City Council - Regular Meeting

Next to Denise is Councilman Gary Daniel. Next to Gary is Councilman Dean Lytle. And on the far left is our city manager, Wilson Hooper. With that, I would like to ask Reverend Bob Ren Jillian, did I get that right, Bob? Do I? You always get it right.

Okay.

Reverend Bob is with the Unitarian Universalists of Transylvania County, and he is going to give us our invocation tonight.

Spirit of love and life, we ask for wisdom and support through the decisions before us and to remember the wide-ranging diversity of this community as we strive to love our neighbors and love you. Help us be centered in this moment to engage in meaningful discussion. May we respect differences, resist divisiveness, and may our good work nurture the bonds of community. We pray for the leaders and public servants here represented for their health and for their strength through the storms of circumstance which may be arising in their lives. We give thanks to those who step up to serve their neighbors and are grateful for their own and their loved ones' sacrifices so that their time and dedication to the wider good might be a blessing. We give thanks in the names of all the helpers of humankind, known and unknown, remembered and forgotten, and we pray each on our own ways and say amen, blessed be. Amen.

Amen. Reverend Bob, would you tell us a little bit about the Unitarian Universalist Church?

I'd be glad to. The Unitarian Universalist Congregation, abbreviated UUTC, is located on South Broad Street, downhill from the library, with a parking lot entrance on Varsity Street. We have nearly 200 people from the city and counting on our roles, and some who travel further on Sunday mornings or who watch us on YouTube if they are traveling or are homebound. And our mission is to support individual spiritual journeys and to promote social, economic, and environmental justice. And besides our mission and religious services with members, we seek to be a positive presence and a good neighbor in the community. We open our buildings to meditation groups, sponsor grief and caregiver support groups, work with community organizations, and offer space to a startup house church that just got rolling, partner with the Rainbow Alliance, and invite NAACP committees to meet in our spaces, and support ecumenical service projects in the community, such as the Sharing House, the Bread of Life Haven, and annual events, such as the November Power Up Dinner jointly with St. Philip's Episcopal Church and the Brevard Jewish Community. We've been the host location for community events as well, including the annual Pride Picnic in June, the Brevard Jewish Community Lecture Series, and the next one's coming up on Sunday, August 30th at 3.30. You're invited. And we offer youth programming open to any family regardless of religious background, such as the Adulting 101 Teen Camp that was covered in the Transylvania Times just a few weeks ago. I extend an invitation on behalf of many of my religious colleagues in the city of Brevard for you to attend the interfaith service of thanks on the Tuesday evening before Thanksgiving. That will be an annual event that I always look forward to as it is said that the biggest, greatest prayer you can say is thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. We are so glad to have the UUTC here and all of the things you do, all of the way that you are so inclusive for our community. And I love that interfaith Thanksgiving that we have every year. Thank you. I'm so glad. It's very special. So thank you. If everyone would please stand and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Attention, honor, and pledge.

I pledge allegiance.

We got plenty of seats.

Yeah.

A little strange.

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

All right. Council, you have the draft agenda. Are there any proposed modifications to the agenda? Do I have a motion to approve the agenda?

So moved.

Do I have a second? Second. All in favor?

Aye.

Agenda is approved. Council, you have the draft minutes of the August 3rd, 2026 regular meeting. Do I have any corrections or modifications to the minutes? Do I have a motion to approve the minutes? So moved. Do I have a second?

Second.

All in favor?

Aye.

Okay, we have no certificates or awards today, so we will go straight into 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 the agenda. And we have one public hearing item on fats, oils, and grease. So if you wanted to talk about fats, oils, and grease, you need to sign up on the other sign-up sheet. I can't tell because some people didn't put a topic by your name. Okay, 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. 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. And I will call you up in the order in which you signed. Our first speaker is Butch Steabing. Very good.

My name is Butch Steabing. I live at 217 Franklin Street right here in Brevard. The issue that the neighborhood is concerned with is the idea of the low-cost housing on the land behind the church. Madam Mayor and Keith Thompson came, seems like more than a year ago, and went to the neighborhood and polled to see how we felt. And at that time, I understood. I don't know that my understanding was right, but I understood there would be individual housings and there would be 15 something like that. Now it is a planned high-rise apartment complex. I take issue with that. The soil, and I did do construction management for IBM, the soil there has been designated as unfit. There are very few ways that you can make that soil fit. You can remove it with layers in like they recommended to begin with of good soil, compact it every six inches to make sure that it's safe, okay? And then they do another layer of six inches, compact it again. Another method is floating footings. If you use a floating footing, it is a huge, wide cement block, three, four times as wide as what you need for a foundation. It's thick, and it floats on the soil. And for an apartment complex, that is no way to build a building. You could put housing in there, but you couldn't put a building of that structure. The third way that I know of is to drive pile drivers, drive the logs, the telephone poles, actually, into the ground until point of refusal, which means they won't go anymore. You dig holes, big holes around them, and you cut them off, and you put in huge concrete blocks and you run your footings across that. Very expensive no matter what you're talking about. If you've got a low bid contractor that says he can do it cheaper than anybody else, I don't think he can. I also think it will be very expensive to have apartment complexes in there where you have not only the rent or purchase of the apartment, you also have the monthly fees to maintain the building. So not only do you get rent or payment, the low cost housing has to have somebody paying the maintenance bill. 30 seconds. I don't want to see that in our community. We don't need to be rejuvenated. Two of our homes just sold for over a million dollars. My taxes went double because of the value of my house now. So I don't want to see. Now you want to do something to try and put a few nice houses in there? I wouldn't argue with you on that, but not big apartment buildings.

Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Carol Haman.

My name is Carol Haman. I live at 200 College View Terrace. I am a nature lover. I'm from a family of nature lovers. My father and nearly all of my relatives were farmers. My son is a biologist, my daughter-in-law is a geologist. They visited me about two years ago, and at that time, the previous proposal was on tap, and I told that we went over to the church property and looked at that property there, the huge trees, the beautiful greenery and so forth. They said to me, Mom, do anything that you can to keep them from developing that property. Just leave it alone. Those animals, those birds, those trees, the vegetation there is a beautiful green space in this city and it would be very much appreciated if you would respect my feelings and theirs and all of the nature lovers in this city. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next speaker is Dawn Ellis. We'll wait just a minute, see if we can get this resolved.

Now, when I get set up out of here, everybody's going to come with me. Because the barge is going to be shut down, and the boat is over. Do you see all of this? That man was right. Everything that's being built, the landfill, how fucking stupid are y'all? Destroying our water. That's righteous anger. This is my land. I have all of it here. And y'all won't run it no more.

Y'all won't.

I was born here. I can't even go to this goddamn bathroom because I'm homeless. If it's there, you don't even live here. Don't touch me. I'm not hurting nobody. Don't touch me. Don't touch me. I'll have you arrested for assault on a female. I don't touch people. Don't touch me.

I'm not drinking nobody.

Maybe they don't want to listen to that.

Maybe they all want to come out and eat.

Thank you, gents.

All right. Shut the door. All right. Sorry about that. All right. Dawn, go ahead. Yeah.

Thank you, my name is Dawn Ellis and I've lived at 75 Appletree Street now for 39 years. I do have a little bit of water in my basement because of the land behind us. The county asked me why I haven't corrected it. Well, if you want your whole yard dug up, because I don't have a full basement. The house was built 72 years ago and it leaks a little bit. So we have a sub pump. But I've diverted most of the water. What happens if they take all those trees down? What happens to that water? Right now it puddles in my front yard. It puddles across the street and we have trees back there. And what happens, this one had no experience as contractor, supposedly. If what happens to the property if they abandon it like they did below on Jailhouse Hill on the bottom of the hill and caused an eyesore going into our pretty little town and Those trees are getting bigger and bigger and nobody's done anything about trying to control that and beautify it the main thing is We bought our houses because we wanted to live there. We worked hard. We bought our houses. Our taxes keep getting raised, and we still live there. Why should we give up the value of our house for a housing complex that's probably going to be abandoned in the long run is because it's probably going to collapse or deteriorate because it can't be built on water. 18 feet they were still hitting water. I can dig a hole in my backyard and hit water. So I know there's a lot of water there. Sandy Reed across the street, she had to do a whole lot of work around her house to get the water taken care of. We've worked hard. I was a teacher. You didn't get paid much. $1,600 a month. And that's with a master's degree and 30 years of teaching. And I still bought my house. We want to keep our neighborhoods. We want to keep our house. I can move back to Franklin to my home, my family's home, but I don't want to. I've lived in this town for 51 years. I should be able to keep my house the way it is, just like you're gonna keep your houses. And that's the main thing. Okay, thank you very much for listening and I appreciate you making eye contact with me and looking at me. Thank you very much. Thank you, Ms. Ellis.

Our next speaker is Charles Garden.

My name is Charles Gardner. I live at 69 North Lane. I was told that there was going to be... Can you talk forward to the microphone? Oh, I do apologize. Okay. My name is Charles Gardner. I live at 69 North Lane, Brevard, and I was told that the Rosemall grant was going to be put up for conversation this afternoon, and I don't sit on here, and I'm just opposing it for other projects other than something for the Rosemall community.

Okay. Thank you, Mr. Gardner. Our next speaker is Rodney Locks.

Good afternoon, council. My name is Rodney Locks. I live at 187 South Rice Street. You have on your agenda M3, the renaming of the downtown master plan. I think over the last 11 years they've done a good job. And I think it's a good opportunity for you to use that same format to do your town hall meetings, to go around to each precinct and find out what the people in that precinct need and develop a plan. And it helps with recommendations for your budget. You have an advisory committee, and when it comes to implementation, you will have some way of getting an input from the people who are affected by that. I think this is a great opportunity, and you can better define what each one of the committees are working on. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Locks. Our next speaker is Jimmy Veal.

