City Council - Regular Meeting

All right.

I know they're Now there Oh yeah.

Good evening everyone. Oh, you can respond. Good evening everyone. Good evening. Thank you.

Has been a full day for most of you I believe and for all of us. We'll just say for all of us. Um but we are here and um I'd like to welcome everybody to the February 16th work session postponed from February 2nd I believe. Um and I just ask that everyone silence your um as I remember to silence mine your devices. Okay. Um, and first I'd like to recognize transportation director Mike Nun and transit manager John Ando for a link transit updates and title six program. Good evening council. Uh, thank you for having us tonight. Uh, good opportunity to meet John face to face. I think if any of you have not, John with us for several years in his part-time role as transit manager. Tonight we want to present a handful of items to you, allow you to ask some questions. There's a couple items that we've asked for to be forwarded to consent tomorrow night. John will get into those, but uh please just look at this information. If you have any questions, John's glad to answer that. Well, top of the uh evening, mayor and council, John, transit manager, been with the city for almost 5 years now. So, it's been amazing and we've done a lot since then. So, um, just want to give you a status update on where we stand with Link Transit. Um, ending fiscal year ending calendar year 2024, uh, we've increased our passenger trip to 162,099, and that's a 92% increase since 2016. If we ran the routes in order, and I've given everyone a map, so if you want to see the current link transit network, we'll be able to see it. But um our purple routes the most busiest followed by the red then the orange the blue and then lastly the green. Um we've also

extended services by forming new uh relationships with the city of Mean the town of Paul River and the town of Green Level and they provide local match contributions to the federal funds that we received to support the operations. We didn't necessarily grow the system hours by doing these extensions. So in theory, by bringing on these other municipalities, it reduces the general fund that the city of Burlington contributes to these routes because we're serving in other jurisdictions. Uh we formed new partnerships with Elon University and Alamance Community College. So they actually pay for their students, employees, and faculty to ride link transit free at the council adopted fair policy. And uh previously before we entered into those relationships uh the students employment faculties paid the fair themselves. In addition ACC also contributes money to the orange route um and they've been contributing since 2016. In 2025 we installed three bus shelters with ADA sidewalk extensions to help continue to bridge the uh gap with the sidewalk network here in Burlington. And we're planning five more in 2026. Uh we purchased two electric vans and five diesel buses in 2024 which basically replace the entire link transit fleet. So we have a brand new fleet that's uh literally um a year and a half old. Our link paratransit scheduling app was implemented and is now available on the app store and Google play. So if you want if you use link paratransit you can book your rides on the app and you don't necessarily have to call for service. We also got into a relationship with MTM and Motive Care and doing Medicaid transportation throughout the link transit service area. So, it's another way to help boost the ridership of the system and get additional revenues. And then lastly, um uh with the changes with the services provided by the Alamance

County Transportation Authority within the city limits of Burlington, we now allow seniors 60 years and older to ride link paratransit um as a door-to-door service. So you'll see in the link paratransit brochure a map that shows the pink areas uh which is the city limit boundaries. They do at times exceed beyond our typical 3/4 mile radius around the rout. But that service is now available to seniors and persons with disabilities. So we're providing a true door to door service within the city limits for that sensitive population. Before I continue, are there any questions on the update?

A good job. So that's the network. Uh the bigger areas, the pink areas of the city limits. The gray area is the 3/4 mile radius along the routes. And then the colors are the routes that we operate. Link dust operates, so everyone's aware from 5:30 in the morning until 9:30 at night Monday through Friday. Buses are right now every 90 minutes. And then on Saturdays, we run from 9:30 in the morning until 6:30 p.m. every 90 minutes as well. And that's the new fleet. That's our new Gillig buses here. And then our new lowf flooror paratransit vehicles. All of our paratransit vehicles in the link system are now low floor which makes it easier for seniors and persons with disabilities to board. These are the new shelters that we've been installing as well as benches. And then these are called lily pads. So if we don't have the right of way to install a full bench or shelter, we basically install the bench on the pole. So, it's helping our riders be able to have a place to sit while waiting for our buses. And this is a smaller style shelter, so it fits on the narrow ride ofways that we have in areas where we just can't get enough right away to build a bigger shelter. So, um the next item I want to talk to you about is the uh North Carolina Department of Transportation Capital Grant. Uh we did a public hearing in September for the grant funds for 2027 and originally as part of that public hearing we asked for section 5210 paratransit operating funds that basically covers the cost of our paratransit program. Um the total request was 594,182. We originally had it at a 20% local match. Um, however, NC DOT advised us that it needed to be a 50% local match. So, that would have been 297,091.

So, we'll be having a a revised public hearing tomorrow to allow the public to comment on this. Um, the difference is 178,255 in local match, but we already have this budgeted in the link transit budget, so there's no impact. there'll be no request from uh transit to the general fund to cover the difference. Um basically in the past we used to use 5307 to pay for paratransit services with NC do giving us these funds. We can now redirect our 5307 funds to other operational and capital needs and then use 5310 which is perfect because it's a senior persons with disabilities grant for our paratransit program. I do want to pause there to make sure because I know there's uh there may be some questions about this upcoming public hearing and the change and why we had to make the change. We'll make sure it's clear.

So I would love for you to share that. Yes. Okay. Yeah. So it's just really about the local match and we want to be transparent and make sure that the council of the public is aware that instead of a 20% local match, it's now a 50% local match. So that's the purpose of readvertising the public hearing. And and the hearing is tomorrow. The hearing is tomorrow. Yes. And where will that be? At the uh council chambers upstairs. Oh, upstairs. Yeah. So um it'll be part of the council agenda. Oh, of course. Tomorrow is Tuesday. But again, don't pass the general fund. We're not asking for any more local funds to cover this uh difference in local match.

I have a question. Yes. going forward. So that's a 30% difference. So going forward, how do you plan? So will the par the grant money for the um senior citizens, will that always cover that 50%? Yes. Going forward as well?

Yes. Cuz when we do the transit budget, we normally ask for a line share of general funds, which is about 500,000 550,000 a year. And that's the local match for all of our federal grants, whether a 5307 or 5310. Good. And then we also pursue the next one um is the state urban match for capital. So when we buy buses or equipment, the state will contribute up to 10%. So we will also ask uh the state for that 10% and then as part of that general fund request, that'll be included in the budget process. Good deal. Um we're not making any changes to the state urban match as from the previous public hearing, but uh just so that you're aware, we did um ask for funds to basically match for the potential to buy uh land for a facility and build an operation and maintenance facility and a new transfer hub, which we'll talk about later in the slide.

John, I mean, when was the original public? Um it was in September 15th. Yes. And that's the 10 million meaning the uh 10% match the 90% is going to be covered and then we just have that 10% just to be clear on that. Yes. If we're successful and we're going to talk about the grant that we're going to pursue for these facilities.

So this is the build grant. Uh we did apply for in um I believe it was uh spring late in in spring to uh get funds from the federal government to build a new operations and maintenance facility and a new transfer hub. Uh we were highly recommended but uh we didn't make the cut because there was so many other agencies that were pursuing. Uh we're probably a few points away from making that cut. So, there's the build grant that is due next week. Um, and the build grant is similar to the bus and bus facilities grant, but it's on a broader base for transportation purposes. And there's been other transit systems that have been successful in getting build grant funds, particularly Birming Birmingham, Alabama to build a bus maintenance facility and transfer hub. Um, so we're proposing to request that same 17,138 17,138,000 um to pay for the cost of that facility. The nice thing about the build is that because we're treated as rural um under 200,000, it's 100% covered, which means that we don't have to request that local match that you saw on the previous slide if we're successful. So, um, should the council be interested in us pursuing this grant? So, we'll be we'll submit the application and keep the council with us on any questions on the bill. Title six. So, also um we're requesting that this get added on the consent calendar tomorrow, but every 3 years we're obligated to do an updated title 6 program, and that's to ensure that link transit does not discriminate based on race, color, or national origins on all the programs and activities that receive federal funds. And we also within the

title six program have our notice, how to file a complaint, a list of any investigations, complaints, or lawsuits, which are none. our public participation plan, our limited English proficiency plan since we determined Spanish is that um language that we should be catering to. Uh racial breakdowns of our non-elected advisory council that being the link transit public transportation advisory commission, a narrative of how we monitor our services and have standards for the fixed route system and then a council resolution or minutes for approval of that program. Should council approve that program, we'll file that with the Federal Transit Administration and it'll be valid through the 2020 date. Any questions?

So, the transit development plan, um, I know some of the council members here are new. At the, um, back in May, the council did adopt a 5-year transit development plan for link transit, which is basically going to transform the network and make it more easier to use public transit in the urban Alamance County areas. As you heard me say, most of our all of our routes run every 90 minutes. very hard to catch a bus every 90 minutes. We're going to redesign the network so the routes run every 60 minutes with the exception of orange route two which goes all the way to me. Um that would operate every 120 minutes so that it flows in well with the routes that are running every 60 minutes. We also and you heard me also say the green route is our our lowest performing route in the link system. We're we're proposing to change that to an ondemand service uh called Link Plus which will basically act like an Uber. So you would use that link app that we talked about. You'll book your ride in the green route area. We'll send a vehicle within 30 to 60 minutes and take you anywhere within that green route zone. Um the goal of the new network is to make it faster to get across the urbanized Alamance County areas uh with reduced travel times and hopefully continue to build on the link transit ridership. And the goal is to still build this change within our existing current service hours and our existing operating budget. So we do not intend to ask for any additional funds to make this network change. Any questions on the link on the transit development plan?

I guess I was surprised. Um I thought the North Park area had a lot of traffic from transit. It does, but they take the purple route. Okay. Well, that makes sense, too, cuz they're okay. Cuz the purple also goes to like the Walmart and go down Nevin Street.

So that that's kind of why. So, um, as part of the transit development plan, we did a transit facility study to determine, uh, a replacement, uh, hub for where all the routes can meet. And the the study and the council uh, agreed that municipal lot number eight, which is at the corner of South Spring and East Fifth Street, would be the appropriate place to have a hub that is off the street. Um, so what would happen is that the city owned property, it's city-owned property, so we can use that as local match towards any grants that we pursue to build this facility or we could buy the property from the general fund and then transit to own the property. We anticipate we would have eight bus bays. We would have space for other transit providers such as park um parking for people who want to use link transit and for guests and staff, a customer service office, waiting room and small office space. This is kind of a conceptual design. Should we be successful in getting funds to build the facility that also includes designs and the cost so we would get 100% design for this facility? Any questions on the proposed transfer fun? Were there any considerations about what else should be around the transit hub? Because it seems fairly isolated.

We didn't get that far in that, but that's something that could be considered as part of the overall design. Um, ultimately, this could also be the catalyst for transit oriented development and us pursuing grants. We want to build some highdensity housing near the facility, which can entice people to use the transit system to get to other areas in the surface area too. The operations and maintenance facility is proposed to be on the North Church and North Main Street. Um there is a abandoned property an abandoned property that's vacant right now that owner potentially willing to sell to us. Um we would uh basically build a facility that would have four maintenance bays, parking for 20 transit vehicles, 10 support vehicles, a bus wash, a fueling station that also includes electric chargers for our Ford uh charger vehicles that we have four electric administrative space for our contractor, conference room, locker room, break rooms, bathrooms, offices, and then uh parking for the employees and the visitors. Um, if we're successful in the grants that we would pursue for this, we would use that money also to buy the land necessary for the facility. And that's just a conceptual drawing of how the facility could look. Um, and of course when we go through design, we would finetune it. Any questions on the proposed operations and maintenance facility? That concludes my presentation. And if there are any other questions about lane transit, I'm happy to answer.

I do want to ask about the orange lab. Going to 120 minutes is an absolute like emergency only transit because it's so infrequent. Yeah.

Is there any consideration of keeping that 60 minutes? The issue was it would require two buses in order to do that and that translates to about another $250,000 in cost to the system. So that'll be about in local support about um 50% 50% of that amount. So it would be it would be if funds are available to allow us to do that and if our partners uh which would be Alamance County, Alamance Community College and Me would be also interested in increasing their local share since we split the local share based on the proportion of miles that that route serves to those jurisdictions.

Was any survey conducted about the stops along that route and the impact that that would have on the users? There were some surveys and the passengers based on the surveys were was open to it because right now blue orange route at times is not reliable when it comes to on time performance because of the traffic on on the highway. So they were they're open to the idea. Now we've also have been reached out to by Amazon that might be also interested in contributing to that route if that route was to deviate and serve their factory because they would like to have their shift workers use public transit to get up there. So we're continuing discussions with them and that that's another opportunity on where we can potentiate funds for that six to make that route 60 minutes. Okay.

