funds and equal to the student loans that I had saved to all fire department service school and schools that serve the citizens of the Northern Michigan campus and the current areas. This amount of total was $101,000, so I'm assured that I've done this for the school Now having said that, I'm an you that I've heard support and that it's on your page. Now having said that, I'm a nobody trying to take my home home. But I told you that to say this, because all about priorities. You cannot out-get funds liberally and then yield your taxpayers to not making favor of an additional tax burden on the city to support the citizens. The core responsibility of this gathering body should be the fund of the needs before the wants and certainly please fire any advance should come before anything is. I would ask the Chiefs for other viable options for funding these organizations. Years ago when I served on the Board of Supervisors, I asked that they would be in building insurance companies for service to Winder. However, I was unable to borrow the support of the majority of the board. They stated that this would be an additional tax part of the original further study for the truth. This would be really willing to know that the insurance company is rendered in receiving money that a citizen has already paid for through their home members and the citizens premiums. And I would ask that you revisit this option and be as resourceful as possible before putting in additional part of the citizens of the city. Thank you, Mr. Kamel. Likewise, I'll ask again as part of the first calling is there any one before this board that wishes to provide public comment regarding the implementation of a meal's tax? I think each and every one of the things that the job you did, well, I'm not going to say that. And I'm an institute real bad, like some scrapers that was public before here, another burden on not only just a small village, it has to have a county. That gets a, uh, gardener or a people that have a county every night. It's a very normal neighborhood. Uh, I don't know the figures. Uh, I'm asking that is there some other way to get this money into this, what's needed? I have what I for a hand of time, please be on the list, back here. Thank you. Please remember one thing. The question I have is, take this amount of money that the five to bring up is there any other way I get this money. I thought that by mine make a quick visit to the permanent or whatever, what about tanks on Gayson? Mr. Chairman, those are set by the Commonwealth and by the Federal Government. I don't think that there's any authority in the code of Virginia that allows a locality to set a gasoline tax at any time, aside from the cold and severance taxes that were already authored. I think there's some municipalities in the east like we heard in the droughts, Poland. It isn't specifically made by the code where everybody has to be given the power and I don't recall anything for TASW County One if it's a municipal and I don't mean to interrupt but if it's a municipality I would assume the only authority they would have to impose a tax is by way of its charter as opposed to There's chartered or Pacific Stats. Yes. You don't think fire is in a federal building complex. The state can catch it. The county can catch it. So when you go above the next island there, you hear it's blue and the state. The're just controlling the red part of our tank. We can change it so we can get it on this stuff. Every party's both pants. This is why we had to put some of these problems to this out there. We'll not put them. We'll just put them back in the middle. And we'll be going to. There it is. We've got our shoes that appear all around the world of shoes. And we've made the property of the shoes. You know, also in the money coming in the future. We'll school bathrooms for our kids out here today. We need this stuff. This is a partner, one thing. I say to one of your life's moment. Risk the right ear, close, close, straight. Damn, I have a foot dance. I'm sure if they could have kept the same for sent foot dance, if they had paid out last year. If they could have kept that, they could have kept their foot dance, if get their doors open, So we see an everyday treatment, more, it's going to explode soon. So, now, when you've all been adopted, and all these mom and mom raised to the old seats that were running, we got to make more more abrasion from, we got more people from. When you're fired, you're making a face move. You're going to say, why are you not allowed to put your gun on a grid? You can leave out to cause a impact. Make exact exact exact same rib as the impact complete with more abrasions. So what you want to do is run the prayers of things for down to six at eight? Now, you need more hand, doesn't it? Fade through this camp. Now, we go ahead. We need more hand, don't move. You just move from my race. I'll say, we are good food. We're not fags with. I'll put them on our six years, I'm not allowed. I don't know where you could go. Now we support. I, I was waiting for police support, and our local people in risk. I go to the out of Eden. And I do not miss, say, a way to not pay risk. But that's all we're going ahead in this camp. It's just about our right-wing. It's close, and on the rich land, we're going out. It's close. But I asked for the late life skills I was sharing with you. If anyway, also put this off for a while. Look at some stuff. Some way, some way, if this one, some way to make it. There's a lot of different ways. One thing comes to my self and how I'm hiding this is instead of building a million dollars for it to walk them up here, why don't we go five hundred thousand dollars? When you know it, I'm concerned on stuff. I'm really concerned. Sometimes we do things that we really don't need to do. Georgia, that is more clear from the presentation of what is approved. All right, by the time the presentation is finished, we can be able to do it a little. I might mistake the bill on the blanket for the video call from the radio, but they don't have an exchange. No five, extent, the fact that we live part of the grant. We don't need it. So, if you all want to get into it, we don't need to live, burn this here and be done. But one thing we're looking at is fields. Sure, these four or five of the fact here these people need all equipment that various children of credit and states they need that. And I won't have that head, but they don't have sure in need of being about a vehicle not here. They can have a vehicle that's a little bit cheap. What they need is something that's got heat, air, water, sugar, and room. So, then the offering, the facial. We don't have to go. I mean, I go on some tables, not sitting, you might want to start a apartment, break, stone. They don't have to have I don't have to have to have a to far and far. Breathe. Stone. They don't necessarily have to have that to do the job. We need to deal on what they have to have to do the job. Give it to them somewhere. But cut back on something that's done. Cut back. Wherever you can. So, could it play? Were everything okay? Could it play? Like I said, I'm glad I come here or I was sick. It's a hard job, y'all have. And I appreciate each and every one of you. But I... I was asking you... know, what is going on against me? That's all I've got come from. Any word you could, you know. We were on the street for the talk. It's like today or we were possible. You don't look that one to two meetings. Would bring millions the other way to their scale. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, if I may respond to that one, I spent some time looking at that as you were speaking. Section 23VAC-10-210-630 of the Virginia administrative code limits local gasoline taxes to the Hampton roads and northern Virginia regions at 1% of a local share of course we're not in Hampton roads or northern Virginia and those laws are meant to discourage traffic rather than encourage it here unfortunately we're just not allowed to do it a list of code says we can. We need to draft. We need to draft this down. We need to wait. Next time, we'll put, now while this comes in still, that we don't need to, because we've been told to lose interest in it, as a run this time, not to talk about the build, not about the play of the swan. You might need to play the swan through the boat, not to pick, they can't. Both, you get rid of this, this post, this, no. Come back to some competency, you will come and sit in your lap. Please follow the matter. Thank you. Is there anyone else as part of the first calling that would like to provide public? Yeah. Yes, Mr. Secretary. I hope that you can hear me, my voice is a bit weaker than some of the others I've been talking. name is Brad Ross, I'm 432, I'm a New York star. And I've been a local fire department first-dominal for one year. You know, one year, like many of you have done this. I've been in this audience tonight. I've also lived in that 40 years and a- But to comment to some of statements has already been made. One of the things about the tax, if you have to remember is that Blue Bill or Jen had one of the Wrecking Stone buildings and it already has a mill stacks and mill stacks, it's being proposed that not include the town of Louisville, Virginia. It also doesn't include rich lands, and it doesn't include taxes. There is already a mills tax there, and the mills tax that is being proposed upon those restaurants and they're outside of those towns. The town reach land, castle, and group building have nice private apartments, they have good equipment in there. Much better than many of the rest of us. This mills tax would be equal to or less than the taxes that are already in those places. And we've got a good example of what meals tax can do for us in those places. A comment was made also that tax everyone was something covered in meals tax. When Karen, Mr. Brestfield, was acting in the Burtstore Environmental Department. We give a rather thorough investigation using the present census information as to the number of residents that are in Tadville County. We also did a very good study to find that the average family is 2.5 people. So it took the population and brought them to the number of homes that could be a tax net, which would be an alternate to a mill tax. If the mills that had the tax net was equal to, or around the same, that's in a commercial county, other Western Virginia County, it would be about $15 per household. Presently, we've written the tax, those we could come out with about $200,000 per year to handle the 12-platter requirements. Whereas the Militax is very to prove that it can come up with at least $1.1 to $1.2 million, which would provide 50 streets to it, at least $100,000 per four, into the 12 fire department. Age of vehicles, in my 20 years, our seniors go from 1968 to 1996 engines. That's quite a new forward in the numbers of years, but it's no more than year what we need in the Quness in 1996, tanker that we can't be muted out during training with it. The bomb started in April, the age of three hitful, there were no parts out there. And you could back in here, special parts, right? It took $4,200 to rebuild the bomb. And the three hitful this probably not worth $4, but we're not going to find a replacement for the tanker when we're near the end of the month. And to be here for the problem, age of fire stations is a problem. We saw just in the last three weeks one fire station suffered heavy damage to a column that is the 20 doors and found out that the doors, the column was even named the door, So it's very easy, also a black mold in the five stations. And training is to make sure that we've got people training well, it's not just the age of being, it's not just the age of stations, but it's also the training. Big problems, volunteers, I've watched the numbers of volunteers go down every area, both the Fire Department, EMS, and churches of other community organizations. And it just isn't there among the younger population. So, it's not gonna be of the continues to be volunteer fire fighters from distance, our media is now. And we just don't have them there, that's not a part of how they live. Insurance rates over the past few years, insurance rates have gone from I've got a department, not good comparison because of the local station to a new station that made from about $415,000 to continue to insure. It's a parent to me that there are other places that possibly money could come from. But who would also be suffering causing others to suffer as the fire departments have suffered over the years? We watched what happened in California in Los Angeles and the fires that were there. And we saw where the candles kicked down the roads, year after year, did, nut and nuts, health, biopartments, not well-claimed firefighters, and with thousands of homes that were lost, I'm not sure just what were permitted at the hand and water that they built the part of that, of the switch. I see the new stacks along with all of the fire departments that have represented here as being one opportunity that we can take advantage of now, that we owe a greater amount of money into the fire departments without any conflicting damage on others. And the tax in everyone just isn't going to work with cash and the taxes are vital. So with that, I thank you. Thank you for the thank you. It's part of the first States of Canada, Farmer's Chiefs of State. I'm up on my computer night and tell you what all my mean wrong effects. I think I've got to go ahead. But if you look ahead from the questions, is wrong, is it a need? Is something small helping communities and taking a family about to do this job. Is it the right reason for you doing for the right reasons? And your answer is yes to all those third questions. And you know what you mean, but you know it has to be correct. When you are all left to serve the communities of your districts, you're elected to be a statesman, statewoman, to serve your communities. And this morning's the season that you have to step up to the place and the position of this morning's not going to have a living, but you have to go for the right reasons. And there is a need here. The farthest farthest is the seat. And there is a need here. The farthest part of the city, the Angus East, in Canada, doesn't have a standard of funding strength. We don't have to hesitate months for us. Well, we need that. We don't even press this