Also want to acknowledge our guests who uh seated in the conference round for this public works session.

Take a moment to uh recognize our city manager, Mr.

Steven Carter, interim city attorney, Mr.

Derek Challenger, our city assessor, Mr.

Steve Edwards, and our deputy city clerk, Ms.

Anita Shira.

Thank you all for being here today.

Looking forward to a productive meeting.

And with that, Madam Clerk, would you please call the roll?

Miss Bryan.

Present.

Dr.

Basson.

Present.

Mr.

Hugal.

Present.

Vice Mayor Moody.

Here.

Miss Thomas.

Mr.

Tillich?

Here.

Mayor Glammer.

Here.

Mr.

Carter.

Sir, you have the floor.

Yes, sir.

We have a couple presentations this evening.

The Commissioner of Revenue.

He'll speak to us about revenue from a collection standpoint.

Followed by Mr.

Trey Burke, our budgeting officer.

He'll speak about revenue on a budgeting trend point of view.

Then following that will be a presentation about our funding community organizations.

And we want to open up a discussion on that because that's something that's going to be happening in our next in our upcoming discussions about our budget.

We're going to put a little form around that uh kind of wide open last year.

We're going to see if we can uh define that a little bit with your assistance and uh see if we can make that process a little bit more uh structured.

Okay.

But first I'm gonna ask uh Mr.

Frankie Ettman if he would come and uh give us his proposal is that his that don't look like him like trade kind of okay let me I don't have that second hey hey Ms.

Sherrod do you need a little time because we we can bring up Mr.

Burke I mean that's fine if we need to switch the order a little bit I'm sorry that's fine no problem absolutely not completely Commissioner Edmondson is always ready so uh we I'm sorry sir that's no problem thank you we saved the best for for later anyway then the order will not be as I presented it's okay we'll get there Mr.

Burke will talk about uh revenue as far as budget is concerned first.

Um uh miss Sherrod, I hope can get that second revenue piece in there because that last case kind of has nothing to do with those two elements, and I'd rather not put that in the middle of those.

Okay.

So first, Mr.

Burke.

All right, good afternoon.

Good afternoon, Mayor, Vice Mayor, members of city council.

This evening I'll walk through the revenue side of the FY 2027 general fund, so not everything, just the general fund budget.

We'll break down the growth we're projecting in the budget and importantly highlight how much of that growth is structural and how much of it is one time.

So as an overall, the total general fund budget.

Sorry, the overall general fund budget is 360.7 million.

This is up 21 and a half or 6.3 percent.

Real property tax, which is the largest single tax revenue in the city, is about 40 percent, followed by intergovernmental revenues, which is um as we'll go over, we'll go through all these in more depth later on in the presentation, but intergovernmental revenue that's what comes from the state, um, is nearly 20 percent.

So we'll dig into how much of this growth is coming and where it's coming from the future slides.

So of the 21 and a half million dollar increase, only nine million, or about 42 percent of the overall represent structural recurring growth.

Real property growth is 6.8 million dollars, is driven primarily by one-time adjustments.

The $5.6 million increase in fund balance appropriation, not the total amount, but just the increase of $5.6 million is entirely one time.

If you strip those out, what you leave with is about nine million dollars or about 2.9% um revenue growth, and that's probably the most honest number of where we think we'll be in the long term.

So this graph shows the dollar change for each revenue source.

The top three bars, real property, governmental and fund balance account for about 90% of the total increase.

But note the declines at the bottom.

The use of money and property, this is largely investments, um, rent or lease agreements that we're getting paid for.

Um those dropped about 1.3 million dollars, as did the charges and transfers, but that's largely related to reduced reliance on other funds, notably public utilities.

Mr.

Burke, could you give some examples of what you talked about?

Things that have been reduced.

The investments and things that we've had that have been reduced.

Can you give an example?

Yes, sir.

So the big one, so the the treasurer, whenever he holds cash.

So the city has you know it's it's a bank account, but it's cash where every every check comes out of.

Um that he puts that into what they call the local government investment pool, and it's it's short-term bonds, basically.

Right.

So 30 days, 60 days, 120-day bonds.

We have to have a certain amount of liquidity or be able to have access to the money in a short amount of time.

Sure.

These aren't tenure government bonds, they're not they're not investing it in Walmart and just sitting around and and collecting dividends.

Um that as interest rates lower, so do the revenues from that from parking the money there.

There's there's really nothing that the treasurer can do about that.

It's just you know, as we benefit from lower prices in the long run, there's also a a downside to that, and that hits us on the investment side.

Okay, so we've reduced that by about 1.3 million dollars.

Thank you.

Um, the only the only other thing there is to just have more money in the bank.

That's the only way to really get that one back up at this point.

That's the only level we have control over.

Thank you, sir.

And that fund is governed by the state?

Those regulations, yes, sir.

Okay.

Yeah.

And no one's discretion, state tells you what that fund resides.

Uh, where we can invest it, yes, sir.

Now, the there are other boards and stuff, and they have um more relaxed standards.

So, like, for instance, the retirement board, they they can invest in other products that the city does not have access to.

Thanks.

Yes, sir.

We're not just playing to start with it.

That's what you're asking.

Okay.

But that's those are good things for everybody to understand and know.

Okay.

So the 143.2 million dollar property tax, we're projecting a five percent growth for that um for this line item.

One time.

We do not so that five percent growth.

So I'm gonna tell you that you know, we don't think um this is gonna be a year over year growth, but the five percent we do believe is baked in.

So it will be there in the future, but we won't be seeing that five percent annually.

Um the now, this here assumes no increase to the tax rate.

Um, but we do want to flag that five percent.

So the national average for real estate growth is about 3.35%, and that's what we should expect to see going forward.

Now, Portsmouth, when I got here, was kind of hovering at one to two percent annual revenue growth, and it's very difficult to keep up with just the cost of services, much less stuff like um personnel.

So, you know, kind of keep that in mind that if we were to revert back to where it was through the 2010s, that you know, we could have an issue.

You know, we've been able really fortunate the last few years to kind of keep up, keep growth, paving more miles of roadways, getting more infrastructure work done, and being able to support our employees with regular raises.

But if we were to revert back to the way it was when I got here, that may not be something that we can rely on every year for personal property tax.

So, and just a clarification kind of one of the differences I think between what we haven't discussed.

Okay, can we go back to that slide, please?

Yeah, a couple of questions.

The money talk.

So the 18.4% delinquent.

Tell us about that.

So all right, so when you the bulk of the taxes that are paid are paid by banks and escrow.

So if you have a mortgage, the bank pays your taxes.

Um that's where in most residents over 30 years, they never complete the mortgage, so we get the vast majority of houses.

We're not really worried about the payment.

Right.

For those where there isn't for those who do own their homes, um, or perhaps there's an issue with the bank, I don't necessarily know on an individualized basis, but that goes into the first five-year delinquent.

Um, and we had seen that really start to grow 2020, 2023 or 2024, we had a fairly large underpayment citywide.

It was about 10 to 15 million dollars.

We've seen people start to come back and start to pay that with the tax.

So if with a lot of bills, if you just don't pay it for long enough, it gets written off.

That's not the case with taxes.

Um whenever there's a transaction with the with the property, that has to get paid.

Um, so if people are moving or they're trying to go get their tax refunds or whatever, there are systems in place that per prohibit people from being able to do that.

So you're starting to see that delinquent come back up.

As long as until that big one goes in, it was about $15 million under payment over the for the line out and for the year.

Until that gets spent, that's gonna be a little bit higher, and it still seems to still be elevated.

But we should expect that to come down because it looks like people are paying current year on there.

So anything on the delinquent's kind of eating away at a prior obligation.

That's a fixed pool of money.

Okay, and that's 18.4% of what?

Uh of the 143 million that were supposed to collect.

That is an increase for delinquent from one year.

So it's about a one million dollar.

Okay, year over year delinquency rate increase.

Yeah, the delinquency is about five million dollars.

Okay.

So it's helpful to monetize the delinquency.

And then the I guess the other point.

Good question.

Uh got it that um we're increasing it five percent.

That's not tax rate, that's assessed value of the land book.

Yes.

Yes, sir.

So back to the city assessor's brief a couple work sessions ago.

As I recall, we were at like 94% fair market value, and as now I'm looking at you there, Mr.

City Assessor.

So we were at 94% fair market value, and now we're creeping up toward 99% where we're supposed to be, right?

It's got last year's number at 96.7, and then this year's number won't come out until next year.

So but yes, we're keeping that way.

Okay, and that's the reason that we're above the 3.35% because we're catching up for folks that had been under assessed.

Uh more we've got we've had some very good appreciation too.

The properties have been selling for quite a significant amount of money over what we already have on them, especially vacant land sales, which drove a lot of values this year.

Because the vacant land we have is we get less and less land, we got it.

The values go quite okay, good.

Thank you.

All right, and I do want to kind of caveat with the just to kind of explain some of the differences between the present or this this slide here and what uh commissioner Emmonson is gonna give.

So, first I have to kind of start building my numbers a little bit earlier.

Um, he's been working on it for a long time, but I kind of have to have this set before I necessarily know what um Commissioner Emmonson's gonna say.

Um I he do he does his based on the values.

I do mine based on receipts.

So if someone doesn't come in and pay, that gets built into the base that I have, and that kind of reflects year over year.

Now, if there's a large increase to the value, then we will factor that in, and it will be something that we maybe look at as we go.

But there is kind of a difference in how we look at it, and I didn't want to um want to make sure we're not, you know, we're kind of making sure everyone knows that I'm talking about this, and um the commissioner will do a phenomenal job in a minute.

Um so you haven't reported delinquency rate here.

Do you know what delinquency what the monetary value of the delinquency on personal property tax is right now?

I can how far are we behind?

I can get that number for you.

Okay, and I'm gonna just keep asking the question because we're gonna talk about water and we're gonna talk about sewer, and we always carried some amount of delinquent value in every one of those accounts, and so it would be helpful to understand what those numbers are and which direction are they going?

Are we getting worse or are we getting better?

I would include food tax, yeah.

I mean, all that all of them food tax, business license, yep.

Thank you.

We know what the parking number is, so we can get so uh we do overall have about two percent growth.

Um that's encouraging and it is reliable.

Um we do see it somewhat offset.

Um it looks like machine and tool has been down, at least it was when I looked at it through January.

Um now, one thing about PPTRA, so that's um I assume part of what the commissioner will be speaking to in a little bit.

Um so PPTRA, that's the personal property tax relief act.

Um the city gets a fixed amount of money every year, it's nine point nine million dollars.

Essentially, that kind of operates as a discount that gets provided to the citizens.

Um, that 9.9 million dollar number has been the same since 2004.

Um it has not grown, so the the theoretically the discount has gotten uh the discount has become a smaller and smaller portion of the bill.

Um and I'll kind of leave the rest of the conversation for the commissioner.

Um go ahead, Trey.

Doing great.

Well, but what while we're on that point, I mean, in the consent agenda tonight, we have a vote on uh setting the tax relief threshold at 50 percent of something.

Yes, sir.

Yeah, which is the same 50 percent of something that we have done in the last many years in a row.

That's correct.

Yeah, okay.

That's the core value at 20,000 and and below, yes.

Yeah, okay.

Council Councilman Dodson, you have to re to rebuild it.

PPRA is a state.

It's the state.

Yes, so that comes from the state.

Thanks.

And it could be used for anything.

It's there's no delineation on what you can or can't use it for, it's just money that comes straight to the city.

Right.

Other local taxes.

Um the bulk of these are going to be your consumer taxes, so that's gonna be um sales tax, which has been growing a lot with Wayfair.

So it seems like as people shop more and more online um and prices go up, that reflects in um sales tax receipts.

Um restaurant food tax, that had been kind of an all-star for a few years, it had been going at five to ten percent for a while.

It seems to be kind of normalizing a little bit.

We're only looking at one to two percent um growth there.

You know, maybe we'll get lucky.

Um it'll be slightly higher.

Um then cigarette tax, you know, it's a good thing.

You know, it's a bad habit if you have if we all have it, it's not a not a great one.

So as that goes down, um, as fewer and few fewer people are smoking.

Um another big mover is interest on taxes.

Um that one, there's a little bit of a base adjustment there.

We I'd kind of been reluctant to realize or project um interest on taxes, but that has been growing as well.

Um, partially because if you if your house is appreciating and it all kind of bundles together, whereas values go up, so do the admission taxes.

Excuse me.

Admission tax.

Yes, sir.

Um here.

Um that's been performing well enough.

I don't remember it being you know, super high or super low.

Um, but it seems like you know, that's been a kind of a standard.

Now that that that would also include cover charge.

Yes, sir.

For nightclubs or anybody that has recovered charge.

