City Council - Regular Meeting

May integrity of soul be your first ideal, the source that will guide and bless your work. Let us pray. Holy One, giver of every good gift, we thank you for calling us to live our life in community, to share one another's burdens and joys, to cheer each other on, to share our resources and protect the vulnerable. Give us your wisdom and may all we do and say here today be a reflection of grace, of love made visible. You know our hearts and we know that we all have everything we need to make life worth living for everyone. Thanks be to you, creator of life. Amen. Shelley, do you want to tell us a little bit about Sharing House? I will. As many people know, Sharing House, we're celebrating our 45th anniversary this year. It's been a large source of compassionate services to the most vulnerable in our community, low-income people living in Transylvania County. I just came from a board meeting where I told our board that we are seeing a 14% increase of services this year, and that was on top of a hurricane year last year, which is unfathomable. We are out of space. Some of you were there this week. And you know our showers are running constantly. We have quite a challenge that's growing in our community. people who are unhoused we need more showers we need more space we need more funding to be honest but with all of that said we have 130 volunteers every week we have 270 on our roster this is a very generous community our public servants here are partners and everything that we do and we hope that we contribute to the well-being of community as well and we'll continue to do so we appreciate the work of the city of Brevard and anything that we can do to partner with you we're here to do it and we thank you well we are so glad to have sharing house as a strong community partner we couldn't do without you that's right thank you all right if everyone would please stand and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance

Attention, honor, pledge. 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.

Okay, Madam Clerk, do we have a quorum? Yes, Madam Mayor, you have a quorum. All members are present.

All right, Council, you have the draft agenda. Are there any proposed modifications to the agenda?

I'd like to make a couple changes, or one change and one addition. I'd like to suggest we move M2 under new business to L1. That's a matter that actually affects the budget, so I think we should handle that before we get into the approval of the budget. And then I think staff provided us a resolution in authorizing submission of an application for the North Carolina Water Resources Development Grant for the Norton Creek Stream Restoration Project and I'd like to add that to the consent.

Okay. Any other modifications? All right, Council, do I have a motion to approve the agenda with the one addition and one modification?

So moved.

Do I have a second?

Second.

All in favor?

Aye.

The modified agenda is approved. Council, you got the draft minutes of the June 1st, 2026 regular meeting. Are there any changes or corrections to those minutes? Do I have a motion to approve? So moved. Do I have a second?

Second.

All in favor?

Aye.

The minutes are approved. All right. We will move on to certificates, awards, and recognition. And we have one proclamation this month. I would like to ask Randy Lytle to please join me up here. Randy is the president of the Mary C. Jenkins Board of Directors, and our proclamation this month is number 2026, type 19, on Genting. Whereas President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1st, 1863, declaring the enslaved people in Confederate territory free, paving the way for the passing of the 13th Amendment, which formally abolished slavery in the United States of America. Whereas word about the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation was delayed some two and a half years to June 19th, 1865 in reaching authorities and African Americans in the South and Southwestern United States. Whereas Emancipation Day observations are held on different days in different states in the South and Southwest and in other parts of the nation. Whereas June 19th has a special meaning to African Americans and is called Juneteenth, combining the words June and 19th, and has been celebrated by the African American community for over 150 years. Whereas the annual Juneteenth celebration in the city of Brevard this year will include a historical trolley tour on June 19th and 20th, a guest speaker and seafood dinner on Friday evening, June 19th at the Mary C. Jenkins Center, an afternoon celebration on Saturday, June 20th at Silverstein Memorial Playground, and a joint worship service followed by a Sunday dinner on Sunday, June 21st at Mary C. Jenkins. Whereas, Juneteenth is an official City of Brevard holiday, and city offices will be closed on June 19th. Now, therefore, I, Maureen Copelaw, Mayor of the City of Brevard, You hereby declare June 19, 2026 as Juneteenth in the city of Brevard, North Carolina, and urge all citizens to become more aware of the significance of this celebration in African-American history and the heritage how grateful the city is to have the Mary C. Jenkins Board of Directors do the organization and put this incredible celebration together. And perhaps you can tell us a little bit more about the details.

Absolutely. We just made the ninth year annual doomsday event, and it has grown every year since. We had over 300 or so people last year. We're looking for bigger and better things this year. We've added a lot more things to it. There's going to be inflables and a derby going on as well this Saturday. We'll talk about Friday real quick. I don't want to take too much time. But Friday is the program we have with Dr. Dionne Hoskins-Brown. She's a marine biologist professor at Savannah State University. She's coming to be, I guess, speaker that evening. We'll be right back. Well, thank you. And every year is an incredible celebration.

everybody please come join us let's have a bigger crowd than last year i mean i've heard people tell me that they're going to come instead of going to charlotte because ours because we really do we put an awful lot of Thank you, everybody. And remember, city offices are closed on Friday. Okay, we will move on to public comments. The public is invited to speak during public comment at this time on any topic unless it is a public hearing item on this agenda. Anyone who wants to speak must register with the city clerk, which is the sign-up sheet. When it is your turn, step to the podium in front of city council, state your name and address clearly, limit comments to three minutes or less and avoid repetition, and I will give you a warning when you have 30 seconds left. Direct comments to the full council, not to an individual council member or to staff. I will call people up in the order that you signed. Our first speaker is Rodney Locks.

Good evening, Mayor, City Council. My name is Rodney Locks. I live at 187 South Rice Street. This time I didn't forget my glasses. I have followed you closely during this budget season. I must commend you for your thoughtfulness and commitment to maintaining a level of service that people will be happy with. During the public hearing, it is clear council priorities and the citizens' priorities did not line up. I even commend council for making last-minute changes to show council was paying attention. You know most of us don't have high paying jobs that will allow us to afford continued property tax increases or higher water and sewer rates. Yet as hard as you tried, you could not keep from raising property taxes by 2.5 cents and water rates by 4.5 cents. Yet you even had to increase the municipal service tax by 65 cents. You know, we citizens are already paying 57% of the general budget for personnel and 28% is for operations. If council does not do anything to make it affordable to live in Brevard, not take care of the homeless and much less improve our quality of life, we cannot continue to support you and our families. If you think this budget year was challenging, you know next year will be worse. Council needs to look at its own internal health. You need to engage an independent group like you did for the police department. I suggest council needs a total reassessment of its priorities, level of service, health care plans, staffing expenditures, and investments. You need to get new more, new money. You cannot keep raising property tax and water rates. The handwriting is on the wall. Read it and heed it. You don't have much time.

Thank you, Mr. Locks. All right, our next speaker is Randy Austin.

My name is Randy Austin. I don't live in Brevard. I do all the business, 78 West Main Street. My brother and I own a West Main Barbershop. I've been working on this main street for 38 years. I took this business over from men that started it in 1957. These men told me when I started, the hardest part about having a business on Main Street was the lack of parking. And this has been so true. I'd like to encourage this council to start the conversations about a parking garage or parking lots, et cetera. Please don't wait until the acoustic trail is finished before we start the conversation. But parking is not the main reason I'm here tonight. At the last council meeting, at the end of the last council meeting, the subject was brought up about reviewing the town's ordinances related to how law enforcement can interact with homeless population downtown. As someone that has spent decades working on property and paying taxes, on Main Street, I don't think there's a homeless problem on Main Street. What we have is a substance abuse problem. The things I have seen for the last two years would shock most normal people of Levard. And I have pictures and videos to back it up. Would someone that has become homeless from job loss, medical bills, or fire lay on benches, throw trash, drink straight from liquor bottles, have fornication, and in just general lay drunk from daylight to dark? I think not. I think using the word homeless or unhoused to describe the people that are causing problems for the police is insulting to a legitimate homeless person. I am here to ask as a business owner, property, and a law-abiding citizens and taxpayer please give the police department all the tools they need to keep the good people in this town to have the community that they deserve where moms kids and everyone feels safe without seeing some of the behavior I've seen for the last couple of years if any of the council members mayor staff or city staff would like to have a conversation across the street.

Thank you, Mr. Austin. Our next speaker is Doug Powell.

