City Council Meeting   4/23/2024

She's not back there either.

If you would please stand for invocation given by Vice Mayor Dent.

Amen.

Are you all together?

Yes.

Any items placed on the consent agenda shall be removed and taken up as a separate matter, if so requested by any member of council.

Otherwise, all items will be voted on with one motion.

I move to accept the consent agenda as proposed.

Roll call please, Pam.

Mayor Reed.

We will now go to our public hearings and we have a public hearing regarding the fiscal year 2024-2025 budget.

You will have five minutes.

Thank you so much for the time and I will leave the petitions.

Anyone else?

I'm sorry.

What is causing the uptick so that folks can look out for that and report it, if it may be, because I was hoping that you were going to have some type of decline after the uptick in 19 and 20, right, in 21.

Thank you for sharing.

Hi, how are you?

But I wanted to speak on one item of the city budget.

Can you tell us who you are, please?

Cole Spragum.

And address.

1315 Career Lane.

Thank you.

That's perfectly fine.

Seeing none in person, Pam, do we have any callers?

One moment, please.

Good evening, Madam Mayor, City Council members, Tom Hartman Public Works, here with my friend,

We came up with the speed cameras to help address that.

Which, as you're going to see in just a moment, that's what's been happening.

They would gun it, get the close to the camera, slam on their brakes, eke by, pick up again.

Would you not see that when they were coming off the ramps?

especially as we start

So having that immediately made me think, oh, okay, now we're showing how much.

And the data is backing that up.

So are you able to see how many?

So about 23% were local residents and others were from out of state or out of our area.

Nasser Alsaadun

And we thank you all for your continued support.

at least you can say you tried and you spoke to not just your local folks but you spoke to as many parents and visitors as possible and those administrators at least they have the information so they're not taking them back.

a snapped violator turns into either a ticket or not sent through.

just to make sure and then not pass it through.

So can you take us quickly through the steps?

Well, actually, I'm going to get an expert.

Yeah.

Wayne is Wayne is coordinates, of course, as you know, the traffic division, but he also leads the review process and coordinated training with the other officers.

So we want to make sure that it's telling us it's in lane two, that the violating car for the information we received is in that proper lane.

So are you reviewing 120 of these a day?

It depends on the internet speed and how quick my computer refreshes.

We have a few officers doing this.

So I do a secondary review of all those.

Yeah, a little bit.

Actually, I would be interested to hear about kind of the officer time per week, for example, that is dedicated to reviewing, reviewing, you know,

So typically it's only two at a time that's on the system.

Is that a software issue?

Now if priority calls come out, we log off and we go take care of priority calls.

Once you get into a routine of doing it, and I've seen the program and how it works, it can be reviewed fairly quickly.

And then looking at the images, looking at the video.

We haven't done that.

So each day you're reviewing and there are a number of hours in each day that you're processing through whatever backlog you're at at that point.

We have another officer that works in patrol division who's going to be doing it at a different time.

And just to be clear, every summons that's issued is reviewed by police officer from Harrisonburg and signed off on only a Harrisonburg police officer can issue the summons, not the company.

It is, yes.

The majority of what we're seeing out there is actually in the parameters of the speed we would expect to see coming through the work site.

So you're still sitting out there spot checking?

I certainly like to support that on T-shirts as well if you want to take a look at it.

Have we issued more tickets or have we seen an increase in the number of tickets or are the speeders just moving to another street?

So they've worked out there, but in the core portion of Reservoir Street, meaning from Neff Avenue headed towards Market Street, we haven't seen a large increase.

You can't move fast.

Now, I have heard people say, hey, we switched to Bruising Country Club or switched to driving on Reservoir Street to avoid Market Street.

I avoid it because of the construction, not because of the speed count.

No, right.

I don't even make it on Port Republic, you know.

So, I'd like to hear a little bit, just introduce yourself first and just kind of tell us what about your company if you want to.

So I take it very, very seriously and when we have an issue like this, I make sure as CEO, I address this myself.

How do we know that the customer or the person is taken care of, that whatever complaint they have, that it's been taken care of?

Even though we provide the service to you, you can have access to any of that information anytime.

They may go through a second time and get a second ticket before they're notified they've had a first one.

Correct.

I see your concern.

It's mailed from Pennsylvania from the Lafax or from the printer location.

So I don't want to get Councilor Jones question, but from what I'm hearing is we have the police officers involved, we have you involved, we have the DMV involved, and the postal service.

That is correct.

How much

So how much do you keep and how much do you keep?

Because there's also a discretion that the police have.

So we want to follow the money, right?

Is your presentation still on here that I can scroll back to the statistics?

Yeah.

Okay, so the DMV lookup that takes place and the print and mailing associated with the volumes you see here is what would be included in the $12 fee once there's a pool of free citations that's included in the fixed fee.

12 times all those numbers added up?

That's a whole lot.

I wonder what that number is right there.

It's just not structured that way in Virginia.

She said 250 per camera.

The first 500 are not charged.

You just catch it in the back.

So we don't know who's driving it or anything.

All those numbers added up, less the fees for the cameras each month.

$34.99 per month for the equipment itself and the first 250 citations.

And what else?

That's it.

So you guys are going to get us that?

to you guys a disbursement statement because we we do lockbox services for you all as well so all of the payments come into a lockbox and then that locks box information is all sent over to the city and there's a disbursement statement so it shows how much cash came in it shows what the invoice fee was with a copy of the invoice for the services rendered and then there's a transfer that's done once a month from that lockbox to the city so then my next question is for you chief if you don't mind so thank you you're welcome

So like at some point you have to look at this.

