City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening, everybody. Before I officially call us to order, I'm going to remind everybody to please silence your cell phones. Okay. And I will officially call to order our Brevard City Council regular meeting of Monday, September 21st. I want to thank everybody that is here in person. It is always great to see members of the public attend, as well as everybody that's watching us on the live feed. I want to start by introducing the people that are sitting up here. On my far right, we have our city attorney, Mack McKellar. Next to Mack, we've got Councilman Lauren Wise. Next to Lauren, we have Councilwoman Pamela Holder. Next to Pamela, we have Councilman and Mayor Pro Tem, Aaron Baker. I'm Mayor Maureen Kopeloff. On my immediate left, we've got our City Clerk, Denise Hodgson. Normally, next to Denise, we would have Councilman Gary Daniel, but Councilman Daniel is not able to join us tonight. And then next to Councilman Daniel's empty seat, we've got Councilman Dean Lytle. And next to Dean, we have our city manager, Wilson Hooper. Okay, and with that, I would like to ask Pastor Marshall Irwin from Bethel Baptist Church to please come and give the invocation, if you would, Pastor Irwin.

be here this evening. Let us bow our heads. Father, what a blessing it is to be able to come to your presence on this evening. Coming on behalf of this council, seeking your guidance, asking for your help in making decisions. We know it's not easy, God, leading. But we're thankful for leaders that want you in the midst of it to guide them and to help them. Oh, how we need that in this day. Leaders that will lead in such a way that it will inspire their people to be the best citizens that they can. So I ask now, Lord, that you will endow each one with a special amount of wisdom that can only come from you. And we know that God, if you would do that, Whatever's done will be right. Bless the mayor, the council members, each one of them, even their families. Remember this city, God, how we pray for it, Lord, that you may continue to hold and do things rightly in it and orderly. We give you praise right now for what you're gonna do and how you do it. In thy son's name we pray.

Amen. Pastor Irwin, would you tell us a little bit about Bethel Baptist? No, I saw that. You were moving pretty quick there.

I've been accused of being pretty quick. I am fortunate to bless, to pass the church that I was raised up in as a child. I'm a son of the ministry, Bethel Baptist Church on Mills Avenue. celebrating 161 years. We were born out of Catholic Creek's church in 1865. And we are a small church, close church, and we just enjoy loving each other. And anyone else that's a part of that, we're just so grateful for being a part of such a wonderful community of people and believers. And just invite any that would like to come. Feel free to worship at any time. Door is open to any that want to come. We We'll welcome you with open arms, and you'll feel loved and cared about if you come. So thank you for the opportunity.

Thank you. We're so happy to have you and your congregation as part of our community. Thank you. If everyone would please rise and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. Attention, honor, pledge. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic

visible with liberty and justice for all. Madam Clerk, do we have a quorum? Yes, Madam Mayor, you do have a quorum. You have five of six members present.

Council, do I have a motion to excuse Council Member Gary Daniel?

So moved.

Second.

All in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? Council Member Daniel is excused. 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 September 8th, 2026 regular meeting minutes. Are there 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.

Minutes are approved. All right, we will move right into public comments. Do we have anyone that signed up?

Oh, where's my little thing? Oh, sorry.

All right. The public is invited to speak during public comment at this time on any topic unless it is a public hearing item on this agenda. Anyone who wants to speak must register with the city clerk, which is the sign-up sheet. When it is your turn, step to the podium in front of city council, state your name and address clearly, limit comments to three minutes or less, and avoid repetition. And I will tell you when you have 30 seconds left. Direct comments to the full council, not to an individual council member or to staff. All right, our first speaker is Doug Powell.

Good evening, Madam Mayor, city council members and staff. I hope everyone is enjoying the freedoms and liberties of this nation and its constitution during Constitution Week. The renowned and eloquent poet Maya Angelou would not tolerate certain things in her house, especially any form of racism or cursing. When she overheard someone tell an off-color joke during one of her parties, she quickly and firmly invited that person to leave by saying, excuse me, not in my house, you don't. You don't paint my walls with poison and vulgarity. You will not do it in my house. Out. Is this your purse? Thank you. Bye. What compels a person to take such action? Well, first, it was her house, and she made the rules. She was protecting what was precious and treasured to her. and second, conviction. She knew that if she tolerated one instance of poison and vulgarity, then her high standards for her home would no longer exist. The founders of this country understood that if American citizens looked the other way and accepted a standard less than the constitutional principles agreed upon in 1787, which are meant to protect the civil and religious liberties of every American citizen, then eventually those freedoms will vanish quicker than one of Mrs. Angelou's houseguests. The famous orator and defender of the Constitution, Daniel Webster, put it this way, miracles do not cluster. That which has happened but once in 6,000 years cannot be expected to happen often. Hold on, my dear friends. to the constitution of your country and the government established under it. Such a government, once destroyed, would have a void to be filled perhaps for centuries with evolution and tumult, riot, and despotism. We assume that our God-given freedoms will always be with us, but they need to be guarded and protected just like the mental atmosphere of Mrs. Angelou's house. We can't secure the blessings of liberty without knowing what they are. Otherwise, we can't protect our nation. which is the citizen's home. This is why it is critical for the citizens of Brevard, the city council and staff to read and understand the constitutions of this state and nation and the original intent and meaning of its words. This is just one reason why Constitution Week was established by federal law and recognized by the state of North Carolina. As John Jay, our first Supreme Court Chief Justice, stated, every member of the state ought to read and study the Constitution of his country and teach the rising generation to be free. By knowing their rights, they will sooner perceive when they are violated and be the better prepared to defend and assert them. The primary function of government under the Constitution is to protect an individual's rights and freedoms. How will we know if our rights are being violated if we don't even know what the standard is? Let's all be convicted to know the Constitution better.

Thank you, Mr. Powell. Our next speaker is Mr. Jay Veal.

Jimmy Veal, 187 Pinnacle Road. Thanks for allowing me the opportunity to speak here one more time. I wanted to, it's interesting this previous man was talking about the Constitution because I want to talk about the oath of office. And I believe this is North Carolina statutes. It says, I, say Jimmy Veal, do solemnly swear or affirm that I will support and maintain the Constitution and the laws of the United States. That's a pretty broad thing. And the constitutional laws of North Carolina, not inconsistent here, therewith, and that I will faithfully discharge the duties of my office as Jimmy Veal, oh, I mean, as, you know, I'm pretending to be a city councilman for the moment. So help me God. So I'm here again to talk about the access to the property up on Pinnacle Road. I'm still working to restore that property, restore that access that existed for over 100 years. On the road, the roadbed's still there. Some people might have told you there's no road. I know some people told you a lot of things. But you can walk up there and look at it, and I'm gonna pass out this little pamphlet here that shows the portions of the trail infrastructure that block access to the six pieces of property. Again, I want to emphasize I'm mountain bike. I love the trail. I especially love the 7.9 miles that doesn't block any access to anybody's property. So the council in 2005 voted to... do the condemnation to open and improve roads, not block access. You're the council now. You're the guys that are ideally situated to do something about it because you can do it with three votes. You've sworn allegiance to the Constitution. You've got constituents that you're supposed to represent. You know, Mr. Councilman A is not supposed to represent Mr. Councilman D. It's not supposed to be a club of councilmen group thinking. It's supposed to be people representing their constituents and follow the laws. And when there's more than a smoking gun here, it's a blazing forest fire. So my respectfully request that y'all get together and let's have a special meeting and talk about it and work it out. You know, if you're worried about, some people said, well, y'all spent all that money on that trail, it's all that taxpayer's money, but the taxpayers didn't vote to block access to other taxpayers' property, and your liability far exceeds what it would take to fix it. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Veal. Our next speaker is... Okay.

Chief Rustin?

Russell oh okay you're not you don't want to speak ah okay okay all right sorry couldn't couldn't quite read the last name there okay all right all right so he's gonna speak on a public hearing All right, well that is everybody that signed up for public comment. So we will now move on to a special presentation. And this is going to be on the parking study that we've been waiting quite a while to get the results of. And I believe our assistant planning director, Aaron Bland, is going to introduce this.

Yes, so just as a reminder, back in May of 2025, we issued an RFQ for a downtown parking study. We received nine responses. A small group of myself, Planning Director Paul Ray, Councilman Gary Daniel, and Downtown Master Planning Committee Member Parker Platt reviewed the responses. came to a consensus top two firms. Those were again reviewed by the Downtown Master Plan Committee and then recommended to you. And in September of 2025, you authorized a city manager to execute a contract for the parking study. And so we did that a couple weeks later and they've been working ever since. And so I'm gonna turn it over now to the team from Benchmark Planning and to review the results of the study.

