>> We will move on to the consent agenda.
We have a live agenda tonight.
The only item on the agenda is the town Council minutes from
August 11th, 2026, which will be approving.
What is Council's pleasure on the agenda?
>> I move approval on the consent agenda.
>> Second.
>> We have a motion and a second.
Would the clerk please call the roll?
[members voting]
>> The motion passes.
We will move on to public hearings
but we have no public hearings tonight.
So then we will move on to citizen comments.
During this section of the meeting,
please come up to the podium state your name
and address, and direct your comments
to Town Council with a maximum speaking time of three minutes.
This is the section of the agenda where anyone can speak
about any topic of interest.
We are now in citizen comments.
Would anyone like to speak?
>> Good evening.
My name is MacK Hollins.
Address?
Just come here to see how the meeting goes.
Don't see anybody saying anything.
So just seeing how things are going and about
if I want to make a petition to the town,
how would I go about doing such a thing?
I guess this is not a question and answer thing.
>> I'd be happy to talk to you after the meeting.
>> Thank you.
Thank you for your time.
>> Thank you.
Anyone else?
We are still in citizen comments.
Seeing none, we will go ahead and close citizen comments.
I will move on to appointments.
We have one appointment tonight.
This is appointment of Brad Saint Clair
as a jointly appointed board member To the River Valley
communications Authority.
This is a joint appointment with the Blacksburg Christian Port
and Virginia Tech are all in involved
in making this appointment.
Saint Clair comes recommended by the authority Board as well.
This is to fill the remainder of a term
by the current at large member retired Chief Catherine Foust.
Brad Saint Clair is a retired from a leadership
role with the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office
and served as an interim director
of the authority before the current director
assumed the role.
So he comes well qualified.
What is Council's pleasure on this appointment?
>> I move approval appointment of Brad Saint Clair
to the jointly appointed-- to be the jointly appointed board
member.
>> We have a motion and a second.
Any discussion?
Seeing none with the clerk please call the roll?
[members voting]
>> The motion passes.
We'll move on to unfinished business.
Is there any unfinished business tonight?
New business any new business?
Now we move on to council reports.
For those who have been following town council meeting
we have not had a council report section.
Although we had it many years ago.
We have decided to bring it back.
This is an opportunity for council members
to share what they are working on,
especially committee appointments
or other initiatives that you might follow with.
If anyone would like to share any council now
would be the >> I attended the Economic Development
Commission last week.
We meet monthly.
And we had the report of the Montgomery County
Fire and Rescue.
So I'm looking forward to when we get that at council as well.
It was really well done.
>> Excellent.
>> I have been attending the stormwater advisory group.
And we have been hearing from other municipalities
about how they're handling stormwater utilities.
We have been learning a lot about how the town has managed
these stormwater utility to date, capital projects that
are completed in capital projects that
need to be performed to maintain compliance with the MS4 permit
that the town holds.
We meet every two weeks and continue
to do so through December.
We will be reevaluating the stormwater fee structure
as the committee moves forward.
>> I have a report.
It is from the Parks and Rec Advisory Board.
Have been diligently working through several drafts
of a survey going out in September.
This survey is designed the community's feedback
on the investment the town is making
and some of our athletic facilities at the Winfrey
and Kip baseball fields and at the old Blacksburg High School
track and field.
The survey designed to help guide the town's priorities
on which upgrades to make and where.
Please keep an eye out and an era
for when the survey goes live in September.
>> I have got one as well.
I'm currently chair of the new River Valley Regional
Commission.
We have an up meeting this Thursday, August 27th.
One section that I think is really interesting
every month is a review of mutual concerns and commission
reports where we share what is going on in our communities.
The regional can for you all out there has
in it Floyd County, Pulaski County, Montgomery County,
the city of Radford.
And every single town in those counties.
And so all of us get a chance to talk to each other about what
is going on in our community.
Sometimes you get good pointers and sometimes commiserate.
But that is a really wonderful spot on that agenda.
This upcoming meeting we're going to have our bylaws update.
We are also gone a model artificial intelligence or AI
use policy.
We had a draft.
Good practices draft from another regional commission.
And so I think this document is going
to be useful not only to our commission
but maybe to other organizations that
are struggling with what you do and what kind of policies
you should have.
It's always open to the public.
The public is welcome.
It is at some Thursday at the Pulaski County Innovation
Center.
And I can report on what happened next time.
>> Is that AI policy for AI use by the Commission?
>> By the Commission, yes, but it could be used for other
organizations.
>> I will share two quick council reports.
I think both of these with Susan and I serve
as a representative on the.
One is the Virginia Tech Liaison Group which meets monthly.
We discussed the start of the fall semester
at our most recent, similar to what we did as a council
at our most recent work session.
We also had Juan Espinoza, the Vice president of Enrollment
management, joined us and gave an update on enrollment
at Virginia Tech in case anyone was curious at the time
that he gave his presentation to us.
There were 7480 incoming students,
which is a little bit above what their target was,
but the numbers change every day.
We learned about just how complicated enrollment
management can be at Virginia Tech.
You might have seen some recent coverage
about graduate enrollment declining for a variety
of reasons at Virginia Tech.
Those are moving targets.
The other council report I will share
is the Blacksburg Partnership Board
of Directors that met recently.
We saw a presentation on the Midtown development
by Ian Friend with SAS builders.
I think we as a council have probably
seen all the information that he provided in different chunks
like when we're looking at this hotel or this.
But presentation went over the entire Midtown development.
So I thought that was kind of helpful for the group to share.
The Blacksburg partnership is also working to organizing
a shop Blacksburg Saturday event on October 3rd.
As we get closer to that, we can share more information
about that.
There may even be a proclamation about that.
Get excited, everyone.
Any other council reports?
What about council announcements?
Any announcements?
With that, our next council meeting is Tuesday September 1st
at 11 a.m.
In Blacksburg Conference Room.
Our next regular meeting we are voting on issues is Tuesday ,
September 8th.