Board of Aldermen - Regular Meeting

Good evening. Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the Tuesday, 10/21/2025 meeting of the Carrboro Town Council. I first would like to get a motion to excuse Councilmember Merrill, who will not be with us this evening.

So moved, Madam Mayor.

All right. It's been moved and properly seconded to excuse Council Member Merrill. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries, seven-zero. He is excused. And now, I would like to welcome our poet laureate, Liza Will Francis, who will bring us a lovely poem. Thank you,

Hi. Good evening. Hello. I just wanted to give a quick update. We just had the Westin Poetry Festival this past weekend. And it was so, so much fun. If you missed it, please come next year. We'll be doing it again. And Madame Mayor, we were really thankful for your comments too when you introduced us on Saturday. So that was wonderful.

I'm just

going to read a quick poem. This is one of mine. It's called I Need More Than That. I Need More Than That. Last night, I dreamt I was being crammed into a bottle. I was a ship in a bottle with a message scrawled on a paper strip, cryptic like I couldn't walk because there was nowhere to walk to. That's the fear, that I'll make a sweetheart of myself. No, it's not in my power, never has been. The fear is that they'll make a sweetheart out of me. A magic trick, smoke and poof, I'm only for oggling, for petting, for breeding and breaking.

The fear is they'll smoke me until I burn all the way down to the filter, my ash flaking off, feather falling to the soil below until my ember is dim and I am yellowed filter of their breath. Flick to the asphalt without meaning, without anything left of me but the stain on their fingers. Thank you.

All right. Thanks so much, Liza. Appreciate it. We'll move to the proclamations, and we also have one resolution. So first, we're going to do the Mayor's Monarch Pledge. I do believe I have someone here to accept the Mayor's Monarch Pledge. Yes. Zilong? Yeah, Shilong. Shilong? I knew I was going get it wrong. Forgive me. Forgive me. Come on. Mayor's Monarch Pledge.

Whereas the monarch butterfly is an iconic pollinator species whose multi generational migration spanning thousands of miles has captured the imagination of millions of Americans. And whereas both the western and eastern North American monarch populations have seen significant declines since the 1990s. And whereas the town of Carrboro recognizes that human health ultimately depends on well functioning ecosystems and that biodiverse regions can better support food production and healthy soil and air quality, fostering connections between humans and wildlife. And whereas cities, towns, and counties have a critical role to play to help save the monarch butterfly. And whereas, as mayor, I signed the 2025 National Wildlife Federation's Mayor's Monarch Pledge, and our town has officially committed to taking meaningful action to protect the monarch butterfly since 2021.

And whereas the town of Carrboro has done the following to encourage all residents to learn about and celebrate monarch conservation, education and outreach to residents, native seed giveaways, planting native milkweed and pollinator friendly species on town properties, and updating the town code to allow managed natural landscapes. Now, therefore, be it resolved that I, Barbara M. Fouche, mayor of Carrboro, do hereby urge all residents of the community to do their part by planting native milkweed and nectar plants to provide habitat for monarchs and other pollinators this, the October 2025. And would you like to say a few words?

I need to take off this.

Good evening, mayor Fauci and the council members. Thank you for this meaningful proclamation and for your leadership in supporting the mayor's monarch pledge. I'm deeply grateful to accept this proclamation on behalf of everyone in our community who cares about monarch butterflies and the natural environment we share. For almost ten years, I have been growing milkweeds and other native plants in my own garden or community gardens that we created together with other volunteers to help provide a breeding and feeding habitats for monarchs. Each year, I have had the joy of watching caterpillars transform into butterflies and then begin their long migration journey.

It is a small act, but one that connects us to a much larger story, the story of transformation, resilience and hope that the monarch represents. The mayor's monarch pledge reminds us that protecting pollinators begins with local action, planting native species and creating safe space spaces for wildlife right where we live. When individuals, schools, and the town work together, we create a healthier environment not only for butterflies and other pollinators, but also for ourselves. Thank you again, mayor Foshi and the council members for your vision and for inspiring our community to take part in this important conservation effort. Together, we can ensure that monarchs will continue to grace our skies for generations to come.

Thank you. Thank

The next resolution is a resolution supporting Operation Greenlight for veterans. Whereas the people of Carrboro respect, admire, and appreciate the individuals who selfishly served The United States Of America in the Armed Forces by placing themselves in challenging or perilous situations. And whereas the contributions and sacrifices of those individuals who served in the armed forces have been vital in maintaining the freedoms and ways of life that we enjoy in our local communities and whereas Operation Greenlight is a nationwide initiative to support veterans and raise awareness about the challenges many veterans face in accessing benefits and services. Whereas, approximately seventy percent of veterans experiencing homelessness also experience substance use disorders, and fifty percent live with mental illnesses such as post traumatic stress disorder. And whereas, approximately 200,000 service members transition to civilian communities annually, and an estimated twenty percent of service members will transition to civilian life in the near future.

And whereas studies indicate that forty four to seventy two percent of service members experience high levels of stress during transition from military to civilian life, and active service members transitioning from military service are at a high risk for suicide during their first year after military service. And whereas veterans continue to serve our communities in the American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars, Millie Dunvisi Chapter one hundred, Disabled American Veterans, Religious Groups, Community Organizations, and civil service, and as county veteran service officers in 29 states to help fellow former service members access more than $52,000,000,000 in federal health, disability, and compensation benefits each year. Whereas, the town of Carrboro seeks to join other communities through Operation Greenlight for veterans to shine a light on the plight of veterans across the country who are having a hard time connecting with benefits after serving their country. And now, therefore, be it resolved that the Carrboro Town Council declares the period from November 4 through Veterans Day, November 11, and ending 11/12/2025, to be a time to honor the service and sacrifice of individuals in uniform transitioning from active service. Be it further resolved that in observance of Operation Greenlight, the town of Carrboro shall display green lights on Carrboro Town Hall, and the town council encourages residents to participate by displaying a green light in a window of their place of business or residence from November 4 through November 12.

This, the October 2025. I am not sure if I have anybody to accept it in the audience, but that is operation green light. Thank you. My last proclamation is the Veterans Day proclamation. We will not have another council meeting until November 18 after I'm sorry.

November I'm I'm wrong because November 12 is a work session that we added to our calendar, but we do not present proclamations at work sessions. Veterans Day. Whereas on Veterans Day, we paused to honor those who have served in the United States Armed Forces, Whereas, the Veterans Day holiday began in observance of the anniversary of the end of World War I, as a day to be dedicated to the cause of world peace. And whereas, in service to this cause, veterans have made immeasurable contributions and great personal sacrifices in the most demanding of circumstances, an example from which we draw inspiration and for which we annually renew our fullest gratitude. And whereas, as we honor our veterans, we are mindful ceremony can repay the debt owed to veterans for their courageous and devoted service.

And whereas, the following employees of the town of Carrboro are veterans. I have I don't know if this is updated or not, I'm gonna assume it is the police department. We have Lieutenant Joe Thomas, Marine Corps, retired Captain Tony Fry, Army, Fire and Rescue Department, Deputy Chief David LaPlante, Air Force Edwin Renagar, Marine Corps, Recreation Parks and Cultural Resources Department, Valana Decker Army Reserve, Steve Harward Navy, Felton Page Army, Clarence Potter Army, and Anthony Stout, Army and our Public Works Department, John Garland, Army. Now, therefore, I, Barbara M. Fuxi, mayor of the town of Carrboro, North Carolina, do hereby proclaim this Veterans Day, 11/11/2025, to be a day to honor the invaluable contributions of Carrboro's veterans and several veterans who are employees of the town.

