City Council - workshop

Thank you.

Good evening, everyone. I'd like to welcome you to the July 6th City Council Work Session, July 6, 2026. City Council Work Session, I ask that you silence your devices. And I just want to say I am very glad to be back with you. I missed you last month. We missed you too. Thank you. I did not plan to be gone all month, and I really wasn't. I was just gone three days. It just happened to fall. Sorry, the wrong three days. Anyway, I'm here tonight, and I'm glad to be back with you. As we get started this evening, I would like to recognize Director of Animal Services, Jessica Arias.

and what's going on.

I did try to pack a really informational slide deck for you guys, because it's a lot to cover, and I know you've got a full agenda, so I'm gonna try to make my part very brief and high level, and then hopefully have time for you guys to have questions for discussion after. So just kind of an overview of where we were, and where we are today. It started in the, well before 1970s, with Alamance County and Burlington, Operating independent shelter facilities. And over the years it became, you know, animal sheltering, you know, it's important to remember it's not something that's mandated by the state for municipals to provide, but it's something that most counties and cities do provide across our state. But once you do provide it, obviously there's lots of rules and regulations that you have to abide by. And Burlington intentionally just built more of a regional service model that's a collaborative partnership across our county that better serves our communities and also provides a mechanism to share costs amongst our communities as well. And so fast forward into the 70s, the county contracted with Burlington for animal sheltering services. A joint shelter and intake facility was built in the 90s and PAWS helped establish the adoption center building in the early 2000s. Also in early 2000s, separate shelter cost share agreements were created with other animal meds municipalities as well as the county. And in 2010, CLAWS helped establish the Spay and Neuter Clinic of Alamance County, which is also part of the cost share agreement. I will mention at the session tomorrow night, we do have our consent agenda lease agreement for the Spay and Neuter Clinic facility. And in 2016, we began a partnership for the cost share for city, county, and CLAWS to construct a new animal services center. And that was completed in 2020. 2025, Gibsonville contracted with Burlington for animal control field services. That was a first for us. And under agenda for tomorrow night, we'll also have an agreement with Elon, who also wants to come in that service agreement. And today we've created here in Burlington a comprehensive animal welfare system that service packs peoples and communities across the county and even beyond with some of our state and local services. We've really made a lot of progress to decrease euthanasia, and you'll see this is a timeline from 2008 to 2025. The blue bars represent animal euthanasia, and you can see how that was very high back in 2008, to very minimal in 2025. So we've really focused on creating positive outcomes for pets in our community, which we've been very successful in achieving, and that's represented by the orange bars. The gray bars represent animal intake. And I think that's really interesting because back in 2008, 9 and 10, that was really a difficult economic time that we were experiencing. And you usually see when our communities are struggling to afford housing and food and just cost of living, we see increased animal emissions in our shelter system. And so we are starting to see that again. through those central seven years, but in the last four or five years, we have started to trend upward in that, and so that's been concerning, and that has helped us shift our program focus to try to center more on preventative type services, as well as still sustaining those positive outcomes, and I'll talk a bit more about that. But this also shows you how population growth in our community has contributed as well, and how it correlates with animal intake, combined with the economic conditions of our communities. So you can see the orange line representing the population growth has badly trended upward since 2012, as Frank goes, and animal intake has been a little bit dynamic. Obviously, the COVID years affected that, but more recently, we see how that is also trending upward, with the exception of 2025, which was a little spike in 24, but we've also made some shifts to programming to focus more on prevention. and to try to center on some type support services for this community. And I'll talk more about our pet health support program coming up. But again, to reiterate our focus areas, obviously the overarching goal is positive outcomes for pets and families and our community. And to achieve that, we really focus on intake prevention and the programming that we have through affordable and accessible spay and neuter. And I'll talk a bit more about the expansion of the PAS clinic and the spay and neuter clinic down in Max County, as well as our other pet health support program that seeks to keep pets and families together through veterinary care support, behavior support, pet food pantries. A lot of those programs, almost all of them except for the spay and neuter is driven by which have been incredibly important to us to be able to launch and sustain that type of programming and grow it in the future. And it's such a great thing. We also focus on outreach education. There's partnerships and collaboration and of course regulatory compliance is always extremely important as state standards have become more stringent for our industry. And pet placement is something we continue to grow and focus on maintaining high levels of positive outcomes for pets. We do that through marketing and advertising pets, making sure our pets are well cared for, and getting out in the community so folks can engage with us, and creating those opportunities for folks to come into our center. We're not just about pet adoption or sheltering. There are so many opportunities for folks to volunteer, get involved with what we're doing, and the outcomes we're creating. This is some year-to-date data highlights compared to our calendar year last year. It's kind of a progress report where we're at year-to-date. So it's just a high-level overview. I haven't gone into the detail. I know I usually send you guys a monthly report every month and then an annual report that kind of gets really down into the many-many. But this is just high-level where we're at. It looks like we're trending about on par with numbers last year for annual admissions, which have been the highest levels since and positive outcomes have been a challenge as adoptions have slowed. It's been difficult. We often see that with challenging economic environments where people are struggling with costs of living, but also costs of death care have quadrupled in the last few years. So it's making it more challenging for people to keep their pets and keep them cared for with those basic things like spay and neuter, which ultimately prevents intake. But our numbers are pretty steady, so I won't go into all that, but certainly open for questions. Some of the measures of success that we look at reflected by those numbers are how we're doing