What we're what we're hoping the concept would be as as most of you know transit was set up so any one of our members in the area could join. They just pay for their service. So it's we're hoping and it's set up already in the agreement that any capital for that would be they would provide that capital. So if they would choose to buy an additional bus, we could cut those times, you know, tremendously. So as we grow and progress, we're thinking the area uh that is a partner of ours would say, "Hey, we'd love to add a bus and here's our local match for that bus." That's

yeah to move in that direction knowing that 120 minutes on a route that's already experiencing delays is a very long time to be sitting at a stop for uh the community college or you're waiting to get your job or medical center. So that's our long you know as you know that's the further reach that archives that are. So we're hoping as we take steps the partners come along and they know the capital is going to be a part of their responsibility. Yeah. Appreciate it. Do you have a sense of the possibility of receiving that grant of the build grant? It's hard to say. I suspect it's very competitive.

It's very competitive and it's beyond it goes beyond buses because there there's going to be other agencies that are want use that to build rail, build highways, build bridges. There's a ton of money available, but it's competitive and the current Trump administration is interested in funding rural areas. So, we do have a a chance because of the fact that we're designated burlies for the build grant before or a different

we applied for the bus facilities grant. I know the build process usually provides feedback as to why you didn't score or receive funds which is then invaluable for future rounds for you. And we had that same discussion with FT on the on the bus and bus facilities grant and since they said it was highly recommended, they didn't really see any issues with our application. We're going to use a lot of the same language that is in that application in the bill grant. We're also serving economic disadvantage areas with our transit system. We're also serving opportunity zones with our transit system, which are two criteria that the bill grant also looks at.

Very exciting. And have we heard anything from ACC or any of those partners in the orange area now that we're increasing? Have we heard any feedback? Are they aware that we're going to that the time is going to increase?

We have had discussions with them both and ACC and county about that. So they're aware. There hasn't been any comment on that. But as we get closer to launching this, so sometime in mid 2026, we'll re-engage those conversations. We'll let them know what the cost would be if we added that second bus on the orange and to see if they'd be willing to contributions. I know particularly with the case of Alamance County, we've asked funds from them um for the last 3 years above the 25,000 they've been contributing since uh 2016 and they've rejected our request and only capped it at 25,000. So I know that they that kind of may be a struggle.

Definitely. Thank you. Mean is um expanding transit and they're very interested based on their uh comprehensive transportation plan and the college is seeing value from the transit system by the number of students employees and faculty we bring to them. So I think we might be able to request additional funding from that. Plus a relationship with Amazon would help too. Thank you. We're funding the link plus on the green area out of just general operations. I mean general with our typical federal funds plus the city's local match. I know NC DOT has offered some funds for similar pointto-oint systems. Have they evaluated those grants?

So they did provide a microtransit grant two years ago. Uh we did um um investigate it, but we weren't at a a level to uh submit for since we didn't have this transit development plan completed. Um the Alamance County Transportation Authority, they did pursue uh that grant and they're um they got one-year funding to do uh microransit services in Hall River, Meban, and Graham. So um so they they've been able to take advantage of and there's not another round of that available not at the present time but should it should it come about we will definitely pursue

um and if link plus is successful in the green area and the former green route zone it could be a potential to expand to other areas of the city or other areas of the urbanized area that link transit is supposed to be served. Yeah it's a great opportunity to reduce head times for riders. Exactly. Thank you. and also bring that door to door connection to a fixed scrap bus. Thank you. Thanks for having us. So we'll if it's okay with you, I'll put on the consent agenda tomorrow evening the title six.

Thank you. And thank you for at least getting that shave by 30 minutes. I mean, that was a big deal. you calms a lot of, you know, the the fears and anxiety and the pressure of folks getting to be on that bus. So, finding ways to be able to take 30 minutes off of that weight. I appreciate that. Look forward to the orange area finding a compromise there. So, I agree with you in there. And I'll keep the council posted on our conversations with our partners.

We appreciate you. Thank you. Thank you. And next we recognize executive director of planning and development services Jamie Lawson to share with us about transitional housing initiative. Good evening, Mayor and good to see you again. I'm um joined by Chad Meadows and Chief Ga. And so I'm going to start off the conversation and then uh this is sort of a collaborative discussion. Feel free to discuss um if you have any questions. Uh so this presentation's just going to um highlight uh the status of the additional housing initiative. Um we're going to look at some other permitted uses that are within the UDO currently. Um kind of do a brief history of the separation data requirements in the city. Uh there will be some discussion about um statistics uh and an overview of calls for service public safety and then we'll talk about uh discussion events. Okay. So uh back um at the beginning of the year staff presented uh the transitional housing um text amendment at the work session on January 5th. We had um three other items that were also included that were part of the different temporary housing options. Um the emergency shelters, the temporary housing for nonprofits and institutions

and temporary housing associated with building and construction. Um those all went through uh with the text amendments. But the transitional housing which um is more of a permanent use uh that that section was pulled um for additional discussion. And um you can see uh hopefully a little clearer that the transitional housing um was added at that time uh as part of the tax amendments uh for special use permit in the office of the institutional zoning district and uh the general business zoning district. And I'll just also say that at that time there was discussion about separation distance requirements which were part of the use specific standards. Um so we took a step back and looked at some of the other similar uses um that are currently within the zoning for the uh UDO. Um and I'll just highlight a couple of these. So we have the boarding homes and living room homes. Um that is the first one that's listed on the list and um that is a special that's permitted by a special use permit only within the office of institutional and neighborhood business. Um essentially that is a um dwelling that offers five or fewer sleeping rooms. Um and these are for like for rent for lodgers. there's common common areas for dining and laundry and um and basic uh other services within the facility. Um there are also use specific standards. So the the purpose of this slide is

really to highlight which all of these different categories and what they have currently as part of their ordinance requirements. The second item is the family care homes. Um those are permitted within all residential zoning districts and also within the office and institutional zoning district and the neighborhood business. Um those are overseen by a state statute. So there's a lot of different rules and regulations that we don't get involved with um that's overseen by by the state. And essentially um those are licensed facilities. They provide support um super advisory personnel that um are there in terms of providing oversight. Uh this is a a facility that is not is for not more than six residential um people and they're also fall under the same category as a mental health um facility that's also um licensed by the state. This also has use specific standards. So this column that's all the way on the right where it says use specific standards each of those different categories homes, family care homes and we'll talk about the others. They in addition to um special requirements there are use specific standards that you need to also follow. Uh group homes are the third category and this is a residential facility with support and personnel. It's um it's temporary and it's uh for boarding of people more than six people in a facility.

Um it's it's more categorized as orphanage or crisis center. Um there are temporary rooms. Um like I said for not more than six people uh post incarceration um and so on. Again um this is a use that requires a special use permit. There are use specific standards um and there are separation distance requirements for this use as well as the family care home use. hack the homes. These are all different uses that we have within our our UDO currently is a licensed tong for juveniles or adult adult persons on release. Um they're um you know housing intended to rehabilitate and bring someone back into um you know society with with education and resources. Again, this is a special use permit. separation distance requirements and use specific standards. Um others are the drug and alcohol treatment uses uh outpatient treatment facility. I'm not going to go into more detail um regarding those, but uh as you can as you can tell there are um intricacies on on each of these types of uses. And so what differs um the transitional housing uh from from these types of uses, they are not permanent housing. They are um meant to be temporary. Um they are not necessarily regulated by the state um or have any licenses. They right now as we're proposing there would be no limitation on the number of people who um could be

uh housed. Um and uh this is one of the uses also that we're looking at. Um we've made a recommendation for uh separation distance requirement. Say the last part again I'm sorry. Oh u the separation distance requirement. You said there is none at the time or you say there is. We are making the recommendation and and the language that was included in your packet last time also had the separation distance requirements as well. Thank you. You said there's no limit on occupancy, but there is a limit by square footage per person. So, it's physically limited by the building or property.

That's right. Y

um so I'm going to go into a little detail regarding um the history of separation distance requirements um started way back in the in the 80s um where um there was the federal housing act um and there were at that time um North Carolina state statute had legislation on the books that enabled uh municipalities to um place in their zoning ordinances a provision that a location of a family care home um could be restricted by a separation uh requirement of up to 1 half mile. Um, in light of that provision, um, in 1990, Burlington removed, uh, the separation distance requirement that was previously had, and that was, um, at the beginning of, um, 1990. Uh, so many of the other jurisdictions, um, you know, throughout North Carolina retained their separation distance requirements within their ordinances. um and whether it be a half mile or a lesser provision. Um and so that had some impact um that you will be talking about on uh the city of Burlington and um what transpired uh you know there were um without that separation distance requirement um and with the availability of housing stock and lower costs um the city did become an area where there became Um, and there still is uh an a a good proportion much higher than our

comparable areas um to these types of uses. Um, in fact, you'll see here in um 2017 uh we had three times more than per uh per capa population for family care homes. Um and then through the adoption of the unified development ordinance in 2019, the separation distance requirements um were reintroduced uh and we've done some some statistics to see where we're at today and um our numbers really have not uh dropped. Um we still have uh fairly dense populations. Um, so with that separation distance still in place and I think this is included in your packet, but this is um generally what we what was studied in 2017 to current. And so you can see um where we are with respect to the numbers and overall density um per square mile and per population.

I have an update to this one also. I recognize that one of the columns has inaccurate data and I didn't catch that until about an hour ago. So I'll get you an updated copy of this. Do we know since basically none of those numbers have changed between 2017 and 2026 of the population but family care homes per municipality is that a factor of the market of state funding of family care homes in general? Clearly nobody's building any more of them in any municipality.

Well, I couldn't say that there aren't others being built in other municipalities. I would say that those that were established um were essentially grandfathered and so you if you had um a license and you had that location in place, you probably didn't want to lose it. And so, um, Keith is going to talk a little bit more about the statistics, but, um, you know, why this is important, why the buffers are important to keep in place. Um, we looked at the UDO and part of the purpose and intent of our unified development ordinance is to protect existing and established development in neighborhoods from um incomparable uh infill and redevelopment. Uh we also often times talk about the preservation of neighborhood character and quality of residential communities while also providing increased housing choices um through our adopted policies and guidance. Uh as I mentioned before um you'll hear more about it, but the separation requirements help to ensure that there's um stability within the neighborhoods and um and and help to also ensure that there there's rehabilitation going on uh within the housing stock. Um preservation of the the character of the single family neighborhoods as well as um you know protecting the businesses uh in the with respect to other issues that might come up with um such as noise uh litter um parking traffic uh issues. So, I'm going to turn it over to Chief and he can provide a little bit back more background on that.

Yeah, sounds good. Thank you uh everybody for the opportunity to be here. Uh it's obviously a little bit unusual for a police chief to be upfront on a video question. Uh so, you know, if you see me looking because I have no idea. Uh stop me and ask questions at any point. Really, I'm just here to provide you some more context on kind of the origin of the separation requirements uh as it relates to these various facilities in the city. Uh and it's because the police police officers are the primary first responders to these places. Uh in addition to the fire department which also carries a heavy uh heavy load in the space and obviously Chief Lawrence is here for any questions that you have fire specific things. There are big demands uh for public safety services and they uh certainly impact the neighborhoods. I think it's also important to start out just by saying that um these facilities are obviously a societal necessity and the residents are some of the most vulnerable people in our community. Uh we do take great pride in making sure that the residents of our city who live in these facilities are safe. As a result of both their vulnerabilities and the personal challenges that lifestyle them, these facilities do require considerably more public safety resources than other other places. We also know that the residents in these facilities come from across the state. Um anecdotally, and this is we spend a lot of time in the facilities, so we got a pretty good grasp on this. It's about 50% of all adults in the adult care homes are from outside of Alamance County and about 50% were residents of Alamance County before they went into the facilities and more or less 100% of the juveniles are from outside of Alamance. That's only because the juvenile placement structure within the Department of Juvenile Justice seeks rehabilitation outside of the environment. That's really not been the best for those children over time. Uh so of course we see uh uh kids come to uh Burlington from across the state. As we're kind of uh framing what these facilities typically are, you're really thinking about intermediate care facilities for individuals with

intellectual disabilities and then group homes for children and adults with mental illness, developmental disabilities, and substance abuse issues. And I'll talk in a little bit more detail about uh kind of the nature of what goes on as it relates to public safety services uh not as it relates to that population as a whole. Um like I said there is a column on this chart on these tables that's incorrect. My apologies for that. Uh really what the research showed and uh Jamie talked about it on the prior slide is um this is an evaluation of all licensed care facilities that Department of Health and Human Services had in the has in the state. And the city of Burlington has the highest per capita concentration of these types of facilities of anywhere in North Carolina. That was where we got to before the uh the separation uh limitations came into place. What you should take from that and I'll show you math in a minute is that family care homes are a defining component of many of the neighborhoods in the city already. So what you have before you is a a map of the city. Uh this is uh highlighted by parcel size. So when you get to parcel size, it's really tiny on that. It's small. So what you have is a 250 foot buffer around it to give you some kind of an idea about where these facilities are located. So the big one on Huffman Road looks really unusual because it's so gigantic. That's the Britney Apartments. There are at least two facilities inside of Brennon Apartments there. Uh I I wanted to call that one out because you think that must be something humongous and it's a gigantic facility, but that's what that is. Um Sorry, Chief.