This, the October 2025. And, yes, thank you. Let's go ahead and clap that up. And before I sit down, do want to take a moment to honor the passing of two people, two community leaders within the last few days. Barbara Jessie Black, Executive Director of Community Works passed a couple of days ago.

Just an amazing human being, a community equalizer. And I know my own life has been very much touched by knowing her. And found out about a former Orange County Commissioner, Mark Markopoulos, who also has passed away. And if you don't mind, I would just like us to take a moment, in whatever way you see fit to remember these two individuals who gave to our communities in the way that they did. Thank you for that.

I appreciate it. And before I walk off, one of my colleagues texted something that I thought was really nice. We were texting about Mr. Markopoulos. And Council Member Haven O'Donnell shared with me these words, Each moment, each hour, each day, so precious.

Make it count. Such a long, long time to be gone and a short time to be here. Thank you, Councilmember Haven O'Donnell. And actually, I'm going to go ahead and welcome her up for the resolution that she is going to present. Coming up? Or you want to wherever you want to do it.

I apologize. I'm actually I'm a little shaky after hearing Barbara and Mark's names. And did want to just add my thank you to Xiaolong. I'm one of the recipients of his milkweed plants that he cultivates. And they've been in the ground, and I've had caterpillars, and I've had monarchs, thanks to Xiong Long.

So, you know, he's cultivating them. And, you know, if you contact him, you can easily, you know, get five or six plants and very quickly over the next year, they you'll have a dozen. So so thank you, mayor and the monarch's pledge. This is a human rights resolution advocating the right for all North Carolinians to safe and comprehensive reproductive rights and health care. This is a resolution that, 09/16/2024, the Carborough Town Council, unanimously resolved, and this is an update for 2025.

Whereas 09/12/2024, the Carrboro Town Council unanimously resolved to advocate for women's health and reproductive comprehensive reproductive rights as a human right affirmed that all people deserve access to high quality health care without fear of government interference or punishment, and affirm that North Carolina has an obligation to implement and protect human rights. Whereas with this resolution, the town of Carrboro reaffirms the stand for women's health and comprehensive reproductive rights as a human right. And whereas the Carrboro Town Council has a history of supporting full access to self comprehensive, to safe comprehensive reproductive health care, such as by unanimously adopting, in quotes, a resolution calling for the repeal of the Hyde Amendment and supporting the right of all women to safe and comprehensive health care in 2018, and rejects in the strongest terms legislation aimed at limiting or denying access to abortion. And whereas the Carbottown Council further resolved to urge the delegation in the North Carolina General Assembly to prioritize the health care needs of all residents to reject further attempts to restrict access to abortion and to increase investment in access to health care, affordable birth control, including emergency contraception, and comprehensive age appropriate sex education.

And whereas the Carrboro Town Council further resolved to encourage residents of Carrboro to speak out against these egregious attacks on bodily autonomy and make their views known to members of their general assembly. And whereas on 08/27/2025, in an attempt to evade accountability for grave ongoing human rights violations in the country, the United States State Department sent a letter to the Office of the High Commission on Human Rights stating that the administration will not participate in its upcoming universal periodic review, a mandatory UNC process through which countries review each other's human rights records. And whereas every u UN member country participates in the universal period review process to date, only two countries, Israel and Nicaragua, have ever attempted to evade review, and no country has ever fully done so. And whereas a government that silences accountability while expanding repression cannot be ignored and must be held accountable on a global stage. And whereas, many residents of the town of Carrboro are not aware of their universal human rights and do not know that The United States is a signatory to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and has ratified three human rights treaties which have legal authority.

And whereas December 10 of each year is a is celebrated around the world as Human Rights Day. Whereas treaties ratified by The United States should be upheld at the federal, state, and local level as they are considered binding on individual states and are the supreme law of the land under clause two of article six of The United States constitution. And whereas The United States has ratified and is bound by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, and the convention against the torture and other cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment or punishment, and whereas The United States has joined the international community in identifying reproductive rights as human rights, including in connection with the nineteen ninety four International Conference on Population and Development and the nineteen ninety five Beijing World Conference on Women. And whereas the United Nations Human Rights Committee has repeatedly found that abortion bans violate multiple human rights in the human rights, The United States is bound to protect, including the rights to life, privacy, freedom from torture, cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment or punishment, and equal protection. And whereas indigenous people, black people, people of color, people with low incomes, people living in rural areas, people with disabilities, immigrants, LGBTQ plus individuals, and other marginalized individuals are disproportionately likely to be surveilled, arrested, charged, prosecuted, convicted, and heavily punished within the American civil, criminal justice system due to systematic discrimination, to experience additional scrutiny from the American legal system.

And now, therefore, be it resolved that the town of Carrboro aligns itself with its human rights obligations under the United Declaration the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, and the Convention Against the Torture and Other Cruel, Inhumane, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment in accordance with Article six, Clause two of The United States Constitution and stands in solidarity with local, national, international efforts to protect and expand human rights for all, and be it further resolved that the Carrboro Town Council does hereby recognize 12/10/2025 as Human Rights Day in the town of Carrboro, Orange County, North Carolina, and commits to uphold and defend freedom, democracy, and human rights in our own town of Carrboro, Orange County, North Carolina, in our country and around the world. This the October '25. And I would like to make the motion for council to accept this resolution.

Thank you council member Haven O'Donnell for reading the resolution and for the motion. I would just need a second.

Seconded.

All right. It's been moved and properly seconded that we pass the resolution, a human rights resolution advocating the right of all North Killenes to safe and comprehensive reproductive rights and healthcare. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries six-zero. Councilmember Merrill is not here. And thank you again, Councilmember Haven O'Donnell.

Thank you all. So

we're down at town manager's update. Town manager Tony.

Good evening, mayor and council members. I'd like to remind everyone that early voting will begin in the new Drakeford Library complex starting on October 23 through November 1 in the multi purpose rooms. We also have a series of Halloween events starting on October 21 twenty fourth, I'm sorry. So please check out our website for a list of events for Halloween. Lastly, I want to mention that on December 6, we are having a Carrboro Chapel Hill parade, holiday community parade, that will start from Carrboro.

Just want to note that this will not interfere with the Carrboro Farmers Market. It's place I also go to as well. And so, we will be doing both events at the same time, and we'll figure out the logistics. Lastly, I do just want to also mention that I just want to reiterate that I'm so proud of our Public Works team. They are working hard.

They have not missed a beat considering that their facility was destroyed pretty much during the flood, and they have been dislocated. But they are still functioning and still doing a great job for this community. So, I just wanted to shout them out and that the town is actively looking for a better place for them to work out of and continue the great work that they're doing. So I just wanted to acknowledge that.

Great, great, great. Thank you for that, town manager Tony, for your update. And we are now down to our public comment period. I think the guidelines are on the screen. Comments are limited to three minutes for everyone.

We want make it fair for all that are here to give public comments, so let's adhere to three minutes. I don't want to tap the gavel, but I will because, you know, we want to be fair to everyone. And the first person that I had signed up, which I think, Marie, you helped her and she Bobby Fletcher, so I think not her. And so I have four people signed up for the downtown area plan. I think I'm going to wait, for doing the public hearing.

