All right, it's six o'clock.

So I'm gonna go ahead and call our October 19th, 2026 uh Columbia City Council's pre-council to order.

We have one topic on our agenda today, which is our 2027 legislative priorities.

I just like to remind you know this is somewhat of a new process for us to start.

Last year was the first one when we really finalize these.

Um and for me I view it as the intent is both for us to give kind of guidance to staff.

Obviously, they do the fiscal note reviews if things are coming on and all of that from the legislature, but this is our idea of like what we want to see advocated for.

Um, and then also our partner.

So we take this information, obviously give it to our delegation, but then also to like the chamber of commerce and Takoon County and CPS.

They're advocating for our community so that we see alignment with it.

So Shane is our acting city manager.

Um, but I see DeAndre sitting over there.

So I don't know if you want me to say it.

Nope.

Right.

DeAndre, you uh take this over.

And this is kind of a new uh other duties as assigned.

You've assigned to yourself.

So Eric, you want to talk a little bit about that too, you can.

Yeah,

well, uh good evening, everyone.

Again, uh, my name is DeAndre Thompson.

I'm in the city manager's office, and um actually taking on this opportunity to discuss our legislative priorities uh for 2027.

Um Stacy Wiederman was very instrumental in talking us through this last

year,

as the mayor indicated, you know, something that we felt our community

needed

and wanted to ensure that we had uh a thorough discussion about what our priorities are and how we can communicate with our partners.

And so uh for this year I'm actually leaning into that opportunity and will take us a little bit further and what our 2027 priorities look like at this time.

Of course, we welcome any feedback, any recommendations or suggestions from the council and mayor.

Um, and of course, we have Earl Krause here with our city attorney's office, uh just in case there's any legal jargon or anything that I can't directly answer, or we'll be able to address that with the council and maybe we'll jump right

in.

All right, so uh goals for this legislative priority list.

So again, this is a continuation from our last year uh process.

So we did create a comprehensive list of citywide legislative priorities for 2020 the 2027 session that's going to be starting in January.

So, as everyone may or may not be aware, uh there's of course a pre-filing period that starts in December, and then the session opens in January.

And so we wanted to ensure that we had a comprehensive list of items that we wanted to discuss as a city from our city departments, those that operate all of our services.

We want to make sure we had a comprehensive list to be able to share with you all on the priorities that make sense to us at this time.

Um we also want to ensure all priorities are clear and directly uh impact city services and operations that we shared that with you all just to give you insight um and understanding of what those priorities are, and then we signal to the city's uh priorities to city representatives, committee stakeholders, uh state elected officials, and other stakeholders.

We'll do that process during our reception, I believe is more appropriate when we'll share this kind of final draft out of what those priorities are so that folks are aware of what we're gonna be discussing.

Um the progress to the progress to date.

So since August, uh I've been meeting with all of our city departments, all of our department leadership to start the discussion around what our priorities are.

So we got direct feedback on any um priorities, any legislation that was either past legislation or legislation that's gonna be coming up.

We wanted to be sure again that we had consensus or understanding of what that pro what those priorities were or potential legislation would be in January.

Um we did review this with the city manager, city councilor, and our lobbyists who actually I have behind me.

Um we have Susan Henderson and Kara Stark with us with Pausanelli, and so they're uh actually gonna be working closely with myself and Stacy to continue to keep us on the right track as we can you know look at these more holistically uh going into January.

So

we shared this draft with department directors for the review and got uh feedback on any changes or updates that we need to make towards the priority list.

So what you have before you is what we have to date based on what we discussed.

So again, uh 2026, here you'll see these are the priorities that we had uh from last year.

We had the general priorities on your left, and then the more specific priorities on your right.

Um, I think the importance of this type of document again is that it's public, so that the community and those that we connect with um and serve with or serve for, um, that they can see what our priorities are, have a good understanding, and also to be able to share this information out with our partners so that we can find some collaboration and cohesion if possible on what we should be discussing with our delegates in Boone County.

So just to go through uh the actual list here that we have before us, so council I've shared with you all what the actual list is.

And so we do have a few revised uh general priorities that we did make mention of for 2027.

So the first I'll call your attention to is the support for infrastructure maintenance and expansion.

Um I did spend some time uh discussing and having conversation with our utilities

department,

um, really looking at this, our public works department, of course, um, looking at this information because again, we want to ensure that our infrastructure maintenance is uh secure and supported, and as we see our community continue to grow out, there is a plan for expansion, and that we can understand what those implications are.

So, as you can see here, uh I think the main changes to what was listed from last year is that we uh definitely want to continue to support uh improving uh transportation systems, including roadways and pedestrian access and policies that support the generation and transmission of electricity.

We want to continue to have that focus, but we also added the city would also like to support legislation that involves improving local wastewater treatment and collection systems and drinking water treatment and distribution systems, excuse me, and conveyance systems.