Go ahead. Now, did you say they're being operated out of the apartment complex or did I miss something? Correct. Rented apartments. Correct. And then group homes. Correct. Fantastic.

Uh so in total there's about 378 beds for family care homes in in the city. That includes juveniles and adults. One of the things that uh you know this is an easy observation obviously from the map is that you do see an exceptionally high density of family care homes in Burlington. But pay attention to the location in the neighborhoods where the facilities are located. For some time the distribution of these facilities has been a defining characteristic of of many of these neighborhoods, but I'll say particularly in East Burlington. Facilities are in rented homes. They're also in rented apartments as well as properties owned by the business. The planning department uh has also uh relayed that they do get contacted weekly by people who are uh run businesses like this with a list of properties that they want to say they want to know do they meet the separation requirement because they want to open another facility. You can be assured in in the absence of separation requirements that there would be considerably more of these facilities in the city and in these neighborhoods. Um, in many of these neighborhoods, the family care homes have fundamentally changed the composition of those neighborhoods. And it's really because you're placing a commercial multi-residential mental health facility right in the neighborhood, but especially in East Burlington. Some of the changes to the neighborhoods, they're not only limited, you know, they uh the changes aren't limited to the fact that many of the facilities have a high frequency of both police and fire response to some of the facilities. We can't, you know, we're not we're not talking about every single one of the 100 plus, but there are differences in the day-to-day activities of the residents and staff at those properties and at those facilities that are fundamentally different than like a single family home, an apartment in a complex, that sort of thing. And while I did highlight that this there's a substantial portion that are in East Burlington, this is a citywide issue. This is not limited to one specific

geography. Next slide. This is a breakdown of calls for service uh for the last five years. What we know about the demand for public safety services is it does vary a lot by the use type, right? Is it residential? Is it institutional? Is it office and industry also industrial? I'm sure butcher those. But what you need to know is that many of the locations like the average home, they require no public safety services each year. Not the vast majority are that way. Other types require considerably more and care homes require a lot of police and fire services. The demand has also been increasing pretty substantially. Uh and you see that before you since 2022 at rates between 25% and 45% per year for police services. the response of the police and uh to a lesser degree the fire department uh to residences in the city. It really does make the neighbors uncomfortable. You'll have had that own experience in your neighborhood. A lot of times when the fire truck shows up across the street and I'm thinking about myself, I'm just worried about a neighbor that somebody's fallen somebody seriously ill. They need some help. But when a police car shows up, we always assume that some kind of crime has happened. And that's just the nature of the average person. And there are a lot of people that are uncomfortable by the idea or the fact that a crime has been committed and that the personal safety or property might be at risk. This is a little bit more breakdown about the nature of the calls for service in these in facilities. Uh what you'll see is that primarily the calls are for missing people, adults and juveniles. And this is uh every day in uh a cons, you know, in a I listen to the radio as much as I

possibly can. And whether um the average day is this is a fixture. This is it's a normal thing. There's a missing person, it's at a family care home, or as a mental health crisis. The other component here, and you see it show up as disturbance really, it also factors in as assault down at 45. This is just about call classification when it comes in to 911 and there's a lot of uncertainty when somebody's calling 911, right? It's emotional. It's panicked. I need some help. This is basically what's happened. It gets called disturbance. The rest of that is is that we know that the typical crime that's reported these in these spaces, the most frequent is assault. It's important to say, you know, on the police service side that the the missing people require resources to locate them. uh sometimes over multiple days or longer. Uh we also know that the mental patient calls frequently require additional response from our law enforcement crisis counselor or the mobile crisis team which is a county level resource. And I don't want to dismiss the fact that with each mental health crisis, it does pose the risk that that incident could escalate. Uh we have very well-trained police officers. We have law enforcement crisis counselors that we work with consistently. These are very compassionate and caring people. But each time there's an instance like this, it can escalate to a crime. It can escalate to an involuntary commitment, or it could result in a use of force by an officer who's forced to make an arrest or detention.

Chiefs, on this chart, um do we know if there's any aspects about how these homes are regulated and managed that dictate that they have to report missing persons more frequently or

Absolutely. Uh so there they they do have uh reporting requirements and uh that are uh required by DHS and you can go look at all of the inspections online. They're public records. So you'll see that that's a kind of a frequent component uh for missing people. Um so last night we helped uh Grand PD locate a 10-year-old autistic boy. Um, I think that was from a private home, but that's a pretty reasonable example of somebody that we would that would be missing. Um, we've had uh there's another group home that's close to downtown. We're juveniles where it's a very similar population, but they're a little bit older, 16, 15, 16 years old. Um, and that's uh that's a pretty pretty common common scenario. Uh the last thing I want to say really kind of as it relates to this and just types of call for services is I've spent a lot of time uh very intentionally highlighting that it's uh high frequency low harm incidents missing people right that those can go really bad. Um you know when we use the drone as a first responder to find a uh dementia patient who's 80 plus years old in a creek uh in the wintertime and save his life. Um it can also be much more serious. Uh so what we do see in uh family care homes is we do periodically see high harm low frequency incidents. Those serious crimes do occur in those facilities. Uh just last night there was a domestic violence assault at family care home in the city. Uh what we what we see consistently is is that sexual assaults are the most common uh serious crime reported at facilities. Uh but they have been historically as serious as murder. Um I recall David Frier being stabbed to death by his brother in the roadway outside the family care home on Huntington Avenue. Uh and as unusual as

the arrest of a resident for a friend to kill a federal law enforcement officer, the threats of similar crimes taking place with uh inside these facilities or with some of the residents. I mean it it should be and is reasonably an ongoing concern as it relates to these facilities. they did not come risk-f free to the community. So that's really kind of the the totality of what I have. I'm obviously opening questions at any point. Chief, as you were talking about the hotspot map, yes, I would assume we have homes that are have minimal calls as well.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, you would see uh generally a pretty standard distribution as it relates to calls for service. Um I think uh I don't remember what my average call was per year. Six or nine I think the totality and then if you uh map all those out over the course of time about how many uh each facility we require. Okay. These hotspots don't represent all the group homes. There are group homes in the quiet areas too according to map. Not every group home calls.

Correct. Yes. Correct. Every group home does not have calls. Yes. Absolutely. There are some very well-run homes that are run in the city. Uh there are some that are not very wellrun and you'll see those show up on DHS's uh inspection report and the violations that they've had over a very long period of time. And you'll see uh owners and managers of those facilities who do not do the right things when they're confronted like with u things like sexual assaults by their staff members against clients. Uh and that's just a component of people making bad choices, right? Uh but we you know to your point we don't cast the stone at everybody but that is the totality of the information as it relates to these facilities. They are high demand public safety services and they are uh some of them are very risky mayor com.

So I obviously have lived experience with some of this space right and I think both police chief and fire chief Correct me if I'm wrong, gentlemen, but you're here because they are responsible for scarce resources, that being the public safety resource in our city. And they chaperone that resource in administrative ways. And we have an obligation, I think, to likewise chaperone or caretake that scarce resource for all 57,000 people that live in Burlington taxes, right? that when you have a missing person and it takes half or more of the police department, certainly in inclement weather, nobody's getting a cop at their house if we're out trying to save a missing 84 year old woman in a snowstorm. That's the most egregious example, but the everyday examples stack up, right? And we have an opportunity to further protect this resource for everybody's use by managing the growth or non-growth of these particular places. Right? And I just want to frame that in that way that I think we five have an obligation to do a higher order thinking here and I'll leave that up to the final decisions. But I think that's what these folks are here to say, right? is there are bad things happening in some of these places. We don't have an ability to shut down the bad ones and we don't have an ability to predict where the next one is going to go and are they going to be wellrun or poorly run. I think we need to manage our resources. My two cents. Thank you. Thank you.

So I I want to go back. Ian, you referred to this map as hotspots, but this map represents each of the care homes. Yeah, I think you know hotspots is typical terminology for and I I understood exactly what Yian was talking about that would be like a uh an intensity based on the volume of calls would be shown up in a vis visualization. This is just that's where they're at and we put the little bubble around them to make them a little easier to be seen. But it is homes with calls, right? Okay. Does the red indicate something? The ones that have the red are

their day facilities, daycare facilities. So, uh, you know, this this population, uh, especially if they're older adults with, uh, intellectual disabilities, for example, they need somebody who's going to look after them during the day, give them a quality environment where they can still be, you know, engaged uh, at their level. And so, it they go to their their home at night.

Yeah. And the city does have a variety of those facilities. We still go to 911 calls at those. They still have the same, you know, conflicts between uh you know uh clients as as you would have the same issues as far as some have mental issues, some have walk offs, that sort of thing. Yes. So I realize that we are looking at this to come to a place of a decision or something about the space between these care homes. And I'm sitting here wrestling with a a larger or or um maybe it's not larger, but who who operates these homes? Um, and and I maybe I'm just throwing that question out there. Who operates the homes? Who um and who regulates those? I realize we have an opportunity to regulate space between um but those are the questions that are really stirring in me.

So the the different ones that we talked about are currently within the UDO. there are mechanisms and in some of the um uses that are overseen by the state and licensed by the state. Um oftent times you're going to see a nonprofit um or church um also involved in operating uh the uses. But um you know for the transitional housing uh it really could be anyone opening up a facility um ensuring that the the building meets all of the the code requirements um and and that is you know to some extent why we have included the use specific standards to put in um you know some feasible um parameters ers um to help the best that we can you know make them make them safe and and um operational. Uh granted we do not have this use already within the so we're really coming up with um you know brand new use which which can be challenging um as well. I'll add in also that uh you know as it relates to family care homes in the city they're like they're licensed by North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services who does have oversight of those because the police department you know um I remember for example doing some reporting to them where uh one of the facilities was washing the dishes in the bathtub. That is not okay. It is not okay to serve people food from where they live. Um, those reports go to the state who is very limited in their resources to oversee these things. And I would say that more or less all they do is fight fires. No offense. He does fire prevention. Also, it is not really a

space that North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services is in. You can look all of these facilities up online. These are public records. Many of them are owned by individuals. It doesn't it I don't have to have a degree or have a have a clinical designation to open a family care facility. The financial components of this are is that some of them can be very lucrative. If you have 10 kids and they're well behaved and you're paying, you know, $1,100 $1,100, $1,200 in rent for a property and you're getting $1,350 per c per child per month. It is a money-m, you know, opportunity, and that is the way that the crop industry has constructed this through the uh state's delegation. But what you do see is is that there's a lot of individuals who like it's not a company. There is no manual. There is minimal training of staff. There are not great background checks. We have seen some very some very troubling things in these spaces related to who works there. Uh and that that's the reality of kind of this this environment. Uh but that's that's a level of that is the current level of regulation the state you know the city as it relates to like the police department oversight. We just go there and if we see something that's unus to the city and that's my concern is knowing that we don't have any oversight and knowing that some of these owners they do operate in that capacity. Um, and then knowing that if we approve this and we don't have any distance or any limitations over this, what does they say? You're saying that we have a responsibility, you know, to to our city, to the people in our city. For me, that's just it's scary to me. Um, Jamon, you mentioned parameters. What parameters are in place? I feel like we really

don't have any parameters because we're just going to basically call the police or the fire department if something does go wrong. They don't have oversight. They're going to report any issues to the state. But where does that leave our city? Our residents, let me just respond. Can I step in the mayor's question? Jamie, can you go back to the youth chart at the beginning? too short.