James Beale, 187 Pinnacle Road. I look forward to coming here sometime and talking about something a little bit different. I would take after one of my mentors, Mr. Locks, and bring up new and exciting things to have opinions about and try to help everybody make better decisions. I'm reminded that my first appearance here was August 5th, 2024. That came very shortly after a meeting that I had with Mr. McKellar in November of 2023 about the problem of the bottom 200 feet of Bracken Trail blocking access to five or six properties up there that hopefully everybody knows about. In August 5th, I said it has to do with, it's just the bottom 200 feet. It's a seven mile long trail. And don't forget, I love Brevard. I still love it, even though that tree thing on Railroad Street, but that's heartbreaking. I loved a mountain bike. I did the Pinnacle Loop the other day. That was pretty fun. I love the trail. It's magic. But this has to do with blocking access to five pieces of property. So I also appeared two weeks later. It's kind of crazy, the anniversary. I feel pretty good being here so everybody didn't forget who I was between last week or two weeks ago. The second meeting I said, hey, blocking access to the property steals the value of it. I thought maybe somebody would take some personal care and dig into it based on that comment. Last time I told you that it's my belief or Mr. McKellar has told me a number of times that the city did nothing wrong when they did the eminent domain. And I have a different opinion about that. But the real wrong is when the trail got built and access was blocked. Mr. McKellar's also told me more than once that there was not a road up there. It's okay if I pass these out? One of the really, really wonderful things about this is it's gotten me to know a lot of fabulous people. Emma Dorsey and Connie Williams lived up there in the 50s. Emma's been paying taxes on a piece of land up there since taxes were levied. Access to her property is blocked by the trail. Connie Williams lived up there from most of the 40s and through the first half of the 50s. His mom worked at the Ford dealership. He talks about backing his car down this driveway. Some of you might have seen it. I cleared the driveway that Connie Williams backed down about four or five weeks ago. I would welcome an opportunity to walk with any one of you up there and show you what's going on. In the second appearance, I said it really would be nice to work this out. That was my intent.

30 seconds, Mr. Beale.

When I met with Mr. McKellar to work it out. It's a lot easier to solve this at council level or city council level than move forward with the lawsuit and all the things that come along with that. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Our next speaker is... Ken Haynes, did I get that right? It's hard to read. Oh, I guess I got it. Oh, okay, so you are on the other sheet. Okay, all right, we're gonna move you to the other sheet. Oh, okay, all right, so he's on the other sheet, okay. Our next speaker is Doug Powell.

Good evening, everyone. One month from today, we will be celebrating Constitution Day on September 17th. The states would have never ratified the Constitution if it did not include the Bill of Rights, which are the first 10 amendments to the Constitution. The reason many in this room are required to take an oath to support, maintain, and defend the Constitution is to protect an individual citizen's God-given rights and freedoms from their very own government. As I reminded you back in April, founding father and lawyer James Otis argued in the British courts in 1761 against open-ended blank search warrants that were called writs of assistance. In his argument, Otis said, I will to my dying day oppose with all the powers and faculties God has given me all such instruments of slavery and villainy as a writ of assistance is. It is the worst instrument of arbitrary power and is destructive of liberty and the fundamental principles of law. John Adams, our second president, observed later, American independence was then and there born. Every man in the crowded audience went away, as I did, ready to take arms against writs of assistance. Not only did the seeds of the American Revolution sprout from that courtroom, But so did the inclusion of the Fourth Amendment, which reads in part, the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated. It is estimated that the average law-abiding American unknowingly commits three felonies a day. If James Otis could speak tonight, what do you think he would say about government cameras trained on the citizens of Brevard 24-7 without probable cause? The main constitutional role of civil government is not to provide safety to its citizens, but to protect our civil rights. Do all citizens like to be safe, including me? Well, of course, but not at the expense of our civil liberties. This is why Thomas Jefferson said, I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery. If you look up the crime statistics in Asheville, you know that the 2,000 cameras monitored by their police department does not stop crime. It is not too late for Brevard to stop the rollout of surveillance infrastructure offered by private corporations to our police departments for free. We all know that when something is free, it is a sure sign that we are the product. Anyone who has Gmail has given Google access to every message you have sent and received, which is reviewed and analyzed by artificial intelligence and stored forever. I have tremendous admiration and respect for law enforcement I have lifelong friends who have served in this capacity and understand how incredibly difficult the job is. For the Chief of Police to stay on budget and to find capable officers must be incredibly challenging. And I understand and acknowledge how enticing the Axon surveillance cameras would be to help her job. But this is why all law enforcement officers must take an oath to the Constitution. And that is why signer of the Constitution, Benjamin Franklin, once said, those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserves neither liberty nor safety.

Thank you, Mr. Powell. Our next speaker is Harvey Sankey.

I'd like to add to that comment that if Benjamin Franklin was still living in the city of Philadelphia right now, he wouldn't have made that comment. In 2024, the city of Brevard and the Brevard-Davidson River Presbyterian Church entered into a lease agreement for three years to study the development of low to moderate income housing on the church's property. However, later that year, a geotechnical analysis revealed soil conditions on the site for that project was infeasible. The city spent $11,000 of our taxpayers' dollars for this study.

Money down the drain, probably went down Davidson River.

Now the city was contacted by a developer and the church to see if they can develop low to moderate income housing on the site, even with questionable soil. The new plan would also add 12 more units. The church is asking us to extend the lease for three more years, and the city would have to pay $10,000 to $15,000 of our taxpayers' dollars for a third-party review. Questions. Will the neighbors be asked for their input? You've heard a few of them tonight. Will this require, this will require rezoning of the area. How will that affect the area? Why is the city in real estate, in the real estate business? Why can't we let the church handle the new study instead of the taxpayers? Looks like we may be throwing good money after bad, a waste of our taxpayer dollars again. We can use this money to set up a fund to help our low income and fixed income property taxpayers. Give it to the taxpayers who currently live in our city. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Sankey. Our next speaker is Lauren Wolf.

Hello, I'm Lauren Wolf, and I live at 269 East Main Street, right at the corner of Main and Franklin, next door to the Presbyterian Church. And we moved here in August of 2024. So we moved here right as the site study was being done on the property. We barely had our boxes unpacked, and we had the flyer for the... community impact session input sessions and we were ready to go and we heard they were canceled and we heard about the soil um and so we hadn't really thought about it much and i share that because um we weren't here for the rising temperatures of this situation um and we've since become we we go to the church we love this community we understand the need for but I'm not here to talk about that. I'm here to talk as a neighbor to the land, a neighbor to my neighbors, and my concern is water. I grew up in Houston. I grew up with flooding, and storm water is something I know a little bit about, but until you live in Transylvania County in a temperate rainforest, you really haven't experienced water in this way. And so my first concern is the Missouri developer who has not developed here before in the wettest county in North Carolina, that they don't fully understand what they're getting themselves into. My second concern is that there was supposed to be input sessions in the fall, in the winter, and then it was supposed to go to developers to see I forgot what the next step was, exactly what it was called, but that was what it was supposed to happen, and it didn't happen. And I think that you would find, you're hearing a little bit of it, but I think in the community input sessions, you would have found people telling you about water and water and springs coming up and the water that flows under their houses. You would have heard a lot about that. It's not that people don't want housing. We want to help our neighbors, but we don't want our homes flooded out. And I'm at the top of the hill, so I'm in a really great spot, but I watch it all go downhill. Y'all have done such a great job on stormwater There was just y'all worked on the ordinance 6.6 and it addresses stormwater runoff and To think that someone could put in 60 units 30 seconds and a parking lot and not make the volume the speed of that runoff increase in any way and They'd have to put in a lot of work to keep that from happening. There's also an available way to calculate what happens to acreage when it becomes paved and the amount of gallons of water that would be flowing to Kings Creek from there. is thousands and thousands of gallons of water. It's a really big deal for our storm water system. So that's my concern about this land and I hope you will consider it and I also hope you will consider community input sessions that were promised to the community before we cancel the idea of bringing in other developers who might be interested or the ideas that we might have for what this land could do for stormwater and maybe green stormwater infrastructure.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Patricia Rinkle.

Yes, I live at the bottom of the We are Davidson River Presbyterian Church. And this is the fourth or fifth time I've come before you all discussing this. Thank you, Lauren, who is a little more neutral. I am one of the property owners who will be mostly affected if this proposition goes through. Water is a major issue. After a normal rain, my yard is squishy. My sump pump was going as I left for this meeting today. According to Mr. Hooper, one of the things you all will be considering is how a 60 unit low to middle income housing development will fit into the community. That's easy, it will not. you're looking at a well-established neighborhood of 300,000 to well over a million dollar homes. It doesn't fit in any way, shape, or form. Increase of traffic is going to be monumental. 60 units, at least two cars per unit. That's 120 vehicles. That's double, at least double the traffic in that area. We're talking from Broad Street to Park Neely, from Main Street down to the college. That whole area is going to be vastly affected, all negative. There is no positive for any of that area if this goes through. We're gonna lose value of our properties that we have, as Dawn pointed out, worked so hard for, our pursuit of happiness, et cetera. The pollution, noise, light, groundwater, that's gonna vastly increase. Crime is most likely going to increase Unfortunately, from the last go around, particularly the church, was not interested in any of our suggestions and or support for alternatives. And there are very good alternatives to this property. I hope the city does the right thing. You all know the land is not worthy. of this scope of development. So you may very well open yourself up for a lot of lawsuits also. So I really hope you all do the right thing and look at all of the information. Also, yes, community involvement, please. We have had one communique from the church. That's it.

