Speaker numbers apply only to this recording.
The Fredericksburg City Council held a special meeting on Monday, June 15, 2026, at 9:00 AM at City Hall at East Campus. The meeting included a new council orientation, discussion of council priorities, a high-level overview of the 2027 budget, and a vote on a proposed monthly leaf/brush pickup fee. Key outcomes included the rejection of both a $10 and a $5 monthly fee, leaving the service funded through existing property taxes.
I mean we like to do this every year and it's a little bit more relaxed environment. Um first going through just a little bit of an orientation uh with the council. Uh there's certain rules these folks have to adhere to. We like to remind them uh of those things and training opportunities uh for ethics and uh things like that. If you haven't heard this, you might learn a little bit this morning. I see Graham looking at me kind of sideways. I'm not sure we did this back in the day, but it's something we've been adamant about. We didn't have ethics, yeah, for all of our elected officials and speak for yourself. So we'd say the majority of our staff adhere to the same rules. So we'll be talking about that uh kicking off uh today. Uh we'll also be talking about uh council priorities. Um this is another exercise we started about four years ago, and this is an opportunity for each individual council member uh to reveal and openly discuss uh their individual community priorities. These are a little bit more broad typically, although they can be a little bit more project specific. Um, so getting all of those down on paper today so that we can all see them and discuss them, and that forms the basis for the overall council priorities going into the budget process. Um we have a lot to talk about in terms of priorities. We'll also talk a little bit about the strategic plan that we've been talking about for a number of years. It's really just an organizational document. I'll explain uh the benefits of this uh to both the council, staff, and the public uh coming up here. It's something we're going to do regardless if the council is involved or not. Uh we're we've already uh we're already quite a ways down the road with the organizational side of it. Um so we'll talk about that, and then we will end with a discussion and possible action on the uh leaf and brush uh pick up item. This item was tabled previously by the previous council uh until the first budget meeting uh this year, which today is that first official budget meeting. So we've added that to the agenda for the request of uh of the mayor and that item also being tabled. Thanks for reminding us. Um that's the agenda, and again, this is meant to be uh a little bit more relaxed. I would say if if you can't hear that well in the back, I see a number of folks on the back row. If you want to uh catch every word, you might consider moving to the very front. We have microphones that are picking up and recording everything that we're saying, but if you can't hear, please move just a little bit closer. With that, we would like to kick off the presentation with Letty and the orientation. So we don't have those audiovisual, we can't see that very well. Can we move on? We can adjust those there you go. You can turn one up.