Okay.

Is that a yes?

Uh let me get back to you on that.

I'll I'll provide a short overview of admission taxes.

All right.

So utility taxes, the headline here is water tax.

Um that's been up substantially.

Uh I need to do a little more digging into what drove what's been driving those revenues coming up a lot higher.

They kind of been on the downs on the um decline for a few years, and it seems like all of a sudden last year they went up fairly consider.

Or this year they're they've gone up fairly considerably.

So we need to kind of do some um investigation to kind of identify what's going on there.

Um but um telecom and electricity, telecom surprisingly, um, but that also shows some growth.

Um telecom has been going down because it's largely fixed to landlines.

Um, whereas whereas you know, most people nowadays you see a lot of people who were no longer have a line in the phone, but telecom doesn't really factor in cell phones.

With well, the water increase, I would think uh some of that five percent uh annual increase to take care of uh uh mandates unfunded mandates.

I don't know that that's a large enough increase to represent that amount tax increase though.

Yeah, yeah, but it is some of it, absolutely.

And it is so the water tax doesn't go it it it is a fixed amount, so even if it goes up, we don't necessarily get more money for like if we increase the bill by five percent, you won't get five percent increase on that one necessarily because of the structure of the tax.

Yeah, it's it's like three dollars and forty cents for a bill.

It that that's more how they look at it on the water bill.

Okay, that'd be interesting to know if our new billing system is doing a better job of connecting usage to billing.

That was one of the things I wanted to look at.

But I need to look at that before I could say that.

And it'd be good at uh appropriate time to see what the delinquencies are on uh water bills as well.

Every utility has a high high delinquency rate.

You you'd also like your customers, you know what I mean.

So you're well that's true, but it's good to see what it is from what your delivery.

Um on this slide, I I typically refer to it in the book as charges for services.

Um the big one here, um, speaking slightly to um the vice mayor's question earlier is um admissions for museum.

Um, and you would pay admissions tax, even though it's a it's a government entity, you do pay admissions tax on that.

Um, and that's gone up um considerably.

Um it went from about 500,000 to 1.4 million.

Um, and that's largely just an adjustment to the base.

Um, and it had been kind of slow um to come back after the recession, or not recession, but the pandemic, and it seems to be um performing back kind of at its pre-pandemic levels now, if not higher.

Yeah, that's that's uh that's a good increase.

Um ambulance fees, um, those are the that's the single biggest um revenue source in this section, and it's gone up it's gone up pretty considerably.

That's largely based on a change to billing that we've done.

Um, selected a new vendor.

Also, there's been some changes in how we kind of handle the fees going in and out, so we're anticipating that one going up pretty robustly.

Um, there is um some question in future years about you know Medicaid and how that ends up getting handled and everything, but that's not really something that we have a ton of control over on the local level.

That's that's largely set by Medicaid itself.

Um the delinquencies uh and that uh services.

Do we do we collect that or do we turn those over to a collection agency?

We okay collection agency that we use.

Okay.

And the the billing is done by a collection agency.

We don't bill, because we don't it's a lot more complex to do it because you got to deal with insurance providers and all that, and they're specialized firms that handle that.

Um and so they handle it kind of beginning to end.

It's not like they we bill you and you don't pay us, you go there, it's just one company the whole way.

Oh, okay.

Councilwoman Bryant.

Um Mr.

Burke or Mr.

Carter, do we know that that's a significant increase on the museums and tourism?

Do we know is that children's museum?

Is that is there a way to break that out to see what I think there is, but I I can't answer that right off my head.

Do you you know which one is driving that?

I would say it's the children's museum.

It would be, yeah.

Yeah, there may be some increases in other, but really the children's museum is the big one that we actually charge for.

Um a lot of our museums are um fee-free.

Right.

I would imagine that our our marketing team is playing a big part in that too with getting messaging out.

So that's that's wonderful.

Thank you.

An increase in programming too.

Right.

And at the children's museum.

I think that has a lot to do with because there's more to do, there's more uh events happening, uh, there's more opportunity for people to come.

And one thing is going down the building in land use.

Um one thing that, and this is certainly isn't a bad thing, but when the casino was built, and as you have construction happening, all the equipment that's there, and the commissioner can talk to you about this as well, is that that is personal property.

And so as they leave, you know, you may end up getting some you'll get some less on on the personal property side, but you'll also have a little bit less activity on the building and permit side because those large projects, um, even on the permit level, do have a pretty large impact on the revenues.

Have we got any projections on what what the hotel uh is gonna produce as far as new revenue?

And is that being phased in and construction during the construction cycle?

We can't pick it up until it's complete, and we have no ideas yet.

So we wait to it's uh finished product.

Correct.

Until we assess it by state law, we can we can pick it up once it's significantly complete.

Okay.

Um intergovernmental revenue.

Um that's more or less revenues we get from the state.

We do get some money from the federal government, but it's largely over on the capital side um and the um BHS and DSS side, but we don't really get any federal money um for our general operations.

Um this is another larger growth area.

Um the big one, so we did um project, and you know, the casino is in Portsmouth, but the money is sent to the state, and then the state sends it back to us.

So it is factored here as a state revenue.

You know, and everyone kind of knows there is the caveat that that could go down next year as another local casino is opened, and you know, we kind of have eye gaming as an issue at the state level that could also negatively impact um the city revenues.

Um then the last one, I only pick the largest one.

There are other ones, but anybody again um the commissioner of the revenue would also count.

But the there are employees in the city that are funded by the state.

Um this is where we recognize that.

Um, but the commissioner, treasurer, um, commonwealth attorney, uh, the clerk of circuit court as well as the commissioner, they all receive money, and part of the their employees straight salaries come from the state, and that's reflected here.

Um, and we are seeing some growth there as well.

Um, some of it's just recognizing changes, so as you know, departments get more staffed up, we'll we'll begin to project more revenue in addition to if a state gives a raise, we'll um program that here as well.

Right.

And also note that the comp board, we will have official numbers, but they'll likely be either right before we adopt the budget or as has been the case the last couple years, right after we adopt the budget when we'll actually finally know what the comp board's gonna get the city.

All right.

For other revenue sources, um, this goes to recover costs and transfers.

Um, you know, if you're recovered costs, it's a lot of accounting.

But for instance, if all of us here today, um a little bit of what we of what anyone makes from the city actually comes partly through a recovered cost, and that gets um that maybe charged to BHS, DSS, um, also other organizations work in the city, such as um health department, PPIC, um, a lot of places play a lot of entities and firms pay recovered costs back to the city.

Um, and we recognize that here.

Um, use of money and property, that's kind of the investments that we talked about earlier.

That's a big one.

The other one is if we lease a building out or we lease um antenna space, um, that would be included under umone and property.

We have the pilots.

Um the big ones for pilot would be the ports of marine terminals.

They pay a large pilot.

Um one bit of consternation that I might as well say because there's a few political opinions you can have as a city employee, but one of them is that we should be getting more pilot money with having some of the um most untaxable land, probably in the state of Virginia as a percentage of the city.

Um, so that's me being political for a moment.

Um, and then fund balance.

So the total fund balance appropriation is 13.6 million dollars.

This only goes to one time expenditures.

We're not funding um any recurring expenses from that.

Mr.

Burke, I'm sure it's in the in the budget booklet that you guys delivered.

But what is our our current fund balance?

145 million.

It's pretty strong.

Yes, sir, I guess.

That's before we start using fund balance.

And you've got to look at your next year's bills.

Yeah, so the and the that that calculated as of that that 145 is calculated as of June 30, 2025.

Right.

Got it.

So you gotta go all the way to all the way to June 30 of this year, right?

And then all the way to next year, and then you'll kind of have a sense of where we are.

So you can kind of go 135 minus eight million 145 minus 8 million minus 13 million, and that's where we'll expect to be at the end of next year.

So uh back to pilots.

Um my recollection is that the the port pilot numbers are in the like 300 to 400,000 category.

There's there's another payment that we get from the port, I guess maybe from the port operator that's on the order of nine million dollars, right?

Okay, yes, sir.

So you're we're talking about two different yeah, so it's not pilot, it's right.

So the the marine terminal, yeah, they pay a pilot.

Right.

There's the VIG, which is a settlement that represents the private operators, real property tax payment.

Um, but as a private operator, they don't give us any um pilot because payment in lieu of taxes, well, they're paying their taxes, so there's nothing to pay in the so does that nine million dollars show up as property tax or what what what revenue streams it shown in property tax.

Okay.

And the one kind of note about pilots.

So usually when they do a pilot, they'll say we're gonna pay they want to pay for X, Y, and Z.

And in the case of Portion Green Terminal, they want fire and police.

So they only pay a relative portion of what their property tax would be, but they only pay for those two portions of a larger pie.

So you know, it's not they're not paying, they're not really supporting anything else going on other than police and fire because they're getting services from that.

Okay, and then kind of back to the your political comment about pilot in general.

Uh the last four years that we've gone to the Hill this time of the year.

In fact, just last Tuesday, our number one discussion in Senator Warner, Senator Kane, and Congressman Scott's office was around federal payment in lieu of taxes.

So currently we receive nothing.

Uh four years of uh pushing on it, we continue to receive nothing.

Nothing.

Uh but we're continuing to engage them to try to change nothing into something.

Haven't succeeded yet, but we're continuing to push the rope.

The projection next year is uh nothing.

The projection that next year and the year or the foreseeable future is nothing.

Yep.

In fact, the conversation that we had with all three staffs this year was the last time a study was done on federal payment in lieu of taxes that included DOD facilities was 1981.

And so we've we've asked Congressman Scott and his staff to uh at least get a uh a refreshed study done to show uh you know from 1981 until now it hadn't gotten better for us, it's gotten worse.

Uh so could we get a study done?

And then the strategy would be to use that information so that when there are earmark projects or federal funds made available to communities that we get extra credit for the fact that we're getting no federal taxes on the 40 percent of the property that's in our boundaries that is encumbered.

Uh they uh I think like that strategy better than just trying to convince DOD to start coughing up money because as we discussed with them, uh DOD has had use of our land since before we were a country in the case of the shipyard, uh, and and so they're already getting the value and then haven't had to pay a nickel, and so why would they want to start paying now?

Now they don't want to start paying now, and they'll never want to pay.

So uh I think we we did at least have agreement in those discussions that uh if we can use the information to get a leg up on access to other federal funding opportunities with uh extra credit in the scoring, uh, that that might be a better strategy to finally get something instead of nothing.

Yeah, because they they've been looking at it uh for years and years as a national issue, yes.

Uh of course we our charge is to look at it as a local issue, so maybe that different strategy might be uh much better of the well the the strategy we've been employing ain't working, ain't working so if it ain't working it's time to change a different horse, change change your uh ask.

Yes or use leverage all right, so this is kind of the the end slot here.

Um the headline growth is six point three percent.

Um, but again, you know, when you take out um I would say unreliable growth that ends up shrinking down to about nine million um about three percent or just under three percent.

Um and that's kind of the number that I'll take with me as we go forward, um, especially you know, as we kind of get through this year and go on to next year, that's kind of where the baseline will be.

Um, as as you know, I kind of said to um councilwoman Thomas yesterday, if I'd put money on it, I'd say we're closer next year to three percent than we are six.

Um so with that, um I'll pause for questions and discussion.

Councilman Dice and uh Councilman.

So at the previous meeting, um I tried to bring up that our tax structure to say that our intergovernmentals was either second or a third, and I got told no it wasn't, but so thank you for your chart.

I know you and I have been working for over a year together to try and help me reconstruct this, and this year you've done a much better job, I think.

The presentation is very nice at kind of explaining where the money comes.

But the reason I you and I were working together on this was because I was I was searching for other opportunities to get money, and as I go through these sources, um I've only found two areas that I I think we can uh set our feet into, and one of them is like uh we've just been discussing is to look at the government and say above us and say, hey, listen, we are burdened with with these uh land masses that we can't generate any rev revenue from.

This only other opportunity I've been able to uncover here is that we are not doing the greatest job of grant writing.

And um, I look at that, and I'm that's the next thing I was gonna come to the office and say, okay, listen, can I understand what our out of this, what our grant percentage is?

So that was getting ready to send you that question earlier this morning.

So I'd love to look at that and say, hey, listen, would that be profitable to look into uh better grant writing than we've done in the past and to get that person on board and to hire it?

So as far as letting you know that uh my search for opportunity has come down to we can't raise taxes, therefore, where else do we look?

And I don't think we raise taxes.

We can.

I don't think that's good.

Not without consequences, lead lead the way.

Um so I think we need to need to look at state and federal with a little more scrutiny uh with a little more intensity, I guess I should say, is what I think I would love to see to say, hey, listen, can we pull money from these other sources?

