Good evening. Welcome to the April 15th, 2025 meeting of the Ashton Town Council. I'd like you to invite you if you would just join me in a moment of silence. Maybe you haven't had any of that today. But anyway, we can relish in it for just a moment. Please join me. Thank you. Mr. Vice Mayor, would you lead us in the pledge? As you're able, please stand and join in the pledge. I'm quite glad you're here. It's still a part of the United States of America. I think you could leave all of it, or we're just staying in this. One nation saying, one nation under God in the middle with liberty and justice for all. All right, we'll go ahead and take a moment here and review our agenda for this evening. On our consent agenda, we have minutes from the April 1st, 2025, Ashland Town Council meeting. We have an Arbor Day Proclamation, a business appreciation month proclamation, and the referral of Resonine 25-0317, Lake View and Luck Farm, Section 1. We have a presentation to look forward to. Promotion of Sergeant Jamie Hamlin. So please with that, we have our citizen input time after that. That'll be opportunity for someone to come up and speak to Council on a matter other than public hearing. After citizen input, we have a public hearing fiscal year 2024, 2025 budget amendment. From our town manager manager we have one discussion item the fiscal year 2025 2026 town managers proposed budget for the upcoming year then we have reports from the planning department finance department in police department do we have consensus for the the agenda is presented. Yes. Yes. Yes. All right. Oh, yeah. Mr. Mayor, I'd like to make a motion to move The minutes from April 1st 2025 Off to the consent agenda to be voted on separately Is there a second second Miss so Paul I Mr. Barn O'Paul. Aye. Miss Barnhart. Aye. Dr. McGraw. Aye. Vice Mayor Hodges. Aye. Mayor Trevert. Aye. All right. Thank you. All right. And now, a motion to vote concerning the minutes. Well, I wasn't here if I'm not making a motion in minutes. No. Mr. Mayor, I moved for adoption of the minutes from April 1, 2025, Ashland Town Council meeting. I second. All right. Ms. Barnhart. Hi. Sokol. Hi. Vice Mayor Hodges. Hi. Dr. McGraw. Upstein. Mayor Chabette. Hi. All right, thank y'all. For the rest of the consent agenda, we're going to vote. We're going to read our proclamations first. The other item on their item D, the referral. It's a procedural activity that the planning commission gets referrals from the council. So I know there's some folks here tonight who have an interest as we do as council members in this application but there isn't any time for discussion of that tonight. So it's again a procedural thing. We move it to the planning commission. If you keep the Planning Commission agenda, then that's where it will be up next for review and discussion. All right so just want to let you know that and now I ask Ms. Barnhardt if she would read the Arbor Day Proclamation. Thank you. Whereas in 1872 Jay Sterling-Morton proposed the Nebraska Board ofultural to set aside a special day for planting trees. And whereas this day called Arbor Day, the first observation with the planting of more than one million trees in Nebraska, it is now observed throughout the nation and the world. And whereas trees are known to reduce the erosion of our precious topsoil by wind and water, cutting heat and cooling costs, moderating the temperature, cleaning the air and producing oxygen and providing a habitat for wildlife. And whereas trees in our own town increase property value, enhance the economic vitality of the business area, beautify our community and our source of joy and inspiration. And whereas the town of Ashland has been recognized for over 33 years as a tree city USA by the National Arbor Day Foundation and is committed to an ongoing process of renewal, improvement and beautification achieved in part through the planting of trees. And whereas the town will celebrate Arbor Day with a planning of trees on April 24, 2025 at 12 o'clock p.m. at Carter Park in conjunction with Randolph-Macon College. And whereas the Commonwealth of Virginia recognizes the last Friday in April as Arbor Day, now therefore on behalf of the Ashland Town Council, we do hereby proclaim April 25, 25 as Ashlyn Arbor Day and encourage the people of Ashlyn to support the planning and protection of trees for the benefit of present and future generations. Data the 15th of April 2025. Here here. Ms. Soapall, would you read the business week proclamation? Oh, excuse me. Whereas the town of Ashland is pleased to have a diverse group of businesses and industries, large and small, to support the local economy. And whereas these businesses play a vital role in economic prosperity by providing thousands of employment opportunities, goods, services, and essential support to local residents. And whereas the entrepreneurial spirit, innovation, and dedication of business owners, contribute to the growth and sustainability of our local economy, fostering opportunities for investment and development. And whereas many of those businesses are also important pillars of support for our schools and communities, organizations that increase the quality of life in and around Ashland. And whereas May has been designated as national small business month to acknowledge the critical contributions of America's entrepreneurs and small business owners. And now therefore, in recognition and appreciation of our businesses, on behalf of the Ashland Town Council, we proclaim the month of May 2025 as business appreciation month and encourage the residents and friends of the town to continue their support local economy. Data this 15th day of April 2025, Stephen P. Trivett Mayor. All right, thank you. Now, is there a motion for the edited consent agenda of items BC and D? Yes Mr. Mayor I move to approve the consent agenda as amended. A second. Vice Mayor Hodges. Hi. So Paul. Hi. Dr. McGraw. Hi. It's Barnhart. Hi. Mayor Chavette. Hi.. I thank y'all. Mr. Mayor if I can add just one note for those who may have been here for the Lakeview at Luck Farm Resoning that is going to be heard at the Ashland Planning Commission on Wednesday May 14th at 6 p.m So that is when it will get a full hearing in front of the planning commission. All right date already set good. Good deal. All right, thank you, sir. Right now we're to the fun part here. Presentation for the promotion of Sergeant Jamie Annman. So, Chief. Just for our members of town council, thank you for allowing me to be before you this evening. This manager, this is a great time. I don't get to do this frequently, but I'm very excited to announce this promotion. Unfortunately, you can't promote everyone. We have a great group of officers, but this officer has certainly excelled in showing this she deserves this position. So I'd like to ask Sergeant Hanlon to please come up and join me. I'm just going to read a short bio if I could. You're on the spot Jamie. So enjoy. Sergeant Hanlon is a 12 year veteran of the Ashland Police Department. During this time, she has worked as an patrol officer and investigator. And she's performed exceptionally well as an investigator. She's handled numerous missing persons cases while assisting in the role of helping the police officers. Several of which of these investigations went across state lines, often involving minors, and had not been for great work, I believe bad things may have occurred. She's worked long hours and she's insured all these children were brought home. She has also investigated and brought forth a successful prosecution in the homicide case. During many of these investigations, investigations she also ate it with patrol and staffing shortages. In December of 2023, a supervisor needed a long-term medical leave, long-term medical leave and required a long long absence from work. Due to scheduling issues, Investigator Hamlin seemed a solid choice to assume the role as an acting supervisor. And we called upon her once again. Investigator Hamlin performed admirably. We have many young officers and her time as an investigator has proven very helpful as we train her next generation. We have a great group of officers in choosing anyone to fill this role is not never easy. Investigating a handling has done a great job. She has a proven check track record of dedication and flexibility that is needed to be a great police supervisor. I could not be proud of her of all she is accomplished. And I look forward to recognizing her accomplishments in the future. I would like to ask Sergeant Hanley's family to please come up and pin the badge on her chest. Look there. One second. Sorry about that. Sergeant Hanley will notice this missing a symbol, the symbol of trust we place in her to do the right thing. I ask for her to reaffirm that oath and her family to place the badge upon her chest. Please stay with us. Sorry, Daniel, I'm asking you to turn and reaffirm your oath. I've also asked all the members the National Police Department who are so here to get involved with all the service that just happened to be sustainable. This recite your request, but me as well. On my honor, I will never betray my badge. My integrity, my character, or the public trust. I will always have the courage to hold myself and others accountable for actions. I will always uphold the Constitution and the community has her so help me now. That's right. Absolutely. Absolutely. No, no, no, not that easy. Please, this is the moment of celebration. If we could get the picture from everyone while they give a chance, this is, does not happen every day. So please look. Come on, Bill. Got it. Don't think? I think we all get to be in the front. I've already got my vision. Got it. We're going to have a ride. What's my dad used to say? I'm the guy. Awesome. I'm going to say, find a gear. Boss? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. for allowing me this few minutes to recognize a great leader with a bright future in action, please, tomorrow. I thank you so very much. Congratulations. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And I'll say it out loud, you know, we're very thankful for the police department that we have. It's the solid one as you'll find anywhere as far as we're concerned. And Kalea says the same thing with that accreditation. But we just thank you for your service and being part of a terrific organization. Now I'll'll follow that by saying, sometimes people come to meetings and their portion is done and they feel hesitant about leaving and we'll just say, we take no offense. Everybody's got things to do. If you want to go celebrate further elsewhere, don't feel bad stepping out of this time. Thank you very much. Thank y'all for being here. Thank you, sir. It's going to cost me. All right. This brings us to citizen input time. If I'd anyone who would like to come forward and speak to council on a matter other than the public hearing and other than the referral See in no one will close the public citizen input and move to our public hearing This fiscal year 2024 2025 budget amendment mr. Yes. Thank you, Mayor and Council. So a little bit confusing on the agenda, but the topic we're on right now is the budget year we are in. So fiscal year 24-25, we've been talking about doing this budget amendment for some time and there's one little confusing element, so I'm going to bring up a screen to help me try to explain it to you. But the gist of the budget amendment is we have the potential for some economic development property purchase that could help us deal with some blight issues and also be an economic development win for the town. We are currently in a position where we have sufficient unreserved fund balance to transfer that money into the budget this year. I will say I was planning to move this exact amount of money into this line item and next year's budget anyway, so we're really just doing it about three months earlier. There we go. So what we're going to see tonight is a $500,000 use of unreserved fund balance to put into a strategic property acquisition line item in the Capital Project Fund. But the mechanism of that is a little bit odd in that it moves between two funds. So a one time use of $500,000 actually equates to a $1 million budget amendment. And that's what I'm going to try to show you here on the screen. And so on the left side you have our current fiscal year 2025 budget. Our four funds that make up the total of $24,425,000. That is the budget as it stands at this very moment. Previous budget amendments have been completed and are included in that. In addition to that, what we would like to do is take $500,000 from the unreserved fund balance, which resides basically in the general fund. And so that would be $500,000 transaction. Take it from the fund, put it into the budget, increase the general fund budget by 500,000. But the mechanism we are going to use to do this is in the capital project fund and so we'll do that general fund amount will be transferred to the capital project fund and when you add $500,000 to the capital project fund you also have to increase that budget. So there's your total of a million dollar budget amendment even though the total cash going out the door would only be $500,000. And so whether that is helpful or leaves you more confused, that is what we're trying to accomplish. And I wanted to try to be transparent about the fact that we're using $500,000 of fund balance, but it really equates to a budget increase of a million dollars. million dollars. So the recommendation tonight is to approve the budget amendment as presented for a total increase to the fiscal year 2025 budget of a million dollars for a new total of 25 million, $425,072. Would that be happy to take any questions you may have? All right. Any questions before we open the public hearing? All right. All right. We'll go ahead at this time and open the public hearing. It's a requirement and something we properly would do. So if anyone would like to come forward to speak to this budget amendment, this before us now invite you to do so at this time. All right. Seeing no one, we'll close the public hearing and bring about to council for discussion. Uh, or a comment. I think Dr. McGraws are representative. I did want to make a comment. I commend the administration for its efforts to work with economic development authority to take the initiative to secure funds, to take advantage of potential economic development opportunities, and a partnership that was successful as in the case of the Apple Garden to Dash in project. So I wish the Administration and EDA, or economic development, already best wishes if this amendment is passed. Any other comment? All right well with that I'm ready to make a motion if you're ready to hear one. I move to approve the FY 2024 2025 budget amendment as presented. I'll see you guys next time. Nice second. Dr. McGraw. Aye. Ms. Barnhart. Aye. Ms. Barnhart. Aye. Ms. Soapall. Aye. Vice Mayor Hodges. Aye. Mayor Chavette. Aye. All right. That passes. Thanks. Take care of that item of business. And that moves us to the discussion of next year's budget. fiscal year 2025, 2026, and back to to the manager very good and we'll jump right into that as well so we bring you tonight the proposed budget for next fiscal year we'll give you a little bit of history of where we've been touch on that very briefly go over some successes we had in fiscal year 2025 touch on a few challenges and then really dive into the meat of the budget, give you an overview of what we're doing in each department, some of the themes where the budget's land is at the end of the year and give you as good a presentation as we can. But where we've been this far, this is really where we start the formal part of the budget process up until now. We've done unofficial budget hearings where we have citizens come in and talk to us before we've ever even written numbers down on a spreadsheet so that we can incorporate their ideas as early as possible. And then throughout March we did the two work sessions where we bring you basically the entirety of the budget as presented by department heads that includes both their wants and needs. And go through those as best we can from a line item perspective. I take the information that you all give me, the community provides, and then input from department heads and bring you what we have tonight, which is the town manager's proposed budget. Obviously there was significant cutting that needed to happen to get from the department submittals to a balanced budget, but that's part of our process. That's not necessarily a negative thing. It's part of the process. We want you to see every request that comes through the budget, the department so that you can have a better understanding of the budget. But very happy tonight to present you a balanced budget and we'll jump right into the presentation. Some of the successes over the past year will touch on some of the highlights. Community engagement, we've made a lot of progress over the past year. We've substantially grown our community ambassadors program, where we have representatives and neighborhoods throughout the town come together on a, every other month basis to discuss issues going on in the town. That could be a town issue, it could be service providers from outside organizations. It's really a good information exchange program that we have going on with the community. We also did the national community survey, which gives us really great data to inform us as to how we're doing and what citizens actually think about the performance of town staff and the organization as a whole. And the great news is, people are very pleased with what we're doing. They have a high level of satisfaction with our services, and in particular, very happy with the direction leadership is taking us as the one of the phrase that questions asked and so a great survey there. I will Also highlight we did hear the things we need to work on as well And so we're gonna have a very tight focus on traffic congestion over the next year do some study and come back to council with some Responses on how to address that the community a leadership