when we see whether pets are remaining safely with their families whenever possible. Do community members have access to affordable basic care like spay and neuter vaccines and that preventative care that keeps them out of the shelter system? Is our community empowered to be a part of the solution through partnering? So through those anti-influential strategies, volunteerism, and just being responsible pet owners and the community. And also making sure that our concerns from our residents are being addressed through our support and enforcement services to protect public safety and enhance quality of life in our communities. Making sure pets receive quality care. appropriate outcomes and we maintain that high level of pet life saving that we've achieved over the years. And then we ensure our public resources are invested responsibly through collaboration, prevention, and continuing to innovate. This is just an example of all of our programs and services that you'll find. Again, we're just much more than an animal shelter that takes in animals and adopts them out. We're really the first line of support members of our community that are looking for help with pets, for keeping pets in their home, getting pets fixed at an affordable rate, making sure their pets have these basic standard vaccines to stay healthy, all those things. And we have an incredible amount of programming that goes into this, donor dollars One thing I wanted to talk a little bit more about that's kind of more in the weeds than the high level is our intake triage system. I think there's been a lot of questions about that as we have shifted to that model because animal shelters all over the country have realized we just don't have the capacity to take in all the pets that are in need in our communities and how do we make sure that those that are most in need are served above those that maybe there's alternate options for assistance for them. So our intake triage model is an accepted modern professional practice in the animal services industry. Many agencies use it. Many agencies use it poorly. People call it managed intake sometimes where they say, oh, we're full, we're closing our doors. And that's happened a lot around our state and in neighboring counties. You've probably seen the news article as recent as last week where that's happened in other areas of our state. And it's been my commitment to keep our doors open always and to manage times of peak intake periods and crisis more responsibly through proactive measures. Do we get it right seamlessly 100% of the time? No, we don't. And sometimes it's a little rough around the edges as we have to adapt and evolve and train new staff. And we constantly have new staff coming and going and to get everybody up on the speed with consistent messaging and such a complex, nuanced message that this is. But we always continually work to improve, work to get it right. And when we make missteps, we correct those, learn from them, and move forward. But as we have refined this model, it's much like human emergency rooms. capacity to help every pet that people present to us, but just like with human healthcare, our resources are limited. We have limited staffing, limited funding, and limited kennels to house pets. And our capacity for care is determined by our ability to provide safe, humane care and meet those stringent state standards. So that's Not simply the number of pills, but it's also the amount of funding resources that go into care, the amount of staffing we can provide. And again, we are the only agency in our county that provides these services. There's no other agency with a facility, so it all falls to us. Unlike many counties that may have a private organization with a big facility that provides complimentary services and they work in support of each other. We just don't have that here. Maybe one day. Public safety and emergency medical situations, cruelty and neglect, those are always an immediate intake for us. Healthy strays, that's where we triage. So they may be scheduled if someone can hang on to them or someone in the community. I think Thomas and Iggy Pup was a great example of that and how that can work well. And I think Council Member Valtunas as well. Although sometimes those things don't happen as seamlessly as we'd like them to, we're getting a little better at it as we already know. But that creates an opportunity to keep pets out of the sheltering system. That way we have space to help one that's truly in an emergency, and then we can provide scheduled support with spay-neuter vaccines and adoption services on out. lost pet support, finder to foster, we do a lot of those. And owner surrenders are another one that most often owner surrenders are always gonna be scheduled assistance unless it's some family crisis or an emergency where they truly need to come in right away. Typically if somebody needs to rehome their pet, we're gonna work with them to provide resources as there are opportunities for them to keep their pet and family together. We will provide rehoming assistance through a third party provider, which has had an over 60 or 80% success rate by statistics. I've seen the folks that are using that. And so we're trying to keep those out of the shelter system and let them be rehomed or provide the resources they need to keep them in their homes. And one of the most important things that we're doing toward prevention is spay and neuter. and providing low-cost care for vaccines, just those basic things. I'm excited that we've been able to reopen the Spay and Neuter Clinic as of tomorrow. They'll be back in business providing wellness care with Dr. Fikes, who used to work with the previous provider, Dr. Whited, who retired at the end of May, and of course we had to close the clinic temporarily in June to do all the license transition. It's a big lift, a lot of support from other city departments helped make that happen in such a short timeframe. But we'll be back starting tomorrow, three days a week, with wellness services. And in the future, we hope to expand to do more spay and neuter there as well. We also have the BAS clinic where we are a licensed veterinary clinic at the Pet Adoption and Resource Center. And we're providing services, all the spay and neuter surgical services there at the moment because we're set up to handle high capacity and high volume spay and neuter with preventative wellness concurrently when pets are coming in for sterilization procedures. But if it's just wellness, if they're already fixed, they can just go up to the clinic to have that service. So we're excited to build that out. I also wanted to mention that BAS was in the process of creating a new partnership with Alamance Community College and their veterinary technology program. We have long been partners with them as a learning site for the animal care. We are excited to have veterinary technology students working with us, interning with us throughout their program, and that provides us with an important pipeline of veterinary technicians that are licensed and credentialed, and there's a desperate shortage across the country of those right now, including veterinarians, so that's a great opportunity for us. And that's all I have. I think I went a little bit longer than I intended, but it was a lot to get through, so I'll be happy to answer questions that you might have, or talk with