box. I'll show back here, make some new cruxers. We've got to have those books, and we need to know what it's all about. We've got to have a great fun and stern to build with. And this is tonight to do. I've been doing this for 40 some years. I started in KVG team when I was a 15 year old in high school by four by four-star, or James Steele, somehow named out in the original 30s. And as the cost of being bad, year in and year out, Dr. Flander, we met a rigorous fund constraint when we did that, and I asked you all not to go into that. You me for that. That's for the questions. Thank you. Thank you. It's there anyone else that would like to provide? Okay, Mr. Brooks. Thank you. There we go. Okay. I'm Perry Brooks. I will read more by a break after this. Okay. My name is Barry Brooks. I live three, four, five, six, daily switch work in North Texas. And if you're trying to have to set the time for me, I will take all the time. I will move on and address you all. I see you made a death process. I work the environment as I've been your third athlete. I did it did, I did, I did here the last nine years. I've come in here that I hear everybody saying, we support black, we support black, but doing it most time to do it is not relevant. The gas acts, that's right, that's the vehicle. About these guys who swim in part our critical mass. And I'm not going to say here in St. Aloha, which I have heard from these kids who came and let them learn for nine years now. It is these days. I'm going to wear a lot of fire for them. They will be inspired to hear. And even though for real money, I'm a new bomb about this way, The younger brothers, the best means of least nature they got for how to quit. And they cost money. All these things, it's their definition, aren't it? Their fear has always been their ten years. Their airbags have always been used. And they're expensive. And right now, it's just there, it's the year the year the year the letter is. They've been laying a bill about them. Well, I've used this much, it's just a pen. This is something that you can help them right now. And I can't get as a citizen. I used to go from a youth school. You know? I don't know anything about it. But they say that same goes back here. Maybe go to the worst piece of my life, just send me a second worst piece of my life. I miss... I have been in the job, but they say that same goes back here. They say, hey, you got to be a person. These are my middle-aged family members, the person we're talking about, I didn't know that. I guess not. You know, there's no purpose to switch to here. But I don't tell you, these men really need to help. And that's all I can say. I appreciate the time. I will be you all think more about the hurt weaging movie that you sign up for. Very, I was going to ask you something, you mentioned earlier, what's average budget for fire department? Well, at the good point, I had this year a ASAP, I've really not had that value for big year, last year, at 26,000 dollars by operating fire for a faster fuel than the fire department that's fine with it dollars to operate the Fireball Festival. The builder, the Fireball Festival by the wind, that's the keeper building the Earth Winner time, 26,000 in the aggregate between the 12th and the average. It's 23,250 miles, that's the average that these 12 Fireball Festival. Don't run, three years. That's the only eight years. Actually, I'm not going to see your portrait. You said, well, I was telling you facts. This is what they had. They gave the 4,000 from the state. And then the rest comes from the county. It's good. I think this 25 years in far, and I was a blessing to take you to this. I hate that I was a built. And I feel like you're not seeing what we stand with or trying to do with, get rid of it, that they have it in their own way. And I'm telling you something about it. Either or there or there or there or there or there or there or there or there or there or there or there or there or there or there or there or there or there or there or there or there or there or there or there or there or there or there or there or there or there or there or there or there or there or there or there or there or there or there or there or there or there or there or there or there or there or there or there or I think they're trying to convince me there's something else. Anyway, just to share, all I can say is, I really, I mean, every misprocure of this We certain one of us would have died off when we used to put them on. And we used to say, I knew it. But when we said it, it's pretty sad where it means I really think that I really think I'm a divine year. I've talked to a lot of people on the street that I've talked to a lot of people on the street, and I've talked to a lot of people that have traffic like a lot of cities. And I'm going to tell you that your work's got to have a good time. A very small portion of people here. And I'm saying, for a bar for a bar for a bar for a bar for a bar for a bar for a bar for a bar for a bar for a bar for a bar for a bar for a bar for it's the last time I saw it, it was way above the height. Right, so we have a good, right, and that's getting the talents too. That's a 10. You can fall into your lungs, and you see here you go, my little girl's resting. And all I can say is, I'm gonna pay no tax dollars once we have to hold it. And everyone loves the Christian's home. I really, you know, it's difficult to call someone the other way. We've got friends and they will be like, here to be on the job. And so, you know, this is a very hard job. These gentlemen have a part of the job in the scam. And they're wrong to make a little bit better than the volunteers. So, I don't want to thank you all for your service. And all I want to tell you is, I've got a lot of people telling me that they have no problems with the fire department. they need your visits case to do that. I don't know if that's not an article. You can do it tonight, but those are the questions that I've got. All the fire department. They need your business case to do that. I don't know if that's not inadequate. You can or do not, but those are the questions that I've got over past years. And I would love Mr. Young, if you have an opportunity, I'd love to sit down with you and go over what business case there is. It's almost as if a public hearing is designed to hear from the public on what you want to do. And that's a great way for a different practice process. I'm not sure where the citizens would be in in these process, but there's a lot of comments and a lot of questions about it. Nice. And I would really love to have it opportunity to have that. And so as your friends and they, we all know that these things can be out of the process sometimes they don't, they're just just to be. And if you think that you're having a hard time at just one down the road and we've got to see the gap and we've got to make hard decisions and we've got to make small decisions as well. And I appreciate the day that you've shared with your truck and I look forward to talking to you. I appreciate you. I would encourage you to, I would encourage you all to continue the discussion because this is a very compassionate argument from a lot of people in the street. Those are brothers. Thank you for your service. Thank you all for it. Thank you guys. Thank you. I appreciate all of you. All of you you, the airsofters, camp, and these work are made. And in fact, we're back to the meeting. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Rhodes. Is there anyone else that would like to provide public comment regarding the implementation of the Meals Tax? Hearing none, I'll make a second calling. Yes, sir. I feel the waiting. Yes, sir. How much do you find these days? I'll take the credit. You have to hear. Mr. Chairman, I've got it. We estimate somewhere between a million and a million two. And currently in our draft budget, we have that we would spend $300,000 of that on leasing six additional shares cruisers $200,000 on a fire apparatus and they can tell you that's that's not a new one that's not a new one we have $60,000 for an ambulance grant match we think we can get get $240,000, $80,000. We buy people to get an ambulance with that. Then we have $40,000 for firefighting equipment. And we have $200,000 for fire station repairs. And then we have $400,000 for a part-time firefighter stipend. And that's one of the things we really need to work on because that training that Barry's talked about that alone is a lot of time a lot of effort and we really are stipends compared to the towns and other localities pretty low that's this year's budget next year it might be a different need for different things but there's a commitment from this board to spend it on fire ems and first That's how many of you have been out on the campus. Look, there may not be necessarily direct appropriations to departments, so we'll depend on who a truck or who needs the equipment, how many who responds to how many calls. Because the stipends are allocated based on call response. So, if there are a lot of fires in Clayville, Hill, then it's going to be a different matter than if it's on the other end. So, I really can't tell you how average how that's going to work out. But I will say in addition to that money that we spend, we pay the town of Richlands $200,000, or $100,000 a year to cover fire in the Western, Northwestern District, so we pay $200,000 to them to cover EMS in those two districts. We pay Bluefield, but basically doing the EMS in their town. we take a hit on that about three or four hundred thousand dollars a year so Our actual spending on fire is much higher than I've heard this time in the beginning. When this fire went, the California control got a big problem. I make the same thing. Fire charts in the clinical field, the wing world, the Williams and the Eats. You can fire that down in the American clinical field. Our modern wing, you know what I'm going to stop. If you've got any entire department here in front of the meeting, you're not going to stop. So don't be scared if it was so. But is there any power or any meaning about building new fire departments? Mr. Chairman, we were awarded a grant in 2023 for $617,000 from the federal government for our station in Springville. The unfortunate thing is when we put our estimates together in 2020, a million dollars would have covered that department. But the time we were awarded the grant and hired somebody to price it for us, the price came in about two million and some change. That's mainly because the cost of construction went up. And I hear what you're saying about the building because we had a business put a building in a blue stone for about $500,000 in 2019. And that same building today to build is going to be well over a million dollars. So it's tough. It's tough. That project's on hold. We've applied for some more grants to try to make up that difference. We may end up having to borrow some money to do it. But that's a major hole in our coverage there in the county. We don't have a volunteer station in the spring of the area. And we had a fire study through the state in 2013. It's driving a lot of this. At the state came in and said, here are all your problems. And it's kind of like you go to the doctor and he says, you know, you got quit smoking, quit drinking, and lose some weight. state in 2013, it's driving a lot of this. At the state came in and said, here are all your problems. And it's kind of like you go to the doctor and he says, you know, you got to quit smoking, quit drinking, and lose some weight, you leave kind of depressed. But anyway, good bad and ugly, laid it all out. And said, this is where you got to get to. And we've struggled. And Mr. Campbell was here earlier. And he did put us on a path. We were buying a new truck every year for about three years and then the economy went and the toilet and that stopped. So playing catch-ups tough. And I'll add to that in response to your question. We have also explored other possibilities in utilizing the federal grant dollars that we were awarded. After we got the price tag back from the engineer that was hired to complete the Fire Department Building project in Springville. And we ran into obstacles with that as well. I felt very hard when we got that price tag back to apply that grant simply to an existing fire department structure that our county had in order to help save costs. And so one of the examples that I threw out was the county department building that we have at the fairgrounds. Well, we were politely told by the powers that be in the federal government that no you were awarded a grant to build a fire station in Springville, and that's where that money's going to be used for. So we ran out of an opportunity I felt like to not only benefit our community, but use federal grant dollars wisely. You know, I think part of the big picture, at least with fire departments, and I can't take credit for this. I think my predecessor, my comms, would have been a part of this, but some of the other board members that are no longer on this board, I think kind of put this into action. The goal was to have three fire department buildings along 460, springville, tazville, and Clay Pohill. And that's where a, you know, whether it be a pilot project or whether it be something to the effect, like this is where the Pays, Tazzle County Fire Department, this is where they will be. Because, you know, when you look at the volunteerism numbers that our county has and compare it to say where we were 10 years ago, let alone 20 years ago. I think ultimately we're down the same road that Pulaski County just discovered that they were down about two years ago. There's a couple newspaper articles how they implemented a paid fire department. And so I know we've looked at it from that perspective and we've explored options on the paid department system or really just getting some new structures put in place but it's been either one roadblock after another or cost because I know the cost is another thing that a lot of people don't understand especially when it relates to federal grant dollars. It wasn't as simple as we could replicate what Berks Gordon did. I think they've got a great model on putting up a fire department building not only quick efficiently, but it's a building that you can be proud of. It looks nice and it's super functional. But when I've got red tape after red tape