Good evening. By the time we see each other again in these chambers, we will all have celebrated our nation's 250th birthday of independence, so it is prudent to review what we will be celebrating anyway. There are many misconceptions about the founding of this country, and those who founded it. Some of these historical inaccuracies have been presented ignorantly and some maliciously. As a city council member, when the things you say or do get filtered too many times by too many people, this presents a window of opportunity for those political decisions to be misinterpreted as well. This is why I commend those citizens who watch here live or online. No better way for a citizen to decide what your intent as a city council member is than by listening to your comments directly and tallying up your votes on each issue. This is our duty in a constitutional republic. And this is the reason why I share what I've learned about the original intent of this nation's founding it to you all. As you would not like to be completely miscategorized by a historian 250 years from now, I think it's important to set the record straight about those men we call the Founding Fathers. We have largely been taught that these 56 men were trying to ensure mostly political and economic advantages when they signed the Declaration of Independence, but this is a relatively recent and incorrect interpretation. I don't have enough time to go over every misconception tonight, but please read the Declaration yourselves so you will know the 27 reasons why they mutually pledged to each other their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. Rarely do people risk death solely for economic reasons. Jesus' disciples risked crucifixion and death because they were convicted by a truth greater than themselves. The signers of the Declaration knew that they had everything to lose, and the odds of victory against Great Britain was slim to none. At the end of the day, these men knew they were signing their death warrants in order to preserve their God-given civil and religious liberties. and ultimately handed these down to future generations. Let's tally up the sacrifices these men made on our behalf after the ink dried. Seven lost their lives, two lost their health, five were prisoners of war, 17 lost their estates or fortunes, Many burned to the ground. Five incurred heavy debt, four lost their children, and four lost their wives. This doesn't include the days, months, and years they were away from their families and their hometowns. They were literally America's most wanted and were hunted down by the king's men every step of the way.

30 seconds.

So perhaps sometime between our barbecues and fireworks, we can celebrate our independence and give thanks for the enormous sacrifice these men endured for the cause of our civil and religious liberties, freedoms, and honor them by presenting a more accurate view of them to the next generation. Speaking of future generations to follow, signer John Adams exclaimed, posterity, you will never know how much it costs the present generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make a good use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in heaven that I ever took half the pains to preserve it. Happy Independence Day, everyone.

Thank you, Mr. Powell.

blue wristbands for you all. I'm sure you appreciate that. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, Doug. All right, our next speaker is Representative Anna Ferguson.

Representative Ferguson, welcome. Hi, thank you. I just wanted to say a quick word of introduction. I am Anna Ferguson. I'm your representative in the North Carolina House. I was appointed back in the spring, roughly less than a week before I had to report to Raleigh to session. which is why this is unfortunately the first opportunity I've had to come meet you in person. I watch your live streams, so I feel like I've met you all, but it's different face-to-face than it is watching you over the television. And I had the honor and pleasure of meeting Mayor Koploff a couple weeks ago, so I look forward to having the opportunity to sit down so we can discuss what we need to do together. The way I see my position is I'm the conduit, between you and what you need from the state. So I'm not here to tell you what you need. You all are the experts. I'm here to have you tell me and then for us to work out how we're gonna make that happen. I will leave some cards here at the end, but again, just wanna take the opportunity to introduce myself to you all. Thank you. Thank you, Representative Ferguson.

All right, that is everybody that has signed up for public comment. We are going to move on now to special presentations. Our first presentation is the Transylvania County Comprehensive Transportation Plan and we have Mr. Daniel Sellers from NCDOT and Vicki Eastland from Land of Sky who are going to present the transportation plan.

And so CTPs were originally developed And so... at the regional level and .

A lot of these things are in here because it's a very engineering-heavy text. I'm here to try to...

and I'll just push this.

All right, I think we will open this for questions and comments from council before I ask for a motion about adopting it with or without any revisions. And we will start with Mr. Wise.

All right, so NCDOT loves their acronyms, and I am currently on, and I'm going to get this wrong probably, LOSRPOTAC and the TCTAC. This is a CTP, and if you remember the Sears and Roebuck catalog, and some of you here would, it's bigger than that. This is what I call fondly a goat choker because my goat at home could not even eat this. So it's an incredibly comprehensive plan. A lot of work went into it and a lot of review. So I really applaud the efforts of all the kind of partners in this thing. And as Daniel said, this is a 20 to 30-year timeline. And I do think it's important to remember that this is system-focused, as you said, and it is currently not in any way fiscally constrained. This is sort of a, let's not say wish list, because they are real needs. They are. That's right, so one point, and I'm sure you guys know what I'm about to say. I had just gotten onto the board when we started looking at this thing, so I didn't have any personal involvement with this particular plan, but I did notice one project on here, which is Project 17, and I don't want to get the name of it wrong. It is officially the Railroad Avenue Extension, And even with all the caveats that I just talked about, how these are not fiscally constrained, this is just lines on paper, that particular project really raised some alarm bells for me and I think for some other members of city council. And so I brought it up at the last TAC meeting, if we could get that. The county, sorry, yes, the TCTAC. meaning if we could, I made a motion to have it removed, and while that motion failed, I think we came up with a potential alternate to replace it, which would take this potential traffic onto Wilson Road. I don't want to get into too many details, but I have been guilty of calling Railroad a bypass. It is not a bypass. There's Ricky. Not a bypass. I do think there are a number of people in the county who are very anxious to look at real bypass options, but that's not what this piece is. I think the alternative you guys have come up with on Wilson Road is also not a bypass. But it just would enable us to take this particular project, which is unworkable, off of this books, replace it with a workable, potentially workable future project. And that would satisfy me, because I think otherwise this is a pretty comprehensive plan. So that's a lot for you guys, I know, because we've been going back and forth on this quite a bit. But I just kind of wanted to get it out on the record. And tell me if I'm kind of summarizing. That's my understanding of how your end is working. Otherwise, obviously, this is a pretty, it's intimidating. One, it shows that we have a lot of things to do in the county, but we also have a lot of really smart people thinking about it. I think that's all I have.

I just want to make sure I understand, Mr. Weiss, your comments are that you would like to have Project 17, the Railroad Avenue project, removed.

I would like to have that removed. And as we discussed, it can be, if we need to say, replaced or the Wilson Road project put in. But yes, I would like to see 17 removed from this document.

Ms. Holder?

I don't feel so wise coming after the wise man. I got this last week and I haven't had a chance to review it as much as he has, but as I'm sitting here listening and thinking and the pages that I looked at where you zone into Brevard City, one of the questions that I get asked a lot is about the roundabouts. And how do you factor in how many roundabouts we need or have you done that according to what the traffic study or your transportation study is presenting?

Vicki, can you get closer to the mic?

At the level of the comprehensive plan, we don't necessarily say what the treatment will be. We identify intersections that need improvement. And at such time that that project is selected to go on into development, that's when the engineers will determine what the appropriate treatment for that intersection will be.

That makes sense. Thank you.

Mr. Baker?

Yeah, I'll start with a question and then I'm going to have a comment. Thanks for all the work. It's incredible the amount of detail that goes into these things. I think, you know, I liked your timeline that you showed just saying that we're right at the beginning of this process, but I know that local prioritization eventually factors in and Yeah, and so I'm curious, particularly in the appendix that you provided, there's a ton of great sort of data, particularly with, what's the word, capacity for the roadways, and I know that we've had in the past certain local priorities either from us or I'm thinking of one in particular with the county with Rosamond Highway that may have conflicted with the capacity data that is provided. So how do you square those two things when a local priority doesn't necessarily line up with what you're seeing on the data side of things?

So as future volumes are projected to increase, those sections do start to fail.

Right. It does, yeah. And I would agree with Councilman Wise on Project 17. I know that something related to Project 17 has been discussed for maybe, I don't know, 20 years. Yeah. And, you know, it, it bubbled up, I don't know, 1012 years ago, and there was some public input that Okay. And, and at that time, public input being what it was, it was kind of put on the shelf. Can you just talk through like, what that whole the history there?

Prior to me.

Right.

Right. And then just in terms of the mechanics of tonight and our recommendation and Councilman Wise, what he suggested, is there, how do we go about making a recommendation but then potentially replacing one of the items? Or what would you suggest that our motion be tonight?

I would recommend that you motion to recommend adoption of the plan with exchanging Project 17

Okay, thank you. That's all I have.

Mr. Daniel?

Yeah, I just have one question. I noticed in the back of the folder that there was some comment about the Brevard downtown circulation pattern study, and I just want to make sure that we're not talking about that in this plan. And that's the assurance I was looking for. Thank you.

Not a lot of comments, just thanks for the comprehensive plan. One of the things that I found interesting was talk of parking rides, which I'm really a proponent of, and also doing things to get people downtown, but not necessarily cars. It's better to have foot traffic than it is to have vehicles. So I think that is one of the things that addresses it and there's many other things. So I would just point that out as personally being important. Great. That's all I have.