And that also will be for any others that want to give any kind of public comment then. And so that leaves us to Lars. Lars, Tropical Storm Chantal, welcome, and come on up.

Good evening, mayor and council. Thank you so much for having me tonight. I want to come here today and see many of you for the first time where I am not completely drenched in sweat and a black t shirt and basketball shorts. I really wanted to take some time and thank the entirety of the town staff as well as the mayor and council members who came out to support us and help our neighborhood in Weather Hill Point during the recovery from tropical storm Chantal. I wanna start by thanking the brave women and men of Carrboro's fire department and specifically thanking chief Potter for the incredible and heroic rescue that happened on the night of July 6, including pulling nearly a 100 people out of our neighborhood in boats.

Mhmm. It was it was an amazing effort. I was there and saw it firsthand and really appreciate on behalf of the entire community all of the work that was done by the Carrboro Fire Department and the agencies that provided mutual aid. That did not end the support that the town provided. There was an incredible effort to clean up the town or to clean up our neighborhood by the public works department as well as a huge effort of providing every possible available resource that the town could provide.

The town made sure that there were facilities available to support the donations that were coming in. The town made sure that there were volunteers by posting out on their website at any point that was needed and was overall incredibly responsive to any requests that we had. I want to note that at first point, around 75% of the homes in our neighborhood were impacted to the point of uninhabitability, not just crawl space flooding but power out. And over 60%, over 65% remain uninhabited today. We are seeing an influx of investors coming in.

Those investors are purchasing the homes at rock bottom prices. Those investors are, in many cases, engaging in tactics where they are then selling those houses immediately and sometimes on the same day as purchasing those houses to other companies. I wanted to ensure that the town and town staff are aware that this is taking place and can prepare for it as appropriate. I also wanna thank the town for their focus on climate change and community resilience. We are certainly going to need to focus on all of the elements of building a more climate resilient community, and our community looks forward to engaging with the town as able.

I also wanna note that the focus on affordable housing is something that is tied into this. That was and has been and continues to be one of the core challenges to the ongoing recovery of our residents. I have other items that I will send via email as my time is expiring, but thank you so much for your time tonight, and thank you for all of your support.

Thank you so much, Lars, for those comments. Those folks still are recovering from Tropical Storm Chantal. We're down to our consent agenda. We have one item, which is approval of minutes from town council meeting held on 10/07/2025. I will entertain a motion to approve this one item on the consent agenda. Seconded. All right. It's been moved and properly seconded. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries six two zero. Consent agenda is approved. Town manager Tony, if you want to take us to the first public hearing.

Yes. First public hearing is on the Carrboro Downtown area plan. Our planner, Duncan Dodson, is going to give a short overview prior to the hearing.

Okay. Thank you so much, Duncan. What I will say before Duncan gets started, let me open the public hearing first. But I do want to say that the recommendation is that the council receive public comment during the hearing. We're going to consider the attached resolution scheduling the adoption of the downtown area plan for November not seventeenth, I think November 18. Is that correct, Mr. Joyner? November? That is correct. Okay. So that is the direction we're going tonight. Go right ahead, Duncan. Thank you.

Thank you. Good evening, Madam Mayor and Council Members. Yeah. As the manager said, tonight we're talking about the downtown area plan. This, of course, has come before you in May for the work session.

We've been working on this for a little over a year. This is the public hearing tonight. As the mayor noted, there's a resolution to receive public comment and set the direction to adopt on November 18. One important procedural note before I hand it over to Danny, which is if you would like to keep the public hearing open, you will need to make a motion and set that date for the continuation of the public hearing. You do not have to keep the public hearing open to adopt the plan on November 18 if you finish out the public hearing this evening.

With that, we have a presentation from our consultant lead, Dani Wilson, from Friesen Nichols. And then, of course, there are a number of attachments and staff here available to answer any questions that Dani wants to throw us to. Thank you.

All right. Thank you, Duncan. Welcome, Danny.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. I'm excited to be here with you this evening.

Great. Okay.

I'm Danny Wilson with Freeze and Nichols. I know you've seen me here before and again thanks for having me back. I'm excited to present to you the downtown area plan. Just a very quick overview of our project team and the project itself and then we'll go through the planning process and then dive into the the plan. Our project team is made up of Friesen Nichols Inc and then PSG. And of course, working closely with Carrboro staff, the advisory board members, yourself, the community. We really appreciate everyone's input for this project. We couldn't get here without everyone's input and involvement. So really appreciate everyone who's been involved. Project overview.

So really, the first question is why are we doing a downtown area plan to begin with? This was a priority project identified in the Carbara Connects comprehensive plan and ties directly to several elements of that plan, in particular the economic sustainability strategy 2.1 a. And the study area you see on the screen here is really the downtown area, boundary of Chapel Hill on the right hand side or the eastern edge, and then encompasses a lot of Main Street, Greensboro Road, Weaver Street and then Jones Ferry Road. The plan I know was in your packets. It is designed to be landscape.

It is beautifully oriented if you print double sided. They're designed to be two page spreads. So it's like a a nice coffee table book. But it is laid out into two volumes. Volume one is really the meat. It it's kinda like the dessert upfront, if you will, of the of the meal. It has the introduction that gives a brief overview of the project and then dive straight into the master plan with and then the implementation plan which is really where the rubber meets the road on the project. And then volume two contains all the background information that feeds into volume one. So background analysis looking at demographic data and and census information and existing conditions. Vision and goals really ties in from the public engagement process and includes public engagement overviews.

And then the strategies and considerations, a lot of those elements tie directly into the master plan and implementation section. And then in the appendix is a little over a 100, a 120 pages of detailed public engagement summaries. So we have documented every public engagement comment we've received throughout the project to make sure it's full fully transparent and people can see their comments and how it relates to the plan itself. I was, as Duncan mentioned, before you several months ago, so I wanted to just detail real quick what has changed since I was here last. We did address comments that we received from you and and also comments received from the community as well as town staff to make sure that the language was updated in the plan.

The streetscape sections were updated to provide language clarity and making sure it tied more directly to the text in the the plan. We include additional information about affordable commercial spaces. That's been a recurring theme we've heard is making sure that the business space and affordable commercial space is highlighted and identified. So I wanted to make sure that was clarified and added some more language around that. We also include additional language regarding micro transit hubs.

That was something that came up with you all. Expanded tree preservation discussion on public and private property recognizing that the majority of the downtown area is private property. And so having a robust tree canopy will be dependent upon private property owners maintaining and adding to that tree canopy. So expanding some language around preservation and planting both of those. Also, provided more information and exceptions on building height.

Building height was one of those topics that has come up and there's a lot of different opinions on the preferred building height. So I wanted to look at tying in building height with some exceptions for affordable housing because affordability is definitely one of the main themes that has come up throughout this project. And also as the next bullet down, can see clarified that afford affordability is the most important consideration. So there are other things that also may be waived in the the plan to account for affordability. So making sure that architectural flexibility is in place, again allowing buildings maybe to be taller if they're providing affordable housing and affordable commercial spaces.

So added language around those items in the plan to make sure you had the guidance and leniency for future development coming to you. Obviously, we completed the whole project and implementation chapter in particular. So that is complete and full in the draft in front of you. And then we assembled the full appendix to include all the public engagement comments we received including the open house series that was held this summer. We had quite a few people interact with with Friesen Nickel staff as well as town staff through that open house series of five different events.