after red tape after stamp after stamp after stamp that we have to comply with simply because the fed say we have to if you want to use their money it it it's an impossibility to replicate what Burke's Garden Fire Department got to do. And I think you know from my perspective at least serving my district, that's some of the hardship that I know that we've kind of unpacked and uncovered over the last, you know, three and a half years. And, you know, in terms of, you know, capital improvements, I do think that it should be behind the priority list. And I don't know. It's kind of fearful, you know, for me to think of not only what our average budget is per department, but then you also look at the average age per department. And I'm not being disrespectful of anyone's age. I think the Bible is pretty clear that she ought to be listening to people with white or gray hair, but they've been through it a lot more than I have. But that's something that the departments need help with. That they've got to have something to attract younger individuals to participate and whether it's volunteerism or whether it's a paid department structure. And another thing that I think is easy to prove, whether it be my FOIA request or looking on some state agency websites or the firefighter stipends, for example, that we provide provide pretty low compared to the rest of the Commonwealth. Pretty low. I would ask you to take a little while longer to thank the ladies and see where the things can be good. This will be a four day, so thank you, my friend. I thank you. I know you knew all the journal of Italy's week, what they meant. And now for the citizen, I'm fighting, that it's what they deserve. Because we need to, we deserve our duty to operate the business, to make profit from it in this day, in this family, in this war. I'm from this and it's going to hurt. I mean it's our vehicles. It's our vehicles. I don't want to have to go through some more else to get a good deal to me. I want to buy some more from the place you're in your camp. So everybody will be able to complain about the financial situation. They're going to go. Why do you have to tell the national question? You're going to be able to find it. Okay, so I'll just ask you what I need to ask. I'll just ask you to talk to that. Okay. I'll hear a big, nice thing. It doesn't hear from my ex-foot. We're going to get work. And we'll walk through what we do. We'll all say about them. OK, make a second calling. Is there anyone before this board that wishes to provide public comment regarding the implementation of a meal's tax? Hearing none, I'll make a third and final calling. Is there any individual before this board that wishes to provide public comment concerning the implementation of a mill's tax? Anyone else? Okay. This time I will close the final portion of our public hearing. This also closes item number 11 of our agenda. Is there any discussion or motions before the school? Do we, is this something that we have to vote on tonight? This chairman, no. The board is not required to vote upon it tonight. The board can continue it out for as long as the board wishes. The board can continue it to December if the board so desired, that being said, the effective date of the ordinance would be, I've said it as July 1, 2025, you're starting in the fiscal year. So effectively though, if we pass it from that date, we would have to re-advertise. Would we have to re-advertise, no, Mr. Chairman? No. One thing I will say though is our current budget presumes that it goes into effect July 1. There's going to be an implementation period if you can't pass it in the night and have it infected the day. We have to work our trashers office and go through a process. So if we push it off 60, 90 days then every month you're cutting it out. You're cutting into that budget for the first year of the time. Mr. Chairman, I have spoken with Mr. Anderson's office regarding the steps that his office would need to take in order to make sure that they're ready. Preparing forms, I've offered my staff's assistance to help them prepare forms if necessary, to cover all the bases that are required under this, to ensure that he has an accurate registry of all those either is it would qualify in Tazmo County. There is some work that has to be done and I have spoken with him and he's ready to begin the process but of course that requires adopting the ordinance to process. I mean, are you wanting more time to digest the ordinances that's been presented? Well... adopted the ordinance to process. Mayor, you wanting more time to digest the ordinances that's been presented? Well, this issue has torn me apart because I used to own a restaurant as I've said in the past and know the issues with paying the meals tax. I was in the town of Richlands. So I understand that. But I also have said on the ESC community since I've been, well, I'm off this year, but since I've been in office. And I see what they do. And we keep kicking the can down the road. And I was just the short time that I was on there, if I could find my notes. We did everything that we could. I know we implemented hazardous waste ordinance so that firefighters could charge from the materials that they needed to be able to put on the road. They were eating those costs until we were able to do that. I was trying to think we did some other things. I'm lost in my paper. But I mean, I think we just keep kicking it down the road, but at the same time, there's not a good answer. And I think also I have a couple of problems with the mills tax. I think some of the penalties on restaurants are a little high. I think we could work on that a little bit. I think I think we could give them a little bit more time or maybe do a stares step on penalties. We also during that time we changed our how we paid overtime on our EMS and we saved a little bit of money with that. But I don't know, I'm very torn and because I understand what it's like and I've been there and I know how awful it is. But at the same time, I've been staring at them for what, four years now. And I can't continue to tell them no. And I also feel like, right now, this is the best option that we have to be able to kill them. So I don't know. I would like to defer to you all to see what you think and maybe diving into the ordinance and maybe changing some things. Not necessary. I mean, are you all fine with the way the ordinance sits? Mr. Chairman, if I may. The penalties that I've advertised were excellent, that were allowable. Under code of Virginia. The board can adjust down to those penalties. For example, a penalty in the amount of 10% of the tax if the tax is not paid with commissioners or revenue timely. If the board decides that what 5% of the tax might be more appropriate, we can make that downward adjusted. Likewise, I think it was Ms. Thompson who stated that what about a 3% tax or 4% tax that downward adjustment is also possible without having to re advertise because we've re advertised we've advertised the maximum rate we can do that here tonight we could yes if we pass the mills tax ordinance tonight can we work on that stuff later is that stuff that has to before we pass it? Well you can do that but it would be an amendment to the ordinance which would require another public hearing. That is correct. Of course if the board's so inclined to hold a public hearing you know for example if the board says we can have this hammered out by June we can advertise to hold a public hearing to amend the ordinance and set that for the first due reading for example. But it's a lot more cost effective if you did everything at once. Yes it is. Mr. Chair. I mean I'm not hearing that 30 days is making difference. Correct. I mean it is you're you've let's say it's about a hundred thousand dollars a month projected so if you lose a month it's a question. I'm talking about we're in April. If...if... I mean, let's say it's about $100,000 a month projected, so if you lose a month, it's going to cost you $100. I'm talking about, we're in April, if a decision is made in May. Does that throw us off to the next day? I think we'll be okay to the next day. I wouldn't want to go much beyond May. I would like to go ahead and discuss what we're going to do. We can make the penalty 5%, that's what we want to do, we'll make it kick in 90 days or 60 days later. Let's just go ahead and amend it tonight. Correct. How would be okay with dropping that percentage down and making it like a little bit further out, 90 days. Because sometimes you have a rough month and then you've had a good month and then you have a rough month and then it's hard to maneuver getting your food costs. If a purpose of the ordinance is advertised, this would be, there's a 30-day penalty where the payment and collection would kick in, you wish to extend that to 9-0, I want to cite it correctly for the benefit of public here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Why you're looking for that, Mr. Collins, I want to just speak some thoughts here. This is horrible sitting up here. I have to say it. I absolutely hate it because I don't want to do any undue burdens to our business owners but yet our fire department, CMS and Sheriff's Department need help, you know. And all of that costs money. So, you know, where does the money come from? And I'm not a fan of taxes. Here in a couple of days I'm getting it ready of strokes and checks to the federal government to the state government, not. I really don't want to do it, but we have to. I guess one thing about this tax potentially is that it's going to be paid from people outside of this area. You know, Mr. Bowen had mentioned that, you know, spreading it across, you know, everybody, but trying to get it off the burdens of our tax payer or our business owners. Let me say that. When we go down to Bristol and need or wherever we're paying, as Mr. Stauer said, 11% meals tax there. So we're funding their fire departments and EMS and things there. It's unfair that they pay their share towards us, but I absolutely hate being here and having to make this decision. And I think we all want the same goal from everybody that kind of spoke in opposition. They turned and looked at their fire departments and our deputies and said, hey, we want to help you. You know, we support you. But I think we can come to some resolution or some compromise that it's not too much of a hardship for our restaurant owners, but at the same time, we can accomplish the goals towards what we're trying to accomplish and quick kick and cans down the road. But you know, on Mrs. Flaster's point there, you know, lessening the penalties and things of that nature, yes, we need to do that for sure. And looking at it, it's about 200,000 per 1% mills tax. Is that where we're Mr. Young? Yeah, that's an estimate. An estimate. And we need roughly a million dollars to accomplish what we're doing. We need tens of millions, I understand, but I mean a million dollars we can make that work. Yeah. And you know, I'd also heard talk about, well we've got all of this allocated money from the school board, maybe we can use that, but we can't, you know, our schools need desperately needs stuff as well, and that would just be a one-time fix. We need something that is perpetual and keeps on going long term to help help these guys in the future Most certainly mr. Bowling Mr. Young We're applying that already We're using that to pay the contract with Richlands. And we're also using that to fund some of the apparatus that we do by with that. Two-thirds of that is going to the school system because last year the mandatory minimum number of the state gave us to pay the school system went up by $900,000 last year and that ate most of the casino money there. Part of problem misses, we're chasing numbers that the state rolls out for us that are going up by 7-8 percent. And that's eating in to our regular budget. And furthermore, my understanding is that there may be a flip on those ratios going forward into the next one. This next year we've voted to spend it all on fire. Yes. So this coming year, the 100% of it has been voted to be allocated towards first responders. Which is probably going to be additional $5,600,000. But Mr. Brooks' point, you know, this has been neglected for so long. We're so far in the hole that it's going to take a major effort to get us back to where we need to be and want to be. You know, a lot of the chiefs got up here and spoke about struggling to get new volunteers to come. We need to reverse that trend some way somehow. And eventually I'm afraid to say that we're probably going to have to transition to a paid fire department across the board. And so we need to go ahead and start taking these steps to accomplish that. Most certainly. I can speak for my district. There's four possibly five in the southern district. Now I've got fishers, then there's two in Berksgarden, and I believe there's one in Thompson Valley, and then one right up on 460. So I know I've got fishers, then there's two in Berks garden and I believe there's one in Thompson Valley and then one right up on 460. So I know I have four or five in my district. We figured that we figured there were about 14, not counting, convenient school. Well what we did in these towns are very difficult to find out. You know we asked the towns you know they won't disclose to us what a particular taxpayer pays them. But we can ask them what they got from the mills tax and then break it down with a number of restaurants they have. And I mean, Donald's is usually your best producing a restaurant from the mills tax from the wind. So we fear we probably have about a dozen or so, other convenience stores that sell pizza or whatever. I don't know, we haven't counted those. We haven't seen there's a significant source of income. One of the things we talked about, someone mentioned Claypool Hill, be hit hard with his tax. And I agree with that. From here, it'll be paid by people that don't at Claypool Hill. However, if you look at the county, fire protection is about population density. The closer people live together, the more fire protection you need, because there's a greater danger of it spreading. And if you look at Claypool hill, you have very dense population, but they're not in the town. Yes. Everywhere else in the county that we have dense populations, they're in towns and they have their fire departments. So we're paying money to Richlands to cover