All right. Counsel, do I have a motion?

I'll try this. I'll make a motion that we adopt the comprehensive transportation plan with the exception of replacing the Railroad Avenue number 17 project with a new number 17 project that we'll call the Wilson Road extension. I'll second.

All right. We have a motion and a second. All in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? Motion passes. And we've got all that. All right. Thank you, guys. Appreciate it. All right, we will move on to our second special presentation. And that is a summary of the Barry Dunn needs assessment report and current Brevard Police Department organizational changes. And Chief one cell our Brevard police chief will present.

I'm here to provide a brief update on the very grand organizational assessment and the progress that we have made since the report was completed. The purpose of the assessment was to provide an independent review of organizational health The assessment included employee surveys, interviews, and operational analysis. It gave employees throughout the organization an opportunity to have their voices heard. The report ultimately identified five primary areas for improvement that we're going to touch briefly on. This was discussed in more depth in a prior public safety committee meeting. While there were certainly challenges identified in each of these areas, one of the most encouraging findings that the report demonstrated was that our employees remain committed to the mission of the police department and they want to see their organization succeed. Under the first area identified as leadership, the leadership findings largely centered around Since arriving in January, many of these findings were reinforced in my one-on-one view to officers. During the first month of my tenure, I met individually with As a result of the report and meeting with not officers, we've already implemented several changes, which included restructuring portions of our organization. We've clarified expectations by not only rank, but assignment within the department. The importance of delegating responsibilities, reinforcing our chain of command, We move into the second finding, communication. Communication was another recurring theme, or rather a lack thereof. Employees expressed concerns about an over-reliance on email, lack of follow-up, inconsistent communication during periods of change, This has allowed us not only to have their voices heard on a monthly basis, As a result of this, we are having to review every single one of our policies and make changes. we are creating pre-event action plans. We've improved staffing alignment. We did a workload analysis in our criminal investigations division to determine if the lieutenant and CID, based on workload analysis, had enough work to do. With finding that it could be run by a sergeant, I've now been able to use that lieutenant And then finally, as we go down into job satisfaction, while the report identified morale and trust concerns, it also found what I think is most important, which is that career development, recognition, and overall employee bonus. So moving forward, as I've said previously, I don't feel the Barry Dunn report is a document about where we were. I see it as a blueprint for where we need to go. The report is serving as both a roadmap and accountability tool for me and for our department. We're currently working with Barry Dunn. We are scheduled, we're slated to meet today of our employees, increase communication to receive our accreditation, focus on recruitment and retention, and then continue to build professional organization for both the employees and citizens of the city. So I appreciate y'all's support throughout this, and if you guys have any questions, I will take those now.

Thank you, Chief. We'll open it for questions. Mr. Weidel.

Thank you, Chief Wenzel. When we went over this presentation in our public safety committee meeting I said the same thing but I'll say it again in public that what an awesome job I think the Barry Dunn report was was great there's more to it than what you were able to present today and I think you've done a great job in taking the recommendations and moving quickly on things that you could move on right away and what this is is organizational transformation and it's not easy but it's definitely moved in the right direction. And another thing I think is that the entire staff, and I've said this to city managers, that there's examples here where our entire staff can take some of these initiatives and take a look at our entire staff where it comes to recognition and wellness. some of the review policies that you're putting in place. So I'd really love us to expand this as much as possible where it's relevant, but again, great job, thank you.

Mr. Daniel? I'd like to echo some of the things that Mr. Lytle said, but primarily that considering where we were and where we've come to now, I attribute that a lot to and I appreciate that you're the person that's here to do this with us. Thank you.

Mr. Baker?

Yeah, as Dean said, we took a much deeper look at this at the committee level, and so I won't take too long with questions, but I just want to say that I'm proud of our officers and the staff. I feel like... In some ways, they were kind of put through the ringer over the last few years, not just with administrations, but just with the amount of change going on and the entire how policing is done as a country has changed. And so I'm thankful that they have stuck with us and remain committed to their jobs and to each other I also want to say thanks to you, Chief, for I think it would have been easy as a new chief coming in while this was already underway to either write it off and kind of do your own thing. And it would have been easy, too, to sort of rely on it too much. use it almost as the, you know, the Bible truth instead of doing your own homework alongside it. And I think that it's clear that you have taken it and used it to help you as you started, but also trusted yourself to add to it where it was needed. So I really appreciate that approach. And moving forward, we've been through this, you know, A FEW YEARS OF KIND OF VERY INTERNALLY FOCUSED EVALUATING OF THE POLICE DEPARTMENT. AND THERE'S OBVIOUSLY MORE TO DO ON THAT. BUT I ALSO THINK THE EXTERNAL PERCEPTION OF THE POLICE DEPARTMENT BY OUR COMMUNITY IS OBVIOUSLY REALLY IMPORTANT AS WELL. As we get our house in order and sort of move forward together, I think it's important to look at that, you know, the community side of things as well. And I know that's something that you care deeply about because I've talked to you about it and I'm looking forward to that work as we go forward.

thank you thank you for all you're doing it's hard to believe you've only been here six months and you've just come in with both feet in and moving along you got a highly favorite compliment from one of your employees last week so I wanted you to know that and glad that we're gonna pursue North Carolina state credentials. My question is about addressing staff changes and combining some of the roles. Will that mean that people will be able to maintain employment perhaps in a different role?

Okay.

a lot easier to consolidate into the deputy chief position. One, from a financial benefit, but two, just to kinda take away some of that top heaviness and streamline the leadership.

Okay, all right, good. Thank you so much.

Mr. Weiss?

Yeah, thank you for this report.

This has certainly been a journey for everyone involved, and I really appreciate you and all your people kind of diving into this without real reservation, and so that's really meaningful. You know, I think historically police departments can be a little veiled and a little secretive, and I have already seen over the past couple of months more willingness of our police to engage with the public, and for me, police, their vital role is being in the community. Their vital role is not just about being out there and solving crimes and stopping speed, but engaging with our community, letting our community know that we're safe, and that we're being watched over. And so these measures, I think are much more important than just the internal workings. It's really about how the public perceives you. So it's hard to put a real number on that, but it means a lot.

Thank you, Chief. That was just an informational brief. There is no action required tonight from counsel. all right we will move on to our next item which is a public hearing and tonight we have a public hearing on the proposed amendment to the official zoning map of the city of brevard two parcels on diva road to pgx and our assistant planning director aaron bland is going to walk us through this yes thank you madam mayor so this is a

We have redone these a house parcel as it is now so it's a little confusing because the tax map hasn't been updated with this subdivision but that's the request part of this land and the request like i said is to make that large parcel completely pgx but not sort of change planning board discussed this at their main meeting and the msu recommended approval and unfortunately state holiday also had

All right, this is a public hearing. Can someone give me the public hearing sign-up sheet? Council, do I have a motion to open the public hearing? So moved. Do I have a second?

Second.

All in favor?

Aye.

Public hearing is now open. Okay, nobody signed up to speak during the public hearing. So... We will now close the public hearing. Council, do I have a motion to close the public hearing?

So moved. Second.

All in favor?

Aye.

Public hearing is closed. We will now open it for any questions or discussion by council and we'll start with Mr. Baker.

Sure. Erin, I just want to make sure I heard you correctly that the new partial, the new smaller partial is already RMX, right? that's going to remain RMX. And we're just changing the larger parcel to the Pisgah Gateway District. Okay. And since we have a member of the audience who might know a little bit about this issue at the state level, I will just say that This is easy to do tonight because we have the permission of the express permission of the landowner. But we have a bigger vision for this entire area that the new zoning for PGX would help us accomplish. And we've been going parcel by parcel for a year. About a year? Yeah. And I'll just say some changes at the state level might move us along a little quicker. But that's all I have.

Ms. Holder? I don't have any questions. Thank you. Mr. Wise?

No questions.

Mr. Lytle?

No questions.

Mr. Daniel? No questions. All right, thank you. This will come back for a vote in two weeks. Well, actually in one month when our next meeting is. Okay, that is the public hearing. We will move on to the consent and information. The following items are on the consent agenda. One, the tax settlement report of May 2026. Two, asset inventory and assessment of the water distribution system and the wastewater collection system. Three, resolution appointing friends of the Acosta Trail representative to the Acosta Trail Advisory Board. Four, resolution accepting $8,575,000 of funding modification for the wastewater treatment plant upgrade phase one. Five, public safety committee meeting minutes April 27th of 2026. Six, public works and utilities committee meeting minutes of May 6th, 2026. Seven, finance and human resources committee meeting minutes April 27th of 2026. Eight, the housing committee meeting minutes of May 12th. 26, and nine, resolution authorizing submission of an application for the North Carolina Water Resources Development Grant for the Norton Creek Stream Restoration Project. Do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda?