Thank you, Ms. Rinkle. All right, that is everybody that signed up for public comment. We will move on. Our next item is the public hearing. We have a public hearing on the proposed amendment to the City of Brevard Unified Development Ordinance, Chapter 17, and the Code of Ordinances, Chapter 70, fats, oils, and grease, or FOG, regulations. And I believe our Assistant City Manager, David Todd, is gonna walk us through the proposed changes. David?

Yes, ma'am, thank you. Good evening, Council, Mayor. I would like to give you a brief presentation on our FOG program updates. FOG stands for fats, oils, and grease. And what I'm going to present to you tonight is something that has been mandated to us by the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality. We have to have an enforceable grease or FOG program. So one of the first things I'd like to do is introduce you to Brevard's anti-mascot, the arch nemesis of Pisgah Piper, Revard Grease Goblin. So this is the real reason why we have a fog program. So what is fog? What does it do to our sewer collection system? So these are some pictures of what's called a wet well. This is where all the sewer is collected across town and then pumped further down eventually to our wastewater treatment plant. The middle picture is what a clean system would look like without fog. The other two pictures are what you see there are fog what's referred to sometimes as fatbergs, icebergs, as collections of fat, oil and grease that has solidified. And it keeps what you see, the little orange balls that you see in the center picture, those are floats at work. They're pumps down in the bottom of that wet well. These plug up our system. So how do you prevent fog? How do you keep it out of our system? There are several ways to do it, but one of the most common ways is to use what's called a grease interceptor or a grease trap. This is a simple representation of a grease interceptor or a grease trap, and the way this system works You've got, these would either be located under a sink or perhaps outside and buried underground. What you've got is an inlet pipe. So the wastewater coming out of your, typically out of a kitchen, would enter through this pipe and then it drops down into a chamber where the lighter components of fat, oil, and grease would settle out and heavier solids would settle to the bottom. The clean water stays in the center and is able to travel up this standpipe into a second chamber where that repeats, and again the solids settle out, the fat, soil, and grease rise to the top, and then again another standpipe, and cleaner water, water far less contaminated with fog, leaves the interceptor. Then at some point in time, there are a couple of caps or lids that are opened up, and these fat, oil, and grease solids are removed from the trap. then taken to another facility, not to a wastewater treatment facility, but most likely to some type of a landfill facility. So why update our fog program now? Well, there are a couple of reasons for doing that. Our wastewater collection system permit, which has been in effect for some time now, specifies, and I'd like to read this to you, it says, the permittee shall develop and implement an educational fat, oil, and grease program that shall include at least semi-annual distribution of educational materials targeted both residential and non-residential users. The permittee shall also develop and implement an enforceable fats, oil, and grease program for non-residential users under which the permittee can take enforcement against users who have not properly installed, operated, and maintained grease traps or grease interceptors as directed or otherwise violated the terms of the enforcement program pertaining to fats, oils, and grease. Our permit, which we've had for a while, states that we must do this. We have had a very minimal level fats, oil, and grease program, but it has not been an enforceable program. And then in April of 2025, we had a DEQ, Department of Environmental Quality, compliance finding. So in that compliance finding, they noted to us that we needed to put an enforceable fats, oil, and grease program into place. It also included in that letter A reminder that this could be punishable by a civil penalty up to $25,000 a day for failure to put this program in place. Now, what's the likelihood of that penalty hitting us? Depends on what kind of action they see out of us. Are we making the proper steps to move forward and put a fats, oil and grease program in place? So if you look at our current UDO, our Unified Development Ordinance, it's basically silent. It does not speak to or address fog. If you look at our code of ordinance, it does speak to fog, but very minimally, and it does not have an enforceable program. So the primary piece where it mentions fog is under, in the code of ordinances, under chapter 70 utilities, under article three, the sewer system, is where you will find all of this language and the code of ordinance related to fog. And what it speaks to specifically is it says any waste or water containing fat, wax, grease, or oil in excess of 100 milligrams per liter as determined by a result of the Freon extractable test and reasonable interpretation of the test results in our auxiliary test to exclude from the measurement values which do not represent fats, wax, grease, and oil. And that's really the extent of what is in our current program. So our current program consists primarily of outreach and education. So previously, we would send out flyers with the water bills. But it would be done maybe once a year, and we have not done that on a continual basis. Program is listed on the website as well, but it's really just kind of a one-page educational program, and that's where I kind of borrowed our grease goblin from. So what we would like to propose to council, what we are proposing to council, is a modification to the UDO that in short says that the program would be, the UDO would just reference the code of ordinances. I've got to put my glasses on. that would say fat, oil and grease or fog control plan in accordance with chapter 70 of the Brevard City Code of Ordinances. So the UDO language change is very minimal and this language has been approved by the planning board. And so they have given that their green light. The Code of Ordinances, on the other hand, is much more complicated in how it is changed. And we spent a lot of time with staff, with the city manager, with the Public Works and Infrastructure and Utilities Committee, and with DEQ in particular, to develop language that we felt appropriately address the fog and at the same time and this was one of the things that the city manager was very concerned that he made sure we included in this is that there is a way to appeal any kind of finding that someone might have out of the fog program because we want to operate this in this fair amount manner as we can so in A part of what was approved in the previous budget is a fee schedule, which includes civil penalties for different levels of violation of the FOG program. And I've listed those here. Tier one violation would be just basically no civil penalty. It would just be a written warning. all the way up to a tier seven penalty, which could be as high as $25,000 a day.

Basically the same thing that DEQ would do to the city.

And then there's a varied level of tiers, which hopefully folks would respond and we would never have to move into the civil penalty part of this. So our plan for rollout of the FOG program, last year, fiscal year 25-26, we created a FOG coordinator position. We did this by basically reclassifying one of our wastewater treatment plant operator positions to take on the FOG coordinator position duties. And what that position entails is somebody who will go around and inspect high users, which are typically food service establishments, and determine whether or not they have the appropriate grease trap or grease interceptor equipment that is being maintained properly, and if not, to hopefully help assist them to get that equipment operating properly. One of the other things that we are in the process of doing is buying some different test equipment for the fog coordinator to use. We're also working with our wastewater collection system, ORC, to identify where low-hanging fruit may be. What systems are problematic right now? What sewer basins are problematic? Which of our lift stations are most problematic? Where do we get the most bang for the buck in pulling fog out of our system? Another step that we plan to take is to We've already sent one notice to all the food service establishments that we were having this public hearing. If this plan were adopted and put in place, we would send out a survey to all the food service establishments or other high-end users that ask a bit about their establishment, what kind of equipment they have. It would help us determine the need for whether or not they need a fog trap or a grease interceptor. We also plan to send our FOG coordinator to those businesses just to introduce himself and to say, hey, at some point in the future, I'm going to be coming back and conducting an inspection, and do you need help filling out your questionnaire or survey, which is really a pretty simple survey. And then sometime following that, we would begin inspections. So sometime in the six-month to one-year period, we would begin inspections on site. to determine whether folks have their equipment and if they have that they're maintaining it properly. And then sometime at least a year after approval from council on this program, we would plan to begin implementation of civil penalties or civil fees if we had to do that. So folks should have at least some amount of time to address the issue before anything like that would occur. So what does the updated fog program implementation and enforcement look like? The first thing would be to update the unified development ordinance. The second would be to update the code of ordinance. We've already updated the fee in our budget. We would put a more robust communication plan in place. We make sure brochures went out twice a year as our permit requires. We would distribute the fog questionnaires that I talked about to customers or high-end, what we believe might be high-end contributors of fog to the system. Based on our priority findings working with our wastewater ORC, we determine where to go look. And then sometime we would spend the next six months to a year helping folks get this put in place. And then after a year we would begin to look at, you know, do we need to level civil penalties. So the main thing we want to do is we want to work with customers to eliminate the fog out of the system. As you saw from those initial pictures that I showed you, it's very problematic and it affects all of us. We also want to nurture a relationship with Transylvania County, their building inspector and their health inspector. So they're some of the first eyes on site in these different locations. They may see stuff before we do. So when construction's taking place, they may be the first eyes on site. When restaurants are in operation, they're gonna be there a lot more frequently than we are conducting their normal inspections. And then we also want to develop a list of resources that would help folks if they need to add or change or do anything with a grease trap. We give them somewhere to go, somewhere to look, somebody to talk to to help implement this different stuff. So what are some possible outcomes of putting this program in place? Well, the number one thing is we would hope to have a reduction in sanitary sewer overflows, both on the commercial side and on the private side, right? Sometimes if a restaurant has a sanitary sewer overflow and it leaks outside their building, that can go into a storm drain. Same thing happens if we get fog in one of our lift stations and it keeps our pumps and floats from operating properly, we can have a sanitary sewer overflow into a stream or a creek adjacent to one of our lift stations. So that's the primary thing we get out of this. We wanna stop getting sanitary sewer overflows, the SSOs. The other thing that this will do is it will create a reduction of BOD and TSS, total suspended solids, at our wastewater treatment plant. So this, if you may or may not be aware, council is aware, our wastewater treatment plant, we've been looking extensively at renovating the plant and upgrading the capacity of the plant, largely because we reach our BOD limit. Not on a daily basis, but frequently we reach our BOD limit. This would help reduce that BOD. It also causes a reduction in odor. So fog produces hydrogen sulfide. Hydrogen sulfide is that kind of rotten egg smell that you get. Pulling fog out of our system will reduce the odor. It also has the potential to result in fewer health code violations, especially at food service establishments. We're keeping fog out of the sewer system in the restaurant. We're allowing their sewer system to operate better and more efficiently. One of the big downsides is it could result in possible cost to business owners that may find they have to revitalize their system or clean or maintain their system. Hopefully folks have been doing that on a regular basis, but if they've not, they may have to begin or start doing that. So next steps. The Public Works Committee has reviewed this and reviewed the code changes. I'm not going to go over those. Those are extensive. I believe they were provided in your agenda package. The Public Works Committee has spent an extensive amount of time looking at those. We've taken their input. We've incorporated their input. And we're bringing this forward to council, both the UDO change of language and the Code of Ordinance change of language. So pending your approval of this program, we would then, the next step would be to begin implementation of the FOG program. Tonight, we're not seeking any action. It's just information for the public hearing. That's the extent of my presentation. I'm glad to answer any questions that I can.