Thank you. Any other questions?

A question. You were talking about the, obviously, Alamance County and Burlington continue to grow. We just did the new shelter. It's almost a decade. Yeah. What plans are in place or need to be in place

I think that's an important discussion as we're looking at 15 and 10, 20 years down the road and how we're going to handle that volume and that increase. It will undoubtedly increase. There will be periods where it gets better as the economy ups and flows, but it's always going to be a need and we really need to be thinking ahead in the future. And our building is finite with the number of panels. I know that we built it with, you know, I think options for expansion in mind if we get there, but I think that is definitely something we should keep on our radar and be thinking about, so we're ready for that proactively, well before they leave this year.

We were talking about capital improvement later in today's agenda, but I would be very interested to see what do you all have in the plans, what do you expect to be in the next 10 years, just so we can start to slot it in. Absolutely.

And I think it's always a combination of capital plus operation expenses. professional positions and professional positions are harder than ever to come by.

It's good to hear that Elon's reaching out to us to provide services, but obviously with that comes more capacity.

Yes, and there's a cost share there mechanism, so at least that is separate from the sheltering cost shares that provide some funding to help sustain that. planting that seed that will bear fruit in a couple more years. But, you know, let's just get through that program.

I appreciate the information on the tree on the surface. I've experienced that personally when I've found dogs in the neighborhood. intuitive, but not always intuitive as to what they're telling you. It gave me a string of numbers, but no idea how to contact the owner, if I could contact the owner. So we wanted to see if we could create more information tools for other folks, as we're asking them to shoulder some of that weight.

We do have those QR codes on the signs go to our web page that tell them who to contact. But the companies will not release the owner information that they will contact that owner themselves. But yeah, so there is some barriers there due to that, for sure. But if you have some suggestions or ideas that can help reduce those barriers, we are absolutely open to exploring that.

Thank you. You're welcome.

Thanks for your work.

You're in and you're out. Yeah, you're welcome.

Thank you. And next, I recognize Water Resources Director and here where we are in the city of Barrow.

Good evening, mayor and members of council. This is my first time here as a water resource director and happy to be here, but it's kind of a sensitive topic basically talk a little bit about the water system conditions and how they stand, the summary of events that led us to this point, and show you the reservoir trends and show you how they have decreased over time just to give you an idea of where we stand The overall use of the water, the evaporation of the water in our reservoirs has caused the levels to decline and we haven't had any significant rain in recent memory to replenish that water. And essentially we're at the point, according to our ordinances, where we would trigger stage one, which is voluntary water conservation. this is that even though we do have a situation where our ordinances really say that we have to enforce water conservation we still have a fair amount of water in reserve we have sufficient water in reserve if we were to receive no more rain from this day forward we've got at least 230 days worth of water at our current rates which in July we're pretty much at our peak rates at this Just a summary of the events that led us to this point. September, we were in abnormally dry conditions, which is drought condition D0. October, we had further deteriorated to moderate drought conditions, which is D1. And these conditions are determined, and the transition from one to another is determined. we were in extreme drought. And at that point, that's when our reservoirs really started to decline due to the lack of rain, the heat, and the temperature starting to rise. And by June 9th, we were at exceptional, which is the highest level of drought condition for this scale. And as of June 28th, we had reached a point where both of our reservoirs were at or below 75% of their total storage volume. this is a graph showing lake kamak and the the water surface level and how it has varied the extreme right hand side of the the graph is basically october excuse me august 27th of 2025 we were pretty much at our peak we had had some fairly significant storms prior to that in july that had really fluctuated and i trimmed those off because they made the draft a little bit actually shows that by November and December The upper green line is the 100% volume for that lake. The horizontal red line is the 75% volume, which we transitioned across June the 28th. And then the lower line actually shows stage two trigger, which is 60% volume. And just a rough guess based off the slope will probably transition to stage two conditions within the next couple weeks. So just bear that in mind as a possibility. This is Lake McIntosh, a much larger volume of water than Lake Cammack. It tends to rebound faster than Lake Cammack as well. The same situation where the same statuses are shown here as well, 100% volume, 75% volume, and 60% volume. And again, it looks like within the next couple weeks if things don't change, we'll probably be at the point where we would consider stage two. And essentially our recommendation is that we would recommend that council adopt a resolution declaring stage one water conservation These are basically a combination of the standard ongoing practices that everyone should be observing on a regular basis just to conserve water from a conscious human person standpoint. You should be trying to conserve water on a regular basis. So some of these may seem slightly out of place, but they're a combination of our stage one and our ongoing measures. Reduce time in showers and water depth in tubs when bathing. Use rinse water wisely when washing dishes, shaving, and brushing teeth. Limit water use when washing vehicles in outdoor areas such as driveways and sidewalks. Install water-saving plumbing fixtures. Do full loads of laundry. Minimize irrigation of lawns and plants and only do so in the evenings or early mornings when it really is systems should be installed be considered for commercial industrial customers essentially that's the entirety of my presentation it's brief I just wanted to provide enough information for you to be able to consider what what we're recommending and