academy continues to be a wonderful place for us to develop leaders in the community, whether it be for town boards or just nonprofit service. The Ashland Foundation partnership, you are very familiar with that, but a new partnership we're engaging in this year to divvy out the community support grants that the town has traditionally provided and hopefully the foundation will be able to grow that fund of pot of available funding so that we can make more impact in the community. Miss Miller did an absolutely outstanding job updating our Ashen VA.gov website. If you haven't been there go take a look, nice refresh on the screen, the aesthetics are better and the best part about it is that it's very data-driven. We took a look back at where people go on the website and put those things up front so that it's easier to access what people most want to use on the website and then also adopted our first ever public art master plan. On the administration side of things, again, Kudos to Mr. Goodman, our ARPA, which is American Rescue Plan Act, federal funding is largely complete. We'll talk about that a little bit later today, but I know for a fact last week he submitted the final report for calendar year 24 to the federal government, and we got all green bars and checkmarks. So we are in a much better position than many other local governments across the country who we are now learning have not been following all the rules for that funding. We are also awarded a top workplace by the Richmond Times Dispatch. Again, rewrote our employee handbook, which is certainly not a sexy project, but very important to the operations of the town. And then again, I mentioned this before, but had a lot of recruitments and have done really well with those recruitments. We've got an absolutely outstanding staff at the moment. In planning and community development, this is only a touch on the businesses that they've done good work to bring it down. You can see some of those there. We've had a number of infill subdivisions, which is going to be very common in town, right? We're getting more and more built out over time, and so how do we connect those infill subdivisions to be part of the fabric of the town? We had a lot of those on James Street and there's growth going on there. The link micro transit has been nothing but a hit. Route 54, I think everyone's noticed. to be part of the fabric of the town. We had a lot of those on James Street and there's growth going on there. The link micro transit has been nothing but a hit. Route 54, I think everyone's noticed, the landscaping we redid last summer out there is absolutely outstanding. We're gonna continue that a little bit further in the coming fiscal year. And then again, working with Randolph making on that master plan. They've had plenty of workload in planning and done a really outstanding job with it. On the police side of things, we've talked about that a few times, but again, we are... We've had plenty of workload in planning and done a really outstanding job with it. On the police side of things, we've talked about that a few times, but again, we are on the verge, I won't say there yet, of 28 sworn officers. And that's a number that is important because I think it was just two years ago, we were at 22 or 23, and our max cap was 27. And so the plan is working. years later we, we're up to 28-8 on our way to 30, and we're seeing the results of that bear out in the police department, hopefully, with more time off, better service, and more regular coverage in town. We had an 11% reduction in part one offenses, 7.1% in traffic crashes, maintained Culea certification, and all the while improved the building with our ARPA funds as well. So great, great year for police. On the public work side of the house, I really want to highlight and we've talked about it a lot, but the workload that public works has had over the last three years has just been unfathomable. All the projects we did with that ARPA money, they have been absolutely running at top speed in engineering and they've done an absolutely wonderful job with it. Like I said before, we are on time, on budget with our projects, Doug submitted the reports and to get all that work done with a relatively small staff upstairs has been outstanding. And that leads to my concern. We've got to deal with succession planning. We have our two engineers upstairs are retiring in October and December of this year and And then a year maybe a year and a half later our public works director will retire as well. So lots of succession planning efforts are going into that to make sure that we can continue having great people up there and the team working as best they can. One thing that we have not talked much about with town council but we have modified, not changed our landscaping contract to have a little bit more focus on some of our special spots. So think of those railroad exhibits and some of the little beds of flowers that were maybe in the past maintained by volunteers. We've had a conversation with the company about upgrading those so that they can be really bright focuses of aesthetics in the rest of the town. And so you'll see that come about, especially now that we're in spring. Maple Street Sidewalk, that project, you may be thinking about the trail that's under construction, but we actually built the sidewalk last year as well, which will be a key feature for the fall line trail. And then you all see the work going on out there with the Ingrid Street that we've planned planned for five, ten years now and it's actually underway. So again, Public Works had another outstanding year. And then the fun stuff at the end, Parks and Rec, we made a ton of progress in fiscal year 2025, renovated our Scape Park, acquired land for South Taylor Street expansion and planned the improvements of that park, more on that to come in the budget. fault line is nearly complete. I'm very happy to share and I'll say it publicly. At the last meeting, more on that to come in the budget. Fall line is nearly complete. I'm very happy to share it publicly. At the last meeting we were talking to town council about that being open in September. It's now looking at the end of May. We'll get to use the local section of the fall line trail as early as this may throughout the entire year of the summer. This Saturday we have a ribbon cutting for another park, Berkeley Town Heritage Park. just north of Berkeley Town by the college. That will be another great park to add to our park inventory at a record season at Carter Park. And then again, I wanna give Miss Richards a lot of kudos. She has done a ton of work to make sure that our relationship with Hanover County is better than it absolutely ever has been. I would expect over the next year you will start to see more Hanover County Parks and Ruck programming happening in town of Ashland Parks. It's been a goal for the town for a long time and me where their partner I believe it's Aaron at the county have managed to make that happen. So again a lot of progress made on the parks and recreation side of things. So 2025 was great but as we move forward there are a few things that are in my mind and in our minds as we move forward with trying to get this budget put together. Obviously we have economic uncertainty. We don't necessarily know what's going to happen. There's some stuff going on at the federal government that leaves us in a little bit of a place of uncertainty. I have resources that I use that are warning of recessions on the horizon. And so it just informs us we have to have a somewhat conservative budget. Basically be conservative and what you put out there and be ready to pivot if things go wrong. And I think we built a budget that allows us to do that. Again, a broken record for Council but for the community. We have very intentionally over the last three, four years plan to use ARPA funds and then have a pathway to get off of ARPA funds, right? Because we did use a small portion of it for operations. We wanted to make sure that we could do that without kind of what I would call fiscal cliff, right? So suddenly you're funding $500,000. Let's say of operating expensive. The money goes away and you have to make up that money all at one time. We've done that gradually over the last two years and planned to use some revenue stabilization money to do that in this fiscal year and next as well for a very smooth transition. The big thing you will notice there is that personnel, line items within the budget have gone up significantly over the last few years and largely that's that transition off of federal funding to our local funding. The other challenges that we have are finance department, absolutely outstanding, Ms. Schugar is doing a wonderful job but they are two and a half people. And so right now, Ms. Schugar is basically being our finance director as well as a project manager for our software transition. And so she's doing a wonderful job with it but that is a challenge for us in that it kind of spreads her workload. I have to help her out with some things on occasion, and