Clayton Hill with the fire department. Is that fair to other people, you know, living in other places in the county, you know? So to my mind, at least, yes, they're paying from the Meals tax, but that's paying to paying to pay for Richland's cover. But I think it's about 12 or 14. We have the fast food restaurants down there, probably going to be biggest producers. One thing that we had discussed and talked about was trying to do something to help restaurants through the tourism zones that we have. We could fund incentives for tourism zones that might offset some of these losses. Well and coupled with that there's going to be a counting burden on these restaurants as well and I don't know I think in the ordinance there was a somewhat of a rebate or yes there were there we've a 3%. For example, if you collect $100 in taxes, you can keep $3 in that. You can keep 3% of the taxes that you collect and submit to the commissioner, to the treasurer rather. But yes, in that rate can be changed. You can increase that to 5%, 7%, whatever the board deems. That's one thing I wanted to go through the ordinance a little bit and talk about some of the areas that could be amended. The first, of course, is section 18-232, it sets the rate. We advertise the maximum 6%. That can be anything from half a percent, all the way up to 6% however the board so desires. Looking at the next part of this ordinance, everyone who remits money to the treasurer under this ordinance has to have a certificate of registration from our commissioner of revenues office. If any information changes on that, you have to notify the commissioner within 30 days. You can increase that to 60, 90, whatever the case may be. Section 18-236 talks about the 3% with holding of the tax due. We can increase that, decrease that, however you wish. Section 18-237 talks about the reports. The way that the ordinance has been advertised, such reports shall be paid honor before the 20th day of each month covering in full, minus commission the amount of the tax collected in the preceding month. If you want to run that on a, you know, that's a 20 day delay. If you want to run that on a two month delay to allow our vendors to be able to get an accurate count of that that way they're not being pressed for time you can do that with regards to penalties. The Commissioner of Revenue notifies the taxpayer within 10 days that such penalty is an interest or do if you want to push that out to 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, that's certainly an option as well. You've mentioned the penalties of 10, there's a 10% penalty on failure to file the report, a 10% penalty on failure to remit the tax and interest at the rate of 10% per year. You can adjust downward the rate of interest that you charge for those who are delinquent. You can adjust downward the amount of the penalty being a percentage of the tax do. If you want to do 3%, 5%, whatever the case may be. All those penalties five, give them 90 days and make the tax what they should be. What was the third thing you said? I make the tax five percent, it's just that? We can do that. Is there any way that you can differentiate someone in this ordinance that owns a business that would be subject to this mill's tax that also resorts in Tassel County. We can't select it with tax people, but it's still in their county residence. I look back through section 58.31S-33. I don't see a mechanism that would allow that. I'll tell you what we can do. I still think we have a tourism zone ordinance already in place and the code does allow us to give a tax break to tourism businesses, tourism related businesses in tourism zones and I think some of the individuals that have been here tonight we probably qualify for that we could fund that with some of this money and that way they sort of what it is going to be back. You could do that as well. Okay. Do we know if some of the establishments that we've, you know, discussed here, you know, with here tonight are already in the enterprise zone or in the tourism zone. I would have to look at the maps. I'm pretty certain that the Berks Gardens in the tourism zone and Crab Watcher Museum area with fishers is probably in the tourism zone. I think that extends as far as Cousses is in the tourism zone. I don't know beyond that. I'd have to go back. We did it in 2012 and I'd have to go back and look at that map again. How can we adjust that map to be more inclusive to some of the other businesses? We'd have to advertise public hearing like we did tonight and redraw the tourism areas. And you could simply put in the ordinance if they're qualified tourism business, then they get certain percentage of that money back or rebate it to them. That's a way that you could distinguish between your sort of homegrown industry that you're trying to protect versus, you know, people going through Taco Bell, kind of deal. Chairman looking at some of the tourism zones, essentially the entire back of the dragon is within the tourism zone here. You can see it in the light green. GIS allows us to be able to go and see exactly where is a tourism zone. Some areas in the northern part of our county that qualify as tourism zones. That one is where Cavitz Creek. zooming out with the others. The essentially the entirety of the areas around polka hondas are tourism zones. I do not see that Merck's garden is a tourism zone. It is not highlighted by our GIS. That could be an error on our GIS. But essentially, Cavitz Creek, the back of the dragon, and the areas around polka hondas. I'm going to get a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a the back of the dragon and the areas around Pocahontas. What is the matter? I have one other amendment I wanted to ask about before section 182.39. Yes, ma'am. I don't know if this is something we could do. Do you have seller when going out of business? It says the payment should be become immediately due. A bond can we set up a payment plan or something? Make it do within 90 days perhaps or just the opportunity just at the payment plane because if you're going out of business you may not have that money right to do it. Absolutely. Okay. I think what I'm here for discussion is that someone who will make a motion to amend the order such that the penalty for failure to file is reduced to 10% to 5. the interest charge on late filing is reduced to 10% to 5. The time at which point of which the interest charge to prove on late filing is extended from 30 days to 90 days, that if a company gives out of business, they have 90 days in which to report their taxes. And then that the rate itself will be reduced to 500% from 6%. I think that's what I heard was sort of humanistic, but here is that a motion that someone would make a motion. I'll make that motion. There's a motion. I'll say a second. and then a second. There's a discussion with that, you know, I think we need to show good faith to both sides here. I'm the dad of four little kids who enjoy fast food, while I enjoy some of our finer eateries. But there was an individual that threw out 4%. And I think that the gradual ease into something makes a lot of sense and we've done that in different ways before And I'm Not seeing how a difference between five and four percent make that big of a difference I guess the is that it's somewhere around $2000. OK. I guess the other thing that I've got to know, and you know, it's really easy for people to come here once or twice and somehow think that they're an expert on the county's budget and it's another for individuals that have shown up time and time again and asking questions and being involved in the process. I think both individuals that are represented here tonight deserve our respect. And I think providing them with a little bit of discussion is really good. But I gotta know a couple things before I cast a vote. And I guess maybe the first thing I got to know is part of this fire department plan that I know was put in place many years ago, having three department buildings on the main vein of our county. And it was going to be on the taxpayer to support those departments. Regardless of what the current structural issues that are going on with our county department building right now, I've got to know that I'm not going to lose a fire department. I've got to know that I'm not going to have one that either gets consolidated or moved to another location. I guess what I'm asking for, can any of my board members provide me confirmation that my county department is going to, you know, if this thing goes forward, my guys are protected. Yes. Tell me so, or after the head. Sure. I get it. For those of us that aren't going to be on the board after this year. I get it, but I gave my county department a word that I look out for them because I don't want to see them moved and I know they serve a very valuable portion of the county. And we'll need about 60,,000 to accept bills. Okay, so I guess the second thing is, I understand that we're considering later on in the agenda the appropriation of $125,000 that had originally been appropriated for the Spring and the Fire Station, but, Just chairman, what we're doing there is we have that money set aside right now. We had budgeted to give the IDA the money next year for the roof, but what I'm hearing from is the buildings will be ruined if we don't fix the roof. Sure. So what we did is we added to the budget for this coming year the $125,000 for Spring with Fire Station and they're going to use that money we've got hand now to fix the roof. So the proposed budget that we looked at this afternoon has the debt service in there for that fire I understand that. My question is, are we going to, with this, continue to explore the little over $2 million price tag of a department in Springfield? Because to me, whether or not we spend it there, or we divide that kind of money up amongst the departments that we currently have in existence. It's pretty clear to me what decision I would make. But I got to know it because the other part of this is how much longer the Fed's going to wait for us to say yes or no. Eventually Elon will come for that grant if we don't get it right. Elon or no Elon doge no doge. I don't really care. I don't want to keep kicking And that can down the road either. Well, I think the issue is going to be if we have a department at fairgrounds, then we're going to have to find equipment if we open apartments. Because the initial plan when we started down this road was to relocate them there and that was going to go with them. If if we're going to keep them here at the fairgrounds, I don't know where the equipment comes from. Now, we have discussed a great length. We're cutting back our operations at the garage dramatically and we'll soon be out of the garage business. So what we've been talking about is taking the garage, the garage office, and what's left of that fire station and making it a single fire station, making it one whole unit a building. And basically telling the feds, you know, thank you for the money, but no thanks because the environmental studies that come with that, the engineering studies that come with that, and when you have to build a fire station, that they're satisfied as a fire station, requires a lot of different features in the building that run the price up. So that's one of the things that we're looking at. Now we had applied for a grant and thought we were gonna get a grant for about a million dollars to help build that fire station, and it's tabled. I don't know that that's going to happen. That was kind of what we thought was going to save us on that one. But I mean that's your all's decision as to what you want to do with that money. But certainly if we go with 4% on this, I'm more worried about having firemen than fire stations right now. I mean, I know the long term plan, but if we don't train and equip and recruit and fund, the operations does not go matter what kind of stations we have. So if we don't get this tax to do that in some way, I really don't know what point there's going to be in building the park. Building a building for the park. see it as you compromise to gradually work our way up. You've got someone who owns and operates a business here that's extending up an olive branch so to speak saying, look, maybe this is what the market's capable of, and we gradually slide into this. And it sounds to me that if it's a $200,000 difference, we can easily find that. And I was on budget committee last year, right? Yeah, we can find that it's just the certain key of knowing that you've got some revenue stream coming to help pay that stuff. Sure. I mean, if it's what gets it done, we'll be happy to have full. There's any other discussion. The only thing I'll add is I think everyone in this room knows where I stand on this and I'll say this and be done with it. I've made my opinions over the last couple of months pretty clear but you know there's been previous rep for Endums and stuff made and the citizens have voted no on a mill tax before on referendums and I want to vote no tonight. So there's a motion. Yes, Mr. Chairman, I will summarize for purposes of procedure. There is a motion on the floor made by Mr. Presley, seconded by Mr. Rivadek to approve the mill's tax as amended in the following six ways, one, reducing the rate of penalties from 10% to 5%, two, reducing the rate of interest from 10% to 5%, three, ensuring that a penalty is accrued at 90 days after the date upon which payments are due. Number four, a payment plan for those vendors going out of business. Number five, 90 days of notice for those same vendors going out of businesses in which to pay their taxes and six to reduce the overall tax rate from 6% to 5%. That's the motion that's on the floor. Here Mr. Gillespie make a motion to amend the amendment to form. Yes. So that motion will take precedence. We have a motion to amend the amendment to reduce the 6th revision from 6% to 4%. would we would point five make it come in the middle that would be about let's see. So how's the dollar? Yeah. Would you like to put that in the form of emotion, Matt? Miss plaster for an amendment to the amendment on. I mean I'm just asking would that be easier to swallow or 4.7 that make it even 10% witness with the state maybe 4.7 that's easier for counting. 