Pulaski Town Council Hears Updates on Water Quality; Town Audit
By DAVID QUESENBERRY
Patriot Publishing
The Pulaski Town Council at its Tuesday meeting heard updates on the Town’s water quality and the Fiscal Year 2024-2025 financial audit.
Deputy Field Office Director Lisa Crabtree of the Virginia Department of Health, spoke to Council about the water quality of the Town of Pulaski. Crabtree said there was a lot of “misinformation” that was on social media and the news which, with the reduced level of Gatewood Reservoir, had caused concerns about the Town’s water quality. She said that she had come to Council to talk about what the Town’s actual water quality was.
As far as sampling and water quality goes, Crabtree said the Town met all state and Federal quantity requirements.
Sampling was done for eighty different users. Out of this sample, ten were chosen monthly on a rotating basis for bacteriological samples and chlorine residuals. If bacteria were detected, samples were taken from upstream and downstream for rechecking.
Crabtree said in the nearly seven years she had regulated the Town of Pulaski, those samples came back absent for bacteria. Checks for chlorine residuals, caused by the interaction of chlorine and organic material from the reservoir, also showed that the Town had not exceeded the limits for these byproducts.
Other tests were also done for a variety of substances such as inorganic metals, acidity or alkalinity of the water, nitrates, nitrites, and radiological materials. In every test, results for the Town’s water samples showed the Town was within limits or the substances were not detected. The Town, she said, had just completed the unregulated contaminant monitoring (UCM) for PFAS (“forever chemicals”) which will be regulated starting in April 2027. She added that in the Town’s sample results she had seen, once again the level of these particular chemicals tested as acceptable or were not detected at all.
Crabtree said she had been the Town’s regulator since 2019 and in that time the Town had not had any incidents where its samples exceeded regulated guidelines. “That’s pretty remarkable” she said, “to say in all of that time there have been no exceedances. You have met all of the state and federal guidelines since 2019. Concerning water quality she emphasized that the Town “has met all the requirements.”
Crabtree noted the Town in 2023 and 2024 received the Gold Optimization Award.
“To receive the Gold Optimization Award, it has to be really quality water” she said. Given what she had seen so far, Crabtree said the Town had a good chance of winning some kind of award again.
“All of the misinformation out there is not because of the quality of your water,” she said, “it’s because people are not happy with choices that are made.”
Town Manager Todd Day noted that Crabtree was a Professional Engineer and was a Deputy Director in the Virginia Department of Health, who was well qualified to address the issue of water quality.
“The Facebook post which rocked Pulaski again was one hundred percent false,” he said. “I’m not sure where people get that stuff from.”
Council then heard a presentation from Emily Viers from the firm of Robinson, Farmer, Cox Associates on their findings concerning the Town’s Fiscal Year 2024-2025 audit.
Viers started her presentation by reviewing the findings of three financial reports; the Independent Auditors Report; the Report on Compliance and Other Matters; and a Report on Compliance for Each Major Program.
Each report gave the Town a “clean, unmodified opinion” with respect to the information given to auditors meeting all applicable reporting requirements; having no internal control deficiencies or material weaknesses; and having no material compliance related matters to be disclosed.”
Viers said, “Three different types of auditor reports, three clean unmodified opinions; so that’s a great audit result.”
Viers then reviewed the General Fund Income Statement finding that for 2025 expenditures out grew revenues, which was not typically common. The cause appeared to her to be inflation which was beginning to show up in localities. She expected that expenses would continue to rise with inflation in 2026 and on into 2027.
Regarding General Fund revenues, Viers noted that while property taxes and other local taxes had grown over 5 percent and 4 percent respectively since 2021, that rate of growth had slowed between 2024 and 2025 to 4.5 percent for real estate taxes and 2.5 percent for other local taxes. This particularly affected meals tax and sales tax as inflation reduced the amount of discretionary income available to citizens. She asked Council to bear this in mind as time went on.
Concerning fund balances, Viers said that Council had been successful in increasing the fund balances for each fund. A general recommendation is that localities should have 17 percent of their budget as unrestricted to allow for two months of operation in case of emergency.
While the Town’s reserve balances were healthy, she cautioned Council that with revenues not growing, she did not want Council to “eat away” at the balances that they had built up over the past several years. Following a general breakdown of revenues and expenditures and administrative documentation in the audit, the presentation concluded.
Manager Day then briefed Council on the Entrepreneurial Business Attraction Program. He said that the Town had all types of incentives which had a lot of overlap.
In response, Economic Developer Shannon Ainsley would be working with the Economic Development Authority (EDA) over the next several months to try to come up with incentives that fits “who and where we are today.”
He asked Council to submit any ideas they might have for incentives as there was still time to do so. The EDA would evaluate possible recommendations for incentives and report back to Council after evaluating measures across the state to see what incentives were working.
In other business, Council approved Resolution 2026-05 honoring Chief Water Plant Operator David Peyton upon his retirement from the Town of Pulaski. Peyton joined the Town Staff in November of 2013 as a Water Plant Treatment Operator rising to the position of Chief Operator in June of 2021. His retirement in December of 2025 completed 12 years of service to the Town of Pulaski and with his 27 years at the Town of Christiansburg, gave him a total of 39 years of municipal service.
For his Manager’s Report, Town Manager Day welcomed Chief William K. Kelley, III as the new Police Chief for the Town of Pulaski.
“It’s a lot of responsibility” he said, “I am humbled and grateful. I inherited a department that’s very well staffed, very well led and I hope to continue that. I am committed to all the different stakeholders and constituencies in our community and I’ll do the best I can,” Kelly said.
The next scheduled meeting of the Pulaski Town Council will be at 7:00 pm, Tuesday, February 3, 2026 in the Council Chambers of the Town Municipal Building at 42 First Street,