So moved.

Do I have a second?

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Consent agenda is approved. All right, we are moving on to... unfinished business. Actually, we will take a short five minute break before we go into unfinished business because this is our budget and it might involve some discussion. So, five minute break.

Feels nice to me. All right.

All right, we are going to move on to unfinished business and item L1 is the FY26-27 Preparatory Project Amendments.

The first one is the establishment of the Sports Complex Capital Project Fund. The second one, the Capital Project Amendment Rosenwald Revitalization Fund, $11,000. And I'm going to turn this over to the city manager to walk us through this. the 26-27 project amendments.

So I'll call on Dean Luby to explain these in more detail and answer questions, but my introductory comment is that these are things designed to tee up the FY27 budget and execute some of the instructions you all gave us at the budget workshop on the 5th.

Good evening. Good evening, Mayor and City Council. So the reason that I'm speaking before Wilson on the main budget tonight is at our June 5th budget workshop here, there's a couple different items that were discussed, but one of them was the need to set up, we wanted to get some work done at the sports complex that will eventually involve the parking lot and the bathrooms mainly. So to do that, we had to set up a capital project fund And that capital project fund is going to be a port. The bulk of that fund will be funded through the adopted budget, which Wilson will get to in five or 10 minutes. But I needed to set up the fund first. So, uh, the establishment of the capital project fund will be, as I said, focused on the sports complex bathrooms and parking lots to start with. It's going to be funded by 40, $46,000 transfer from the general fund and then an $11,000 transfer from the Rosenwald revitalization fund. So the first council action that we're looking for is just approval of setting up the fund in, uh, as a capital project and, and the budget, which, I've just spoke of $46,000 from the general fund and $11,000 from the Rosenwald fund.

All right. Council, do I have a motion to set up the fund as described by Mr. Luby?

So moved.

Do I have a second?

Second.

Okay, we'll open it for discussion. Mr. Wise?

No comments.

Ms. Holder?

No comment.

Mr. Baker?

I'll keep it rolling. I don't have any comment.

Mr. Daniel. Well, I will say so that people will think we're not taking this lightly that we discussed this at great length just a few days ago. So I have no other comments than the ones we made. Mr. Lytle.

I'll go against the grain, why not? So what I remembered, I know that we talked about this money going to the sports complex, which I don't have an issue with, but I thought we were gonna open up a fund that was all encompassing, so it would be there for all of the properties. No, is that, or am I misremembering that? Because one of the issues was that because These complex, Franklin Park, Silverstein, sports complex were all treated separately. It could lead to sort of misalignment of planning. So would it not be better to have a fund for recreation and within that have the fund earmarked for the sports complex, and then when we have funds for Franklin Park, that would be something that would go under the same fund. So that would be my, I thought that was my recollection, but if that's not what we discussed, that's something that I, that I feel would be beneficial for future discussion and future planning.

Well, I felt the direction, and Wilson and I talked about this prior to setting this up, that we thought it was wiser to set up a separate fund for this location, and then if need be, if we do need a Franklin Park fund or a Silverstein fund or a fund for other locations, We would then come to council and ask for approval.

Well, one of the gripes that I have is that there needs to be a comprehensive plan for all three, right? And we need to know what standards are for all three locations. So as I had said in our meeting, if there's a need for bathrooms at two of the locations, maybe one location has the same standard, it's just a larger bathroom or a smaller bathroom, but that standard needs to be thought about altogether. So I feel pretty strongly that having separate funds, I just think we should look at all of our recreation facilities within the same bucket and have one overall plan. And obviously priority being given at this moment to Sports Complex to make sure that we've got a safe parking lot and bathrooms there. So what would be the disadvantage of having one larger fund with all three locations and then earmarking certain funds within that larger plan? What's the disadvantage of doing that?

Go ahead, sir.

None. Councilmember, Dean and I are agnostic about what you call the fund. I'll leave that up to you all. If the original motion is amended to change the name to Recreation Fund or something similar, we pose no objection to that.

So I would propose that it change to park and recreation fund or something like that and we leave with direction that this money is immersed to the sports complex as discussed.

So I'm just trying to understand. So you're saying we would have an overarching parks fund and then separate projects delineated within that fund so there is no confusion as to which project the money is going to?

Correct.

So this would really just be a subcategory under the overarching fund?

Yes. And what's even more important than that is the plan for all of our parks and rec. That's what we need to see. We need to see what that plan is going to be for all three. And if Franklin Park doesn't happen for five years, it doesn't matter. We need to know what the plan is for all three. So it just kind of pushes that point forward to make sure that we receive that plan and we're able to execute each one of the individual plans as we prioritize.

Ms. Holder wanted to say something else.

I want to thank the dean for bringing that back to my memory. I actually thought about it this afternoon. I had a birthday this year already, and so by the time I got here, it was gone. But we did have that conversation. I remember it well that we would have a recreational fund, and then under that, it would be restricted, just as he described, on which park would be where, what we're doing and what funds are going there. So I support what he just said. I do remember the conversation, and so that's what I support as well.

Well I find this interesting I think the danger is and is and we're going to be discussing in just a few minutes I'm sure when we get to another fund that had money put into it that was restricted that got lost it became it didn't all of a sudden it's not restricted it's everyone understands it to be for another purpose. So I think the danger is that you lose the specificity that this provides. And I think if this is, and I think that may be why staff would have gone in this direction to say this money is for this thing and it's in a separate fund for that thing. If you put it in a general fund, then it can get lost in there in public perception.

Yeah, I mean, I think there really are interesting arguments on both sides of this debate. Part of the reason that, I mean, my recommendation to Wilson was that we name it the Sports Complex Fund. Part of the reason I said that is because I felt there had been some probably valid criticism that at times We've had some funds that we have a whole bunch of different things going on in them, and it's a little hard to track. So I felt the direction from council was we would like to have specific names for our capital project funds and keep them very clear what we're doing. But your comments, Dean, are very valid. It's kind of two sides of the coin.

Okay, let me see if we've got more comments. I think Mr. Wise wants to say something, then I'll get to you.

I agree with the spirit of Councilman Lytle's comments. My understanding of our budget discussion was for this specific event, we allocated a very specific amount of money for a very specific engineering plan And so that's why we put 46 and 11. Those weren't random numbers. Those were specifically targeted for specific, I agree with Dean completely with the idea that we absolutely are desperate for a parks fund to deal with maintenance. I just believe that this specific allocation was pretty targeted. That was my understanding. And I think that's, to me, that's why you went this direction with this amount, with this name of a fund.

That was my thinking, and I, you know, Mr. Baker and I have had some discussions about some other funds. And he brings up a lot of valid points that we have general fund names that we're kind of doing a lot of different things in. And it gets to be kind of unclear what the purpose of that capital project fund is. But I'm happy. The fund hasn't even been set up in the Harris governmental system. So I can name it whatever we want. Mr. Baker.

Yeah, and I think this is an interesting discussion because we've had the same talk and discussion, as Dean said, about the Roundabout Fund, about the Multi-Use Path Fund, about the Rosenwald Fund that we just talked about during the budget. And I think what's clear is that establishing a fund also establishes a priority by council. and an ongoing priority that might involve multiple projects. That was I think the reason why something like the Multi-Use Path Fund got started to begin with was that this was a decade, now two decade long project of completing this trail system that was gonna have individual capital projects along the way. Similar with the Rosenwald Fund, I think it was originally conceived as the Mary C. Jenkins Community Center and Silverstein Park revitalization. Both of those capital projects were underneath that Rosenwald Fund. So it's a trade-off between, I think, coming out of our budget session, I can say that we all up here have concerns about the ongoing maintenance of our parks system. And establishing a parks fund would signal to the public, hey, we recognize that this is something we need to pay attention to in the future. But the trade-off is, if you put money into a specific project, like the sports complex, and then there's additional money in there that is left over, well, then the expectation from the public is, well, the leftover money should be used on parks. And future boards may decide that that money, there may be another need in another budget year where that money should be better spent. So I think, I mean, early on in the budget, process I was in favor of establishing a parks fund for the very reason that we have ongoing we know we're going to have additional projects that we need to fund so I guess I'm I really could go either way honestly I but I think we need to do a better job of when there is contingency money left over after a project, making a decision then and there where that money should, whether it should stay in that capital project fund and under the larger fund, or whether it needs to be returned back to the general fund when we close that project out.