Because we've done it, y'all they have done a very good job of just squeaking out every penny we can from these sources that we have.

We need to absolutely look elsewhere, and I think grants and and other money like we were up in um other people's money, other people's money, yes.

That's exactly what it needs to be.

Yes, absolutely.

So I want to express my uh interest in other people's money.

That's a good way to put it out like that, and we'll use that.

And we noted.

Thank you, sir.

I didn't coin that though.

Thank you.

This is much improved over last year.

Very good, but we do need to fill these gaps we've been talking about, too.

Thank you.

Yeah, thanks, Mayor.

Um, so at the council retreat, the CFO put a chart up that was a forward prediction of revenue versus expense, and the revenue is like this and the expenses like that.

So your prediction going forward is about three percent.

Is the right number?

Do you know is is that the assumption that she had in the revenue piece of that chart, or do we know what what year over year revenue growth she was predicting in that picture?

I would think so, but I have to look back at a note to say yes.

It would have been two and a half to three.

Okay.

And then the the other question I had about that chart, and we'll talk about this, I guess, tomorrow and out of liaison meaning with school board.

Do we know what school projection we put into the expense side of that of that uh chart?

So when we do as we're seeing I would assume it was flat though.

Well, yeah, so we're seeing a eight eight point something percent year over year increase, right?

From the school system to against the city general.

Was eight this year.

Well, uh, yeah, so so you know where I'm going.

We we it's not flat.

Right.

And and so if we're already revenue, I mean uh expense here and revenue here, and we are assuming that the school ask is flat, well, then we're ropo-doping ourselves into the real expense is gonna be like this.

So could we go back and take a look at that chart and see what assumptions went into the on the expense side?

You know what our assumptions were for the school?

I can't tell you a percentage point, but I can tell you that whatever growth there had been.

So what we'll do is we'll look at it at this date, we'll look at it at this date, and then we'll kind of look at it at the future date.

And so whatever the growth had been in the past is what we'll project going forward into the future.

So to some extent, yeah, we are projecting it to grow, but that doesn't necessarily mean we're projecting it for the ask or you know, but it's all based on actuals.

So whatever they were actually paying, that's what gets baked in, and that's what gets projected for.

Does that answer your question?

Well, not exactly because if if we're projecting based on actuals, we know that the actuals have been 10 to 20 million dollars a year below what we were we have funded.

No, we it is fully what we fund because we give the money to schools, right?

Yep.

We give so if we say 86 million, we say 83 million dollars, we give them every penny of 83 million dollars.

Um or every dollar, there may be a couple days different.

But we give them every dollar of that.

Um, and whether they spend it or or not, we still fully spent it, and we don't we don't reduce it by what isn't spent.

So it's the full amount.

Okay.

Yes, sir.

Good.

Thanks, Mr.

Burton.

Thank you.

And I do want to add, you know, I think that you know, when we look at this information and we look at real opportunities, first of all, you guys are doing a great job in terms of of telling the story.

But the other part of the story is I hear the things I've I've I've I've listened to a lot of discussion.

Uh, one of the most important ways that we can control the outcome of revenue is to attract more business, more opportunity here for growth in the city of Portsmouth.

The best example, you saw the revenue, the revenue sheet, what the casino has done for our city.

We need to attract more business, more opportunities, similarly situated, that is going to invest in our city and provide the additional revenues that we need to run our programming to take care of our schools, take care of our public safety.

So thank you for putting that out there.

That's that's that's the story.

I'll be back.

Uh Commissioner Edmonds.

Uh, first of all, let me apologize for uh standing you up the first time, but I think we're ready for you this time.

There's no apology needed.

I'm happy to be here.

Maybe I learned a few things myself.

Thank you.

Did a great job on that.

Mr.

Mayor and Mr.

Vice Mayor and Honorable Counsel and Mr.

Manager, Mr.

City Attorney, and Mr.

Assessor and Miss Clerk and my fellow citizens all my name is Frankie Edmonds, and I'm your current commissioner of the revenue.

And as I get started, I'd like to ask some individuals in the room that came with me, our leadership team from downstairs uh came up if you'll please say and let's acknowledge their presence tonight.

You're hearing one poor report of this, and so I just want to make sure we cover all the bases.

We're happy to answer what we can.

As I get started, I'm reminded I looked down this list and I see some dates and times and all of this, and I've been doing this 20 years now, and I want to take this opportunity.

A little birdie told me that our vice mayor may or may not be running for re-election.

So I want to say we looked at this together the first time 20 years ago, and now we're looking at it again tonight.

But I want to thank you for your service on behalf of our office.

I know you've done a great job, so please accept our appreciation for your time.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And it is real this time.

Well, you didn't have to say never, right?

But you've been a great, you know, uh public servant and a friend, and I want to thank you for your service.

Thank you, Trink.

Um, as we get started, there's this uh is a snapshot in time, and I'm sure you'll have questions and so forth.

The one thing that uh I will tell you, and I I share the sentiment.

I think that the uh manager and also uh the individuals in finance, we have a good working relationship, and we try to make that you know happen.

So um as you know, the uh commission of revenue does the assessment piece, and then the treasurer does the collection, and we want to thank uh IT and the city attorney's office and the collaboration of individuals that helped us get to this point.

So we don't get here by ourselves, um, but yet we s each have a role to play.

So I want to thank the city attorney and his team for helping us get here, and IT and also uh the others.

So I'm gonna read through this, not to read to you, but some of this stuff is for uh data just for your information.

Maybe someone we've done this before, and I'm gonna invite you to be informal if you want to ask me.

I'm happy to stop at any time.

We'll go through what we have and uh thank you so much for helping us get this updated.

So thank you.

Thank you.

History of the Personal Property Tax Relief Act.

Um the General Assembly passed the car tax act in 1998, believe it or not.

And uh we'll go down to the second uh oh, I'm sorry, can we hit the you've got a is this what I'm supposed to be using here?

Yeah, oh, this one.

Okay, yep.

Perfect.

All right, we're on the first uh page or second page.

In 1998, Virginia Personal Property Tax Relief Act uh and was amended in 2005.

So in 2005, you can see that history there, and we've been participating in that time.

So what happened?

I came in, I got elected in 2005, I took office in 2006, and we found about 20,000 vehicles that the Virginia Department of uh motor vehicles did not attribute to Portsmouth.

So obviously that uh will account for some of the questions through the years of why we had a lower rate.

The proposal was to go to 100 percent, as we now know, 20 years later, we haven't realized that.

I don't know of a locality in the state, maybe one or two that ever have realized it.

So that's the only money we're getting.

We haven't gotten you talk about unfunded mandates.

That really is an unfunded mandate because it's been a promise out there, and in the taxpayers, I hear it, we hear it, the individuals that we represent together are looking for it, but um you're only gonna get the same amount.

I don't know of anything, most things that you're paying the same today that you paid 20 years ago uh for, but maybe that's a discussion for another time.

If we you're saying go here, you have the pages, and I'll just read through them.

These are regional tax rates based on personal property tax, and you'll see Franklin is at 241, and then of course Portsmouth is the highest on this sheet at five dollars per 100.

That's per 100 and assessed value.

So that's our tax rate, it has been for 20 years, or prior, you know, uh for over 20 years.

And that's something I think we've talked about trying to work on, and we're happy to participate in that discussion, but we're still where we are today.

Absolutely.

So just remind me again, it's five dollars per hundred assessed for the first twenty thousand dollars.

Yes, sir.

Okay, yes, sir.

And so City of Portsmouth, this is our history from 2006, and we worked on this throughout, and we're in 2026 now for the 21st time we've done this, it's proposed is what you'll see tonight, what you have a copy of is 50 percent.

And that's the because as you well know, um, if we are over that uh nine thousand, nine point nine million rather, then we got to come up with the money from your general fund, which would be another unfunded mandate if you don't get it from the state.

So the money's we try to stay as close as we can to what we are getting uh from the state supported funding for that personal property tax relief.

And we we uh in constant communication with the finance department and with the manager.

We do we were operate on basically a three percent uh margin, so we're looking at a three percent material change down or up before we start seeing the bells and whistles go off.

We've been able to maintain with the allotment that we've gotten from the state around 50.

A few years we went up, the one year we uh saw a big increase because we had some um additional funds, and according to the Virginia uh uh state code, you have to spend those funds on that.

I I'm not an attorney.

I know Mr.

Burke has a feeling that you can use those funds in other areas.

I don't think you can, uh, but I'll defer to the city attorney and to Mr.

Burke in that regard with regards to that.

It's my understanding it's an allotment for those purposes, that purpose, and you have to use it for that uh purpose.

That we had some extra funds back in 11, we got that, and now we're back down to where we've been able to liquidate, if you will, or use the funds that we received from the state for that purpose.

Mr.

Manager, you have the floor, sir.

Thank you, sir.

Uh, just for uh being nosy, yes, sir.

Okay, uh the the year where we are above 50 percent.

Do that mean we got more than nine million dollars, or we had less to assess.

No what this means, uh what that means is in my record best of my recollection, we we were in a situation where we accumulate accumulated some funds.

In other words, when the project started, I mean excuse me, the the process started, you had an understanding of what the roles and responsibilities of each office were, and then Portsmouth got certain monies.

Okay, those monies were either realized or not realized, and then that represented up to that 62.

We thought we could sustain that.

So back then the treasurer was obligated, was a different treasurer at that time, but they were obligated to basically say we have to use these monies for that purpose, and that's kind of where it and the only other uh through the pandemic, we also had a situation where we mitigated it because you might recall we did a 75% ratio, and we came together to try to uh lessen the burden on the taxpayer, and we had to agree to that.

That's the only other time, and the numbers don't really reflect that because we tried to keep everything uh balanced, if you will, and equitable uh with regards to that.

So we had a little money up front that the city had allotted back in 11, and then now we kind of stabilized this basically 50 percent of what we're realizing.

Okay, and to say that, and and we'll look at some of these other numbers of the types of vehicles that people are purchasing.

So if you've got a vehicle that qualifies and that you every time you get a new vehicle, obviously, it's still on the 20,000, first twenty thousand, but obviously if you get more people move in, then of course you get more vehicles, and that's still the nine point nine million is all you're gonna get from the state.

Right.

Vice Mayor Lee.

Uh Mr.

Edmundson, uh let's go back to the 20,000.

That's not only 20,000 below, but it it's the first 20,000 of uh the value, right?

In other words, if I got a 40,000 dollar car, uh I get the 50 percent on the first 20,000 value.

A lot of a lot of people misunderstand that.

They they think, well, my car is worth more than 20,000, so I'm getting nothing.

Right, but that's true.

They're all getting something, they all getting something.

That's right.

They all getting 50 percent of that 20,000, whether it's and I will tell you one of the questions that we get, which you might be getting also, which might facilitate why you're asking this, is that if somebody uses that in the form of a let's suppose they are Uber Lyft or insurance or some other business that they're in, they use their vehicle for that.

If they're bit if we're determined based on their tax filing that it becomes a business vehicle, then they lose their personal property tax relief.

You can't do that commercial vehicles or don't they don't qualify for personal property tax relief under the current statute.

And and your office still gives breaks for high mileage and we give everything we can circumstances is based on the condition of the vehicle, but yes, sir, we do every day in this building, and then you might recall we've had in the past uh a drive-through appeal where we get about 200 people come through because of the construction activity downtown, which is a good thing.

We may not be able to do exactly like we have in the past, but we've got some innovative ideas where we're trying to go online for some.

I know other localities in the area are doing that, and then we may institute for a period of time a mobile unit where we can send out to individuals if they can't get to City Hall and number, and then number two, we always make a trip.

So if you have someone that can't come out and you let us know, we're trying to go to them as best we can.

Understanding that we would rather make the trip and see what what it is uh than not make the trip, and then someone feel like they've been unfairly taxed.

So thank you for that clarification.

Uh thank you.

Real quick, so uh do individuals have to apply for this relief, or is it automatically?

No, ma'am.

No, it's automatically applying it.

It's based on the information that we have on our system.

Okay.

Through division of motor vehicles, and then you'll see subsequently in another slide that we send that out commercially, a lot of it to be uh evaluated through um NADA, which is JD Powers now, and so we're using that service to help us, and then we take all of those sales, uh and you've heard the similar type story through real estate because it's based on the sale of the vehicles.

Some of one of those things that we looked at in the past, it could also been on SUVs.

You might remember at one point in time they were trying to eliminate some SUVs, which are higher valued vehicles, and they were basically stopped selling them or people were destroying them so they couldn't use them any longer.

Then they came back, and that may have been a bump year, if you will, that we had an increase because of the type of vehicles that were being assessed at that time.

Thank you.