All right. This is a public hearing. So, Council, I need a motion to officially open the public hearing. So moved. Do I have a second?

Second.

All in favor?

Aye.

The public hearing is officially open. The public is asked to adhere to the following guidelines for the public hearing. Register with the city clerk by printing your name, address, and phone number on the sign-in sheet. When it is your turn, step to the podium in front of city council. State your name and address clearly. Be concise, avoid repetition, and limit your comments to five minutes or less. 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 this is a time to provide your comments but not to ask questions a public hearing is not an appropriate venue for a question and answer session and we've got one individual that has signed up and that is mr ken Tell me your name again.

of this program and what it means for business owners in this town and the fats, oils, and grease reduction program, how you guys are going to handle it, and what we are going to look like as business owners up front and the cost of it that's going to be involved, and just a little bit more in

Thank you very much. Okay, that is the only person that signed up to speak. I need a motion to close the public hearing. So moved. Do I have a second?

Second.

All in favor?

Aye.

Public hearing is closed. We will now open it for council's questions and comments. And we'll start with Mr. Lytle.

Thanks for presentation, it was very, very clear. Do we know how many, and obviously restaurants would be sort of the largest sort of need for this. Do we know how many, businesses might be in an area of sort of non-compliance that might need additional equipment or care with their FOG. Do you have any idea?

I don't think we know how many are not in compliance right now. That's kind of the purpose of the questionnaire that we would start with is to try to give us some indication of that. Erin Wines, our... ORC for our wastewater treatment plant operating responsible charge. Do you remember how many food service establishments we identified? 385? Is that? So it's about, you know, that's about the total number. So I don't know. I don't have any.

How many of those might be in noncompliance? Okay. Right, okay. And in terms of enforcement, would it be like, you know, what are we putting in place, you know, if there's a smaller business that, you know, is attempting to comply, right? They're going through those motions, they're working towards distinguishing them between someone who is ignoring. how are we supposedly handling those two scenarios or do those two look the same if they both are not complying?

We had a lot of discussion about that and I think our intent is to see folks trying hard to comply The civil penalties, Mr. Hooper, you correct me if I say this incorrectly, but I believe the civil penalties are a may, not a must. So I think if we see intentionality in trying to reduce the fog, we're going to work with folks. If we see somebody that's blatantly violating and not making an attempt to correct, I think we would be more inclined to lean towards a civil penalty. Mr. Hooper, would you agree with that? Yes.

Great, and just to comment about, I love the fact that we're educating first, communicating first before we move to penalty. I think that's really, really important. Also, I love giving options for contractors or resources and providing that. And I would just say I would double down on overcommunication. I think I saw that we're planning to go out twice a year with a flyer, why not quarterly at first, to just really overcommunicate. That's the only thing that I saw that I would suggest. Thank you, that's all.

Thank you, Mr. Lionel. Mr. Daniel?

Yeah, I serve on the Public Works Committee with Mr. Wise and I think he would agree that that was a remarkably clear and succinct presentation. Thank you. There's a lot of work, a lot of reading to do on this if you're interested in that. But I do think it does address the issue clearly and it does bring us into state compliance that is required by law that we meet. And I also think that our staff has gone to great extremes to communicate with the public and the businesses of what and why we're doing what we're doing. So thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah, just a couple things. I'm curious. I know you said some notices were given out to business owners about this public hearing. Did any notices go out about the committee meetings when this was being discussed, or was that kind of the first communication that was – believe all the public meetings are or the committee meetings are publicly advertised with an agenda just like the council meeting but I don't think there was anything to my knowledge was anything in addition to that okay I just think and in addition to notices it may be worth in that year time frame that we have sort of coming up as the introductory period having some educational events, not just information going out via flyer or email, but having some in-person check-ins. And I would hate to shut down every restaurant in town for a night, so maybe spread that out a little bit. But I know there's going to be a lot of questions, and I think we should have a venue to answer those as much as we can. I do have a question just for a little bit more detail on, it does seem like this program has a lot of overlap between the health department, which is a county department, not a city department, and a little bit of our own planning department, particularly with new construction, I would think. So can you talk, I know you mentioned the health department a little bit, but just a little bit more about how the coordination between sort of those three areas would work?

I'll do my best. It's one of those things that's probably most in flux in part as well. The North Carolina building code already and has for some time required grease interceptors and traps. So when someone builds a new building or facility, the Transylvania County building inspector is responsible for those inspections for compliance to the code. So that's where their role would come into place. They should be doing that now, but we just want to be working with them and talking with them and making sure that, you know, what they're putting in is, you know, meeting the results of what we want, what the code says, right? So it's kind of, we're working hand in hand, but it's really not anything new for them, but it's new that we would have a vested interest in it as well. More so, we should have always had it, but more so than we've had in the past. There is nothing in regards to the, I don't believe in regards to the health or sanitation inspection in particular, that they would look to see that a grease trap was being maintained. They, again, might make sure that there is a grease trap there. Our program, as required by the permit, would make sure that that grease trap is being maintained as it's required to. And so some of that might start with we come in and find somebody has a grease trap, but they're not maintaining it. We might make a return visit to say, are you doing that now? Do you have records of it? And we would ask folks to keep records of that. So that's kind of what our coordinator and inspector would be doing. But we might have a health inspector that says, hey, their drains are overflowing a lot. You guys might want to look to see if they have a fat oil or grease problem, for example. So that's where we might have first eyes on the street. It's difficult for restaurants. And if somebody has a deep fryer, for example, they probably are changing that oil and grease out now and using somebody like Blue Ridge Biofuels to come in and take that away. We don't want them to dump it down the drain, but if they are. they're probably having drain problems, right? Or we're having drain problems further down. So that's the kind of thing that the health inspector could help us see. Do they have a grease collection system out back, right? Is it neat and maintained? But the big thing is we just want to be sure that the three of us are talking, they're aware of the program, that we're kind of working hand in hand with it. The planning department as well could look at plans and be sure that some of that stuff is there, but that's not... Paul, Emily, I don't want to speak for you guys, but y'all aren't typically looking for code compliance things. You're looking for more ordinance compliance. Is that correct? Yes, sir.

So as it relates to planning, what we've spoken about in the past and how our work would intersect with this FOG is having it be added as a list of plans that would need to be submitted, which is what that one little sentence in the UDO change does. And then we've been discussing and are trying to work through what it looks like through our permitting process. And so one of the features that we have in GovWell is to have a separate process request a secondary permit or something like that. And the thing that complicates this and why we're looking into our process is that there's a lot of, it's not just new construction that requires this FOG compliance. And so we're working on how our process might be able to help catch as many as possible and make sure that that reporting is done accordingly.

Okay.

And my final question is on if there's any state programs, I know, you know, well, backing up, this is a state, primarily a state requirement. That's why we're going through this. And I'm curious about whether they have any programs to assist businesses that are attempting to upgrade their facilities and get up to the standards that were, the new standards that we're putting out there.

We've not found anything specific to that yet, but the list of resources that I spoke about previously, if we do identify those types of programs, we want to put them on that list of resources, and hopefully we can keep that list of resources updated on our website, so it's things like that. If we find that type of thing, we can keep that list updated, but as to date, we've not, and just double check, we've not found anything to date. Okay.

and I just want to thank the this is just for the public I think it's like over it's around 100 pages long and so yeah I just want to thank the staff for working on this and the two council members at the committee level that really dug into this this is pretty detailed stuff so thank you Aaron Winans I would be lost to not point out Aaron for the bulk of that work I'm up here talking about it but

Erin did a tremendous amount of legwork on that.

Ms. Holder.

Thank you, Erin.

Great name, too.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. So I think some of my questions have been answered from the discussions of the earlier speakers. Businesses or restaurants are predominantly the culprit. Is that correct?

Yes, ma'am, it tends to be what is termed food service establishment, so it's restaurants. It could also be churches or daycare centers, any place that would have a commercial type of kitchen, Mary C. Jenkins Community Center, places like that, in addition to restaurants, but primarily restaurants are making the bulk of the food. That tends to be the primary offender. There are some other industrial-type users as well, Grocery stores in the back, like in the butcher shop or in the dairy section, things like that. They're washing down spilt milk, things like that.

So when we're talking about hiring a coordinator, did I hear that?

So we have, we created a fog coordinator position by taking a position we had at our wastewater treatment plant now. So, uh, Aaron looked hard at his staffing and how things were going and found a way to reorganize some of those duties and just reclassify that position. So it's still at the wastewater treatment plant. It's still, um, reports to the wastewater treatment plant and has duties there and can function as an operator when needed. But it's his primary function is, uh, will be to serve as the coordinator, which ultimately, once the program is established, will look more like inspections and testing of what people are doing in addition to education.