So, I think it's important. We're like seven issues in here under the layers of the onion. Um, the issue, as you might recall from the other month, was the transitional housing has a half mile separation. Was it one mile half mile separation rule? Um, and we're at this point in the conversation because there are other uses within our also that same rule. As I think Council Member Ward pointed out, the moment we start to strip these out, we open ourselves up to the question, well, why do you have these rules on other areas? And so, we're we're not necessarily discussing changing group homes in any way right now today. We're truly talking about transitional housing and if we want

that restriction there. But could you go forward to the number of group homes per city because I think Chief used um the term social necessity and I think that's really important because I for over a decade I've worked with OE Enterprises. That's one of your red dots down here. They're they're an amazing program that provides workforce opportunities for adults with disabilities. And what these numbers say to me very clearly, the number of family care homes has not changed in this time period, but the population has. And that means if you have a family member and you live in Burlington and that family member facility, there are no more beds that have been built and there are no more beds that will be built as long as this is firmly restricted. And there are bad actors in this system who are causing true harm. They break my heart. They tax our resources. They strain our taxpayers. And they do not do their diligence to provide safe housing for people who need it. At the same time, we are an area that's going to continue to grow. And that's going to require us providing housing on the entire spectrum affordability from transitional to homelessness to for adults with disabilities to folks on all levels of income. And when we draw a hard line that prevents any more beds, any more units in one of those segments, we force those family members, those neighbors to go elsewhere or live on the streets. And that is not respect for social necessity, human dignity.

And let me I let me just say this. I think you're correct. We're not here to talk about family care homes or and things. The the point about the call for services that's real. Okay. What is clear about this is and we looked at it in 2017 is the disproportionate number of family care homes that we have and the people that were being served by social services in every other county around member county sending the kids here. Okay. And they're filling up our beds. We have all these different vidas available if we were looking out after folks only or even county folks only. Okay, that would be one thing. But we're if you ask the question who gets into these things and entrepreneurial sort of folks some of them have most of them all have great intentions. These kids or adults, many of them come with Medicaid dollars. Okay. And that's what the chief was referring to when he talked about making it a viable model. Okay. All in 2017 was we had this disproportionate number particularly in East Burlington. Many people have gone for office saying we're going to do something about East Burlington. But this is one of the problems when you have concentration.

That's right. And and it it has an impact on the neighborhood as it transitions has affect transition downward. So this was one of the reasons in 2017 when you look at it with the development to go back in and try to put a separation back in there like all the other towns. So many of the others already have but it does nothing for the homes that are already there because it's already concentrated. So that does not fix that problem for the homes that were currently there.

That's that's correct. Okay. And but you know these were entrepreneurial folks and without a separation vision they found Alamance they found Burlington. Okay. For uh the Austin spirit. Yes, there families in this county. Let me talk about this county. The county that need places to have their

of course we we ought to be looking, you know, I'm just saying this. You know, Burlington has looked to the lead all the other cities in this county and we have such a disproportionate number of these group homes and family care homes. Fine. we if you accept that responsibility but at the same token I mean I think what this presentation has showed me is that when we talk about our legislative agenda this should be on our legislative agenda

to the legislature to say this is the fallout of decades of change in institutional health care for those with mental physical disab it's come down as family care homes and a regulation system that's flawed and broken

that's harming people and here we are as a municipality who should be the loudest because if these numbers are right and we have the highest cut rates per capita, we've been hit the hardest and everybody scrambled decades ago to draw lines on maps and strict limits and as a result nobody has enough space and so everybody's busting everybody all around the state and nobody's really trying to fix the system at its core. So again, there's multiple layers to this onion. One is beyond Right. Our local control. It's a legislative question that should be something we are hollering from the rooftops because we've been the ones most impacted of any city in the state.

Mhm. And the other is we're trying to solve the number of home units forward with the transitional housing. as nobody's yet provided me with a map that shows the radi based on our zoning types that we're allowing these in and the separations required. I'm pretty sure we're zoning out pretty much everything on these, which is for residential items is illegal by the FHA. This isn't a residential type, so we're not violating that. But if you write an ordinance saying we're enabling this and that actually makes it unusable in every zoning area and parcel of the city, you haven't actually enabled anything.

And that's what I fear with this is we're we have a need in our community that we're trying to address and we're not actually solving it. And I would love to see us actually try to move the needle on it and solve it. And this larger conversation about how we do separations across other things is an important conversation and it's going to peel back other issues that are going to be beyond just a number in our UDO. Um but we can't just throw up our hands and say we can't do it.

I I want to go back and refocus on what you need from council or the direction that you're asking for from council. So we're talking about the transitional housing and the other familyare home is an example. Transitional housing. I'm making sure I understand. Transitional housing does not have the radius half mile radius where the others do. We do not have transitional housing at all.

Okay. City. Um, and to to answer your question, we did start to take a look at the numbers um to try to address the question that you have. And there I can give you the acreage, but the map is probably what you're looking at, too. Um, but there are 53 acres within the general business zoning district. um 118 in the office and institutional. And then we also looked at adding in the light industrial zoning district 2 and that would give another roughly 400 acres um within within the city. And then we were also overlaying on top of that the um the bus routes to to try to correlate you know that connection. And then was thought to subtract out all the restrictions that we have because there was restrictions to proximity to daycarees and other

that included that. So that's after that restriction. Correct. Okay. That's more opportunity than 600 acres all together. Right. Right. Right. You're adding in one more zoning district. That is general acreage. It doesn't assume if the parcel is available and also the model. Yeah. Okay. The model it's got to be a financially viable model. And in West Burlington historically, prior to 2008 to 2012, the model didn't work. You couldn't buy a house or rent a house. Are you talking about transitional housing or family care? No, I'm talking about the separation in general.

Family care. Family. And that's That's what I was referring to there. And as far as transition was concerned, we were just I think we're just trying to be consistent with what you already had.

So what do you need from us? Well, really, we just wanted to have this as a discussion um based on the different research that was provided and give you a baseline of where we're at and then, you know, looking for some direction from council um on the current draft that we have. Um any insight on that? Um any any other modifications that you're looking for? Just wanted to open that conversation back. Let me ask if you add districts and keep the separation that helps some. It does. It does.

So, I mean, I'm not opposed to this ordinance, but we don't have enough information to know where does this really shoehorn these into. Well, yeah. We just came to a conception. We got to see what's on the ground, what it produced,

and is that your transit? Is that your facilities? Will be throwing these to the absence far reaches of our community, which then makes the job at Lake Transit even harder, especially with some of the wonderful services of par transit things that they offer. If we're forcing those vans to drive to the far reaches of our city to pick up these folks because we've zoned them out of the center, we're stretching our own resources and burden reducing the number of riders that we can serve people serve because of words on paper. And we can fix that and serve more people and help them live a better life if we just change the words on paper. What I'm hearing you really want is to see that now.

Yeah. Okay. So as as some guidance maybe then is that next work session or or uh that would be what in two weeks would

yeah we we can certainly at at your pleasure we can certainly present the map and and um you know I I I think that it's it's also difficult to consider are some of our existing zoning districts that if we looked at in terms of overall relationship with our future land use map and longterm vision um you know it's hard to say exactly um what will happen in the future. So doing the analysis is basically a set stamp in time today. But I would not, you know, put put any um cons I would not say that we would not want to consider things like where people can request a reszoning for their property. I mean that's that's certainly an option for folks too. Um also there are um these licensed facilities that licenses expire. Um things change within the facility. There's definitely things that are set in stone right now based on our analysis. We have no control over it. So I understand what you're saying. We definitely do. Um but we we are um being as um cautious diving tread lightly into this pool you know and so that's why the standards are um proposed as is

whatever is contemplated you still think in terms of special use correct I still see that song So far,

I think it's still important to consider at the end of the day, a separation is a really blunt tool compared to being able to enforce code and other rules on these facilities to ensure that they're providing the high quality or whatever service care that they run because ultimately that's what we want out of it. And if they were all good actors, we wouldn't care what the separation. But we live in a world where they're not all good actors. And so we're the question is, is half mile separations and special use in certain zone districts really the best tool to achieve this type of housing? What else do you have in mind?

Or can we get more creative? I mean, there's there's other ways you can do strict code enforcement and just be there watching over what they're doing. And we've had to do that in other cases and it forces them to either fix the way they're doing it or some and it's not easy. It requires city resources, but it requires city resources to do. So,

and and my concern is if nothing is in place, then we will continue to see more of those bubbles show up in East Burlington and and that feels like a huge concern to me. I I I'm sitting here going, there is not an easy fix to this. Yeah. What sort of just to keep the conversation, what sort of code enforcement are you referring to there as far as the way as the way they operate from a provide provision of services to their planting? Well, I'm talking about the yards and

it's all the fallout of like people complain about loyer, people complain about litter, people complain about cars parked when they shouldn't. Like there are fallouts from uses that we see in the Brown to fix it app that people report to us all across the city. Family care homes have many reports. Your own mother lived down the street from a family care home. So you're very aware of all the reports that neighbors will happily provide us and some of them go against our code of ordinances and so we have a leg to stand on to go enforce them. We should be doing that.

And the speed that we enforce those either corrects a bad actor in the ways that make them a better neighbor or we have to escalate a situation. I think though a difference is that your blunt tool is never highly unlikely to be litigated as being biased or singling anyone out. And if we start using other more precise tools, then we're going to get sued.

Not necessarily, because ultimately at the end of the day, we're trying to build a community that's safe. And if we're enforcing safety and ordinances that encourage safety, then we're on firm good foot. So the reality is people are going to call and say they're picking on me because I'm white, black, pink, blue, Methodist, Baptist, atheist, Martian, whatever they're going to say, right? They're going to complain that these guys are going to have to deal with this guy's going to have to deal with it. As opposed to we have this very high ground tool that limits the folks in a pretty reasonable way in communities all across the state. Let's not break something just to break it. and everything is already broken because like the folks that we're talking about trying to create a space for

are living in 10 cities in undeveloped lots. That's not a fixed system. That is a really broken system that we're trying to fix a little bit. You're referring to the transition.

Yes. because that is really and that's why that map is so important because if we don't actually write an ordinance that allows somebody who's already got the hard task of financing one of these, building one of these, dealing with the folks coming in and out of it every day. They're doing the really hard Lord's work here and we're asking them to be good neighbors and we're concerned they're not going to be good neighbors and so we're going to put separation requirements on them. But at the end of the day, if we don't give them properties that are actually usable, developable, that work for this, and that work long term for this, it's not they're not going to build it. They're we're still going to have folks living in tents in undeveloped rightways of our highways and behind other buildings.

So, if we Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead. If we do nothing with this tonight, there's no action in front of you tonight,

right? I mean, but if we don't um have any kind of guidance, direction, whatever, uh if nothing is going to change with what we have, we don't have a transitional housing statement, will that will that come back to us? I guess I'm wondering what do we need to what do we need to go away from here thinking about in order to move something forward, in order to make a difference? So right now you do have temporary housing. So, you do have in fact a transitional housing um option under that

under a different name that does not have any restrictions. Um that still has to follow the code requirements and and you know council can decide happy with that. Um and that can be you know your choice for discussion. um we can bring back the existing language uh with the map and and there can be additional conversation. Um that's really why we're here is to get you know some feedback and direction. Sorry. Go ahead. I was just going to say I think it would be helpful to see that map.

Yeah. Um I think definitely you you really want to see that map. I also think there is a larger question here than um codes the UDA there that we can't settle in here but I think we could have some impact on um I'm sorry you're fine you're fine. This is the conversation I'm glad we're having it under temporary housing that falls under churches and nonprofits. Correct. That's the one I'm say I feel comfortable with. under the transitional housing. That's what uh that leaves it open to anyone who wanted to house.

And it is correct that there's no limit on the amount of people they have in the facility or in the home. No restrictions from us on that. And one more I want to make sure as long as the square footage by footage and the occupancy level of the building. So, Chief Lawrence would be the person to determine if that space, right, they would go through the the building the building permit. There's still a limit on the number of people that get inside. It's not just open based on square footage. inspections would be right in part.

And so the way that process works is if someone wanted to do that, they would submit a change of lease permit to the inspection department and provide a set of plans and scope report. And we would then take a look at that in our review process. And in that process, we have inspections, engineering, water resources, code enforcement, the fire department, and the police department. We're all tagged in that process. We all have an opportunity to review the application to verify that what they intend to do against the intent on those. That's the oversight. So that would be the oversight that we would have. So it's that ensures it's a safe facility and it's for that facility.

The aftermath we don't, you know, we can't control at least we have some ability to know what's going in there and to ensure that it's the right and they're following code. And in that process, we would enforce separation distances and all ordinances or you'll be able to enforce it. So inspections would be the one that's well zoning would do it. Zoning that jointly, correct?

