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2025-01-30
KINGSPORT— It has been five years since the Lee Apartments, a 128-unit housing development built in 1941, were demolished due to deteriorating conditions. Yet, despite ongoing efforts, the Kingsport Housing and Redevelopment Authority has been unable to secure funding to replace the units. “We're actively trying to find a developer to help us secure tax credits through the Tennessee Housing Development Agency,” said KHRA Executive Director Terry Cunningham. “These tax credits are essential for making the project financially feasible and ensuring the housing remains affordable for low-income residents.” The agency has applied for tax credits several times but has “not scored high enough to be able to get a 9% tax credit," Cunningham said. Tax credits and restrictions Cunningham described the role of tax credits as a "dollar-for-dollar reduction" in an investor’s tax liability, spread over several years. These are financial benefits to investors and they allow KHRA to offer affordable rents without taking on significant debt. “The rent structure for affordable housing doesn’t allow you to carry much, if any, debt. Without these subsidies, the cost of development would make the units unaffordable,” Cunningham said. He said applications for tax credits are sent to the Tennessee Housing Development Agency who then scores the applications. In recent ones, Cunningham said Kingsport and Sullivan County have consistently ranked lower than surrounding counties. "On our most recent application, we were six points behind on the need factor compared to cities like Knoxville, Nashville and Chattanooga,” he said. “We’re competing not just with other housing authorities but also with private developers for the same pool of tax credits,” Cunningham added. Recent adjustments to THDA's qualified application plan may improve Kingsport’s scoring prospects, but the agency continues to face other hurdles. Another challenge comes from HUD owning a Declaration of Trust on the Lee property, dating back to 1941 when the apartments were built. The declaration places restrictions on the site, mandating that any redevelopment must replace all 128 units with the same bedroom count and remain affordable housing. “But you see, the initial 128 units that Lee had were just too tight for people,” he said. “That's a lot of people in one area, that’s about 44 people per acre and it’s less than a seven-acre site.” One of the agency’s goals is the deconcentration of poverty which can partly be achieved by limiting the number of people in a space. Cunningham said having highly populated areas in small spaces can lead to "more crimes, drug and social problems.” To meet the requirement to replace all 128 units, KHRA has acquired nearby properties to develop smaller sites and remodel existing homes. “KHRA and the city are working on a comprehensive redevelopment plan that includes Boone Street, Tennessee Street, Rotary Park and surrounding properties we own,” Cunningham said. “We’re working on pulling that together.” Other options While KHRA operates independently, Kingsport city staff have been working closely with the agency to find out if there any other options for redevelopment aside from tax credits. “If we can’t make the tax credit options work, then we need to find other options,” said Kingsport Mayor Paul Montgomery. Alderman James Phillips called the delay a “stalemate.” “The city has offered to fund consultations with redevelopment experts,” Phillips said. “We’ll do anything we can to assist—whether it’s setting up meetings with consultants or exploring public-private partnerships—but we have yet to be asked for help.” Phillips also believes there are other alternatives that exist. “We’ve been told there are no other options besides the tax credits, but we feel very strongly that there are other options and there can be other options,” he added. Montgomery said the BMA appoints members to the KHRA board of directors. However, there are no current BMA officials on the board. Phillips said one struggle of not having current BMA representation on the board is how complex it is to understand the inner workings of KHRA and how the agency operates. "The number one thing I want to accomplish right now on my list with KHRA is having BMA representation on their board so that we can fully understand the decisions that are being made," Phillips said. Stay Informed: Subscribe to Our Newsletter Todayeasy fishing game

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Bad Bunny has lifted the curtain on his next long-form studio release. Entitled Debí Tirar Más Fotos – which translates to “I should have taken more photos” – Benito announced the album with a teaser video starring one of Puerto Rico’s most influential film directors Jacobo Morales. “I should have lived more, I should have loved more while I could,” he says to his cartoonish companion Cocho who stands on the table. “While you’re alive, one should love as much as they can.” The official album announcement wasn’t too much of a surprise, with the musician dropping hints via socials – yesterday posting a 17-track “BOMBA” tracklist on X among a series of other posts about x100pre, his debut studio project that he released on Christmas Eve. Earlier this morning, Benito fueled the album allegations with a surprise new single “PIToRRO DE COCO” which arrived alongside its official visualizer. Shortly thereafter its release, he followed up with the trailer. Stream it in full below. A post shared by Benito Antonio (@badbunnypr) Debí Tirar Más Fotos will mark Bad Bunny’s sixth studio album, arriving a little over a year after his fifth LP Nadie Sabe Lo Que Va a Pasar Mañana . Expect Debí Tirar Más Fotos to drop on January 5.

