Bristol, Va., sets goals to cut costs, grow businesses

BRISTOL, Va. - With a new fiscal year starting Sunday, city leaders discussed goals for the upcoming 12 months.

Mayor Kevin Mumpower outlined his short-term priorities at the beginning of Tuesday's City Council meeting. City Manager Randy Eads mentioned he had a list but didn't discuss specifics until after the meeting. Some of the same items appeared on both.

Mumpower said many of his goals focus on the city's long-term financial well being.

"We don't want the city to ever get to the place it got two years ago. We want it stable and moving forward, so we're going to look at the charter, see what we can do to refine it and maybe present a few things to the state legislature to draft for us to solidify the city's financial footing," Mumpower said. "We know future councils can undo what we do, but, the way I look at it, that's on them. Our responsibility is to try and do the right thing."

Mumpower said that may prove a lengthy, detailed process to determine reasonable thresholds that keep future councils from borrowing too much.

His second priority is promoting economic development and hiring an economic development coordinator whose focus is attracting new businesses to the city. Another is supporting a program to give jail inmates job opportunities to reduce recidivism and the jail population.

"We want to establish that inmate work release program. That is going to be a home run if Randy [Eads], the sheriff and the commonwealth's attorney can figure this out," Mumpower said. "We've already had several meetings about how we would train these inmates, get them certified, give them a skill set so they're employable. That would save the city $500,000 to $750,000 a year - that one goal. If that's successful, it would be a really big deal for the city."

That program, Eads said, is his top priority entering the new fiscal year.

Another of the mayor's goals is completion of a state-funded study of the city's solid waste landfill operations. At that same meeting, council voted to increase residential trash collection by $4 per month to help offset operating costs.

"We need to figure out what we're going to do with our last big albatross," the mayor said. "We're subsidizing the landfill $500,000 this year - it was $1 million - but we've done that at the expense of the community."

The mayor said his last priority is to establish restricted funds where monies would be set aside for specific needs, including big ticket capital needs such as a fire truck, a school building fund and another just to pay down debt service - if extra funds are available.

"We need to have money set aside only for those purchases so we don't have to worry about where those funds are coming from," the mayor said.

The city manager said many of his top priorities center on economic development and job growth.

"We want to give all support we can to American Merchant to get them up and running and any support we can give to Dharma Pharmaceuticals to make sure they're up and running," Eads said.

Last winter, American Merchant announced plans to hire up to 400 employees for a towel manufacturing business that will locate in the former Ball Corp. building. It is expected to begin production around the end of this year.

Dharma Pharmaceuticals is a startup firm that recently applied for a Virginia Board of Pharmacy license to grow cannabis and produce and distribute CBD oil and THC-A oils. If successful, it intends to hire about 150 people for an operation inside part of the Bristol Mall.

Eads said he is "committed to completing phase one and two of The Falls development at Exit 5 and wants to decrease unemployment and poverty in the city.

"If you get American Merchant online and Dharma Pharmaceuticals comes, within five years American Merchant and Dharma Pharmaceuticals is 550 jobs," Eads said. "My goal has always been to reduce the poverty rate by 5 percent. To do that, you've got to get 900 people out of poverty. With 550 jobs coming online, you would hope the vast majority would be filled by citizens of the city that might be in poverty or close to that poverty line. That would get us halfway there."

In 2016, the Census Bureau listed Bristol, Virginia's poverty rate at 23.6 percent. Eads said efforts to attract new manufacturing businesses could greatly impact that figure.

"When you start reducing that poverty rate, you're changing a lot of things in this city just by going after the root of the problem," he said.