And what we're trying to figure out now is do we go ahead and continue to have that separation in this under transitional housing, that half a mile separation. Do we add that just like with the family care homes? Do we follow suit in that mileage area and which is what we're currently doing in any other area about the homes? But there's nothing magical about the half mile. So I think the really important thing about continuing the discussion, looking at the data and the map is that maybe we change it to a quarter mile to open up more opportunity as far as the separation. We can finesse that and it doesn't create the issue of that we're talking about

if they want to go straight to East Burlington. It's a matter of like what's the right number there to enable enough potential opportunity to ensure that we create the housing we need. So there's really opportunity because there there's other areas of the city that's clearly not being used. These investors or entrepreneurs are choosing to go in the same location for whatever reason. So there is opportunity for them to you know to operate transitional housing in Burlington based on the map. Yeah. When a family care provider is not a transitional housing provider. Correct.

But but they still have to if that separation is there means that the transitional home cannot be within a half mile of the family care home. Would that not be the same? So that protects it from being saturated in the same area. And what I'm saying is there's a whole another opportunity in the city of Burlington on the map that's not clearly being used. So it's not that we don't have the area to provide these homes is why are they all choosing one area? What can you chart? can't afford it. So I have some less food in there.

And the families shouldn't suffer that don't have the money to live in West Bro. They shouldn't have to have all these homes because of the cost to live in their neighborhoods. But also for transitional housing, it's not allowed residential. So okay. So it's not going to res. But like but the family care homes are right. They're in the general. They are residential. They are. Okay. Yeah, for the purposes of this discussion, we have some we have a lot of tools at our disposal to change like where these could be built and it's the zoning type. So right now and J you said the other one you were considering was industrial. No, which is the light industrial.

So the first column of blue light industrial. So we could as we live with it's not listed yet, but that is an option right now. fail.

So, as as we live with this ordinance, if somebody said, "I want to build one of these, but as J mentioned, like there could be a reasoning, they could come to us with the property in a different classification and we could either choose to modify the UDL or resone that property, right? Or down the road, we could choose to change the distance or change what type of things it has to be separated from. We have lots of levers we can pull to create more enabling legislation going forward. The challenge is we're picking our starting point here and then are we willing to accept feedback to continue to live and with the real world consequences of it and keep the door open for folks who are trying to create this opportunity. And the entrepreneurs to me like they're accountable for making sure that their um residents can get to the bus stop. They should be responsible to make sure that they can get to where they need to be because it's ultimately their responsibility. They're the ones that's getting paid to house the the residents. So, I get where we want to have them mirror a bus stop. We want to have them near certain, you know, access to resources. But isn't that because we're not the over we don't have oversight over these homes owners. So, to me, it's their responsibility to make sure that they're opening up business and can get them where they need to be. Maybe I'm wrong.

You're spot on. And I think it's important that the tone that we set to the wider audience, the folks who go back and watch this meeting or read the minutes is really important for them to understand are we willing to work with them constructively and creatively to enable if they have a piece of property that's a really good fit but doesn't check all these boxes. Can they bring it on their team who can then forward it to our attention and say, "Hey, we could actually build one of these if you are willing to change your conditional. Do we not have an opportunity to place them in conditional zoning areas of can we?

Well, they currently have the option to go to the board of adjustments for areas even on the separation permit. So, boards are correct about that. You know, it's all by special use permit. It doesn't come to the city council and uh they can, you know, you get board adjustments. That is always a tool. The challenge with that is it's time and money and risk because you got to figure out how to get a hold of that property and can you get the approvals and the folk folks have lots of opportunities elsewhere to build this very scarce resource and if you go to battle for them then they'll go elsewhere

I'm not certain they aren't building them any other place it's not like other cities are building the So, I think um I think you've probably heard enough from us. Um but I I really do think I mean I really appreciate the passion that each of you brought to this conversation, each of us brought to this conversation. I think we have a responsibility to go away thinking about the responsibility that we have to the city as well as thinking about what are the possibilities and um and and requesting a map to to move us forward. We're not settling this tonight. Um so I mean it's not that's not our place tonight anyway, but um so yes, I I will be leaving when it's time to go um with lots to think about in regard to this. I think we got what we need.

Okay. Probably more more than you need. Sorry. Thank you. Thank you so much.

And next, um we will hear from our economic development director, Adam Schul, and a team on downtown. Thank you, mayor, council members. Great to be with you this evening. Pull this up. See if I've done this correctly. Okay, great. Yes, as the mayor noted, Adam Schum director, joined by Maggie Hogan, our downtown manager, Amy Rap, our city engineer. We have other folks in the room who touch these projects we're going to talk about tonight. So, we may look to the sidelines as well. Um, but thank you so much for having us. Always excited to talk about downtown Burlington. This is this presentation talks to a council request request for information about our construction projects downtown scheduling and going to look at uh through the lens of local businesses downtown and any disruptions, inconveniences. So we've structured this to give a very brief summary of what these projects are. Since we say construction project plural, we have a lot going on. So just wanted to quick, you know, reminder of what we're talking about, how they came into being, look ahead at those construction timelines and then discuss some of the uh inconveniences and supports to local businesses that we've done in the last year and some we've learned from and plan for the next year. So we'll start with our water and sewer project also called utility project. Uh again try to be very succinct with how we talk about these. Our engineering folks um uh engineering folks can go into a lot of

detail but we're rehabbing 2 miles of sewer mains and replacing over 150 sewer laterals. those pipes that run the sewer mains of buildings uh water manes as well replacing number two miles and then replacing mile lines that connect individual buildings to water mains. This started in May 2025 and we're estimating an end date of summer 2027 for the entire project. Wanted to clarify that there are sections of this or portions of this project that are ARPA funded. So folks might their radars might uh go off when you talk about going beyond December 2026, but that funding will be accounted for and expended as required by those deadlines. And just a reminder on the context for this project, General Assembly did allocate 10 million of ARPA funding for uh this work. If you we all remember the pandemic and the kind of federal response to the pandemic, more than$8 billion dollars coming to the state of North Carolina and general assembly and others kind of helped figure out where all where all that went. So this is the city of Burlington responding to a need and saying absolutely we could use 10 million uh with our capacity and expertise and so that's what was done. uh total project costs. Want to include that for each uh for this project looking right now at a little more than $16 million happening concurrently with water and sewer this past year was some parking lot repaving. So this is resurfacing roadways and parking lots. I placed a map of our downtown lots in front of you. Um I'm here for about a year or more and still wonder which one's lot six, which one's lot four. So want you to focus on municipal lots one, two, and three which are kind of behind or

parallel to front street. Uh that is where this work was done um from about October to December. So again an opportunity to improve our parking lots and those surfaces, repainting them. wanted to take advantage of that. And funding for that is actually tied to our $21.5 million transportation bond, part of the general obligation bonds approved by voters in November 2024. Um, and when we talk about total scope of that project and those three lots, it's about $400,000. Our rep goes far beyond downtown, just focusing on what's uh been happening in downtown. There is a slide too that shows all these projects I'm talking about the timeline. So, we're getting there. The Paramount Theater renovation and expansion of a high-profile project downtown for which I should say too, uh, some of the great work by community engagement folks, uh, who are in the room and on the front end of these projects, uh, public information meetings, uh, scoping the projects according to some feedback from all of that. So, wanted to shout out that important work and that shaping what you see in front of you on this slide. describing all the new features but to a renovated and expanded paramount year and on the bottom there kind of when work started in earnest July 2025 and then estimated completion we're going to say fall early winter 2026 I'm not going to jinx anything over here I've been told over and over don't you jinx us the date and that's the kiss of death so uh again cost and funding this is a large project so it's complex we do have our recreation in the parks general obligation bond that included 11 million for this project. There was potential grant funding the city was able to secure that included 462,500 from a commerce grant. There's a general

assembly allocation where state lawmakers saw value in this project and gave half a million dollars toward that or instrumental in that. And then just noting uh the construction bid that uh was awarded in May was 10.3 million a little more than that. We'll kind of give you a look at project that that does not include design cost and certain costs that we you'll see later dollar figures attached to that. Last but not least, streetscapes. So in this year we will see a street streetcapes component project. What that means is uh we have basically kind of an L-shape from Spring Street and Front Street hugging the Paramount that we're going to see some streetscapes work uh predominantly because we have a grant source that we wanted to make sure we utilize. So, we'll be doing that work, widening sidewalks and enhancing crosswalks u starting in June of this year, wrapping up by the winter. And again, mentioning where that's important funding comes from. A main driver of the timing in that one is the $425,000 commerce grant we have for that work. But there was also general obl obligation bond funding uh with the bonds. It was approved for 5 million. So I promised a condensed look at all that. So there's the four projects. We wanted to put a general, you know, a timeline as accurate as possible. Uh these are construction projects, so uh it can be tentative. Put the uh costs and investment associated to each project. On that uh chart, you see at the bottom there uh 28.8 million uh projected as investment into our downtown. Uh we recognize there's a lot that goes into this work um change is hard no matter what. But at the end of

the day that kind of investment we make into our downtown transformative and kind of once in a generation. So speaking of kind of how change is hard and why change is hard, I should stop. I had Amy's expertise here for any questions. Hit her with all the hard questions. Give me the easy ones. But if you do have any questions on those projects, please uh please let us know. Uh some of the things we've noticed, you could probably guess in the last year. What have been the pressure points and kind of that that difficult part of change, street closures, particularly with our utility project. Um I think we have an example uh schedule or what we have tried to communicate to folks. I'll be honest, when you look at the utility project at a high level, it's it can be overwhelming. There's a lot of phases. They're by color. our contractors doing as best as they can in describing when streets will be closed, for how long, where will they be closed, at intersections or just streets? So, uh, we recognize the complexity there. Um, some of our signage, we work with the contractor to make sure folks know when there's a road closed sign, businesses are still open in some portions of that of that road, and that's key. Um, I mention unpredictability of the construction schedules. And then we have to think both what's happening locally and throughout the state, nationally, globally. What are the trends that we might be feeling? And we know at the end of the day when looking at this business lens downtown, these are small businesses uh can be volatile for a lot of reasons. There's so much that goes into uh business as most of you folks know and uh so trying to take into account what's happening at a macro level as well. And I think we're not immune to that in downtown business. So, how do we respond? What did we do knowing that these projects were coming? Uh, and then we'll kind of look at what we might be looking at moving forward. Uh, I can't praise the What's Up

Burlington app enough. Just as a kind of relative newcomer to the community, I wondered how well this is being utilized. And I think I've heard nothing but great things and I love getting the texts that I get withformational updates. So, we make full use of that for the construction projects. I mentioned our public meetings uh beforehand. We've had some things we'll talk about with merchant meetups as well to try to hear feedback throughout. Um I had a slide earlier with a sign downtown for connoisseurs. We we really leaned into any kind of pedestrian level messaging that either the city MSD funds can support or our Burlington downtown corporation can support to show sometimes you need a very simple you can park here. the map or the construction schedule that uh Mr. Smite has over there is helpful, but sometimes you need to know I want to go to uh whatever business, how do I get there where I park? So, we lean into a lot of that and um this is an example of creative problem solving. You know, we do have a link uh a link bus stop that was at W Street. due to some of the construction uh scheduling it was after we did some research and talked to folks it was really helpful to move that out here to Lexington and we weren't sure if that was possible but we had certain folks help us out and uh meet with business owners a couple times hear feedback um you know not all glowing but it that was fine because we needed to have that partnership and communication with them and I think it's worked out really Well, talk about some of this as well. Just I I haven't said enough about how our Burlington Downtown Corporation has tried to be creative and think of ways to uh maybe absorb costs for local businesses downtown. Uh just to take that burden off of them or participating in our parade. Um and that plays into

something we're kind of looking ahead at as well. I'll cover this one before I stop talking, let other people talk, but in examples of how we've tried to be really responsive in the past year, take opportunities when they come to us and amplify them. Uh folks may remember the Whalers concert back in October. Uh full disclosure, they were going to go to Greensboro and couldn't that at that particular time. So we said, "All right, we're here." Um, and not just us, we have an incredible partnership with um, Welsky Robinson and Core Properties that has the food hall, Burlington food hall downtown in really short order with uh, a lot of help from Ron Park staff on the street closure, sidewalk closure, business sign offs on uh, that entire block to say, "Sure, right, you're doing a concert in like four weeks. We're we're in it with you because we know it's an important time for downtown and foot traffic to come downtown. So, we had a couple hundred several hundred folks at the concert. Hope you're able to be there. We hope we'll have more uh with this particular promoter. And that's another way we're trying to uh be really because again I this is private le. This wasn't a recreation and parks event. This was something that come up organically and we figure out from a BC and city standpoint how to make the most of it. Um, and talking about amplifying winds, this was the maybe first or second week of Maggie's time as downtown manager, and I'm going to stop talking because she took this project, she took this work, and ran with it. So, please tell them why we