4.75. Make sure that the state is 5.3. The state's 5.3 let's do 4.7 that that's compromise, that makes accounting a little bit easier at 10%. Would you be willing to put that in the form of a motion to amend that portion of the revision? I'm going to put that in form of a motion for a minimum of 4.7. That becomes a superseding motion at this time. Sir, second. No, second. Motion in a second any further discussion So we need a vote on amending the amendment first that is correct. Yes This is this vote is only for the amendment to change the rate from 6% to 4.7% Any other discussion That is the vote on the floor, yes, Mr. Chairman. All those in favor, the motion is presented. Please indicate by saying aye. Aye. Aye. All those opposed? Nay. Nay. I's having motion carries. So now the motion on the floor is to approve the meals tax with the revisions and I'll go ahead and state them again. The first is to reduce the penalties from 10% of the overall tax to 5%. The second to reduce the interest of crewing on that tax from 10% to 5% per year. The third to ensure that penalties accrue only after 90 days, subsequent to the tax rate being due Fourth, that there is a payment plan for those vendors who are set to go out of business. Number five, that there is 90 days grace period given to those businesses who are going out of business. And six, that the rate be reduced from 6% to 4.7%. And that is the motion on the floor made by Mr. Presley, seconded by Mr. Robotnik. Any further discussion? All those in favor of the motion is presented. Please indicate by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed? Nay. Nay. I's have it motion, cures. Three, two vote, Mr. Chairman. No, four, one. Four, one, okay. While we're on it, I'd go ahead and like to make a motion that we set for public hearing, redrawing of the tourism app. So it's an exciting clue to Bill's tacked free base. Would Mr. Ravadek, would you be willing to mend your motion to also include adjustments to the enterprise zone? The tourism zone. The tourism zone? Tourism zone or the enterprise zone? Both. With the enterprise zone, we've got to do the acreage swaps and things like that. Right. My understanding from our last public hearing on the enterprise zone, we still have quite a bit of acreage that we can do some swap and all we do We have a committee that's reviewing that and getting ready to apply for the state for the enterprise side I mean we can we can do that that has to be the enterprise zone has some state funding in it So that has been the state we can advertise a hearing for that as well Would you be willing to menu your motion to include that? It's two separate motions'll be willing to. Okay, so what two motions to set for public hearing at our next monthly meeting, and I'm public hearing on the Tourism Zone and the second motion for public hearing related to the enterprise zone in Tassel County. Second. Motion to second. Any further discussion? All those in favor of the motion is presented. Please indicate the saying aye aye all those opposed eyes having the motion carries There any other discussion as part of our public hearing section of the agenda So just to be clear we have we have we have purged an amendment to an amendment Then we have heard the amendment that we actually vote on the ordinance itself. There were two superseding motions with regards to the amendment of you. You have the underlying motion that set the six standards that were going to be changed. Number six was a tax rate. We had an amendment made a motion on number six. We had a superseding motion made for number six. Once that one was approved, that knocks out. You know, it makes the other amendment, which means the next vote is for the approval of the ordinance. So procedurally, we've approved all amendments and to the rate going, putting that at 4.7% and then the next one was to approve the ordinance with those six changes as requested by the board. You went here, would you care to go ahead and vote again to approve the ordinance as amended? Sure, to benefit the right. It certainly wouldn't hurt. Mr. Chairman. Is there a motion? Not a number of rats. So much. Second. a motion and a second any further discussion. All those in favor of the motion is presented. Please indicate by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed. Nay. One nay. I's having motion carries. Okay. Moving on to Citizens' comments scheduled this side of number 12 of the agenda. This portion of the agenda is set aside for citizen wishing to comment on county issues who are previously requested to speak at the meeting and pursue it to three minute limit to communications. This time I would invite Tazel High School Project graduation has come forward. Mr. Chairman, can we have a quick recess? Oh, they're already coming up. I'm sorry. Yeah, let me get them. Thank you. I had none. I was pretty sick. Eight to the bathroom. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.'m Kim Whit, and I'm Jaden Ritt. seniors at Tazzle High School representing the 125 members of the class of 2025. We would like to take this opportunity to tell you about Project Graduation and ask for your support. Project Graduation is an ongoing tradition in our community. Parents and family members plan an event for the night of our graduation that provides us with a safe and fun way to celebrate our great achievement. Many of you here tonight, probably and hopefully, have fond memories of your own project graduation. The project graduation committees intent is to give all attending seniors who attend project graduation, a generous cash prize, as well as various door prizes to assist their next stage in life, whether college, military, or the workforce. All our efforts are moving forward. The current economy and prevalence of many other groups fundraising in the area have hindered our ability to generate ample income and have left our resources much lower than expected. We need your help in making Project Gr assistance. Project graduation is May 31st from 7 to 11 p.m. and Lincolnshire Park. We would greatly appreciate any monetary assistance you are willing to donate. We are grateful for any amount as we seek to provide an amazing experience for the class of 2025. Thank you for considering our request. For a grateful for all you do for our county community and Taisal High School students. Thank you. Thank you all. Thank you. Thank you all for setting so patiently, too. Now, are you also the same group that are here for DECA as well? You want to go ahead and go through that too? Yeah, let's do it. Good evening members of the board. My name is Terence Stolner and I'm Jaden Redd and we are the co-presidents of the THS DECA Club. We are in front of you today representing the Tassel Hospital Decca Chap. The THS Decca Chap took 22 students to the district competition at the higher ed center in Avon, Virginia. Eight students took home first, second, or third place at districts and qualified to attend the state competition in Virginia Beach. I received second place in the Quick Serve Restaurant Management category and Terrem receives second place in the Marketing Communications category. Nine of our students attended the State Leadership Conference. Our freshman students attended seminars and learned about marketing and leadership. Jaden and I participated in the Business Solutions category. We received fifth place amongst 22 other groups. We are now prepared to attend our fourth and final national conference in Orlando, Florida. This trip is a fantastic opportunity for us to learn, grow, and create one last memory together as members of this excellent organization. We are seeking your support in the form of a donation to help cover some expenses. Specifically, we are looking for funds to assist with food, gas, a rental car, and amusement park tickets. These experiences are not only enjoyable but extremely educational. They have provided us with valuable lessons and experiences that we will implement and demonstrate in college and in our future careers. Your contribution will play a crucial role in making this trip possible for us. We truly appreciate your consideration and support for our chapter over the years. Thank you all so much for your time. Thank you all. Alrighty. We can give these motions a taskable bulldogs. I'm just kidding. I've'll be making the motions So I'll make a motion that air glyphs be his 500,000 dollars 500 $500 and $500 out of his discretionary fund to project graduation in $500 out of discretionary phone for the dick. I will also give $100 out of my grantee min fund for project PHS graduation and to you just second. So. Thank you so much. Anybody else? There's. Yeah, anyone else? Thank you, motion. You can make any any other is there a second to Mr. Presley's motion? I'll second. Right motion is second. All those in favor please indicate by saying aye. All those pose and for the record chairman abstains one of these fine ladies works at my office. I think I have to abstain on this but thank you all for coming here tonight. Congratulations. Thank you all for representing us well. Thank you. You're welcome. All right, next we have Jim Campbell. He was previously scheduled. I just asked sir, I think you've already done it, but please just take your name and to do the microphone. You have to do the microphone. It's just kind of hard. This may not be much bigger. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. You want the microphone? You want the microphone? It's just kinda hard. This may not be much bigger, I don't know. Earlier in the evening, I would say this, I've been here through the most of the meeting and I have seen that most of the meeting has comprised of whether it be Dr. Stacey or Auditor, whoever. There been a tremendous amount of what I would call accountability, physical responsibility, things of that nature. I think truly that's what it's all about. And I know you are probably very tired of hearing about fire departments this evening. And I don't blame you how well I do. Have a great deal of appreciation for them. I want to start by telling you that in December of 2024, January of 2025, I submitted four requests for financial and training documents associated with Babis Valley Fire and TASO County Fire and Rescue. These requests were forwarded to the respective departments because I was informed that TASO County Department of Public Safety does not currently maintain training records or financial records for these departments. I would like to say, and I really have to hand it to Mr. Collins and Mr. Gone, throughout this process, I have been consistently in contact with both these gentlemen and have had the opportunity to meet with them personally in regards to my concerns. Particularly Mr. Collins has advised me that on numerous occasions he has encouraged the chiefs of these departments to comply with my requests that are required by law. As you all are aware, the response time that is allowed for four requests is five days. It is my estimate that I've received approximately 50% of the information that I've requested, the other information has been willfully withheld without explanation. I feel that as a result, I will have no choice but to get forward with the litigation to have the agencies comply with my request. Every citizen here certainly here on this board as well, deserves the right to know where their tax dollars are spent and as a citizen and as a citizen, I should not have to pay for fully information and spend my time and energy analyzing this information to discover irresponsible spending. It should be the responsibility of county administration and employees and their employees to monitor these matters. I'm deeply concerned as to why these agencies are withholding the remaining information. I do know that fire equipment has been sold to individuals who have been turn resiled the equipment at huge profits. Equipment that has been purchased with public tax dollars should be sold or liquidated in a public banner as well. Babis Valley Fire Department has produced only 8 receipts for a six month period and one of those were completely blank. Pazel County Fire and Rescue has provided receipts for expenditure that I feel the average citizen would find hard to believe It wasn't appropriate use of Pazel very well Some of these expenses Include but are not limited to Multiple visits to local community stores to buy energy drinks and that takes pizza rolls to back product soft things Just an end of you Denner's from the one or two people at the Lepore Strance and some as far away as Bristol, Tennessee, Bluefield, and a few. Dinners from the Warner 2 people at Lini Local restaurants and some as far as Bristol Tennessee, Bluefield West Virginia, Dublin, Virginia, and Abington, Virginia. Multiple visits to local grocery stores such as Fisland, grants, wall markets, wallways, pre-lasking county, purchasing and loading gift cards at convenience stores, and Walmart as far as Dublin, and then a few minutes later going across the street to fill up the gas. I have discovered all of this with only a portion of the information that I have requested. So your role, you know at least speaking to this problem, in short term, is quite simple. I would ask that you consider correct, the batch should be taken, and that they comply with the law in terms of transparency, with their spending, and until such times suspend their funding until these matters can be resolved. You have any questions? I feel like I can a whole lot in the little wild. I said I feel like I carried a whole lot in the little wild. Now, one of the things that I would like to point out that really concerns me. I was at last minutes' presentation. Mr. Brutes discussed the issues going on with their fire departments. Just as I said earlier, I'm very much in favor of their fire departments. Having served on a fire department before, I'm very well understanding the needs that we have. But I do have some serious concerns. of which is these funds are provided to local fire departments with relatively no accountability on your house part. I think at the bare minimum, checks, cancel checks, bank statements, receipts for expenditures should be forwarded to Mr. Brooks or his assistant on a frequent basis to ensure that this type of spending does not take place. I feel that citizens expect that the money that goes to these departments be used for PPE here, utilities, things of that nature and not frivolous spending like we see here. So I don't know what this board may be able to do to go under their support, certainly, and I've talked to Mr. Collins and Mr. Brown, I've been passed four months now, and I'd really, other than legal action, to the courses who are rid of mandolists, I don't know what to do on this board. But I feel like it's a basic necessity of any public agency to be open and transparent in the way that they've been public funds. And I just feel that these matters are hands-pulling. So anything that you often do to garner their support, cry out to court action, I would appreciate it. That's all I have. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Moving on to our last scheduled speaker. This is Juneteenth and I would invite Feta Ferguson or Chinat Wilson forward. Please state your name and address for the record. I'm going to go to the library. I'm going to go to the library. I'm going to go to the library. I'm going to go to the library. I'm going to go to the library. I'm going to go to the board supervisors, whether you can do this to help us in the project, the celebration, which we will do in 21st of 25th of July. We are 7th here, going to you as we appreciate these new generations, and given us we can work with them going is we appreciate things in the United States and the U.S. and the United States in the United States. And we would appreciate it if you'd like to after this presentation, that is tonight, we have a big thank you to you through the U.S. and the United States. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you for waiting. Thank you. Do you all have your 501c3 or would this have to go through the, we went through tassel And today or something last time, yeah we all come here? I think it was too early to tasset. Okay. Yes. I'm going to do something today or something next week. What do you do? I'll go ahead and make a motion to appropriate out of the Southern District Fund of $1,000 to tax it today for the sole purpose of the June team. Is that it's held here on Main Street? I'll give a order number. 100. 100 for each treatment. Any other? I'm sorry. I was trying to catch up on something there. So we got 100 and 100? 1,100. That's it. I'll do 100. All right, 100. 1200 and total. Any others? I don't think I have any much left. You gotta get this question. All right, others in favor of emotion is presented. Please indicate the saying aye. Aye. Police closed. I as have it in the motion. Mr. Chairman, who seconded the motion? Mr. Pressley. Yes. Okay, that's what I believe. It's in some motion for a thousand dollars from the southern, a hundred from the eastern, and 100 from the Westrop. Yes. Okay. So it's a motion for $1,000 from Southern, $100 from Eastern, and $100 from the Western. Yes. Thank you. All right. That concludes our scheduled citizen comments. Yvonne Thompson spoke earlier, and I don't see her present here. So at this time, I will move now down to item number 13, citizen comments on the schedule. Does there anyone before this board that did not previously scheduled to speak before our board wished to come forward and provide? We're gonna provide. We're gonna provide. We're gonna provide. What are you doing? We're doing what you're doing. You're doing what you're doing. I'm sorry. Dave Wood. I'm not just from here. She didn't hear me. From Bluefield, is that correct? Yeah. You're not done. Yeah. So we can hear you a little bit better. No. My name is Dave Wolfert. I live in Bluffel, Virginia. I came here tonight. I'm here to speak to you guys and see where you stood on this mess that we got going on and we filled with the sanitary board. Some of your own counter properties affected by that sanitary board. As it stood up for the meeting, I would too, minus nine. It looks like it's a done deal. It's probably going to get served. And to make you aware of Virginia Corporation Commission, utilities condition, will have absolutely no say in any of this, because it is a West Virginia corporation. We will be locked in to the West Virginia Public Service Commission, whatever they determine the rates are, which ain't pretty much rubber stamp everything. It had a 6% to 7% increase in a year. Of course, with this transfer, we're going to have a five year lock with no rate increases that have not already been pre-enabled and advertised But it is going to affect the amount that comes to the centred word put into you guys that you buy and block. So you might want to take a look at it and put some input because it's all absolutely nobody there last night from my town and you guys. That said, that's all I wanted to do is make you aware of it in fact in our corporation commission. I have no say in it. I spoke with them last week and absolutely nothing to do. All right. The other thing that I wanted to suggest to you after listening to the meeting tonight, I grew up in Mercia County and I was in a fire department in Mercia County for a long time. I got a fire department in particular. We had a fire department in Bluefield, and one in Preston, and then we had created another volunteer fire department in Preston. Shortly thereafter, another volunteer partner came in Athens, and then another one in Green Valley. We went through the same thing, you guys are going through. I mean, it was just, it was a nightmare. Mercy County created a fire commission. There's an administrative secretary and a board. They established fire fees throughout the county. Now, I've got some property over there, the largest property that I've got is about roughly 60 acres with a 25 hundred squirts with house on it. And this down on the board was from the motocard. I don't even think the motocard has a front department now. They're taking care of it out of Moncom. But my far fees are very realistic. I pay $109 a year for that. I've got a house out there and I can't remember what I mean. It was $30 or something. So it's high-pitched city lifts. a A realistic firefair commission and an administrator, it's handling all the books. Everything goes to the, these little independent fire departments, can't just go out and do what they want to do and sort of be accountable but not really accountable because nobody's really watching it, they don't catch it until it's all over and done with it. So I'm suggesting you take a look at a firefair staff, staff, staff, staff, staff, staff, staff, staff, staff, staff, staff, staff, staff, staff,uties. You all are looking at leasing vehicles for them. We do. We do. Yeah, that's that's working out really. We, after a while we're we didn't have enough police officers to keep all the vehicles going. But now we've got more vehicles and we've got police officers. Till 2020, you never had a four-wheel drive truck to fly off. I know. I know that. We've all seen at least service vehicles, maintenance vehicles, and that kind of stuff. It looks like it's working out real well. All right. the other thing that I'm going to get to that fire station in spring. Very good. You also got an industrial parking. I think I know industrial is in. It's got some real nice buildings and I'm sure that there's some kind of federal red types that you can't use in buildings from a fire department. But you've got to think about this. The United States and 50 states in all our territories, we have the equivalent of somewhere between 3700 and 3800 counties, all vying for industrial development. A lot of it you got a whole lot of trouble with money to give tax breaks which we do not have. Maybe we need to get a waiver and take a look at even some of those buildings or one of those buildings out there. For a far-staff. I can try to answer a few of these comments. The building, the biggest shell building, actually that was built with money from Virginia Co. Phil Economic Development Authority. They have a $2 million lien on the building. And they pretty much call the shots. It's a great deal for a loan. We only pay if we have a tenant. And then we only pay what the tenant pays us. It's a great deal, but we're limited to use it for industry. So we can't use that building. The other building belongs to Dr. Muncie, who's a businessman here in town. And that's kind of occupied. But on the sanitary board though, I did want to mention our public service authority has two votes on the sanitary board. Yes. We have two votes on the sanitary board and we were approached by American. It wasn't, I think it may have been water company, but actually they're doing sewer. But yeah, right. They perched us and they said, look, we want to buy Bluefield, Virginia and Bluefield West Virginia's collection systems and the plant. And we want you all to vote for that. And what we're willing to do for you is to lock in for the PSA at 2005 bulk user rate for another 20 years. So we can be paying in 2040. So we can be paying in 2040, 45 who are paying 2005 for the blue stone and everything that flows to it. I'll actually look at it as a big deal with the West Virginia. The Max哥 is with your West Virginia. The most great deal with your West Virginia is that we don't know. You all know of course you will have to keep them and that's pretty much what's going on. I don't know if you'll know. Maybe with the San Diego in the Greek. Oh yeah. Terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible history there. Billions of dollars were made from the people's plot. I went to court in Richmond and Charleston and both legislatures. I was knee deep in that mess. It was a corruption there was, you could smell it. I don't know if it was a bad, a bad, a bad, a bad, you're a lot of deceased men, so the community was sick. But I will tell you that, yes, but they offered us not only the deal on the bulk rate on the sewer for our PSA, they also offered the county a deal on taking leachate for our landfill. It was a very good deal, 15 cents instead of 2020 and they were going to walk that in for 20 years too. So it was a huge deal for us. But I went to see Mr. Hanson, the town manager of the town of Bluefield and said, look, we're not going to let him divide and conquer. If you all want this deal, then we'll vote with you. If you don't, we'll vote with you. If you want to vote, let them put us, pit us against them. And I discussed with him the issues with a for-profit enterprise running your sewer system versus you running it as a nonprofit. But they felt like that they were good with that, and we're okay with that. ask him about that repeatedly so we voted for that in reliance on what their town manager who was also on the San Tribal work voted that way so if that's their decision I have a vision that I'm going to marry, not really, and not not unless I'm going to marry. But I don't care what's going to be great. Investigated, selling out watches to Virginia. Mm-hm. This, I know that you don't need to listen to what you've been talking about. This, because, this place, you know, for a while, you can see the marvelous adventure which makes you a black rock man. And basically, it's a black rock. I'm going to ask you to ask questions from the legislature. You might want to know the basic background of the community. And I would like to ask, perhaps, I'm going to ask the attorney to talk about the community. Thank you. That's all I have to say. Thank you. Thank you. Any other citizens that have not previously scheduled? Mr. Child, can I request that we use like five minutes? Yes, I'll make a motion if we recess for five minutes. Is there a second? The motion is second. All those in favor? Pum, huh? I'll expose the eyes to have a motion. Care is we are in recess and should be back approximately 9.46. We are now back. I will recall our meeting to order after a very brief recess. So at this time I believe we're at item number 14 administrative financial and county project updates. Mr. Chair. Given how late we are, Mr. Young, I would ask that maybe we limit some of our discussion on this and maybe go through what's necessary for business this evening. Mr. Chairman, I. I'll limit my discussion to items that are required. Board action if that's okay. That's perfectly fine. Thank you. We have a resolution that the current plateau is asked us to approve on behalf of the PSA. It's for a water supply planning grant. And it's a resolution support that grant application for coming plateau to planned long term Planned long-term water future of Southwest Virginia or at least the I don't need a motion to approve that resolution so move Motion in the second any further discussion all those in favor the motion is presented please indicate the saying aye All those opposed as have it in the motion carries chairman I asked to ratify an earlier email poll to transfer $125,000 previously appropriated to capital improvements to the Supreme Court Fire Station to the IDA to repair and replace the roof on the workforce training center on Camp Joy Road. And at the same time, we're adding into the proposed budget for next year under $25,000 for the fire session. So a second. Motion a second. Any further discussion? All those in favor, the motion is presented. Please indicate your saying aye. Oh, no. All those questions, I think I was happy. First case, go. Need a motion to ratify, awarding the 2025 mowing bids. A question on the mowing bids. I did see some email traffic. Okay. We can pass that when it comes to whether or not Thompson Valley was included. My understanding is it was. I believe that it was. Because I don't think the cost of it, I mean I know some of my other board members hit concerns about the cost but at least what I saw it, I mean it was not wasn't reprehensible, it wasn't anything that was like ugly in terms of the added calls. It's up to you, but it's not. You will pay that with the general contract, district funds, or how you all want to handle that. I would ask that it be just included in the bid that was awarded. Are part owners of that real estate? Did we go out to the contingency because that's a operational variable? Well, no, the bid comes to a general budget every year. Oh, I thought, okay. Because it's included in the county wide bid. Oh, okay. I thought it was a great deal. What's happened is we added to our bid, the Tulsa Valley Community Center, because sometimes in an effort to get the overall bid, they'll give us a break on some of the-of-way places. The question is, do you want to pay that as part of the budget for the mowing in general or do you want to ask Mr. Wissby to pay that up as district funds? I think that would be a budget because I think discretionary funds are used for other things. That's the