Any questions?

It seems to me that the choice to make a resolution is the easy one. What's the communication plan to help people understand the importance and repetitious cycle of those recommendations so we get some actual progress in the conservation efforts?

We've got a plan and some actions already in place to do D-Line, Hicksonville, all those folks and have communicated the steps that we're going to take and we expect them to also communicate to their customers that they adhere to these conservation measures as well. So with these different points of communication, we feel like we've got a broad range and we feel like we're going to reach most of the folks. And again, this is voluntary. The next step would be managed teeth, so to speak, along with it.

And is it safe to say that many other areas in our region have been at this stage far earlier than we have, right? So we're not breaking any ground?

No, no. We're behind the curve when it comes to that, but we've always been a water-rich area. And anecdotally speaking, the reservoirs have been below these

and if you've used in a couple of weeks we might be at a stage two and well in a couple of weeks we'll be preparing for another city council meeting so that one feels like a natural information certainly give you an update at that point and if we need to go to the next stage which is mandatory and enact some some restrictions on At this time, I'll recognize GIS Administrator Andrew Schor.

Before you tonight, a city-initiated street renaming. The situation is that two street segments that have the same name. It's known as Hooker Street. So the one that we're looking at renaming is at the corner of Short and Meridian. And the request is just not looking for a new name, but we're gonna extend Meridian to the northwest. um what we have is this is the yellow dot is the location of the hooker street that is going to be proposed to be renamed and the red dot is the other poker street that we have in place so it's separated by just over a mile as the crow flies so i request for councils to put this on a for a public hearing and set that date for was flattened in 1949, and the Hoker Street office short was done, there was a flattened 9 and 5. It's still the latest I could find on that section. And the Hoker Street at Meridian is the lesser of two evils because there's two property owners that would be affected.

And have we talked with those property And at this time, I'll recognize our Chief Financial Officer, Eddie Reese, to share with us that capital improvement plan.

Thank you, Mayor and Council. We have the city commission additionally asked our department heads to do a five-year capital improvement plan so that they are looking forward to what might become the pipeline. A good example is when we need to replace a fire truck and get that on the schedule so that we're not totally surprised. Due to... some grant applications that we apply for at the state and federal level that are asking we have a 10-year. So I believe last year or the year before, we started with more of a resource fund during the 10-year. But we didn't come to California to adopt it. And this year, we asked all of the departments to prepare a 10-year capital improvement plan to be a little bit more forward-thinking in the future. This is to allow us to check another box and give us more brownie points when we're applying for these grants and applications. So you have before you, we're asking council to just adopt it. It does not commit us to anything. It's just a plan. And this is, you know, it may be determined that our drug gets wrecked and we need to move it up from one year to a couple of years It is just a plan that's going to commit the council or the city to any spending, but adopting it does give us a little more credit when we're applying for these grants.

So we're asked that this be put on the agenda for tomorrow night.

Any questions or concerns?

Anything else? Thank you so much. And next, I recognize Executive Director of Planning and Development Services, James. Anything, everyone?

Up next is a water service utility request So anytime there is a commercial utility request, we come in front of City Council to make you aware of it. This property is located at 1031 North Fencing Highway 87. It's the existing Circle K commercial facility. We are recommending the utility request. We are not recommending annexation at this time due to its location. It is located currently closer to Elon than it is to Burlington's corporate limits. And so staff is recommending the utility connection, but deferral of the annexation. And this would be on for tomorrow's consent agenda.