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Hampton Mayor Donnie Tuck gave his final State of the City address Tuesday afternoon — reflecting on his most significant accomplishments while also welcoming the beginning of a new chapter for the city. “A mayor can’t do much alone,” Tuck told the crowd of hundreds at the Hampton Roads Convention Center. “My colleagues on City Council have been a solid team. I think it is important to note the mutual respect that we have shown to each other, and I am proud to have served with them.” Old Point National Bank President and CEO Rob Shuford introduced Tuck for the address. The packed crowd, which gave him a standing ovation, consisted of elected officials, business leaders, school staff and representatives from community organizations. Tuck has served on City Council since 2010 and as mayor since 2016. He opted not to seek reelection this year to spend more time with his wife. Vice Mayor Jimmy Gray won the mayoral election and will take over in January. In the past eight years, Tuck said the city has seen much improvement in reducing violent crime, educating children, attracting development, growing small businesses and developing facilities that serve residents and attract more tourists. He said state statistics placed Hampton and four neighboring cities in the top 13 Virginia cities for shootings per capita in 2023, but in 2024 the city has fallen off that list, and isn’t even in the top 20. “Hampton has reduced our homicides by more than 60 percent and our non-fatal shootings by 42 percent — a remarkable decline in one year,” he said. He spotlighted efforts the city has made to prevent violent crime and show youth a better path than guns and gangs, including the Hopeful Hampton initiative — which aims to reduce gun violence among teens and young adults by pairing them with mentors. He added that thanks to a $4.6 million federal grant the city received last year to reduce gun violence , the city will launch five neighborhood resource centers by 2027. The centers will provide prevention and intervention services, including trauma-informed care, workforce development, access to health care, mentoring, conflict resolution and educational programs. Tuck said the first will open at Langley Square early next year. Regarding business, Tuck noted that the first of two light industrial manufacturing buildings at the Phenix Commerce Center — being constructed at the former site of the Virginia School for the Deaf and Blind and Multi-disabled — will be completed by the end of the year and the second shortly after. The project is expected to create 250 permanent jobs and bring $800,000 in annual revenue to the city. He also announced that a second Amazon facility opened in the city last month. The same-day delivery site opened at the former Gateway computer property. Tuck said the multi-million facility will employ a mix of approximately 125 full and part-time workers. Tuck said Hampton has not seen a slowdown in retail spending and that the city’s revenue from sales tax was $6.5 million more last year than it was in 2016. He described Hampton as a “youth sports destination” and said the Aquaplex, which opened in the fall of 2022 to much fanfare , has already hosted 34 major swim meets and 30 high school meets. He also said residents and high school students heavily use it. Regarding education, he said that in 2015, just over half of the schools were fully accredited. Now, all 29 K-12 schools are fully accredited without conditions, and the city’s on-time graduation rate of 97.93% is the fifth highest in the state. He also said he was proud to launch a partnership with Bloomberg Philanthropies. Hampton is joining a three-year Bloomberg American Sustainable Cities initiative that will use federal funding to address climate change and racial wealth inequity. Tuck says through that partnership, the city believes it will successfully compete for federal grants for resiliency projects. To engage the community, Tuck said he held town hall open meetings at least four times a year, regularly attended neighborhood meetings, and spoke with civic groups. “That enabled me to see this city through a variety of perspectives,” Tuck said. “We are a diverse and fiercely passionate city. It’s not easy to leave, but it’s time.” Looking back, Tuck said he was proud of all the city had accomplished and that moving forward, there are great things ahead for the city. “I know you all will work together to meet the challenges we still face.” Josh Janney, joshua.janney@virginiamedia.comDonald Trump had the right idea about education during his first administration: Judge potential employees by their skills and experience, not their degrees. Open up a world of bright futures to people who don’t have a bachelor’s degree but crave training and work hard. In fact, aside from starting up Operation Warp Speed to accelerate the development of a COVID-19 vaccine, Trump’s most worthwhile official act was probably signing the that federal jobs should not require a bachelor’s degree unless it's really needed. Trump and other Republicans saw that the education vision President Obama had pushed — consisting of a vague followed by “college for all” — had alienated working-class Americans. Well-paid manufacturing jobs had all but disappeared, and