City Council - Regular Meeting

is the gas. This Item B6 is a special place. I ask There were several comments from your desk clean. So this is almost like

Item B7 is Raiders Athletic Association. Just a point for future reference. The agreement is uh ostensibly for the original agreement is for five years. Se uh but when it's dated 2926 to 2931 that's actually five years in a day. Um it should be 2926 to 28318. Do you know reimburse allow us to reinforce? Item B1 is a grant from

CL is through office. Given school Item B12 is February allow department. Agenda item B13 is main fire station.

And agenda item B14,5 All right. Thank you, Miles. Is there any further questions or discussion on the consent agenda?

I I had a question with respect to budget amendment 16. Um, in the packet there were two receipts submitted. One for $17,900 for the replacement of the condensers and one for uh $1,625.3. It seems to replace the coils, but the amendment itself is only for the 17,900. Is the other item going to be able to come out of the existing budget?

Yes. Or that amount will be included. Okay. Okay. All right. Thank you. We met with So instead of us not being small amount. Do you recall that?

I I understand the tenor, but I I can't I can't say one way or the other. I don't want to, you know, I I just don't know. All right. Any other comments, questions? All right. If there are no further comments or questions, that'll conclude our work session and we will move directly into the regular meeting. So, I will call to order the April 6, 2026 Belmont City Council regular meeting. Uh, and I believe we have Danny, Pastor Danny Peterson here to u give our invocation. So, if everyone will please stand. Thank you, mayor and council for this opportunity today. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we gather with gratitude for the privilege of serving our wonderful community. Lord, we would ask for your guidance upon these leaders as they consider tonight matters before them. Lord, we grant ask that you grant them wisdom to make sound decisions, courage to do what is right and humility to listen with open hearts. Father, we ask you to help them to work together in a spirit of respect and unity, always seeking the good of the citizens of Belmont. Guide this meeting tonight with clarity, Lord, with integrity and with purpose. and we ask your blessings upon our community and all of those who call it home in Christ's name. Amen.

Amen. Thank you, pastor. Now, if everyone will join me in the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you. You may be seated. All right. Well, tonight we have several recognitions and acknowledgements that I would like to share with everyone. So, I think if you are following along online with the packet, you see two, but we actually have two more that were added. Uh, so at this moment, I would like to invite our n our line workers that are here with us tonight. So, from Duke, we have some line workers that if you would come on up to the podium here. Ah, well, it's okay. Come on up. Don't be shy. So, thank you, Mr. Mayor. Absolutely.

Council and manager Brazwell. My name is Martha Wgner. I am a proud resident of Belmont, but I'm also honored to be a colleague of the gentlemen who stand behind me with Duke Energy. Um, April the 13th is line worker appreciation day and I have with me today the on call crew uh locally. So, they're going to have to go as soon as we finish. But

Jake Robbins, Roy Bolan, Trevor McCarthy, and Billy Summer Sumi. Um, thank you. Thank them for coming and for everything that they do. We I call them our first responders. Um, you know, I like to say that I've been with Duke a long time, but these are the folks who actually power the lives of our residents, our businesses, and of our industries. So, if you'll join me in it.

Yes. Thank you. Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you. Now, I will say, so, um, one of the fun things that you get to do as mayor is you get to make proclamations, which is a a neat thing to do. So, I do have a proclamation that I would like to make. That's the proclamation recognizing National Line Worker Appreciation Day in the city of Belmont. Whereas line workers roles are critical to the safe and efficient delivery of power of our customers. And whereas line workers are highly skilled professionals who undergo rigorous training to work with electrical safe electricity safely and efficiently. And whereas line workers come with many hazards from extreme elements of storm damage to freezing cold or sweltering heat. And whereas line workers perform their duty day and night under severe conditions, looking out for each other in our community community regularly without injury. And whereas they are our first line of defense and do the important work of keeping the lights on from high voltage transmission lines, from power plants to distribution lines that connect power to our customers homes and businesses. Whereas line workers show brave bravery and resilience and restoration and outreach to customers in the aftermath of historic hurricane Helen. Now therefore, I Joe Jordan, mayor of Belmont, do hereby proclaim April 18th, 2026 as National Lime Worker Appreciation Day in the city of Belmont, and commend its observance to all citizens. and witness whereof I have here unto set my hand and cause the seal of the city of Belmont, North Carolina to be affixed this sixth day of April, 2026. So, thank you. Take a picture.

Do we want to do a picture? Do a picture. Sure.

Yeah. All right. Let's do I'm good. test. All right, moving right along. We have another proclamation today which is is anyone here for the walk to school day. All right. Well, we will read the proclamation. Uh proclamation recognizing Tuesday, April 14th, 2026 as walk to school day in the city of Belmont. Whereas National Walk to School Day celebrates the benefits of a safe and active lifestyle and safe transportation systems. And whereas the first organized by the partnership for a walkable America, Walk to School Day began in the United States in 1997 as a one-day event aimed at building awareness of the need for walkable communities. And whereas Walk to School Day events offer community members, state officials, local school

representatives the opportunity to collaborate on providing and maintaining safe routes that connect our schools, homes, and other community destinations. And whereas in observance of National Walk to School Day, children, parents, and community leaders across the nation are joining together to celebrate the health benefits of walking and inspire communities to make lasting safety improvements. Now, therefore, I, Joe Jordan, mayor of Bel the city of Belmont, do hereby proclaim that Tuesday, April 14th, 2026, shall be designated as walk to school day in the city of Belmont, and commend it observance to all citizens. and witness whereof I have here unto set my hand and caused the seal of the city of Belmont, North Carolina to be affixed the sixth day of April, 2026. So, April 14th, remember, is walk to school day. Right. All right. Well, I know we have a group here for this one. So, I believe we have the National Society for the Daughters of the American Revolution with us tonight. So, if you all would like to come up here to the podium, don't be shy. Come on.

All right. There it is. H Neil. Neil, there he is. There's Neil. He woke up.

Thank you all for being here. Um, I have in front of me a proclamation honoring the 100th anniversary of Major William Chronicle chapter National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution, April 18th, 2026 by the city of Belmont. Whereas February 12th, 2026 marked the 100th anniversary of the chartering of the major William Chronicle chapter of the National Societ Society, Daughters of the American Revolution. The chapter was organized in 1924 under the leadership of its founding regent Grace Alexander Johnston with the charter members of 50 dedicated philanthropic women and formerly chartered in 1926. And whereas our chapter is named in honor of Major William Chronicle who led the South Fort Boy's militia and gave his life at the Battle of Kings Mountain in 1780. His sacrifice and the victory his company helped achieve was a turning point of the southern campaign of the Revolutionary War. The Major William Chronicle chapter DSD works to perpetuate the memory and the spirit of Major William Chronicle and all men and women who achieved American independence. And whereas the Major William Chronicle Chapter DSDR is a nonprofit, non-political volunteer women's service organization dedicated to promoting patriotism, preserving American history, and securing America's future through education. The chapter members volunteer over 3,000 hours to service each year in Gaston County and local municipalities. And whereas today 65 women of the Major William Chronicle chapter DSDR continue its important tradition with the more than 1 million women nationally who have served in this patriotic organization's mission to date. Whereas the members of the Major William Chronicle chapter DSD will commemorate this historic milestone with a centennial celebration on April 18th,

2026, honoring the service or the century of service to their community, state, and nation. Now therefore, I, Joe Jordan, mayor of Belmont, do hereby proclaim April 18th, 2026 as the 100th anniversary celebration day, and commend it observance to all citizens to recognize the chapter's century of service in promoting patriotism, preserving American history, and supporting in supporting education. In witness whereof, I have here unto set my hand and seal the great seal of the city of Belmont, North Carolina, this 6th day of April, 2026, and of the independence of the United States of America, the 250th. Wow.

