The Richmond City Council Finance and Economic Development Standing Committee met on July 15, 2026, at 9:30 AM. The meeting covered board and commission appointments, a major ordinance on the city's payment register, a resolution to investigate payment register failures, and several housing and budget items.
On activation of the emergency alarm signal, all persons should immediately exit the building. Please use the exit to the left, right or front of the council chamber or the north or west stairwells outside of the rear doors of the chamber. Do not use elevators or escalators. At the exit in the building, security will direct everyone down 9th Street to the fence area located between Clay and Lee Streets. Able persons should assist visually and hearing a pair of visitors with exiting the building. Persons wishing to speak during the public comment period and or public hearings are generally allowed three minutes to speak. Persons apparent before the committee are now allowed to campaign for public office, promote private business ventures, use language or personal nature, which assaults or demeans any person, including comments directed at public officials or staff members that are not related to the official duties or just to question staff members directly. All questions are to be directed to the committee chair. Fair to adhere to the guidelines and result in speakers forfering any meaning time and further discipline action as necessary, which include borrowing from attendance at future meetings of the committee for a period of six months. Madam Chair's concludes announcements. Thank you, Madam Clerk. Um we'll move to the public comment period. Followed by the approval of the minutes. Seeing none, the public comment period is now closed. The minutes to be approved from the June 17th, 2026 finance and economic development standing committee meeting. If there are no amendments or corrections, then those meeting minutes stand approved as presented. Those minutes have been approved. Thank you, Madam Clerk. Let's move the partners of boards and commissions forward. Good afternoon, Chair Robertson, Vice Chair Jones, Pamela Nichols, Council Management Analysts. The vacancy report before you this afternoon captures current and projected vacancies through November of this year, and it consists of vacancies for the economic development authority, participatory budgeting, and um Richmond retirement system. Madam Chair, there has been a request that the committee will continue consideration of the applications for the economic development standing committee. Um and the request was that you all would continue it to your September meeting. However, the committee could continue it to its October meeting, which would align with our quarterly um review cycle, and it also would allow for the submission of additional um applications. Uh granted, October is great. Continue to October. Yes. One for thank you. And then moving on to the participatory budgeting steering commission. The committee is considering one vacancy for a non-voting member. And I just want to remind the committee at the May 11th council meeting, there was an appointment being considered, but then there was a request by a colleague that that vacancy would be continued and referred back to this body to allow for the submission of James Boshan application to be considered. And so for that one vacancy, um, you all would be considering the reappointment of James Botion. And then we have a list of other um individuals to Tyler Ellis, Hannah Jones, Samuel Jones, Diane O'Libnik, Kawisi Powell, Maya Rogers, and Joy Shaw. And also after meeting with Mr. Slat, um, they have indicated their full support for the reappointment of Mr. Botion. Who offered their full support? I'm sorry, I didn't hear you. Um, Mr. Slat has offered his support, of course, and also uh Mr. Um Councilmember Bretton definitely would like to see Mr. Botion to continue to serve as a representative. Ms. Jones. I just had a quick question. All of these that are listed are how many vacancies do they have? Okay, so um currently they have, and then we're gonna move over to the next page as far as for an individual with a disability, but the current vacancies are for one non-voting um member as well as for a resident of the city who is a person with a disability. Um, and um, as I mentioned earlier, I did meet with Mr. Slat, and they indicated that two of the members who are currently serving as individuals residing in a council district south of the James River has failed to attend meetings. Those um terms actually will end in November.