basic county maintenance. We need to approve fire vids as presented. I'm just curious, what is our budget number for it and what was the bid's? Mr. Collins is saying it was a bid's hot to ask you. I think it's not. Do you want to just pass this over to him? Let's pass this over. Yeah, it packs me Concerned is surplus of test case share of self-to-20001 and Chevrolet reverse. So how much vehicle you don't have problem with surplus in this journey? Okay, I'll make that motion. Motion then a second. All those in favor of the motion is presented. Please indicate by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed? Mr. Chairman, I abstain. Do they all vote? Aye. I's have it with one abstention. And after that, would be at the discretion of the board. Well, what about appointments? Fire and rescue board. I think we to take a bat one. Okay. The IVA will meet again tomorrow. Wait to see if Miss Brenner is there. Can we give her one more chance? That's the next moment. I'll have something to figure out. That's That's up to you, Bob. Well, I thought we said last time. That was our last chance. I thought we'd go to them. Let's do it when we're about to promise on it. Something to figure it out next, Bob. No, Eric, one thing I was going to ask you, do we need to talk about the sequins stuff? I thought I was done. Seek for basically try to find employment opportunities for persons that are recovering from drug addiction. And what they are doing in Wise County is they are using their direct distribution opioids settlement to pay those individuals to do work for the county. Wise will give it to C-Core and C-Core pays them to do work for Wise. I think that's intriguing. I would like to do that maybe for litter pickup. Add a service that we really don't have. My problem was when I discussed it with C-Core, what they're wanting is a 12 month commitment for certain number of people. Like the job search. I thought we could probably pay them money and they bring a crew and they pick up some trash, but what they're looking for, wise county according to C-Cores, given them about 22,000 a month, which would basically be 100% of our opioid money. Now personally Wise County is giving them $1,000. And they're sending them 11 employees to basically operate their park and their animal control and things like that. I mean, to me, I think it would be very difficult to justify the auditors that we spent 100% of it giving it to somebody that then paid for positions that we otherwise would have funded. I think if we add some service that we're not doing now, like we'll pick up and set a budget amount that we're going to contribute to it, I think that would be ideal for us. Or you could say, well, what's it take to get me one person and see what they could do for us? I do think it needs to, if it's a plant, our current operations, I think we're in trouble with an auditor in my opinion. How much of that are we willing to spend on that? That would be the question. I think if we do, we start one or two, and don't go like, why is it definitely going to just try it? Can we defer this? I just don't know. I don't feel good about this. I feel like. Well, I also feel like this would be much more appropriate to get a recommendation from the opioid abuse. Yes, that's kind of what I would like to do. I feel like I'm not in the, I don't know. So the other, I mean, I like the idea of it. And I mean, C-Core is a rehabilitated program. It's I think very important to this region of the country, but also I'm curious how it conflicts or competes with our own work program that we have there. Yes. So, maybe let them chew and get back to us. Okay. Chase, Mr. Collins, excuse me. We were earlier discussing the mowing bid and mis-revotic had some particular questions with the impact on the budget. Yeah. How come in stack against our current budget? The amount is $50 more per cycle. When I say cycle, $50 more per month than we were paying last year. And so that is because some of the rates have been reduced, for example, the Bluefield you know it's just, you know we're not going to be paying that per se gasoline prices, diesel prices have gone down somewhat. So instead of $7,490, $7,440 per month, it's $7,490 per month. And that includes adding the Thompson Valley Community Center in which is $200 per month. We estimate $1,300 for the whole year there. What we've done in the past to adjust and keep it within budget, and this firm is pretty good with this, is to say, well, if it's going to be a little over budget, we'll say, well, let's skip one or two moans at Cammack's Creek. Sometimes they will, he'll do it a lot of quilt and say, okay, how about you move this patch this week and this patch next week and alter it that way? And they're getting too high anywhere, but then keeps our total cost that. Well, that answer my question, thank you. Is there a motion? We're regarding the ratifying the poll for the 2025 moment. I'll make that motion and second any other discussion All those in favor please indicate Miss Engaim aye. I always post I have a nice to carry. Thank you They don't mean a lot, take it literally in the residence and top some value. So, anything else though that we need to take up Mr. Young? I don't know how urgent the scholarship issue is. Fairly urgent, actually. Because they need to go ahead and start their recruitment for the fall We do have some money to allocate in the budget that we were looking at some of the parameters One of the things that we were talking about Sending well first setting a cat household income cat that. So we can target the populations we were going to target maintaining the GPA where it is. But another thing we were doing is if you were the child of a volunteer firefighter that you get moved to the top of the list. And because we're only going to allocate so much money the way we kind of structure things. So first come first serve. So I think you need to know that deadline is deadline. Yeah, that's good. That's the crash I stopped. I think the plan was to budget $100,000 for the year. Same parameters as last year except that we add that if your fast foot shows a family in film of over 120, $1,000 gross income to your household that you're not eligible. However, in the distribution and the money, if you are a qualified father, you're not eligible. However, in the distribution and the money, if you are a qualified firefighters, determine my first group and whatever the train and all that, or the child of such that has graduated in the last two years, then you receive priority. Those people get funded first, and then the remainder of the funding is divided by the other qualified students. I think that was generally what we were talking about. So what we're trying to do is throw a bone out to firefighters using the money we have in the budget for this scholarship. I'm not sure if from. Sir, where does the 120? That was at 300 percent of the median household income. It was, I think it was 1.7 times the poverty rate or something like that. The college gave us the number. Yeah. Did you bring it around? No,. I think in today's age, 120 isn't what it was. No, no. How's the information? Well, I don't know if we do a need emotion on that, because it's kind of put into a budget, but I mean, we're wanting to discuss it if you all would be able to college the Green Line. I think parameters on scholarships is the appropriate in that area. And I don't think anything that you will just do out there is offensive by any means. I think people would be happy to have that. Yeah, because I think with the parameters of the targets, middle class, they all say, not send doctor skates college for free here at Target. Yeah, I had to take kids at a very real all-time scholarship. So we're only knew some partying helps that. Not too much about his assistance, but maybe not enough. I don't think one's necessarily more evil or better than the other, because I've never thought that just because someone's parent as a doctor means that they should be penalized either if they've got the work ethic and the Intuition and the drive but I think it just depends on what direction this board wants to take it if you want it to be Mirror base then make it be mirror base, but if you want it to be you know built on a on a different way I think doing it this way is the program. Yeah, and it is somewhat merit-based because we do have the GPA cap on there. But we've also seen this program unleashed as well. Oh, yeah. We definitely have to reel that in. however it is on our budgetary decision matrix list and the college also realizes that in terms of passive budget in the gym, it could go either way, but they do want to go ahead and start trying to do the springtime recruitment to the falls. I suppose Dr. Wright's no longer here to put out a nasty press release. Yeah. Well on that note too we have the interim Mickey Ratliffe. It's the interim but I've heard that they're trying to get by July have a full time permit president place. But with your all consent, I'll go ahead and tell them that under the certain guidelines, go ahead and proceed. We'll hope the best that we maintain that position. You're good. Do we go ahead and vote on that? If you think it's necessary. Why can't we wait for the budget? We just keep in mind that the college-guerves' animals are just telling these kids that that's the deal. And we're on the hook. Well, is there any good friendship between waiting to help him. Hello. Hello. Yeah. We're on the hook. You're touching? No, I'm not. You're touching between waiting a month to tell them. Okay. Hello? Yeah, graduation is made. Yeah, they're already going to the schools. So they're very, very short. We're just about the whole month, or the whole month. We have it in the budget. It's baked in the cake right now, but it's still on the decision matrix list, depending on how we finish the year. Well, do you think with the parameters that we will need all of that? Well, we possibly. because the college foundations do and somewhat of a matching grant, I guess, have become that good model of that. And that made it speed that we pay every year. Do we still have to pay that? Yes, that's required. That's required by statute. Okay. Okay. Okay. Whoa. Budget committee, do you think that's something that we can handle? I think so. I mean, it's pretty far down on the matrix list. There's going to be some other stuff before we get to that one. So I feel we can order some of the other cuts that are on the matrix. Above that? Right now, this afternoon, we looked at the budget and I had the budget update on here and kind of skipped over it. But the numbers we looked at in this matinee right now are revenues given the cuts that we've made and we've cut about $380,000 from last year's budget overall. Given the cuts we've made and the revenues that we believe we're going to have, actually our revenues are heading about $80,000 to $90,000 ahead of the expenses. So we're actually a little bit now. That could change tomorrow. But that's about where we are right now. Yes. Yes. It also includes a payment for Springville Fire Station and includes a contribution to the clinic so it's we're a pretty decent shape on that right now. Now the school board number actually went down this year the state has recalculated how they allocate that money. So it went down by about $600,000 in that help. So what do you think about the 15.38 I think something like that? Close. Again. OK. Well, if you think it's proven to make a motion, I'll go ahead and put forth a motion that we will. I'll second it. So the motion would be to fund the Southwest Virginia Community College scholarship program for Tazzle County residents with a cap of $100,000 total with the addition that students whose family income exceeded $120,000 not be eligible and that qualified firefighters or their child would receive priority and be funded 100% prior to other students being funded. I think it was gross if I recall. I think it was. Yeah, they do. So there's a motion to that effect as what was just stated by Mr. Young as their second. Motion in a second. Any further discussion? All those in favor, the motion is presented. Please indicate to say aye. Aye. All those carriers. Thank you supervisor Ravonik anything else on the administrative or project updates And we need to cover I Need two members to serve on the Western natural gas selection committee We see we'll receive one proposal from a firm. will do a feasibility study for us. I'll need to interview them. I'll be super-rising robotic. I'll do it too. And I'll need to supervise with a lesbian. Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you. Did you want to do a cordelia's street? Let's defer that. We'll defer cordelia's street to May if that, Mr. Chairman. Okay. I need to consider ratifying a poll to allow funds appropriated for Warholk Park and FY25 for quote, Water and Sewer Lines now to be used for utilities, including but not limited to water sewer in electric. Now, with the town of Tassel and they think they can handle the water and sewer, but the the electric was not the the budget so they're asking to use that money for electric instead of the water and sewer. 