Mr. Mayor and council members, I'm Melissa Hbert. I'm the vice regent of the Major William Chronicle D chapter and I have several of my fellow members with me here tonight and we are really honored for you to be giving us this proclamation tonight um in a year when we're all celebrating the country's 250th anniversary. It's it's an honor for us to be celebrating our 100th and you're making it very special for us. So, thank you very much. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you.

All right. Absolutely. You better turn it off.

Is your microphone working? Very good tonight, I guess.

All right. Well, we have one more proclamation. It's just a day full of proclamations, which is a good thing. Um, so I know there's no one here for this because this came to me uh by way of mail. Uh, but I think it is something that's worth noting. Um, so this is an official proclamation from Tree City USA. Whereas in 1872, the Nebraska Board of Architecture, uh, oh, I'm sorry, agriculture establishes a special day to be set aside for the planting of trees. And whereas this holiday called Arbor Day was first observed with the planting of more than a million trees in Nebraska. And whereas Arbor Day is now observed throughout the nation and the world. And whereas trees can be a solution to combating climate change by reducing the erosion of our precious top soil by wind and water, cutting heating and cooling cost, moderating the temperature, cleaning the air, producing life-giving oxygen, and providing habitat for wildlife. And whereas trees are a renewable resource, giving us paper, wood for our homes, fuel for our fires, and countless other wood products. And whereas trees in our city increase property values, enhance the economic vitality of bis business areas, and beautify our community. And whereas trees wherever they are planted are a source of joy and spiritual renewal. Now therefore, I, Joe Jordan, mayor of the city of Belmont, North Carolina, do hereby proclaim Friday, April 26, 2026 as Arbor Day in the city of Belmont. And I urge citizens to celebrate Arbor Day and to support efforts to protect our trees and woodlands. And further, I urge all citizens to plant trees to gladden the heart and to promote the well-being of this and future generations. Dated the sixth day of April, 2026. So, enjoy Arbor Day when it gets here. Um, but I was glad to see that come in and I'm glad we have the opportunity to

um to make that proclamation. Okay. Um, so with the proclamations done, I will entertain a motion to set the agenda as amended by the removal of item B9. I'll make that motion. Motion made by Alex, seconded by Charlie. Is that you? All right. All in favor? Any opposed? All right. The agenda is set. So at this point, uh, with the agenda set, I will entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda as amended. As amended by the removal of B9. Yes. So move motion made by Jim, second by Jason. All in favor?

Any opposed? All right, the consent agenda is approved. So that will move us on to our uh regular agenda item number C1, public comment, and we have Maria Porton. And just as a reminder, um, public comment procedures. All speakers have up to three minutes on any topic. Speakers must sign with their name and address. Thank you. Speakers must be respectful of city council, staff, and the public. Uh, it's a time for speakers to bring matters to the mayor and city council's attention. Generally, there's no discussion or debate about the items. If warranted, the mayor, city council may ask staff to follow up um with the speaker on their concerns. And um this is separate from various other public hearings which we don't actually have any tonight. So please, your three minutes should start now. And the little lights right there will help you out and let you know when your time is getting close.

Hi, I'm Maria Portone. I'm a member of the Environmental Sustainability Board. And I think most of the people here were around when we started the composting pilot in August of 2024. But for anyone who wasn't, um, why compost? Food is the single largest category of material in municipal landfills. 24% is the estimate by the EPA. So, if we compost, we slow the filling of landfills, which is a good thing. Food decomposing in landfills emits methane, a gas more than 28 times as potent as carbon dioxide in warming the atmosphere. Um, municipal landfills are responsible for 14% of the human related methane emissions. Food that's aerobically composted does not emit methane. So those are the reasons why we started the composting pilot. Last year, city council voted to continue it uh with a in a feebased structure. So what have we accomplished? We've diverted almost 48,000 pounds of food waste from the landfill. Um, and that's the equivalent of 316 seedlings planted and grown for 10 years. So, it's pretty effective. Uh, you know, it's a good program. Now, if you turn it over in 2025, we implemented the feebased service. We still have work to do. We need to grow this program. We need to implement a new signup process. We need to update

the web page. And we need to publicize this program. But I can't work on publicizing it until we get the first two items done. So I'm asking you to continue this program and give me a chance to try and grow it in the coming year. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Any discussion on that? I know we something that had been implemented before. Um maybe it's something we can have Miles bring back up to in a work session.

Um well, I was planning to bring up later in other business anyway since I we received an email somewhat to the same effect uh within the last week uh in terms of whether uh we could update the the web page and and do more to to publicize uh the program. And so I don't know if uh Miles you could speak to that. Yes. Um I can I checked with staff given that that uh information came in I think last week to you all through an email. So I passed that along to our public work staff and to uh Miss Lackey. You're out of time. I'm out of time.

And so they've been working on that internally. Uh there's going to be a button placed on the public works website where you can actually go in and sign up for uh this program similar to what they do for like the I think it's the yard waste bin request. So there's a there's a button there. It's like a Google form. So very similar to what that program does. We're going to like u kind of copy that and implement that on the on the public works side. So that's in the process. I think that they said that that will probably take place this week as far as that item being complete. And they also plan to u it's already done. Great. There you go.

Staff is good. Um and so they also plan to send out like social media reminders throughout the year. I think we have a post scheduled for this coming month or the the month of April, I believe. Yep. So, we've already got that uh ready to go as well. Is it possible? You know, we've got a couple, right? We've got Main Street programs. We've got, you know, the cities, places, it can we do some shared type of posting on that. I think that would be helpful to get the visibility to this because I will say, I mean, it's being the liaison to this board. I mean, they've worked really hard to try to get this going. I think there's a lot of interest. It's just like people need to know that it's out there and it's available. Yeah. I've had a number of people come up to me just randomly and talk about it. Yeah, it's good. It's good. So, it is getting out there. Yeah, for sure. So, your efforts aren't wasted.

Thank you for that. Parks, I have a question for you. So, do I have the authority to call someone up to speak at the podium that I know wants to speak but did not sign up to speak? Mr. Chi, would you please come up? And just as a reminder to anyone here, if you want to speak at public comment, there is a signup sheet in the front. Uh, and you do need to sign up in order to to speak, but I know there's some information that you had sent. And I think we would like to be heard. So, your three minutes will start and the little lights will tell you when you're getting close. And don't don't don't be afraid to get too close to the mic. It doesn't pick up well.