Thank you, Madam Mayor and Council, for having us here this evening. My name is Vaughn Hanson with Benchmark Planning out of Charlotte. Very happy to be here to present the draft working study to you. As Aaron mentioned, we've been working on this about a year now. One of the reasons it's taken a year is because we were also asked to do a count in the summer peak season as well as the fall. And so we just did that back in July. And so After that was concluded, we were able to take the results and compare them and bring the report back to staff to review and eventually prepare a draft study document and present it to you. The purpose of the study, per the RFQ, was really to evaluate parking availability in both downtown and in the lower yard, looking at what the community's experience with parking in those areas was through a survey, as well as interviewing subject matter experts in the related to downtown and the lumber yard. Taking those results to identify any kind of improvements to be made to the parking management and access to parking and the presenting management alternatives back to the council and recommendations for your consideration. We began the study process because we were going to do our first counts pretty soon after we got under contract. We very quickly started developing a parking inventory. identifying the 181 spaces in the lumberyard and 1,231 in the downtown area. The downtown boundary for the study, we worked with staff to identify and refine that. You'll notice it doesn't include the library parking. We purposely defined these boundaries that way just to make sure that we were capturing what the local idea of downtown and the lumberyard were. There's a note on that 1,231 downtown spaces in the fall count that we did about a year ago. Unfortunately, NCDOT was still working on doing the top cover of asphalt. And so there was temporary parking markings on the pavement in some locations. And so there were about four fewer spaces between our fall 2025 and summer counts. Those would have to be all on-street spaces that were removed or just due to restriping taken out of the inventory overall. We, of course, investigated ownership and use restrictions on parking, particularly off-street parking areas throughout downtown. You can read these details and notes in the study itself, but things like noting that the depot parking lot was leased by the city and could at some point in the future revert back to full use of the party who leased it to the city. The former bank that's now medical offices, of course, during our... fall count was unused and under construction. It was partially under construction still when we came back in the summer, and so it was not included. Just notes like that, including where the Heart of Brevard had leased the spaces to do the employee parking program, so that we were well-informed about, when we were doing our occupancy counts, the reason behind some of the usage statistics that we identified. We divided the downtown and lumber yard up into different quadrants, essentially, look at the distribution of parking through some of the heavier and more lightly used areas. So we have the core lumber yard area number 10, the depot area number 11 on the lumber yard. In downtown, we really identify the intersection of main and broad, the quadrants around that, 4, 5, 6, and 7, as being the primary high-use core prime parking spaces, where you have about 24% of your supply. Interestingly, in the areas east of Gaston Street, you actually have 503 parking spaces over there, which is a mixture of both on-street and off-street, some very lightly used, a lot of church parking in that area, a lot of large parking lots. The farmer's market is over there that utilizes a large parking lot as well. We have the Water Oak Suites parking, which appears to be fairly lightly utilized based on our occupancy count. But just to give an idea of the distribution of parking spaces quantified by quadrant throughout the downtown area. So very quickly after we got under contract, we identified a date, October 10 and 11, 2025, to do our initial counts. When we did our listing sessions, we actually identified the second dates, which were back in July of this year. During each of those counts, those were both Fridays and Saturdays, we did five counts, 9 to 11, 11 to 1, 1 to 3, 3 to 5, and 5 to 7. So there were 20 different counts occurring over those four different days. the fall peak and the summer peak. So we had a team of three people that were here for those two days doing each of those counts. We were each assigned different locations to count, so we were very familiar with what the operations were and what to look for. We distinguished, of course, on-street and off-street parking, things that were publicly available, things that had restrictions on them. Just a couple of notes. Kind of as a happenstance, the fall count happened to coincide with the Brevard College homecoming events. And the summer counts, we had purposely identified those based on some feedback we received to coincide with what appeared to be the heaviest time of summer camp turnover this summer. We looked at all the camp schedules and when they were coming in and out. And that weekend, Friday, Saturday, was identified to be the heaviest use. So it was representing, really, your summer peak. And the people were here to make that happen. So getting right into what we found, the study report contains maps showing what we found during the peaks for downtown Lumberyard during each of our counts. So our fall downtown count, the peak occupancy was Friday, October 10th, from 1 to 3 p.m., the period immediately after lunch. Overall occupancy at that time was 60%. On-street parking occupancy over 75%. The publicly available off-street parking close to 75%. And all off-street, noting that we do have some lightly used areas, was 56%. The closer to red you see on this map, the more heavily occupied those areas were, both on-street and off-street. And so you'll see those prime core spaces on Main Street and Broad Street, of course, having occupancy over 70%. One of the things that brings some of the occupancy numbers down overall for the on-street is we did include all the parking on-street, on South Broad Street, inclusive of the area south of the library, just to make sure that we were counting that to see if people were using them, and they generally were not during most of our counts. And then in the summertime, Friday 1 to 4 p.m. on July 24th was our peak for our summer count as well. So that was Friday afternoons immediately after lunch, The lunch crowd kind of hanging around, maybe getting ready to leave, and the afternoon crowd coming in really were your peak times for downtown. Overall occupancy just a little bit higher than the fall at 62%. On-street occupancy just a little bit higher than the fall at 78%. Publicly available off-street parking, 65%, and overall off-street occupancy, 58%. One of the things you know, the parking utilization on main and broad is essentially pretty much the same between those two periods. And what we're also seeing, we saw during those peak occupancy times, was that your free city-owned off-street lots were also very heavily utilized, close to 100% at each of those times. This table just shows all the counts that were taken during those periods in occupancy. And the blue areas highlighted on those blue boxes highlight the Friday 1 to 3 PM peaks. So you see overall 60%, 62% between fall and summer, and on-street 77, 78% between the fall and summer. On-street occupancy did get higher, was higher at one point that Saturday in the fall. That, again, coinciding with the Brevard College homecoming had a lot of people coming downtown. I believe after the football game or right around there. So you got about 83%, which is just below the threshold. We like to use 85% point where it's basically full and people are starting to have a very difficult time finding parking throughout the coverage area. But you were below that in downtown. Moving over to the lumber yard. Friday, the peak fall count was that Friday evening, five to seven again, maybe after some of the homecoming events have taken place. Over occupancy got up to 82% on street occupancy was 83%. This is just for the core area centered on King French Broad in that area. We excluded the lumberyard, the depot area from that because the off street parking there was very lightly utilized during each of the periods that we counted. And so the The on-street occupancy was really getting close to the point where there weren't a lot of really good options for people coming in and out. It was very full. People were circling, trying to identify those spaces as people were coming and going and hoping to be able to get one. And then during the summer, it was actually around lunchtime, the early lunch hour, Friday, July 24th, where we saw the peak. Again, overall occupancy got up to 84%. And at that point, due to people kind of parking outside the lines, so to speak, The on-street occupancy actually exceeded the number of marked spaces you have in that core area. And so the occupancy actually got up to 102%. Notably, between the fall and summer, I believe that you had a business that was no longer operating, maybe a CrossFit kind of place in the lumber yard that might not have been there in our summer account that was there in the fall. Even with that, we still saw a heavier on-street occupancy with them not being in operation. As I noted, again, the depot parking lot, again, during the summer, very lightly utilized, very similar to fall, with the exception of that Saturday morning from about 9 to noon, 1 o'clock or so. We had a very large number of people when I first went down there to count that morning, taking bikes off the back of their cars and trucks and getting ready to ride. But they were mostly done by about 1 o'clock, and it was mostly clear again by the afternoon. So here you see a table that's showing all the counts across the lumberyard counts from the fall and the summer. We see that the on-street occupancy is getting to 85% on four of those different time periods during the fall and above 85% on-street at four different times during the summer. Again, the peaks, you see they're highlighted in blue, Friday 5 to 7 in the fall and 11 to 1 in the summer on that Friday afternoon. There weren't really a lot of times that we counted where the lumberyard was not very busy. Not that downtown wasn't also busy, but the lumberyard was getting closer to the point of not having a lot of available parking. Even in that circumstance, though, people weren't really utilizing the depot parking area as a relief valve. They were parking on the street in the spaces a little bit north of French Broad Street. That was the primary relief they were using. But in general, the on-street spaces were very well utilized most of the time in the lumberyard. So in addition to looking at what the occupancy counts were during those time periods, we also looked at what the potential parking generation might be based on several different benchmarks. We first did an inventory of the land uses. This is the actual buildings in downtown in the lumber yard. You can see the distribution of uses, be that retail, restaurants, office, professional. Some of the uses have, we counted things like seats, number of rooms in the bed and breakfast, residential dwelling units in those locations. And basically use those compared against the city's UDO zoning district parking maximums, as well as a couple industry trade groups, the Urban Lands Institute and the Institute of Traffic Engineers, the recommendations that they provide as well for parking generation. One of the things we note that those two trade groups don't really count are differences in timing of occupancy of certain businesses. You have restaurants that might be open in the evening. They exist, but maybe they're not generating traffic all day. If you have a church, maybe it's a busy Wednesday evening and Sunday, maybe another day of the week, but it's not generating that parking demand all the time. If you have compatible uses that are sharing spaces as well, so it's not accounting for that. And we do note up there there's an asterisk, and I believe you have a public hearing on it later this evening, but of course the legislature adopted session law on regulatory reform or on parking reform that would eliminate your ability to require a minimum number of parking spaces. I believe the city is going to continue to have maximum parking amounts, and so we use those maximum parking ratios from the city's UDO to do some of our measurements here in terms of supply and demand or parking generation potential. So I mentioned in the inventory, 1,231 spaces downtown, 181 spaces in the lumber yard. Kind of using the DMX, the downtown mixed district, for the downtown areas. The normative zoning district, we know there are a few other zoning districts downtown. But the maximum that you could put under the UDO rules, off-street parking, essentially, would be just over 1700 spaces. So it's about 480 ish short of what your maximum parking supply off street could be looking at it overall. And the lumberyard is about 40 short that's inclusive of the of course the spaces up at the at the at the depot park. And so the there's probably a little bit more of a gap between potential parking generation and supply and the lumberyard the immediate core area of the lumber yard compared to downtown. There's probably a little bit bigger gap in there. So that's what we found based on what the potential generation was based on those benchmarks in the city's UDO as well as those industry trade group standards. At the very near the beginning of this process, we also wanted to get some feedback from the community. on their experience with parking in downtown Lumberyard. We had a really great response to that. A little bit over 800 people participated. And in February of this year, we also had a day of listening sessions here at City Hall. We talked to about 30 people, subject matter experts, with both the city government, downtown business and property owners. We spoke with parking enforcement personnel, people who live downtown, work downtown, just really trying to cover the whole gamut of people to provide input to us on their experiences and thoughts and ideas. And so it was really great. One of the things to note is that really this is a survey and input that is from your community. 93% of the people who answered the survey either lived in the city or somewhere in very close proximity there too. And so this is really reflective of the experience of your Community members, your fellow residents of the city of Brevard, not really the experience mostly of your out-of-town visitor coming in because they really wouldn't have known or had that much interest in taking the survey. We did get some, but not a whole lot. So when we asked people's primary reasons for coming downtown, we had about 80% of the people were saying shopping, dining, and entertainment, having fun, doing errands, doing personal business with, you know, paying taxes or whatever the case might be going to a doctor's appointment about 60% relatively few people who answered the survey were downtown workers and relatively small number of court based on the number of going units you have in downtown were people who are residents of downtown. And again, reflecting the local nature of the respondents to the survey only about 5% said that they were coming downtown for tourism purposes. So we know who is responding to it basically. We asked them what the timing was and people were able to select multiple periods. A lot of people selected they just come downtown various times depending on what's going on. But what we do see is that afternoon period really being that time after lunch between probably one and three being where we had the most people selecting an individual period or a couple of periods that span that afternoon timeframe. So that really coincides very well with what we found in our peak occupancy between the fall and the summer. We asked people how long they tended to stay when they came downtown and drove their car and parked. So you see the distribution here. And roughly 60% of the people who responded would be covered within a two-hour time limit, which is great, because that's typically what you have now here on street spaces. And 90% would be covered in a four-hour time limit. And that kind of informs some of our thoughts about parking management alternatives. People's experience with parking, you see on-street parking, the top bar there, about 60% of the people said it was often hard to find. That is their experience. You can't dissuade somebody that there's plenty of parking available out there. If that's their experience, parking being hard to find, and their destination of preference, that is their experience. Off-street parking, people generally were able to find a place to park based on these responses without too much trouble. Very few people said it was very easy all the time. We also asked about signage question that we discussed and just some of our observations. It was it was basically split 5050 is whether people felt that they're that the signage the city of place and as well as maybe private parties as well was adequate to identify the location nature of the restrictions with both your on street and off street parking. We also had some open ended questions to allow people to give us feedback just you know, what do you think what are your ideas what would improve the parking situation in downtown Brevard and the lumberyard. Of course, we have expanding the supply, right, adding parking decks, adding spaces, restoration of spaces that might have been removed in the past. People advocating for when it comes to cost and time limits, having free or very affordable parking, accommodating longer visits, as well as more options for parking those those short run in and out run, run in and out trips that you do provide some very short term spaces now for picking up from restaurants and things of that nature. But people like that idea. Signs and management, a lot of people advocated for having more clear signage, easier payments, it wasn't, you know, some of us about the private parking spaces, some of us about the city lots, as well as more employee parking for for downtown business. Of course, the heart of Brevard has instituted a program to do that as well. As far as parking options go, adding more accessible spaces, having more shared parking, and connections, better walking routes, making sure that the sidewalks are accessible, don't have obstructions, better lighting. We had that mentioned several times about some of the off-street spaces back off of Main Street or Broad Street not being as well lit. Better bicycle access and maybe shuttles during some of your big events in town. So that is the kinds of responses that people wrote when given the option for providing their own input, direct input, open-ended questions about parking in downtown and the lumberyard. We got fewer direct responses about the lumberyard. I don't know if that's just reflective of who took the survey or the perception. But, of course, we know that there is a little bit different parking usage in the lumberyard and downtown. So overall, looking at our findings from the study as a whole, based on what we saw at the peaks, the heaviest peaks, you had Brevard College homecoming, lots of people in town in the fall, summer counts with summer camp turning over, tons of kids out on the street with their parents. We did not find a downtown-wide parking shortage. There were areas that were very well-utilized. Your prime core parking spaces, those four quadrants around main and broad, very well utilized. But at the same time, on-street spaces were abundant out in the peripheral areas. Your off-street city-owned lots were very well utilized, including both free and paid lots, really, during those peaks. But there were still off-street spaces available throughout the study area as well. And so consequently, there is a verifiable high demand for centrally centrally located on street spaces as well as free, public off street spaces, people enjoy the free public off street spaces, especially with air when you don't have a time limit. And during those times, there's typically underutilized spaces in the peripheral areas. And private lots in particular, tend to be a little bit less utilized, we have a lot of surplus parking, it appears to be in some of your private lots. Also going around today, just kind of looking at it on a different day of the week, observing that as well. As we found in the lumberyard, the core of the lumberyard experiences periodic, pretty significant constraints with on-street parking, where you have people circling, jumping in and out of spaces. There's not a lot of options for off-street parking in that immediate core. Mostly it's directly related to the businesses in that immediate area. They have a few spaces for themselves off the street, but on streets of the primary way people park there. And, you know, overall, to, if something is to be done to address some of the concerns that people express and looking at the utilization of some of these high demand areas, really, the city should first consider management operations and infrastructure changes before expanding your actual supply of public off street or private sector can do what it wants, and it will do what it wants, you do have maximum parking allotments in the UDO. But before the city goes out and does anything to expand the actual supply, there are some other management type changes that could be considered. And so we looked at some different alternatives to address some of the issues and provide the city council with some options as it explores what it might want to consider, if anything, to do moving forward. So we developed five alternatives. utilize different combinations of prices, free periods, and time limits for the city-controlled parking. These range from keeping things basically as they are now to charging something for more convenient downtown spaces. We look at availability, cost to drivers, operating expenses, and potential revenue in the study document itself. We don't identify a preferred alternative. Some of this is really just the preference and direction the city council wants to take. We think there probably are some improvements that can be made incrementally with some management changes, but would, of course, leave it up to the council and your staff to make those recommendations and move forward with any kind of plan in the study itself. And here we use some terms premium core on street spaces are those on Main Street between England and Gaston and broad between probart and Morgan Street. General parking general on street parking are those spaces on main broad and Jordan and Morgan that are not defined as either premium or peripheral. And our peripheral on-street parking are the spaces west on Main, west of Oaklawn, east of Rice, and the on-street spaces on South Broad Street, south of Morgan Street. Your paid city lots, of course, are your Clemson Square and the lot on the corner of Jordan and South Caldwell. And the free lots are the one behind City Hall here, as well as one across the street. So we share some features between all of these, except for keeping things as they are. their peripheral on street parking would be free without time limits. The two currently free city lots would potentially move, providing four hours of free parking. Of course, from the survey, we found that 89% of the visits people were reported in the survey could be accommodated with for within that four hour period. And then for those that wish to park all day or utilize those spaces for longer periods, they could pay a nominal per hour charge for that additional time. your access your designated accessible off street spaces would remain free and accessible on street spaces would remain free and exempt from time limits. There's some statutory things having to do with that you can charge for them you're not you probably wouldn't want to do that. The charges would generally apply during your current parking hour restrictions now, Monday to Saturday, Monday through Saturday, nine to 6pm. And alternative one would retain the existing charging schedule in the current pace that he lost it would not change that. And if you do move to any kind of paid parking, you would of course want to provide some alternative that did not require the use of a smartphone given the need to adopt technology, download things, whatever the case might be. You would want to make sure that you were providing opportunities for people to pay if you wanted them to through a physical means. So in addition to maintaining the current system, these are the alternatives that we came up with. And I won't go through them individually, but just noting the first alternative, basically move your general on-street parking. So that's the parking between your core parking and your peripheral parking to allowing a four-hour limit. Again, allowing people to stay longer periods. Noting, of course, that you would continue paying $3 an hour. You're currently paid lots with that. having the all-day on-street parking for free, and your currently free off-street lots continuing to allow a four-hour free period followed by $2 an hour parking. Then we introduced just different variations on parking between your premium core, the general on-street, and the paid city lots, going from just pay-as-you-go, an alternative to with no time limit, and a premium core and a lower charge on the general, maintaining similar limits on parking duration in alternative three at three dollars an hour in the core and two dollars an hour at the four hour limit in the general on street and then those just reducing the current paid city lots and then in alternatives four and five having a flat parking fee for the premium core spaces at five dollars just a nominal charge as an example Um, and then allowing, um, an alternative for having free, uh, uh, two hour parking in the general on street, uh, alternative five, having four hour limited with $2 an hour, uh, costs, uh, for the general arms on street. Um, in the last two, we also have, um, a free 30 minute period in the general on street parking areas as well, uh, that would allow people to. have a brief stopover and address some of that desire, need for more short term parking, but still having an option where the city could generate revenue to fund its parking management program, or to help with the market based pricing system to encourage people to utilize some of the underutilized parking that exists today.

