Welcome everyone to the standing committee and governmental operations.

We were just waiting on quorum, but uh hopefully we'll achieve that soon.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, everyone.

We will go ahead and get started with some of the portions we can do without uh quorum.

Madam Clerk, do you mind reading the um welcome notes?

Thank you.

Up in activation of the emergency alarm signal, all persons should immediately exit the building.

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Able persons should assist visually and hearing impaired visitors with exiting the building.

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Persons appearing before the committee are not allowed to campaign for public office, promote private business ventures, use language language of a personal nature which insults and demeans any person, including comments directed at public officials or staff members that are not related to their official duties or address the question staff members directly.

All questions are to be directed to the committee chair.

Thank you so much.

And I believe we're able to move forward with presentations.

Is that yes, Madam Chair?

That is wonderful.

Okay.

Um let's go to presentation number one.

Clean city commission annual report.

Thank you.

Mainly wanted to come to give you our annual report in person today because we are going through a bit of a transition.

If you're not familiar with the Clean City Commission, do I hit a button to change the slides?

Ah, clicker.

Perfect.

The Clean City Commission's been around a while, and if you're not familiar, this is the representation as we currently have it.

I do understand on the agenda today.

There are three other members uh potentially coming forward, which would take us to just one vacancy and that being the ninth district.

I do plan to attend some civic meetings in the 9th district and try to uh get some excitement and get somebody to volunteer to represent the 9th district so that we'll actually be uh at full capacity for the first time since I've been on the commission.

Um what the commission mainly is here to do is to advise you and the administration on all things recycling or anything that will beautify and better the city.

Um but in the last couple of years we've kind of gotten away from the recommending policy changes and doing more uh cleanup activities ourselves.

So it's been more of us doing the fishing rather than teaching people to fish.

And I think one of the things we're trying to do is refocus on to more of the policy side and less of the actual doing, but also encouraging communities to do more of that.

So one of the things we did this year was come up with what our priorities are for this year for calendar 2026.

And they are these four things.

As you probably all know, we do have a scourge of illegal dumping throughout the city.

And we're looking at what can we do to try and reduce that.

There's been some discussion with DPW about putting in cameras.

There's been discussion of trying to focus on uh repeat offender areas.

I know in Swansboro West, where I live in the 5th district, we had 15 tire dumps last year that had to be picked up.

And probably the biggest event we had was um uh in Southside was the um United Nations Church had 249 tires dumped one Saturday night um right before church service on Sunday.

And when they came in, it was quite a shock for them.

We need to find a way to reduce this uh illegal dumping and to uh go after those people who are doing it.

We also need to expand recycling in schools.

We're missing an incredible opportunity not only to increase the recycling, but also to teach the kids how to recycle.

And I've talked about this at a couple presentations I've done, and some people have corrected me and said that the uh that their school does do uh uh recycling.

And so when I went and talked to those schools, what I actually found it was a teacher or uh custodian who was taking it home and doing the recycling that way.

We need to be more consistent with that.

Um, third, uh, if you've ever been out to the Richmond Road, East End uh landfill, you know that there were piles and piles and piles of branches, sticks, logs, and everything that had accumulated from years and years.

Um we don't have a uh uh a sustainable recurring way to deal with that.

So as a Richmond tree steward as well, we generate a lot of branches because of climate change.

We're losing more trees than we ever have before, and we need a place to put them.

And we have that area and then also one on Maury Street, and they were filled to capacity.

Now, fortunately, DPW has found some money this year to start chipping those and and to start getting rid of those in preparation for the solar farm at uh East End.

But we can't just keep dealing with our debris on a when we can find the money basis.

We need to come up with a sustainable uh recurring way of dealing with what we know is going to come when we have 75,000 street trees in in the city of Richmond.

Um so we want to work with DPW to develop what a sustainable solution and bring it to council and the mayor for potential funding in the future, whether that's shipping or biochar or whatever.

And then finally, uh I'm here to say what we we do a lot of things really, really well in Richmond.