Help me out.

So we're growing and changing, but I wonder if we are being as customer service-centric and efficient as possible.

So around the rest of the state.

have some other warning mechanism for folks to slow down and to monitor and catch those folks.

If you don't mind, can I just comment on the state police for a second?

That was mostly for my colleagues to kind of ponder and think about because that's what we used to see.

just to let you know how the technology is accepted across the state and what the plans to use this and why Nesta appreciates it.

I am not surprised that the governor wants to increase the coffers of the state of Virginia.

I do not know about what the funds get distributed to.

So I'm asking those questions.

and the reason I'm looking at Tom is I think you had some reason that wouldn't work here in this construction zone because otherwise that's what I would have preferred.

But then over time, it becomes background noise.

Well, it doesn't for me when it's flashing at me.

So, I don't know, you know, the statistics and I don't know the tools that best do those and provide those kind of feedback mitigation strategies.

And as your chief of police, I think it is the best thing we can do for our residents.

We partnered with Mike Parks to put out advertisements that way, PSAs, we worked with Tom's outreach specialist

We're open to new ideas when we come to these things, but we did broadcast the widest net that we could.

Yeah, I do think that maybe we look at sending something to folks in the county, folks that are coming through that main corridor, you know, on both ends, like we probably want to.

Yeah, I think you have to do that because they're coming into it.

for some reason I just noticed that today I don't know how long it's been up there but that is what I think people will notice as they're coming because as I came through I was like oh okay well I got it so you have the last word?

But hey, I told her slow down.

All right, we'll go into Item 7B, consider approving a donation to the city of Harrisonburg Hombu Service Center Capital Project from the press period of Shenandoah.

Shenandoah, Presbyteria of the Shenandoah's Committee on Presbyteria Administration here, as well as Nate Riddle with Open Doors.

Did you identify over the next two to three years, three to five years, someplace where you thought you might?

and then there, like I said, there are some costs being credited back to us that reduces the overall cost.

Did they really need the kitchen now instead of later?

So, yes, we have made this request throughout the process.

Any questions about the kitchen?

assuming it doesn't get cheaper later on.

And so Open Doors was part of that whole process of the redesign and is in support of the equipment and the changes that are being proposed to be funded through this.

Do you do just dinner or you do breakfast and dinner?

Of course another important consideration is an inclement weather if we're housing folks throughout the day and not just in the evening it could be three meals as opposed to one but at minimum it would be one meal a day.

Is that correct?

Thank you.

So if I can get a motion please.

Second.

So real quick, so we're actually more than just approving the donation of the money we're agreeing to support the additional funds for the kitchens, right?

We need to have that in the motion.

It's in the contingency, I guess, is what you're saying, right?

Similar to when Council took action over the ECBG funds for the solar panels, there was an obvious commitment to the city making up the remainder.

Roll call, please, Pam.

Mayor Reed.

So our next item is Consider Nominations for the 2024 VML Policy Committees.

I don't know if we're pale.

Well, our deadline is May 24, so we can do it at the next meeting.

Are we good with that?

Okay.

We will now go to Larry.

And our recommendation is to, for you to point Brown Edwards and Company as a city's external auditor for a three-year contract with a option to renew for three additional one-year terms.

Thank you, Larry.

Second that.

Will call, please, Pam.

Mayor Reed.

Anyone wish to speak, please state your name and address.

Thank you Madam Mayor.

Anyone else?

And I appreciate it.

Thank you.

Because it's on the agenda.

Oh, that's right.

We're glad you're here.

Anyone else?

Any callers, please.

One more time, please.

I'll close public comment.

So is that legal?

In fact, we encourage you people to violate that ordinance, which still must be enforced.

Right.

Right.

How do you endorse it without being counterproductive to the ordinance?

First meeting in May is the soonest you could have.

I just want to get the clarity on that.

Do you have anything?

Thank you for your time.

Appreciate you.

Thanks.

So again, excuse my tardiness to the meeting, but it was for good cause.

Yeah.

and I think that's about it from the last two weeks.

Sure.

soliciting input tomorrow afternoon, later afternoon, soliciting input from the community on amenities that they would like to see included in the ultimate design of the splash bar going on, going in at Ralph Samson Park.

Do you have anything else?

I went to my uncle's funeral and we fixed like four or five problems while I was driving to this funeral.

I think Laura was spearheading that one.

You know, we got more done apart in COVID than we maybe got done, you know, the year prior to year after.

I mean, I don't have a problem with doing that.

So if there are other larger topics, sure, let's put it on the agenda.

But I just want to be a protective of our time.

Is there anything else?

Knight.

So we just realized we have three Tarsus sitting here because then I'm after Councilman Jones.

If not, we need to get you there too.

Actually she just goes by Kate Nardi now.

That was good for Kate.

All right, closed session.

Move to the Harrisonburg City Council going to closed session is authorized by the Virginia Freedom of Information Act, Virginia Code Section 2.2-3711A.

under subsection 8 for a discussion with legal counsel regarding specific legal matters involving contractual negotiations requiring the provision of legal advice by such counsel.

So move.

Oh, so moved.

Roll call please, Brian.

Council Member Robinson.

We will now go into closed session.