Okay. Uh thank you members of the city council, the mayor, and also uh the city manager, Mr. Brazwell. Um basically, the reason why I'm here is just to present a unique opportunity uh for the city to consider as they plan their capital uh budget projects. and I've had the uh pleasure in the month of January and March to uh have uh appeared before the parks and rec citizen advisory board uh with the suggestion I I've sent the information to you and they have direct me at the last meeting uh that it's not within their purview uh which I understand um as you look at the proposal uh the proposal is just an inspiration as a resident uh noting that uh the public and also our high school students have not had the opportunity of having a a rubber running track in existence in the city of Belmont. Uh so the suggestion is a looking from the information is a contingent proposal. Uh if so, the city manager or the mayor or a council member wish to have that uh as part of the uh capital uh projects um budget is to fund from the city cash reserves or any other designated funds combination thereof uh to fund a public rubber running track uh to the sum of approximately $1.5 million um and to be located at the South Point High School um where the existing uh running track exists And the reason being it uh kills two birds with one stone. If we make it a public running track, it would be accessible to all the fine runners and joggers and walkers throughout the city as well as all the athletes and school children that would have access at the high school track. And um I've had some favorable response from different people. Uh specifically um Kenneth uh Taylor, the organizer of the Pont 5K has spoken favorably for this idea. Um the concept itself I being

a joint public proposal I found um uh in the city of u in Capis County the Robinson high school track was funded from tourism money. So that's the reason why I stated let's kill two birds and one stone. If we can convince the Gaston County schools who has control over the high school track that if the city is willing to fork up the money, why not get public access and have everyone share in the wonderful, you know, the wonderful things that a rubber running track would provide for the city. Um, obviously there's the key word is contingent. Um, there's obviously a lot of legal hassles to overcome. Ownership, uh, security, uh, those are some major ones. And um the other thing I was informed by uh a member of our park and wreck is I believe the original track was constructed with private funds. So I'm not sure quite the nature of the ownership is of the high school track. So that's something else that would have to be addressed. But that's what I'm all here for. I think it's it's just an idea. I hope uh you guys enjoy it. I'm planning to run the 5K. I mean I'm old. I got arthritis, bunions, and fallen arches, but I still enjoy uh walking a 5K just for the heck of it. If you have any questions, you know how to reach me. You have my email, phone number, and if the public has any questions about it, too. You you all know way to pester me. Okay.

Thank you, Mr. Appreciate that. Thank you.

All right. So, that will conclude our public comment for the evening. And that will move us to agenda item C2. So, this um the economic development the project family 2025 amended revol um resolution for a level one incentive grant. We have already held the public hearing on this back in uh March 2nd meeting and we tabled the discussion for uh the to consider approval. There were some questions that came up and Miles, I'm going to let you start this off. I know we have uh Donnie Hicks from Gaston County here with us. We appreciate you joining us. There may be some questions that came up that he can clarify. Um but Miles, I'm going to let you run with this because your name is listed as the staff contact on the sheet.

Yeah. Thank you, Mayor. Um yes so there was like really three questions that you all asked during the March 2nd 2026 uh council meeting. The first one uh the salaries of the proposed 30 jobs. The second question can the company's name be made public or do they need to sign a non non-disclosure agreement NDA? And the third has the company ever received an initial incentive grant when they first open their business. Um, I sent those questions that you all had to the EDC and you can see in the writeup that they responded. Um, they attached a document regarding the salaries. It's in your packet. Uh, they state that for the NDA they intend to keep the company's name confidential and will not disclose it during the public hearing um for this meeting. Uh this is a standard approach um for all their local public hearings ensuring respect for the company's contractual obligations, competitive position and business relationships. And they also stated there are no records at Gaston County where the city of Belmont for past incentive grants to this company. Uh since that time they did state that I believe Gaston County did uh provide an incentive grant but the city of Belmont has not followed in that process. So, this is really the first one that um or the the amended one that uh they're asking for. And so, um I did put the background information given that um this item was discussed on March 2nd. Then I asked Donnie Hicks also to attend uh to fill in the blanks um if you all had further questions. There's also the amended resolution uh including the packet and Gaston County's level one incentive grant analysis. So, mayor, I'll turn it back over to you.

Thank you for that. Um so discussion on it. I think the two points that were brought up that I recall being brought up by Mark was one concern with the employment um the compensation the gross wages and it looks like on page 107 of our packet it looks like the Belmont average annual compensation is 53,651 and all of them are over that except for one the sanitation associates at 52. So most of them over with the average of the uh new employees being 59,523 uh with a total of 31 new positions. So that being over the annual wage in Belmont uh and also over the annual wage in Gaston County. Uh so I know that was a big concern. And then the second I think as Miles said so they had received some um grant money from Gaston County but not from Belmont. That's great.

And I know those were Mark's main concerns. He's not here tonight to discuss them further, but I Are there any other concerns? I mean, Donnie is here. We appreciate you coming, Donnie. Um, are there any other questions for him? Yeah, I've just got one question for Donnie. Maybe it's a little bit broader, not just as it pertains to project family because that's part of this the last twi two times it's come up but is it possible to get councils redlisted or NDAs assigned or signed earlier or a part of the process when we deal with these types of opportunities?

Yeah, it depends sometimes on the sophistication and size of the company. Sometimes they will demand an NDA prior to going past the code name, but it it is an issue for them generally to put it out there too early because for all the reasons we listed for competitive reasons, for employment reasons, almost anything gives them the chance to do this and then control how they approach everyone they work with. We can certainly work with you on bringing miles into that earlier. just trying to make the process easier for you guys because we appreciate this coming before us, but also I feel like three4s of this the problem sometimes it's just easier if we know who the company is and then moving forward as as that. But that's all I have may I appreciate Donnie

I just wanted to thank you for being here again too and thanks for the additional information you provided that was helpful um we really appreciate all you do to keep Belmont in the conversation when it comes to commercial expansion and development. Um just as a point of clarification for me when you I was trying to remember in some of our recent grant estimates that have come before us is the baseline typically assuming that they meet 80% of their uh employment numbers and investment. I think that's the example that was included here. So we 20% discount. So what really that that discount is not applied to the employees but it gets tough to estimate what the value of the real estate's going to be. I don't want to geek out and go in their taxes but

I will I get where you're going. I will this gets if this starts say the fall and it crosses 27 it'll cross rebal so we're going to pick up a higher value. Yeah. If it were put into this current year it's going to go in at a substantially lower number and then that piece when rebound hits is not included in the incentive. So it's meant to approximate basically that. Okay. That's all I have. Any other discussion on it? All right. So, we're we're considering approval of this. Yeah. I'd make a motion to approve the amended resolution. Second. Motion made by Jen, second by Alex. All in favor? Any opposed? All right. The motion is approved or the resolution. Thank you. Thank you. Third time charm, Donnie.

Thank you for coming, Donnie. We appreciate you. All right, moving right along. That will get us to agenda item C3, Belmont Tourism Development Authority branding and website presentation. And this is quite the presentation. Um, so we I think we have a couple people from Belmont Tourism here to to walk us through.

Yeah, Mr. Mayor, while they're coming up, um, in my role on the and Marks as well, the tourism development authority, um, I got to to sit in on the process over the last 18 months or Michelle and Daniel who were doing a fantastic job with the tourism development authority, which if you don't know is obviously their main mission is to promote tourism to Belmont and we derive all of our revenue from the hotel occupancy taxes and and they're continuing to thrive. Um, but this was a really extensive experience over about 18 months with the rebrand and the website. And when we when we saw the the demo, I was just like, "Wow, uh, this is impressive." And I said, "Council and the public needs to see this because it was quite an investment of time and money. Um, so I thought it'd be good, good idea to bring them here and have them run through that."