Yeah. Well, as um Adam said, it's been an impact on foot traffic. Um and so in fall 2025, Labour discussed just with us that they were returning 300 employees back to their uh three or four offices downtown. Um which is was really great to hear, especially for just the overall economic vitality of downtown, but also to increase that foot traffic. Um we know that they do support our local businesses, especially, you know, during lunchtime and to also have those numbers back really helps to fill out the the downtown. So um we wanted to celebrate that and we know that also coming back to work after co is hard. So we wanted to make them feel extra welcome. Um and so we created a welcome back lap for um campaign of sorts where we basically got together about 16 businesses um that offer special discounts to blackport employees. they showed their um IDs around the um the the district and so it was helpful to the businesses to get business into those businesses with black core but also to make them feel welcome back. Um and so we made them a one pager also about the projects that were going on just to get them in the know in case they you know saw things going on around there. And we've also been working really hard to to um build that relationship with them and maintain it. Um we have had three employees join our economic um or sorry our downtown enhancement committee. We meet once a month to talk about what's going on downtown and also how we can um uh assist with the overall beautifification and just enhancement of of the area. Um, and so you will you might see uh signs

like this around downtown. Um, this was also part of that campaign. Um, and businesses participated and it was really nice to see that kind of the community come together and welcome them back. And new in 2026, Adam and I have uh worked hard to come up with creative ways, like he said, to think about how we can support the community, especially using BC funding. Um, one of those ways is uh to um launch a social media campaign um and a strategy to focus on the Burlington community downtown. Um and we've seen other downtowns in the area or in the Pont triad region um also struggling and people saying you know we we want to support the community or we wish we would have known but it we don't want to wait until it's too late to support those those businesses and so we want to do something to be proactive now in order to support them. So, um we have the idea of this campaign um that we would love to launch um soon um for um just instilling that pride back into downtown community, the downtown community and getting the community out here. Um we also are are trying to do more programming. For example, we saw many of you at the um first annual wine and chocolate walk this past Saturday. It was a really good time and I hope you all had a really good time. We heard a lot of feedback that the community loved it. Businesses also were really happy afterwards. They felt very supported and so we would love to add more programming like this in the in the next year. Um we also uh as Adam said were able, as Adam mentioned, we were able to use BBC funding for that to help um remove any barriers to businesses participating. Um, and we would love to be able to do

that in the future, which is why we would love to focus more on um our partnerships with with also local community um giants that we that we have um to in order to be able to expand that programming and those events um around um and good job there.

Tickets sold. I think people didn't understand that we had the um ceremony down in the amphitheater, but the real party was like after and everybody was out at the shops. They were actually in downtown. So, because you didn't see them in the amphitheater with us and we were doing well a lot of them, especially not 135, but they were out walking, they were shopping, and to have all of that um those tickets sold 135. I want to support you guys in the downtown in that way with innovative things like um events such as this. So, please give us a breath and good job on that.

Yes, ma'am. Thank you so much. We we really didn't know exactly how it was going to go because it was the first time we did it, but we were so It was

Thank you. Um, and then I just want to mention I do send out those weekly updates about the construction um, uh, updates um, through the WhatsApp what's up Burlington notification system and also through email. So if anyone would like to get onto that notification system, you can go to this link here and then select project downtown update notification group and you will get those updates from me. Um, and then if you have any questions or anything about what's going on downtown or any project updates, you can always reach out to me. Um, and that is my information at the bottom.

Reagan sang your phrases today. I saw her at the event today and she said that Maggie was doing a great job. She said the businesses downtown, they really like you. You're coming in and you're figuring it out in such a short time. She was really, really proud of you. I appreciate that. Thank you. Any questions? Question. The streetscape phase. The map showed a green highlighted section. It's kind of the L shape you're talking about, but extending down Main Street. So, the map that went around was for the utility project.

Yeah, just that we had a meeting recently with about 75% design on the streetscape. So, we want to get everything uh finalized and we'll be communicating about that a little more outwardly. We just want to make sure we have all the best information on what that project is going to look like. That highlighted area was restricted on the contractor not to be working in that vicinity on Front Street, Main Street during the Christmas and holidays. So, that would help reduce the impact down. Yeah, I appreciate that. Not just Christmas and holiday, but I would say Elon is a huge part of our economy and especially our downtown economy, our graduation coming up in the spring.

We've got a meeting coming up to discuss that very thing, the coordination between Paramount, the utility, and streetscape. Which projects will be overlapping or which ones won't because the streetscape won't start to be run but utility will be appreciate the contractor reopening some of our streets kind of a pleasant surprise to be able to to the way we have been to every singularly with our utility project on singing praises of that contractor gentleman one of the contacts name is Logan and there are several times throughout the summer and fall where I called and please just go into that business and talk to them and explain kind of what's happening how to how to handle this uh putting a face to this process is really some the best work we can do and just explain it like a human being rather than a large document or our comm our printed communication is very important but uh sometimes just hearing from somebody that this is why this is happening or this is the schedule or this is going to be fine it makes a world difference so really appreciate your work on that

yeah our utility contractor Daniel's done has done a great job and not beond in many ways. Um before we move on um from our downtown, this might be a good time on the agenda at the council meeting tomorrow. Um we were going to have a request to close streets for fourth Fridays. Um after we had the streetscape meeting, um Sean Echerry wanted to look at that and um reconfigure those

those events to take advantage of of what's available downtown and maybe um enhance those events. We'll bring that we asked to uh pull that from the agenda tomorrow and bring it back with a little more uh certainty after after I ask just as a former downtown business owner and I stay in touch with a lot of our business owners. It's really hard as you mentioned right now. Um you know there's folks who have mortgage their homes to try to start business in downtown. So please just keep that line of communication open. Every day of uncertainty, every day that you don't have folks walk in that front door is really hard and the last thing I want to see is more. I know we're going to lose some folks. This process is not going to be easy. We didn't think it was going to be easy when we started talking about this years ago, but all that you can do to help bring that little bit of support reassurance is much appreciated. Absolutely.

Thank you. Um just want to do a check in with council members. Do you need a 5m minute break? Are you good? Cuz if we can keep pushing, let's hear it. Okay. Um, so up next we have our car chief of

All right. Good evening, Mayor Council. Thank you so much for the opportunity to be here um tonight with you. Full transparency, I try to cover a lot of ground with you in in one sitting. So uh but I I promise you I'll try to keep it a very high level. Uh we've got a lot of reports that um we realized that we shared with uh fire council that you guys had not seen that information that we feel are very much guiding documents for us uh for the next few years that we want to make sure that we put it put before you. So as part of that tonight um I've got a few things for you. Uh the first is our 2025 annual report. Um as we uh completed the year 2025 about this time we always compiled this report to kind of highlight our successes, our achievements and kind of um look at our trends over time and we put that together in this annual report uh that we uh will share with our stakeholders in the near future. Uh we wanted to put it for you guys tonight. So, you've got put a print copy at your uh seats tonight and also uh some printed copies in the back of the room for anybody else who'd like to pick one up. But um after we share this with you tonight, we'll come put that in our social media and sharing live widely starting tomorrow. So, tonight I'll just take a moment to highlight a few of those things. The other is our 25 20 year strategic plan. Uh that was work that was um completed within the department this past year. We did that one in January, February. Um it is very much a guiding document uh for the next five years for us. So again, I'll be brief with that, but um the copy of that plan uh was provided with the council packet u as well as another study that we did uh during 2025 was our fire station location analysis. A very analytical look at um the growth of the city since our last study of that type in 2011. um and kind of evaluating where

we need to be thinking about uh the future of fire service and us being able to provide appropriate fire service in the city. So we'll share those with you but all those reports are provided in your council packet. U again this this is a cover of the board. You've all got one but I'll just kind of run through this but uh it is intended to keep our stakeholders like yourselves and our community aware of the great work that our folks do in the fire department day in and day out. Um, so you'll see it's very uh it's got a lot of photos in it because we like to capture that help tell our story in that way as well as a lot of data. If you're that kind of kind of person who like to look at trends and graphs and those things that that information is there for you as well. But I will just uh walk through a few things just to to to kind of center us tonight. Uh really in 2025 we had about 10,462 responses or calls for service across the city that our fires responded to. On average, that's about 28 and a half uh calls for service per day uh throughout the city. A vast majority of those, about 68% are EMS related, so medical related. All of our staff are all EMT level providers uh and provide basic life support uh services to uh to our community. Uh so that is a tremendous call volume for us. um as well as about 3,323 fire calls or fire emergency responses throughout the year about 32%. And you would show that um we had about a 1 1.1% increase in MS related calls throughout the year and about 5.5% increase on uh fire related calls over last year. We also down at the bottom is kind of a little difficult to see in red, but we we keep track over time. Um so uh tremendous increase as the cities continue to grow and spread so as our demand for service and you can kind of see those trends over time. So we started really tracking this in 2008. Uh

you can see the increases in EMS service is up 63%. Fire related um response is up 81% and on average across all call types about 62% increase for managed service over 17 years. talk to you a little bit about our response time. Um, we have a standard of cover that we've adopted within the organization that is u consistently national standards, NFPA standards uh 1710 uh on on what our standard of service should be uh as a municipal fire department. And um as part of that is travel time and I think I share the travel time with you because that is um one thing we we can um The three components are call processing. Our turnout time is the time it takes us to get our our protective equipment on on the fire truck. And the travel time is the time from doors open. We'll start turning till we get to those places. Um and realistic that is the one piece of our response time in total that we don't have a lot of control over. uh it's all a matter of where our fire station are distributed throughout the city as well as the traffic and congestion and those type things that we encounter trying to do these calls. So I think it's important to show you kind of from where our goal is where our response time uh is. So we've set we have a travel time um goal of 4 minutes from the time that fire truck starts rolling to anywhere within the city 90% of the time. So we operate on this 90th percentile. Um so it's actual uh from the the fire truck starts rolling till we should open that door. Again that is very much a function of station placement distribution as well as tracking maneuverability within within each of our districts. Um and it's progress in the fire station location an analysis report that uh I'll share with you as well. But I I'll share with you over here on the graph I've

kind of highlighted the ones in the box. You can see the yellow line is a 4mm minute goal that we've set for ourselves. Those again NFPA standard as well as an accreditation measure. Um the the box that I have highlighted are engine companies. So those are the units that are um that are distributed throughout the city. We have six of those across the city. And you can see that in most cases um because of the increase in in traffic and the way the city is spread in a lot of cases we're not meeting our goal. So I think that's why again I refer to that fire station location study to to to kind of give to the fact that we're seeing the effects of the growth of the city. It taken us longer to get to the focus that we need. So I just wanted to point that out. Um from a tax base impact we had about 90. We had exactly 98 structure fires within the city in in 2025. U about $106 um million dollar worth of property that was involved in those fires. Um we received the property saved. Uh so fire loss in dollars, we had about $1.7 million of damaged property in the city uh during the last year. from a life uh impact. So, we had no no fire fatalities uh in 2025. Uh I think our second year running not had any fire fatalities. Uh we we take great pride in that. Chief Harris and our community risk reduction division in the back of the room. Uh his staff as well as our emergency responders um go over and above trying to make sure that the folks have the information and the basic safety um things like smoke alarms in their homes so that we can avoid those at all costs. So, we're glad to report that we had a goal in 2024. We did have eight civilian injuries due due to fires though and one firefighter injury uh in emergency response

throughout the year. Very minor. Uh but nonetheless, something to report. From an EMS and life um standpoint, we had 63 cardiac arrest cases um during the year. Um we had a successful resuscitation of 17 of those that is 27 uh% return of spontaneous um uh pulses and the national average is about 10 to 12%. So the one thing we take great pride on and this is consistent over the years is our folks do a really good job in patient care. Uh they really care about the people that they providing that service to and they do a really great job doing that. We had 20 cases uh 20 instances not 20 cases 20 instances of of Narcan um administration. Majority of that PD also administers Narcan. They in many cases are able to administer that before our folks get on the scene. Uh but have a very high incidence of those overdose patients in our community that require that that u that drug. My epinephrine injections for folks with severe adapylactin reactions like beastings or nut allergies those type things it's got to a point where they're having difficulty breathing um we have drugs that we open to buy those folks for that as well. uh three glutes administrations to diabetic emergencies, 19 aluterol treatments for breathing problems in our community and 37 cases where administrations for possible heart attacks help limit that impact. As far as training goes, we um we continue to have a very strong partnership with Alat Community College and certification of our folks. Um during the year we had uh 17 uh new recruit rec recruits that were added to our ranks. 11 of those some of those came to us already certified. 11 of