Would that be helpful in this situation if we had that type of agreement, would it override

You can see from this map here, this is roughly where the property is. And this red line points to Elon's corporate limits. They're extended, getting extended north. This is a satellite annexation in Elon, as well as this here. And then this arrow to the right points to where all And as you know, the main heading further east is a little bit further of a distance.

aware of the value

recognize public information specialist John Vernon for us to discuss city advisory board and commission appointments and I did share with city council members some just some of my thoughts and ideas it was laying on their desk when they came in this evening just to help us kind of

Because of how you'd like to proceed with this, I think we could go one of two ways. We could go in order of the account numbers. We could start with the ones that have new materials involved. So there are people who did letters that were relevant to a new board. I'm not sure how you'd like to proceed with this. We'd like to start with those, which would be to planning and zoning and the PHA. Or if you'd like to go in order in which they're . So however you'd like to proceed.

I have not done this before. So I really yield to your expertise on this.

I mean, I appreciate you putting together this.

That may have been helpful for me to share with you.

Generally, I guess you guys just have a conversation about what you'd like to proceed with. There are several notes, and I know there's a lot of confusing new information that's been added, and I can walk you through these individual notes if you'd like me to do so. But there is an additional email from Brock Rebels, the CEO of that, that is included in your addendum packet that you got on Thursday. So you would like to proceed with discussing some of these. You'll see that some of them stagger, so there's two that end in 2029, there's one that ends in 2027, and one that ends in 2028. So, would you like to start a conversation there?

I really appreciated Ms. Rebel sending her comments, given that she works with this group. I found that to be very helpful. And, I, I, It feels to me like honoring her request makes sense. She did not state who for which seat, I don't believe. Or I didn't understand that.

I would recommend for reappointment if you use the ones in 2029 to start. That should be my recommendation for that.

For reappointment?

Yes.

Yeah, because they're going to get a full drawing in, right?

Exactly. And put the newer folks in the 29 seats.

Yeah, so for the two full terms, it would be Charles Carter and Nell C. Cash. And then Kathleen and Sandra . I don't have a preference of if it's the 27th or 28th.

I know that, you know, not always, but typically we, you know, we go to those who have requested reappointment, and one not mentioned is Michael Fraze, and I think Veronica Revels did not have him on her list, you know what I mean? And I'm certainly willing to live with the consensus here, so is there any consensus for his name to be put on the list at all?

Because she did not recommend that. That feels appropriate to me.

I think we have some very highly qualified new applicants that I would like to see have a chance to speak.

Again, like I said, I know Keith and I are sometimes so passionate about this. In any event, you know, I mean, I certainly can, you know, with a consensus, because obviously, if we were to go, if we were to take a boat, and, you know, it appears now that the slate that's been recommended would carry the take, so I don't know that there's any need necessarily going through that routine unless, you know, somebody else, you know, is inclined to do so.

Anyway, I...

I bring that up because, you know, he has, you know, like I said, shown a passion for serving on the board. Anyway, having said that, you know, we can move on and work if everybody's, you know, consensus is otherwise. I'll find the way to put it.

Other comments?

So he goes on the Medicaid jobs for 27 and reads for 28? And then the second one that has sort of ramifications would be planning and zoning, which had an email from West Sarton about the way it would be considered in places. And that would have been for your appearance. So I thought that might be good to see that next, if you guys would like to do that.

We have support from the mayor's proposal. is Deborah Clapp, or Dorothy Clapp, and Wes Sussman. I'd be amenable to Dorothy as the appointment, and Wes as the girl's alternate. There are two full appointments there, and an ETA appointment. So we have two. That may have to go to Alice Westerman. Is that for the first four?

That was just reading through the applications. She was the name that I really appreciated her application.

Is the second one? And then Ethan Raynor is in the ETJ re-appointments of the ETJ appointment. And that would leave the ETJ office.

Okay, let's go back over that again.

Okay, so currently what is proposed is Alice Wesselman and Wes Sarton on the two terms in 2029, the full terms. There has been proposed for the alternate throwing seat, Dorothy Clapp, and for the ETJ appointment, reappointment of Ethan Rayner. I'm just doing alphabetical order.

I appreciate the additional applications. I was very impressed with Christina Benson's application. And I would recommend Terry Painter.

so there's and there's just one vacancy on the agency yes we only have two members I do, for the VOA, I know that that's like a very complex board. With her being an attorney, I have to say that she knows the law. So I would suggest she, Ms. Benson, be appointed there. But I'm open to whatever counsel feels the best. And you can send Ms. Taylor to the VOA or people on the ABC board.

name has been mentioned as well. Have any of you had any contacts? But the two names we have now is Christina Benson and Terry McGee-Paylor, is that correct? Whatever the consensus is, whoever is not

I don't know if your office would reach out to them.