So our planning process, we started with existing conditions analysis and then that really started also our public engagement process. You can see that ran throughout the public engagement really helped hold into the vision and goals and then developed character areas, the representative renderings and strategies. And then lastly, we created the implementation plan. This project is directly tied to the Carrboro Connects plan. So there are numerous strategies and projects that apply to the downtown area that are identified in Carrboro Connects.

Again, this was one of the prior priority projects identified in the comprehensive plan. So many of the elements of the comprehensive plan also apply here. We try to take them down to the next level of specificity and have the items that were specific to the downtown area and the downtown area environment. However, there are many elements that are are very similar to the comprehensive plan and you'll see that similarity when you look through both. The central part of this project was public input and the public engagement process.

So combining that with the Carbboro Connects engagement that had taken place not too long ago really drove all aspects of this plan. As I mentioned, they're high level summaries and the document itself and then the appendix has much more detailed information from the public engagement activities. And then this was the first project to use the engage.carbarrownc.gov platform. So really kicking off the Carbara's engage engagement website for projects. You can see the list of public events on the on the screen here.

We estimated some of these but around 736 people plus or minus and then plus the town staff did multiple pop up events that are not captured on this list. And so many other people also were were touched and connected to and discussed with town staff on this project. So briefly diving in, I'm not gonna read the vision and goals for sake of time, but I would encourage anyone who is not to definitely definitely take a look at this. It does directly come from what we heard from the community. But the five goals I'll touch on really, build for climate resilience, ensure a range of housing choices, improve pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure, support small businesses, entrepreneurs, and minority owned enterprises, maintain architectural integrity of historic buildings, a brief summaries of the five on the right hand side.

Those are directly tied over to the implementation chapter which you'll see in just a second. Our master plan chapter covers the character areas, representative renderings, and streetscape typologies. The character area plan helps focus a variety of things. It looks at the multiple different districts that are have distinct and unique character in the downtown area. The downtown core has more of a commercial feel with smaller lots.

The core extension is generally larger lots, has a mix of commercial and some residential surrounding neighborhoods and the tan is really residentially, focused. And then the Lloyd Broad neighborhood is the historic Lloyd Broad neighborhood that has residential with a little bit of mix of neighborhood commercial activities as well. Each of these character areas has a two page spread in the plan talking about existing conditions and describing the existing conditions of those areas and why they're unique. And then also goes on to describe a future vision for each of the areas with a brief description, the intended uses, building types, building scale and placement, where parking is located if it's surface or structured, and then also some urban design elements that help make each area continue to be unique. The representative renderings, I know you've seen these and we'll look at them again here real quick.

But I do wanna stress this section is not just pretty pictures. There's a lot of really good text that goes along with it and I encourage everyone to make sure that we're looking at that text as well as the images. They are the images are purposefully created. They do tie in a lot of different elements that we heard from engagement that are included in the plan. And I do wanna stress it is not these are not intended to show how a property should be built.

They're intended to highlight elements that could be used in any type of development in the town and in the downtown area in particular. They're used as a guide for town staff, planning board, council to sit down with developers and property owners and and provide suggestions for how they could develop their property, how they could incorporate different elements that would be supportive of the downtown area plan and of the things we've heard from the community. So we did five renderings, four for private development and one is of a public space. There are variety of sizes as far as lot size and and units and everything. But all of them have affordable housing and and housing variety.

They'll have public or commercial space variety, mixture of public and private outdoor space, streetscape enhancements and a variety of elements on the the public streetscape, native plantings, trees, stream restorations, a variety of architecture, different scales you'll see, and then sustainable elements as well as art integration. So our our first rendering is looks at a mixed use development with a recreational focus. Can I will this show up online if I do this? Can you all see a mouse on your screen? Okay.

Great. So now if I can talk. The this shows stream restoration with native plantings to this stream here. I drive to the rear with a parking garage in the back, so allowing for on-site parking but tucking it out of sight in in the rear away from the pedestrian area. Having recreational focus on the side with a playground, open field for casual play.

If you look closely, this is actually gymnasium. So looking at, maybe a rec center, or, a private gym or something, but having a recreational focus here with housing up above. You can see solar panels on the roof, bus stop, enhanced streetscape, interior plaza with plantings, a spray plaza that could be turned off and and just be a plaza, so not necessarily wet, but it can be wet, and then even shows a movie screen for outdoor movie night in the summer, or something of of that fashion. The building height gets reduced on this side compared to the front, not only to help provide street presence, but also to blend in with existing neighborhood. You can see some shorter buildings adjacent to this.

Again, this mixes in a lot of different elements that directly relate to the the variety of strategies in the plan as well as what we heard from the community. This is a mixed use development along a greenway or a multiuse path. So this is the multiuse path or greenway right here in the foreground, native plantings. You can see this development actually fronts the greenway, so the intended front door is along this path. Again, there's parking back here.

So it does have on-site parking but tucked away in the rear and again, not interfering with the pedestrian space. Integrated art and different architecture. Taller buildings along the greenway, again, some step down to the rear, actives 1st Floor, and a variety of different unit sizes in this one. Contact sensitive development in the downtown core. This looks at a scenario if there's residential development on the right hand side off the image, but there's a a prominent street corner, what are some options?

So this looks at creating a colonnade, so really strong pedestrian environment. Second, you can see the the step up architecture on the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Floors to help create the human scale along the street, but still allow for some height. You can't really see it too well in this image, but this cut through here leads back to a parking garage. It's embedded behind these buildings. We wanted to make sure these were laid out in a manner that actually could be built, so did accommodate for a variety of elements on-site.

And then this steps down in scale and then blends into, you know, townhome, rowhouse, quadplex style architecture to blend with the surrounding neighborhood. This shows a mixed use development with a quasi public space, so not dissimilar to Carmel Mall and the the plaza out front in the green up front having a wide production environment, 1st Floor retail or commercial spaces, again, 2nd Floor could be office or or retail. And then, again, you can see taller buildings right on the street frontage with slightly step down to the rear. But really the strong public quasi public space, this could be privately owned, it could be have an easement in place, but integrating lots of different shade trees and plantings and encouraging people to gather and and enjoy being outside and together. Looking at a downtown green space, this is an example of a a park that could be built or elements that could be included in a park.

And we heard a lot about wanting a park in downtown in the downtown area, and maybe it's a series of pocket parks. That was an idea that came up as well. Again, these are elements that could be pulled out of one large space and scattered to create a series of pocket parks or combined as we've shown them here in one large public park. But again, wide sidewalks, street trees, bike racks, accessible benches and places to sit and eat, rain gardens, another spray plaza or splash pad. You have clustered trees for shade, natural shade.

There is interactive art. You can see children playing with interactive art features, integrated recreational facilities and amenities all throughout, so not necessarily a playground, but you can see tubes buried in hills so kids can explore and play. And then a mixed use pavilion, multi purpose pavilion that could be used for concert or just people sitting and relaxing, and then having trails connecting to the adjacent neighborhoods. So the strategies and considerations section I've mentioned, this has a lot of general information and best practices and overarching strategies and considerations. Just a few of them are listed on the right hand side.

These are all the different categories that directly tie in to what we just looked at with the renderings as well as a lot of the implementation items. And then the implementation chapter itself, the table is set up with three main categories, the built environment, operational programming, and policy and regulatory. And you can see that at the the top of the page. So this is an example page on the operation and programming recommendations. And then also the numbers, the OP is operational and programming.