Well, well, I appreciate you doing that. I will share a quick little side story. I have a very close friend that works at High Level Marketing and they saw as I was going through this, they saw some of the slides and specifically asked me who did them and where they had come from because they were they were very impressed with the work. So, I think that that says a lot about the efforts that that your group's putting into this and we appreciate it.

Yeah. Great. We appreciate that and thank you for having us all tonight. I think I know most of you and those that don't, congrats on recent uh election wins. Um Yep. So TDA, so just a reminder for anybody here in the audience, we're funded by uh an NCT NC uh statute. So these are funds that have to be spent on tourism related items. They can't be spent on uh things like road paving, which I see a lot of lately. So thank you for that. I saw Jonathan in the back. I know uh they've been doing a lot of work. So thank you guys for that. So you have a ton of information in your packet. We're going to go through it one by one. I was hoping to keep this under an hour and a half. So, we'll we'll hit it quick. We wanted to make sure you had all this information if you wanted to go back and uh review it later. Um, we're going to go over just a little bit of what we've been doing the past couple years and then show you the website. So, our goal has been to create a solid base, right? Picture a pyramid. We we didn't have a lot coming out of COVID. We didn't we we had a brand that made sense um maybe 15 years ago, but Belmont's changed a lot and it's going to look different 15 years from now. So we wanted to build a new brand and really come out of COVID and have a good way to market Belmont. So we wanted to make a playbook and this playbook the the goal is for it to outlast you know me uh the the current board any employees and have a strong foundation for where we go. Once we had that playbook we wanted to develop the resources around it and say all right how do we implement it and then we we finally you know implement these things uh that we've we've gone through. So, the playbook, just a quick overview. Um, it's a whole new brand identity. Once again, you've got this in your packet. I really encourage you to go back and read this, you know, when you're you got some time uh later. Um, the goal is cohesive messaging and a cohesive strategy. Um, the thing everybody latches on to is we do have a new logo. So, I'll show you that tonight. Um, but that's a small small piece. I want everybody to

understand that's a tiny piece of this whole project, right? We also have things like color palette, typography, um guidelines, things like that. So, this is really the template in the playbook. So, no matter who's around, we we have a cohesive strategy going forward. So, we went through uh four main phases. Explore, we're going to go into this a little bit more, but we did a ton of research. We didn't just come out, you know, of nowhere with this. We did a ton of research. Once we did all that, we evaluated it and we said, what does that the data say? What are people telling us? And then once we've done this uh we created these ideas, right? So these weren't just like me sitting in a back room like drawing some stuff on an Etsy sketch, right? This is really founded and um a lot of feedback from the community and outside the community. And then the phase four engage is us actually putting this into action. Now that uh phase one, like I said, there was 17 one-on-one stakeholder interviews. Some people in this room may have been part of that. So we really wanted to make sure that everybody was involved. This wasn't just the tourism board um doing it on their own. So, we did a ton of interviews. We had a a big focus group. We included um anybody from the community that we we uh could get a hold of or thought made sense from, you know, real estate to local business owners um and anybody else. In addition, we did a a survey outside of the community. And so, that had 382 people to see what do people around us think about us. So, we wanted to know what's our community think, but what's everybody else think uh about us as well. And then we had, you know, an agency do an audit of all of our digital assets and uh kind of judge us on that. So, what did we get from all this survey? The core is downtown. Um that's kind of a guiding principle going forward that you'll maybe hear. Uh natural and outdoor assets, we've got the water, we've got uh mountain biking, we've got all sorts of natural and

outdoor assets. uh heritage, heritage and history. I think you guys hear a lot about this. We've already had a couple proclamations, but a big part of Belmont is the history. And you're going to hear something uh fun about that in a second. And then another thing is our proximity to Charlotte. You know, we're 15 minutes away from Uptown. A lot of people don't realize just how close we are. And a lot of people that stay in our hotels are going to Panthers games or visiting Uptown. They stay here. They come back and forth. So, our our two main features are our proximity to Charlotte and um our downtown. And then we've got some uh some outside perceptions. Once again, a lot of detailed information in your packet if you want to uh go back and view that. We can't leave out. Everybody knows the Daniel Stow uh and a lot of great things they're doing lately. So, we've got a a big focus on helping them promote that as well. So, from all that, we have kind of four brand truths. We won't read them all, but basically, uh, downtown is what drives it. We're right next to Charlotte, Belmont Abbey, a huge part of the community, a huge part of who we are. And then, um, regionally, we're really known by the Abbey. Regionally, a lot of people, uh, and this comes from the survey. This isn't just me saying it. Um, a lot of people maybe don't know Belmont, the city or the town, and think of it to come to, but they know Belmont Abbey. So that's why that came in. Um we've got to do a better job of really promoting that and tying the two. Next, we're going to uh evaluate all this information. So, um kind of showed you everything we got. We evaluated it. And now this is the fun part. Everybody likes to see uh our new logo. So, we brought in um historic Belmont. We really wanted to highlight the history of Belmont. We want to own that, right? We're an old mill town. We want to own

that and promote that and and not shy away from it. So, woven with charm is kind of our positioning line. I think you can get the play on words there. Uh, and we've got different variations of this once again in your packet. Go through it and check out. Uh, you've got 10 pages of logos and how you can use the logo and what not to do, different colors, all that sort of stuff. All right. So, we had this strategy to build a base. We did the research. we implement it. What's the result? Well, we got 48 pages now of what to do going forward. So, 38 of that, all 48 you've got in your packet. So, we're not going through that uh tonight. Um 38 of it goes through all that inmarket uh research. Uh we go through the the brand story, all those sort of things. And then we've got 10 more pages, like I said, focusing on the actual branding, the logo, and that sort of stuff. So this is really the culmination of you know a years'sl long work, a lot of outside help and um a lot of input from the community like I said um tons of interviews and uh tons of time by a lot of people. So really proud of this. So now we're in the engage uh which is what you're going to see tonight. So this is actually implementing everything that we've been working on. Uh once again, the goal was create a foundation, get that brain playbook. Next, uh thank you to those of you that were on council and voted to help us get the staff member. We are a volunteer board is very tough as many of you have served to get a volunteer board to really accomplish things. You know, meeting once a month, so we were able to hire Michelle

right behind me, an amazing hire. Um, second death.

It's really, really unique when you can get somebody uh that lives in your city that is passionate about what they do and is also excellent at it, right? You can't always get those things combined. And uh she's come on board and she's done more since she was hired than we have in a couple years combined um just by having her kind of steward the the Belmont Tourism name. So really excited about that. And so now with her help, we've been able to take control of all of our kind of core digital assets. We used to have to outsource that to agencies, have somebody else manage it. Now we control our narrative and communicate to the public on our own um standing. Here are just some uh stuff we wanted to show you kind of the the look and feel of the new brand. We've got examples of um some of the brand advertising we've been doing. So you'll continue to see this. We're going to start aggressively marketing the brand. Um, and we've got a new initiative uh marketing stove with some of their upcoming events. Um, so you'll see a lot of that in public and you'll see that it matches with our stuff here. And then we've got a brand new website as well which we're going to show you. I think that was the genesis of most of this update. So, we're excited to see that's our um newest public facing uh uh thing here. So, if there's any questions, if not, we've got a quick website demo for you to see what we've been working on.