So we also developed some revenue models based on those alternatives.

We utilized our peak season Friday and Saturday counts as the Friday and Saturday norm. So 100% of the peak season during those months. In the lower season, the Friday and Saturdays, we've done about 65% of that. Our weekdays, Monday through Thursday, we'd model that at 70% of your peak season and 45% in the lower season. We have 312 paid parking days per year. That's Monday to Saturday, 9 to 6. The annual mix in the model was 40% peak season days and 60% lower season days. And we're estimating that the pricing would, if you institute pricing, would shift demand among city managed spaces, not eliminate it. It would retain the vast majority of the people who are parking here now, would continue to come park downtown. So looking at the duration and collections, here we have utilized the survey to come up with the lower season and the peak season was assumed in terms of the distribution of the duration of parking, whether it be under an hour, one or two, two to four, over four hours. We utilized the estimated and previous revenue from the city-owned lot estimates to get the kiosk. Numbers for your current off-street parking that's paid as part of our baseline there. Estimating about 85% compliance with people paying for parking that everybody pays. They'll probably get a ticket if they don't. The hourly billing is a general rule with no one-hour minimum so people can pay. And we modeled 30-minute free stays where offered, including repeated visits. So looking through the various... revenue estimates based on that model, you go from your current estimates of annual off street parking revenue $80,500. We average that between a couple years, we thought that if you do alternative one, changing some of the time limits allowing instituting a time limit on your currently free off street parking and have for $4 or four hour free with $2 an hour after that it would generally generate a nominal additional amount of revenue about 10% increase And then the other various alternatives just based on the pricing structures and whether it's a flat rate, hourly without time limits, hourly with time limits, generating a pretty wide range of revenues there. Alternative four with that flat $5 fee for the premium core spaces and then free two hour parking in the general spaces and of course your free peripheral spaces generating the least of your on street parking models because you'd only be charging in a narrow area. Two, an expanded where you're charging both a flat rate and an hourly rate. And alternative five, they're generating the highest. These are numbers not inclusive of, of course, the expenses that would go along with that, including personnel, operations and maintenance expenses on an annual basis, annualized capital improvement costs and capital budgeting costs. They'll go along with maintaining the program, the equipment, the vehicles, et cetera, that go along with that. So we did prepare those estimates of revenue for you to also just have as a point of reference as you're moving forward with consideration where you want to head. And the alternatives really intended to generate or move behavior in certain ways towards essentially trying to encourage better utilization of some of the parking that's not as well utilized now while maintaining the premium core space is trying to induce more turnover in those areas, either that being through maintaining those two hour time limits, or making them a premium product that requires some payment and therefore some consideration as to whether you choose that or a lower cost or free alternative when you're parking on the street. So then the final part of the study, we developed some some strategies and recommendations actions for the council to consider based on of what we found and identified through our discussions and the survey results and our observations and talking with city staff. Number one, we think there's probably some improvements that can be made in your off-street parking signage, directing people to those off-street spaces that you want people to utilize more since there is some investment by the city in maintaining those as parking lots versus dedicating them to some other type of use or development. Exploring, working with private property owners and parking lot owners, whether there's some sort of coordinated signage system could be utilized to identify the location of some of the off street lots. Some of them are not as well identified as others. And then really looking for an opportunity, if there's a way to identify a vendor that could provide a single if desired by a private property owner, but a single type of payment system so that you wouldn't have to jump between different payment systems if you're parking in different locations, whether that would be something available. But pursuing that just to ease the burden of having to pay to park. Strategy two, increasing the efficiency of your existing parking resources. So the first action there is refining the downtown public parking system. And I think that if we were making a recommendation, we would probably be leaning more towards looking at whether some changes in the parking durations could lead to some different kind of behavior, as well as potentially instituting a charge for people occupying those currently free off-street lots for periods longer than four hours. That would encourage some of your downtown workers and business owners to potentially utilize some even less utilized spaces if they're going to be here eight, nine, 10 hours in a day. Again, encouraging the increased utilization of peripheral parking. Some of the spaces are much less convenient than others. Unfortunately, the spaces on South Broad Street, if you're headed towards the library coming from Brevard College, it's a little bit harder to turn back around and park in one of those spaces just given the traffic patterns in those areas if you go through downtown and don't see an option. But really looking at what management techniques could be utilized to increase utilization of your peripheral parking areas. Developing practical employee and long-term parking options. Really wanting to make sure that employees have a viable, safe place to park for long periods of time without worrying about getting a ticket. We've heard some concerns about safety going to locations meant to imply anything about the selection of the current lot. People sometimes don't feel safe at 10 o'clock at night walking around by themselves to a less visible parking area. Establishing event parking plans for downtown Plummer Yard. and continuing to monitor your parking conditions and usage trends, I think making observations, direct statistical observations of the occupancy and utilization of your, particularly on-street parking, would be beneficial to incorporate that into your regular kind of observations and planning programs for the city. It would be easier to do if you're having some sort of paid parking, of course, because you have the revenue and timing that goes along with that. But even if maintaining a the current system or going, making some changes to your time limits or something like that, you know, having more regular observations and doing those counts and looking at benchmarking those, particularly in your peak seasons against what you've seen in the past, including the previous parking site that was done. One of the things that we heard about again was getting getting to and from downtown and getting to different locations within downtown. So strategy three was improving mobility and access to and within downtown. We could get the lumber yard to a certain extent as well. But you know, there's some walking connections in downtown that still potentially have some ADA accessibility issues, most like telephone pole placement, things of that nature, making sure your curb curb ramps are in good states, people have safe crossings, things of that nature, evaluating signal timing on Main Street, one of the observations I set out there with my stopwatch and looked at the signal timing at both Gaston and I'm sorry Caldwell and broad streets and both of those signals were having through traffic on those main streets not main street itself of approximately two minutes which is a deterrent a to safely crossing the streets people tend to start running across they're parked in one of the peripheral locations but also if you're driving you saw a parking space that you've just passed and need to turn around and get back to it. It can be very frustrating waiting two, four minutes, depending on how many lights you go through, to get back where you're coming. I know NCDOT has reasons, but there's probably some things that can be done. Evaluating additional reserve parking for drivers with disabilities. We think there's potentially some opportunities given the composition. Maybe it's a peak time of year thing as well. where having some additional on-street parking available for people that might have some mobility limits might be beneficial because you're getting them parked in maybe closer proximity to their destinations. Just something to think about. Parking in some of the peripheral locations could be more difficult for some of them. Conducting a pilot program for remote parking shuttles during events and improving both bicycle connections and parking, one of the things we noted both in some of our discussions and our observations. We didn't see a lot of people utilizing the public racks all the time downtown. We saw a lot of people riding bikes. through downtown, some within, with stops in downtown areas. One of the things we noted, though, is a lot of the people, at least at this time, once you're fully connected to Hendersonville, it's probably going to be a little bit different story, but it's people that are more on the pro side of road biking, and they tend to have more expensive bikes that they might not want to leave, just out and about for anyone to get their hands on. And so one of the things we discuss in the study itself is potentially adding, you know, maybe probably not the city, but an opportunity for a private party, like one of your bike shops, to do some sort of valet bike parking downtown during your busier weekends, provide an option for people that would like to bike downtown but don't necessarily want to leave their bikes laying around. And we noted, Aaron noted, that the Brevard Bike Association is currently doing that during some of your downtown events, having kind of a valet that they do. That would be a good thing just to put in the minds of any entrepreneurial-minded people. That might be something that could be a moneymaker during some of the busier times of year. And then the fourth strategy, always wanting to be prudent, basically planning for potential future parking needs. You're very fortunate right now. You have both a great tourism economy, a great business economy in your downtown. You have a lot of people showing up. You have very well utilized on-street and off-street public parking. You have some off-street parking that could go away at some point in the future if you're seeing additional infill or redevelopment taking place. The state prohibition on parking minimums extends across the spectrum of potential uses. So even a large residential project, we know that they'll probably not get any money from the bank unless they're providing at least some minimal degree of parking that the lender feels would help them be able to sell or lease their product. But there could be some time where you're so fortunate to have a real bad problem. And so just encouraging, you know, looking at some ideas about where shared or city owned structured parking might go in the future, we did identify a few locations that had the proper width and depth to accommodate a standard size deck. Really, those are just for your ongoing consideration. There's no as we identified in the study need for the city to expand its parking supply. At the present time, if a private party wants to come along and do that, more power to them, that would be great because it would actually relieve probably some of the burden on the city. We know there's some potential changes coming down the road as well that will be altering the picture of parking. The longer term, I don't know if the current plan, but the longer term plan we understand for the court system to move most or all of its operations outside of downtown will cause some changes in behavior and occupancy during those court days that you're currently I guess it's always fortunate to have especially in the off-peak times that would change it we've heard about some other potential development projects coming in that could both bring some people lodging staying closer to downtown would not require driving downtown to get here as well as opportunities potentially for them to be providing some additional structured off-street public parking in conjunction with those project And so really just, you know, the city could, you know, over time, look at the feasibility of some of these locations we've identified, and see if anything makes sense or if additional study needs to be made. But really being being in a position where you're able to address that need should it ever arise with a plan in place and some options on the table. So I'm very happy to answer any questions you might have this evening. I'm also happy to take any written questions or Through your staff as we move forward working on getting this project Thank you, thank you Lots of information.