If it's built environment, it's BE with a numbering system. The recommendation itself and then a description of that recommendation as well as a page reference to the most prominent location of information regarding this topic. Tying back into those five goals we talked about at the beginning of the downtown area plan as well as the goals for the Carbara Connects comprehensive plan. The time frame for starting the the action and then who's responsible for overseeing it. So you can see town asterisk is the lead.

So if there's a secondary supporter, they would not have an asterisk. And then we also looked at the climate action and race and equity goals of the town and identified if it was a negative, neutral, or positive impact to those goals and have those listed out. And then estimated budget, $1 sign is really maybe something that's nominal. You could cover it in this year's general fund maybe without even having it funded at the beginning of the year. $4 signs is something, you know, it's very expensive.

Maybe a bond referendum, maybe federal funding, maybe saving for several years, but not really something you can pay as you go kind of project. It would require significantly more resources than that. And then the funding source on the right hand side is just the general regularly occurring funding sources that local governments use for these types of projects. There are plenty of other funding source options as well that can be found for things. These are just the the more normal ones.

So this chapter also includes metrics and reporting to help the town assess year over year if the the plan is being implemented or if there are things that are may need some tweaking to to make sure that these goals are are moving forward. With that, I'll be happy to answer any questions. That was a very, very brief summary of a fourteen month long process and I'm happy to talk in much more detail about it.

All right. Thank you so much, Danny. I'm going to go ahead and go to public comment and then we'll come back around. And the first person I have signed up is Clara Zaleski. Clara. Welcome, Clara.

Hi. Thank you Mhmm. For this opportunity to speak. So, I didn't know a whole lot about this downtown plan until really tonight or this weekend when I tried to look at that huge 500 page packet, which was quite overwhelming. And that brings me to my point, is I don't know a whole lot about it because there was not any community engagement in my neighborhood or near my neighborhood.

I live in a neighborhood called Fair Oaks, single family homes. It's off of Hillsborough Road before you get to the McDougall Schools. And there could have easily been some kind of engagement at MLK Park or the cafeteria at the McDougall Schools, but I didn't but there wasn't. And a lot of my neighbors don't know anything about this plan either. And then, the other thing I wanted to bring up on the slide that was just shown in the beginning about public input, and give the numbers of participation.

And if you look at the community events, I don't know if you can put that slide back up, there's four events, but to me, that's not a whole lot of people. A 100 people, 42, thirty, sixty people, and then total was seven thirty six people, including staff. Out of 22,000 residents in this town, seven thirty six is really a low number of people being engaged in this process. And I think we can do better in getting the word out and getting people excited about this and getting people to come and contribute their ideas. So, my take home point is for any future community engagements for any project is try to include all of Carrboro.

And, you know, the single family homeowners, you know, we're not part of the downtown area, but we're important. We contribute to the tax base and we frequent the local businesses quite frequently, and I think it's just important to really extend that community engagement outreach. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Claire, for those comments. Next we have Linda Hock. Linda, welcome.

Hey, I'm Linda Hock. Okay, as quick as I can say it, I have spent my life in community building, community engagement, public information. Also, in conserving the environment and supporting the arts. I have been active on the Transportation Advisory Board for seven years, the Greenways Commission, multiple three nineteen grants, Green Neighborhood grant. I was on the UDO focus group where character and the charm of the town ended up being the main focus.

I was the first person, I think, to lobby and suggest that the Jones Ferry Corridor and Carbara Plaza was ripe for redevelopment. I knew nothing about the downtown plan until Saturday. It's basically a reworking of this town, a central planning document and a relocating from what I saw of several downtown businesses. I understand your planning board has suggested more time needs to be sent as has your climate and environmental board. I would second that.

I am the HOA president I'm not president, I'm sorry. Promoting myself. Secretary of nobody knows anything about this. Downtown business people I know don't know anything about this. This is a major, major change. It needs a lot of scrutiny. It needs community building. And that is the widest community possible. From what I saw, while there were seven thirty six people, there was some redundancy. There were this carbo in motion was two times.

I mean, I looked at the plan today really quickly. So, I would really caution you to go slow and be careful. Because you can if you break it, you own it. Thanks.

Thank you so much, Linda. I appreciate your comments. Next up is Jeff Gannon. Jeff Gannon, Welcome, Jeff. Good

evening. Good evening, mayor and town council. I'm Jeff Gannon here on behalf of the Climate Environmental Advisory Commission. We in in short, we are well, we we recommend that the town council approve the Carbara downtown area plan, but with modifications. And in support of our previous speaker, we found that the public engagement to be insufficient, particularly the neighborhoods outside of the downtown area.

We request extending the engagement period so that we can include feedback from these communities. Additional requested modifications. This plan ignores, a major element of climate resilience, and we recommend reevaluating the entire downtown area plan post Chantel based on topography. The downtown area sits at the highest elevation and water flows downhill, And it is flowing downhill into these neighboring communities and

or in

the neighborhoods. So we the flat map that's included in this plan gives no information about how that water is gonna move. Design elements. We request including and prioritizing a green infrastructure design element to replace and enhance the existing plants and landscaping, which is currently a subset of the green infrastructure. Green infrastructure is a strategically planned network of natural, semi natural, and engineered areas that integrate storm water, management, mitigation of urban heat island effects, improved air quality, enhanced biodiversity, and carbon storage.

We request this type of planned network that will enhance stormwater practices, enhance heat mitigation, carbon storage, etcetera. And for instance, there are details in the plan that give the planting strip specifications as zero feet, whereas in an urban environment, urban trees need at least five feet five to eight feet for their growth. So these are some of the details that we're recommending be reevaluated. And then lastly, we recommend that traffic, this plan is gonna definitely affect, downtown traffic, and we request an additional metric, which is regular studies of traffic congestion, to assess how and all development will impact main thoroughfares and side streets and side neighborhoods outside the downtown area. Thank you very much.

Appreciate your time.

All right. Thank you so much, Jeff. The last person I have signed up is Leanne King. Leanne King, welcome.

Hello, mayor and council members. Thank you for inviting us to speak tonight on the master plan for downtown. My name is Leanne King. I live at 203 Pleasant Drive, just north of the downtown study area. I've lived in Carrboro for twenty years. I'm the director of Cleary and Associates. We're a planning and zoning firm that's based out of Chapel Hill, North Carolina. I want to thank you first of all for including multiple kind of notices in your e newsletter that I get about what's happening with the town. I travel a lot for work, I couldn't make it to the meetings, but it was helpful to kind of see the progress and be able to connect in that way. Generally, I'm very supportive of the concepts included in the plan and its focus on equity, affordability, sustainability, and resiliency.

In particular, I support the future visions for each of the four character areas, including the intended uses, building types, building scale and placement, parking, and urban design. I think it was a very thoughtful outcome of the work and the engagement that's been conducted. I also encourage adoption of the plan with just a few minor tweaks that really I'm intending to kind of help ward off future confusion and kind of confusion about policy guidance as you use this document. And it's specifically related to the representative renderings. I think that they're very interesting kind of thought and visualization exercise, but I think they're a little bit confusing because they're not placed any specific location within the community, and I think that's gonna be confusing in the future.