Great. Michelle's got all that. You know that off the top of your head.

Hey, while they're pulling that up, Daniel, did I see in here? I think I saw an image of like the flags that can be used like on the light post downtown. Didn't we talk about last meeting, I think, about possibly getting some of those? Yeah. Because that would fit within our flag policy to use something like that.

Yeah. So, if you if you look through the branding guidelines, we've got mock-ups for everything. We would love to um you just saw some there, get some banners in downtown and be able to beautify downtown during some of our major events. I think the summer concert series, all that sort of stuff. So, we'd like to purchase some of those with our new logos. Once again, our logo is slightly different. We're promoting to the outside, trying to bring people in. We're different than uh you communicating out public works things and all that. So, we'd like to, you know, help beautify the town, buy some of those uh flags and and bring in some stuff like that. Yes. miles approved.

Yes, because I'm I'm old enough to remember other rebrandings and and there seems to have been lots of different So, I'm just trying to make sure I understand the use of this logo and when it's used visav like the other logo that that we change for the the actual city of Belmont. Yeah, it's it's a great question.

We we do get that a lot. And um so you have the city of Belmont and the city of Belmont has its different departments and I think of that more as like a corporate entity, right? You're operating a business and you're communicating to your citizens. This is the brand of Belmont focused outward to other people to bring them in. So you do have a a tourism logo for the department, but this is really the brand that is publicly kind of put out there and promoting Belmont. So if you look at visit Asheville is, you know, any any major city or actually any city with a tourism board, they do have a separate standalone um outward facing logo that's separate from the the city.

So it's not replacing the other one that we spent uh time and money like four or five years ago doing. Definitely not. It helps kind of distinguish between what might be a public works type of thing. So, like we've been talking about the leaf collection, the yard waste, composting, things like that that are really geared for citizens um versus what is going to be for the the greater population outside of Okay.

Um and to answer your question about users, um great question. Um, so it's actually really interesting just to see as we've been starting to promote this new website. Um, in fact, this last month, um, from March 1st through April 1, we had over 2,000 new users to the website. Um, and that's a huge growth. Um, last month, for instance, was only a little under 600. Um, so we're seeing significant growth already in people going to the site. Um, and then as I'll kind of talk through, um, also just kind of keeping people engaged with the site itself. So, um, as you can see just from the start of it, um, it's really dynamic and engaging. Uh, we really wanted to just get people excited about it. Um, and really encouraged them to to check out the pages and like I was saying, it really encourages them to to take a look and to continue to explore throughout it. Um, and then a lot of what we did was also incorporating that research that Daniel presented. Um, it's a lot of into the the design and the um, you know, just how we're creating and creating a cohesive um, destination for Belmont. Um, as Daniel shared, a big uh, strength we have is event-based um, tourism. And so we really wanted to lean into that throughout the website. So you can kind of see that start here. Um, and I'll share more about that as we go through. Um, and then really also just the different parts that we kind of talked about. Um, again, this is a lot of the things we we took the the research that was presented to us and we really wanted to make sure that that was in the development and the design of the site. So you can see the heritage and culture, getting outside, spending time in downtown, um, Belmont Abbey, all the things that we really learned um, from that important research we we took into the design and development of the site.

Um, but with Belmont, there's so many different things that you can do, and I'm sure um, everyone in the room can attest to that, that you can kind of choose your own adventure. Um, and I'd love to take a minute and get a volunteer um, for any of you if you could choose one of these. categories for me, Mr. Mayor. Sto Park. Food and drink. Food and drink. Okay. Was that not one of the No, it wasn't. Oh, you look at the pictures. He's a picture guy. Picture guy. One of those categories. Yeah, I like I like his suggestion. Food and drink. Let's go.

All of those different um categories. And then Yes. So, food and drink. Um, you can see they'll pull different cards and these images will actually change every time that you're on the site. So, every time you reload the homepage, you'll kind of get to choose your own adventure from there. And it really just gives you a really short brie um and then you can go in and to explore everything that has to um to do with food and drink. But, let's just click on one of the options um that you'll see. So, you can see a full description from here. Um, you'll see information about the location as well as their hours, their website and address and things like that. So, what happens if you go to see all?

Yep. So, that's a great question. You're actually jumping ahead. Um, because you might not be interested in Nelly's. Um, maybe you want to know more. So, that'll actually bring us to our navigation which you can access the see all as well. You can do the explore all food and drink there and then see all as well. So, if you did decide to do that, it would bring you to a page like this, which will have an introduction. Um, and then it'll have the entire catalog of all the places that are tagged for eat and drink. And that's And that's anyone in Belmont. Do they have to come to you to be How do they get on? Like I just want to make sure we're not picking winners and losers here.

Yeah. Yep. So, I did a very um indepth uh look at the different locations and not just in downtown. Um, we have Hickory Grove Coffee Roasters, which is um in in North Belmont, which you might not know of. Um, it's a little bit smaller location, but if there is a location that isn't included, we do already have a form that's created so they can add their business listing there. Um, they can submit their information here. Um, now, as we kind of talked about with the branding, this is of course also a discretion. We want the website to be something for visitors to come to Belmont. So, we are not going to be including businesses that would be more geared for our residents. This is a website that is designed for visitors to come um and to explore from a tourism perspective, not from a a resident perspective. So, that discretion is included on here just so that I'd like to make sure that um I acknowledge that as well.

Is there a cost for the business to be on there? Nope. No cost. Is it relatively easy to update this website and is it all inhouse? Yes. Okay. So that is something that was really important to us um to make sure. So it is built on WordPress. Um so it is things that are able to be edited. Um so if there's things that you see um that basically just comes straight to me and I'm able to to update it as well. Um and then as also with that, we do have a separate form. So if someone has a business already on the website, but maybe their hours are incorrect or um you know, maybe they have new photos that they want to share with us, uh they can actually do that through like an editing of business listing. uh form as well.

I just want to note as well that we're very sensitive. You saw one of our brands is downtown Belmont as a tour. But our goal is to drive for all of not just downtown. So we're extremely sensitive to that and we make sure that businesses north, south, east, west, they all get love and attention from not just focused on a simple segment. And those cards, it just so happened I know Nelly's is pretty prominent in most of our stuff. It just Those rotate so they're not up there every time. Everybody kind of gets equal. It's just an algorithm that just kind of changes accordingly.

Yep. And also with what Daniel was saying, um, as far as things to do, that really is kind of trying to expand people. So maybe it's the downtown that brings people in, but maybe we want to get them to explore other parts of the city. So maybe we want them to see the heritage and culture. Um, or get out outdoors. Obviously outdoors was a big one. Um it was another big part of our research to see. So again, you have this introduction slide and then you have a catalog of all the different things that you can do in the outdoors. Um Kevin Loftton Riverfront Park is obviously really big right now. Rocky Branch Park, they just did a massive redevelopment with with the Boy Scouts. So um how can we better highlight those? How can we showcase some of those pieces? Um so and get people to to enjoy the outdoors.