But yeah, that all that information comes to us either in our current system now, and that we have to take out of that military and some other vehicles that we have in our system that may or may not uh be taxed, number one, and number two uh may not be may not qualify for PPTRA.

In addition to that, now's probably a good time to tell you.

You've also considered in the past personal property tax relief for um uh disabled veterans.

And of course, they some of those vehicles don't qualify for the relief because they're not being taxed, they're getting a higher exemption.

Correct.

So instead of the 20 percent first twenty thousand, they're getting it on the total vehicle.

Okay, and some of them are getting it in addition to their real estate.

So, in other words, Portsmouth's given two exemptions to qualifying uh disabled veterans, real estate and personal property.

Now they would have to ask for that, those two those two exemptions they do ask for.

Okay, and they have corresponding documentation to represent the the exemption.

Thank you.

Is that it?

That's okay.

Okay, so here's your history, and we'll go to this next slide will tell you kind of where our breakdown is.

These are the numbers that we're looking at.

It's like a snapshot in time.

So I can spend as much time as you want or less.

This is just tells us what we've been dealing with up to this point.

January 1.

We're on a calendar year.

So we're looking at all these vehicles on a calendar year basis.

And then it comes down to when we actually send the notices to the treasure.

So we front load our work.

And that means we'll get January, February, March, April.

We start working on concluding the bill, and by April 15th, we present a book to the treasurer for collection.

They go through what's called a smooth, if you will, or process those figures, I mean those uh items, tax items that we have on the system, and then that's where your June 5th billing will come out.

So after April 15th, we'll have a communication where we say uh here's the number of vehicles that we have, here's what qualifies, and this is why.

So this are these are the numbers on the system at the production of this uh document, but it could change, they're all subject to change.

In addition to that, we have one primary billing, and then we have eight supplemental billings that will carry us into uh Jan excuse me, February of the following year.

So we'll still be given some of this, but if the money's still available, someone could qualify for PPTRA in February of next year, 2027.

Okay.

Moving along, regional personal PPTR comparisons.

Um, and you'll start to see a lot of them haven't set the rates yet.

So you got rates in 2024, 2025 for your convenience, and then you'll see the ones that we could uh capture uh to date, we did, and the ones that you see are proposed.

Portsmouth is in a proposed status, and then there's an acknowledgement at the bottom, city of Portsmouth proposed percentage, and then the city of Suffolk and Williamsburg bill at a later date.

They're in a different time structure than we are.

So that calculates for some of their change.

Okay, moving forward.

Personal property measures of central tenancy.

You know, we've had this discussion in the past, it really does not affect our tax assessment.

It just tells you from the numbers where the meet the medium and the mean and the range are, and we provided that for your review at this point.

And it is a quite a difference because as you might imagine, we have all types of vehicles out there.

Uh, and some people I'll get a call from somebody from another neighboring locality, and they'll say, Do you know you have a whatever vehicle in your community?

Those people in cars, they'd like to measure their cars.

So we do have some nice vehicles in Portsmouth.

Going forward, this is a tax statement, um, and it's based predicated on automobile show value by means of a recognized pricing guide.

So I mentioned to you earlier we use NADA, which was purchased by JD Power, and so JD Power is a uh nationally recognized, internationally recognized pricing guide, but they take regional uh assessed values of things and let us know based on uh the vehicles what they qualify, I mean what their values are now, and that's when uh Vice Mayor indicated someone can appeal that obviously high mileage, the condition of the vehicle at the time on the first uh 10 years of that particular vehicle, safety features and other things.

If someone feels like their value their value is not uh correct, obviously they can appeal it, and we use that pricing guide and those techniques identified in that pricing guide as our foundation for methodology.

Um forward, um the uniform uh property uniform assessment methodology.

So the city of Portsmouth uh is experiencing a two percent decrease in vehicle assessments for calendar year 26.

That's not three percent, we're not cause for an alarm, but we are monitoring that in a sense that values sometimes go up or down, and because of the nature of the vehicles we have in Portsmouth, we think that it's a two percent.

That's kind of normal course of business.

Um vehicles are assessed by JD Power Pricing Guide.

We assess vehicles of 100% clean loan value as required by Virginia State Um code section there, and then this valuation guide is widely used by localities in the Commonwealth of Virginia to date.

You may have someone you've heard of other pricing guides, Edmonds and some other blue book and some other ones, but traditionally uh that's the most standard one across the commonwealth.

Uh we use a fair, equitable, uniform assessment methodology throughout our assessments and revenue profiles.

And with that, um I'll be more than happy uh to take any questions or provide any further explanation.

If you have, I do uh know that you have two documents.

So one of them is a manager's report, city management's report, and then there's a uh draft of a ordinance that we worked on that will be considered later tonight.

Um I hope you'll see favorable favorably to uh vote for those, and if we can provide further information, we'll be happy to do so.

Councilman Dodge.

Yes, sir.

Um, but as far as personal property taxes, y'all cover a lot more than just automobiles.

We do, yes, sir.

And uh when is that going to be presented on all the other because there's motorcycles, trailers, golf carts, for WDs, uh motor homes.

Well uh let's take a step back.

With this presentation was specifically for PPTRA.

So our office, we we generate uh just for revenue projections or revenue forecasting or revenue telling the story, if you will.

We we operate uh for about 26 line items monthly.

We do a revenue report.

So we do other items, admissions tax, business license, right?

We do other things.

Most of your recreational vehicles would not we we have a value on those items, but they're not going to qualify for personal property tax relief.

So I apologize for the this is just for the relief.

That's yes, sir.

That's what I was gonna say.

The scope of this particular presentation uh that we were requested to present tonight is only for the personal property tax relief.

Those types of things would not qualify commercial vehicles, no, sir.

Uh recreational vehicles, side-by-size golf carts and all that, they're not gonna be seeing a report on that later on.

We give that report monthly, and I'll be more than happy to sit down with you and review it if you'd like.

But I mean, we can.

I can give you whatever report you need.

I put it in odds, but after 20 years, I can tell you whatever you want to give me a guess, I can tell you now I can try to tell you now.

They don't want me to do it right, but but I can tell you, I mean, it's about let me just break it down to the case.

If you have last year's summary, I would I would love to.

We give a report every month to the tr to the uh finance department.

Annual summary is more than sufficient.

Prior to the uh casino, it's about thirty to four thirty-five million for commercial, you know, business, it's about thirty-five million in personal property, and then of course, with the casino, you got about twenty plus million in addition to that.

So, real short answers just on the thumbnail sketch of it, and tw in nine in nineteen, what would you say, Gwen?

In in uh twenty oh four, our predecessor generated about fifty-seven million dollars, and in two thousand nine, we generate seventy million dollars.

And so from 70 million to date is probably what one is uh one ten, one twelve, one hundred and twelve million.

Your ta your title just confused me because it didn't say relief, it just said property tax.

Yeah.

Okay, we can update that.

Consulate Hugo, sir, you have to do that.

Thanks, Mayor.

So appreciate the brief.

If 50 percent is too high, then we're cons gonna consume more than 9.9 million dollars of state funds, right?

So let's say it's too high, and the value of the relief that we give is 10 million dollars instead of nine point nine.

That 0.1 million that we give away, we just give away, right?

It's just revenue that we should collect that we won't collect.

Well, it's the qualifying vehicles, that that is correct.

Okay.

In 20 years, we haven't seen that, but we could.

Well, uh uh, so that's kind of where I'm going.

So yes, so this year it's at 50 percent.

Last year it's at 50 percent.

How much revenue did we miss collecting because we gave ourselves the 9.9 from the state, but we gave relief that was more than 9.9 million.

Yeah, you understand the question.

I understand.

I believe the question uh is I understand it, uh, councilman, is that basically you're you're saying how much more are we how much are we paying in addition to what the state relief is, right?

How much are we relieving?

Okay, because we said 50 percent.

That means every car in Portsmouth is gonna get 50 percent.

Okay, wait, let's correct that.

Because every car in Portsmouth is not getting it, only the qualifying uh uh okay.

Uh uh okay, so the qualifying cars in Portsmouth are gonna get 50 percent tax relief up to the first twenty thousand dollars.

Yes, sir.

Well, if we set that rate if if 50 percent is too high, then we're gonna give away more relief than 9.9 million dollars.

And if we give away more relief than 9.9 million dollars, that's just money that we didn't collect didn't collect.

We're gonna give give ourselves the nine point nine million that the state's given us to plug that hole.

But if we if we give away 11 million dollars of relief, and we only get 9.9 from the state, then we under collected by 1.1 million.

I hear what you're saying, and I'm gonna give you my best commissioner answer and my best citizen answer.

Okay.

I'm gonna have to defer to your better judgment and being a counsel to be prudent and working with the manager and the finance department and the commissioner revenue and the treasurer and other people that are component of that team to make sure we don't fall into that.

I mean, we have our our fingers on the pulse of where we are today, but I I unforeseeing any other substantial change or you know, miss if we have an influx of people moving in, which we hope happens, we may have we may go below 50 percent.

Uh uh okay, uh so I'm tracking with you.

But we we can look backwards and say, hey, last year we gave uh 50 percent, that was the relief rate.

We gave away relief valued at what surely it wasn't exactly 9.9 million dollars, that would have been I think what he's trying to ask is what's the deficit between the nine point nine million and what amount of relief we actually allocate.

Well, I mean it's actually maybe the target.

Well, and it is also based on the collection.

Last year's last year, it's in the books.

It is, but this particular number is going to keep into this year.

You and the they'll report those figures on a on a cat on a fiscal year basis, and we can go back and extracolate some of those and try to show you what that would be year to year, but we haven't seen the a material change in the assessed, I mean uh in the units, if you will, yeah, tax units.

So that's why we think you know this number is gonna hold.

And that that's what would drive that number.

Correct.

Yeah, potentially not the value, but the number of vehicles called into that category.

That's correct.

Okay.

So we probably should be looking at that.

We and we can get the information to you based on collection rates, we could inquire with the treasurer or through the finance department get you that information, but if until you get an additional more vehicles or more units, that's really when the question is gonna come.

Um, if that 50 percent is gonna be enough.

And when we were in that category, we didn't have the other exemption.

There wasn't the military or excuse me, the yeah, veterans tax relief at that point in time.

And that's kind of taking them out of the equation.

Yeah.

Because they're not getting the personal property tax relief on that particular vehicle, they're getting a full exemption.

Correct.

That's why I mentioned it a little earlier.

It'd be good to see what that number is.

And how it's kind of punching the I believe button that 50 percent is the right number based on the number of cars that you assessed and the value of those cars a year ago and the number of cars that you assess in the value of those cars this year.

I mean the value of the cars this year, well, two years ago, three years ago, the value actually went up.

That's right.

And now they've they're starting to go back down again.

So we have a older models because they're two or three years older.

People in Portsmouth aren't uh getting newer vehicles at a rate they are in other places, and that's all I would suggest to you while you're seeing the numbers in other communities, neighboring communities going down.

Either they're having new you know, new units coming in, adding more.

I told you when I came in in 2026 and about 2027, we found 20,000 vehicles that weren't in the number from 04.

The division of motor vehicles gave us a count based on 2004, and then we found more you know more vehicles.

And they also qualified.

So uh a number on your report that really shocked me.

We had 30,000, almost 31,000 vehicles.

That's that's shocking.

Yes, sir.

And the way you get the way you get a vehicle count number is based on uh DMV reporting registered cars.

That's correct.

So the cars that we got driving around town with 30-day uh tags to avoid paying tunnel tolls aren't being counted, right?

Well, they could be counted, they will be counted.

We're a pro-rating locality, so if they're here prior to the 15th of the month, they'll be counted for that month if they're I'm excuse me, after they're getting 30-day tags that they put on their car for ever to avoid whenever they pay their tax, whenever we get the information from D and V, whether it has a 30-day tag or not, yeah, is based on the sale of the vehicle.

So when they have a title, the tax is gonna follow their title, not their registration.

Okay, if they'd like to come down to on the first floor in the city of City Hall and come to their um DMV select office, we can give them a tag and sell them a transponder.

Councilwoman Bryant.

I noticed that you were leading me too.

I thank you for that.

Thank you, Mr.

Edmondson.

You mentioned that um people are more and more using cars for business purposes, right?

Uh tell us more about that.

Is that a significant change?

How do you how do you track that change if I'm doing kind of a uh side gig where I'm delivering food or something Uber, what what does that look like over the last couple years?

You have influenced thank you.

I'm gonna be brief on this because I know you got other items tonight, and I'll try to answer it succinctly.

Yeah, it isn't.

And also invite you to let's have this discussion because it's becoming more and more prevalent.

We do really well with brick and mortar stuff.