What I recommend is that that actually be included in the volume two, the strategies and considerations section, so that it can be part of the considerations when you're looking at actual projects, but it's not the upfront kind of policy guidance. I think kind of separating those two could be helpful. You may also want to consider not including the second rendering for mixed use development along a greenway. It does depict a building that's six stories. When I read the building heights and the character areas, they were limited to five.

I think I was looking at an older version, so there may be flexibility in building height now. So I will leave that up to you to make sense of. But I do request that. The only other thing I was going to suggest is keeping the development considerations in downtown, that written section in volume one. I thought that was really helpful information to have in that portion of the document.

And that might just help with kind of clarity as you're using it. So lastly, I want to speak real quick about the connection between the downtown plan and the UDO. I'll speak very quickly here as time's running out. But I think there's a lot of change happening in the supporting neighborhoods surrounding downtown. And I'm recommending that as you talk about the UDO, you recommend exploring a maximum lot size for single family detached homes beyond which owners would need to actually increase their density and do missing middle housing. I'm really afraid about gentrification in the neighborhoods that we have in downtown. I'd be happy to talk with you about that idea. Thank you.

Very good. Thank you so much, Leigh Ann. We appreciate that. Those are all the folks that I have signed up, but certainly if there are others who would like to speak, come on up. Just say your name.

Downtown, well, obviously Downtown Area Plan.

Hi, I'm Jane Danielowitz. I am the chair of SEAC. The Climate and Environmental Advisory Commission's recommendation to approve this draft comes with modifications, and those are explained in the memo in the agenda. SEAC had one week to read the plan, and none of us had seen any of it before. We request one more time to convey all modifications to the council and to the planners and we would like to extend public engagement which has been insufficient both in downtown but particularly in neighborhoods outside of downtown.

The commission at this time requests three modifications with more to come. Modification one, to revise the design elements to include the green infrastructure and reconceive the entire plan with this as an overarching concept. As Jeff has already explained, plants and landscaping is a subset of green infrastructure and as it appears, it's an add on and after the fact in the current document, not central to planning. Whereas green infrastructure is a foundational design element for all development. And green infrastructure matches the other design elements in the plan, I.

E, bicycle infrastructure, pedestrian infrastructure. Green infrastructure is a strategically planned network, including natural, semi natural, and engineered areas, and advanced planning is essential. Green infrastructure drives the design. Modification number two, topography and storm water. Per Lars' comments earlier, use topography, superimpose a topo map onto the Carbara map to reevaluate the entire plan.

Downtown area is at the highest elevation and we know that the water is going to run into areas outside of the little map that you drew of the downtown area plan. Topo map overlay would visualize how and where storm water would flow and show how increased development in the downtown area will impact flooding in all neighborhoods within and outside of downtown. Modification number three, traffic and congestion. Jeff also spoke to this. More development will inevitably compound the existing congestion for people traveling through and into downtown.

Adding other metrics, another metric to the plan. Regular studies of traffic congestion will evaluate how future development will impact main thoroughfares and side streets. Ongoing traffic studies can determine the appropriate infrastructure to improve safety, which is I know a big concern of everybody's, and reduce and manage additional traffic and congestion. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Jane, for those comments. Is there anyone else from the audience that would like to give public comment? Welcome and just state your name.

My My name is Scott Muir. I live in the Roberson Place community just down the hill from the Art Center. I'm also on the SEAT committee with Jane and Jeff. And so not to repeat their comments, we're I'm in full support of those recommendations as well. I just I'm also on the board of my HOA, Roberson Place neighborhood. There's 91 homes, 28 townhomes down the hill there. And the only way in and out of our neighborhood is past the art center into downtown. So we we can't, you know, go pick up our kids from school. We can't go to the grocery store or leave our neighborhood unless we go through Everson Place. And I never heard of this plan.

Luckily, on the SEAC committee, so that's how I found out about it. And I only had days to to read, you know, this document

is a

170 something pages. Apparently, it's a fourteen month process in developing it, so it seems a little rushed to give people just days to read the document and process it. Even the advisory committees who are tasked with trying to make recommendations. This is important work and as I scan the document, I'm not saying that there were I disagree with any of the major points. There's a lot of great stuff in there. I love Carrboro. I raised my two children here. It's a great community and but these these documents and these decisions have have long lasting implications lasting years, decades into the future. And so we wanna preserve this as a special place. I mean, the community loves it just mean, I'm sure you do as well or you wouldn't be doing the work that you do and and we're grateful for that.

But it just seems like in the community engagement, it seemed like less than 3% of the community's population was and and it's unclear if those were even residents. People who were at a a community event maybe came from outside the community. I go in and out of this of downtown every day. I actually teach a class at the art center. I saw in the one of the presentations that there was a sign in front of the art center, but even though I teach a class there, I never saw this sign.

So I think the the community at large would really appreciate just pausing for a moment, giving people more time to read, provide comment, because this is an important document. It will have long lasting implications. So, you know, if if it took fourteen months to develop it, give the community time to read it and process it. So thank you so much.

Thank you, Scott. Appreciate your comments. Anyone else? Anyone else for public comment? Terry Buckner, come on up.

Hi, my name is Terri Buckner. I first moved to Carbara in 1979, and I've come and gone many times, and now I live in the ETJ, but my heart is still here in town. I have spent hours and hours and hours on this plan. I did know about it, and I did pay attention, and I've tried to bring an attention to others, but it's surprising to me how many haven't heard about it. But my real issue here, and the reason I'm speaking, is because this is supposed to be a plan about sustainability.

And sustainability, if you recall back when we first started talking about this, has three legs. And one of those is economics. And, you know, for all that I'm told that this is about economic sustainability and this plan, I don't see it. You know, there's I went through the Chapel Hill UDO, or Land Use Ordinance, whatever the acronym is, and they actually specify in their plans what percentage of a new development can be commercial and what can be residential. And they're not onerous.

They're, you know, like sixtyforty or fortysixty, depending on where it is. So, I think there just needs to be a lot more attention paid to how revenue is going to come into Carrboro through other means than personal property tax. And this is an opportunity to do that, and I would encourage you to ask for that aspect of this plan to be further developed. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Terri, for your comments. Anyone else? Anyone else? Council members. I'm going to go ahead and close the public hearing for council deliberations as well. Well, I'll leave it open, just in case. I'll leave it open. Thank you, Linda. I'll leave it open in case we want to continue the public hearing. Are there questions for staff or for Danny?

Of course, I we've heard a lot about engagement, lack of engagement in neighborhoods outside of the downtown area. That is a recurring theme. And so since it's a recurring theme, I think it deserves some attention. So I guess, you know, we need to talk about that. Do we need a staff member? Or anything else you may have questions. That was just me talking. Councilmember Frey.

Madam Mayor, I would love to ask a few questions of Danny if you can. Uh-huh.

Yeah, sure. Go right ahead. Danny, come on up. And so we can start with Danny, council members, if there are questions for him, which probably are.

Can you please also convey my thanks to your team for the enormous amount of work that went into this. As a couple of the advisory commissions noted, it's a large document. I got through it, I think, almost three times, and it took a while. Right? So thanks for all of that work.

I have I'm gonna come back to the engagement thing at the end.

Thank you.

But I think I wanted to ask a question about how you handled it was really clear from your detailed notes on the feedback that you received that there was a tension between sort of the main maintain charm priority and all of the other priorities, Goals that require growth and change against a natural inclination to keep what you have. Is there anything you can share about sort of how you balanced those when you were working through the plan?

