Order.

Welcome more and welcome more.

Mr.

Drew Kane.

All right, so Mr.

Mayor, members of the council.

The first reason we will be provided by Brett McKenzie, who is our legislative affairs director.

Bray will be joining us lab in action from Richmond.

Okay.

All right, so Brent, go ahead, the floor is yours.

Thanks, uh, Mr.

City Manager, and good afternoon, Mr.

Mayor, Madam Vice Mayor, and members of the council.

Um today we'll be giving you a uh thorough update on our legislative agenda items, providing you an update on some budget amendments, uh, including those on the legislative agenda, and then some that you just might be interested in.

Um, and then we'll be providing you an update on some legislation that is um uh relevant to our legislative agenda and some things that we just want to make sure you guys are aware of that are happening up here.

Uh then at the end, I have uh about five or six pieces of legislation for uh to get some direction for y'all on.

You guys can hear me okay?

Yes, yep.

Okay, just what we heard.

All right, so our legislative agenda um has seen some results uh here over the last briefing.

Um seen a lot of action this week in particular as things are kind of moving past as we're head towards uh crossover around February 18th.

Um our uh unfortunately our blue line charter amendments uh both failed to report by the committee.

Um one in the house and one in the Senate on the opposite side of that.

Our 10-1 uh charter amendments have both passed their uh chamber of origin, and so those were crossing over to go to the other chamber now.

Um the Senate vote was interesting.

Uh 2713, that was just enough votes to get it past the finish line.

Um, and there was some uh some consternation around a bunch of charters that day, and so but uh cooler has eventually prevailed and the legislation moved forward, so we were happy to see that.

Um the next one uh our cancer screenings for public safety.

Uh just this morning, Senator Rouse's version and the Senate uh have been sent and Senate General Laws sent to Senate finance.

Um, like many pieces of legislation in Senate finance as you'll see throughout this presentation.

Um it was not acted on favorably, but they didn't make specific mention that they are uh the uh funding for it was still under consideration in the budget, which is really positive news.

Um, and we're waiting for the house version to be heard in house appropriation simply this week.

Um our EMS four for life funding.

This was a request from our uh EOMS department spans um how we are allowed to spend the funding increase the funds or change the formula.

Um unfortunately it was continued to 2027 in the Senate.

Uh but in the House that version recorded out of transportation 21 to optimistic that we're gonna be able to turn some of those and once that we're gonna do this across.

We'll see how that goes.

Um our fire programs fund again.

You will remember that this legislation would increase the percentage of um fee that people pay on the for car insurance and home insurance.

Um how that version uh was not successful, but the Senate version did find some success and is continuing to move on with Senate to Senate finance.

Um, so some reviews there to some progress, but uh Senate finance is always a tough, a tough place to be.

Our SAV legislation has gone through multiple multiple changes and it's been really watered down.

Um it doesn't provide direct um action on the SAV issue, but it does ask this new commission to take a look at it.

So we're hopeful that in the off-season we'll be able to use this as some leverage to get them to take a new look at these SAB um regulations and really start to put some deep in some mitigation factors and some additional planning that'll help us get to permitting.

We're not the only locality that's seeing this problem, and so they're hearing it from more and more folks.

So again, incremental progress on that issue, but uh certainly moving forward.

Um our men haten fishing bill that was brought to us by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.

Uh, this one's really just kind of fallen apart based on the cost of uh they estimated the cost of the study to be around two million dollars.

That was a lot to ask for in these kind of constrained budget times.

So Senate version carried by Senator Dave Marsden was continued to next year.

House version is still alive, but you know, we say on your kind of cottage fever, and it's it's got some challenges for it.

Our pop-up event some legislation has stirred quite a few conversations around here.

It's been really interesting.

We expect that to be heard on Thursday morning in the county cities and towns, subcommittee number two.

Um we'll see how that goes.

Could go out of direction today, but we're continuing to have those discussions and trying to find some common ground.

Um and then our 10-1 general law, just like the charter change passed both of its uh chambers of origin, and we'll be crossing over and will be um heard in the other chamber likely right after crossover.

Uh since the last time I briefed you, all of the budget amendments.

The budget deadline has come and passed, and they've finally been posted.

Um all of the requests that we had in our legislative agenda were filed.