We have a lot of laws in zoning and all this other stuff on brick and mortar places.

We don't do as well on gig economy, if you will.

So what'll happen is someone will file their taxes through a preparer or themselves or what have you, and if they get a 1099, uh then that 1099 is unrelated income.

So you can be an employee of the city of Portsmouth, as an example, still be an Uber Lyft driver, you can be a you know, uh any type of food delivery or anything of that nature.

You can have jobs outside of your normal course of business, but once you do, you should get a tax filing, which is a 1099.

So when you get a 1099, a lot of people don't realize if you're a uh if you work as a dog walker or you do other things and you don't believe that you are an independent contractor, that's why it's called an independent contractor.

So when someone shows up and tells you, Oh, I'm in business, they're always in business until you say here's your tax bill, then they're not in business.

But I will tell you, we have a lot of good folks in Portsmouth who say, I didn't realize that, let me rectify it.

So we have places like Bloom is a good example of people who have a business incubator, in Q hub type of situation where they're going and open a business and they may have other employees, but as soon as they get that 1099, and so someone could be involved with a company, they could be in sales, they can be in whatever they want to, that 1099 triggers us to ask questions.

Once we start asking the question, it's normally found on their tax filing, their depreciation schedule where if they're taking a uh a deduction of a commercial vehicle, if you will, uh, or for business vehicle on their tax filing for the IRS or the state, then we can ask the question was that in Portsmouth, this particular vehicle does not qualify for PPTRA because you're taking over 50 percent of that.

Now, what'll happen is they'll have to refile their taxes or file an amendment to it, or pay the tax.

They remove themselves from that program.

And so most of them don't because they'll say, Oh, I'm 49.3 percent or whatever, which we have to follow what the code says 50 percent or better.

Uh so if you had an individual who was a uh like like if uh someone was a real estate assessor or appraiser as an old if you will, they work for different localities, they I mean uh different uh banks or lending institutions or something, they go out and do the uh appraised value on a piece of real estate, they may be driving their own personal vehicle to do that, and if they take that exemption at a certain amount, and it is all types of businesses.

I mean, we got an inquiry today about pickup trucks.

You can make money if you have a pickup truck so much an hour by moving people's stuff.

And you know, 20 years ago we didn't have that.

Right.

We didn't know what we called it.

You can rent anything, you can rent people's pool, they're so fun.

You can we you would believe the things we see online.

Uh and people are doing this.

Yes.

So believe it or not, it's a very difficult.

We've had to expand our compliance.

And we do a lot of outreach and education, we laugh about it, but there's a lot of money being made by people who are entrepreneurial spirits out there.

Once they understand the tax code, though, is if you're gonna use that vehicle and pertaining to this conversation, if you're gonna use the vehicle for 50% or bet or more, if you will, then you don't qualify for personal property tax relief.

In addition to that, you probably gonna have to have a ta uh for all intents and purposes.

If you're engaged in business, you need a business license.

And so we regulate somewhere between sixty, four hundred and seven thousand businesses per year, and it represents somewhere in a neighborhood of about thirty-eight to forty thousand uh forty million rather.

And that includes the ship, you know, the VIG location, and and also the casino, and so we deal with mom and pop, you know, fifty dollar license that might be a restaurant or a service, and we deal with some of the largest uh economic development projects in the history of the city.

You'll see them as you drive through, and they open and close it all the time, so we're always changing that number changes also.

But that's created a you know, yeah, nuance that we you know we have to address.

Yeah, thank you, sir.

That's everything.

Thank you so much.

My daughter's playing right now in a softball field, so if I excuse myself, hope you'll understand.

I gotta go root her on.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We thank you for your for your service.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Manager Carter.

Appreciate you.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh, our final presentation is evening we'll deal with uh civic organization support.

Uh this is just a discussion starter.

Uh we're not asking any decisions to be made tonight, but we want to get this in front of you so we can start a good discussion on this and uh move this forward and make a make a good decision on this later.

So Trey's gonna give you some information on what we're currently doing.

Um hi, I'm Trey Burke.

I'm sure none of you have ever seen me before.

So this evening um we'll go through the proposed support to civic orgs, which is basically support to nonprofit organizations, um, as it's included in the um fiscal year 2027 budget.

We'll go over the um current and 2027 allocations, the changes, and then there is a small portion um kind of kind of going over some of the problem areas we've been experiencing with the support to civic orgs, um, and then um kind of soliciting a conversation about how to how to address those going forward as the manager mentioned.

So in the big picture, the fiscal year 2027 budget allocates 1 million one hundred and thirty thousand dollars to 14 civic and nonprofit organizations.

That's a six and a half percent increase over the fiscal year 2026 adopted level um at 1 million sixty thousand dollars, and it does include one new participant.

These dollars are are distributed across three broad categories, so that's human serv or housing and human services, youth and education, and health and community wellness.

Um, these are informal categories, but they're kind of how we broke them down.

Um so every organization funded through this provides a specific and measurable service to the city.

Um the city is not legally allowed to provide donations except for in very specific instances and very um specific ways.

Our largest category by dollar amount is housing and human services that totals 441,000.

Um this represents about 39 or 40 percent of the total civic organization funding.

The single largest line item, um it's here two one organization with two different programs that we fund separately.

Um that's the her shelter, they have a homeless assistance program that the city's been working with them on to provide um housing and shelter to homeless citizens, and they also have a um domestic violence shelter that they run.

Um so that's up to 70,000 in the homeless assistance is at 232,000.

Excuse me, ports of volunteers for the homeless receives sixty-four thousand dollars.

Um that's a sixteen percent or excuse me, seventeen percent increase, and they also provide direct services to unhoused individuals.

Senior services of Southeastern Virginia is proposed at 75,000, that's a ten thousand dollar increase, and the that is largely for operational support, and it's partially related to um meals on wheels.

So in this category, every organization saw at least a slight increase, an increase from $382,000 to $440,000.

And this is one in particular we'll come back to, but this is where you see probably the biggest impact of federal cuts.

And the total funding is $550,000, excuse me, $557,000, a modest increase.

This is the largest allocation in the program at $350,000.

It's kind of a mix of operating and capital with the capital being the big portion.

It's kind of to help them reset and establish a new kind of program.

I think it also expands them in the middle schools if I'm understanding correctly.

This also includes the um portion of police athletic league and complete the puzzle.

Um police athletic league is funded at $65,000 and complete the puzzle at $100,000.

And then Hampton, excuse me, Horizon Hampton Roads.

Um that is basically scholarships for a youth summer program.

And then the Access College that is scholarships to Portsmouth public school students graduating.

One last one, the Friends of the Portsmouth Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court.

Um, that is organization and they provide services to individuals in the juvenile justice system as directed by the courts.

Health and community wellness, so that totals $130,000 across four organizations.

Um that's the food bank of Southeastern Virginia.

Um at 50,000, the United Way, and the United Way is our newest um participant in the program.

That is $25,000 for financial mentorship program.

Um so helping um youth and young families um manage the challenges of kind of getting started financially, and it's mostly on educational basis.

Um it's not direct funding, but it is kind of setting people up with mentorship.

Um it also includes CHKD, the child advocacy center, and that is providing services to youths who were um oftentimes kind of in those first moments or you know, immediate period of time after they've been picked up by either law enforcement or social services as victims or survivors of um neglect and abuse.

And um EVMS, they requested a larger one, but it seemed to be largely this also gets back into the the federal funding cuts, but they requested a large increase, um, but we ended up funding them at $25,000.

Um this is kind of the overview.

I won't go through line by line because we've already covered the largest ones that I know were a little pressed on time.

Um but you know, keep it, review it.

Um it also includes both the amount and the increase.

Um if you have any questions, I'm happy to answer them.

Vice Mayor Moody and Swoman Thomas.

I I do have a question about one of the uh omissions, and that's the uh Edmark uh that's uh here in Portsmouth.

Uh last year they received uh $7500.

I don't see them in the budget.

And uh for those of you who aren't aware, Edmark is uh provides uh hospice uh uh uh care for children, also uh uh politive care, what which is uh pain management uh basically and uh uh I think we need to reconsider that uh that's an important service uh for children and then 7500 is a paltry uh amount if I could clarify that um it's not necessarily that they were rejected funding.

Um if if they could have if they could reach out to us um and send us an application, we'd be happy to review it.

Um we did not receive one for that okay.

So we we didn't make that decision, they didn't send their application in correct.

Okay, I'll uh I'll reach out to them and let them know that you have definitely number.

Uh no, I do prefer to go.

I'll get it.

I'll take care of it.

Okay, yeah, very good.

Councilwoman Thomas.

Thank you.

And um, Vice Mayor's uh question kind of is what my question is pertaining to also.

So um I actually um the egg mark, you know, should also be up there.

My question is not just what's missing, but so you're saying that there was a cycle where all of these these organizations had to apply.

I know we talked about last cycle where it was kind of up in the not up in the air, but there were several pathways to request civic organization funding from the budget.

So now we have this application process where these organizations did go through and apply and request the dollar amount, is that correct?

Yes, ma'am.

Can I add something to this?

The application process has always been there.

There's just a process at the end.

Yeah.

Kind of like where we are now where people start saying, hey, well, I want these guys now, and I want these.

That's what happened, you know what I mean.

So it wasn't that there was no application.

That's that's what gets you the first set.

No, I was just asking for like for um the example that uh vice mayor even just gave, like if it was one funded previously, did they have to reapply for the funding again?

Okay.

Yes, ma'am.

And then like I it was one, I think it was next gen.

I remember they were up there before.

I was thinking about that one as well.

They do like um internships and so forth for youth um over the summer and so forth.

So I remember there that that was the one that stuck out to me that that was missing.

Um my next question is something we also discussed last time during this cycle, and I think we all agreed upon is having an impact statement from these organizations after the funding.

So some of these organizations were funded previously, and I I know them and they're doing great work, so it would be great.

And we talked about having an impact statement for you know the next so was that part of like uh the application, do we have that um from the organizations that we prior funded that would get refunded again?

Um, because that was very important to kind of measure like okay, you got may maybe some are asking for more, like what did you do, you know, with the funding from previous year to so that we as council members can really understand the impact um that these organizations are having on the community.

Um on your first point about next gen, so they're under the workforce foundation.

Okay, um, which is not a group that we would fund here because they're they're intergovernmental, quasi-governmental.

Okay.

So they're kind of handled a little bit separately.

Okay, for some reason I thought they were on the list, but thank you for that explanation.

And what about the impact statement?

So we do get kind of a a program overview, and that includes kind of the objectives of the program.

Now, as for a um impact statement, this was we're still in the first year since then, so we would be right because we adopted on that one, so we're still in the fiscal year in which the those were ongoing.

Will we be able to see that before this?

Because that's important to me.

I don't I won't speak to the other council other council members, but to me that's important.

Um so that you know, we even talked about I remember this discussion about having them present like just a quick overview of you know, just the wins and the opportunities they provided.

I just think that's something important as we continue to uh support the organizations that we need and that they do great work um to lift our community up and to lift the citizens up and to provide needed services, it just would be great to understand like and have an impact statement for us as we're going through these discussions and these funding discussions in our budget cycle.

Thank you.

Did Eggleston uh did they submit an application?

Uh not not that I'm aware because they had yeah, I know we've uh provided some funding in the past.

Uh uh they have a laundry operation uh here in Portsmouth and they hire uh um votes.

Yeah, that's we have people with disabilities.

Uh so uh but you didn't see an application for them.

Go ahead, sir.

Anybody else have the floor?

Councilman Hugo, do you have the floor, sir?

Yeah, so I don't know if this is the appropriate place in the budget for the request that I that I passed along, but back to the conversation that we had at the council retreat around uh the stand-up of or the resurrection of ports events, the involvement uh that they had with high street fest.

Um so I reached back out to them and uh um basically asked them to uh to give us some input on if we're gonna continue doing high street fest and depend on ports events to be the the uh organizer and and uh host uh uh uh group.

uh the stand up of or the resurrection of ports events the involvement uh that they had with high street fest um so so I reached back out to them and uh um basically asked them to uh to give us some input on oh if we're gonna continue doing high street fest and depend on ports events to be the the uh organizer and and uh host uh uh uh group uh what would that look like and and so each have uh uh a letter that that we got uh from shell wren and Liz Pascalini uh earlier today and so whether that's to be considered in civic organization funding or in some other part of the budget uh I I would ask that we uh consider that application because of the great feedback that we got from high street fest last fall and the fact that we're getting ready to do high street fest on steroids for sale Virginia in June.