We appreciate it. I'm going to open it up for counsel to Address any questions they might have and we will start with Mr.. Wise

Thank you so much for that comprehensive presentation. On a kind of macro global scale, I think this, at least for me, kind of confirms what I sort of had a feeling about is we obviously hear from a lot of people that we have a parking problem, and I think now we can articulate how to express that issue, which is really helpful. The thing, this is kind of a rhetorical question really for me, but I'm now more curious about what problem we are actually trying to solve. Is that to try to create more turnover in our downtown spaces so more people can get in and out? Is it more distribution of vehicles across this spectrum of spaces, especially the periphery? Is it better access for customers when they want to pull in front of a store? That's probably the number one thing I hear. Or is it getting employees off of our streets and into the lots we already have that aren't being utilized? And I say that's rhetorical because I'm not sure what the solution to it, and I don't want to call it a problem because I think This is a fine tuning more than a problem in my mind. I think what I've always thought was there's signage. We have signage and circulation problems. And as you mentioned, a lot of that has to do with DOT and their opinions about appropriate light lengths. The other questions I have are how many other communities, and this is not for you to answer necessarily, have free on-street parking? I know it's not common. I don't want people to freak out. I'm not advocating. No pitchforks, please. But I'm curious about who has that system, how successful it is, and how many have switched over and been successful when they move to some kind of hybrid pay scenario.

I think probably the most direct comparison, and they're not even perfect for you, but up to blowing rock still has free on street parking and free city owned off street parking. And it is during peak times of year and weekends, it is extremely well utilized. They're currently looking at partnering with a private developer to go in on a There's a new conference center that's potentially going to get built where the city would be looking at actually adding in some public spaces in a new deck. The city owns two decks now. They explored on-street paid parking a few years ago. That did not go over very well with the residents. And they enjoyed their jobs on city council and maintained free on-street parking. Blowing Rock has a parking problem. They absolutely have a parking problem. it's really not one that's very fixable except adding capacity, which they're working on doing. Most most places even, you know, beach communities are similar having peak and off peak parking demand seasons, you have a couple of peaks, they have a longer single peak, a lot of them don't charge during the winter, late fall, winter, early spring, and then bring in the meters and charge during summertime, both for on-street and off-street. It's really, you know, what solution is right for the kind of system that you maintain? Is it more confusing when you have a large, permanent, year-round population like you do here compared to a beach community that goes down maybe during the winter? And, you know, to have changes in when you're paying for parking and not paying for parking, it's probably better to be consistent one way or the other just so that you're not, you know, having to do a lot of work switching back and forth. But a lot of communities just have gone over to paid parking and that people when they need to park somewhere they're going to park whether they had to pay for it or not, in general, and so I don't think it really deters a lot of people. Time limits changing those to encourage turnover can can work accommodating longer stays in areas that have less general occupancy that you've observed can be a way to free up more space in your very high demand spaces without putting a price tag on things.

And I think the other piece of this, and it's really just something to consider, is how do we communicate to the people of Brevard this kind of message and the things we're trying to look to solve it. Because, I mean, it's been the number one thing we hear about is that there is no parking. I mean, that's the message, there's no parking. So I want to try to think of a strategy to help with that messaging too and create a system that's like, well, there is, but you need to spread out a little bit.

I mean, people have their their observations, they come downtown to go out to dinner, and Main Street's full, right? That's not that happens, right? Miss, it's an occurrence that happens. They go over a couple blocks, they're likely to find a space if they go over a few more blocks, they're almost certain to find a space but that is their that is their experience. I went I need to drop off my mom. She can't walk a long distance. And so there's no parking. And, you know, again, you're making it as easy for people to locate an open space. And if it's a greater distance to travel from that space to their destination without having to worry about taking too long or get rained on or it's gonna cost me a fortune to do it, I think will help with that perception to some extent. There will always be people who will have a negative experience with on-street parking in particular.

Well, it's a precious commodity for sure. That's all I have. Thank you.

Ms. Holder?

Thank you also for the very intense Thank you. Presentation and informative. I'm glad that you addressed the Americans with disabilities in parking and I think that's important because they may not be able to get parking in front of the place where they need to go. but you also presented the idea of a shuttle and so perhaps the shuttle and a place for Americans with disabilities could be in the same proximity and then they could be shuttled to where they want to go. Is that what your idea is?

The shuttle idea was more about during festivals and events having more remote parking options available during those times. The not accessible but reserved for ADA placarded vehicles, was really about making more of those spaces potentially available in your core area. The alternative to that is, you know, is there a way to, you know, designate a drop-off location that's not going to be perfect for everyone so that perhaps you're driving someone who has mobility limitations but you are able-bodied and you can go drive around and park somewhere else without, you know, making that something where it's not holding up traffic parking out in the middle of the street. in the middle of the street or something like that. That would be the thought behind that.

Okay, so that doesn't really address that, correct?

We're talking about expanding the number of those types of spaces that might be available, but that's the primary way to address it, really, is just having more. We do observe, walking around, doing our counts, a lot of cars that have a tag or a placard or whatever the case might be, not necessarily occupying an ADA space, but just occupying a general space. And if that general space and ADA space were occupied when they got there, they might have to go further from their destination than they would like to based on their limitations.

OK. Is that something that could be considered maybe? I know we can't reproduce land. So when I first came to council, I think one of the big issues right before I got on council was about parking spaces that had been taken from downtown. And people were upset about it. I can't remember why. it was or what happened. But we did get a lot of feedback about that, about parking spaces. What are we using them for?

I should know that. The number of parking spaces were reduced because we put the bump-outs in.

The bump-outs took out. And people were kind of upset about that. How do you address adding additional parking spaces, or is that your purpose?

So really, in that specific recommendation, it would really just be converting either permanently or temporarily existing spaces on the street and potentially in some of your off-street lots to that purpose.

Okay. And I wholeheartedly agree with better signage. And I was standing right under a sign and didn't know it was a parking lot until we were doing the walk study. And I learned, oh, we can park over here. And those lots were pretty empty. And I think it's because people don't know they can park there. So I think that better signage is a great idea. Finding employee parking. This is the first city I've ever lived in that has free on-street parking. So I was kinda happy to see it. And I'm sure we'll get a lot of feedback if we start charging fees to park. You probably would.

To the previous councilman's question, I was just thinking in some of the discussion, the questions you were just asking about, we're doing some similar work in Pittsburgh, where they still maintain free on street parking. And then your comment about the signage, you know, one of the things, big recommendations there, which is, you know, blazing all the kinds of signage that you could just, here's where the free all day parking is. And you have those signs at the entrances to those lots here, but there's not really a lot. You can certainly go on the city's website, which I do like to plan ahead, kind of my job. But most people aren't going to go online looking at parking options in downtown Brevard before they show up. And so just making sure people can get directed very easily and very obviously to where you are providing those longer-term spaces I think would go a long way. Because behind City Hall is kind of a hidden area. It's not the one that everybody's going to take. There's nothing really leading you down there.

That's the one I was speaking of. All right. Thank you so much. Thank you. Mr. Baker.

Yeah, thank you for all the work. This is a big undertaking and something we've talked about for a long time, so it's great to see it in its final state. I'm gonna start just by repeating something I said about an anecdote about our former colleague up here, Councilman Mac Morrow. When he was having his final meeting, I went back and was doing a bunch of research in Transylvania Times about his past and the first election he had been in and there was a in 1986 there was a front page article of the Transylvanian Times with all the candidates and their positions and I think two out of the four or something like that said they were gonna fix the downtown parking problem and that was 40 years ago so you know it's it's one of those things that people are always gonna have thoughts and feelings and perceptions of and it's more of a management problem than a than an actual on the ground problem that we're gonna constantly having to reevaluate and I appreciate that you put that in one of your strategies or one of the recommendations was just to like continually study the problem because things are gonna change. Another interesting thing I took away was your observations of the depot and What's interesting to me about that is that parking itself, and this sounds like an obvious statement, but I think sometimes we get lost in this parking. We idolize sort of the perfect parking situation in that parking itself is not really a place people want to visit or it's not an asset. Like you can't build great parking and then like all of a sudden people want to be at that place. because the depot has amazing parking. It's had amazing parking for, I can't, five, six years, and it is empty 99% of the time. The other thing about that is the opposite can actually be true, that parking can take up space where something, an asset could be, where a business could be, or something people actually want to visit, want to be in. So it's not like this inherent good that if we could just get more parking, then all things would be great. I do have a couple of questions. On one of your strategies, you talk about coordinating with private lots, and I think that's an underrated part of our downtown parking is that we actually do now have a decent amount of private lots that are actually really close to the core where we want people. I know you talked about a coordinated signage program. Are there other things that cities have done that really helps with bringing in those private lots and making them feel more a part of the whole system?

I think that the second part of that would be coordinating payment.

Yeah, the software.

Timing prices and things of that nature. The free market is at work. there. And that can be a difficult. Yeah. Even with with willing property owners, I would say that, you know, just our observations, some of the private lots, they were paid to park in a private lot, like at the bank. Yeah. They were not empty, but they were not very heavily utilized. Or for whatever reason, I think some of that's knowledge of availability because like at the bank some of those parking places are very convenient to some restaurants and things of that nature but where your your paid lot is generally full dinner time the bank paid lot was there a few cars there but not really well they probably make more money during festivals I assume than than other times of year but um

And I have a couple of questions on your alternatives on the sort of payment structure. I notice that in none of, and you suggested maybe like a 30 minutes for free in the general area, but not in the premium spots. Is it?

Well, that's just, you know, whichever way you want to. Yeah. I don't, I think that the premium spaces, you know, making those a a commodity if you're going to go in that direction you if you're using pricing, then yeah, the pricing should probably be generally applicable. And those otherwise, you might just get a lot of free turnover, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. There are people that also need to park there for very legitimate purpose. They're going out to eat or something like that and want to They found the space right in front of the restaurant and wanted to be there. And so having those available for them as well. I think there's, the thing about alternatives is there's every kind of iteration. You know, you could make a hundred different, we just had to pick something to go with for them.

Right. I just wanted to make sure that wasn't like a, Like you're like, do not do that by any... No, no, I don't.

Okay. It's more of something to consider as to how widespread or not that might be, even if it's not at all.

And then knowing our state and the state laws and things like that, I have a feeling I know the answer to this, but I've been in some other places, other states that have... When they create a on-street paid parking system, they also have a way for residents to park for free in those spots. Is that legal in the state of North Carolina, and have you seen that? Is that something you recommend?