In the past, in this situation, a council has appointed someone else, and then I follow up and tell them the council's requested to see if they have an interest in any other boards, and I'll reach out to them and tell them that there's been an interest in that and see if they would like to apply to the PLA, and then I bring it back for counseling, yeah.

Yes, okay. And that doesn't cause any quorum issues or anything with ABC?

ABC, I don't know their quorum, but I guess they would put Terry over there. Okay, I don't know.

Just figuring it out.

So Terry Paylor, Terry McGee-Paylor, is that the recommendation? What I thought was to ask both of them. Oh, Christina and Terry. If they have any interest in Board of Justice.

depending depending do your follow-up with those two folks and just get their flavor and then come back and we'll make a final decision based on that feedback since they both applied for the abc board neither applied for the pla right i was just interested in this because she's an attorney and i know how complex that board is yeah i'm still learning to think okay so shall we move on down to the

I was very impressed with that. And I will say this is a recommendation to the commissioners so they do what they want officially.

I learned the hard way last year. The recommendation was later.

But even if they decline the recommendation from our city council, they're still required to choose somebody I thought some of the people who applied for the ABC board would be good on the board of adjustment if they're willing to do that.

Can you clarify, John, on our sheet, Brighton, Ireland is listed as reapplying?

Oh, I'm sorry. I came in after this and I forgot to add that.

So the four vacancies, there's two Burlington seats, one Burlington alternate, and one E2J that Brian was serving in the full Burlington seat.

Yes, and he would like to be invited again. I can give you his application for next summer. That's the seat that's available. One of the seats, yes.

Four seats, yeah. It's an application to reappoint him. For the VOA? Yes. Oh, VOA. Yeah, Brian and I will appoint him. Yes.

And then moving on to the Public Transit Commission. And I will say that I made another mistake on this one. Elizabeth Weitzman is currently serving on HPC, and she should not be included on this list for consideration. So please mark her off. Thank you. And Kathleen Jocks has been appointed to the following card.

those two

names on your list mayor right so that Meisenbacher the reappointment gets the longer term ending yes yes so yeah swap down here I agree but thanks GFO and then Lawrence Lee second yeah correct and then we don't have a name for an alternate at this point not at

And we can move on to the Parks Commission. And Mark named off this, which would be Wes Sarton is now off this list again. And yeah, so that's all for the moment. And I could go back and look at what his seat is currently. And we could add his

to re-appoint Jennifer Andrews, Thomas, and Thomas Phelps. We had a lot of strong applications here. I think they should have, but I don't think we have one, and we are so strong. All four positions on the same expiration date.

What I'm suggesting is not instead of

I think strong candidates like Emily then, you put that on the list, John, and maybe ask her if she wants to alternate through public transit, right, or VOA. If they really want to serve, let's

said who wrote Katya and don't kill a few also asked for this as well as as a transmission of a different slide

was the person I thought he had requested there were two that he requested and I think traffic

It sure is. It's wonderful to be able to see all their experience and what they'll bring to these boards. Thank you everyone who did that.

Yes.

And then finally, tree of carrots question.

Which one of the tree? Tree of carrots. Tree of carrots. I asked Pat Pelt and Ellen Gooder, two of my selection wanted to bet that.

I really liked Michael Adolph. I'm seeing his name correctly. Yeah, I really liked his effort.

I just heard one of the full terms. Yeah, that's good. I should specify also that Elizabeth Weitzman is also a female. Awesome.

And that means there was just one other person, Sean Magenter. And that still leaves one man.

So if I counted correctly that means that there are ten people who applied who are not currently in the seat and there were more

to four open seats?

Maybe.

Maybe. I mean, so I agree with Council Member Smyth that if somebody takes the time to make an application, let's make an effort to find them a place to be. If they want to serve, let's help.

So I was in an email out saying they were not reappointed this time, but there's council interest in seeing if they would like to apply for the seats that are open. I guess I mentioned

Thank you, John, for organizing all of this.

It's a lot for us to be here today, but I can only imagine how much organizing all of this will be. Do you remember who we suggested, Emily Paris? Who she might serve?

Yes, and I can make special notes of those emails. Oh, thank you so much. Thank you.

Next, I recognize Executive Director of Planning and Development Services, Jane Wells. Welcome back.

So again, very briefly, there was only one item on Planning and Planning Commission's agenda from June. This is a limited use rezone request. The property is on the east side of Alamance Road, south of Bonney. request to change the zoning to general business with a limited use and these are the uses that are in yellow are now being requested they removed the uses that are in red in between the time where they were initially going to be on the planning and zoning commission agenda to them when they were heard because the app with them and that is a result of so many uses that were removed. The future land use of designation of the property is suburban residential and general industrial kind of matches with the existing zoning but you can see the regional commercial kind of creeping down in this area because of the way and riparian areas, it does make the back portion of the property basically invisible, so you really wouldn't see any kind of industrial or medium industrial type use in the back portion. There is an existing, I believe, Considering all these uses, it does seem that they're more inclined for account use. I think the neighbors in that area are just concerned about transition and traffic being generated above and beyond what's there now. So staff did recommend this rezoning and planning a zoning commission today as well. the airport is the concerns with traffic are there is there anything that can be recommended to make that better

if it becomes a problem?