And we get original investment as well yeah and there's and food food tax yep yeah lodging perhaps right so I guess maybe I should ask for a consensus of my colleagues to consider uh jamming this into the budget and working with the city manager to figure out how and where okay um Vice Mayor Moody are you voting or you need to I was voting okay all right so so so so the ask on the floor is to call for a consensus to include uh for consideration uh the funding of uh ports events in this budget cycle is that accurate yes well there there was a question about whether to include it from this budget or just in general and there need some clarification in this place of the budget or some other place I don't frankly care what part of the budget it's up to the budget budget cycle it doesn't necessarily include in this the budget cycle so the the the reality is it's in the budget cycle yes so wherever it is it is so those in favor show up by hands those are opposed okay all right now we'll move on to councilwoman times and make what statement in that go ahead sir the city manager has presented you a balanced budget right if you add something you have to remove something so in in the consensus consider the the consensus was asking for a consideration okay I I think I use that word specifically so the consideration means that as we go through the process it will be considered and put forth and it will be determined whether or not we accept that consideration.

In our meetings will make sure that we address 100% that's why I use the word consideration.

Cool thank you so good question hey to give you a bill without giving a solution so there's money in this year's budget to support sale Virginia we aren't going to do sale Virginia next year because sale Virginia is a one time thing.

So my suggestion is that we take a look at the funds that are in this year's budget to to accomplish sale Virginia and see about using those to offset this bill.

Okay so you're wanting to put it in this year's budget now.

No no no the the upcoming budget but my point is we had money in this year's budget that we don't need to put in next year's budget.

Yeah we did something okay hence hence it'll be determined in the discussions that we have I think we've got enough information that we can uncover that enough we're figuring out doing what we're doing I think so got it councilwoman Thomas and Councilman Dodge I just have real quick for uh Mr Carter.

Um I know I talked about the impact statement will what will we have during our meeting from you to understand what some of the organizations have done because that's an important discussion.

Yes absolutely my question would be what would you want so that we can make sure we have those things to satisfy your needs.

They can give it like I mean I'd hate to pick on Star Base but I see I get a we get a presentation from Star Base about like their growth their number children serve the number of participants what you know like what their plan is it doesn't have to be that I know every organization does not have the structure and board of star base I'm just picking on them at the top.

But just a item of like impact like what did you do like what who did you serve how much of the community did you serve how do you plan to expand it with the next round of funding that's very important.

What we'll do then is create a a standard template and have everybody present this kind of same information so you kind of have to yeah something just to go off of and I'm sure they might might have already presented it because some of these organizations have come in front of us.

Um like we just had the you know senior services explain to us exactly how um that that funding will be used and how they plan to expand their services.

So something like that, I think for those or especially for the organizations that haven't had a chance to come in front of us, that would be helpful to have.

What this the purpose of this it was to start conversation about how do you want this to actually function?

What it was it what is it that you need so that when you get to this point, you have all the information you want to make whatever decisions you need to make.

That's kind of where we were trying to drive this to.

So I'm I I'm along the same line is that we constantly look at measurable response.

I think that's what she's asking for is can we measure the impact on with Portsmouth United?

We demand measurable results from them, and we should be doing the same here.

Give us some some measure of your results.

Um other item that I wanted to ask was did um is Tidewater Youth Services, do they get an application in this year?

Do you know?

No.

But but Tidewater Use Services, they get funding via uh juvenile um court services.

It's not something you would see in this section.

Right.

Um I can we can find out what that amount is, but it's not something you would see in the support to civic orgs.

They're a service provider to juvenile court services.

Yeah, the funding that they're getting though is to care care to deliver their services, what they're lacking is housing.

Their housing is about to collapse on them, and they're gonna be without housing here real soon.

Okay.

That's uh I didn't know whether they turned into a for that for some assistance there.

Okay.

No, that wouldn't fall on this either, really.

Right.

Vice Mayor.

I I see uh uh the uh uh retiree bonus is under non-departmental.

I didn't see it up here because we're just doing civic organizations.

Yes, right.

Well, there'd be a period where we can discuss that.

We discussed anything of this.

Let's discuss it now.

I think we're all aware that uh uh it's 1,500, I think is in the budget, which represents uh 1.4 million dollars.

And I think uh there was some discussion about uh being uh allocating uh money towards as we know some of the retirees uh draw more than others.

Yes.

And uh I think there was like uh 254 that are uh on the low end of the scale, uh uh fift fifteen uh uh hundred to two thousand, and there was uh like six hundred and seven retirees.

But uh I think it was a creative way to uh if we can do that uh uh to allocate it according to the need.

Uh obviously some of the re some of the retirees uh you know retired as much as sixty thousand dollars and up.

So uh uh what I'm getting at uh instead of doing across the board uh if if we could allocate it uh according to need, and uh that 1500 has been going on for uh a number of years.

Uh so uh if we could uh increase that uh I I think the number for for that 254 uh group uh allocate two thousand uh for them for for the the middle group of six hundred and seven um uh seventeen hundred.

We have for those and for those fifty for those fifty-three that are in that sixty thousand uh and up class, nothing.

Okay, uh but uh I thought I thought that was a good idea, and I know some were uh in that discussion, but uh I I think it's I would I would like to see that uh considered uh so uh more money go goes to the the people who have the greatest need uh and and uh and I think those numbers uh I think in both systems uh I think it's like uh nine hundred and fourteen uh people uh involved you have some yeah I I can provide you with this.

And and and I would think that um you know before we get really involved in this discussion, it's certainly an appropriate one, but but I think we need to wait until we have our individual discussions to really kind of understand where we want to go.

I like the idea of it, but the other thing is there may be some legal legal implications, so we need to make sure that before we start having this public discussion and creating this expectation that we have all of the information.

That's the prudent thing to do.

I I've I've heard I've heard of what you said, Vice Mayor.

I think we need to know that it's legally prudent to do it, and if it's legally prudent, we can start to really investigate how we can make it.

I'm all for equity, uh, but at the end of the day, if if we can't do it legally, um we'll have to find another way.

Well, there you go.

I think we just hold up on that discussion right now.

Yeah.

Okay.

Mr.

Manager.

Back to this particular discussion.

Um one of the things that I'd like to do is establish some really good guidelines for how you get in, how you get selected, and what we bring to you guys.

Uh inside the city manager's office, uh, we established uh uh a whole process that that kind of works for organizations like this that request money.

There's an application process, there's a scoring process, right, and there's there's thresholds that you have to meet, or you just don't get scored.

I mean, you don't get funding.

And uh there's a detailed report that you get about how well you did, how bad you did, or wherever the case may be.

Um, and I would like for this group to consider something similar for this process.

We're have an application, you have a an advertised period that's open, we get the application, we get several people, and uh and I would include a couple of council members to score the applications.

Uh then you get a report back of who qualify for funding, and you have a group of people that can uh and again a couple of council members select who gets funded.

I like that idea.

All right, good idea.

Vice Mayor, yeah.

I like that.

Uh give you some idea.

Uh in in the past, uh we actually had representatives from the uh probably the uh 20 percent that represent 80 percent of the funding actually come to work sessions and and tell us about their organization and and really uh explain their ask and and and why they need it.

Uh I thought that was good because uh everybody around the table here has got some questions uh and uh uh of course after the they leave and uh another time we we decide you know who made the cut and who didn't.

It's somewhat what you you're saying, but it's uh kind of open to the entire council to at least hear uh why they're asking for funding.

That was an option, that wasn't a you know, so anything that works for the group is fine with me.

Yeah, I I think that that requires more discussion, as I said, because what what I what what I can see from a perceptual standpoint, I I personally don't want to be involved in a decision making on a funding based on people coming to talk to us because I just think that there's too much extra that can be added into that.

I think having it done from staff and having everybody look at it that way, I think it it takes us out of the decision making in that regard.

Um we approve a budget.

A budget is comprehensive.

One can say, you know, we didn't, you know, that was my friend, that was my buddy, that was somebody I worked with 10 years ago.

I'm just saying you you can add more to the to the work than what's needed, and we just don't need more added to the work.

Having a broad stroke, I I'm all for if people want to make an impact.

I think an impact should come after the fact.

Um what have you done, a summary?

Because I mean if we're gonna take time to have everybody come in front of us, that's gonna be a lot of time.

And and and I can appreciate all that, but at the end of the day, they should be able to articulate based on what we've supported them with, the impact that they had, whether that's in data, how many lives, who they touched.

So I like the idea of having the impact statement summary because it gives us something to go by.

I'm a reader, so I'm gonna pay attention to those things and then open it up where we can ask them questions individually.

For example, I called when when we did the complete uh puzzle, I called the young lady who actually runs that program, and I got a lot of learning about what they did.

I had no idea that they were really involved with autism and the things that they did.

So just an example, I think that that gives us the opportunity as council members to do the work because it does require work.

So you have four.

Yeah, thanks, Mayor.

So I'll just pile on to what you said by starting with a question.

So there's nobody on this list that's also being funded by Portsmouth United, right?

Yeah, that's not true.

We can get a response.

I think some overlap.

But uh okay, so it it I think we ought to sort that out because uh seems like we ought to be going one direction the other direction, and okay, and to your point about process.

I mean, they put a process in place to vet the requests that they got and and grade and make decisions so having some consistency of process because their list of nonprofits are doing valuable work for the city.

This list of nonprofits are doing valuable work for the city, and so having some consistency um in the application and the information that's provided, the commitment to provide uh deliverables and then some kind of reporting that the deliverables actually got provided uh to that's always important, yeah.

Yes, so and that I think would address some of the concerns that we already talked about around what these people do and what impact are they gonna have to the community.

So uh and I think the process that you put in place for the sponsorship uh questions um has taken a lot of the uh inconsistency out of the decision making uh that that the mayor was talking about where people get accused of taking care of their uh favorite thing.

Um this way it's uh everybody's on level level play and field councilwoman Bryant.

Thanks, Mayor.

Um it feels like it might be helpful, Mr.

Carter, to in our two on two conversations and moving forward.

No, if there was anyone that had previously been funded that didn't reapply, or anyone that you consider that didn't end up on this list.

I don't know that we need to talk about it here, but that that came up with, for example, Edmark.

I think that answers I think that chart is last year's now.

It doesn't go back several years, but this is last year's this year rather.

Yeah, this year and the next year.

So this is everybody that applied?

No.

Well, no.

Yeah, I I guess what I'm asking for is is if there was anybody that did apply that did not get funding.

Um like uh the is there an arts category?

Is the symphony something that we have?

There's two different academics.

It's being funded.

Yes, it is being funded.

But not through this.

Right, right.

There's also the museum and fine arts grant that is not administered by the city city that's administered by the museum of the there's a museum and fine arts commission over the museums, and they do a lot of programming and art stuff that's not okay covered here, but they're also an independent board.

And so that's why we have these three mission categories are specific to this, these organizations.

Okay, that answers that question.

But just I think in conversation, it would be useful to know if there was someone that applied and you considered and decided not to fund them just just for background and kind of painting the whole picture because as we develop this and evolve the process, it just helps us better understand who's coming to us and what their needs are, and like it's a company's coming.

Thank you, Mary.

I was just gonna say I think it would be very imperative that now that we have the budget that we take time to dive into it and write our questions down, and then when we have our two on two with the city manager, um, because we can be at this all day long.

Yes, taking and choosing what we want to talk about.

Yeah, this was an introduction, not an end.

Okay.

That was this was for are we doing this right?

There is more.

The last few slides.

It's just the city voting.

Okay, so I'll be I'll be gonna go on ahead.

Yeah, all right, I'll be quick.

Um, so we kind of identified three things that you know to some extent we think y'all could help us out with.

Um you know, just kind of as we go through, we're starting to see these problems, and they're not stuff that staff in this in the role that staff plays in these things.

We administer stuff, we do not make legislative decisions, right?

And some of it's kind of starting to get into legislative um territory, and we do need guidance.

We'll you know, again, we're not soliciting it right here right now, but we do need some at some point in the near future.

So, first, you know, as the federal government cuts um happened, we started to see more and more organizations off asking for substantial support.

Um, and it's not necessarily just that grants were going out, sometimes it's Medicaid revenue.

Um sometimes it's also like VA stuff.

There's money that was there, is now not there, and these organizations are coming to the city.

This is essentially a um we don't even have an estimate of what this money is because we don't know who else out there and we don't know what money they're getting, and there's just an endless flow of increasing requests.

Now, you know, that's gonna be a large amount of money that we can't just say, hey, we want to backfill every organization that lost federal federal dollars.

Um it's just an unlimited liability, and so you know, if that's the goal is that we're gonna start backfilling some of the stuff, we need more direction in how and when to do that because we need to at least be targeted with this if we want to do it at all.

And I'm not necessarily advocating that we do.

Second, um, the civic orchest program, it's really kind of was originally envisioned.

So city has things that cities do, and then there's things that cities don't do, but there may be nonprofits that operate in that sector.