it just makes getting some of those things done in the time we might want a little bit more difficult. The good news is there's an amazing light at the end of the tunnel. This software is going to dramatically improve our ability to do finance work, but also be a much better portal for our citizens to interact with us electronically. Hey, taxes online, easier, get permits, easier, all those kinds of things. But really, I just want to recognize that right now, Ms. Schudard's doing a wonderful job, but she has stretched very thin, and so that will be a tough thing for the next year. And then in public works, we already talked about it, but there'll be succession planning there as well. We started planning for it last year, and this fiscal year will be the year where it actually happens. The way you will see that in the budget is that we have added some extra wages to the public works engineering line item to allow us to over hire for brief periods, right? So if we know someone's gonna retire in October, Let's hire their replacement and let's say August or September so they can get some over lap time, learn the job, learn from the incumbent and then take their place. So those are just a few of the challenges that we're working through as we put the budget together. But getting into the more nitty gritty of the budget, these were some of the goals that we presented for ourselves. Obviously we always want to do a balanced budget. We've accomplished that again this year. One of council's goals, and it has been for the community for quite some time, is connectivity and infrastructure. This year, we make significant investments in both those places, and we'll touch on that a little bit later. We obviously want to continue to not just recruit great employees, but retain them. And so we're able to provide healthy raises that keep us competitive within the region and the marketplace that we can beat. Again, we talked, I won't keep going there, but transitioning off our ARPA money to make sure that we have a balanced budget. And then one of the things I've done is referred to this new fiscal year 2026 as a baseline budget, right? So not add a ton of new programs, not add new positions, understand that there's some economic uncertainty and that we're coming off of federal money. Let's just have a base year where we do great government work. We make the programs that we currently operate as good as we possibly can, and really have a new level set. So at the end of fiscal year 26, we'll have a new kind of starting point for comparison in future years where we don't have large influxes of federal funds So the proposed budget that I have in front of you this evening is about a $16 million general fund budget That's up 4.6% from the amended fiscal year 2025 a six million dollar capital projects fund budget again down in this instance about 8.35 percent This one a little bit odd to talk about $180,500, $180,500, special revenue fund budget for the American Rescue Plan Act. A very small budget for the upcoming fiscal year, and largely that's due to the fact that ARPA is a one-time funding source. So it's only going to go down over the years in that fund. We expect most of our projects to be almost done by June 30th of this year, but there's gonna probably be some rollover. And we'll talk a little bit later about what the four projects are that encompass that rollover. And then finally, we have our Central Virginia Transportation Authority budget of about $1.6 million. And that's again down 4.3%. I'll touch on it a little more detail later, but largely because we have some larger expenditures at the end of this year that will lower the total of the budget and even with new revenue next year, keep our expenses below what they would be this year. And so that gives you almost a $24 million off-ones budget, the total budget, largely because the three funds there that are down, the total budget is actually down 6% even though the general fund is up 4.6%. So again, budget environment, I won't go into much on this, but economic uncertainty and inflation, we touched on that indirect federal impacts. I'll just say a word or two about that. While the town of Ashton, we don't get a lot of direct federal funding. I think our annual budget is maybe $6 or $7,000 for a grant or two that we may apply for. We do have some indirect concerns with the federal government. The first is what you may be hearing in the news. We have a large rail grant that we received word that we were going to be awarded. It's in limbo right now, about $420,000. It wasn't an operational It's something that we'd like to do, but it's in limbo. We don't know if that money's coming to us at any point. That's kind of indirect for town applications. The other ways to think about this is our partners. And so I go local, DEIC, right? Great organization. They've done a great job over the last five years building their programming, programming, but they've largely done so through the use of federal grants. And so they are now getting a word that some of their grants may be frozen as well. And so that's where I say indirect federal impacts. As we may have some of these partner organizations that if their grants are pulled, they may look to the town for help or assistance in the future. The other one that isn't a local partner but is a regional regional partners, GRTC, right? You think about GRTC, they used a lot of their ARPA money that they received to do no fair funding, right? So you could take the bus just about anywhere in the region for zero cost. Well, when ARPA funds dry up, where does that funding come from? And so they also get a lot of federal funding for their programming in general. And so there's a world where some of these changes may have indirect impacts on us where our partners come and say, hey, we don't have the federal funding we might have hoped for. We may look to the town for help in the future. So again, something that we keep an eye on and we're trying to talk to our partners about, but I want to highlight that as an uncertainty going forward. And then internally, I've already talked about those four items there. Other than we are using a significant surplus from fiscal year 24 to do much of the infrastructure investment that we're talking about, I'll highlight that as well a little bit later in the presentation. So fiscal year 2026 budget, some of the important things to note on this screen. There's a lot of history there, but just to understand it, FY17 through FY24 on this chart are actuals, and the FY25 and 26 are estimates. And so there is a distinction there between what we actually estimate versus what the budget is when we adopt it. So these numbers are largely lower than they would have been if we'd listed budget numbers here. But the point is to share with you that you can kind of see our use of fund balance over the years. And when it has brackets around it, that means negative. And that is money, excuse me, coming out of the unreserved fund balance. If it's positive, that means it's the years where we had money go back into the unreserved fund balance And so that's why I was saying if you look at fiscal year 24 1.452 million went back into the unreserved fund balance That's a lot of the funding we're using in this fiscal year to put towards capital projects because I'll show you a little bit later Our unreserved fund balance has gotten too high and we need to spend that down with strategic use of one-time funds. So again you can see the general growth in the budget will touch on that a little bit later as well but just wanted to touch on fund balance here. The chart on the left is the last numbers chart just in a visual way, right? So the on the left you can see red is our total revenues, blue is our total expenditures, typically you're always going to want your revenues over your expenditures. But in FY25 and FY26 we've intentionally tried to spend down that unreserved fund balance and so budgeted for a difference there. And so that's an intentional gap and you can see the impact that it has on the green line which is your unreserved fund balance total. We've gotten up in FY24 over $8 million in crank frankly, that's too much for us to be sitting on. And so we're trying to intentionally spend it down on council priorities over this year and next. And then on the other side, it really gives the budget versus actual transfer is to give you a picture of what has been our history and when I'm going to recommend to you probably will not be our future. And so typically the blue line is what we budget every year. You can see it's typically higher than the middle red line and the green line and that's because we budget very conservatively. We say revenues are probably going to come in at or lower than we expect expenditures Expenditures, we're always going to try to keep lower than expected. And so typically expenditures will come in under budget and revenues will come in over budget leading to a surplus. But you can see here that come mid-year about maybe two months ago, and we would normally be