those um new recruits went through the ACC fire and EMTmies um which we now have um we have colllocated them on our training facility. We have our own fire and police training center. So um we are glad to have that. We have great things in process as far as the burden building and other training assets that we're partnering with ACC on to make sure that our folks as well as uh new firefighters come in that community are well trained. As far as inservice training um across our um our staff, we had we logged a total of 28,558 training hours uh throughout 2025. Again, we we pride ourselves on being uh very well-trained and very capable emergency responders. Um that is the expectation of our community. When they call 911, they get folks that show up that are able to help them in their time of need. And our folks train very hard to make sure that we're able to do that. Our community risk reduction uh division, which Chief Aris again, the back room, our fire marshal uh manages um is also a great program of ours. uh his his team conducted over 2100 fire inspections uh throughout the community during 2025. Um this is maintenance inspections on on buildings that are already in place as well as new construction um uh for new businesses and things that are that are coming into our community. 370 plan reviews um just as building inspection gets plans on new construction. because of this changing uses so does our fire marshall make sure that we are uh our built environment is appropriate and safe for our community uh to use and enjoy. Um fire investigations we have 25 um advanced fire investigations throughout the year. These are uh investigations that require a higher level investigation than our company officers. We provide uh Chief Harris have staff that are trained as uh

certified fire investigators and I have that higher level training that are we have on call come in to make determination on calls and origin of every fire in the city. Um as far as public education, our outreach uh which we take great pride at as well. We had 16 almost 17,000 inerson contacts throughout the year. many of those through large events like carousel festival and any opportunity that we can get into schools, daycarees and um restrooms, all those places that we can get in talk about uh ways that those residents and those visitors within the city can um can be safe and everything that they do. A couple of program stats just to share with you our smoke alarm installations. Throughout the year, our staff have been out in our community installing 128 smoke alarms uh for residents that don't have that basic level of um fire protection in their home. Um we occasionally have grants and things that could provide those to us and our goal is to get those out in the community and put them to use to protect our our residents. We also have a child safety program um that helps educate our communities and our caregivers about how to properly use and restrain children while they're responding in motor vehicles. Uh we've had that that program in place for uh 25 years, pretty close to 25 years. Very successful program uh and we have given 141 parents education to help them uh throughout the year with their their child. There's a longer list of this in our actual report, but I just want to highlight a few things um throughout the year that we're very proud of as well. Uh one of you, several of you came to the unveiling of our our medical UTV that was uh we received on grant this year. You may have seen it at the carousel festival, uh which was the first event we actually put it in in service for. Uh but it is a a small four-wheel drive um UTV um allterrain

that allows us has a medical slide unit in the back allows us the capability to access patients that are more remote that we can't get an ambulance to and those type things. Um so that was a grant that we received from the Gary Senise Foundation uh during the year we uh took possession of and outfitted and we're very glad to have that in place. Our staff's very proud of um engaging in um community service as well. Uh we do a couple of things. We deliver meals on wheels to our community uh once a month as well as um in the last year we started um assisting the Salvation Army, I'm sorry, the Salvation Army with their food pantry. Uh they get a li a delivery of food from uh the that comes in once a month and our staff is there. Um and what used to take their staff all day to do, we can show up with firefighters from both Graham and Burlington, um who are partners with that. They can have um the full truck unloaded in 30 45 minutes. So, it's a great great opportunity for us to get out to support our community and we're glad to do that. Um expanded partnership with the Bron Police Department on our drone and responder program. Uh very successful program. The first, as you know, started on the rooftop of the police department. Um, the second location was um unveiled and started service earlier this year, earlier in 2025 at our fire station 6. So, we do now have that second drone um in operation and to my knowledge provides us for the most part 100% coverage in the city. Uh great uh very forwardinking program um that has been very very beneficial to all public safety in the city. Um, our strategic plan was completed. Again, I've shared with you that that hope that we'll have some conversation about that. Smoke alarm Saturdays. Again, opportunities to get out and put those smoke alarms in our homes. We've

hosted several groups from across the state, the tribes use um um meetings as well as our fire rescue administrative professionals uh meetings. This is our um our administrative group, our admin administrative assistance group from across the state. Their departments have they get together and talk about things that are happening at their level that how they can support their fire chiefs and their departments the best that they can. Uh we also we're also proud to say that we registered with the center for public safety excellence to become an accredited fire department. That is a part of our strategic plan. Um has been for some time. Um co set us back with that but we're back on track and moving forward with accreditation. that is a goal that I would love to see us meet if we're trying to work forward. So, um that kind of sums up our annual report. I I'll pause right here before I move into the other just to see if you have any questions and comments on the on the annual report. We will we'll get that out on our social media um tomorrow and share that information with you. Uh the next piece I'll be very brief with is our 2025 to 2030 strategic plan. Um this was uh completed in January and February 2025. Um it involved many stakeholders both internal um in the department as well as external from the community. Uh many of our uh other uh prior council members were involved with that. Uh as well as other departments that help support uh us and us them uh as well as other departments around the the community, whether it be the health department, other fire departments, police department, uh many other stakeholders that help guide us and help shape what we need to do, where we need to be taken in the next five uh years to become uh the department that we need to to be.

Um, this strategic plan was presented to our prior council in March of 2025. Again, it it dawned on me that at least happened the new the new board has not seen this information. Um, one of the goals, um, again, I think it's a very much a guidance document that you guys need to have your your finger on as well. Um, and we can have further conversation on how we meet some of the goals that are uh within this plan. Um so I'll give you just some very uh it came basically came up with with several high level goals that we um adopted as part of this plan. First uh let's evaluate and improve our physical resources to enhance service to our community. We've done part of that with fire station analysis. So it all kind of plays together. Um that is one strategic goal. Develop a health and wellness program to reduce occupational injury and illness. Uh, as you know, our jobs are not very safe. Um, we do very well at keeping our folks safe and make sure we have commanders that make wise decisions that don't put our our folks in unnecessary need. Uh, but in general, fire and police work is at times very dangerous work. And so we want to protect our folks folks as best possible. Um, so there a goal in there is to think about how we can do that. uh and make sure that we're we're providing all the protections um as well as mental health type um resources that we can to our to our staff. Enhance the department's u relationships with the public to improve improve community engagement. How do we get out there more and do more with our community uh to help um share with them the great work that we're doing? uh enhanced strategies developed BFD is a destination workplace to attract and retain quality and diverse applicants. Uh we have had some struggle for some time with recruitment and retention of employees. Uh this is a goal kind of wrap around how do we become that workplace that folks want to come to

work. How do we do that so that we're not battling uh retention issues and keep folks invested in uh in their positions happy employees? Uh improve professional development in the department. empower the workforce to better serve the community. Again, how we how do we take take our folks to the next level to be that professional organization that the folks expect of us. Uh and then as I mentioned to prepare for, pursue and achieve uh accreditation uh through the center for public safety and excellence. So those are really our goals. Um we have work groups department who are already have some of these things in process. Uh it's very we're we're trying to engage our employee base as much as possible because they are the they're the eyes and the ears of the people have the fingers on the pulse of things that are going on and can again you got 118 people who all have minds and all have the ideas that I want to hear about. So um we have employed uh work groups to to do that. A lot of this work is already in process. Um one of the things we want to do is come back to you uh with this plan in uh April. give you a couple months to kind of digest the plan. Um, and I will say there is a implementation guide that kind of goes hand in hand with this um strategic plan. I'm more than happy to share with you. The strategic plan itself is very high level. The implementation guide is more granular. Um, so it gets into individual steps of how we reach those goals. I'm happy to share that with you, but it's just too big a document to to put out um slide. But I'll if you're interested in that, I'll be glad to share that with you. But I' I'd really love to bring uh this item back to you in a couple of months, maybe April, and ask that um you guys can adopt that plan to give us uh your blessing on our plan, our direction, um or any input that you'd like to see involved in this plan as well.

All right, any questions on strategic plan? I'll move on real quickly to the fire station. Um this is another plan again that was conducted in 2025. Uh again it is a very analyt analytical look at the city of Bronson and how we've changed over time. Uh specifically how we changed since 2011 when we did our last fire station analysis. The output of that study was the addition of fire station 6 on B Parkway. Um again, we've not done that work in some time and as we follow our trends and our response times, our travel times, it became evident to us that we needed to have that evaluation done again. We brought in North Carolina Fire Chief Consulting Group, a local group, Greg Grayson, many of you know who was a fire chief here for a couple of years. Um went on the Greensboro and city of Asheville. Um uh has now retired doing consulting work. So he's a Burlington resident, so very invested in uh making sure that we heard a good fire department and are able to respond properly. Uh he was a consultant on on this work and uh provide a very comprehensive document that gives us a very again analytical look at um our city, our responses, where our target areas are, where growth is happening, uh to give us some guidance on where we need to be thinking into the future um for new fire stations. Right. Many of us were at the the groundbreaking for a tremendous development in the city uh today that uh uh is part of this plan. Uh and and currently, you know, we're we're scratching our head. How do we how do we provide that service? Um this this plan kind of gives us that guide. Again, this plan was something that we had a consultant here who gave us presentation on to the prior council in August. But again, um many of you missed it. So, I want to make sure that it was in your hands. you get have that

document as well. In general, it provided four gaps that we need to be thinking about. Um, and it took into account a couple of things. ISO standard. As you know, we're a class one ISO fire department, the best fire protection rating that we can have. That's based on again our part of several things. Our communication, our training, uh, our communications, and our distribution of fire equipment throughout the city. Um so the isolator standard is a fire engine with um 1.5 miles truck within 2.5 miles. Um part of that is that that as well as evaluation of our response time to that distribution of companies as well as from those stations how long does it take to get into into the city. um kind of the culmination of those few things brought um basically four gaps um that you can see on the map here. Um I'll move on to G the analysis but plan secure uh funding for new stations equipment and firefighter staffing plan for a new fire station west of fire station 6. Um at the time we were thinking maybe Springwood Park area because it's already sitting in uh property. Uh however with recent developments may be something that better serves that area out there. Um consider a dual purpose fire station uh to better serve the airport with uh potential federal funding. Again we already knew through this study we had a gap on along the alet shroom corridor. Um, at the same time, uh, we've had many conversations with Van Danley at the airport about his need to take the airport to the next level. Requires some level of on-site fire protection, uh, for the airplanes and those type things. We we had this conversation about how we killed two birds with one stone. Um, the study clearly shows in that area there's a deep fire station. So, there's

possibility there for continued conversation with Dan and the Air Force Authority about a dual purpose fire station uh there. improved coverage between stations one and four uh was identified gap in service that the study shows again kind of that area that was again an area in the 2011 study that showed we had a gap but we've not those lines um acquire land for future northern fire station as you know generally up in the um Hopeville Road area we've got a lot of residential growth that's happening there that's outside of our uh appropriate fire spots. We do bring in county fire departments a couple miles from each way into those areas. Uh but being within the city uh is an area that's good to think about.

Which area? I'm sorry. Which area? Um hope road 602. Your last go back. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Is that motion what is

and again the the report will have some very more granular detail about those locations but um I just tried to to give you the graphic here that's showing you those four those four areas that u that the sun for that I'll just say that I know that was very much like drinking from the preferable fire hose. Uh I do apologize for that but again I had a lot of ground I needed to cover with you brought up speed with the reports that I felt like you needed uh and we have some interest. So I appreciate that time. I realize if you got um any questions about any of that, I'm willing to willing to speak with you personally about them and share any information I have that help you be as informed as you can. Right.

Thank you so much. And next I recognize Jamie Dawson. Um we had talked about switching E and F, but Thomas made that request and and Thomas had to go. So we'll just move forward with E. in order on the agenda. Okay. So, um this is on the city initiated annexation request.

And if you don't mind on Mayor, I'll try to consolidate these all into one sort of overview because the process is basically the same for each one. When you were ready to talk about chickens, weren't you? Sorry. Come up with a joke. On the fly, the chicken before the annexation.

Okay. Um, so on the agenda for tonight's work session, there are four different these are city initiated annexations. So basically they are cityowned parcels. Um one is the Grease and Lane track. Um this is at the end of Gree and Lane um that is uh off of the university where the residential development is being uh constructed. Um the city has a right of way in this area here. Um and utilities have been extended. Okay.

Yes. Utilities have been extended. Um and so this is this is a an annex station to capture that. Uh it is continuous. Um the second one is Guilford Macintosh uh lake parcels. Um one, two, three, four in total. Um shown on the map here. Just stop me if you have any questions. And these we have trails and facilities already on this one, right? Yeah. Which is out of the city.