Okay, so who made the motion?

Mr. Baker, I believe.

Well, Denise is checking.

Yes, Mr. Baker, seconded by Mr. Wise.

Mr. Baker, do you wish to amend your motion as requested by Mr. Weidel?

I will, but I'm going to ask for some clarification on the terminology here. So a capital project fund can be underneath a Like there was a Norton Creek Stream Bank restoration fund that was underneath the Rosamault Fund, correct?

No, there was a Norton Creek Stream Bank project. There can be many projects underneath the same fund.

So the capital fund is the overall fund.

The capital fund is... is the main trunk. There can be branches on that trunk.

So we could establish a parks and recreation fund and assign these dollars to the sports complex project.

Sports complex project, yes. Could do that.

And then once that project is completed, we would close that project and move any leftover money back into the general fund.

If council wanted to move that money back to the general fund or...

Right.

or they could choose to leave it in that fund just to use on another project.

Correct. Okay.

If there was one.

Okay. So I'll amend my motion to establish a parks and recreation fund, capital fund, and assign $46,000 from the general fund and $11,000 in a transfer from the Rosenwald revitalization fund to the sports complex capital project.

Second?

Mr. Wise, you were the second. Are you?

I'll second. Oh, Dean's second. That's okay. Oh, I'm sorry.

It was already a second on the original. Oh, okay. So he's modifying the second to, yeah.

Sorry, Dean. That's okay. I'll be third. I'm fine. You're never third, man.

All right. Is there any further discussion before I call for a vote?

Councilman Baker, do you want to codify in your motion the destination of any leftover money?

No. Not yet, because what we're talking about is design funds. We're gonna need a whole lot more money on top of this for construction, so we're near the finish line where we're gonna be talking about leftover money. And I think once we, we don't even know how much design is actually gonna cost at this point. Design work will come with potential budget for construction at that time we could say we're gonna leave any leftover design money and for construction of the project but I think we're premature in that all right we have a motion and a second all in favor aye opposed motion passes all right so that took care of two or one

and B correcting oh we still have to do the we need to do a capital project amendment moving $11,000 the Rosenwald fund okay okay to this newly established parks and recreation capital fund with the sports complex capital project all right

Council, I need a motion to move $11,000 from Rosenwald to the newly created sports complex. No, to the newly created Parks Capital Project Fund with the sports complex capital project underneath it.

So moved.

I think it needs to be clarified that it's this recreational funds capital project. You just left out the word recreation.

Oh, recreation. Okay. Okay. All right. Do I have a motion?

Part of the discussion even started before the retreat because we're all in need and So it was Dean's bright idea to move the 11 to address the parking issue with the sports complex. So I'm good with that.

Mr. Wise.

No comment.

Mr. Baker.

No more comments.

Mr. Daniel. No comment. Mr. Lytle.

No comment.

I shouldn't have made one either.

All in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? All right. It's approved.

Thank you.

All right. So now we are moving on to The second item of unfinished business, which is to approve the FY26-27 budget ordinance and fee schedule. And we're going to do this in two steps.

And I'm going to ask... That's correct. And Madam Mayor, thank you. The reason for that, it needs to be approved as the governing board's budget needs to be approved. First, because it's going to require... a few of you to remove yourselves due to ethical considerations because you sit on the board of directors for some of these organizations that are going to receive funds. And that's contrary to the ethical obligations. So I believe Mr. Baker has the list of... who needs to be recused. So if I could call for perhaps someone to make a motion to recuse those affected members and regarding the governing board, just regarding the governing board portion of the budget.

Mr. Baker, do you have such a motion?

I'll make a motion to recuse Councilman Lytle, Councilwoman Holder, and Mayor Kopeloff from discussion of the governing board budget.

Do I have a second?

Second.

All in favor?

Aye.

All right.

Now we need to approve that as a separate thing.

Now you make a motion to approve or to approve the governing board.

Right. So I'll make a motion that we approve the budget for the governing board.

Do I have a second?

Second.

Okay. Any additional discussion from the three members that are still able to discuss? Mr. Daniel, any discussion? Where are we on this? We are approving the governing board allocation of funds, which is basically the nonprofits.

Oh, OK. Yeah.

And three members are recused because they're on nonprofit boards.

We don't have that up on the screen, but we can pull it up if we want to.

I've got it right here. I think we've seen that list, or you've got it. OK. Mr. Wise, any questions? No comment. All right, Mr. Baker. All right. So I have a motion and a second. All in favor?

Aye.

Okay. Looks like I have three eyes. So it passes. Okay. Now we're through that. All right. Now we're going to move on to the approve the actual overall 26-27 budget ordinance and fee schedule. And the city manager is going to run us quickly through where we are with that.

Yes, ma'am. Before I do, I just want to say thank you all for your engagement with this so far. It's been a tough one, but you've worked studiously and diplomatically with one another to arrive at a compromise that I think should work for everybody. However, if you're still not ready and don't approve one of these final two options tonight, I just want to remind you that we'll need to set another special meeting either for late this week or early next to pass a budget because we are legally required to by the end of the month. But I'm hoping that's not necessary because on Friday the 5th, we had a workshop in this room and you all came to an agreement on the final points of the budget. The result of that meeting is recorded and displayed here on the screen. However, there is still one more choice left to make. And the reason why we didn't answer this at the workshop on the 5th is because I didn't pose you this question until afterwards. And so for the benefit of the public, I'll share with you the final choice that I'm asking the council to make, and that is to decide what to do with the remaining $28,000 that's left after we remove the tipper carts, which was something you all instructed to do. You also instructed us to use about $6,500 of that savings to purchase a program that will help us put together a evaluation system for our employees. And that leaves us in the neighborhood of about $28,000. At the time, you instructed us to earmark that money as seed money for a merit compensation pool in the next fiscal year. But it occurred to me after the discussion was over that $28,000 is almost exactly the amount of money we need to bump up our 2.7% across-the-board COLA adjustment to 3%. And if you follow with our stated intention for the COLA, which is to try to keep our employees' compensation ahead of the CPI, then a move from 2.7% to 3% would allow us to, if not totally accomplish that, get much closer. And the reason I say that is because the CPI has increased significantly just in the last few months, just since we started our budget discussion. And I don't think we can even meet the full CPI at this point, because last I looked, it was 4.8 or 5%, so significantly more than we were bargaining for. But that's due mainly to the cost of energy going up significantly, and so I'm hoping that the peace deal that the folks in Washington are negotiating with Iran right now will open the energy markets back up and perhaps bring those costs down but moving up from 2.7 to 3 will make it a little bit easier on our employees and so what I'm asking you tonight to decide between is a budget ordinance that reflects the budget and as described by you on June the 5th, or alternatively, a budget ordinance that takes all of those directions except the earmarking the 28K for merit pool and instead applying it to an additional .3 percentage points of COLA adjustment for our employees.

All right. So council, you've got two possible budget ordinances in front of you. Do I have a motion to approve either the 2.7% option or the 3% option?

I'll make a motion that we approve the budget ordinance with the 3% option.

Do I have a second?

I'll second.

Okay, we will open it for discussion, Mr. Baker.