Those that that whole thing is a very broad question.

So we need some explanation of where does council want us to be looking at to be soliciting support for these programs.

Um is homelessness your big thing, is education your big thing, is um you know, tennis.

It these are big things, but we need to know what sit what council's priorities are so when we get requests when you're saying, hey, go out and advertise or make sure everyone knows about it.

Well, we need to know who needs to know about it.

It's a much bigger question than non-profits writ large.

We need a little more specificity in where council's heads at.

So when we go through this, we're not making a legislative decision on what we support or don't support.

Third, um, one of the things we have been told in the past is that this program should somewhat should form somewhat of an incubator role.

So we have you know, organizations that are trying to get started up, have been overlooked or just got started.

The problem is is that the way the application is written, it does have a very high standard.

The example that you know I would like to go to is an audit.

So we require every organization that gets money through this to provide an audit.

This ensures that they have processes, they have procedures, they're doing what they're supposed to be doing.

That's a really good protection for the city.

Right.

But even auditors wouldn't necessarily require all the organizations to get an audit, and so we have this tension here where if you're a new organization, some of them are just gonna be left out in the cold because it doesn't necessarily make sense for them to go through the process of getting an audit, but that also kind of leaves us up for a little bit exposed or vulnerable on this because if they were to go out and start spending money all willy-nilly because they don't have a track record or anything like that, the audits are really good protection for that.

So we don't really know how to move forward with that.

There's a little tension there between we want to support them as they start, and we want to we want to make sure we're a hundred percent because right now we are at a hundred percent.

We are doing everything we can to safeguard the money at the city.

The other thing is we can give you money to do something, but we do not have the expertise in the city to tell a nonprofit how to be a good nonprofit.

That's not what we do.

We do city government, not what we should do.

So, you know, we we can provide help in some ways, not in others, and so the it's just you know, that's gonna be something we can't do.

And so we just kind of want to make sure we set that expectation to council that we're not uh we're not a business advisor.

There's no mentorship here, it's just cash and support and sorry, services.

All right, the last one I kind of want to bring up just so everyone is aware of.

We also have a neighborhood beautification grant.

What this is is it's up to five thousand dollars that can be provided to a civic league.

Um mostly these go to do stuff like planting flowers, um cleaning graffiti.

If you know, like an entryway or a signpost got knocked over, the city can take some of the money that typically a civic league or an or or a neighborhood would be um expected to replace on their own, and we may provide support.

The issue has been that civic leagues over time stopped having less cash on hand, so they couldn't provide any match.

And we that's not that's not something we um can advise, especially without any kind of support.

Um so that's something that you know we kind of want to make sure that everyone wants to continue down this path or how we know get some um direction on it, and we'll I'll be working with the city manager to come up come up with some recommendations on that program.

Um, for how to make good reforms and also still achieve um those ends.

Um I don't think we have the knowledge and to know what items are on that list, so we wouldn't probably need the foundation of who's making these requests, and then we could prioritize them.

Um just to ask us out of the blue to prioritize those three that we don't have.

Um it's not something that could be accomplished.

You tell us what you need to make it to the right.

Okay.

Well, so what we'll do at this point, um, it looks like it's about seven o'clock.

So why don't we take a uh fifteen minutes?

We'll start at seven fifteen, uh, to start the uh regular meeting.

Um is that okay with everyone?

All right, give everyone a time to freshen up and uh get what you need.

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, citizens of Portsmouth wanna welcome you to the Portsmouth City Council meeting tonight.

I also want to take a moment to uh acknowledge all of our guests who are here with us.

In addition to that, I do want to take a moment to thank our city staff who is present and working over time.

Uh want to acknowledge our city manager, Mr.

Stephen Carter, our interim city attorney, Mr.

Derek Challenger, and our deputy city clerk, Miss Anita Shira.

Thank you all for being here with us today.

I will now um ask for everybody to please stand for a moment of silence, followed by the pledge of allegiance.

For which it stands.

Do we have a motion and a second to approve the minutes?

Move adoption.

Please vote electronically.

At this time, I will take a moment to acknowledge our guests that we have in the audience.

These fine gentlemen that are looking so dapper are the members of Alpha Five Alpha Fraternity Incorporated Epsilon New Lambda chapter.

And the president is Mr.

Keith Bailey, if you all gentlemen would stand and be recognized, we would appreciate that.

Now we will move on to our city council rules.

And Madam Clerk, would you please read the speaker rules?

City Council rules require a limit of up to five minutes to speak.

As you approach the speaker's podium, you will notice a timer.

At the beginning of your five minutes, you will see a green light.

Four minutes into your remarks, you will notice a yellow light.

At the end of five minutes, you will see a red light.

Hear a beep, and we ask that you conclude your comments at that time.

While speakers have an opportunity to address council on matters of public concern, all comments should be made in a manner that respects the seriousness of the forum and should not be made in a belligerent, sarcastic or demeaning fashion.

Our remarks shall be directed to the city council as a body rather than to any particular member of City Council, staff, or the audience, and should be limited to matters that only the Portsmouth City Council can influence.

A person who fails to observe this basic rule of decorum will be deemed out of order and not allowed to conclude his her comments.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

Our next item, item 26-83, the city manager's report consent agenda.

2683A, an ordinance accepting funding in the amount of 27,500 from the Virginia Crisis Intervention Team Coalition in appropriate and said funds in the FY2026 Behavioral Health Care Service Fund for use in furtherance of the Portsmouth Crisis Intervention Team Program.

Item B, an ordinance accepting additional 4E foster care funding in the amount of 75,104 from the Virginia Department of Social Services, an appropriate set amount in the FY2026 Social Services Fund to pay for foster care related uses.

Item C and ordinance accepting additional supplement of nutrition assistance program employment and training funding in the amount of $15,000 from the Virginia Department of Social Services and appropriate said amount in the FY 2026 Social Services Fund for Eligible Us.

Item D, an ordinance establishing a personal property tax relief percentage of 50% for the calendar year 2026 personal property tax bills.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

Council members, we are in need of a motion and a second to approve the consent agenda.

Move adoption.

Second.

Any additional discussion?

Seeing none, please vote electronically.

Thank you.

Now moving on to our next item, new business.

Item 26-84.

Boards and commissions.

Councilman Hugo, do we have any boards or commissions to share tonight?

No board and commission business tonight, Mr.

Mayor.

Thank you, sir.

Next item, item 26-85.

Item submitted by council members.

Does any of my council members have any items to submit tonight?

Councilwoman Bryant, ma'am.

You have the floor.

Thank you, Mayor.

Just want to invite everybody out to the great American cleanup this weekend.

Um it's a great opportunity to work around the city to pick up litter.

The meeting please is City Park at 8 a.m.

Supplies will be there until noon.

So come out and join us to make Portsmouth shine.

Thank you.

Thank you, ma'am.

Any other announcements from my colleagues on council?

I think we have the bunny hop coming up.

Is that is that going to be a little bit later?

Anybody know about the bunny op?

Yes.

That's an important event.

So April the 11th.

Okay.

So I'm a little premature, but I don't think we'll have a meeting before April 11th.

So perhaps someone can speak to the bunny op.

Councilman Moody, I mean Vice Mayor Moody, sir.

You have the floor.

Well, the bunny hop and the twists were probably the only two dances I ever mastered.

Uh I will say that.

Um you know we're almost at the end of March, and we're almost uh at the end of woman's month.

And I know Mayor, you uh uh you invoked uh uh councilwoman uh Marlene Randall's uh memory last uh last meeting, I believe.

And that got me to thinking of the women who've actually served on council, and I was surprised the first woman to serve on council well was actually in uh 1940.

Uh and I have her name here somewhere, which I can't read.

I'm gonna read the list.

Uh Gloria Webb, who was uh former mayor uh of this council, uh of course Marlene Randall, who was the first uh African American uh vice mayor, and uh of course uh uh Lisa Lucas Burke, who was uh former Vice Mayor, uh Elizabeth Sim Simmons who served on council and was also uh vice mayor, and uh of course uh we've got uh two of our present members uh uh Yolanda Thomas and uh Catherine uh Bryant and I'm also gonna give you the uh uh the first uh the first woman in uh 1940 uh that served on uh council and she was also uh former mayor.

Oh wow and her daughter actually served uh on council as well.

Uh and uh uh let me let me find that again, Mayor.

Uh just pardon me here take your time, sir.

I'm usually uh faster than this her name.

I know you've been uh everybody's been in suspense waiting for this name.

Her name uh uh was Mary Carney Dundero, and uh she uh was elected in 1940 uh as the first uh woman ever uh on this council.

So uh I thought uh thought everybody would like to know that as we're getting to the end of uh national woman's month in the month of March.

So thank you for your indulgence.

Absolutely, and I will add to that there's another lady that is pretty powerful in the state of Virginia and was the first African American woman on the city council.

And she served on council.

Yes, she did.

And I forgot her.

I'll never hear the end of this.

Uh uh Louise Lucas.

Uh and uh she was the first uh African American uh council member of uh woman, council member on this council, and as we know, she went on to uh bigger things and still serving.

Senate uh Senator Pro Tim of the or Pro Tim of the Senate.

Yes, absolutely.

Thank you, that's all I have, Mayor.

That's probably more than enough.

No, no, I think it was absolutely appropriate, and thank you.

Thank you for sharing that.

We appreciate it.

Councilman Hugel, sir.

You have the floor.

Yeah, thanks, Mayor.

While we're talking about future events, uh so April the third, Friday is the beginning of Peace Week in Portsmouth.

So this will be the second annual peace week.

Uh coincides with uh our young folks uh being on spring break.

Uh so uh organized by uh our friends at Portsmouth United, Ms.

Matthews and the nonprofits that are uh are plugged into Portsmouth United.

So we're gonna have activities uh all over the city starting on Friday the third of April and running that entire following week uh until the end of spring break, uh culminating with the big basketball tournament uh with uh at Carlton Copeland's uh uh location on uh the on the Sunday, the uh the 12th of April.

So uh for those of you who are parents of young folks in in uh Portsmouth, uh please go to uh uh the uh uh Portsmouth United uh website, or you can find uh details on the brand new Portsmouth United app called Portsmouth Buzz.

So uh and and Portsmouth Buzz has uh much more than just youth activities, it has activities around uh food banks, uh behavior health services, social services.

Uh add that to your uh to your home screen and uh and get plugged into what's happening around the city.

But uh we'll look forward to having a very safe uh peace week with uh with our young folks uh uh starting uh April the 3rd.

Thanks, Mayor.

Thank you, Councilman Hugo and Councilwoman Thomas.

Ma'am, you have the floor.

Thank you so much.

And first off, I want to thank the vice mayor for that recognition to be uh named among some of those outstanding women who have definitely set an example of serving your community um through volunteerism and also serving office is uh extreme pleasure to be named among those women, so thank you for that recognition.

Um Councilman Hugo mentioned Peace Suite, which is what I was gonna also mention, but I will take the liberty to mention one other camp that it's called the 4H, and my councilman to my left has knows quite a bit about this.

Um, the 4H uh Center, they hold a camp.

I just learned about it in Wakefield, I think it's in Wakefield over the summer, and they also provide scholarships.

They're looking to provide um spaces for 40 Portsmouth students.

Um that's camp they get to stay um overnight.

The kids go canoeing, learn karate, archery, whatever, a whole bunch of outdoor stuff.

Sounds really fun.

Um they came in, one of the volunteers came and spoke to uh one of the schools this past weekend, and um you can go to it's I think it's Airfield 4H Center.org.

Um, I will see if I can also uh get that somehow posted to our socials or to Portsmouth Buzz because I do think it's important that our families in the community know about all the opportunities available to them in the organization, they also provide scholarships.

So it's a really good program to get our kids some outdoor kind of away time.

Um, other than that, uh the last council meeting I did bring up, I would like us to follow up a discussion for consideration for that auditor position.

We are in budget cycle, and I do think that um this is a perfect time to bring that conversation back to light.

And so, what I'm gonna propose, if I can get a consensus amongst my council members as for our April 13th work session to bring that conversation back to light.

We had the discussion about the position, the description, the org.

Um, it is under one of our our pillars, so I do think it's the perfect time to bring that conversation back to light.

So if I can um if I can take the liberty right now to see if we can add that to our April 13th work session just to start that conversation, I think this is a great time to bring that back to light so that we can't talk about an auditor position.

And so, do I have that liberty?

We don't need a consensus for that.

We'll we'll bring the discussion back.

We'll just yeah, we don't need to.

Appreciate that.

Thank you so much.

We'll bring the discussion back um under discussion uh at our work session next time.

Thanks.

Councilman Dodson, sir.

You have the floor.

