Danville City Council – LIVE! (9/15/15)

SouthsideCentral was LIVE! for Tuesday’s Danville City Council business meeting and work session. This article is now complete, so enjoy the recap.

Here’s a preview of what will happen tonight.

1. Buddy Rawley will lead the prayer and Pledge of Allegiance.
2. The public comment section is a total variable. I’ve got no idea if anybody is going to speak.
3. The consent agenda is for senior citizen program and airport renovation funding.
4. The city will officially accept over $10 million from this year’s bond issuance.
5. The police department has gotten lots of grants for things like speed enforcement, seat belt enforcement, drunk driving enforcement and the hiring of a crime analyst. Council has to do a first reading on these types of grant requests.
6. Hopefully, the council will finally adopt the 2030 Comprehensive Plan for land use tonight.
7. Rezoning requests will pass easily.
8. Finance Director Mike Adkins will present the annual delinquent tax reports.
9. Another first reading to formally accept the annual state and federal grant money for transit.

We’ll cover the other miscellaneous things as they come up then we’ll go to the work session.

We’re underway! Buddy Rawley adds a little personal touch to the prayer tonight. Now let’s move to the public comment section.

Ed Clark & Glenn Scearce lead off the public comment session, speaking for the Heritage Preservation Association.

The HPA is giving Fred Shanks & Buddy Rawley awards for the Confederate flag vote. Fred isn’t here, but will arrive later. There’s nobody else wanting to speak, so we move to old & new business.

My goodness. We’re in full Speed Round mode. Nobody is speaking in the public hearings, because nothing is really controversial.

Here’s the left (as council members would see it) side of the gallery. Ed Clark, Glenn Scearce, Ed Chaney, Frank Harvey, Dianne McMahon, Vernell Gwynn and everybody else… HELLO!

And here’s the right side. Dolores Reynolds, John Ranson, Harold Garrison, Tommy Dodson, Sheila Baynes, Michael Scearce and everybody else… HELLO!

Wayne Byrd is not going to get away from the SouthsideCentral camera by hiding in the corner. Heh.

There’s a good turnout tonight.

We move to the around the horn session. James Buckner talks about the ShrimpFest and notes Glenn Scearce was there. Alonzo Jones only has two topics to talk about tonight. Fred Shanks comes in just in time, and picks up his award from the HPA.

We’ll add more in the editing process. Moving to the work session next.

Front to back, left to right: Harold Garrison, Linwood Wright, Dolores Reynolds, Brian Dunevant, Shelia Baynes, Mike Adkins, Earl Reynolds & Arnold Hendrix.

Utilities Director Jason Grey describes the plan to buy the small amount of electricity generated from the Schoolfield Dam. The dam is leased to STS Hydropower, but Danville will get an excellent rate on the electricity generated there.

Finance Director Michael Adkins goes over the monthly financial reports. All revenues are coming in as budgeted.

Larry Campbell & Gary Miller had to leave before the start of the work session.

Here’s Danville’s new assistant city attorney that is assigned to the blight reduction program.

The work session continues. We find that Keith Walden’s Stewart St. project went from the city’s estimate of $300K to his engineer’s estimate of $800K. The project was pulled from the VDOT revenue sharing grant process this year.

Council did put a request for an $800K project to fix the Patton St. drainage problem. That’s $400K from the city and $400K from VDOT. This is interesting because outgoing city manager Joe King said this wasn’t the city’s responsibility to fix.

Council agrees to put up to $350,000 aside for outside counsel’s legal fees. This is mostly coal ash related. Although I expect a settlement with Duke Energy soon, it’s not going to be a cash bonanza. Honestly, it’s a decent chance that the city will net nothing from all of this coal ash stuff.

We wrap up things with the around the horn session. Lee Vogler goes first and introduces the proposal to eliminate the $50 non-resident city library card fee. That gets a majority of support and will happen at the next council business session. We’ll have more on that later.

We’re done here. Thanks for reading the most comprehensive coverage of the meeting. We’ve got more coming up on SouthsideCentral!