Yeah, I guess I'll start with just my general budget comments, and this has been a long road, so I just want to thank the staff for all their diligent work, and as always, it's been done with a lot of transparency and openness, and we've had multiple workshops at this point, and at times, it seemed like it was a little messy and complicated, But messiness and complication doesn't mean that it wasn't a well-run budget process. I think it's just the nature of the beast sometimes, and I think staff helped us navigate it as well as they could, so thank you. You know, big picture, because it has been, you know, we've had a lot of discussions, I think it's important just to review what the main pieces of the budget are and the request for a 2.5% or a 2.5 cent property tax increase really boils down to additional firefighters and the need to maintain our level of service and fire protection, additional Public Works employees because we've recognized that the level of service and the level of maintenance that we We'd like our city to have, we've been falling behind and we need additional work there. And then the last piece is really just taking care of our employees and keeping up with the cost of living and supporting them with benefits and healthcare. And that's really it. And sometimes in, I don't always like to respond to the dark corners of the internet, but you would think that sometimes folks think we're raising taxes because we want a tree-hugging festival or tourist hugging festival or something like that. But, you know, we're talking about firefighters and city employees and public works. So we're, you know, I'm proud that we're maintaining the service levels for our citizens, taking care of some long-needed maintenance issues in the public works department. and doing the basics really well, but they're really important to the people of Brevard. I do want to express just a little bit of disappointment in the county's decision not to join us on funding the three firefighter, full-time firefighter positions. Not because that was the decision that they made, but because I feel like we didn't even really get to have a discussion on it. I know budgets are stressful and We're all trying to meet a deadline of June 30th, but I do think we need to work together on that particular issue because we're sharing that fire service and the responsibility of paying for that fire service. And I hope we can, as I've said multiple times up here in years past, I hope we can work closer together and have more of an open dialogue on the future of sharing that fire protection service. And more specifically on the action tonight on the COLA increase from 2.7% to 3%. You know, a new CPI report came out last week, which showed inflation hitting 4.2%. And that's not an entire year worth of data, of course. But that has an immediate impact on our employees. And... One question I asked the city manager on the telephone last week was, does that also apply to the salaries we would be offering to open positions and moving those salary ranges up? And he said he confirmed that it did. That's really important because we are in a competition with other employers and there's less and less people joining public service and we need to maintain our competitiveness in what we're offering to our employees. So yes, it is to take care of our current employees and make sure we're compensating them fairly But it's also for the open positions that we have in maintaining our competitiveness.

Mr. Daniel. Well, I'd kind of tag along on that last comment is that I feel like keeping our highest performing employees is critical to the successes that we've had already. I think that we should not lose sight of the merit raise issue. I'm not opposed to the 3% using that fund. The 28.8 is a drop in the bucket as far as any merit raise program would be to be effective. This year, I can see that money being used well to increase our salary pay. I would like to address my previous objection to the use of the Fund 82, the Rosenwald Fund. My objections have been made somewhat in a vacuum, so I wanted to actually read the budget ordinance that I think has caused this conflict. It's ordinance amending the F2024-2025 budget. It's budget amendment number 25-6. It's a budget amendment to transfer 100,000 from the general fund to the Silverstein Park Norton Creek Steambank Restoration Project phase two. It's only two paragraphs, don't worry. City staff has contracted with Summit Engineering for additional stream bank restoration work required by NCDEQ at Norton Creek. Additional funding on the project is expected to be needed by the city. As needed by city staff estimates, the sum of engineering and construction will exceed the $100,000 and $44,000 currently budgeted for the project. The budget offset for this transfer will come from police salaries. If the entire $100,000 is not needed for the project, the unneeded portion could be returned to the general fund. So I just wanted to clarify where my objection comes from to that.

thank you yeah I think the moving from two and a half excuse me working on the cold here apologize moving from two to two point seven to three I can get behind that I think that we can be need to be and will be the best employer in the county and i really want us to strive for that and obviously our compensation is part of it in terms of the rest of the budget i just want to know want you know the public to know that i think everyone SITTING UP HERE UNDERSTANDS HOW JUST A SMALL INCREASE CAN IMPACT FAMILIES. AND A LOT OF THEM PART OF MY FAMILY ARE EXTENDED FAMILY. WE UNDERSTAND THAT. mayor the comments from mr locks earlier in public comment that we do need to find ways to anticipate the coming years because this will not get easier not saying that we'll have all the answers but we have to do whatever we can and i think that's you know partnering with the county we need to bring in more jobs we can't keep going back to the well But at the same time, I think a small increase every year when it hurts a little bit is better than waiting and doing a large increase where it'll hurt a lot. So that's where I came down to backing a small two and a half or not a small, but a smaller two and a half cent increase. In terms of the Rosenwald Fund, I think there's a lot of learning. I'll speak for myself, there's a lot of learning in that discussion. I think we have to be really clear, as has been said, about where funds will go, overage of funds will go afterwards. I think that, and I appreciate the discussion and the retreat, The rest of the council was really open in coming with a compromise to use the remainder of those funds for infrastructure projects that otherwise would have come from general fund anyway. So I'm happy with the budget. Not everybody is as happy as to be expected, but This being my first budget, it was a process that I learned a lot that I hope that the public can eventually get behind and understand why we did what we did. Thanks.

Mr. Wise?

Yeah, this was a tough budget. Being a public servant is a tough gig. And we have a lot of people working for us at the city. where they could earn more money in the private sector, they probably wouldn't get yelled at by as many people, wouldn't work as many hours. I don't know if they do it for the pure glory I mean, that's why we do it, right? The pure glory of it. But the primary effort of this budget is to protect those people that work for all of you. And they work tirelessly for all of you, and I think we need to signal to them as a community, and I'm speaking as a taxpayer here, that we really appreciate those efforts. And so some of our biggest complaints are about road maintenance, potholes, sidewalks, conditions of our parks, fire, police, and that's what this effort is about. And I agree completely with Dean is, I feel, and this is why this is tough, but I do feel an incremental increase is better than dropping a 20% bomb on a community of a tax increase. And so, You know, in many ways, this is an effort of how to hurt the most people the least, and I think that's the kind of tactic we've taken. The 2.7 to 3% COLA, I hope that the city staff understands that merit raises are incredibly important to us. We're prioritizing it. We're even getting some software so we can really dive into it, but I'm hoping that's enough of a signal to our staff to say that you guys are really important to us, and we really appreciate every single hour you put into the job. That's all I've got.

Ms. Holder?

I need clarity. Was the motion for just the 2.7% or 3% increase, or is it for the entire budget?

Entire. Entire.

Okay. So in the budget for the legislative request, I talked with the Senate manager and asked him to put in $300,000 to the legislative request for bathrooms at Silverstein, which we do not have. There's just a port-a-john. My request was not included when we had our budget retreat, but I would like for it to be included. So... City Manager and I talked about it before the retreat, but it was not included in that report during the retreat.

So you're asking if we would do a new updated legislative request to our representatives with this included?

Yes.

That's my understanding of her request, yes, ma'am.

Okay.

And so I was going to ask our parliamentarian for...

I was going to say, I don't... That's a legislative request. That's not really what's on the table. Right now, the legislative requests are dealt with differently, as I understand it. It's not part of the budget because we don't have the money yet, so that's not really at issue right now. I think it would be something to speak about at a later time, perhaps for a later... motion, but it's not really pertinent to the budget itself at this time. Because the legislative request to an outside body, I believe that's what I understand. Because you can't budget money you don't have, but it can be a legislative request requesting it.

I mean, we do a letter to our legislative representatives.

That was voted on at a different time.

And it's voted on. So to update it with an addition, we would take that letter and we would do a new letter for council to vote on the new letter with your request.

including separate. But that's not a part of it. I understand, but that's not what I got as an explanation earlier today and a couple weeks ago. So what do we need to do as far as this budget now and then have a separate request tonight to get that in the legislative request?

A separate motion tonight to get that in. table your comments, remove it from the budget discussion, and pick it up after we vote on the budget as a separate request. Okay.

Mr. Attorney, does that sound... Yeah, you'd have to amend the agenda to add that as an item.

As an item. Okay.

but that's doable by vote as well. I'm not sure, I thought the legislative request section was, wasn't that voted on last week? Or last week? A couple meetings ago. A couple meetings ago, two meetings ago?

Yeah. So I didn't get that explanation from you when we talked, so that would have been helpful. So I would like to go back and fix this. I will take it out of the discussion for the budget. and then we can go back to this after the budget. As far as the employee salary is concerned, I will go with the three point. My hesitation is, we have talked about giving merit raises. I would even look at 2.9 or 2.8% because 2.8 is the COLA for 2026 percentage. So because I would like to look at more opportunities for the merit budget. I mean for merit raises in the future. I think they're important.

Okay. All right. Council, we have a motion and a second. to approve budget ordinance for the 3% option. I'm gonna call for a vote unless there is any further discussion.

So is this just for the? Just for the budget.

This is for the overall budget. The entire budget that includes the 3% COLA option. But it's all the other parts of the budget as well.

Okay.

All right, all in favor?

Aye.

Opposed?

No.

So I have four ayes and one no. The budget passes. All right.

Do I need to make a motion to change to add to the agenda?

Mr. Attorney?

If you want to add an item to the agenda, you would need to make a motion to amend the agenda to added I think you probably need to be specific about what the motion is for I guess that's but I think I think you need to add to the new to the new business There is still another item of new business.

