Michael W. Pollard
Candidate for City Council · Bristol City · Independent
On the ballot for Virginia's November 3, 2026 election.
Campaign finances
From 5 reports filed with the Virginia Department of Elections, covering Jan 14, 2026 to Sep 30, 2026: $1,515.00 raised and $1,217.26 spent. Cash on hand: $297.74.
About Michael W. Pollard
I want to start by saying that much of this will be over-simplified, and some may not come from a background to understand what I'm getting at. But some will appreciate it, and it's important to me, and I was asked to tell about myself. First, I am a Christian. That means I want to please God in everything I do. God makes life worthwhile, which is as I indicated before, an extreme understatement. And to clarify what I mean vs popular media, the God of the Bible says His commands can be summarized in two, to love Him with all my heart, and to love my neighbor as myself. He then explains that my neighbor means anyone who comes across my path in life, and to demonstrate love with action, to serve each other. Now, I mess up, and I mess up a lot, but I keep trying. And when I mess up, I want to do three things. First, apologize - honestly, sincerely, and every time. Second, make it right, as much as possible - which is often not sufficient, it sometimes comes across as shallow and self-serving even when it's sincere, but it's important to try. And third, learn from the experience, apply what I learn, to not do it again. So then, the focus of life is loving God and loving each other with service. Second, I'm neuroatypical, with ADHD and other aspects of the autistic spectrum. Now, don't listen to how some people over-generalize. Neurodiversity is not a disorder, but a different way of processing. And it's a wide spectrum, and some people do have complications that need adjustments, and some people have abilities others don't. It literally means that we are inside our own heads - we tend to think more than we speak. Sometimes I think I said something to my wife, but I just thought about saying it - I thought it so clearly that I thought I said it out loud, and it wasn't out loud. Attention deficit and hyperactivity mean that we want to learn things that are interesting and new, and we don't want to stagnate. When things are stagnant, we get bored - and that tends to show up pretty strongly in traditional schools that teach using rote memorization. In grade school, I got straight Cs - I got As on tests and Fs on boring homework. Now that I'm an adult, I tend to focus on details, and I can get lost in my work for hours at a time. And sometimes I express things in a way that is too literal for others to understand what I mean - people can think I'm criticizing when that's not my intention, and what I'm saying is literally accurate. But an ability to work with details and accuracy helps me with both my work and my ministries. I often consider that I grew up in northeast Georgia, but I've been here significantly longer than anywhere else. In Georgia, I got two technical degrees and worked with a variety of IT jobs, but I found that for a stable career, most companies wanted a bachelor degree. So I went to college, and while I was there, getting a bachelor degree in Computer Information Systems and a minor in Management, my father took a job at King College, so afterwards I came here. I got a job at Universal Fibers, where I worked until last year. At the end of last year, I was offered a job at BCTI in Gray, where I can more directly help a variety of local businesses and organizations as a Systems Engineer. And in 2018, I met Amanda, formerly Gardner, and we got married in 2021, 5 years ago. She's from Radford, but she's been here almost as long as I have. She worked at Emory & Henry until last June, and now she works at King University. I've put things this way before. My favorite job title was Technical Support Engineer. In that role, "support" was my middle name, helping people however I can. In a previous role, the executive assistant to the president regularly asked for help getting ready for board meetings, bringing in cases of drinks from her car, setting up tables, putting out appetizers - and getting out of the way and going back to my own job before they saw me. But my focus is technology, and I have education and experience with almost anything IT-related, from hardware and software to programming, servers, and networking. Those are areas where I can not only help people, but I can help in ways others don't have the expertise. When the office needs to set up for a party, I'm glad to help, but setting things up in a tasteful and attractive way isn't in my skillset. My personality leans towards functional. I've said before that I'm autistic, not artistic, but I enjoy finding other areas where I can help. And I go further than that. As reflected by the title Engineer, I try to improve things. Part of our company slogan at Universal was "We will make better what we find and use less to produce more". Sometimes people say things about IT like, what are we paying you for? We rarely see you do anything. You're here to fix problems, and we don't have enough problems to justify keeping you. Well, when IT does their job, you don't see them. We fix problems before they come up. We catch things while they're little. As an engineer or analyst, I want to improve processes so that the same problems don't come up, or at least not as badly or as often. And, managers please take note, much of the time when IT problems get big, it's either because they're too busy putting out fires that they don't have time to do fix them right, or they don't have the support to do so properly. It takes money to preemptively improve things, but it costs less in the long run. You've got to plan for routine maintenance, not just for facilities but for technology, and you need to budget for it or it won't happen - until you have an expensive failure. And these led me to getting involved in local government. I started attending the City Council meetings in 2011. And I saw things that could use improvement. Turns out that writing policies and refining procedures fits pretty well with working with local legal code. I was able to help with the Planning Commission for two full terms, which is all that's allowed. We got several things improved, perhaps not perfect because of the compromises required, but among other things, we created a mobile vending permit that now allows food trucks. Before, the City's answer was that it's not allowed. We didn't accept that as an answer, but we created a process where it could be done. We also created the process that allowed urban chickens, a process which was refined further by the current City Planner and Planning Commission. And the City now has a rotation plan for City vehicles rather than waiting for them to fail before replacing them. And we're in the process of eliminating a pet fee process that costs more than it generates. There's still work to be done, but it's better. About four years ago, I was honored to be elected to the City Council, and that's enabled me to get involved in other things, supporting and in some cases advising some of our great local organizations. I'm currently working with the Bristol Train Station Foundation, the Bristol Library Board of Trustees, the Bristol Library Finance Committee, the Bristol Virginia Planning Commission, and the Rhythm and Roots Committee. I've joined the Bristol Noon Rotary, and I'm on the boards of Girls Inc and Kiwanis of Bristol United. And I help with Community Baptist Church, where among other things, we help the food insecure with boxes of food, and we support several local ministries that help the low-income and unhoused. And yes, sometimes I'm more free with my opinions than some people may prefer. I try not to criticize individuals, but ideas and policies, though as I noted before, some people take it personally anyway. Will that make it harder to get re-elected? Maybe, but I think it also says I'm a regular person. I may not be good with smalltalk, but I'll be glad to talk with anybody if you've got any questions. (If this is too long, let me know - I have shorter versions)