people were looking for a new middle-class future. The growth of tech indicated to Obama’s education advisors that success would depend on a university education, preferably in science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM, fields. But that wasn’t a message that many working-class people wanted to hear. It struck them as an elitist judgment that they're nothing without a four-year degree. Obama was right to some extent: The in well-paid jobs will be among those that require a college degree. But Trump was right too: 45% of those holding a bachelor’s are even a decade after they graduate, working in jobs that don’t require a degree, and 28% of people with a two-year associate’s degree than the average four-year-college graduate. More than a third of college students, meanwhile, within six years, and almost none of those students ever finish their education. The problem is that high schools have become so college-focused that students who don’t plan on higher education usually get little to no guidance on what careers they might consider, according to a recent . There is a wide and rapidly expanding variety of possibilities. So although Trump’s opening of federal jobs to more people without degrees was a start, schools can do far more to prepare young people to be both citizens and members of the workforce. That would be a far more productive path for Trump to take on education during his second administration than the issues he’s been batting around lately — especially because he will have some trouble realizing his ambitions even with a compliant Congress. Shutting the U.S. Education Department, as the president-elect has , would require congressional approval, and eliminating a Cabinet-level agency would be tough to get past even some Republican lawmakers. Its responsibilities could be returned to the Interior Department — where they originated before the Education Department was created, in 1979 — but what would be the point? The laws requiring equal treatment of girls and women in education would still have to be administered; college financial aid applications would still have to be processed; Pell Grants and student loans would still have to be overseen. No matter where the necessary personnel are placed, the work would need to be done. Even as Trump vows to get the federal government out of the schools — though really, now that the No Child Left Behind Act is dead and gone, the Education Department does little to interfere with public education — he wants to meddle more by pulling funding from any schools that teach about LGBTQ+ issues or "critical race theory." While these subjects make for provocative talking points, they're not a major part of learning in most districts. These are decisions to be made at the state and local levels, and voters who don’t like what their school board decides can throw its members out at the next election. They very rarely do so. Another pillar of Trump’s platform, school choice, appears to be facing public resistance. All three statewide votes on the subject this fall went , two of them in conservative states. Nebraska voters overturned an earlier state decision to spend taxpayer dollars to enable parents to send their children to private schools. Parents rely on and support their local schools more than elected Republicans might understand. Trump tends to favor disruption over constructive policymaking, but he has already made non-college pathways a signature education statement, and the idea has become popular with both parties. Now is the perfect time to take advantage of that. His administration could use corporate tax credits and public-private partnerships to help create apprenticeships, landing young people in white-collar jobs with a future, as Switzerland has done for years. Instead of deconstructing education, his education appointees could rebuild it through more relevant and exciting curricula with practical applications. The president-elect's pick for Education secretary, former pro wrestling executive Linda McMahon, has so far remained quiet about her priorities, though vouchers are likely to be among them. But just before her appointment was announced, she Switzerland's system of white-collar apprenticeships for high school students, which lead to executive and professional jobs. I've long thought the United States should the model; a small but very successful program in does so. Both Presidents George W. Bush and Obama saw education as an important part of their administrations but stumbled on the issue because of sometimes harsh and unrealistic policies. and ultimately did very little to improve learning, excite students or close achievement gaps. Trump has a chance to build on what he has already said he believes and become a true education president. This story originally appeared in .WASHINGTON: President-elect Donald Trump has selected former Senator David Perdue of Georgia to be the U.S. ambassador to China, leaning on a former business executive turned politician to serve as the administration's envoy to America's most potent economic and military adversary. Trump said in a social media post Thursday that Perdue “brings valuable expertise to help build our relationship with China.” Perdue lost his Senate seat to Democrat Jon Ossoff four years ago and ran