doing this, we come up with what we call mid-year estimates. And so we have six months more data. And so we're able to more accurately estimate where the budget's going to land. And so that's the red line where you can see Which budgeting a large use of unassigned fund balance mid-year looks like it's gonna be less and then the green bar is what actually happens And you can see FY21 22 23 and 24 we actually had Fund balance come back into our our fund balance and so that has been our history, but a lot of our expenditure savings are oftentimes tied to vacancies. And so as much as it's been a struggle to not have full public works in police department and positions, it's provided us savings. And so good problem to have, filling these positions in police and all our other departments is gonna leave leave us less wiggle room. So expect going future will have less savings and so more likely you're going to see budgeted transfer and a little bit less actual use of fund balance but probably not going into the negative where we put money back into the fund balance. So again, some more ways to look at the budget. This is where we share with you a little bit of how we typically compare actuals to what we budget. And so you can see the first column is your budget. The budget estimate is that mid-year estimate I talked about and then actuals. And it largely tells the same story. We budget a little bit higher because we think it's going to be full expense. I think all 30 of those officers are gonna be in the chair every day of that entire 360 day year, but that doesn't happen. And so expenditures come in lower than expected, typically, and that's largely what the chart is showing you year over year. But again, that trend will still continue, but not to as great an extent. So on the personnel side of things, in the general fund, not too many changes, but a few interesting notes. I did not want to add any new full-time positions in this year, kind of under that guise of, it's a new base year, there's economic uncertainty, but still trying to make some level of progress in some of our positions. I am recommending that one part time position that we have at currently at 20 hours a week go to 32 hours a week and stay at a part time position. Still maintains our flexibility going forward. We can increase or reduce hours as necessary, but allows the community engagement, tourism and parks and rec function to get a little bit more weight behind it and a few more hours to help with those services. All previously funded ARPA positions are now locally funded. The compensation plan that we have adopted of Sherrod with Council, we're going to review that in the coming year, but this last year that we will do it this way, all bans are going to move 4.5%. We have four pay bans every position within the town is placed within those pay bans, all of them are moving 4.5%. So the bans move and the employee gets 4.5% and that's just once, right? So I'm not saying they get 9 as the band moves, the employees within them get 4.5% as well. And then we also do a merit pool where we give merit allocations to our highest performers. And so this year we had $75,000 flat to add to the merit pool where we give merit allocations to our highest performers. And so this year we had $75,000 flat to add to the merit pool. And then finally, a council initiative that we had earlier this winter was to add stipends for our committee work and this fully funds those over the course of the whole year as opposed to the last, I think it was four months that we had previously adopted it. And then on the benefit side of things, the only real changes that we have are a 2.1% increase in premiums with our current health care provider. We want to stay with them. They have, honestly, quite good health insurance and have treated us pretty well and 2.1% is a relatively good increase relative to what we're seeing elsewhere. And then the one new benefit program is to add what we're calling a Spanish language incentive program. And that would provide a $1,500 a year increased to an employee salary if they either are fluent or become fluent in Spanish and then take a fluency test annually, right? We don't want them to lose that fluency and maintain the stipend. But if you maintain your fluency, this is something that we value, be able to communicate with more of our population, and it's a nice way for us to encourage employees to better themselves while also helping the community. And so this year, I would expect at most, at most we would have three, I would expect it to be more one or two people that would take advantage of that. On the tax rate side, I could make this very short and say no change rates, right? Everything is staying as it is. We are not recommending any changes to tax rates, but you can, I'll just kind of leave it here for a second. You can see the rates as they stand today, 10 cents at real estate, 70 cents for typical personal property. Our B poll is still 7 cents per 100 if you're over a million dollars. And then as we keep going through, the consumer utility tax rates, staying the same, we touched on those, I believe in if his school year 24 and they've worked well for us, so we're not going to touch on those. And then as we talk about some of our bigger tax rates, we have meals tax. Meals tax is currently at 6%. And we're planning on it staying there. This Mealstacks has largely been the town's goose that laid the golden egg. It is where a large, it is by far our single largest local source of revenue and it performs very well for us, but we do see a little bit of a flattening out at the end of the curve there. And so the growth has not been as great as it has been in years past. And so we're going to work with staff to try to identify as that specific businesses that are struggling or is that an overall economic environment that we have to address. But we will certainly look into that and try to make sure that we can push those as well as we can and help the business community succeed. Some opportunities that we do have, empty pizza hut, the old Wendy's is vacant and and then there are various downtown locations as well. So there is certainly opportunity for us to grow the pie and make sure that more folks are contributing to that tax revenue. On the lodging side of things, our tax rate currently is 8%. That is uniform across the Metro region, Hanover, Richmond, Chesterfield, and Henrico, also charge 8%. This again, a flattening and even a little bit of a dip in the fiscal year 2025. I think, and we are doing the analysis now, a lot of that seems to be one or two delinquent taxpayers rather than a trend, but we're going to do the same examination for lodging as we did with meals to try to identify is this individual users or is this just a demand for the service in the region as in as high as we might have hoped it would have been. We were quite optimistic about the sports authority down in Virginia Center Commons really pushing hotel rooms and I don't think we're seeing that play out in the numbers so we've got some some more analysis to do there. And then finally, last of our really large revenue sources is sales tax. This one really does continue to do outstanding. It's grown really significantly, especially since fiscal year 2020, when online sales tax started to be remitted to localities. That's been a huge help to us to kind of capture those sales that we weren't necessarily collecting taxes on. And then again, I won't go through the whole story, but this one isn't just generated from within the town. We get a portion of the Hanover County pie when it comes to sales tax. And this one from a rate perspective, the state has a rate. The town receives a portion of Hanover County's local option 1% tax. And So Harnover charges 1% and then we get a piece of that. So that's largely summary of general fund. And this should be one. Jump in if you have questions, if you have comments. But I'm going to move on to the capital projects fund. All right. In the capital projects fund, again, $6 million total budget, we are in 1.8 million in new appropriations. 