The Winston-Salem City Council met on September 15, 2025, at 6:00 PM, with all nine members present. The meeting included a city manager update, an honorarium proclamation, consideration of consent and general agenda items, a public comment period, and council comments. All agenda items were approved unanimously. The meeting adjourned at 7:17 PM.
Items C-1 through C-3 were on the consent agenda. Items C-2 and C-3 were removed for separate discussion.
Good evening, everyone. I'm Alan Joins, Mayor of Winston Salem. It's my pleasure to call to order the September 15th meeting of the Winston Salem City Council and ask the City City Clerk to call the role, please. Councilmember Joyner. Present. Councilmember Clark. Here. Councilmember Andrew Bowen. Here. Councilmember Scipio. Present. Mayor Pro Tim Adams. Councilmember Taylor. Present. Councilmember Hall. Present. And Councilmember Burke here. Thank you very much. Would you please join the City Council and meeting a moment of silence? Thank you. Would you please join the City Council meeting the Pledge of Allegiance? Pledge of allegiance. What would you say is one nation under God? Thank you very much. Our Sergeant in Arms tonight is Lieutenant Victoria Arnt. And our fire marshal is Peter Geyck. Glad to have there he is over the corner. I'd like to turn the meeting now over to the city manager for his uh update. Uh thank you, uh Mayor. Um a couple of different announcements tonight, but I'm gonna start with a couple of uh quick presentations. The this past fiscal year was a very successful year for our local tourism industry, including a record setting year for the Benton Convention Center. I want to recognize first uh Stephanie Pace Brown, who's president of Visit Winston Salem, and then Grant Mennox, who's our director of operations for the Benton, who are both going to provide you some reports on this past year's performance and the outlook for the upcoming year. Thank you very much, Mr. City Manager. Hello, everyone, nice to see you. Um, I was here just about a year ago um to share with you our new brand, um, which is uh Winston plus Salem is twice as nice. Come on in. So I'm happy to have a few minutes um tonight to update you on the progress that we've made um in the past year or so to attract visitors to Winston Salem to expand the customer base for our local businesses to create jobs and to generate uh tax revenue. Um, just a few weeks ago, the state of North Carolina um released their annual report on the economic impact of travel and tourism in North Carolina. The study reported that visitors to Forsyth County spent 1.1 billion dollars in 2024, and um that's 1.1 billion with a B dollars. Um, and it generated 75 million dollars in state and local taxes. I think people are often really surprised to learn that more than seven million people visit Forsyth County every year, and we rank ninth out of 100 counties in North Carolina for visitor spending. Um we've made so much progress in the last couple of years. Um, in our fiscal year that ended June 30th, hotel revenue in Forsyth County increased 10 percent to total more than 140 million dollars. And we know that typically for every one dollar that's spent on lodging by visitors, another four dollars is spent on restaurants, retail, recreation, entertainment, and transportation. Um that's money in local cash registers. Um visit Winston Salem uh works to attract both leisure visitors and group visitors who come for meetings, conventions, and sporting events. On the group side, the sales team's bookings were up 13 percent in our last fiscal year, totaling almost 70,000 room nights and generating 84 million dollars in economic impact. The team generated 346 leads for future business and booked 177 groups. On the sports side, our team worked with local venues to book 41 youth and collegiate sporting events across the wide variety of sports that included basketball, tennis, track, cycling, soccer, lacrosse, dance, field hockey, hockey hockey, golf, gymnastics, motor sports, volleyball, running, dance, and dog competitions.