Yes. So in the strategies and considerations section which is at the end of the plan, There is information regarding funding new buildings with existing structures, looking at massing scale, intensity, language. It's scattered throughout regarding compatibility where if you're building a new development, making sure you're looking at the surrounding and and stepping down and tying architectural design styles together. There's a lot of different language like that. And the plan to help support the existing character being maintained while still allowing development to take place.

Thanks. I think, you know, everybody's gonna have their own sense. From from my personal taste, it leans a little bit hard into the charm. And the reason I say that is because you you give an example. I think there's one of the renderings that shows really aggressive step down.

You have a neighborhood adjacent and so you step down an entire large block including the side of the block that is actually on a major thoroughfare. You're losing an enormous amount of space and sort of benefit of having created that impervious surface in pursuit of the sort of the visual look. But that's something that the the council can sort of dig into. I think my main questions for you actually are still I'm gonna go come back to the streetscape typologies, which I've had a which I have given comments on before and which I've come back to again. One thing I wanted to highlight that stuck out to me is maybe needing some adjustment is the way that you've mapped out the non core primary.

I think, you know, when you do a small area plan, you're inevitably bounded by the limits of the plan. But it can do some things to how you envision the interface between the plan area and the bit just outside the plan area. And I think that this has happened mostly in the context of your non core primary streets. In the map where you lay out the streets, you transition. So we have the core primary street, which just to summarize briefly for those listening at home.

The core primary street is a street where social life takes place. It's multimodal and pedestrians and cars and bikes and everything else are sharing a limited space. And so it prioritizes slow traffic so that all users can share the space safely. And then you have a non core primary, which is more throughput focused. It's a wider street, presumably with higher speeds than the core primary.

But when you draw this out on a map, you transition from the downtown street to the from the sort of core primary to the non core primary as you're going out into the neighborhood. So you sort of have this emphasis on we have to scale down the buildings for consistency, but we're going to scale up the traffic in a way that I think could potentially create a really unpleasant sort of edge condition wrapping around the downtown. Noting that sort of the places where you switch over, it's Jones Ferry changes over to non core primary at Davie, Main Street from Elm going up past Poplar, Greensboro from Shelton North, Merritt Mill South from Franklin. We're going to have our LUO updated to reflect a much broader sort of whole town look at traffic safety and speeds. And one of my concerns is that this may conflict with some of the things that we're expecting to adopt in our UDO in terms of how we think about throughput versus multimodal space on our streets.

The second note I have is actually related to the first so that you talk about the trade offs around bike ped. For instance, that we currently have a 10 foot sidewalk in downtown requirement in downtown. The council's got to think about from a policy and a function perspective, would we trade down to eight if that got us protected bike lanes? We have to think about trade offs within that cross section. But you've talked a lot about where space allows.

And then there's sort of a conflict still between the recommendations for a type of street and the suggested cross sections that you actually present. Like you say, for all of the typologies that the travel lane should be no more than 10 feet across. And you actually show that in the cross section of only one of the typologies. In the other examples, you're still keeping 11 foot, 12 foot wide travel lanes, presumably for a variety of reasons. But I think the Brewer Street example is the only one where you give the reason why you're retaining the wider lane.

I'm just thinking, you know, it seems that either the, you know, the recommendation doesn't hold or the cross sections need to be updated to actually show the narrower travel lane. And if you did that, you may have some more options to show us in terms of none of the cross sections that we were shown include actually protected bike lanes. None of them include street, you know, significantly sized spaces for street trees. I think someone emphasized that you can't fit a street tree in like a three foot strip. So I'm wondering if actually implementing the recommended lane widths would give you some more space to play with some of that design.

Okay. So I'm going to wrap up here. My last note is that there are some of the strategies in the implementation section have some conflicts either with other parts of the Carrboro Connects comprehensive plan or with our ongoing UDO work. And I'll call them out by number. BE o eight that calls for a centrally located park in downtown.

If it's actually centrally located in the downtown core, that puts it outside the fifteen minute walk shed for most residents who don't currently have a park in that walk shed. You'd actually have to locate that further out along the Jones Ferry Corridor in the extended core in order for it to, like, serve the purpose that the the recommendation describes. BE o nine calls for complete streets. As part of our UDO overhaul, we're looking at switching to something more in compliance with a NACTO standard. And I'm wondering if there's inconsistency.

I wouldn't want us to adopt an implementation that says that we're gonna do complete streets downtown even as we're saying that we intend to do NACTO citywide or townwide. And then I think there's a number of the policy recommendations. It's actually policy recommendations three through 16 need to be checked or maybe cross checked with a consultant who's working on our UDO overhaul for conflicts. We've just received the first code diagnosis and there's so we don't have anything adopted yet, but we're starting to get a sense of where that consultant is saying, hey, you need to do this or not do this other thing in order to facilitate your goals as represented in the comprehensive plan. And three, four, ten, fourteen, and 16 are directly in conflict with something that the consultant has advised us to do in our UDO.

So we'd wanna make sure that our downtown area plan doesn't conflict with what we're intending to adopt in the UDO. I know that's a little bit of a tricky feedback to give you because there isn't a new adopted UDO yet, but maybe you could chat with the consultants and say, you know, make sure that you're you're both swimming in the same direction. Or possibly some of those might need to be moved out of part one or, you know, rendered into, you know, sort of a less of a requirement that's gonna then bring us into conflict with our own UDO later. Thank you, Danny. I think that's all I've got on this.

Thanks again for a thorough document. Wanted Madam Mayor, because you asked us specifically about engagement, My problem with the engagement as it's been performed is not the one that we're receiving from the public comment that we're getting. If you look at the document, sorry, if you look at the document and you look at the review of the engagement work that they've done, the biggest shortfall of the engagement is that we did not reach our black community members. They're dramatically underrepresented. On the other hand, we've heard a lot from white homeowners, including folks who live outside the downtown area plan.

In fact, I think double digits of our feedback actually came from folks who live in Chapel Hill or elsewhere in the county. So if we're going to talk through like what do we need to do to improve engagement, the problem isn't that we did Carver in Motion twice. It's that we didn't actually reach that community to the degree that we needed to. So I'm not as worried about the sort of geographical bounds as I am thinking about how we actually get to the communities that are underrepresented in the current feedback. But I will add that I don't think there is there shouldn't be in this downtown area plan anything that is completely new and outside of what we saw in Carrboro Connects, which had a much more successful public outreach focus.

So I don't know if we feel that we can rely on the Carrboro Connects part and say, look, this downtown area plan, we want to give outreach about it, but it is also just implementing Carrboro Connects or whether we need to adjust for the fact that the downtown area plan itself did not reach that community again. Thanks, Madam Mayor. That's my thoughts.

Yeah. Great comments there. Thank you, Council Member Frey. Council Member? Oh, May I approach him?

Not I'm not Maybe Danny has some good ends here. This is my thinking about Complete Streets and NACTO here is that I think we are pretty likely to be preempted on NACTO specifically in Raleigh. Did that one die? There is currently a bill addressing

Street requirements Yeah. Which should not interfere.

Okay. My I guess my my overarching point here is that I believe complete streets as a concept holds NACDA requirements. I I don't believe we are precluded from pursuing NACDA requirements and it may be safer to say complete streets

Okay.