That was one of the ideas that was explored in Brevard. Of course, that program never took off, and so that wasn't needed.

Was that in Blowing Rock? I'm sorry, in Blowing Rock.

Okay, yeah. And a lot of the beach communities, for their beach access parking, they'll have a sticker for residents. I know Oak Island was probably the most recent of the beach communities to institute paid parking with a resident sticker. It can be tough to administer something like that, but not impossible. And blowing rock concern was, well, I love driving downtown to the post office to get my mail. And if I have to pay to park, I'm going to be right.

Yeah, yeah.

And so that was the which are very legitimate concerns, people that regularly come downtown. So perhaps having some, you know, something like that could work. Or you just you have a very large year round population that I think where it probably works better is where you have a very a relatively small year-round population in comparison to the kind of parking demand you can generate at your peak times. Basically providing some free access for people that otherwise would be able to park with no problem during the rest of the year. And the other part of your question may be unasked in terms of the revenue. Yes, there are limitations on what you can do with on-street parking revenue. It has to be spent on the, you know, on street parking program, basically. Yeah, off streets a different story. There is a way the revenue bond act you can pledge on street parking revenues towards the maintenance of off street maintenance, construction, etc, of off street parking. So that's under that specific act. And you do have to issue revenue bonds, you can't just magically transfer the money.

Right. Okay. And I had a question in the lumberyard area. This is, I think, probably more for our staff. Whitmire Street is a state-maintained road, correct? But there's not currently on-street parking on Whitmire Street, at least not lined. Okay. Okay. Okay. Yeah, I'm curious about that because obviously in that area, French Broad is heavily used, basically full, and King Street is heavily used, basically full. Whitmire is right there. It's the next street over. And sometimes you see people park there, but not really. I think we might just need to clarify, like, where is it legal, and then people would do it.

The visibility probably because people aren't – there's not necessarily anything on Whitmire really to, excuse me, draw you over there.

Yeah.

Right now, if you're circling around, the connection is kind of weird, too. The connection down there is an interesting convergence of roads in any case. But yeah, I guess maybe one of the obstacles to doing some kind of marked on-street parking in Whitmire could be the requirement basically to provide some accessible parking in conjunction with that. And there might be some engineering challenge standing in the way, I don't know that for sure. This is just another consideration. That's all I have.

Mr. Lytle.

Thanks. One question I have, and I think I know the answer, but could you articulate, you've got management recommendations, right? What's the problem that paid parking solves that the management recommendations can't solve alone?

The one, well, I don't know if we can solve anything, but we can alter behavior in certain instances by putting a price on parking. For instance, where you have a good number of people lawfully occupying some of the city-owned off-street parking lots for long durations of time. If there were some free allowance and then they had to pay for the remainder of the time, that could encourage them to change their behavior. It wouldn't be a huge amount of money necessarily to a lot of people. It would be a lot of money to some people. But it could encourage them to seek out a location that was more distant, more remote from there. Also, establishing a fee on anything increases the scarcity of it by, you know, not making it just a free commodity available to anyone who happens to come along. I think a lot of your visitors would probably, not your, I think your residents would probably have some issues paying for parking, not financially, but just opposition to it. Your visitors, I think, would mostly generally be able, capable and willing to pay because they came to Brevard for a reason. And again, the person paying for parking $3 an hour without a limit, a lot of people just, hey, this is convenient for me. I'm just going to pay to park here all day. And so it can be in combination with time limits or without. But it just encourages people to consider the options they have in front of them. And people don't want to necessarily pay more than they have to for something. It would bend some people's behavior but not others. It's really just acknowledging the fact that this is a scarcity. commodity and assigning a price to it, if that's the direction the city wants to go.

And I'm not advocating for it either, but if there were, if we wanted to look at some form of paid parking, what would a recommended pilot look like in order to be able to know whether or not it accomplishes what the intended outcome was from a paid.

Fortunately or unfortunately, maybe unfortunately, to do a, there's probably not really such thing as a feasible paid on-street pilot because the infrastructure investment would be pretty significant. And you'd probably pretty much have to be committed to it. You could use it to potentially manage time limits absent a payment if you wanted to back off. But I think your investment in the equipment would probably be the same as you're basically committing to it at that point.

Understood. Thanks.

Go down to zero, but it would still be your infrastructure cost. Yeah.

That's all.

Thank you. All right. Well, there is no action requested of Council tonight except for the recommendation to send this on to the Downtown Master Plan Committee for further discussion. So, Council, do I have a motion to send this to the Downtown Committee?

So moved.

Do I have a second?

Second.

All in favor?

Aye.

Okay. We will go to the committee and thank you very much. You gave us a lot to think about. And with that, we will take a five-minute break. resume and we will move on to our public hearings our first public hearing is the proposed amendments to the city of brevard unified development ordinance chapters 2 6 and 19 building height regulations and aaron bland will walk us through this one

Yes, so this is a staff-initiated text amendment to revise the city's approach to regulating and measuring building height to establish a more predictable and context-sensitive method to distinguish between smaller buildings and larger buildings and the kind of visual bulk and scale that they introduce to the city's kind of built environment. Our current regulations measure building height from the highest adjacent grade to the eave of the roof regardless of roof type or height and regardless of the slope or the terrain that the building may be sitting on. So a building can technically comply with our maximum height even though it's on a sloping site and one side is much taller than that maximum height because it's measured again from the highest adjacent grade. So it can create large exposed walls because of its simplicity in the way we measure it right now. And so the proposed amendments will address this by using a combination of regulating by number of stories, the story height maximum, and the overall building height maximum, and then introducing an exposed wall maximum. The Planning Board discussed these amendments or various different approaches at a work session in June, and then in August of this year, they recommended in favor of the amendments you have before you today, and they also submit their statement of consistency as required by state law as well. Let me jump to the amendments. So the... The regulatory approach we're proposing to change to will differentiate based on the number of stories a building is proposed to have. If a building is to have one or two stories, they would be regulated through that maximum number of stories themselves with a 14-foot maximum height per story, which is a very straightforward way of measuring the height for these smaller structures like houses, things like that that might need to or be appropriate to be regulated in a more simple manner. Larger buildings with three or more stories are gonna be subject to an additional maximum building height and maximum exposed wall height standards. The maximum height would be calculated from the average finished grade to a roofline measurement point, which I'll point out in the actual text here in a second. And the applicant would have to provide those building elevations demonstrating compliance. By distinguishing between the different building types, the one or two stories or three or more, and we're applying a more detailed review only where necessary, the larger buildings, which are more impactful based on their size and their just sort of visual impact. The measurement points are defined for a better account of the architectural features and the topography. Let me skip to that section. So that finished grade is gonna be calculated based on either the outermost corners or at intervals of five feet or less of the structure. the applicant can choose however they wish to determine that average finish grade. And then the building height point is going to be determined based on the type of roof that's employed. So a flat roof is going to be measured from the top, a mansion from the deck height, and then the other roof types we typically see is going to be in the middle, the midpoint of those roofs. And so you'll be measuring from that average grade to this point and then the The height limit itself is being proposed to be raised by five feet in all districts. So right now, general residential is 35, bumping it up to 40. And again, that is to account for right now, we're only measuring to the bottom of all these rooftops. We're proposing you have to measure to the top of a flat roof or the midpoint of these other gabled shed roof types. So to give a little bit of wiggle room for that increased height that we're actually measuring now, we're proposing to increase that allowed height across the board, which is what you see in this table here. You also now see this maximum exposed wall height column added. So in general residential four, that's 30 feet. In general residential eight, it's 35 feet. And it stays 35 feet until you get to downtown and corridor. General industrial or much more intensive districts will have a larger allowed height. wall height. And you can see how that is measured from the lowest adjacent grade instead of the average grade. So the idea there is on a sloping site, you can't have some massive wall on one side that just looks completely out of place because of the topography of the site. And that does only get measured to the roof line of a building segment. If it's stepped back four or more feet, we won't measure all the way up to the top for that exposed wall height. because that step back kind of breaks up that massive, bulky, blank wall. So that's the new exposed wall height standard we're proposing. of change that you'll see in your packet is that we're removing the way we measure height in the steep slope chapter and that's because in steep slope areas we were not happy with measuring from the highest adjacent grade and so we determined a specific way to measure it in the slope areas but now we don't need that anymore with the way we're changing it across the board so this whole section has been removed from the steep slope chapter so overall these amendments are a shift a single dimensional height limit that can be manipulated into a more comprehensive and nuanced approach that considers how buildings are built and perceived in our um more unique context throughout the city so um Like I said, the planning board recommended in favor of these amendments as presented here. And this is also consistent with several goals of our comprehensive land use plan, which are listed in your packet. And tonight's presentation is just for the public hearing purposes. We are not requesting action at this time.

Thank you, Aaron. Council, since this is a public hearing, I need a motion to open the public hearing.

So moved.

Do I have a second? Second.

Second.

All in favor?

Aye.

The public hearing is now open. Nobody signed up to speak at the public hearing. So council, I need a motion to close the public hearing. So moved. I need a second.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Public hearing is now closed. I will now open it up for questions and comments from council. We'll start with Mr. Lytle.

Thanks for this. Just curious, are there, I saw in every zone, maximum height is at 35?

Currently, that's the height for several of them, yes.

Has there ever been consideration for maximum heights depending on the character of the neighborhood? In other words, if all homes are single story, a certain size, on a very, very small street, and then someone wants to build really maximum height structure next to next to it or in the middle of it has that ever come up or has that ever been considered to look at those or is there a way to you know sort of look at those one by one on a case by case that has not come up I wonder how that would be

done legally typically these sorts of standards are going to be set by the zoning district and so if there's an area that is so unique and so deserving of its own special standards I would recommend that it have its own zoning district and that way you can tailor all of this all of these dimensional standards more appropriately to that area I don't know of a way that is clean That's not based off of a zoning district or some other defined district, like a historical district or something like that. I don't think we can just sort of decide this one required. You know what I mean? You know what I'm trying? I don't know how to do this one. For sure.

No, I understand. No, it's clear. It's clear. Okay. Good enough. There may be something that I propose to the committee.

Okay. Mr. Baker?

I don't have any questions but I do have a suggestion for next time when this comes back up because as I was thinking through this and reading, The biggest question I had was how would this have, if we had this in place, how would it have impacted some buildings that are currently in existence? So I was curious about French Broad Place. I know when that was built, there was some consternation that it was too, the building height was too high.

They got a variance.

Yeah, okay, they got a variance, okay. And then there's a building actually behind FLA Church that is I think like, is it three? I know they had a lot of issues, but I'm curious about some real world examples that might help illustrate this for us when this comes back.

I mean, one I'll mention because it didn't come to fruition, but this would have changed how we measured the height for the proposed hotel. It was being measured from Probart Street, but obviously as you look at it from Appletree Street, it's going to feel a little taller than what we say the height is based off of the way it's currently written. Yeah.

I think if we could just have a couple of just real-world examples like that, it might help us put this in better context. It would help me put it in better context.

Ms. Holder?

So, thank you, Aaron, for that segue. I was thinking the same thing about the story that's behind Bethlehem. I mean, the stories. I just... There's a lot of stories. You're like 10 stories high. Then you have this little bitty story. But, you know, how do you... have people to conform to that if somebody buys property, private property and is a private builder. You know, to Dean's point, how do you regulate that? Or can we?

Regulate what, the height?

The height. That's what we're doing here. Okay, so... We can tell somebody who has bought the private property as a builder you cannot build 10 stories high?

Correct.

Okay. Is that for the whole, for everywhere? It's by zoning district. Except downtown?