362,000 of that is from grants and revenue directly into the capital project fund and then 1.5 million is a transfer fund the general fund. And so again, good investment, we're able to do a lot of that due to the surplus that we had in fiscal year 2024. and some of the priorities this year, sidewalks and trails will receive 275,000 in new appropriations. That's not necessarily their new total budget. That's just new money being added to their existing pot. And I would say with sidewalks and trails, since it's a priority, we'll get there. But CBTA, that fund, we are also funding, I believe $150,000 in new sidewalk appropriations as well We have a lot of stormwater projects going on so we've got $358,000 in there and you can see that a portion of that is grant funded fleet management inflation and Prices have certainly taken their toll on the town fleet as well And so we have $355,000 in there to manage our fleet parks and recreation recreation. Again, real investment here, a lot of that is going towards South Taylor Street Park, but another $355,000 spread across multiple projects. We're going to continue to work on our commercial quarter to continue to beautify that and make sure people know how to get where they want to go. So we're going gonna do more landscaping and then finish out replacement of all our gateway and wayfinding signage. So we have uniform branding, good direction, going on throughout the town. And then again, supporting our public art efforts, $50,000 of new money, and then a $10,000 public art maintenance slide item that would be new this year. But it's one of those. If you're gonna have nice things, you got to take care of them and so we're going to start a maintenance line as well. Continuing to move along, this one maybe a little bit harder. this year, but it's one of those. If you're going to have nice things, you've got to take care of them. We're going to start a maintenance line as well. Continuing to move along. This one may be a little bit harder to see, but Central Virginia Transportation Authority, it's a separate fund, and for those at home, this is a regional authority that the town is part of. State regional, sorry, not statewide. Regional sales and using gas taxes are charged and then reallocated to the localities as well as the Central Virginia Transportation Authority. This budget for the current time largely focuses on the local funds that the town receives directly. It's not necessarily talking about funds that we're going out and trying to receive from a grant process. And so you can see the two things to focus on in this particular Number one are the columns that are estimated expenditure FY25 and estimated the expenditure FY26. You can see we're recommending a $1.64 million budget for FY26. In the current year we expect to spend down some of our CVTA funds with some paving. We've got some reports from V.OT that tell us we need to do a little bit more paving than we have and have some streets that are in need of repair and so we're using some of the funds to focus there. We've got 75,000 reserved for the England Street Street skate project. That money may not be necessary so this might just fall back into the fund but we haven't reserved in case we have some unexpected expenditures and then also $100,000 there for Purchase design right away work on Vaughan Road extended So that's current fiscal year as we move into next fiscal year We don't really have large projects on the horizon, but we do have a hundred fifty thousand dollars in sidewalks Funding and then you can see in the out years and CBTA in particular I like to show you the out years and there's even a few on this slide, or on the spreadsheet, the on the slide that are shown. Because you may be asking yourself the question, Josh, we have all this money, you know, you have 740,000 or you have 1.4 million, why aren't we putting it towards projects? And a lot of what we're doing with the CBTA fund is saving up for big projects. So in some of the out years, we have things like you can see in FY27, a reserved amount for an economic development road project that was largely tied to the haul and track and regardless of how it's developed, one of the ways we can incentivize development that we like is to come in with infrastructure dollars. And so we'd have some money reserved there. That would be another one of those. Great if we don't have to use it. We can put it towards other projects, but always smart to have that money reserved. We also have 400,000 and FY27 reserved for root one in Archie Cannon traffic signal. That will obviously cost significantly more than that, but this is a start towards that funding. And then you can see the out years. One of the reasons I wanted to kind of talk about the out years There's a couple of columns on here that just quite frankly wouldn't fit. And there's two, a few other projects. So... You can see the out years. One of the reasons I wanted to talk about the out years is there's a couple columns on here that just quite frankly wouldn't fit. And there's a few other projects. So in 32 and 33, we have about a million dollars reserved for the next phase of the English Street Street Scape, right? So just to try to get us started, we don't necessarily even have a perfect estimate for it, but to try to get those out there, at some point we're We're going to have to have a match for the I-95 overpass project, and so we've got just lightly reserved 300,000 in a very far out year, and then, um, I'm sorry, that was 200, and then again, we're still hoping that the grade separated railroad crossing will happen, whether it happen at Vaughn or Ashcake Road, but we reserved in the out years $300,000 for that as a match potential as well. And so a lot of this is not necessarily about what I'd love to do this year, but about the things we think we're going to need in the out years. And that's why you see the budget you see in front of you. But for fiscal year 2026, the spend plan is $150,000 towards sidewalks and reserve the rest for future projects. And then our last fund budget is the American Rescue Plan Act. And I've already shared with you a lot about that, but we're going to roll over potentially, and it's tough to estimate depending on the speed of construction projects, about $180,000. It is our expectation that about 36,000 of that will be to finalize our software implementation so to pay for the Tyler Munis software. We've reserved that amount of art for going forward. There's also installation of conduit under the street scape in the Route 54 England Street project. We've got money reserved for that in the amount of about $49,500. We have $50,000 reserved for storm water and that will go, I don't remember right now, towards either the stream restoration or the maple street swell. And then finally the last part is $45,000 for the South Taylor Street Park expansion and that will get you to about $180,000 and those are just some that we still think we could get a lot of them done before the time but we wanted to be honest and say these might roll over and just show it in the budget. Excuse me. So from a highlight perspective, again we're proud of the way we've transitioned off of our ARPA expenses, continuing to invest in town council priorities like sidewalk, storm our management quality of license projects, maintaining our assets that we currently have. We do recognize that this is a conservative budget and that we are not offering a lot of new programs or expanded offerings, but we are still trying to make progress on those town council priorities with our community engagement efforts to make sure that we are interacting with the community as best we can and as productive a manner as we possibly can. So, next steps. After this evening, tonight is largely presentation. Mr. Mayor, it's kind of up to you whether you want to take public input or not. But the next meeting we have is May 6th and that is a official public hearing opportunity so folks will be able to share their comments there. I would encourage you. Don't wait until then. Email us, call us, talk to us. The later in the process this gets, the harder it is to change the budget. So even though it is a public hearing, it will be difficult to change at that time. And then since town council is not legally allowed to vote on the budget the same night as the public hearing. We have scheduled your budget vote for June 5th. And with that, I will take any questions on the budget that you may have. If I may, I'm looking at, pardon me. Thank you for that. That was wonderful. I'm sorry, what? Oh, okay, I'm sorry. Thank you. That was a great presentation. I appreciate you spending time doing that because a lot of it's great to me. So I'm glad you're in the driver's seat. I'm looking at page 113 or perhaps page 48 in the booklet that we have. It's about the fire expenditure detail in the ambulance. And I was just wondering in light of the situation that has happened recently or they had the fire and they lost some other ambulances and they have to rebuild that facility. Is there any way that we can increase that? The $5,000? I know they only asked for $5,000, but is there any way that we could possibly put some more money in that budget because as a community we depend upon them. That is Council's prerogative. I'm happy to add that in. This would probably be one of those moments that you would want to do it. But I would love to know a number. Because I mean, I'm happy to go talk to the rescue squad and see if there is something they're interested in specifically. But if we don't hear tonight, we have to get a budget add in pretty quick here to make sure timing works. So I need to know some numbers at this point. OK. I need to know some numbers at this point. Okay. Kelsa, remember Barnhart, which page did you refer to? It's 113 and or 48. So 113 of probably the packet and 48, what do you like? Yes. The lower number. Yes, the lower numbers 113. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. Yes, Mr. Vice-Mayor. I was going to echo the concern of Ms. Barnhart. We didn't come prepared with a number. And I know that they're in the process of defining how much insurance costs they're going to get and what replacement equipment they're going to get. They may take the opportunity to enhance the equipment more than what was destroyed. Came here in my mind saying it is a concern and somehow reflecting in the budget we would like to support the rescue squad, recognizing that town residents pay county tax, the way anyone does in the county, and the county supports the rescue squad, because it's right around the corner in the heart of the community, and it is a vital service. Somehow an expression didn't put a number on it, but a number, I mean, just from a budgetary point of view, doubling the number would be a sign of support. We can do that. I agree. I was thinking at least $10,000. I'm happy to do that. I'm going to throw it another perspective and it's not trying to convince you not to do this just giving another perspective. The other way might be to just open an honest conversation with the ambulance and say, know it's going to take you time to redo your building, outfit your building, potentially outfit the new equipment that you get, help us understand over the course of the next year where those gaps exist and will come to the table either mid-year or at next year's budget with a genuine expectation that we're going to help fund some of that. So rather than just say, don't know what you need here's money, help us over the next year do your evaluation as you rebuild, as you reconstruct, as you do everything, where did gaps exist? Did you have to replace way more boots than you thought you were going to? Because they got burnt up. Well, maybe we can help with that. And so happy to do both, but giving you another alternative as well. That sounds very reasonable to me. I think the goal is to maintain the quality of the service, not so much just to make a contribution. Other thoughts? Given the history of both the voluntary fire department and the rescue squad, you can't address the past, but so well in anything you do. But there is a lot of history for volunteers paying for the building, paying for equipment, doing this for free for years, for sure there's still some volunteers. But I think it is good to acknowledge now that the root of this was people doing it without governmental help. And so if there's a way to encourage, I'd like the idea that you have about to go about it with something that's more denified. Okay. I agree. So, where we don't, you want to vote on this this or we just, we have an understand vote on this. Or, I guess if you were going to increase the budget, you could just tell me because I'll put it into the budget and then you would have to vote for it. Right. So, okay. So, anyway, we have an understanding here. Very good. We've got the discussion. Thank you. All right. Well done. Anything else? I do have a question about that regarding the fire department. Did insurance cover any of these losses? I am expecting that insurance will cover a... a question about that regarding the fire department. Did insurance cover any of these losses? I am expecting that insurance will cover a large portion of their losses. We just don't know did they have sufficient values on their equipment and their property that it's going to cover the full replacement cost. Just ask a good question. Anything else on the budget? Yes sir. Well, not the disappoint. I had a comment. The chart that struck me was the one that the manager spent some time on showing that the last couple of years we've been spending more than we're getting revenues. And that's changed. And I think the manager has done a good job. And this is, we're not voting on this. We haven't finished the public hearing process. But I think in terms of presentation for the public to react to, I think the acknowledgement that we're not going to have the American Rescue Plan money that we had to use for capital projects and enhancements in our services, which I think the administration has done a great job doing. And we need a soft landing back to reliance on local resources. So I would just say as one council member I think again the manager has opposed the budget that I think does put us in the glide to a soft landing at this point I I think, appreciate his efforts. I do have a question on the incentive for the Spanish fluency. Yeah. If someone is hired who's already fluent in Spanish, do they also get that? They would just have to take the little fluency tests that we would have them do. And as long as they passed. Oh, okay. It's a great opportunity. I mean, we'd love to hire folks that come in with that skill already baked in. Okay. And we'll start including it in our recruiting efforts that that will be a recruiting incentive. Okay. Bueno. Yes. Alright. Thank you. Anything else on the budget at this time? A presentation. Yeah, obviously very well done. Thank you. The fact that your background was a finance administrator for the town for a long time, we value that talent. Thank you. All right. This brings us to reports. And so planning department is Amos. Good evening. Good evening. So the first thing I would do, I would like to do is just thank you for the proclamation recognizing business month next month. Mrs. Kelly Frankie's here representing business development. And also I'd like to point out, she is also the Matt President. And she has done a fantastic job. She went in for six months. I think she's in almost a year and a half now. But she's really done a fantastic job of picking that organization up and keeping them rolling. We do hope that someone wants to step up and help her out. But until then, she's really done a remarkable job. and I think her for being here for that presentation. Ashlyn and in suites, I think last month we told you we were all excited it was going to auction, but we got a notice right before the auction that that was canceled. The owner is going to try to work with the note holder to pay that note off and maintain ownership. I did talk to Hannover County today, the building department, they will put the bids out for demolition tomorrow morning. And once they run through that procurement process, we will immediately move to demolition. And so we're looking at probably the middle of May for that to happen. Happy to answer any questions or if you get questions out in the community, we're happy those. Yes sir. It's to be clear so the ownership will remain with the lean holder and what the county is doing because the building has deteriorated is removing the structure but the ownership will stay the same. Correct and then we will be the ownership will stay the same the first the ownership will stay the same. Correct. And then we will be, the ownership will stay the same, the first noteholder will stay the same, but we'll be able to put a lien on the property and we would become the first lien to be back. To pay back for the demolition cost. Correct. Thank you. You're welcome. That helps. Yes, indeed. All right, thank you. So, smart scale. I think we've talked about this almost every month. We were pleased to get a staff recommendation for the smart scale list for the I-95 and 54 exit 92 diverging diamond projects. So it made the staff cut to be funded. It is now gone to CTB. There has been a lot of push from Northern Virginia. They, this cycle didn't score as well as they have in past cycles. I think that is completely due to the fact that we have leveraged our central Virginia transportation authority money. And so we scored really well because we used that money to go towards projects to apply for smart scale. And that's how the program was set up and that's how Northern Virginia and Hampton roads because they both had transportation authorities. That's how they have done so well in the first five rounds. And so there's a push to get more Northern Virginia projects on the list. And so on April 22nd there is a six year improvement program public hearing. I believe the mayor is going to speak at that public hearing and just push to keep the Richmond region projects and in particular our project on the list. And so hopefully we are successful with that. I just wanted to say for the sake of our audience, smart scale is a V dot. Well here I have these initials. We're doing part of the transportation instrument. I'll know what you'd call it in the CTVs is the Commonwealth Transportation. Thank you. I usually try to do better with my acronym. Well, you've done well with a lot of them. I met last month. I'm not sure if it was before this meeting, but I did meet with the Randolph-Making College Master Plan subcommittee, and they are finalizing their work on their master plan. I have encouraged them to come to you sooner than later, but they will come to the Planning Commission in town council to make sure that we're able to incorporate their amendments and update our comprehensive plan. And we'd also like there to be a public process through that review. So we will keep you updated on that progress. Kelly Franky coordinated a