Okay, so you know what my next question was, who's gonna pay for it, but it sounds like it's already in the budget. Okay. And fees, are they ongoing or just when there's a violation?

They would just occur when there is a violation. And the Tier 1 violation has no fee. It's unnoticed. So folks would have to fail to respond to the Tier 1 level and you know any kind of fashion to move to tier two which is a relatively uh i guess that's depending it's it's a minor fee or fine civil penalty compared to what it is as you continue to violate so hopefully you know we would not see hopefully we're working with folks and it's it's not The intent is definitely not to be a money-making scheme. It's to keep the fog out of our system. The benefits are huge if we can prevent sanitary sewer overflows and if we can gain any capacity at our wastewater treatment plant. That's where the real kind of bang from the buck comes from.

Okay. And I agree with this, Aaron, about... Education, I think that's important. And maybe since we are talking about restaurants and they need to be open so I don't have to cook. And then it can stagger, maybe stagger the classes and stagger the days and the times to make that education possible. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Mr. Weiss.

Yeah, I want to thank everyone involved with this, because I know it took a lot of time and effort, and as I'm sure you all read through this, because it's fascinating. It is like 100 pages. I also want to say that thank you to my other council members, because you guys basically asked the similar questions we asked in committee, and I appreciate that, because I think it shows that everyone's really trying to look out for the best interests of not only the business owner, but the cities as well. I think it's hard to overestimate how nice of a word fog sounds like when compared to the pictures. and how many acronyms we are dealing with at this level, but the important thing is the damage that happens when we don't control this is so enormous, and that does impact every single one of us in this room, whether you own a restaurant or not, because that affects our wastewater, and we all contribute to that. So I think this is a great program. I'm glad DEQ sort of gave us a little push, and I look forward to educating our business owners to get this in place.

Thank you. Thank you, Council. Any additional questions? All right. There is no action on this tonight. Thank you, Mr. Todd. This will come back for a vote at a later meeting.

Yes, ma'am. Thank you.

All right. We will move on. We have the consent and information agenda. The following items are on the consent agenda. One, the tax settlement report of July, 2026. Two, ordinance declaring road closure for Brevard Plain Air Festival and Halloween Fest. three reaffirming resolution city of brevard official depositories four downtown master plan committee meeting minutes june 10th of 2026 five public works and utilities committee meeting minutes july 1st 2026 Six, housing committee meeting minutes July 14th of 2026. Council, do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda?

So moved.

Do I have a second?

Second.

All in favor?

Aye.

Consent is approved. Moving on to new business. The first item is to consider updates to the Brevard-Davidson River Presbyterian Church lease amendment for LMI housing. And I believe City Manager Mr. Hooper is going to open this.

Yes, ma'am. I'll preface my comments by saying that this was discussed at the Housing Committee last week. And that committee referred it on to council for further discussion. But there is one small change in the strategy that I'm going to propose tonight from the strategy that was discussed at the housing committee last week. But indeed, some of our speakers have it right. There has been a development in this matter that requires some reconsideration of the lease. We've been approached by a low to moderate income housing developer called Greenway who is interested in developing a low to moderate income multi-family project on the church site. They are aware of the geotech study that was performed two years ago and its findings on the quality of the soil there. But they've shared with us that they think they can make the project work. We're not yet convinced that they can, so we want to do some due diligence on them. And in order to do some due diligence, there's a change to the lease that needs to occur. In order to adequately vet this group, we need to change the expiration of the lease from June of next year to a date further out in the future. And I'll get in a minute to why I'm proposing the new expiration date that I am. The other change that I need your permission for is not a change to the lease per se, but a change to the expectation that we had that the council had two years ago when we first discussed this and that was that we would use a competitive process to find our qualified development partner at the time we thought that was going to be an rfq that we would put out on the street and receive submissions from interested housing developers that we could then vet individually and choose our favorite Well, clearly that's not what's happened in this case. We've been approached by a suitor who is willing to negotiate with us and tell them more about themselves and their plan and let us vet them, but it wasn't done competitively. And so I just want to make sure that that is okay with you all before we proceed any further. But the thing I do need an official approval from you all on is the extension of the lease expiration date. As I just said, I'm asking for you all to authorize me to sign that lease amendment. I'm suggesting that we update the lease to expire on the end of June 2030. This will give us adequate time to do due diligence on Greenway Development Company, and if that diligence reveals that they're not the right partner, perhaps do another type of pursuit for a suitor. So it gives us time to... find a qualified development partner that we are comfortable with, whether that's Greenway or someone else. So that was all discussed at Housing Committee last week. The one change to the strategy that I'm gonna recommend is this. At the Housing Committee, we talked about moving directly into the third party review for Greenway. And the plan at the time was to hire DFI, our trusted advisor on these matters, to do this third-party review, which is a rigorous look at Greenway's finances, at their pro forma, at their past projects and how those worked and how those were financed and so forth. It's a very technical review that the finance experts at DMI, DFI would do on our behalf. However, that's not free. Since our contract with DFI is now focused on Azalea Avenue, a third party review for the church property would be outside the scope and we'd have to amend their contract and add some additional funds to it to pay for this additional service. And I haven't received that quote yet, but they tell me it'd probably be between $10,000 and $15,000. So with that in mind, what I'm suggesting is that before we even pay for that rigorous third party review, that we do a little bit of diligence beforehand and ask DFI to scrutinize Greenway's plan, scrutinize their past projects, their financials, and so forth, and give us an opinion whether this is a good project to move forward with into the third party review stage and so I don't have a timeline for that yet but it'll probably just be a few a month or so from now before we get that assessment from DFI on whether it's worth moving forward into the third party review stage but if we were to move to the third party review A lease extension would certainly be needed because it would take probably six to nine months to perform that third-party review, and then an additional handful of months in order for us to hold the public input meetings that we would want to hold, define the public interest for the site, and negotiate the details of the development agreement with Greenway. And so we would need the extra time to do all that. So just to summarize what I need from you all tonight, if you're willing, is an authorization to sign an amendment to the lease extending its term from 2027 to 2030, and a thumbs up or a head nod from you all that you are okay with moving forward without a competitive solicitation process if our suitor is determined to be fit to move forward with.

All right. Thank you, Mr. Manager. Excuse me, sir. This is not a public discussion right now. I'm going to move for council to ask questions, so please. I'm going to open this up for council questions and comments before I ask for any type of motion on this. We will start with Mr. Weiss.

There's a lot to unpack here. I appreciate everyone coming to speak to us now and before. I want to reemphasize that we don't know what we don't know at this point, and that's a big we don't know. But I do want to share a couple of numbers with you that are important to me and I think other people in the room. One of those numbers is 3,071. 3,071 is the number of housing units we are short in this community to house our workforce, 3,000. We live in a town of 7,500 people. So think about the relative scale of those two numbers. We have heard from the public for years that housing is critical, that people are desperate for housing. We're talking about housing for teachers, firefighters, people who are working at the grocery store, people who are working at the bar, the restaurant, people that are our neighbors, that are our friends. If we want Brevard, to remain diverse and interesting and beautiful, we have to look at any opportunity we can for potential housing. Sometimes that's a really hard question to try to answer. We have very little land in Brevard and you can't build housing like this in the county because there's no infrastructure. We have very little stock to work with. And so we are trying to do the best we can with the information we can get. And I think part of this conversation tonight is really looking at, is there an opportunity that's at all realistic? And we don't know. It would be disenfranchising to all the 3,000 families dying to get homes who want to be in this community, who have every right to be here, who already live here, or living with their parents or their grandparents or their aunt and uncle, or not living in homes, to not try to at least look at this as an option. Again, I really want to emphasize, none of us know. We don't know. We're not saying yes to anything, but I do think giving us a little bit of time to look at it, and I say this too from the point of being an architect. You know, I have very serious concerns about this property. Lauren Wolf, you brought up all the concerns I have. As a coincidence, we have the same initials. It wasn't staged this way, right? But so it is really hard, and that's why hearing from you is so important because your voices really matter in this conversation. We have friends who live on Franklin or in Franklin Park and that whole area. We want to hear from you, but there are a lot of voices in the conversation, I think is what I'm trying to say. I think that's talk way too much already.

Thank you, Mr. Weiss. Ms. Holder?

I, too, want to say thank you for coming and speaking and your concerns. To Lauren's point, I think we all have concerns, and they vary. Wilson, I do have a question. What are we paying for the lease? Remind me of that.

One dollar a year.

One dollar a year?

Yes, ma'am.

Can we afford that?

Barely. Barely.

Just barely. All right. So... My second concern would be to pay a third-party review. Is the soil going to be different? Will the answers be different? And so that would be my next concern. I am concerned too because, to Lauren's point also, we have people who work in Brevard who can't live here and cannot afford to live here. And we have housing units that are going up for low to moderate citizens in various neighborhoods in Brevard. And it seems that no one wants them in their community. and I've spoken with several who do not know to moderate citizens does not mean that crime rates will go up. It doesn't mean that because their background is different, socioeconomic backgrounds may be different, race may be different, education may be different, but I think we saw the report last week where most of our crime rate comes from. It is not our unhoused community. that was the lower percentage. And so I think that that's something to consider when we look at this. I certainly hear the concerns about the water issues and the concerns about that. And unfortunately in the mountains, and when I first moved here, it rained so much, I said to some of the members, I said, you guys didn't tell me it rained so much. And they said, well, there are 200 and some waterfalls in Transylvania County. So that's something we can't really change, and I think it can affect all of us who don't live on a hill. But I would like to think about a third study. Is that gonna give us more information? Is it gonna change the information that we have? Will we be better educated? Would the engineers be able to pull this off? To his point earlier, he gave us three options. Are there other options? And is that something that we need to move forward and to look at? I would like to see more housing for low to moderate income citizens. I would like to see more people live here who work here. Thank you.