Yeah. Okay. All right. Currently it's 35 feet is the building height by right in the residential districts we have in town. Downtown goes up to 50 feet. But the way we measure that currently is, again, from the highest adjacent grade. So the point of the building with the dirt up against it, that's the highest point. So if it's on a sloping site, we're not measuring from the bottom. So that wall may be substantially taller than where we would measure the height of the building from. So that's the sort of unintended possibility that we're trying to mitigate with these amendments.

So if we had this four years ago, this wouldn't be an issue with the really 10-story building behind the church. It's not 10 stories for real.

I'm not certain. I don't know how tall it is or how tall its individual stories are.

Yeah, it's huge.

I mean, I think about the house I used to live in in Bedford Place. It's on a slope. If you look at it from the driveway, it's only one story high. But if you look at it from the entrance road to Bedford Place, it's like four stories high.

I think that was all I had. Thank you. Mr.

Wise?

I don't really have a question. Just appreciate trying to clean this up because I know this is something we run into a lot. And I really also appreciate kind of looking at the steep slope part of this, too, to kind of make all this a little more easier to apply uniformly. That's it.

Okay. Thank you, Aaron. That's it for that public hearing. This will come back for Council to vote on at our next meeting. We'll move on to our next public hearing. The proposed amendments to the City of Brevard Unified Development Ordinance Chapters 2, 8, 10, and 17, Removal of Off-Street Parking Minimum Requirements. And Mr. Bland will walk us through this one.

Yes. And so Yvonne referenced this state law change in his presentation. Session law 2026-39 was adopted in July of this year, and it has removed the ability for local governments to require a minimum amount of off-street parking for new development. So the effective date of that isn't until January 1st, 2027, but we're recommending and initiating this amendment to go ahead and remove our minimum required off-street parking section. If you remember back in 2023, we just did a pretty big change to these standards pretty recently, and we introduced this tiered – I've got to get through a bunch of – anywhere it says required parking has been amended to just say parking. So there's some stuff that doesn't really get changed. We added this tier system where Tier 1 had minimum requirements but not maximum. Tier 2 has both minimum and maximums. And Tier 3 just had maximums. And so we're going to have to change this whole table up because we can no longer acquire the minimums. The intent with this was to have parking minimums in the lower density areas that are less walkable and don't have available public parking while establishing the maximums in areas that are more densely developed and more heavily commercialized where there's – likely to have too much parking rather than too little parking. Think like Walmart and places like that with humongous parking lots. So we're gonna have to change this table to remove the minimums, which means we no longer need three tiers. We just have a tier that has no maximums and a tier that does have maximums. Eliminating these minimums does not prohibit or discourage the provision of parking. It just allows the applicants and the developers of sites to determine their own amount of parking based on their site usage. It kind of takes this out of our hands and into the private sector's hands to determine what they think is required minimum parking for their needs. The planning board reviewed this at their August 25th meeting and unanimously recommended it in favor. And as always, they submit the required statement of consistency. We talk about parking in the comprehensive land use plan, what we call right size parking requirements. So this is... Consistent with that goal and as well as several other overarching goals because parking has an impact on a lot of the city's function a lot of its visible aesthetics and Land use and transportation goals and so several of these goals are listed in the staff report that this is consistent with in addition to this table being changed like I said lots of just references to required parking are going to be the word required will be removed because it's not allowed anymore or we'll just reference our maximums. This does eliminate some of our incentives that we had inserted when we did this amendment for things like shared parking, electric vehicle charging parking spaces, additional bicycle parking spaces. Some of those are no longer Able to be done because they hinge on the required minimums, which we cannot enforce anymore. So some of that stuff is taken out of here. But mostly this is really just amending that table to go from three tiers to two tiers, and then all the little references to required parking in various chapters are amended just to save time. parking instead of required parking. So happy to go through any more of the specific changes if you'd like. Otherwise, this is just like before for public hearing purposes only, and we are not requesting action at this time.

Okay. Council, do I have a motion to open the public hearing?

So moved.

Do I have a second?

Second.

All in favor?

Aye.

Public hearing is open. No one signed up to speak at the public hearing. Council, do I have a motion to close the public hearing? So moved. Do I have a second?

Second.

All in favor?

Aye.

Public hearing is closed. We'll open it for questions and comments from council. We'll start with Mr. Baker.

Yeah, honestly, I'm personally happy to see this. This is a kind of a nationwide trend towards revisiting parking minimums as sort of a standard practice for city planning i know it does it could be perceived as taking a tool out of the tool kit for for planning staff but in reality it gets back to you know treating parking as part of the market, a part of a commodity like anything else, instead of this separate sort of magically different thing. And I think it was interesting that our, when we were having our parking discussion earlier, It was mentioned that if you're a developer and you're looking for financing, your bank is not going to let you build an apartment complex without adequate parking because they know you won't sell those apartments. Or they will take a holistic approach and look at the parking that already exists around the apartment that you're building and say, oh, there actually is enough parking. So there are things that sort of regulate this on their own and this puts it back into that realm instead of it being a problem for the city to try to regulate. So I'm happy to see it.

Ms. Holder? I don't have any questions, thank you.

Mr. Wise?

Yeah, I kind of do wonder what provoked the state to do this, because I don't think it's for those reasons, Aaron, necessarily. I do think we want to be careful with this, not on our behalf, because while I agree with everything Aaron said, I think it could also act as a double-edged sword. We could see developments that do require use of city, and that kind of goes into city parking and... As you mentioned, we implemented a tier system a couple of years ago, and I know you guys did a lot of work because of the perceived need for that tier system. I want to just be aware as we're moving forward and look at what's happening with parking. Not that I understand locally we can change what the state rules are. I just want to be aware of the effects locally of what's happening. I do think there's a lot of benefits to this as well. So again, thanks for getting ahead of the curve on this, and we'll just keep an eye on it.

Yeah, one thing I meant to mention, and you mentioned the effects, and I want to point it out, is that this is one of those things that becomes kind of almost retroactive. So if someone had to require a number of parking spaces that we enforced last year, we cannot continue to enforce that. Right. So someone who has a parking lot that they deem is too large based off of our minimums, they can now develop that area of their parcel. Right. So it's not something that, like, all the parking spaces that have been built are set in stone. They can now develop those areas.

Mr. Lytle?

It seems like there may be spillover parking right on other streets in some cases. So are there tools that we have that sort of would mitigate that if that starts happening? If there's a developer, not enough parking, they start spilling over to other streets, eliminating parking there?

I was going to look at the police chief for that one. We can regulate our streets for the parking that we see fit if issues arise with timing and no parking zones. So far from stop signs, if there's issues like that popping up, we can take action on those sorts of things.

Okay. Thanks.

All right. This will come back for action at another meeting. Thank you, Aaron. We will move on to the consent and information agenda. The following items are on consent. One, tax settlement report of August 26. Two, property tax releases September 26. Three, accreditation grant police department $60,700. Four, resolution authorizing application for SRF loan and or grant assistance for azalea rhododendron sewer extension. Five, Public Works and Utilities Committee meeting minutes August 5th of 26. Six, Downtown Master Plan Implementation and Downtown Advisory Committee meeting minutes of August 12th, 26. Seven, Housing Committee meeting minutes of August 11th, 26. Eight, Parks, Trails, and Recreation Committee meeting minutes August 19th of 26. 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 unfinished business. Our first item is the Silverstein Picnic Pavilion and Bathroom Final Design. And I believe, Wilson, are you?

Yes, ma'am. David and I will do it together. And David, as you approach the podium, I'll ask you to bring up the rendering. And then also the designer of record, Melanie Spreen, is here if you have any technical questions for her. I'm gonna give some brief remarks recounting the history of this issue. And Mayor, if I get something wrong, I'll ask you to step in and correct me. But briefly, around 2019, the city and members of the Rosenwald community, both individuals and institutions, started talking about ways to reinvest in the community. A vision was developed and adopted, and the various players set about implementing it piece by piece. The three most significant pieces, construction of Mary C. Jenkins Center, improvements to the playground and basketball court at Silverstein Park, and stream bank repair have already been completed. Public investment constituted the vast majority of the funding for those projects, but seed gifts by the Bethel A. Church and other donors were certainly the catalyst for all of those projects. Unfortunately, the dollars that were raised early on didn't stretch as far as the original stakeholders thought they would, and so a couple of the projects were left unfinished. Faced with tightening budgets, as it did with other special project funds, the council had to decrease and then end its regular annual contribution to the Rosenwald Fund several fiscal years ago and pivoted instead to searching for private donors to help fund the remaining projects. And that strategy has actually borne some fruit. Private donors have funded the addition of the outdoor storage building and the gazebo at MCJCC and the design and engineering that you'll hear about here today. If you approve the plans as presented, And I encourage you to do so because any significant changes will require work on Melanie's behalf that we don't have the time or the money to cover. Staff will take these plans shopping and try to find some other potential private sources of funding to help complete this project. And having a shovel-ready, so to speak, project means that if we find a donor tomorrow, we can execute this project shortly thereafter. I want to say that this design was developed collaboratively with the Rosenwald Advisory Committee and discussed with them in fine detail, and I'm talking about fine detail. uh... on i believe three separate occasions i was there for two of them personally and i think there was another one at a third meeting that i didn't attend and so it's well vetted with them and and and they liked what uh... they saw when we presented this image in this rendering to him a few meetings ago. So David, if you can talk a little bit more in detail about the proposed project.

Yes, sir. Good evening, Mayor, Council. I do want to acknowledge Melanie Spring is in our audience tonight. She is with May Collaborative, who are the designers of our project. What we have before you is a rendering that in the bottom right hand corner, you see the kind of site and where we're talking about locating the pavilion and the restrooms. And then in the top right, you see a rendering. In the left hand side is a site plan and an elevation of what the structures look like. One thing I do want to point out that in the right hand top rendering, the parking is shown as head end parking. But after a little more looking and designing and thinking about where the sidewalks and all are, we have changed that to parallel parking and that's what's shown in the site plan on the left hand side. So the left hand site plan is the most accurate of what we have. The picnic shelter is roughly about 30 feet by 40 feet. The bathrooms are a 15 by 15 square foot building with two restrooms and a little storage room. The infrastructure that kind of serves this facility is all fed from the bathroom. So there's water and sewer coming into the bathroom as well as electric. That electric and water in turn helps feed the picnic pavilion area. We've got a sidewalk leading from the pavilion directly into the playground, and then an accessible parking space and a regular parking space, both in the parallel lots that are shown there, with accessible sidewalk up to the restroom or to the pavilion itself. We've got lights in the pavilion that you can, are dusk to dawn lights with some additional security lighting. The bathrooms have proximity sensors in the bathrooms and are upfitted very similar to what you would see in the Mary C. Jenkins public restrooms, the outside public restrooms. You were sent a cost estimate earlier today. It's just under $415,000. That is the construction cost estimate. That does not include the design work, which is complete, nor does it include construction administration fees we would have, and construction administration observation fees we would have as a structure were built, and it does not include what I call furnitures, fixtures, and equipment. So the picnic tables, for example, under the shed are not included in that number. That's kind of my summary, unless there's anything that you would like to ask out of that. Melanie, is there anything you would want to add that I didn't mention? Put you on the spot.

I think one important point to point out, David, is that we had to be really careful in the design because of the flood zone that this is in. And that did limit the placement of where we could put things. And so that's why you see the bathrooms located where they are very specifically after all the testing that we did to make sure that we weren't going to interfere with the flow of the stormwater.

Thank you, Mayor, for saying that. That also reminded me, Stephanie, Colin, to my left here, our architect did an extensive review of the plans and what we're building here and ensured that these do meet our current architectural standards as well. Stephanie, is there anything you want to add on any of that? Not yet? All right.

Okay, well... We are actually looking for approval from council of the resolution approving the design of the Silverstein Park Pavilion and bathroom. Do I have a motion to approve the resolution?

So moved. Second.

Do I have a second?

Second.

Okay, we will open it up for comments and questions. We'll start with Ms. Holder.