business walk for downtown. It's our second one of this fiscal year with the help of the Economic Development Authority Downtown Ashland Association. He coordinated a business walk for downtown. It's our second one of this fiscal year with the help of the Economic Development Authority Downtown Ashland Association, as well as Hannaburg County Economic Development staff. We were able to go and visit over 30 businesses in the downtown area. We were very well accepted and got a lot of good feedback on ways that we can help them and things that are going well. So really enjoyed that time and we'll have another one here coming up in a couple months. We held the historic district education seminars that Mrs. Hopekecker is coordinating for us at Caravodies. It was a, I think, a wonderful event with a great turnout and then we had our first session last week. Again, with a good turnout, really wonderful speakers. Tom Wolf is helping us in recording those so that we can share them out and we've already received some feedback and questions from those. The next session is on April 22nd at 6 p.m. If you all have social media that you have are following a policy and share these things, please share our flyers that we can continue to have people come out to those. And then last but not least, hopefully you have seen the black fencing that is, that it used to be some version of a teal and it faded and came back and it's a beautiful black fencing. Really appreciate, I wanna give a shout out to public works who picked that up and dropped it off in two different phases and then put it back. And we didn't get too many complaints from the businesses or visitors so really appreciate their efforts. Have any answer any questions? You mentioned BZA appeal in your report. What's the action? They voted to deny the BZA variance application and we've met with the applicant today to see if we can help him fix his violation. Great. Thank you. Good question. Anyone else? All right. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Finance Department of Meshugar. And thank you for your share of the budget presentation. Thank you. Okay, so tonight before you, good evening, Mayor, members of council. Tonight before you are the financial reports for March. On the screen you can see those. Tonight I appreciate Mr. Hodges bringing that up. So on the just a few notes, we do have business license that are due May 1st. There were no applications. If anyone has any questions, please have them reach out to the finance department. Also the auditors were in last week for preliminary field work and they will be back in August for final field work. On the next slide, you can see the next few slides, a drawing error. We'll figure it out. Or maybe we will. Continue, I'll get it. OK, so they are visual representations of the largest revenue sources in the town, as we normally on Meals Tax are March revenue collections were lower than projected but in comparison there we go thank you Doug. In comparison with the year to date for the same period last year we're up 1.9% so you can see March we were a little lower than last year but overall for the whole period which is July through March we were higher by 1.9%. The next is lodging tax. And I will say Mr. Farah gave most of this in his presentation so this is probably not new information for you. On lodging tax, March collections were lower than projected, but this is a revenue collection issue, we believe, so we're working on that right now. The sales tax, as presented earlier, we're ahead by 11.1%. And I also did look at the revenue that we should be getting for April, and that's about the same as March, which is usually how that trend is in previous fiscal years. For real estate and personal property, we're still seeing some come in as the due date passed a few months ago and both of those right now are at budget, both personal property and real estate. And on the last page page you'll be able to see the towns invested funds and sorry personal properties so you can see the LGIP the general operations and then we also have the capital fund. You can see the invested funds there. I'll be happy to answer any questions if you have any. Anything? I can't believe the vice mayor didn't bring it up but LGIP is local government and I apologize. I'm falling down. Thank you. Sorry, thank you. Thank you. Good catch. All right, appreciate it. All right. Chief it. Chief Renhold. We welcome you back. Great to be back, sir. Good evening. In your packet this evening, you'll have your action police department monthly report for the month of March. I'm happy to report that we continue to have a decrease in part one offenses. And we've also continued to have a decrease in medical crashes. Something you brought up a couple months ago about DUIRS. We did have four last months. I do think the increase in staffing and start in education and training or officers is starting to the re-prowar. So we did have four DURS last month and while I don't want that trend to continue because it means we have impaired driving I do think it's out there it's just good that we have more resources and we'll continue to locate them as if they do have driving impaired in the town. I'm also we did receive some concerns from citizens regarding pedestrian across walks we did conduct operation last month and we'll continue to do those periodically throughout the summer especially with the increase in pedestrian traffic so we'll keep that up. We also did have some complaints on speeding with Thompson Street we did do a five-day enforcement period where we conducted four hours of radar and issued 11 citations and four warnings. As a part of the program, which is known as the acute program, that's the first part of what we do in enforcement phase, then we'll go back with something called the stealth stat. It's essentially a box that's put on a, on a pole, light pole, electric pole or something that has a radar inside of it. It's discreet, so much people don't know when they drive by whereas the digital sign board actually alerts people to it. This is more subdued, so as you drive by it, don't know that it's there. So we won't have the people that are racing to see how fast they can get towards the sign or the people that see the sign and slow down, but this does give us a more accurate depiction of what's happening. And we did realize that we do have a speeding problem on there. So the enforcement will continue, and we're going to even be more laser focused on that area as we go forward. Also, in the monthly report, if you did notice, we did have a discharge of fire and the 700 block of North Center Street. That was as a result of a road rage All sorts of responding quickly and did take one individual in custody and we did secure a couple felony arrests for that individual for the discharge. While it did happen there is not any concern of any future violence it was an isolated incident so we don't have concerns of public safety at this point. Last month we also participated in the Ashland Little Leagues opening day and the railroad run and there were not any reported incidents that occurred on either of those. We also held our coffee of the cop sheets and we submitted a $10,000 grant to DCJS for some police equipment so I will know hopefully in a couple of weeks whether or not we have secured that funding. Also we have upfitted and received two new police vehicles, one of which will have the subdue graphics pattern which will be giving to one of the officers who's more traffic inclined and hopefully see that out in the field here in the next upcoming weeks. And as the manager had alluded we have sent a conditional offer of employment to an employee and that will bring us up to 28 once she's successfully brought on board, barring no one leaving, but we're also in the process and we just pivoted and did another higher process. So it's our goal to get up to 30 and up, hopefully that I'll be reporting to you in about five months that we're gonna send to more people, either to the Academy or get a certified candidate. would like to point out that an upcoming event, we do have train day on April 26th from 11 to 4. So that will be very congested as we shut down 54 in parts of center street. So I ask for everyone's patience. And I hope that all of you got the invitation for April 24th at the next Friday from 4 to 6.30. At Oakdale, so we joined us for some of the officers for recognizing for some of that great accomplishments and over the last year. So, that'll be happy to answer any questions. Anyone? Thank you, Mr. Chairman. All right. Now, I did skip right on past given opportunity if individuals wanted to say anything about the budget. So if you'd like to come forward, keep it brief. But want to give you the opportunity if you'd like to come just say anything about the budget. All right, thank you. Appreciate it. There's opportunity to get the information in. Let us know what you think out there. All right, anything else to come before us? Happy birthday to my grandson Daniel at 20 years old. All right, we're joking.