Mr. Baker?

Yeah. Wilson, just to start out with the question on the process here. So tonight we're just talking about extending the lease three years to continue looking at this property for affordable housing, but there may come a time where you will ask, I guess this is my question, will you come back and ask about that third-party review at a later date?

If Greenway survives this first level of scrutiny.

Right.

If they survive that first level of scrutiny, then yes, I will come back and ask for approval to move forward with that third-party review and to move the money around to pay for it. Right. But if they don't survive this first level of scrutiny and if DFI makes a recommendation that we not move forward with them, well, then I'll bring that to you and that'll be the end of our relationship with Greenway. Right. We would then use the remaining three years on the lease to try to solicit another qualified development partner. It might be a return to a competitive solicitation. It might be a private negotiation with Habitat or some other trusted provider. The lease term is the only provision of the lease, the only substantive provision of the lease I want to change. I want to keep all the rest of them the same. And so the same strategy that we previewed a few years ago with the exception of these two small changes is what we'd follow. And I want to point out that there is a provision in the lease that says the minimum number of units is only 24. And so if we can find a developer who we deem acceptable who can build 24 units, then that might be our preferred approach. It just depends. We'll spend the next few years finding out if Greenway doesn't pan out.

And I know I'm getting ahead of myself a little bit, but if you come back and request from council approval to move forward with that third-party review for this one developer, Will you also bring to us an option for a competitive process and what that would cost to go ahead and do a competitive process at the same time? Or could you?

I'm not quite sure what the benefit of that would be if we perform a third-party review and it's deemed satisfactory.

I'm saying before the third-party review, before. When you come to request the third party review for that, because the third party review is just for one particular developer. I guess I'm curious about the option of what it would cost to just go ahead and do the competitive process and have that review for multiple developers at the same time. Does that?

I could do that, but there would be some risk there. The risk would be that we, instead of going with the bird in hand to find two in the bush and end up with none.

Yeah, and I think I'd like to evaluate that risk at the time and make that decision. And I'm just speaking for myself. And so just to back up, so extending the lease three years to continue looking at this particular lot for affordable housing, I just want to back up and talk a little bit about how we got here, because when we originally talked to DFI, they did a search across the city, looked at lots everywhere. I think they came to us with five, if I remember correctly, five or six at the time. And a few of them were immediately sort of eliminated for various reasons. They were either too small or there were some steep slope areas. There were utilities overhead which eliminated some things. This lot is not, it's not like we have a ton of available lots like this. And I think when we have these conversations at City Council, we often hear like, well, why here? Like, why not somewhere else? And again, we don't know whether this is gonna work out or not. We're gonna have those discussions. But the reason we're even talking about it and the reason why I'm gonna support at least three more years to study is because we don't have a lot of options. There is no backup plan. We've got Azalea Avenue, but that lot is not perfect because it does not have utility service currently. We thought we had the money squared away to get utility service there, and it was taken away, as I'm sure some people in the room are aware. at the state level. We're hoping to get that back. But again, that was a lot. We thought it was on track, and then it was not on track. So these opportunities to make a dent in the very serious housing crisis that we have, they just don't grow on trees. And so we have to do as much due diligence as we can to see if we can make it work, particularly when we have land that is being donated. that is a huge cost that will not have to go into the price of these homes that gets wiped out at the very beginning. We would be negligent if we didn't study something like that when we're talking to a partner that says, we would like to donate this land for affordable housing. And that doesn't mean that we're supporting the developer that is coming up now. It just means that we're gonna ask for three more years to continue looking at this and seeing what's possible. That's all.

Mr. Daniel?

Well, as has been stated by everyone, the housing crisis is dire in this area. A lot of the issues, understandable concerns that folks have raised. that those concerns are gonna be addressed because by law they have to be. They won't be able to put this in without addressing water. They won't be able to build this without a solid foundation. The other point as well is that, and I always try to point this out, is if you look at French Broad Terrace, Broad River Terrace, excuse me, That's what we're talking about. Well cared for, nice housing, responsible people, people you would see every day, either in the grocery store, at your doctor's office, working there. As I've said before, it's not a bunch of gypsies. It's people we know who need a house. They need a place to live. And that, you know, one of the concerns, and I'm not sure who to ask, I don't know if Paul would know this, so French Broad Terrace, I would be surprised if we're not talking about the same soil for that building. Do we know that?

I think it is slightly different, but I don't know the specifics of it. However, in the actual geotechnical report, it is lined out specifically and has a number of solutions as part of it as well. Yeah.

Well, you know, construction was my career when I was working. And I did build a building, about an 8,000 square foot building. on water is still standing and being used well. We dig the footings, they fill up with water. There's technology to address that, and it's sound improving technology. So I just put that out there, but again, our need is dire. We need housing.

Mr. Lytle.

Yeah, I for one am no expert at land development and because of that I'd really like to see what the ideas are and see what the options are. One thing I'd like to say as well is I think that There sometimes is a confusion about what low and moderate income actually means. I just looked it up. According to HUD, for Western North Carolina, one person that means at low income is making over $43,000 a year. Moderate income going up to $65,000. So these are folks that have jobs. These are folks that are looking for homes for their kids. And so we need to make sure that we do the best we can to accommodate. And so I think that, I'll speak for myself, but I think the rest of the council shares the fact that we both care about existing homeowners as much as new homeowners. And I wouldn't want to endorse anything that would harm an existing homeowner with water. or with destroying their properties. So whatever we end up doing at any point in time, if we chose to do it, that would have to be, we'd have to make sure that we have nothing but assurances that that's the case. So that all of us come out on a win-win. But my opinion is that we go ahead and extend with the understanding that it's not an approval to move forward, it's just an approval to find out whether or not we should even first look into it, and then once we look into it, if a manager feels that he'd like to bring it back at that point, whatever planning or whatever the plans are is that we'll be able to see those plans in detail for approval.

Thank you, Mr. Lytle. All right, council, do I have a motion to authorize the city manager to sign and execute a lease extension as discussed?

So moved.

Do I have a second?

Second.

All right, pick one. Any further discussion? Anybody before we vote?

I'd like to clarify that the motion also include approval to move forward with a non-competitive process. Erin's comments, I want to hear the rest of the council's thoughts on that and clarify what the council's intentions are.

Okay. I was going to do that separately, Mr. Manager.

Thank you, ma'am.

Right now we just have a motion to extend the contract. Then we'll get to the noncompetitive process. Okay. All in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? Okay. City Manager, you have the authority to extend the contract to June 2030. Council, the second thing that Manager is asking is whether or not you are authorizing him to go forward with a non-competitive process.

I will make the motion to do that.

Okay. Do I have a second?

Second.

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

I'd like to say that because this is a difficult site and you have a contractor who is prepared to move forward, I would like to be able to take advantage of that if that proves to be the best way to move forward.

Okay, Mr. Weidel?

And I just want to be clear. So with your suggestion about going to DFI and getting their opinion about whether or not to go ahead and investigate, that's something that you're just asking for the thumbs up to do. yes sir okay and so this would you know this is more about if you were to come back I just want to make sure I understand if you were to come back it would be a non-competitive process or not is that is that the motion as I understand it that's my understanding yes okay can you reiterate it just can you reiterate just again the disadvantage of a competitive process in this case versus it going to Greenway?

I think in this case the disadvantage is that Greenway might walk away and we might have nobody. And again, they've insisted that they can put together a project that will be economical and work and take care of the concerning soil at the site. DFI, not at this first level of scrutiny, but if we move forward with the third party review, will be applying the same level of scrutiny to Greenway that they would be to the suitors that would have participated in the competitive process. And so the sort of advantage you get of having an opportunity to review a lot of proposals in depth we'll be able to do that same level of scrutiny with the third-party review. So the one, you know, I guess benefit that we might be losing out on is, you know, the benefit that you always experience in sort of competitive economies, and that is that, you know, folks will give you their best deal when they know they're having to compete for it. We wouldn't benefit from that in this case, but I'm sure that Greenway is going to try to build the project as economically as possible while still abiding by our zoning regulations and so forth, building a good quality product that would qualify for LIHTC funds. That's another thing that, Council, you all know about that I'll share here with the general public, and that is that LIHTC, the federal funding program that a lot of low to moderate income, most low to moderate income developers use, has strict requirements for the quality of the buildings, how they're managed, how tenants are chosen, and so forth. And so, between our rules and the LIHTC rules, you'd see a high quality development from Greenway, whether they're having to compete with other other entities for our business or not.

Mr. Manager, may I add to that? Yes, please. One of the things that we've talked about at length with the church and with DFI is that this third party review will be about looking at their pro forma, assessing what assumptions they've used, what the market demand is, and really gut checking every line of their pro forma and their plan. So the idea is that that DFI will be our set of eyes in reviewing it for its feasibility, for whether or not the assumptions they use are right, for the competitiveness for the LIHTC proposal and other funding sources if necessary. So they are really going to be looking at each and every line to ensure that it does, in fact, hold up. And so that is the purpose of that third-party review. And it would be similar to what they would do as part of a competitive process as well.