We haven't finished.

We'll probably go after that, but you could ask to amend the agenda to allow discussion, allow you to make a motion.

Would that be number three?

It would be M2. Actually, I think it would be two because two was moved up.

Yeah, we already. Okay.

Yeah. So do you wish to make a motion? I do.

All right.

Please go ahead.

I would like to amend the agenda to add to new business number two to add to the budget for the legislative request $300,000 for bathrooms at Silverstein.

Do I have a second?

I'll second.

Okay, we have a motion and a second. We will open it for discussion.

Just for the agenda. Oh, I'm sorry. Got confused. All right.

all right so this is just yeah so we still need to vote on adding it to the agenda all right i'm just going to call for a vote we have a motion and a second to add this topic to the agenda when we get to it we will open it for discussion all in favor of adding this topic to the agenda i'm sorry i can't i heard two Two ayes and against?

Nay.

And three nos. So motion fails. It's not added to the agenda. Okay. We will move on to new business. The first item is the FY 2025-26 wrap-up budget amendments. And I believe Dean Luby, our finance director, is going to walk us through these.

Good evening again. As we near the end of the fiscal year, one of my jobs is to look through the budget and make sure that no individual funds go over budget. And in past years, I've missed one or two. But we have a couple budget, we have three separate budget amendments. that I'd like to have your consideration. We're gonna go under one at a time. Budget Amendment 2607 is in the stormwater fund. About two years ago, we contracted with McAdams for a stormwater master plan in the amount of $435,000. We told them we wanted it to run over two years. It's actually moving a little bit quicker than we anticipated. We've already paid $264,000, so I'm requesting a $60,000 budget amendment so that that fund will, the actual expenditures will be below the budgeted expenditures. Even with this budget amendment, we're gonna have over $100,000 in fund balance in the stormwater

fund we're expecting the stormwater master plan to be done in early 2027. all right do i have a motion to approve the ordinance amending the budget for the sixty thousand dollar increase to the stormwater utility fund so moved Do I have a second?

Second.

Okay. Open it for discussion. Mr. Wise?

No comment.

Ms. Holder? No comment. Mr. Baker?

I have no comments.

Mr. Daniel? No comment. Mr. Lytle?

No comment.

Okay. All in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? Amendment passes.

Okay, thank you. Budget Amendment 2608 is for the Water and Sewer Utility Fund. We are requesting a $240,000 budget amendment. The reasons for this is the problem out at the wastewater treatment plant. which occurred a couple months ago, required $100,000 expenditures, added expenditure that had not been budgeted. In last year's supplemental spending plan, council approved $80,000 in SCADA improvements. It so happened that those improvements, they cost $90,000, but the real problem is that they took a lot longer than we anticipated, so they hit in this fiscal year. So we had not budgeted those funds. When the supplemental spending plan gets passed, the hope is that we can get that all done by June 30th. And in this case, it did not happen. Additionally, the water and sewer maintenance department had about $40,000 in higher overtime, and we did not anticipate. The offset to these entries are we've received close to $130,000 in FEMA reimbursements that are attributable to water and sewer services. And then we have two relatively new revenue line items in the water and sewer fund, which I did not really have a good history to base my budget on. And it turned out our actual revenues are exceeding budgets for both the high strength waste charge and the septage digester fees. So there's no effect on fund balance. but that is Budget Amendment 2608 in the Water and Sewer Fund.

Okay. Council, do I have a motion to approve Budget Amendment 2608 in the Water and Sewer Fund?

So moved.

Do I have a second?

Second.

Okay. We'll open it for discussion. Mr. Lytle?

No comment.

Mr. Daniel? I have no comment. Mr. Baker? I have no comments. Ms. Holder? No comment. Mr. Wise? No comment.

no comment all in favor aye aye opposed budget amendment passes all right our third budget amendment mr luby is from is for the general fund and there's many departments that are over budget in the general fund this is budget amendment 2609 and and we are requesting a budget amendment for 525 000 and i'll briefly go through the department's and the reasons that they're expected to be over budget. But if anybody has any questions, I'm happy to try to go into detail. The finance department budgets for citywide IT all over the government. And it so happened that this year, Windows 10 was no longer supported. So we were forced to upgrade about 20 different machines or so to Windows 11. We normally spend about 20 grand just in miscellaneous IT upgrades, but this caused this line item to go over budget, and then we also had higher overtime costs in the finance department, and we had an employee retire, so we had a big payout on that. So finance is requesting a $25,000 part of the $525,000. The police department... is requesting a budget amendment of $65,000. We have sort of an informal goal of trying to buy the police department two cars every year, and that way their pursuit vehicles never really get older than 10 years old. In the last three years, we've purchased a total of four vehicles. They also had one vehicle, a relatively new one, that was damaged in Helene, so they really were down an extra vehicle. We would like to get their fleet a little bit newer. So that's part of the amendment. The buildings and grounds department had some very high overtime costs, which council has addressed in this budget by giving them two more people. We also had a lot of issues in this particular building, both upstairs and downstairs, which we've spent an extra $70,000, which had not been budgeted. Council has also addressed that in the current budget, budgeting I think $150,000 in the current budget. So buildings and grounds is $120,000 of that total. Public works, admin had higher overtime costs once again. And then they had to replace some very expensive doors down at their facility that cost close to $15,000. The garage requires a $50,000 budget amendment. Again, salary and overtime. And then they also needed to purchase a diagnostic tool for the heavy machinery and trucks that we have. That was, I guess, the old piece was outdated, and it was no longer able to... produce in the way that our mechanics down there needed. Additionally, the Transylvania County money that we budget for helping them out with their vehicles was a little under budgeted as well. So that makes up that $50,000. The streets department had some higher than expected vehicle maintenance and repair costs. That's a hard one to budget really because you can look at what's happened in past years, but every once in a while some bad things happen to our older vehicles that can get very costly. That portion is $70,000. Then there were some other higher stone and asphalt costs. Then the bucket truck that we purchased actually came in. We estimated it to be $150,000, but the actual cost ended up being $169,000. Then finally, in our sanitation department, again, we had some very expensive repairs to some vehicles. We also needed to rent a garbage truck because our fleet was so low that we were paying $7,000 a month for that. Then our brush grindings exceeded budget by, let's see, quite a bit, something like $90,000. Brush grindings are things that Wesley collects down at the yard, and he typically spends $30,000 or $40,000 a year to have those collected, the brush ground, then taken off-site. And this year, that number was close to $109,000. Luckily, we've received close to $525,000 in FEMA proceeds in this fiscal year. So again, fund balance is not being affected. But we're asking for the approval of this large general fund budget amendment.

Mr. Luby, one of the things I noticed looking at Budget Amendment 2609, the subject says increase it by $515,000, but the total in the actual body of the amendment is $525,000. I believe you need to reconcile the two numbers on the amendment.

Yeah, I think, where's the $525,000? Oh, I... That's an error by me. I've changed it in many of the other places, and I think I missed that one. If you add up those numbers, they do come up to 525.

Okay. That's an administrative correction before we vote on it. Yes, I apologize. Okay. All right, council, do I have a motion to approve budget amendment number 2609 to increase the general fund by $525,000? So moved. Do I have a second?

Second.

Okay. Mr. Wise?

No comment.

Ms. Holder? No comment. Mr. Baker?

I just want to repeat one thing you said. The offset for this is primarily FEMA or entirely FEMA? Entirely FEMA. Okay. Thank you. That's all.

Mr. Daniel? I have no comment. Mr. Lytle?

No comment.

All in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? Okay. Budget Amendment 2609 is approved. And that, I believe, is the end of new business. Okay. Unless I have overlooked something. All right. We will move on to remarks, final remarks. And we will start with Mr. Lytle.

I think I already said what I wanted to say about the budget, but again, thank the staff for all the hard work this year, my colleagues and also the public for your engagement and feedback. And it was really valuable to listen to your points of view, and we'll take that forward in the next year. and take into advisement some of the decisions that we make along the way and not just wait until the end of the year to engage with that. Thanks.

Mr. Daniel.

I'd just like to thank the staff for my birthday card.

Mr. Baker.

Yeah, I'll just say on the legislative request, I am... I'm fine with reopening a discussion of the legislative request and adding potential projects to that list. I don't think we should open it just for a discussion of a singular project, especially since we're just two weeks out from, or about a month out from when we discuss that. So if we want to open that back up and discuss about the entire request, which I think has already been submitted, so it would need to be amended I'd be open to that in a future agenda. But that's all I have tonight.