It really depends on what the ultimate use is. We can't really analyze what the traffic impacts are without knowing a specific use. There are, under the UDO, depending upon the levels of traffic that's generated, there may be a requirement for traffic impact analysis, but this portion of the process you're gonna see a significant amount of development in terms of building size.

That portion of Alamance Road is DOT road, correct? So any traffic changes would enable it to be rescored and submitted to DOT for widening if needed. And it's wider further south, and then it becomes kind of the shopping area. That kind of small street space could eventually be slated

Yeah, and this is a rezoning right now, and at some point in time when there is a proposed development plan, that would go through our technical review committee process, and that would be when we would request a stratified impact analysis of the criteria.

Thank you. Any other questions or comments?

So at this time, I'll just ask council members if you have any reports from the committees that you are serving on. I can do a rundown if you need me to, but you know which committee meetings you've been to. Do you have any reports?

For me, the community land trust. Of course, it's still in need of funds. um for their adventures of creating affordable housing here in burlington they still have their initiatives and looking forward to purchasing their first home so they definitely ask for the city's support and our community support with that and i'll let bob go over the transit we have not met this month so if you remember the review for last month um there's some work that's being done to the widening there's a lot of areas that is uh coming up that i'm happy about and i'm happy to see those goals i know grant hookdale where i think is one of them that is a part of it that's going to have some new But we're moving forward.

Thank you. My trust has a new executive director.

They do. And we actually got to meet him last Thursday. They were able to go ahead and hire the executive director, which has been a goal for the last two years. So I'm happy that that is accomplished. And he's a really smart guy. He has great plans, good connections. He's been out and out and out, throwing things, meeting people, connecting. So I think that's going to put them in a good position any school time.

That would be very interesting if you wanted to present to council on some of the planning and how it would be a partner.

I definitely think you could invite that to happen. So Bob and I sit on the park board and you know exciting thing there is part really working to make where you can swipe one time. You could get on a bus in Chapel Hill, swipe once, and end up in Winston-Salem. and not have to, well, I guess you have to change buses, but not have to continue to pay or swipe your transit. You can use that same, right. So, I mean, some real effort at making public transportation work more fluidly across the region and tying into link transit. So I thought that was exciting.

The only other thing that happened was the adoption of the budget. That was the main feature. And it had to be done before the end of the year. The details of which I don't remember, obviously, but if any of you are interested in that part, I can certainly wrap it up for you.

Bob and I both have those in our emails.

It seems that part is thriving and doing well, so I think that's good to know, too. I also am a part of the North Carolina Metro Mayors, and we have been talking recently about, I'll probably name this bill SB889, which I'm not gonna speak to, but I'll let our city manager speak to that if he wants to. But anyway, that is getting information. Sometimes there's so much information I just receive and try to understand. So it really is a lot. And I'm grateful that we have an amazing city staff that can help to understand all of the information we receive.

So anything else as far as committee reports go?

Not a committee report, but I do Thank You mayor yes regarding Senate bill 889 passed and signed by the governor essentially delaying the implementation of the

properties in certain counties, and Guilford County is one of those. And so when we were looking at our budget, we were projecting that could impact us up to about a half a million dollars for our properties that are within Burlington City limits but located in Guilford County if that bill were to be passed. Since the budget and Peggy and the finance department projects that we'll have a shortfall in revenues of about $665,000. However, we don't recommend moving forward with the budget amendment. We came in too late for the agenda. The police department has an opportunity that we received information that we may receive a North Carolina Governor's Highway Safety Program funding, grant funding for the amount of $279,990 in this program. control guard equipment and whatnot for specifically for DUI enforcement. We have had a successful two person team that the chief The first year is 100% federally funded, and then years 2, 3, and 4, it drops down to 85%, 70%, 80%, and then we've had 40. and we would be obligated to maintain those positions at least 12 months after the council. So if council would be interested, we will move and try to get a letter from them.

approved for the grant. If council wants us to apply for the grant and then we get approved, we'll come back at that time with the budget.

I think it's a good program. I believe that we have already applied for the grant.

It's council's prerogative to get turned down if you want. It's a great opportunity.

any concerns about receiving the grant we're just going to speak that we're receiving the grant okay yeah just for the two

grants with the taper-off tail of funding that's been used by feds since the 90s the math changes just a little bit in a five to eight year cycle but it's consistent it's PD's used it for we've got as many as six people years past for various items we've now which is responsible for at least years but six of the funds stop completely in year five and then we have to pay for at least 12 there's a taper right so you get 100 up front so we pay zero and then we pay whatever the math is 25 50 70 percent keep it for a year and then you do what you want to do but i don't think we're ever going to be in a position with our growth to cut cops, right? So this is a way to get them for free and with equipment and car to boot is, you know, cheaply we pay $80,000 plus for a start-up vehicle. So that's significant for them to pay that start-up cost and then we keep the body and the car. I have no objection. Thank you.