This is awesome. Yeah, it looks great. I love the idea of having a single place that highlights all the businesses. I was thinking about that the other day really telling what I'm telling people about it. What do you have? What's there? And it's so much easier to be able to tell them to go there. And hats off to you for nailing down historicbellmont.com. Good job on that. There's a lot of Belmonts. You know, we grabbed it and we bought a bunch of several different URLs and they all point back to this. That's great. That's great. Have you Have you Oh, sorry. Go ahead. I was going to say real quick to your point because you said exactly what I was thinking. So the quickest way that I lose interest in a website is when I see the events aren't updated. Yes. Yeah.

And I'm like, okay, they can't even keep their events up to date. So we But you kind of answered that it's inhouse. That's something that's going to actively be constantly done. Um so that when an event rolls off, it rolls off the website. All new events come on. And I assume you're talking closely with Cassidy about those events to make sure that great minds are are working together. Yep. Yes. Okay. Great. Someone dedicated on staff now to handle that. It's huge. Great.

Yep. And there's tons of events and it's great that we already we do have this event calendar. Um and I actually already have the calendar populated through the through December. So even if you were wanting to know Bavarian Holiday Fest, you can look for it on here and you can find it. Um, so we have a full event calendar and then like the forms for the businesses, we also have a submit an event form. So, um, if someone had a local event that they wanted included, we could work on that as well. Um, and then I did want to showcase, so this is the full calendar of events. Um, as Joe was mentioning, it does, you know, these are the most recent, the most upcoming. Um, and then, uh, the full list is through here. So, one I wanted to show also was what an actual full event description kind of looks like. So, if someone were to want to know what more about Galdi Festival, they could go through here. Um, we do have an option to have a couple different photos that they can scroll through um an event website so that they can go out to like the different pages. Uh, dates of course, all the information that they would need and we can hyperlink out to different parts of the website through here. Um, and then it also gives you the venue, which is a really interesting piece to think about. Um, so we have the downtown Belmont is highlighted here. So, um, you can click on that and it will show you all the events that are happening there. Um, and it'll also show you Stow Park. So, if you were to click on that, you see all the events that are happening. Um, and I could click on that, but I actually wanted to show you the search functionality for that. So, if you were wanting to know more about Stow Park, um, you could actually type it in here. disappointed about the location. Another thing that drives me crazy, you see all the event info, you're like, "Where is it?" Well, we get a lot of traffic on mobile. We're all on mobile now. So, easy click throws in your maps straight to the event, right? So, our goal is to be a easy destination like the source for all these events. So, people can find time, location, everything.

Awesome. Do you have like a map showing public parking locations? Oh, Jim, it is. We do not have a public map. Um it is part of our FAQ on the website for parking that does link out to the downtown um parking just because they do have quite an extensive parking um detail on their website. Um and so it's something that we can look to incorporate as well.

Um when you search for anything uh it will pull everything from the site. So anything it thinks that might be included whether that be a blog article or an event um or a place itself. So, like I was saying, if you were to click on a venue, it'll show you all the upcoming events that are happening in that venue as well. Um, so it's a really helpful tool if you're if you're wanting to just kind of see from there. Just real quick, if we just pause here, I have a couple questions. So, for the events, is it just city sponsored events? No. So, it's all So, if I wanted to have an event, how do I get on there?

Um, so then at the bottom, kind of where I was showing you before with that other form. So, there is a submit an event option. So you can click down here and you can kind of see again there is a disclaimer. We want to make sure and we really took this from the Gaston County Tourism and their events as well. We took a lot of this language from them. Um just making sure that is an event that we want to make sure is open to the public. Um it's relevant and attracts visitors to come to Belmont. Um and it encourages visitor spending.

So who who uh vets that I guess like who makes the final say if an event is going to pop up on here or not? As of right now, we haven't gotten any. Um, but that currently is me and if it's something that we need to address in a larger board. Um, that's certainly something we can look at. Um, kind of making sure and uh, and also Cassidy is able to, you know, Cassidy and I work in the same office, so she has a great lens of of what that could look like as well. Are there any non city sponsored events already on here? Um, I'm sorry. Sorry, I don't uh I mean it's okay if you

I'm trying to think. Um like the dark Belmont walking tours are aren't necessarily city sponsored. Um obviously they work closely with the downtown group. Um as of right now, I don't believe that we really do except for um we do have uh like the Chinese lanterns and different events that are happening at at uh the conservancy. Um, so that is probably one I guess I don't know if it wouldn't be city sponsored.

Yeah. Well, if this going to bring people in, even if it's a private entity, we're going to host it. You know, the the delineation is if you guys want to host a learn recycling day, we're probably not going to post that on here because that's really residents, right? So, that's the delineation. Is it going to bring people from outside in to spend money in the community? Okay. And then just a couple more. So, as far as the advertisement of the specific businesses, I think it makes sense ones that target how you bring folks here, but did you guys discuss about like a nominal fee or subscription for the businesses or is this just truly

We haven't and and honestly, I don't think that's a direction we'll go. Our our our goal is um to use these funds we've been getting given to help promote Belmont tourism. So really we're doing this as a benefit to the businesses and we partner with DVDA the businesses um you know the conservancy was at our last meeting. Um lots of lots of people come and see us and we try and help everybody every way we can. So we're um instead of uh asking them for a nominal fee, we're more looking how can we help you. Okay. So how can we help promote you? Do you have anything upcoming? Can we spend money on advertising to promote your your stuff? Okay. It's more of a service. I like that.

I like it. I was just curious. Thank you. And that brings a great point. Um, as Daniel mentioned, we are funded through the occupancy tax. So, of course, stay is a huge portion of of what we do. Um, and so you can see our two hotels that are featured here in Belmont. Um, I'm excited,

soon to be three. I'm excited for um hopefully next May or June to include the residents in. Um but since our hotels are averaging over 80% per um of of uh occupancy per month, um we do want to look at something that we've been working on is developing how can we highlight other Airbnbs and other private rentals in the area that we are still gathering the occupancy tax from. So this is a project that we're we're still in in the process of working on, but you can see an example here. Um it would still have some of the photos of something that you would you would be able to rent. um a description and um some of the event details. So, if they wanted to go and rent it, they would be able to do that through their website. Um the big piece about this one is that it's half a mile from a wedding venue. It's half a mile from Camelot Meadows, which is something that currently our hotels don't necessarily have that close of proximity. Um and that's a big part of this website because we know that tourism is a is um a weddings are a huge driver for tourism. So that brings to our next um kind of almost like a miniature site within the site. Uh historically there was a Belmont brides website which was a completely separate branding, completely separate website. We were sending people multiple different locations. It really got a little bit confusing. Um so what this page does is it really is able to bring everything into this URL and drive traffic to one place. Um it's something that we're going to continue to build on and expand on because we see a a big growth in this opportunities for weddings. Um, so for instance, we really want to get a compilation video. So we could click here and you could see all the different venues that are here. Um, but we do have different venues that are highlighted here. Not just places that you could get married at, but also maybe you want to host your rehearsal dinner or maybe you want to have a a wedding shower at, you know, Belmont Specialty Foods in their private event space. So um, we do have different venues that you could have for events as well. Um, and