Thank you. I do want to apologize to the council if I had gotten those instructions in advance, I would not have brought it tonight. So next time I'll call Matt. I have your number. It's in my speed dial. I also want to bring transparency, and I spoke with Wilson about this as well, regarding the awful event that happened at the sports complex with the young boy who was hit by a car and I understand he's okay. The information that I understood and I think that we all understood was that it happened because of the lack of the traffic markings in the parking lot and the way the parking lot is situated or whatever. But now I understand from the report that it was actually a person who was intoxicated that hit this child. And so that's very, very unfortunate, and I don't know that lines would have helped, which is unfortunate. I also understood that the emergency vehicles had a difficult time getting through to navigate, but the emergency vehicles were not impeded by that. And so I wanted to bring clarity and full transparency to myself and to everyone about what happened on that night. I still agree that there does need to be parking, and that's why we talked about the $11,000 to go towards that to fix the parking situation. But I think we need to know the full disclosure about what actually happened on that awful day for that boy and for those parents. Juneteenth celebration is coming up this weekend. We can't say enough about it. I hope that everyone will come and celebrate Juneteenth. And I'm struggling with what to say on that Sunday, but I'm sure that if y'all pray real hard, something will come. But I'm glad to be in a community that we can celebrate each other. no matter who or what we look like. And I always say if you turn us inside out, we'd all look alike. And so let's just celebrate each other for who and what we are.

Mr. Weiss.

Yeah, I just want to go through puberty. I want to thank everyone for all the hard work that they put into this. And I don't know who of us are reading the Declaration of Independence, but some of us are.

We are.

Yeah, so come on down to 4th of July because we're going to read that sucker, and it's really important right now, more than ever, that we all understand what the tenets of the foundation of this country are about. Let's not lose sight of that as we move through our daily lives. That's all I've got.

Mr. Attorney?

Nothing to add.

Madam Clerk? And I have nothing to add either. Thank you. Mr. Manager? Mr. Chair?

I have three things. The first is that we will need to hold our July 20th meeting. We usually decide around this time whether that meeting needs to be held or not, and yes, it does. We've got a few important items that can't wait, and so we'll need to hold that meeting. My second announcement, I'd like to ask David to come up and share the latest on the Hillview Avenue culvert replacement because it'll start to impact our constituents here in the next week.

Good evening, folks. If you heard my update at the Rosenwald meeting, it'll be a little bit of a rerun, but we have our contractor is beginning to mobilize this week. He will start construction work on Monday of next week, possibly closing Cashers Valley Road as early as Monday of next week. He is going to provide us with a much more detailed update of what roads will close when and the duration tomorrow. And then we'll quickly get that out to you folks and to the community. But our contractor has figured out a way to replace the culvert without doing what's called a pump around where you pump the river basically around the pipe from one side to the other by kind of creating a temporary ditch. but that is going to require him possibly to have to do multiple road closures and openings but it it no time will both roads be closed we'll make sure at least one of the roads is opened we just can't tell you the schedule of the duration of that right now but if there are multiple closures they would be short to allow him to do little pieces of work and then at some point longer closure when we replace the whole culvert but his work is scheduled to be completed whether allowing by the mid to later part of August so in any case you know hopefully over the next couple of months the work is done that's the extent unless anybody had any questions about that I'd be glad to try to answer

David, I just want to make sure that when we know exactly when those roads are going to close, that we have an all-out publicity campaign to make sure that everybody is aware of the road closures on every media that we can think of, because that really is a major artery across town there.

Yes, ma'am.

And may I add, if you get flyers to my church, I can distribute them there and also to other pastors in that community.

Okay.

Thank you. Thank you, David. My counsel, any more questions on that? My last comment, I'll ask Chief Wenzel to stand up and share. She alluded several times in her presentation to a deputy chief, and so she's got a special announcement for us today.

Yes, I am super excited to be able to announce the name. He has successfully completed his background. So our next deputy chief is Alan Bonanno. He comes to us from the city of Hendersonville Police Department. Just a little bit about Alan. He started policing in 2007, worked with the city of Asheville for approximately a year, moved to Laurel Park Police Department where he worked the road for about seven years, and has been with the city of Hendersonville since 2015. Alan distinguished himself throughout our deputy chief process, which included an assessment center writing scenario, as well as two separate panel interviews. As part of the Barry Dunn report, it was important to get employee feedback, so we actually had an employee panel interview that had sworn and civilian staff on it. to allow them to have face-to-face time with our candidates, get to ask them questions that were pertinent as a means to get their buy-in, but also to get their input and opinions because that's much valued. So he scored extremely successful in that, as well as a separate interview with myself and our HR director, Ms. Kelly. So with that, he has experience in helping the city of Hendersonville get accredited. He has experience in CID as well as records management, which are all vital areas of the police department that we're currently working on here in Brevard. So I'm super excited. July 6th, this is set day to begin, and hopefully we'll get to swear him in at the July 20th council meeting. Thank you.

Thank you, Chief.

Okay, thank you. Wow, all sorts of stuff going on. As you can see, you know, we have... incredible amount of work going on I do want to thank everybody I want to thank the staff I want to thank the public I want to thank the elected officials who have wrestled with a very very tough budget year and trying to balance all of the different needs that we have across the city and I think we've done and come up with a pretty good, fair, balanced budget that listened to the public, and I appreciate all of the public input. We held a special half-day budget session after the public input session specifically to deal with all of the issues that were brought up. So thank you to the public. I also want to thank the public for our town hall meeting that we had last week at the Rosenwald information and listening session. We had great attendance. We went through a lot of the different projects that are happening. You know, for a small town, we have an incredible amount going on. Most of it's funded with grants from our state representative, you know, which we'll be talking about. But also a lot of federal grants, a lot of money from FEMA. And it makes such a difference really to our ability to do large infrastructure projects that with a small community of 8,000 people, we would never be able to fund out of you know tax increases so partnering with our state is so important and i i want to thank representative ferguson for sitting here through our entire meeting and listening to all of our budget and i am really looking forward to having her come for a full day with uh staff elected officials so we can brief you on a lot of the uh needs and a lot of the legislative requests as well as show you what an absolutely incredible town Brevard is and even convince you that you really should be moving here, that this is really the best part in your district. But thank you so much for joining us. I know how busy you are in Raleigh and taking, you know, three and a half hours or so of your life to listen to us means a lot to us and shows how important all of this is and that we are listened to by our representatives in Raleigh. So thank you. Thank you, Anna. Also, just want to remind everybody, yes, Juneteenth is great. We do an incredible job with this. If you have not been to our Juneteenth celebration, be there. It goes on for three days. The biggest day is Saturday afternoon, and literally, It is just something for everybody. But as Randy Lytle said, it's educational too. And it's a celebration to bring us together as a community instead of fighting amongst different areas of the city. We are one city, we are one community, and we all work together. And so please, I encourage everybody to come out in a sense of unity and a sense of community and join us on Juneteenth. Saturday it starts at 12 and it goes to six and there are events all afternoon. And of course the 4th of July, our 250th birthday, we are having a two day celebration, very different than in the past. Our celebration starts on Friday, July 3rd, I believe at five in the evening and goes until 10. It's gonna be music and events downtown on Main Street. And then on the 4th, elected officials of the city and the county will join together in unity in reading the Declaration of Independence that guides all of us and is the foundational document of our country. We will be doing that at 11 o'clock on Saturday, July 4th at the main stage on Main Street in front of basically the visitor center area. And then we have events going all afternoon, all the way up until about, I think it's 8 o'clock at night. We're gonna have music, we're gonna have the square dancing, we've got vendors, we got stuff for kids. We're actually going to have a copy of the Declaration of Independence that you can come and sign it so that you can actually get a feel for what our founding fathers went through. As Mr. Powell said, they took an incredible risk. Put yourself back 250 years and understand the degree of courage that they had to show when they stepped forward and put their names on that piece of paper. It's easy to just think about it as a document, but it was quite a statement of courage by people who believe so strongly in the ideals of freedom and equality and liberty. So we will have an incredible 4th of July, finishing, of course, with our fire department and the fireworks at 920... 9.30-ish. 9.30-ish. So get in place early, but we're going to have spectacular fireworks to end the 4th. So with that, everybody, thank you so much and have a wonderful evening. I need a motion to adjourn.

Second.

All in favor?

Aye.

We are adjourned.