Anything else? Okay. Mr. Wise?

No comments.

Ms. Holder?

Not going to be transparent. I'm not sure that I'm ready for a non-competitive process. And the compassion of this church to donate the land, I think we need to be good stewards of the process. And to your point, that, you know, with one person they can give us, I'm not saying that they would, but there's no competition to say that, you know, I can do this and I will do that. You know, there's no competition. And then my next question would be, you know, what did DIFI do before that may be different this time?

Well, we never got to this part last time because we got the report and thought that the project wasn't going to be economically feasible. So we never arrived here. Emily, you want to add?

Yes, that's correct. So in the previous, in our existing contract with DFI was to conduct the housing needs assessment, identify sites, work with us to identify potential sites, and then move forward with the selection of a site and the pre-development feasibility of a project. That pre-development feasibility was to include the geotechnical, an architectural assessment of kind of what could fit on the site, and community engagement. Well, we got back the geotechnical report, and at that point it was deemed by you all, by the housing committee, by everyone, that it was not financially feasible for us to move forward with that project at this time. So we pivoted kind of that second level of review excuse me, that second phase of the project to the Azalea site as well. So this is really, instead of looking at, instead of doing the competitive solicitation with a fully completed package that has what we think can fit on the site, what the public wants, what all of this is, we're instead asking them to give us their best shot. you know sell us on this project before we move forward then when we receive that in-depth proposal that is what's going to be reviewed by dfi so it's just a little bit different but we will be reviewing the same kinds of things as well as you know as i mentioned the detailed pro forma so this work that we're proposing with dfi has not been done for this site um but it is something that that they have done something that we're planning to do should we have moved forward with this

So I think that even makes me feel even more concerned about a non-competitive process. Because we don't want that one person to tell us what we want to hear versus what we've already heard. OK?

Mr. Baker?

Yeah, just one point of clarity. So if we get through the sort of first look at this and we deem that the third-party review is necessary, that will be another council action, correct, Mr. Manager, where we will authorize you to pay for the third-party review? That's correct. Okay. That's all I have.

But may I get clarification? Yes. Is he asking us now to vote for him to go forward in the process of a non-competitive process? Is that what you're asking for tonight?

That was the motion.

That was the motion? Okay. So what difference does it make to your point? Tell me what, help me understand what you just said. We're not giving him authority to actually do it, to actually hire someone?

Correct.

Okay. So it's the process you're looking for now. Okay.

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

Aye.

Opposed? Nay. That was four ayes and one nay. Motion passes. Okay. We have a couple more items. I think we will take a five-minute break and then come back. So five minutes. We will move on to our next item, which is the proposed remote participation policy for appointed boards and committees. And our city clerk is going to talk about this.

Yes. So since the COVID state of emergency expired in August of 22, there's been a lot of questions about whether remote participation in meetings is allowed under state law. With governing boards, such as the city council, There are specific statutes that govern quorum and voting requirements, but state law neither clearly authorizes nor clearly prohibits adopting local rules of procedure that define and authorize remote meetings outside a declared state of emergency. However, the UNC School of Government has advised that appointed boards and committees likely have significantly more freedom to conduct remote meetings. provided there are no specific statutes regarding physical presence for voting or quorum. And given that our numerous appointed boards and committees meet regularly on a monthly basis, members sometimes have scheduling conflicts and can't come to a meeting, and in the past, meetings have had to be canceled due to lack of a quorum. There have been requests by members to participate remotely, but Given that we don't have a written policy or an adopted policy by city council allowing such participation, the question whether members participating remotely can count toward a quorum and whether they may vote is up in the air. So the School of Government has put out a number of blog posts regarding remote participation. and they recommend that local governments adopt specific rules authorizing remote participation for appointed boards and committees. But special consideration should be given to the use of that remote participation, that's a mouthful, but special consideration should be given in the case of planning boards and boards of adjustment who act in quasi-judicial manners. They suggest four different approaches, in-person only, in-person quorum, and in-person voting required, in-person quorum required with restricted remote voting, or a full allowing of remote quorum participation and voting. So we took this to the Finance and Human Resources and Citizen Appointment Committee in June, and the committee considered whether to allow remote participation, and if so, under which approach. The committee, the consensus was for the Planning Board and the Board of Adjustment They recommended approach number three, which is to require in-person quorum to conduct business, but allow remote participants to count toward quorum as well. To permit remote participation in discussion, deliberation, motions, seconds, and votes. However, remote votes only count if they are not outcome determinative. And they recommended approach four for the other boards and committees. So using the feedback from the committee, staff drafted the policy, which is in your packet for consideration. And the proposed policy strongly encourages in-person attendance but authorizes certain circumstances under which remote participation would be allowed. Members participating remotely would be required to give 24-hour advance notice to the committee chair and the committee secretary. For the planning board and board of adjustment, the vote of a member participating remotely shall not be effective as a deciding vote, and remote participation shall not include voting on quasi-judicial applications, nor shall quasi-judicial hearings be held without a quorum of members in person. except during a declared state of emergency. The policy requires a roll call vote when members participate remotely and addresses how the chair may handle remote participation when contact with a remote participant is lost due to technical difficulties. It also limits the number of times a member may participate remotely in regularly scheduled meetings in a rolling 12-month period. It does not limit the number of members who may participate remotely in a given meeting, provided that either the chair or vice chair is physically present. And I'll take questions if there are any.

All right. I will open it up for questions or comments. Mr. Lytle.

No questions. I'm on this committee. I think it gives a good balance of some flexibility while ensuring that most of the vast majority of meetings are in person and ensures that the quasi-judicial boards are handled differently.

Mr. Daniel, anything?

I'm a little concerned about the vote only counting if it's non-determinative. Sort of begs the question of why vote. You're either voting for it or you're not voting at all.

That is for just the Board of Adjustment and Planning Board.

Okay, that's what I wasn't clear on, I guess. But otherwise, you would vote on the other committee. You would vote and your vote would count. Okay. Yes, sir.

Okay.

Thank you.

Mr. Baker?

Yeah, I think I brought this up a couple times in remarks at the end of meetings, so I know it's complicated, and there's a lot to look at. But I'm glad to see it, and it's great to update everything. We're in 2026, so I think it makes sense to have this ability for our committees. We live in a small town, and we've got busy people that want to help on on committees but might have to travel or other things so i think it makes sense to keep their voices uh heard and uh there's obviously considerations for city council and some of those other quasi judicial boards so i'm happy with this and ready to put it in place

Ms. Holder?

I too am on the board, and I think it's a wonderful idea. Mr. Wise? We didn't take this lightly. The discussion was fair and considered seriously. And so thank you, Denise. Mr. Wise?

Yeah, I like building in some flexibility for folks who are volunteering. It takes a lot of time and effort to put yourself out there. So thanks for working on this and getting it in front of us.

All right. Do I have a motion to approve the remote participation policy?

So moved.

Do I have a second?

Second.

All in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? Policy is approved. All right, we will move on to our last item of new business, and that is the renaming of the Downtown Master Plan Committee to the Downtown Master Plan Implementation and Downtown Advisory Committee. And Mr. Daniel, who is the chair of that committee, will present this.

Well, the Downtown Master Plan Committee has a downtown master plan. Staff, David and others have worked with Melanie Spring, Spring, excuse me, to develop a pretty detailed and broken down plan for how to proceed, or guidebook of how to proceed. This change would make the title of this committee action forward by saying the Downtown Master Plan Implementation Committee. And as the mayor and other members of the committee pointed out, we do other things as well that are involved with the Downtown Advisory Committee. and that's why it's such a long title, is to clarify that this downtown master plan is in place, the implementation needs to move forward, and this committee is gonna be working on that, as well as advising on downtown issues. as they arise. This is simply a clarification for the intent and purpose of this committee, for all, as was pointed out by myself, We have new council members on that committee. We have new staff. We have new citizen folks, members on the committee. It just clarifies that this is the intent to implement this plan and also advise on downtown. So it was suggested by a few of the members of the committee that this change should be made and so I'm bringing it to you for the committee for your approval or disapproval.

Do I have a motion to approve the resolution renaming the Downtown Master Plan Committee?

So moved. Second.

Okay. Any comments or questions? Mr. Wise.

I'm going to call this the Demby DAC just so everyone knows moving forward. Dippy Dack. Committed. Those are my only comments, thank you.

Ms. Holder. How can we unhear that?

I don't wanna unhear it.

Thank you for explaining what that means, Garrett.

Mr. Baker.

I have no comments.

Mr. Daniel.

No comment.

Mr. Lytle.

I would just say it's a good opportunity to double down on the implementation part. And so it would be great to have a implementation dashboard that's public so we can really keep track and really, really focus on that portion.

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

Aye.

Opposed? The committee has a new name. All right, and that is the end of new business. We are on remarks and future agenda considerations. And we will start with Ms. Holder.

All right. I think I made the most concerning remarks that I had regarding the building of low to moderate income housing. And having been the individual who was considered maybe one who wouldn't take care of housing, and I know I'm a responsible citizen, in the past, I know how that feels. I know how important it is for people who are responsible and want to work and build a life, especially as a single parent, you know, it's important. and we need to be open to giving people that opportunity and not to assume that crime rates are going to go up because they're there or because, as I have been told erroneously, that the property value will go down because they're not going to take care of the housing. None of that's true. People who work hard... outside of the home work hard to take care of the property of their home. And I think assumptions have been made that are unfair and sad. When I first moved here, I was told or even during the interview process that Brevard is a retirement town. And the first thing I thought was if everybody's here to retire, after retirement, people go on to heaven or wherever they believe they will go, but they're no longer here. And so how does the city continue to evolve? How does it continue to exist? we're not allowing people to come into town, uh, with our prejudices who can keep our city going, you know, who, how would the next generation come here? You know, that is working and can afford, can't afford to come here. How can they keep our town going? Who will be the next city council? If we say, you know, you, you're gonna be a criminal criminal and I don't want you in my neighborhood. I don't want you in my city. And so I think that if we look at this a little more compassionately and give people an opportunity, I think we'll be pleasantly surprised and glad to have new neighbors who work hard and really want to make a life for themselves and their children.