Uh that's the boundary map for that. And then there's a small piece of property on the west side of university. Um it's a pump station. And then the last one is the B Valley Golf Course. So essentially um all of these are contiguous uh to existing city limits. We have them um requested to be added to the consent agenda for tomorrow night. And this would follow the same process as we normally do United Stations um where we have set a date of public hearing for the first March meeting. Okay. So if you're comfortable with that,

I'm just curious like is there a reason why some of these never got an accident. Yeah, don't really know the the answer to that. There's some there's some other ones that are going to come in front of you, too. We're just waiting on the the surveys and the specifics uh for them. So, I think um you know over time we just as we acquire or get um land, it's important to to annex it.

Yeah. the the grease and lane just occurred through some some of the development that's happening. Um the Guilford Macintosh was property that we bought from the town of Genesville a few years back. Um it's it could have been annexed then, but for whatever reason it wasn't. But we're looking at all these the pump station at University Common is right there by Chick-fil-A and Target. Nobody knows why that that's been the pump station's been there for 20 years. And then the valley has just recently been configured and there's no additional like liability. I see we're already serving these areas anyway. There's no additional liability or cost.

Thank you. And now you Okay. So, I think the ask was just to provide a update or not update but a summary of what transpired with the chickens ordinance. And so, that is what you have. Um, I'll run through this. Let me know if you have any questions. Morgan is your communication. All right. So, um the next slide is basically a timeline of the same thing that I'm presenting here. So, back in 2020, um began the research for the chicken ordinance and discussion at that time. Uh there was research done, there was a survey done, there was public input and then there was a draft ordinance that was prepared in 2021. There was a public meeting with the planning and zoning commission just like every other ordinance draft. Um and then there were several different drafts presented uh to a work session um later that year and there was a public hearing that was held in April of 2021 um with it which was continued until May and then it was um there was a motion to deny the ordinance uh and that passed.

So this basically just summarizes that in a nice flowchart. Um just kind of an overview of the um draft ordinance at that time. Uh chickens were background chickens were added as an accessory use um permitted within um the residential zoning districts uh with use specific standards. So that's the low density, medium density, and high density zoning districts. um other standards that were included provided a um a limit uh of chickens per lot and then there were prohibitions in terms of um reers and and um don't know if I need to read everything in terms of the language but there was a lot of thought um put into the ordinance uh details about hoops and enclosures um during the discussions of the different drafts. There was a um a modification um for a reduction where the coups could go from 25 to 5t on the side and near property lines, no closer than 50 ft to a residential dwelling on an adjacent lot. Um and other standards to address the location. Also, general language dealing with required maintenance, upkeep, and well-being. um dealing with compost as well as uh what happens if a chick is no longer um alive. And then compliance with our general code and standards definitions are always things that have to be added. And then there was a um amendment to the uh general code just to

to coincide with the the draft um ordinance. Told you I'd be fast. Very good. Jamie, was that approved by planning and zoning recommended? It was recommended. I think that was on the timeline. Yes. So unanimously approved. unanimously. Thank you. Any questions?

Thank you. So, mayor, I would for us to continue this discussion again. I think there's a lot of good reason to to move it forward back then. Um, there are currently chickens and residential houses in Burlington that are non-conforming. Um, I think this gave us some of the tools to actually ensure that they're well managed for the community to be able to crack in on this and see if it's something that we should move forward.

So, I know that there are other municipalities who do have a chicken ordinance. How does our how does this compare? So, um there are I think included in the research that was done with the previous ordinance, there was a full um Excel spreadsheet of uh research that was done. Um I'd say, you know, some municipalities just leave it very general in terms of it. It really depends. Um I I think that uh you know from what I could see we weren't that far um in terms of those that had regulations and restrictions. We were in line with those but there were there were some that that didn't have any and just were kind of allowing them by saying animal services perspective too. We're already enforcing Gibsonville. We provide services there. they allow I think up to I think it's seven or more hens and yeah so this is much more restrictive than even what we have that we're currently enforcing for residents so that was the I don't know much about chickens um but I do know that most people I that I have known who had chickens had more than four so I thought that was

I think the important thing is like to address roosters like that's where the problems So to to bring this back um for for more discussion or so I mean it could go back through the process uh to a current but I think it's more important to get council's opinion in that 3-2 vote. I'll say it was one of the supporting votes. Um I know this makes sense back then. And again we have residents who want chickens. We have residents who currently have chickens. Yeah. Yeah.

When they're good neighbors, their neighbors don't care and they're not reporting them. And I think that's great. Um they're able to have sustainable food safely in their yards. Um but I would love for our ordinances to jiuate the way people actually living in our community. Um and so would love the rest of council's opinions about if and how this could best move forward to what ducks and gains.

I've had some delicious duck eggs. Uh, so I I I I raised ducks many years ago. My grandfather raised chickens and uh let's put ducks in here. I I have to take another to look at it. I don't know if many people will be that interested, but it's the big age, the rich a lot of customers. And there was a reference to other foul in a different section prohibiting. Oh, I think it would be great if we go back to task on this and look at it again.

So, what might the best process to get community back? I think like doing what we've done. Are there other things that aren't on our radar, weren't on our radar back that easy? the community would like us to consider. I know we all ran a fantastic public engagement process back then. Had the most responses to date we've ever done.

Yeah, we had 1300 responses. So, I have a summary of that um but I can give to you all tonight. Um but there were 189 open-ended responses. So, we kind of summarized what the themes were in that so that you weren't reading all of those. But we do have that data if you want that. And then if we want to go back and that was prime COVID time, so I think folks were in a different mindset about things. Um and then we've got new tools also with the city um to to be able to interact with our residents. So we're happy to help facilitate some more feedback. I I like to go back through the process because that's been a few years back and see the attitude because like Morgan mentioned you know that was co era so maybe a little different I don't know but anyway moving along I like to go back

okay on that yeah I'll just push back a tiny bit I don't love the logic that people are already doing it anyway therefore we should allow it to completely eliminate this equation and say that we should uh with good intention look at the data and make his informed decision. So we go back to Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. You're very welcome.

Okay. Um let's see here. Uh boards and commission reports. We have a report from the traffic commission. with the uh two items tonight. Uh one item is no parking on North Williams Street. These maps are compact. I'm not going to go into the detail unless you have specific questions. This this came from the police department and the residents in this area. There's a slight hill here and there are parking in the street. We have neighborhood parking. It's not unlike any other neighborhood, but this specific area because of the topo where you just became unsafe and did not get a lot of cooperation from the residents. There was rentals in this area and just felt like we need to put no parking in this red section. You see the red on this side of the street only. There are comments at the public meeting. No feedback from anyone. No conflicts and it's unanimous recommendation.

It's Web Avenue. I'm sorry. I should point that out. Web is just up here. 87 and got about the other landmark. Web Avenue is right here. It's just off there. It's on the corner near the school, right? The um where the apartments are. The apartment's on street at that intersection near Petburg that that Williamson Street further southwest. Yeah. This way down here where the place is on.

Yeah. This is like an industrial yard and we like the next block south is the city's recreation forest. Yes. Yes. Yes. Okay. But again, it's only just in the red area. So if it is over,

it won't affect anything but this side of the street for this distance. The second item uh is Memorial Drive. Most of you familiar with this area. Heavy medical presence, basically dentist, orthodontist, places like that. We had two meetings on this and we had a mayor and Councilman SM were actually traffic commission members in October. Um, this came out of a safety concern. Uh, if you've been over there, uh, it's worked for many years. People just park on the street. There's no markings. There's no anything. You know, people, uh, the employees basically have taken over the parking in office buildings. We had uh, several conversations with business owners and property owners. They're aware of the issue. They just wanted a safe environment and to maintain the most parking as possible. That was really it. We had a great meeting here. We had several people in October come in and speak. Um there was no denying that something needed to be done just because of of the growth. Um so we looked at an alternative that kept Memorial Drive as it is existing um two-way operation and just putting in some uh delineated parking. We put down payment markings. We went a little bit further with another option that would be one way which is what you see here. This is the recommendation of the traffic commission. So, you would make this oneway loop, if you will. What you see in yellow would be areas that are marked out for no parking. We currently have red, no parking already in place. It will stay, but the yellow will give you safe, clear distances from fire hydrants, driveways, especially were having issues here. People were blocking driveways, just parking and getting out, going to their appointments. Uh it like I said it was really just getting out of hand and and those that out there have businesses realize that. So what we've done here is we've marked out again yellow all the way around to make sure

you have safe safe clear distances out of driveway entrances, fire hydrants and just allow for the two for the oneway travel. Also will g will give you parking on both sides of the street. Basically you're reducing it by 20 parking spaces spaces on the street. It's going from 68 to 48. Uh, everyone that commented was okay with that. You still have lots for all these buildings to park in. Uh, we did some spot checking. Max parking was maybe 30 plus on some days. So, staff build staff, police, transportation, feel like this is a good option. The area the owners felt didn't have any kickback on it. Um, this will take some additional time to implement. We want to educate again. We want to remind them again what we're doing. um good chance for some feedback and then we'll also need some warmer weather and things like that to get markings down and signage and I want to pick a a logical date to start you know what what that will be a Monday they don't have appointments on Friday so we'll do some coordination I just want it won't go in immediately if you if you do approve it but we would ask for this tomorrow night on their consent agenda if there's no other questions

I think the one way is very elegant solution I like it a a while. It's not a lot to get there, but it was good to have the the owners that were in support of something just to save our park versus having to have a a debate or disagreement over is everybody pretty uniform. I I go over there a lot. I tell you what, that's when you meet somebody coming in from the upper end there and you know, the way you going in and going around, it certainly makes sense. I mean, I I think it would improve it. I really do. I'm Sure.

And we'll over we'll probably over sign it, flag it, do our best early on as we do other places when we put stop signs in and things like that. We'll do our best to to do that, but seems to be a good solution. We'll see how it works. So, that'll go on the cons. Okay. That's all I have. And um next we'll hear from our city manager.

Thank you, Mayor Council. like a few items. We already talked about one is the the request to remove item G from the agenda which is the fourth Friday so they can take another look at that. Um I'd like to introduce our new water resources director Michael here looking forward to working with you all. Michael's been here about two weeks now today. Um he comes to us from Charlotte Water. Um over 30 years of engineering experience, 23 years with Charlotte Water um managing their uh instrumentation controls group and lots of experience with the water treatments. Um and a couple requests that or conversation topics that were from LA brought up at last work session. Um just to give you an update. Um we've talked with a few um potential facilitators for a council retreat and gather information and bringing some options hopefully at the March work session. Um and then also um we've uh requested and received a copy from the Ferguson group, our our federal lobbyist. Um they've prepared a white paper on broadband. We just got that. Um staff has reviewed it and some of us are still looking at it. We'll get that out to you before the work session that you have. Um and I believe that is all that I have tonight. City attorney may have asked you to go into close session to

discuss four pieces of litigation pursuing NC GS1 143 and I will for the record give those cases to clash close session this time. back over here. Probably have 10 minutes. Okay.

Mayor, before we go, can I just ask two quick items I just wanted to share with council? Um, we've there's a kind of informal affordable housing group that's convened out of the home association. We've had a couple meetings. Um, from those conversations, it's been interesting to hear that there's a kind of a gap in understanding about what's in our UDO and some of the tools that were put there to encourage housing development. Um, and even some kind of awareness about the light, medium, high movement that we went to from the R zones. Um, and so I would love to explore what might we might be able to do as a city to kind of provide some more information in the community um to close gaps or connect dots uh to encourage them to consider building housing all areas um and power we've already tried to create. Uh and then two um for many years we talked about art museum in town. Uh question about the upstairs space in the library. We own the library building. Um and I know there's been some discussion about like what would it take to access that space. I think there have been some studies done some research on what's needed to to make that space usable. uh any other council to see just

and the only thing I want to say is um I've just been so impressed over two major winter storms in a one week time at how I mean like my street was cleared quickly and I don't think it's because I'm made but and I've heard that from people all over the city that um you all did amazing work getting ready for that and um and it was just executed beautifully. And then um Saturday was such a fun event downtown. Um both the city side of things, city council side of things and downtown corporation. Um just really such a fun event and and wonderful turnout from staff and the community. So just thank you to everybody for that.

Anything else? This is the longest work session in history. I guess I feel it too. So we need a motion and a second to go into close. And all in favor, thank you.

Do we need a motion? Um to return to open session. We need a motion. Motion approved. Second. All in favor? I motion to return. And then I need a motion to motion. All in favor? I thank you, mayor. Thank you.