Thank you. Thank you for the, and as he noted, Rosenwald, the Rosenwald group had a chance to review the drawings and it's exciting to see something start to come to fruition. Did I hear you say something about private donors?

Yes, ma'am.

Okay. What did you say?

We're going to go and try to find one. Okay. There's no money in the budget for this at the moment. There is the possibility that the council will designate the surplus Fund 82 money as seed money for this, but we would still need to find $400,000 or so more, even if that money was designated. And so before budget even starts and before this even becomes an issue for you all's deliberation again, we hope to find a private source of funding for this project.

and the design was fully funded by a private donation.

I understand that. What about grants? Can we not get grants? It is in a predominantly minority neighborhood, and those grants are readily and usually easily available.

Yes, ma'am. I intended to suggest that those were the kind of things we'd be pursuing as well. What this project doesn't qualify well for are the typical public grants that fund recreation-type projects.

Why is that? I don't know because I don't write those kind of grants, but why not?

I don't even think bathrooms are eligible for Part F and some of the others are.

Bathrooms are not, but the shelter would be. I didn't hear you.

We can't apply for PARTIF because we don't have a comprehensive recreation plan that includes this facility and all the others. Ours is more than 10 years old, and so it no longer qualifies, so we would not be competitive for PARTIF for any of our recreation facilities right now.

Okay, that's understandable. So if we went back to fund 82, I'm going to go back there. What is it, $74,000, $75,000 there?

Available, yes. You all have already softly committed to Carolina Avenue traffic calming, which would make the available amount around $74,000. Yes, ma'am.

So that would cover the general requirements, which is $29,985. Yes. It will cover the concrete, $36,902. Specialties, $2,268, and two shelters. If we took specialties out, then we could possibly, and took part of some of the other out, we could get the six picnic tables, perhaps. But I know that we could do that much with $73,515. So that seed money would be helpful. to leave the funds there in 82 in order to even start with those line items that are in this proposal if we went with this proposal. And I understand we have not approved that yet either, but if we went with that.

I WOULD JUST POINT OUT THAT TONIGHT THE ONLY THING WE ARE ASKING COUNCIL TO DO IS TO IMPROVE THE DESIGN.

OKAY.

WE ARE NOT LOOKING TO MAKE A DECISION ABOUT FUND 88 THIS EVENING. RIGHT, RIGHT. WE'LL COME BACK FOR A SEPARATE DISCUSSION AT ANOTHER TIME. OKAY.

BUT I JUST WANTED TO PUT OUT THERE THAT, YOU KNOW, IT WOULD BE HELPFUL, YOU KNOW, Move if we approve this Design tonight, then there's a little bit to even start to go forward as we look for other grants and private donors Okay, thank you and thank you And I'm so glad to see this thing come together It's great job.

Thanks for taking a look at this. My only real question, and I think I see it on the site plan, is we will be doing a little bit of screening behind the picnic shelter and that existing residence. There's some trees indicated there. Something just to kind of help the buffer. I said that as an affirmative, but as a question. Yes, sir. Yeah, otherwise, yeah, let's, I don't have any recommendations for changes. I would say let's, Let's get this thing out on the street. That's all I got. Mr. Baker.

Yeah, I want to just start by thanking the private donor who donated a substantial amount of money. It takes more money than you think to get the design to this point and having construction ready design documents is really a big step towards increasing the fundraising possibilities for any project and now that we have that we can really go to work on grants and also private fundraising and we know where we stand in terms of the total cost and I just want to take this opportunity to mention some other projects that we have recently completed that were either a combination of private or public dollars or just 100% private fundraising dollars. The Bracken expansion and the completion of the additional trails there was, there were some public funds in there, but it was also a, the large majority of the funding was private donations. The TDA also contributed to that as well. And then the soccer field at the sports complex was 100% funded by private donations from a couple of two, a couple of, two families that gave a great deal of money and then a group of others that got together to fund that. The city has been able to do some great things by combining public effort and private donations and this is just another step on the way there. So yeah, I think it's a great step. I'm interested, obviously, in the grant opportunities that are out there, but also the private funding that we have in this community to step up and complete this project if it's something they'd like to see.

Thank you. Mr. Lytle.

No questions other than I want to thank the donor as well. Each of our neighborhoods are important and every neighborhood needs to be inviting and needs to have its own character. It's nice to have destinations all over the city and it doesn't matter which community that you enter. So designs look good to me, mainly because I know nothing about design. But other than that, they look pretty good. Thanks.

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

Aye.

Opposed? Motion passes. We have an approved picnic pavilion and bathroom for Silverstein Park.

Thank you, Melanie.

All right. We are moving on to new business. Our first item is Clarification of Naming Conventions for City Trails. I believe Mayor Pro Tem Baker is gonna brief us.

Yeah, so this came out of the Parks, Trails, and Recreation Committee, which I chair and Lauren Councilman Wise is on as well. And really this was spurred on by the upcoming really exciting project of the Acousta Trail. and we're about to get some big news on that with 65% design being completed at the next meeting of the Acosta Trail Advisory Board. This council has previously designated the existing city trail all the way to Main Street as a part of the Acosta Trail. And we also have this name that we've sort of all assumed that the Estetot Trail was the name for the entire city trail system. We actually learned, I think, during this research that there's no official, the only official action that council has taken with the name Estetot Trail is actually related to the pathway that is inside the National Forest, the sort of gravel area at the north of this screen here on the map. And we've sort of colloquially started calling the rest of the trail system Estetot. That introduces a lot of potential confusion with Acosta and Estetot both being E names. And with the Acosta Trail construction imminent, we feel like we need to go ahead and clear up some of these naming conventions so that we, when we're creating signage directional signs, we can be very clear with both visitors and the public alike what these trails are called. So the recommendation from the committee is that the section of trail which is in black on the screen to the north of the yellow line, so the yellow line is the current and future Acousta Trail, and the black line is the existing City Trail which heads into the forest so the committee recommendation is to Officially name this northern section of the trail in black here on the screen as the Estatow Trail and In practice, once the Acosta Trail is completed, this would mean we'd have very clear signage that as you're traveling along the Acosta Trail, if you wanted to take a right on the Estetot Trail, you would be headed towards the National Forest, and if you wanted to continue on the Acosta Trail, you would be headed into downtown Brevard. So that is the recommendation from the committee. I will say, not to introduce another thing, but we have a future problem that we'll need to deal with at a certain point once these southern sections of trail are completed. We have certain sections that are on the ground now, but the dotted sections on the map are either currently in progress as Tannery North is, or we're working on completing design and future construction of that, but this we'll figure out, we'll need to figure out what the name of this section is called at some point in the future.

Okay, thank you. We are looking for action tonight. Council, do I have a motion to approve the attached resolution affirming the naming conventions just briefed that were recommended by the Parks, Trails, and Recreation Committee?

So moved.

Do I have a second?

Second.

Okay, we'll open it for questions and comments. And we'll start with Mr. Wise.

Yeah, I mean, I've actually talked to people who get the Estetot and Acusa Trail confused a lot. And I think this is such a major, the Acusa Trail is such a major piece of infrastructure coming in. We want to make sure people know where they're going and what they're riding on. And then we did do a little bit of looking into what the Essato Trail really was and how it was really kind of historically more aligned with the forest. So I think clarification here as these trail systems emerge is gonna be really important as we get thousands of people coming into our community. I would also say that we do have the BATS name out there for the Brevard area trails, and that southern section is BATS. I mean, come on, BATS.

All right, do not confuse the situation, please, Mr. Wise. That is not on the agenda tonight.

Write us and tell us you want BATS. That's all I have, thank you.

Thank you.

BATS.

Mr. Lytle. Okay.

No questions really. I think it all makes sense to get clarification. No comments or questions.

Mr. Baker.

I don't have any questions or comments.

Ms. Holder.

No comments, but you can let your part be best.

Thank you, ma'am.

Every time you go out there, it's best.

Collaboration is how it works.

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

Aye.

Opposed? Motion passes. We have clarification on the naming. Moving on to our next item of new business. We have resolution authorizing application for an SRF loan and or grant assistance for a capital improvements program, priority one sewer system improvements. And Mr. Todd, our assistant city manager will be briefing us.

Thank you. Mayor, I would be remiss to not go back to the Silverstein Picnic Pavilion for one second and acknowledge that we did have two donors to date that have helped us with that project. We had one donor that did the original concept and rendering and then a second donor that funded the design. I just wanted to acknowledge that. Council, the... You will remember we recently completed what we refer to as the AIA asset inventory assessment of our wastewater collection system. From that assessment, we identified 1,900 manholes, 58 miles of gravity sewer line, 15 lift stations, and 6.5 miles of force main. So that's a lot of infrastructure to maintain. We also identified some problems with that system. highlighted in some areas more so than others which include frequent blockages, sanitary sewer overflows, frequent repairs, excessive it's excessive aged infrastructure we use smoke testing to identify further leaks field inspection and then we just need to plan for growth over the next 15 years so out of that plan we identified several priority areas and pulled together roughly a total cost of about $18,430,000 of infrastructure need on our wastewater collection system over six priority projects. What we are bringing before you tonight is the first of those priority projects, the number one priority project, which has a price tag on it estimated at $3,230,000. So the resolution before you tonight is to apply for an SRF loan to help us with this work. We believe that that SRF loan will provide us with $500,000 of principal forgiveness money. and it has a 2% loan origination fee, and then the remainder of the funds we would be able to finance at either a zero interest or low interest loan. Typically the low interest loans have been half of market rate so far, I believe everything we have. Dean, we're currently all at 0%, aren't we? I don't think we have anything at low right now. So they have to make a determination. There's details that you saw in the package of a lot of what's happening in this area. primarily consists of what they they use some fancy words to say cure in place pipe so basically what that is is we take the aged sewer lines and we pull a epoxy coated sock through those pipes you inflate it with a balloon inside of it once the epoxy cures they pull the balloon back out and you've relined the pipe so that's that's what the cure in place pipe refers to so the The bulk of what you see here is cure-in-place pipe and manholes. I would be glad to answer any questions you might have or get into any more detail that you would like me to.

All right, council, we are actually looking for action on this. Do I have a motion to approve the resolution authorizing staff to apply for the SRF fund to address the number one capital improvement priority?

So moved.

All right, so, and Mr. Wise, were you second? I'll second. Okay, we've got a motion and second. We will open this up for questions and discussion. And we'll start with Mr. Baker.

Yeah, I'll just say I've been witness to what these improvements can actually do in terms of reducing sewer system overflows. I had a manhole in my neighborhood, which before I was on council, I made a lot of noise about, and I'm sure the mayor was annoyed with me. because there was literally toilet paper in the street after sewer system overflow and it was pretty disturbing to me. And now I can happily say I drive there all the time or walk there all the time and I haven't seen that manhole overflow in years at this point. So this can really do tangible good and I'm excited to see it continue.

Mr. Weidel.

In terms of the $500 loan forgiveness, is there a possibility that that's not guaranteed, is it? Or there's a possibility that we may not receive that?

It is not guaranteed, but there is a possibility that they could grant us principal forgiveness on the entire amount as well. So it's kind of... Historically, looking at what has happened recently, the $500,000 seems to be kind of the going average right now. Okay.

Any other questions?

Ms. Holder.

have a question because i just don't know okay uh wilson remember at the july rosenwald meeting one of the residents showed you a video of some flooding that was in a yard is that something that will be covered by this or is this something totally different

Not this particular application, but there are state grant monies out there for that kind of thing. Okay. And we have reviewed some of those and might pursue some of those in the future once our stormwater master plan is completed.

Okay. All right. Thank you. That's all I had. Thank you. Mr. Weiss?

uh... i don't really have questions i just want to point out that uh... the kind of relative costs were talking about uh... for these kind of projects is in my opinion staggering uh... and and why it's so important that we maintain these systems because they will impact almost everything else in the city we're looking at a new wastewater treatment plant and if we can control the sort of eye and eye that happens here we could actually possibly reduce the cost of that plant so These kind of repairs and maintenance do telescope over the scope of the city. Even though on paper it looks like an enormous amount, it is an enormous amount, it will kind of pay off in the end of the day. And that's all I have.