Mr. Weiss?

Yeah, just to actually piggyback on that a little bit, we've been getting a lot of criticism from a number of housing developments, whether the city's involved directly or not. And when you boil it all down at the end of the day, it's people saying, we all love housing, we just don't like it near us. And Brevard, it's a living, breathing entity. It's alive, and it's beautiful, and I cannot abide the thought of it being narrowed down in scope to just a certain kind of people's allowed to live here, a certain wealth is allowed to be here. Everyone's allowed to be in Brevard as far as I'm concerned, and we need to do anything we can to help those people be here if they wanna be here. We live in a beautiful town, and we need people who work across all walks of lives. I mean, we all value everyone who's here. So I hope people in the future can take a step back and think about who they're talking about. They're talking about their neighbors. They're talking about people they walk past on the street, people like you and me who just want to make a living and be safe and live in a safe house.

That's all it is.

It's not scary.

That's all I got.

Mr. Baker?

Yeah, I'll try to be brief, but I'll start with housing. Multiple studies over the last couple years on housing in Transylvania County and Brevard have put our vacancy rate for rental housing at 0%. And just think about what that means. I know it's easy to throw out a stat, but there is not a rental available. And think about being a college, I was a college student, graduate or my junior or senior year, I wanted to live off campus. So I rented one, two, three, three different houses and then I rented an apartment and down the road I was able to purchase a house. But none of that can happen for kids that are in that same situation today. Think about being in a relationship that ends and you need another house. and not being able to find a place to rent in the city that you live. Think about being a young adult who's still living with their parents at 26, 27, 28. Maybe they got a service job or they work in the trades and they've got a job but they would like to live on their own and they're just unable to do that in our city. Think about how that just stunts the growth of not just our city, but these people. And how those people are probably moving away. And a lot of it is our young people. It's the people who are trying to build a life here. And I think about that all the time because I had opportunities here after college. I was able to build a life here. And how many young adults in that same situation are just not able to do the same thing? And to me, that is just not acceptable as a city. It's a huge part of why I'm sitting up here is that I want to make sure that's not the kind of place that Brevard is, that we're shutting the door on a whole segment of people who would love to live in Brevard. And it's people, by the way, that are already here. There are college kids or people that grew up here and would like to stay here. On the license plate cameras, there was a public comment on that. I just want to say publicly, I hope everybody knows this, but the city does not currently have any license plate reader cameras. There are some in the county, some of them are operated by a private business, and some of them are operated by the Sheriff's Department. So if you have concerns about current license plate readers, I hope you'll direct those to the folks that currently have them. I also want to say that this has been discussed at the committee level. We are going to be having some public input sessions on it coming up, so keep your ear out for those, and please come and attend those if you want to learn more and want to express your opinions on those cameras within the city of Brevard. If you want to talk about them in the county, look up the county commissioner's meeting. They've got public comment. They restrict theirs to 15 minutes. We don't do that, but they'd be happy to hear from you, I'm sure, on those cameras. And just one, finally, I know there's been... some coverage of our letter about the courthouse that we sent to the county. Several constituents have reached out to me just thanking the city for that proactive approach. And I hope that we can find a partner on the other side who can work with us on just looking at the potential of that building. And if you look at the history and the events that take place there throughout the year, some of my favorite times of the year in Brevard take place at the courthouse. And it just wouldn't be the same if that were a private business. I'm not really sure how that would work. And so I believe it belongs to the public. And we are a great option to keep that in the public sphere and would love to talk to the county more about that option.

Mr. Daniels?

I would like to just thank the deputy chief and chase Owen and Mr. McKellar for handling the situation that we had earlier in our meeting. The compassion that was shown to that individual I think should hopefully assuage some of the concerns that folks have had about the recent ordinances that we adopted to deal with disruptive behavior. It made me sad, but I was happy to see how we, as our city representatives, dealt with that situation. So thank you to all of you.

Mr. Weidel?

I have no further comments tonight. Thank you.

Mr. Attorney?

Just a reminder that we do have a closed session.

Oh, yes. How could we forget? Madam Clerk. Nothing for me, thanks.

And no lower lip pouting, please.

Mr. Manager.

Yes, ma'am. I have two comments. The first is also on housing. We have mixed news regarding the creation of housing in our community. Good and bad news coming out of the North Carolina Housing Finance Agency on Friday. The bad news was our application for LIHTC credits for our Azea Avenue property did not go through. And so we will spend the next year improving that site by adding utilities and other improvements to hopefully make that project more competitive for LIHTC next year. The good news is that the Woda Cooper, that's the company name, application for 84 units on Morris Road called Cascade Ridge was accepted. And if you'll recall, that was the project that back in March we passed a bond inducement resolution for. And so that project is going to move forward. It'll have our name on it, but it will be managed and developed and administered by a third party group. And it's a win for us whether we were behind it or not because it means 84 LMI units in the city of Brevard. And so a mix of news coming from the North Carolina Housing Finance Agency late last week. The other thing that I learned last week from the North Carolina Housing Finance Agency is that they're willing to consider changes to the formula year to year. Called the QAP, or Qualified Action Plan, the formula that they use to... rank the projects and divide up the money they're willing to hear feedback on and so i've got the name and number of a person who we can call next year with suggestions on how to tweak the formula uh... to hopefully make us more competitive in the next round and so please that we know who to call with that kind of feedback now uh... switching gears uh... councilman baker mayor pretend baker in response to something you just said two weeks from tomorrow on tuesday september first six p m at the mary c jenkins community center we will be holding our a l p r town hall so that event that he just described will be at that time and date. And so please come and share your thoughts on automatic, is it automatic or automated, Alan? Automated license plate readers. And then tomorrow we will start our outreach and it'll have a link to a website that we're about to launch that has information on our particular proposal with Axine. It'll have information on the benefits of those cameras, certain protections for the data and other things that are corrected, our internal policy for how police officers are to use that technology appropriately, and other information that we think is helpful for the general public, and I hope that everyone will take a look at that and read that before they come to the meeting in two weeks. But again, September 1st, 6 p.m., Mary C. Jenkins Community Center, ALPR Town Hall.

Thank you, Mr. Manager. And I just want to close by thanking staff for, again, a lot of really hard and really great work and lots of different topics on fog, on housing. And one of the things that... is really obvious when you look at brevard in terms of housing is that we have so many projects we are not trying one solution but we are what we have realized is this crisis is doesn't have a single solution it will be solved by looking at different options in different places and working creatively in a collaborative environment with a lot of our partners Every quarter we have a meeting of all the mayors and the managers and the chairs of the county commissions of a four-county area, the Landiskei area. Our last two quarterly meetings have focused on housing, on affordable housing across the region and what everybody is working on. And I can say that Brevard, little Brevard, is right out there and leading the way with policy changes, with creative financing, with taking the initiative, with making these things go forward. I am so looking forward to when we actually have Fairhaven Meadows open later this year and those 42 units get filled. It's great news now about Cascade Ridge and the LIHTC funding that's going forward there. Our housing partner, Habitat Building Housing, Yes, we've gotten a lot of comments on some of that housing. It changes the nature of what once was just a green space, but what it changes it for is it will be nine families that have a safe place to live right by our trail, right in the center of the city, that they will be able to have a good quality of life. and that to me is so important so we to be so proud staff elected bodies all of our collaborative partners that compared to four years ago we have made so much progress with real projects that are actually increasing the housing stock here so thank you to everybody that works so hard on all of this I also want to thank everybody for, we hosted the Main Street Manager Conference. We had Main Street Managers from across the state here in Brevard, and I have to tell you, our town impressed them. In fact, the comments that were made to me is, nobody wants to host it next year because they'll be compared to Brevard. Our town is special. Our town is very, very special. And it was nice to have those 100 representatives from across the state here. They also happened to be here during our National Night Out. I want to thank all of our first responders. I want to thank our fire chief, who I see isn't here anymore, our police chief, our deputy police chief, and of course our sheriff that were all out there at National Night Out. They all got in the dunk tank. which is a great way to sort of break the ice with the kids and make them understand that these are people they can approach that are friendly, you know, that get wet and smile and get right back up there. But National Night Out, as always, was a great community event. It was great to see so many families and so many children out there. So thank you all for putting that on. And for those that got in the dunk tank and suffered through a couple hundred dunkings, thank you all. I know it actually is pretty exhausting. My last comment is tomorrow night I have Meet the Mayor from 5 to 6.30, so I encourage people to come, bring up topics. And one of the things that we are working on, it was mentioned this evening by one of our commenters, is we are working on starting a program of holding town halls around different places in the city. And our next town hall, we held one in Rosenwald a couple months ago. Our next one is going to be in the Pisgah Forest area of town. I think it's probably going to be in October, but staff has to actually work out the details. And it will be another one of those informational and input sessions so stay tuned and look for that because we really do want to get that feedback and thank you everybody and I think with that I need a motion to go into closed session for economic development so moved do I have a second all in favor we are in closed session please turn off the broadcast and please clear the room