Thank you.

Just an update on the streetscape project. We had originally put that out to bid in June and received no bidders. We re-advertised and it was scheduling a little bit and we got one bidder last week. in the range of uh basically of about a little under 3.3 million plus um some contingencies and all terms alternates that would provide some some sort of barriers when we wanted to block up all our planners long story short is engineering department and withers and avanark and so on a few items down. We'll bring this back to you in the July 21st meeting for, hopefully, for a webinar.

And then, Mary, do you want to introduce Matthew? Thank you. This evening, I'd like to introduce Matthew Coe. Matthew is a senior at Williams High School, and he will be doing some shadowing and interning throughout the month of July, except for the last week. So for a few weeks, you'll see Matthew around. He might work with you more. So thank you, Matthew. Thanks for having me. Welcome.

Welcome, Matthew. And Adam has three Elon students that are with us here this summer.

I'll introduce our interns first. We have two interns from the Campus Alamance Program who are working with the Economic Development Department for nine weeks. So that started June 1st. It's amazing how fast it goes. They've got about three more weeks with us. But that is Marty Logan, who's to my left here, and Luna Nongoli, to my right, beside Gary over there. So current Elon students working as interns, like you say, Mayor. I might be working with them one day. They're very impressive. I really appreciated their work. In a little different program, Madeline Waco over there beside John, she is an Elon Mirror Service Fellow. So it's another Elon University program that she just graduated from Elon. works with us for eight years of a full-time position funded by the university but embedded in the city great program really appreciate her work and partnership with Elon so you'll see her around all the way through May it has been a pleasure this summer working with them and hanging out I hope they've had a chance to learn a lot it makes a great connection and I think I'm learning something

I do have one question. I did get an email after the 4th of July. I didn't get a chance to forward it to staff, but the concern was the fireworks past 9 p.m. on 4th of July. But my question to staff, I want to put out there, and in case the resident is looking, does the fireworks fall in our provision for the noise ordinance? Or is that, would not be? it didn't start until around 11. So I have to believe, if she said it was after 9, that it was presidential. That's a good question, too. But it was definitely on the 4th of July, on Saturday. But the problem was she had a child that had, well, maybe an adult child that has a disability. And so the noise and things like that prevented her from going to sleep. And so she wanted counsel to be aware of what occurred. and she suggested an ordinance for fireworks.

I do think we have a noise ordinance that's from like 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. which does not fall

We do go to a lot of fireworks houses from July 4th. We do a lot of advising about what's appropriate and what's not, especially about time of day. We are sensitive to the fact that everybody's celebrating America's birthday. We also find ourselves heavily focused on gunfire as a real priority for the police that evening. We saw some of those cases as they came together that really needed to be addressed and were appropriately I think it would be great if maybe that resident, if they want to talk to the police department about that, we may be able to help them out with some scenarios and services. I don't think that it's realistic for anyone to expect fireworks on the 4th of July to stop citywide or countrywide. So it's probably about giving some good guidance and maybe some environmental improvements that perhaps could help them in that situation.

I think you can bluntly force them all day long if there's a capacity issue. Okay, the fireworks went off at 10 o'clock. We're not getting to you. We're just not going to be here. So, right, it was just a realistic way. No, not really. But to ask, right, with some new ordinance. The last thing we need is some new ordinance. We've got state walled-out fireworks that go up and make noises. And then we've got plenty of stuff to treat the issues of.

And we do have an easel.

Is it 10 o'clock? Is it 10 p.m.?

No, it's about reasonable, so the hourly environment. Especially in the winter months when it's dark at 5, it might be more acceptable for it to be loud. I'm not talking about fireworks, but some louder voice at 5 o'clock versus at 10, whereas now, later, it's probably less reasonable.

Thank you, guys. Thank you. other comments i just want to say to the public watching that we still are interested in people applying for emergency shelter status and in the past week that might have been helpful had we had um not necessarily white flag i think i've seen orange but emergency shelter and there is a process on our website to make that application Fortunately, we did not have power outages. Gibsonville did. Burlington did not. So we were fortunate in that regard and did not need to move to an emergency shelter for the city or the county. I'm assuming they did in Gibsonville as well. But anyway, just... to say that that application is a year-round application and does not apply just to freezing temperatures but also to unsafe high temperatures. So if you are interested in that application, reach out to somebody and we'll help you with it because we do need more Is there anything else?

Okay. I think we'll plan to see you tomorrow night.