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

Aye.

Opposed? Motion passes. All right. That is the end of new business. We will move on to remarks and future agenda considerations. And we will start with Mr. Lytle.

Okay. I just wanted to sort of address the last council meeting just a little bit and, you know, I had a chance to reflect after the meeting and I think it's important that we continue to treat everyone on committee as an individual. Backgrounds, life experiences, they'll inform our positions. But we can't assume why anyone votes a certain way because of those experiences. And I hope that, and as I said last time, I hope to challenge, and we challenge each other's ideas and assumptions, but we shouldn't make assumptions about their motivations. And the last thing I'll say is disagreement on this stage isn't the same as dysfunction, it's not. We have to remain respectful. And as I said last time, by doing that, we avoid groupthink, and that ultimately helps us reach better decisions. So I just wanted to voice that publicly because I think that the takeaway there is not necessarily negative, and I think that's what I think the voters are looking at us to do is to challenge each other. Thanks, that's all.

Yeah, I mean, I'll pick it up there. I think when I was running for a second term, one of the questions that Transylvania Times asked was about, you know, what did you learn the most in your time in office or your first term? And the thing I came away with when I was reading through that question was like, actually the uncomfortable moments are the important moments on council. And that's when you, instead of shying away from that, you need to lean into it and be able to have those conversations. And so I appreciate Councilman Lytle saying that. I guess I would say, regarding my comments at the last City Council meeting, What was difficult for me in the moment was the fact that I felt like we had unnecessary conflict about certain things. And there certainly is necessary conflict, and that's why we get elected to have those discussions. I think it's when we're talking about particular funds or having a hard time discussing the use of public funds for the city, not because of our individual opinions, but because of perceptions of money or funding that are just difficult to work through. And so I appreciate Councilman Lytle saying that. The uncomfortable moments up here can be difficult, but they're important to highlight, honestly, and it's important, again, to lean in and have everybody at the table speaking honestly with each other, and I think we've done that by and large, and I appreciate this group for always doing that. I have a couple comments. I want to thank everybody, including the Heart of Brevard, for the plein air festival this past weekend. Other than a little bit of rain, I think by all accounts it went off really well. I know city staff and our public safety staff have some extra work involved in all those festivals, so thank you to everybody who helped put that on, including, of course, the Heart of Brevard. When I was taking a look at some of the art that was painted, I couldn't help but be thankful that we live in a place that you can paint paintings of, that people actually value. We live in a pretty beautiful place, not just the natural beauty around us, but also the city we take care of up here. and our citizens build around us. So I'm very thankful for that. And we were lucky to do a tour of Fairhaven Meadows with Representative Ferguson last Friday. And those are coming along really great, 42 units of affordable housing, which will be coming online very, very soon. I don't think the last time we toured, we were able to see the three bedroom units, which they have a number of over there. When I was walking through them, I was reminded that the reason you have a three bedroom unit is because there's going to be children living there. I'm just thankful that this group stepped up when we needed to. That is the first federally supported affordable housing that has been built in Brevard in over a decade. And it was on the precipice of completely falling apart and not happening. They needed a little bit of extra funding, a million dollars in a loan, which they will repay over time back to the city. And we were able to step up and make that happen because we had committed Four years earlier to set money aside for housing in our community. And so it's been a long time coming. Sometimes you don't see the results of the actions we take up here for many years to come. but I'm excited to cut that ribbon here pretty soon. Or be, I'll let the mayor cut the ribbon. I'll just stand next to her. But to be at the ribbon cutting very soon and celebrate a remarkable accomplishment for a small city.

Ms. Holder? I want to take a personal liberty just for a moment. You mentioned paintings, and I remember something that Mason did. He painted the Eiffel Tower. I have a picture. You want to see it? I actually had the picture made into a necklace as a Christmas gift to myself. His teacher entered it into the Western North Carolina Fair, and he got second place in his age group.

Nice.

So he's nine years old, and he said, Mama, are you disappointed that I didn't get first? I said, I am not. I said, the only interest we ever got was the pay to go in. Never had our word or anything interest, so I'm proud of him. I, too, want to say thank you for allowing me that liberty. But I, too, want to thank you. thank the donors that gave their support to Silverstein so far and It means a lot and hopefully we will be able to continue to get Donors and grants and wherever the money needs to come from it will have more than enough Every time I go through the four-way stop at Oak Lawn and Main Street I I think, man, I'm so glad these stop signs are here, but I never said thank you. I kept asking for them, but I want to say thank you now. I don't think it's ever too late to say thank you. Thank you, thank you. I want to go back to... kind of what Aaron and Dean have been alluding to, I too have been thinking about those final comments and just want Brevard to understand, as I think I alluded to the last time, that we do represent the whole community, we do represent the whole city of Brevard. The discussions that have been happening lately happen to be on the forefront, but it doesn't mean that discussions in other parts of Brevard are not important. They are just as important. And we have supported, I have supported, things that I may not have thought about had I not seen constituents come and be at these meetings and sitting here and say, hey, this is important to me. and some have even come to my office at the church and had conversations, and I realize how important they are. And so that just happens to be on the forefront right now, but it's not that we are not seeing the whole totality of this city. I think everybody understands that's important. It's important to me, and I'm so glad to be here to represent Brevard.

Mr. Weiss?

Yeah, I just want to thank everyone for spending the evening with us. I am sure you, I'm not sure of this, but I hope you realize how important you are and how important it is that you're here. We talked a lot tonight about communication in different ways, communication about parking, about the trail, and I see a lot of miscommunication happening out in our community, and so when people are engaged and they talk to us and actually spend time with us, we can try to help them understand where we're coming from, the decisions we make, and I think people are more likely to understand decisions if they understand all the issues surrounding it. So if you could please spread the word that we're here, we have committee meetings, we want to hear you, and if we can't hear your voices, And I'm sorry, social media doesn't count, because although I'm on there trying to get the facts straight, you need to talk to all of us. Tell your friends to tell us what's going on. That's the only way this works. I mean, it's the only way we can communicate, and it's the only way we can communicate with you. And that's really the entire name of the game. So thank you for being here. It really means a lot to us.

Mr. Attorney.

Nothing to add, just a reminder that we do have a pre-close session.

Yes, we do know that. Madam Clerk. Nothing, thank you. Mr. Manager.

Two brief things. The first, I should have said this earlier, was we did brief Council Member Daniel on the results of the parking study, and so since he's the chair of the downtown committee, and we knew he wasn't going to be here today, we gave him a preview briefing of this, so he's well informed. The second thing is I want to thank Representative Anna Ferguson for visiting us on Friday. I know, Mayor, you might have more to say about that. But I'm so glad that she offered some of her valuable time to come and hear about our needs and hear about what we could use her help with. And she pledged to do what she could to help us in Raleigh with a couple of important projects that we have on the books. That's all I got.

Yeah, just to follow on with that, we were very pleased to have Representative Ferguson here. I mean, one of the big jobs that we have as elected officials is to work with our elected officials at both the state and the national level. And we work as a team. And we were very fortunate. We had great staff support. Thank you, staff, that put a lot of time in. We took Representative Ferguson out to our wastewater treatment plant because that's going to be one of the big challenges over the next seven or eight years to get phase two going and funded. And I think... Thank you to Erin for really showing her what we're using the 13 million dollars that the state gave us three years ago for but also what the needs going to be in the future and We took her out to Fairhaven Meadows and then we took her through azalea and rhododendron that part of well it's actually not part of the city, but that part of community that has the problem with the septic systems and the failing septic where we desperately need to get that three and a half million dollars back that the state had had removed to put in a sewer system there and she has pledged to work with us on that and we will continue to work with her to try and find the best route to to get that funding back because taking care of our people, taking care of our families and their homes is just so important. And I think that really came across when Representative Ferguson was there actually in the community. It wasn't $3.5 million, it was the 130 families and homes that need help. And so a big thank you to everyone that made that a success. A couple of other things. Thank you to our donor for the Silverstein Pavilion and the bathroom. You know, the entire Silverstein Park is an incredible example of what we can do when we work together, when we have collaboration. you may not remember because it's been I guess it's been like six or seven years now but what that used to look like that whole park there was an old rusted metal playground equipment there was a basketball court that was in bad shape. The stream bank was eroding. Mary C. Jenkins, the old original Mary C. Jenkins, was actually unusable. It had been condemned because it was in such bad shape. So the city and the community partnered. And when I say the community, Bethel A. Church donated the land that Silverstein Park is on. That is huge, folks, huge. The city invested... And I don't know, I'm just off the top of my head, Dean, but I'm going to say over a million dollars into that park between the stream restoration, the basketball court, and the playground. It's got to be over a million dollars just for that. That's not even the community center, which was another 2.5 million. So now we are gonna look for more community collaboration to get that final piece of the pavilion and the bathrooms there so that we have a place for families to go, a place where they can sit that's covered ADA compliant bathrooms so that everybody can use our facility down there and enjoy it. And so we were very fortunate that a private donor came up and gave us the money for the engineering design. I also want to thank Councilman Wise who donated a lot of his time to the concept in doing the architectural drawings for this. It's everybody working together as a team supporting the effort. And one effort does not negate a different effort. We can work on multiple things together. We can make them all happen. It's what we want to happen, and it's all of us working together as a team that make that happen. And so I'll be looking for more donors, folks. I'll just put that out right now. I'll be coming around. But we are going to make it happen. And so I'm really, really thrilled that council approved the design and that we can move forward. Couple of other things. We have a town hall coming up, which goes right to what Councilman Wise was saying. Our town hall is on September 29th from six to eight. We call it the Pisgah Forest Town Hall. What we're trying to do is we are trying to get the elected officials and staff out of this building and over into different sections of town and holding meetings out there so that it's easier for people that live in that section of town. And yes, part of Pisgah Forest is in the city of Brevard. And so we're going to be holding it at the Rec Center, and we're going to be going over a lot of different projects, giving up-to-date information so that you don't have to rely on inaccurate information on social media. You have the facts. We're going to have DOT there to talk about the Wilson Road project and the Roundabout projects. by the forest and walmart so high interest we're going to have an update on the acoustic trail another really big item that's coming more on this will be put out i guess this week because that's next week but tell your friends it's a great opportunity to get the latest facts and then also give us feedback uh you know what do you think what are your concerns what are your questions so town hall and we're going to keep doing these about one a quarter or so and we're going to rotate them around to different places And finally, oh, two final things. We have a new program, Adopt a Drain program. If you're not familiar with this, you can adopt one of our storm drains. This is, again, collaboration. Now, I've heard people say, well, isn't that something that public work should be doing? well you know what if we can have the public help us with sort of the easy checking the storm drains cleaning off the leaves or debris on top that frees up our public work staff to be able to do a lot of other projects that require more technical skills so this is twice a month you would check your storm drain you get a little What is that thing? Picker upper thing. Picker upper. You get a safety vest. That's it, huh?

That's the technical.

That's it, I'm very technical. Yeah, is it technical? But I encourage you, and it's just another way that people can help the city because we're all in this together. This is all of our city. So adopt those drains, folks. I've got some flyers over there. You can pick them up, and it's very, very easy in case you want one.

I already got one in mind, so.

All right, very good. And finally, we have Meet the Mayor this Thursday, September 24th, 1130 to 1. Again, another opportunity to hear, to communicate, to share information and ideas, and to get accurate information. You know, that's what transparency and communication is. teamwork are all about so join me at meet the mayor on Thursday come to the town hall adopt a drain and think about donating to our new picnic shelter at Silverstein Park and with that I need a motion to go into closed session for economic development so moved second all in favor aye we are now in closed session please stop the report