we want to continue to build this out for different information, you know, blogs and other inspiration for for people to get involved and to get married here. Um, so there's one more uh tab left that we haven't covered and that is the about. Um, I definitely want to showcase the history. I know that's been something that we've all kind of talked about and how important it is and that's why it was, you know, included in the branding. Um, so this page is definitely one I would highly recommend checking out. It's really engaging. I love the little uh timeline that goes through uh and the different photos and videos that they were able to incorporate. Um, and then we do have a couple videos here that are um, sourced here. So Mark and I, I know he's not here today, but we actually got a chance to see this video um, last week. They premiered it at the historical society. It's about eight nine minutes long, but it's really really incredible. They did a great job. So, um I'm glad that we're able to kind of house it on here. Um and then this is also an article for or a video from PBS. Um they did a trail of history, Boomtown. So, um it's a great spot that we can kind of get everything all in one place. Um again with the about similar to those things, we do have a newsroom now which has uh all the things that were kind of recently talked about. Um there's the Marriott that Jim was just mentioning. Um, so a lot of great uh archive of news that's happening in Belmont, but the real big piece for the about is the blog. Um, now with blogs, they're really really important right now. Um, with chat GBT and the AI LLM, which are uh large language model programs, um, they need quality content to be able to feed those those sources, right? So they need to have that information so that they can then answer the questions that are being asked via chat GBT. Um so this is going to be a a

a much growing, you know, we'll continue to add more articles and things like that. Um so you can see some of the articles that have already been in for like really unique content um that might not live elsewhere so that the the chat GBTs and the LLMs of the world can can pull it in. Um and you can see an example of that here. uh you'll see a table of contents on the right hand side and then um can kind of just scroll down through here and see different photos and different things that you can do for instance this is thing free things that you can do at the Daniel Stow Conservancy and we've engaged with influencers too right to gather some of this content right

for the blogs we have not done the blogs um influencer content yet um but we have done that a lot on social media so um we're getting a lot of really good feedback from from that um and definitely something that we can look at doing um for incorporating some of those photos and things that we've done. This is awesome. This looks amazing. I'm telling you guys, I told you it so many different directions coming together into one website. Fantastic job, you guys. Awesome. Fantastic. Good. I am glad. And I'm sorry. Go ahead. Whoever came up with woven with charm is that is awesome.

Yeah. And like I said, we we gave you a bunch of information. I I think you uh you actually might find it a little bit enjoying to go through and there's tons of research that maybe you wouldn't um naturally think about what people think about us and that sort of stuff. So, great job. Well, now that this is done, my business website is slightly old. Great job, guys. Yeah, y'all did a great job. You really did. Well, as I as I'm sure Jason has heard me like a broken record, a website's never done. It's always a work in progress. Please send me feedback if there's things. Um the site map is down at the bottom in the footer, so you can really kind of just dig in through here, too. If you if that's easier for you, um feel free to send me feedback. And I'm sorry. It's a living document.

It's a living document. It'll continue to grow and evolve. So, I like the constitution. Keep checking it out. And thank you for letting us come and share. Thank you. That was great. That was great. Good job, guys. Thanks, Daniel. All right, moving right along. That was good. Um, that'll take us to agenda item C4, Belmont Sports Hall of Fame, the Honor Wall and City Wreck Building. And Miles, Miles, is that you? Me? Yes, sir.

All right. Thank you, Mayor. Um, Art Shoemaker from the Belmont Sports Hall of Fame approached uh me, oh, it's probably at least a year ago now, and has recently resurrected the idea about putting um various plaques and frames from past uh sport recipients in the CIRC facility. And the location is if you come off the um elevator on the second floor, there's a wall directly in front of you. Uh that wall in particular is what um Art's thinking about. Um the wall would uh it's about 18 feet in length. Uh would it require um a track system to hold the actual pictures in in place and we're thinking that there'd be like five rows of pictures uh for all those recipients. Uh we also discussed about potentially uh putting tracks on the on the right hand wall too. There's a there's a smaller wall on that side. Given that um as more people are inducted into the Hall of Fame, we could expand that area and move the pictures over as we needed to. Uh the track system itself uh will be constructed by Jeff Gibson. He's a former cabinet maker. Um and so he plans to construct the tracks themselves. He's got like a a sample prototype track that staff has looked at. and we we went over there and and looked at the wall, looked at the track, see how it could be mounted. Uh which effectively you place a track at the bottom, place a track at the top, and the pictures kind of slide into them and then you cap them on the end so they can't be removed. Um, one thing about Mr. Gibson is he's currently out of business and so he has requested that the city staff install the tracks and uh so I asked public works staff or public works director if our staff could install the tracks. They thought that that would be simple enough as long as we had all the materials, all the hardware and everything and then Mr. Gibbs can help us locate like the exact location on the wall. Just the

attachment method needs to happen by city staff. Um, and so before giving this an outside entity asking that of uh me, of course, it's not my building, so I wanted to bring that to you all's attention. Um, we do support having having the Hall of Fame pictures over there. Um, I don't think it would be a a negative to the building. The tracks themselves are more industrial look similar to what that building is construct. It's not like a It's not wood or, you know, stained wood or anything like that. It's more of like a metal uh track system. So, it kind of fits in with with the wall structure over there. Is it the Are we talking about a lot of pictures of the historical society? They are back there. Liz is anxious for us to get them out of here.

Let's take it. I think it'd be cool. Well, we've kind of outgrown ideas. I think it's great. We've kind of outgrown our space over there. I'm on that board with art and we've got I think we've got eight over 80 inductees now and they all have they're all uniform. It all looks the same. You know, it's a portrait with the bio underneath. It's a consistent look and like Miles said, the track system that Jeff was designing and going to manufacture for us is it fits with the aesthetics of the building. Just the sports tying is a better in my it's a more appropriate. If I were looking for like a a sports or recreation hall of fame, I would expect it to be in like a civic center as opposed to the historical society, right? Yeah. Is there a wall space anywhere downstairs for this or is it the only wall space that it could be is upstairs?

I'm trying to think like I know it can't really be in the lobby, but I think that was the largest space that we identified that could actually hold all the Yeah. and allow for some growth. Is there any wall like back there in the back where the concession stand is? Most of those walls have like doors, so there's no like real like long wall. There is like a long wall in the backside as you go to like the multi-purpose room, but it's on the backside where nobody really really can see it. So really coming off the elevator, come up the stairs, you know where that area is. So that's it's probably the best place. I think Arc looked around the building a lot and so he's recommended that wall. So we said yes. I walked straight to that wall and kind of looked at the wall that he was referring to, but I didn't Thumbs up.

Peek around. I didn't give anybody a thumbs up. I but I didn't peek around uh at other walls there. Um well, I appreciate Jeff uh Mr. Gibson offering the supplies. Yeah, I'm sure that's no small cost and something that we can avoid by just providing the wall and the labor um and art for keeping us alive. And Jason, you too. Do you need um direction on this or a motion or I'd like to have Yeah, at least a motion. I'll make a motion. Motion to approve the use of the wall. Yep. And install the track installed by city staff. Yeah. Perfect. All right. Motion made by Jason, second by Charlie. All in favor? Any opposed?

