The meeting began with a work session featuring presentations on the state of the city's public utilities and facilities, followed by a regular council meeting that considered several ordinances, resolutions, charter amendments, and public comments. The work session focused on the immense infrastructure needs of the water and sewer systems and the condition of city buildings, while the regular meeting addressed legislative items and public concerns.
Good evening, citizens of Portsmouth. Welcome to our public work session. Also, I want to welcome all of our visitors and invited guests who are here today. Thank you for being here today. And with that, we will ask that all of my colleagues note your attendance electronically. Yes, sir. And Mr. Carter, sure, you have the floor. Then we have the uh a short overview of our uh public facilities. Um that one is going to require some uh more information that we'll bring to you at a later date. I'm gonna also ask if uh this may be out of uh ordinary, but I'm gonna ask the mayor if he will indulge me with a couple things here. Um have a couple of employees who are retiring, and if you don't mind, I'd like for you to present them with a uh a um a plaque if you don't mind. Oh, I certainly don't mind, sir. Are they present with us today? I hope so. Mr. Jake Sumler is he available. Okay, and Alex Oliver. All right, would you bring Oliver report? Did you have some comments you wanted to read? I absolutely will. Mr. Oliver, if you would come forward, sir. Mr. Oliver's retirement after 45 years with the city. He's born and raised in Portsmouth and graduated from Trishland High School. He's an outdoorsman in camper and uh plans to spend some more time with this family. Want to congratulate Mr. Oliver for his time served for the city 45 years is no small feat, and we thank you for your presence. Thank you so much. He's he's with uh general services. Yes. Uh his his nickname, I think is right. So yeah. Yes. Um where is oh there he is. Ms. Mr. Wright. Are you ready? Mr. Wright is going to take the lead. He's with uh our engineering department. However, this presentation is mostly about public utilities. All right, he served as the uh interim uh served as the entrance director for public utilities. Mr. Russell Stevens, who is also in the audience, he's the um deputy director uh and the ones who's running the day-to-day operations of the department now. This is kind of similar to what we talked about with uh the roads and bridges piece to kind of give you an idea of what our history was where we are today and kind of where we need to go with that. So this is just uh again some informational uh things. It's it's a little bit detailed because of uh the issue that we're trying to cover.