3-I's in the poll. Motion is their second. All those in favor of the motion is presented please indicate by saying aye. And chairman abstains. I do to that conflict. And that's all that I have. I thank you at moving on to board concerns a supervisor The letter in the packet I didn't like it. Let's look through that. But other one real quick is I want to get 2000 on the packet. I didn't like it. Let's look through that. But other one real quick is I want to get 2000 on the screenshot. The screenshot every phone to the standards out. So I put that in the corner of the picture. How's the second? All those in favor? Please say aye. Aye. All those photos? I'm having a much else? You go ahead. I'll go back to Barbara. Sue, Viser plaster. Are you going to present? Yeah, I don't have anything. Thank only have one thing and I'll be quick. I know that in the last year we gave a good Friday off to our county employees. It's up this year and the question is about it. I mean, I personally thank Good Friday's a day. We should give off, but I just wanted to input from everyone here. Good with it. But can't the department have to make that decision error? The Constitutional officers make that decision on their own. When's the last time a Constitution officer is given their office a day off without the board during so year? 1800? Probably. They always ask us, but in the end they have their own rules. They can take out now the clerk will have to have permission from the judge to do that, but we don't control them. Now, what they do is if we do it, then they go to the judge and say, hey, look, they're doing it. And then it snowballs. And the PSA and everybody else will pick you back on what we do. It's just like when it snows I get these texts from all these different people what do y'all do and I'm like y'all can make that call yourself. We have historic we're giving you a Friday. We have done so in the last. Well I'll make the motion that we provide good Good Friday is a city holiday. Second for our counting employees. Mission. How many holidays do they get? 14, like we counted them up today. So I don't get 14. Maybe. Maybe. It's your personal house. We can could get what you do in the next meeting or the president? Grail prohibition. I was looking. I don't think they gave us a number. Well, there's a motion in a second called those in favor of the motion. We send a paper saying aye. All those pages pages. What's all that? I just have it. She can't hear. There's not enough. That's Scrooge down there. So I'll have that. I'm jealous, I guess. Me too. I don't get these things. I'll wait for you to get over. I think they had that. You got it. There's a May 7th of our bank, but they're trying to do it. I don't know if I need to get it done. I do it all the time. Yeah, I can pull it in a half to you. There's a May 7th I can pull it out So we have all the seats. I'm going to be here with the grant commission. I did have a different matter. But I'm not going to call for my driver at 6. I got a change. Mr. Chairman, we did have, this came up with a budget committee meeting. I did have a couple of other items. Now I've lost my document. The string sweepers. I think the legend made my board boy concerned. Oh, okay. Well, they come up with a better name than that. The string sweepers. I mean, that's a firearm, right? The street. It's a string. The string. I can't make it a string. We're not talking about guns here, right? Well, I mean, if you sell these guys. It's gonna be funnier. Yeah. Not gangsters. Yeah. But the street sweepers like a shotgun or in tombstone, they call it a street howitzer. A stranger sweeper. A stranger sweeper did cover our budget meeting today and made a request. We could help them this year. So we could do that in a budget cycle. We could help them next year in the budget but not now. So I'm going to make a motion that out of the western district funds donate $2,500 to go towards the streams we've written. I think Miss Plaster was willing to match me out of her capital improvement. Yes. Yes. For a total of $5,000. I'm sorry, Bob. So where are they cleaning? Where are they going to be cleaning? Last year they did two tenths of a mile. I think they said they got something like 30 times right there in the town of Virginia. I guess my question is, are they gonna make it to this part of the clinch? Yeah, eventually they said that they were gonna kind of work their way up. Is there no way that they can just skip spot clean portion or two with a towel? Well, they're goals to get to the head. Now I get it. And to clean up as they clean up then that's helping the down flow because you're getting all the sediment build up up and stuff like that when you're cleaning it out. I know there's two portions of the clanchion here in town. I know that one in particular is at the farm bureau building. They've got some trees and limbs and some debris from the last hurricane. They're doing a fine job, but I just know that there's quite a bit still to be cleaned out. Oh, it's going to be done. Yeah, and they're working their way up. They gave us a report of last year in the clinch river. They, in 2024, they removed 9,150 tires and over 103 tons of trash out of it. And I think we gave them $5,000 last year. So if you look at like a dollar amount, that's incredible. It is incredible. So we get a lot of things for that book so And from a flooding standpoint Every time we get out of those rivers is that much more space Yes, and keep it through And They also by doing this is restoring the flow as well, the natural flow of the water. Also, they'll put 1500 from the Southern District fund. I'll put a kind of cabinet proven on them. I'll put a 1500 from the Northern District capital improvement fund on them. Okay. Your mine's Capitol Improvement. And... Well, good. I'm glad you said that because I actually had sheenah down us. I bet you did. You know, we're not. I got distracted. So I just think it's so important to... It's important. Improved the condition of the clinch not only serves as a tourist attraction, but And I love to fish on it. It's an almost on does So I'll put that in the form of emotion second all those in favor Please indicate by saying huh all those pose I I opposed? I's having the motion carries. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Another one I had was another donation from the Western District in the amount of $5,000 to go to the town of Cedar Bluff towards the Cedar Bluff call fest. Second. Motion is second. All those in favor, please indicate the saying aye on. All those opposed? I have the motion carries. Thank you all very much. And that concludes my board in terms. Do you have anything else? The other thing I had was OTR. We had discussed this and we looked at it. The budget committee was recommending them in the budget for next year, but their event is actually in gene of this year. If you recall last year, we approved money to the Fair Association to help support this event and the Fairbrought the check back. So actually the $7,500 we approved last year came back to us. So I was going to ask for a $7,500 appropriation for OTR for this year and then we can budget it next year. Did that come under your district's firm this year? Um, yeah. Was that a district or do you think you all do the contingency? I don't remember that. I don't know. Let's take a look at the minutes in the last year. I don't remember. In what month did we do that last year? If you have the spread sheet It should that Orlean gave you should show a deposit back. Yeah I've had no deposits into my account. Okay That it shows $7,500 with the draw in July. No, okay, then it probably came out of contingents that it shows $7,500 with the draw in July. No. OK, then it probably came out of contingency. So the question is, are we going to fund that event again? And if you want to do that, look, still. People have their opinions on OTOR, but it's one of the largest events now that we have. And Tazel County, except for the heritage festival. I mean that I think the data I saw last year was either Friday night or part of Saturday they thought that they had about 35 or 3700 people right there. They're going to do a little better controlling it this year, that the time's passed. I mean, I'm just there last year. I don't remember there being a control issue until people started believing. But, well, I just think back there, where they worked up the road here. Yeah, there were a lot of complaints about the law. Major Hankin said that that would not happen at the end. Well, I'm okay with throwing that one here. I'll put that in the book. I'll second it. 70 is not my knowledge from contingency for OTR. All those in favor of the motion is presented. Please indicate the same. I was opposed. I was having motion carries. Now I think I'm done. All right. Thank you. So my concerns, payment on money expenses, Thompson Valley Community Center, we took care of that. Appreciate you all. We also looked at an additional dumpster, Thompson Valley, but confident that that will be cost-prohibited. I'll throw by there and go to the room, I think, for another dumpster. And also, I'll throw by my understanding that as Ken told me, an extra dumpster there would cost approximately $22,000 a year. It's pool. That's the pool. It's the pooling. One thing I talked to Ken about, and we're going to try to get you another number on that, is what if we pull the second dumpster on weekends or something like that, in days that we know it's busy instead of doing it every day, try to cut that number down so I can probably try to get you a smaller number on that. If you wanted to. I think I would like to at least explore it. If that's possible. That's the only one we have. That's got two. Two dumps per week. Why, I don't know. I mean, I think the only other big expense there is that I think the stairs would need a little bit of work being done allowing easy access to two dumpsters on either side. I know I get a lot of complaints especially from elderly individuals on how steep it is. But I can't imagine that that's hard fix. I think that might be much easier than even getting a second dumpster. But I'll look at that. I'll say, dude, is there a number you won't can aim for as to what we would pay to have them pull the second dumpster? The problem is, is when we put out the whole operational info out the bed, it has in there how many dumpsters, how many pools, how many convenience areas. So now we're having to go back to them and add something to the contract. And you know how that goes. So is there a number you only try to shoot? I mean is it like a little bit so what you're looking for would it be something what What would it look like on a once per week? You know, if you did it four times a month, is that what you're asking about? Well, I'm asking if it's 28,000 a year, then what if we do 7,000? What's that guess? Sure. Something like that. OK. I don't know what that type of budget committee is, but like if there was an extra expense of about $10,000 a year for trash removal, was that going to make a break anything that part of the line item on the budget? I mean, that's kind of where I'm at. Right. Okay. So, Dishlant, Ms. Wilson, and I know you're here this evening with Peak Foundation. Is there any update or anything you'd like to discuss with us? I do presentations for the way they are at the town of Tassel. I'm a little bit nervous, but I'm really happy to have you here. I'm very happy to have you here. And tomorrow I'll be treated for the right year and the end. And the end. to my meeting. I want to check the table and tomorrow I'll be treated for the right there and and the audience and I would like to come back and do a presentation of meetings to give you a statement for the definition of what kind of the leader will be. Will you be available for our main meeting? I think this is. What date do we have in May? May 4th. May 6th. I'll do that and I'll pay particular attention to all the active people around the world in all the sessions. And even I think it's incredible that there's a lot of room for them in New York. You guys are pretty touched on this show all the time, it's not breaking, you know, I said, sitting here in California, outside New York and New York, to see how touched the situation, to be on pay attention to all the types of situations to be on, they teach it all how many of us are in the states and bring it to the heart of stations at the moment. In order to do for, and I think every group we've asked it, present yourselves very well in the cases that we know. And I'm all about who it. Somebody'm sorry. But I think the interaction in the first round of the slide is not the way they are. The possibility of the fact that they're receiving. We'll be presenting to Martin Agnihagni in the next stage, including the facilities. And I think we're going to have to see the connections from one dentist to the view. Excellent. Well thank you for that update and all the work that you've kind of been doing. But I'm a scenes. Okay, no other board concerns at this time. I'd like to move into our final executive close meeting, pursuant to Virginia Code Section 2.2, dash 3711, to discuss the following A.A. Legal Consultation or excuse me, a personnel and legal department. That's A1 personnel and legal department. Is there anything else that we need? Yes, Mr. Chairman. We have A29 contract negotiations with TAS, with horse shows LLC that was kicked to the second one. All right. Motion to move into executive close session to include the A1 and the A29 as red. Motion, and is there a second? Second. All those in favor, please indicate for saying aye. All those opposed. I'll have it motion carries. We are now in executive close session, and I have no idea when we'll get back. We have returned from executive closed session with anyone monitoring the certification. Whereas the task of Board of Supervisors convened an executive closed meeting on this date pursuant to an affirmative vote in accordance with Virginia Freedom of Information Act and whereas 2.2-3711 of the Code of Virginia required certification by the Board of Supervisors that such an executive close meeting was conducting a conformity for Virginia law. Now therefore we have resolved the task for county board of supervisors here by certifies that to the best of each member's knowledge, one that only public business matters lawfully exempted from open meeting. The private Virginia law were discussed in executive close meeting to which is certification resolution And two, only such public business matters as we're identified in the motion, convening the closed meeting were heard discussed or considered by the task for county board supervisors. The chairman calls for a roll call votes for the following vote. Here by recording. Chairman votes aye. Supervisor Revive. Aye. Supervisor Cruey. Supervisor Presley. Supervisor, supervisor, supervisor crewy, supervisor, press lead, supervisor, plaster. Ah. All right. I think we've only got one motion. The wing and wing are... Oh, no. No. Jump in the good... Is there chairman? I mean, if the board received and terminate is rental agreement with the title or show, LLC, effective and effective immediately pursuant to mutual agreement. Motion in a second. Supermods here. Pressley. Pressley. All those in favor please indicate me saying aye. All those matters. as well as Patres, Asgard, much here. Is there a motion to adjourn? I'm six. I'm six. Thanks. Second. Thank you, over time. Thank you, sir. Let's have a good year. Oscar, much carries. Is there a motion to adjourn? I'll be six. I'll be six. Thanks. Second. Thank you all for coming. It's time to have Biggie Deer.