Thank you, sir.

Yes, I did grow up in 4 H and uh, yes, I have a heart for the organization.

And if anybody would like to co-sponsor uh child in that, please see me after it's 390 dollars to sc to sponsor a child.

If anyone's interested, I'll be glad to uh uh work with you on that.

Um, and yes, Mayor, thank you so much for putting that auditor position on our agenda.

Very good, sir.

Are there any other items to be submitted by council members?

Well, I have one.

So last week I was in the great uh country of England, and as a part of our visit, there was a business visit.

I had a chance to visit our namesake city, Portsmouth, England.

Portsmouth is a seaport city, it has a shipyard, much like the city of Portsmouth here in Virginia.

The highlight of my trip was I had the opportunity to visit their city hall in Portsmouth, England, and have tea with the Lord Mayor of the city of Portsmouth, England.

Lord Mayor, Gerald Vernon Jackson, and he was a wonderful chap, and he and I had tea together, and we discussed the history of both of our countries and how connected we are.

So much so that he presented me with the plaque with this city insignia of Portsmouth, England.

I actually am wearing the tie that is indicative of that as well.

And I asked him if it was okay if I could now use the term Lord Mayor of Portsmouth, England, of Portsmouth, Virginia.

And so he said it was okay, but I know I probably have to get some approval from my colleagues on council to be the Lord Mayor now.

But I wanted to share that with you.

It was a wonderful visit.

We visited uh some of the businesses that were there, and we look forward to continuing that relationship.

We had already established a sister city relationship years ago.

In fact, some of you may remember as a part of that relationship, they gifted us.

You ever seen the red phone booth in England?

Well, we have one of those here in the city of Portsmouth that was gifted to us, and I think they gifted a street lamp.

So we'll be bringing that back online.

Thank you all for indulging me.

And now you can appropriately call me the Lord Mayor.

Moving right along.

Report on pending items.

Item 26-806.

Report on pending items.

Is that me?

That's you, sir.

Mr.

Gardner, you have the floor.

All right, thank you, Mayor.

Uh, you should have gotten a copy of the report back in your email today.

Um, those uh items are uh there for you for your review.

If you have any questions, please let me know.

The only other thing I'd like to add is tomorrow morning at nine o'clock in the Craddock neighborhood.

Uh we're meeting at Afton Square, right behind station 11 for Rog to Block.

So everybody interested in coming out and participating.

You don't have to have any special training.

All you need to be is there and available, and we will take uh take you through the process of of rocking the block for credit, making that neighborhood uh shine a little bit.

So thank you again, Mayor.

Thank you again, uh counsel.

Uh please come see us tomorrow.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Carter.

That's a wonderful event in Rock the Block.

And so we look forward to uh continuing to support our community and making it beautiful.

Our next item, item 26-87, non-agenda speakers.

And madam clerk, would you please read the speaker's statement?

City council rules require a limit of up to five minutes to speak.

As you approach the speaker's podium, you will notice a timer.

At the beginning of your five minutes, you will see a green light, four minutes into your remarks.

You will notice a yellow light.

At the end of five minutes, you will see a red light hear a beep, and we ask that you conclude your comments at that time.

While speakers have an opportunity to address counsel on matters of public concern, all comments should be made in a manner that respects the seriousness of the forum and should not be made in a belligerent, sarcastic or demeaning fashion.

Our remarks shall be directed to the city council as a body rather than to any particular member of city council, staff, or the audience, and should be limited to matters that only the Portsmouth City Council can influence.

A speaker who fails to observe this basic rule of decorum will be deemed out of order and not allowed to conclude his her comments.

Thank you, madam clerk.

Our first speaker this evening is Mr.

G.

W.

Thompson.

Mr.

Thompson, if you will come forward, state your name and address.

You will have five minutes, sir.

Good evening.

Good evening.

Lord Mayor.

I started.

My mess.

City Council meeting of City Council members, city manager.

My name is uh G.W.

Thompson.

I reside at 4065 Windy Brow Drive in the great city of Portsmouth.

I represent Virginia Organizing, which is a non-Partisan group focused on political action.

Will the members who are here tonight please stand?

All right, thank you.

I also represent church and community in action, which unites churches and community leaders in Portsmouth to advance social justice through collaboration, advocacy, and service.

The primary objective is to facilitate connections between churches and the needs of the community.

Both organizations jointly funded sleeping bags, duffel bags, maller blankets, warming kits, rain ponchos, and other cold weather items for distribution to the homeless.

Donations came from church and community in action and private donors.

Virginia organizing and church and community in action and the homeless community, thank you for securing funding and finalizing plans for the permanent shelter, which will begin construction this spring.

We recognize that this initiative has presented difficulties, and we appreciate your dedication to creating a shelter for people experiencing homelessness.

We respectfully request your continued support throughout the completion of the shelter, particularly during periods of inclement weather.

Your assistance during the recent snow event when additional space, meals, and transportation were offered at Portsmouth Volunteers for the Homeless and Zion Baptist Church welcome any overflow.

The support offered by the Sheriff's Office and the Emergency Management Office was greatly appreciated.

Additionally, we hope cooling stations can be provided again this summer.

Again, thank you for your efforts in addressing the needs of our homeless brothers and sisters.

Amazing things can happen when government and community work together.

Coretta Scott King said, and I quote the greatness of a community is mostly accurately measured by compassionate actions of its members.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Thompson.

Our next speaker.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Councilwoman Bryant.

Thank you.

Sorry, Mayor, to call out.

Mr.

Carter, in the last day or so, Council has received a number of emails regarding the construction of the homeless shelter and Oasis and the service there.

Could you report back to us on the plans for that, please?

Or how that will be coordinated to continue services.

Okay, thank you.

And I apologize.

Sometimes I'm looking away and then I come back.

So that's okay to catch my attention.

I need that sometimes.

Thank you.

Our next speaker, Keith Bailey.

If you would come forward, sir.

State your name and address.

You will have five minutes.

Good evening, honorable Lord Mayor, Shannon E.

Glover, and Honorable Vice Mayor William Moody Jr.

and other honorable council members of the City of Portsmouth, citizens and friends of the City of Portsmouth.

I am Keith Bailey, and I am currently the President of the 223rd House of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, otherwise known as the Epsilon New Lambda chapter, seated in Portsmouth, Virginia.

This evening, our chapter is here to get firsthand knowledge and introduce ourselves as one of the vital community partners in the City of Portsmouth.

Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity was the first intercollegiate Greek letter fraternity established for African American men and was founded on December the 4th, 1906 at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York by seven college men who recognize the need for a strong bond of brotherhood among African descendants in this country.

The Epsilon New Lambda chapter was chartered on September 23rd, 1951 by 10 local men of color.

And Mayor Shannon Glover has already asked our chapter to stand, but I'll ask him to stand one more time, please.

Thank you.

The fraternity initially served as a study and support group for minority students who face racial prejudice, both educationally and socially at Cornell.

Alpha Phi Alpha was founded on and continues to pursue principles of scholarship, fellowship, good character, and the uplifting of humanity.

Alpha over the years has recognized the need to help correct the educational, economic, political, and social injustices faced by African Americans.

Alpha Phi Alpha has long stood at the forefront of the African American community's fight for civil rights through leaders and members of our brotherhood, such as W.

E.B.

D.

The Boys, Adam Clayton Powell Jr., Edward Brooke, Martin Luther King Jr., Thurgood Marshall, Paul Robinson, Jesse Owens, and many others.

Since its founding on December 4th, 1906, Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity has supplied voice and vision to the struggle of African Americans and people of color around the world.

The Epsilon Ulambda chapter has supplied voice and vision to the struggle of African Americans and people of color in this community.

Alpha Phi Alpha is international.

There are over 900 chapters and over 290 members of the fraternity.

One of our core values of is service to our local community that improves and uplifts our fellow citizens.

Within the past year, our chapter has executed, just to name a few, the following.

On the last Friday of every month, we volunteer at the Bond Secorse Food Bank located on George Washington and Highway, assisting with stock and shells, freezers, and refrigerators with food to be given out to the community.

We participated in the Keep America Beautiful Cleanups four times a year at our two locations in the city of Portsmouth.

This past November, we assisted with the city's recycling event at IC Norcom High School.

We met a black males.

We marched in our fishbowl parade.

We donated candy and participated in the recent West Haven Elementary School Trunk Retreat.

We held a scholarship breakfast at Rivers Casino this month and donated 10,500 in scholarships to seven male public school graduating seniors.

And we have agreed to participate in this coming's Great American Cleanup.

We stay busy.

In addition, on September of this year, we'll celebrate our 75th anniversary.

What a privilege to help serve the citizens of Portsmouth and the surrounding communities.

In closing, our strength lies not only in our individual abilities, but in our collective efforts.

I thank you for this opportunity to share this bit of information about who we are and what we do.

Thank you.

Thank you, President.

Thank you, President Bailey.

And if President Bailey, if you could stay stay for a minute because I want to I want to say this to the entire community.

The members of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity here in the city of Portsmouth.

I've witnessed your work firsthand.

I've witnessed you and your brothers cleaning up Frederick Boulevard corridor.

Yes.

And I stopped by and had a conversation with you on a number of occasions.

I've witnessed the work that you all do with mentoring our young men and taking our young people on trips and places that they may not ordinarily have an opportunity to participate in.

I submit to you that our community would not be the community it is without the support of your organization.

And I would add there are two other folks.

Yes.

Yes.

So I wanted to add that.

And again, thank you and the organization for what you do to make Portsmouth better.

Thank you.

And we appreciate all that you do.

You are present at so many of our efforts, and we appreciate it.

And I did see several of the council members at our recent breakfast that we held at Rivers Casino, and we thank you for your attendance and your support.

So we continue to be partners with the city of Portsmouth.

Good day, sir.

All right, thank you.

Thank you.

And our next speaker is Jalisa Jones.

Ms.

Jones, if you would come forward, state your name and address.

You will have five minutes.

Good evening, Mayor and City Member.

Thank you so much.

Ms.

Jones, could you do me a favor?

Could you come closer to the mic and bring it to you?

Yes.

Because I we want to hear you.

Yeah, I'm a little shorter than it's a good idea.

We got you.

Yes, ma'am.

Good evening.

My name is Jalisa Jones.

Um, I reside at 55 Pepperwood Lane.

And I wanted to come and talk about I'm the founder of My Life, My Story Youth.

Um, and we are the I'm a regional partner for the 757 area.

My focus here in Portsmouth because I believe this city's area is great, this city's youth area is a great concern.

Um, I'm with the 2.9 Safer Community Grant.

Portsmouth has the historic opportunity to move beyond temporary lives.

We are proposing a permanent high impact third space called the My Life Mice Story Matter Youth Hub at Sanctuary where kids don't just stay safe, they get prepared for life.

Our model uses a hook and ladder approach.

A lot of times when we know about recreational centers is just somewhere for the children to just go and just play.

But with this particular um transitional hub, it is something that will not only give them just something to do, but give them a purpose in life.

So as a teen, they will be able to go in, do boxing.

That is it would be a discipline structure thing, even if they wanted to do music, if they wanted to do welding, whatever they wanted to do, they will be able to go and learn about that.

And our we will be working after school hours.

And um sincera to see if we can do any kind of some partnerships so that way we will be able to build this hub up so that the children will be able to, the teenagers will be able to have not just a safe place to get away from, but a place that they will be able to go and um elevate their life.

So thank you and have a great day.

Thank you.

And also, I'm sorry, I'm nervous.

Um I did um the clerk, I gave you a handout, and that'll give you a breakdown of our services of what we will um be offering and what we're looking to do with the the teenagers.

Also, with this program, I am looking into making sure that we hired the teens as well.

So now so not only will they be able to attend, but they will be able to work as well, get set up with credit building, bank accounts, everything, prepare them for life as they as they're as they get older.

So thank you for taking the time to listen to me and to read over the paperwork that I presented to you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Miss Jones.

Councilman Dodson, sir.

You have the floor.

Yes, ma'am.

Are you um or have Miss Jones?

Could you come please back to the polling?

Your model seems uh close to the big homies program.

Are you familiar with them?

Have you been working with them?

Okay, I didn't know.

So right here.

So repeat your question.

No, uh, are you familiar with the big homies program?

Because it seems very similar to yours.

No.

The hummus program.

Big homies.

The big homies.

Well, we I did reach out to them and see if we can do a partnership.

Good.

That's what I'm saying.

Yes, I was gonna suggest.

Thank you.

Yes, yes.

They uh they are on my list of partnerships.

Yes.

Thank you again, Miss Jones.

Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes our speakers for the evening.

If there's no more business to conduct by this body, this meeting is adjourned.

Have a good evening and safe travels home.