All right. There's going to be sign up there above it, right? Like wall of fame. Yeah. Yeah. Be sure to let Art know. Yeah. I know he'll be excited. He's probably already All right. All right. Okay, that will take us to uh item D, other business. So, uh Alex, we'll start with you.

Um hope everyone had a wonderful Easter, good time with family and and all. I really just have one thing and actually a few people have reached out to me in the Oak Street area, but also in Davis Park area. They've seen a a massive spike of like the electric scooters and stuff like that. and I've had two residents reach out in two separate occasions that they've almost hit a kid um unfortunately through that area. So, I don't know if there's any enforcement or signage or anything like that we can do. Um they're actually motorized. So, the motorized bikes are bad, too. That's what I was going to say.

Yeah. Well, they said these were the scooters, but um I don't know, Miles. Just maybe something we could maybe talk to Chief about. I just don't want anyone to get hurt. And there's a couple blind spots and people tend to fly through that area and not kids on scooters or adults on scooters. Kids kids on scooters. Okay. Adults acting like kids. Yeah. Could be that too. But I just don't want anyone to get hurt. Sure. Yeah. In that area heavily traveled by families and kids that are out playing. So we don't want anyone to get hurt. So I think it would be fair that we have a conversation with Chief to see Yeah. because that would be what city road back there anyway. So I mean on on the roads themselves is that where they are with the ride is someone through there.

Are you allowed to have a scooter on the road? Technically I would imagine no because if you're underage and you don't have a permit I think it has to do with the size of the the electric motor in it and all that kind of stuff. There are rules. I mean it's kind of balancing for me personally like I love the idea of people using alternative modes of transportation and playing doing those things but we want to do them in a safe way. Yeah. Uh, so having something there that keeps everybody safe while they're enjoying the

We could we could check our ordinance and state laws. Um, regarding that, I know on the sidewalks, I think we have ordinances about not riding like bicycles and everything on sidewalks. So, I'd imagine that motorized other vehicles can't ride on sidewalks, but far as the streets are concerned, uh, let me check and bring y'all back information or send an update to you all. And then maybe just one more thing, mayor. Uh, everyone thank all the volunteers and staff that made the uh the Easter events uh happen in the park. It seemed like it was really well attended. I know my little man had a lot of fun. So, uh, the bubble guy was a really good huge hit. That was a huge hit and the wind worked out. So,

pretty sure that was Jim as the Easter Bunny. Yeah. Well, I I felt old cuz I was I told you, "Hey, remember in Maul Raps and they beat up the Easter Bunny and you all looked at me like I was from another planet." Like, good movie. Malls. That's a good movie. Yeah, that's a good movie. I know it is. Heard of it. Underrated. I'm so old. You are. Thank you,

Charlie. Uh, I just got one thing piggybacking off of what Alex said about the Easter in downtown Belmont. Um, that was a great event. I saw a lot of kids just having the time of their lives hunting Easter eggs, getting their face painted, meeting the Easter Bunny or Jim. Uh, hats off to all the staff that helped with that. That was that was a great event. That's all I got. Jason,

um, couple of quick things. Um Miles, I think we had a conversation about and also with Chief about some concerns slashcomplaints about um some business and uh residents complaining about like noxious persistent noxious odors in certain parts of town. Um, and I we're wondering if it might be possible to maybe look at amending our nuisance abatement ordinance to include noxious odors if it becomes a persistent thing. And, you know, it's uh, were they able to determine the source? I think it's pretty apparent what the source is. It was.

Yeah. After the after uh Councilman Runfeld had had the conversation, I think that he reached out to chief and chief put him in touch with a police uh officer regarding the conversation. Then me and chief had also a separate conversation about having a code enforcement possibly look in to see if we could um uh possibly have an ordinance around noxious odors uh in that purview. So he is he's checking he's checking that out and that was probably last month's department head I mean last month's monthly meeting that I had with him. So probably two weeks in that he's doing the research. So we should have more information coming to you all on that. Okay. Thank you.

Um and then one more last thing. Um I know recently we had the St. Patty's Day bar crawl and uh it's always a huge event. I like to go to it myself, but I one of the things that kind of surprised me was um the there was a sign this year in front of city hall um advertising the bar crawl. And again, it's it's an awesome event. I just don't know that having that type of advertisement in front of arguably our most iconic landmark, city landmark, it kind of gives the impression it's like a city sanctioned event.

Um I don't have any problem with it if it was in front of private businesses, but um I don't know, maybe next year if that's something that how how the count the rest of council feels about it. But uh that would be something I would suggest maybe giving some evaluation to next year. There were there were some citizens that raised that issue with it. It wasn't just me. I agree with you on that. Thank you, Jason.

Jim, um just a couple of things. We already talked about the the compost program in connection with public comment. Um uh just a quick update, Miles. Uh we had a public comment last month about um what we could do to uh allow for participation in that wreath project with the the veterans graves in the cemetery. Uh just where if there's anything we needed to do with respect to that.

Yes. Um Bridget Somerville was the person that signed up and for some reason we don't have phone numbers on our comment sheet. So, I struggled to find who Bridget Summer Somerville was and her contact information. Luckily, one of our staff knew her and so we've got her cell phone number. I passed that to Jonathan during the May meeting coming up. We're going to ask for council approval for Wreaths Across America at the cemetery. And I think the request was that we pick up the boxes after they place the wreaths. So, um yeah, staff's reaching out to Miss Somerville. Okay. Very good.

Awesome. The only other thing um we Joe, you read a proclamation about walk to school day, but um you know there is an event where where people will actually be walking to school um at um what is it? I think it's at um well it's at Davis Park. They're going to walk to Belmont schools, right? Multiple Well, if we had it's it's early in the morning, but it's a good event. Uh we were all invited um on Wednesday, a week from Tuesday the 14th. What time? That was like 6:30. Okay.

But it is well worth it that we had a good crowd at at Davis last year and they did one at Paige um where they walked from um what is that? Uh rot Yeah. to to Paige. So, it's always fun uh to do. So, I would suggest if you're available. So, I think Reagan is the one we need to RS we need to. So, that's it.

Great. Thank you. Thank you, Jim. All right. Just a couple things. Um just wanted to echo what everyone said about um city staff and the Easter events. Um I was not here, but I I saw lots of pictures and it looks like a lot of people had a really good time. So, thank you for everyone that continues to put efforts into these events for our city and our residents to enjoy. Um, I quick update. I'm still working with DBDA regarding updates to their bylaws. I think it's something we've all discussed kind of what that's going to look like. So hopefully in the next little bit we'll we'll have something to look at there as far as what that ultimate direction will be. Um, and then I just wanted to thank each and all of you for making time for me. uh we had individual meetings and I got to sit down with you and and uh ask your opinion and your advice and uh what you're passionate about about our town and it they were great meetings. I enjoyed all of them. Uh, I really appreciate you taking the time, the dedication you put into our city, but also to take additional time and I know there's been a lot of asks for additional time lately. Uh, but just to sit down with me personally oneonone, it was it was really uh helpful for me to kind of see where your your passions are and what really makes you love Belmont the way you do. So, I appreciate that um taking the time to do that. So, with that, uh, I think that will finish up our other businesses and I will entertain a motion to adjurnn. Motion to adjurnn.

Second. Motion by Alex. Seconded by Jason. All in favor? Any opposed? All right. We will stand a journ.