City Council Meeting

Paul NabtistaffThank you, Mayor Reed and members of the City Council. This annual process of the Planning Commission reviewing the Capital Improvement Program is supported by the Code of Virginia. The Code of Virginia recognizes that the Planning Commission is a responsible party in this review as the overseers of the comprehensive plan, which, as the state says, is intended to define the physical future development of the city and recognizes that the capital improvement program focuses a lot on the public investments that may impact the physical future development of the city. For that reason, the Planning Commission is tasked with reviewing and providing recommendations to city council on the draft capital improvement program,

for first as determined by the state is that they should be determining conformance of the requests in the capital improvement program with the comprehensive plan. In addition to that, our planning commission typically advises city council on priorities among proposed projects from recommending that there are limited resources and we often have to make choices about what we want to invest in sooner and what we want to defer. And so they use the comprehensive plan as a reference and determining where our focuses should be. And also to anticipate FUTURE CONSIDERATIONS RECOGNIZING THAT THE TIMELINE OF THE CIP IS ONLY ABOUT FIVE YEARS WHEREAS THE COMPRESENSIVE PLAN IS 20 YEARS. SO WE'RE LOOKING FARTHER AHEAD AND LOOKING FOR THINGS THAT MAYBE SHOULD BE IN THE CAPITAL PROVENT PROGRAM THAT AREN'T.

Jim Featherhe's unable to be with us tonight as he's prepping for that. So at our meeting last night, which included our public hearing, as Mr. Napty said, the Planning Commission voted unanimously to find that the projects detailed in the FY 2027-2031 capital improvement program are consistent with the city's comprehensive plan, as well as other adopted city policies and priorities. As Mr. Napty described, the vote followed our public hearing and briefings by staff. met with the director of parks and recreation as well as a representative from the fire department to address a couple of questions we had on a couple of projects there. So over the number of meetings that we had, we got to this point and had our hearing last

The next item is phrased, consider longer-term plans for sites or facilities when prioritizing short-term or partial improvements. An example that came to mind as we were considering the capital improvement program is in the context of the property yard. It's just one example. There's an item in the CIP currently that also involves a fairly significant expense for replacing the fuel island and the underground storage tanks there. And while the environmental concern with leaking underground storage tanks is real. I spent my career in corrosion in the petroleum industry. This is something we dealt with at service stations. We need to think about how we want to address this in the context of a plan already envisioned

Stacy Hallactually being expected to make these decisions in one term. And I think, not asking for a pat on the back here by any means, let me be really clear on that, but it's a big job. It's a big undertaking. it's a lot of don't raise my taxes, don't do this, we already pay too much. So education is the biggest component of all of this. And I had one thing I was going to say later on, but I'll say it now. So I posted on Facebook earlier, and I'm going to pull it up and read it to you. And it was just a question, because I'm trying to understand what people understand. So my question was inquiring minds want to know when you are thinking of the city's capital improvement program and you read something that says quote funds already committed or appropriated in the cip

Brooke HardinstaffAnd just to chime in on that in terms of the capital improvement program. So as James noted in November of 2022 is when those, you know, first round of figures after that more detailed design and engineering work could be done. That was when the FY24 CIP was being prepared. It would come forward to the council in the spring of 2023. and so as you look back at the CIP and how that was constructed you'll see consistent figures in FY 24, FY 25, and FY 26 as those numbers were made available.