unsuccessfully in a 2022 primary against Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp. Perdue pushed Trump’s debunked lies about electoral fraud during his failed bid for Georgia governor. During his time in the Senate, Perdue was labeled as “anti-China” in a 2019 Chinese think tank report. The former Georgia lawmaker advocated for a more robust naval force to cope with threats, including from China. Before launching his political career, Perdue held a string of top executive positions, including at Sara Lee, Reebok and Dollar General. Trump has threatened to impose sweeping new tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China as soon as he takes office as part of his effort to crack down on illegal immigration and drugs. He said he would impose a 25% tax on all products entering the country from Canada and Mexico, and an additional 10% tariff on goods from China, as one of his first executive orders. The Chinese Embassy in Washington cautioned earlier this week that there will be losers on all sides if there is a trade war. “China-US economic and trade cooperation is mutually beneficial in nature,” embassy spokesman Liu Pengyu posted on X. “No one will win a trade war or a #tariff war.” He added that China had taken steps in the last year to help stem drug trafficking. In response to Perdue's nomination, Liu on Thursday night said in a statement that China “is ready to engage in dialogue, expand cooperation, and manage differences with the incoming US government so as to maintain stability in China-US relations to the benefits of the two countries and the world at large.” It is unclear whether Trump will actually go through with the threats or if he is using them as a negotiating tactic. The tariffs, if implemented, could dramatically raise prices for American consumers on everything from gas to automobiles to agricultural products. The U.S. is the largest importer of goods in the world, with Mexico, China and Canada its top three suppliers, according to the most recent U.S. Census data. Perdue, if confirmed, will have to negotiate a difficult set of issues that goes beyond trade. Washington and Beijing have long had deep differences on the support China has given to Russia during its war in Ukraine, human rights issues, technology and Taiwan, the self-ruled democracy that Beijing claims as its own. Chinese President Xi Jinping said in a meeting with outgoing President Joe Biden last month that Beijing stood “ready to work with a new U.S. administration." But Xi also warned that a stable China-U.S. relationship was critical not only to the two nations but to the “future and destiny of humanity.” “Make the wise choice,” Xi cautioned during his November meeting with Biden on the sidelines of an international summit in Peru. “Keep exploring the right way for two major countries to get along well with each other.” Trump’s relationship with Xi started well during his first term before becoming strained over disputes about trade and the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic. Trump seems particularly focused on using tariffs as a pressure point on Xi, even threatening he would use tariffs as a cudgel to pressure Beijing to crack down on the production of materials used in making fentanyl in Mexico that is illegally sold in the United States. A second Trump administration is expected to test U.S.-China relations even more than the Republican’s first term when the U.S. imposed tariffs on more than $360 billion in Chinese products. That brought Beijing to the negotiating table, and in 2020, the two sides signed a trade deal in which China committed to improve intellectual property rights and buy an extra $200 billion of American goods. A couple years later, a research group showed that China had bought essentially none of the goods it had promised. Before Trump's return to power, many American companies, including Nike and eyewear retailer Warby Parker, had been diversifying their sourcing away from China. Shoe brand Steve Madden says it plans to cut imports from China by as much as 45% next year. Trump also filled out more of his immigration team on Thursday, as he promises mass deportations and border crackdowns. He said he’s nominating former Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott to head Customs and Border Protection. Scott, a career official, was appointed head of the border agency in January 2020 and enthusiastically embraced then-President Trump’s policies, particularly on building a U.S.-Mexico border wall. He was forced out by the Biden administration. Trump also said he’d nominate Caleb Vitello as acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency that, among other things, arrests migrants in the U.S. illegally. Vitello is a career ICE official with over 23 years in the agency and most recently has been the assistant director for firearms and tactical programs. The president-elect named Brandon Judd, the head of the Border Patrol Union, as ambassador to Chile. Judd has been a longtime supporter of Trump, appearing with him during his visits to the U.S.-Mexico border. He notably supported a Senate immigration bill championed by Biden that Trump sank in part because he didn’t want to give Democrats an election-year win on the issue.

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