I think. But I'm open to other perspectives on this or if we are on top of this bill in Raleigh and have a perspective that is perhaps more up to date than mine. I'll I'll just say I just don't I just don't know that I actually think that like this is like a rectangle square. I don't think we need to call the rectangles squares here in this document.

What's the bill number?

I have no idea.

I'm just asking me to ask the same question about the street requirements.

Yeah. I'm trying I'm trying to look up the bill number, but my Internet is pretty

There's so many.

But did but I'll also say I think I just wanted to kind of add I think the more pertinent thing is that we do not need to specify NACTO streets in order to pursue NACTO streets per the remit of complete streets in this document.

Okay. Thanks. I just wanted to make sure that Complete Streets wouldn't be in conflict with doing that. My my research on that bill had led me to think that there was not a problem.

And do you is that does that track with how you're using the concept of Complete Streets and how you understand the relation to NACTO, Danny?

It does. We'll go back and make sure though. I never like to answer off the fly. So we'll definitely go back and make sure there's no conflicts there.

Thank you. That's just a little directive for now.

So I since I'm waiting, maybe councilmembers have other comments and questions later. So I want to go back to the renderings. I know when the renderings first came out, there were questions and concerns. I thought I heard somebody tonight maybe it was Leigh Ann how those renderings kind of would fit in where we are right now, and how you came to those renderings with what's on the ground here in town now and where you see those renderings. And I realize they're just renderings, but they're quite the renderings, all right?

So I just kind of wanted to know how you came to that versus, you know, what you see here in town now, and where you see those maybe finding a place here? Or something similar, not exactly. So

we did select actual properties in the downtown area and the renderings are based off of reality. Okay. We purposely did not disclose where those were because we were not suggesting whatever is there today should be demolished and they should be built instead. That is not at all what we were suggesting. We used existing properties to show reality that you could build what's shown in the rendering on a property in the downtown area.

That property does exist. And we try to select properties that if they were redeveloped as shown on the renderings would have a a profound positive impact and and really rejuvenate and and inject energy by drastically increasing residential units, having a variety again of of spaces for commercial uses, affordable spaces, some larger commercial spaces, some smaller commercial spaces, same with the residential unit mix. But we personally didn't wanna say, you property owner, we're showing your property something that it's not today.

Right.

And what

we didn't want to say, we didn't want anyone to feel like we were telling that their property should be something that it's not. Okay. We wanted to actually make sure it was done in a realistic scenario where it could be built if someone did wanna come and build something. And again, the the point of the renderings is to highlight elements that you could pull out and say, I understand this is a a four unit development, not a 60 unit development, but these are still elements you can use. Maybe they're just smaller scale. Was the

intent Yeah. Of Appreciate appreciate the response. Anyone else right now? Yeah. Go ahead, council member Heaven O'Donnell and council member Palmer.

You wanna go first? Just so voluminous. I you know, if you if you're ready.

Take your time.

Well, first of all, I I wanna appreciate how this document is laid out. It does take time to go through. I'm gonna admit to having one and a half re readings. And I did find that the implementation the chart for the implementation was really helpful. It was it helped to digest a lot of the information and show the cross pollination.

I think that was one of the aims, and I think that was achieved. Two things. I'm very interested, of course, based on my background and interest in the recommendations of the Climate and Environmental Advisory Council because I feel like

Oh, then he'll pull the mic over. You

mean my classroom teacher voice is not enough? Hey, John in the back row. Anyway, so you know, I'm very interested in the comments made by folks who've looked at the project through the lens of the Climate Environmental Advisory Board because of the ultimate sustainability and resilience within our community and how important that is and what we've recently been reminded of in terms of our vulnerability that we never know when it's coming. I like the suggestion and I think it really speaks to the work of that advisory board to ask that the green infrastructure lens be one that it's our second of our two pillars. And I think that that's one of the ways to not only address climate action, but it also will address some of the serious equity issues that we have in terms of climate vulnerability and the burdens of some areas in our community as opposed to others.

Lars' reminder about Weather Hill Point, and reminded me very much of when we were making decisions about approving that plan. So I would really encourage that not only your team, Danny, look at that, but that counsel strongly supports the recommendations of the CAC. I think that the in doing so, not only are we informing our own thinking about plants in general, but how having a green infrastructure filter also informs the UDO and I think that's one of the things that's important. Additionally, I think that the, I think there was a recommendation, I'm not sure, I was writing so fast, you know, plants and landscaping really be embedded into that instead of that being the overarching. I think that's really important.

I think one of the ways that we see that community is telling us how important they think this is, aside from our advisory board, is through our Green Neighborhood Initiative that is really starting to take off. And every single person and neighborhood that's involved in the Green Neighborhood Initiative, they are now ambassadors within the community. And I'm just astounded at the sense of community that has come from these initiatives. And it's something we don't see here unless somebody gets up and says, well did you know what we're doing with our gardens? Or did you know what we're doing with invasive removals?

Or did you know what we're doing with composting? We who sit here on the dais don't know because this is the work within the community, but that's exactly how resisting climate change and mitigating for it and creating a sustainable community happens. So I'm just going to put this little shout out out there to all the neighborhoods who are doing the Green Neighborhood Initiative. Get in here and present and share so folks know the sense of community that's happening around your efforts. So that's the commercial on that.

So in terms of the engagement, I think this is really tricky. And I think a serious conversation needs to happen on council and within the community. You know there's a sense that there's not adequate participation and engagement. So depending upon where you sit, you may feel that there's been enough or you may feel there's not been enough or you don't even know what's going on. Our job is to recognize that all that is true.

Know, otherwise we're creating a hierarchy of, you know, of of one set of sites over another. If community folks come in here, and it's, I mean this this is freedom of speech at its heart. When they come in and say, I had no idea or my neighborhood could have been a site because we're located next to McDougall or we're, know, Sunset Creek has a gazebo, whatever it is. We need to listen to that because if we don't listen to it and make it happen, then we're complicit in marginalizing voices. It shouldn't matter to us what somebody's bank account is to be engaged.

You know, I'm guessing a lot of folks who came may not live, I think it was said they could live in Chapel Hill, right? We don't know. But one thing we would know for sure is if we did pop ups in North And South, Carrboro, East West, wherever the neighborhoods are, and make sure neighborhood folks knew to attend or at least were aware something was happening. Because that way we're saying you matter and your bank account doesn't matter. Because we need everyone to be engaged in Downtown Carrboro.

Our local living economy depends on everyone seeing this as our hometown village. We're not going to build a fence around downtown and say only people downtown matter. And if we're concerned about getting into certain neighborhoods, then we just add neighborhoods to the list. I don't understand what the rush is. Either we all are included or not.

And I'm hearing people say, you know, they don't feel included. So that's not a good look for Carbro because that's not at Carbro's heart. So I just want to address that because I feel that if anybody walks out of here tonight or those people who are watching and they feel they have not been included in the conversation, they should know that they should come to us on council and the town and say, I want to be included. I want my neighborhood to be included no matter what it takes. Lastly, and it's not last, it's probably first, is the question about economics.

I've been concerned about how does Carbo generate revenue since the 2020 vision. Duncan's laughing.

Yeah,

it's been that long. Dolores, it's been that long. You know, our goal was, you know, increase the tax base 50%. Yeah, here we are twenty five years later. Nope. So I'm wondering how we start to look at economics and the shifting of economics. You know, economics nine months ago, ten months ago, looked very different than it does today. A lot of people have lost their jobs. A lot of folks are going to be losing their jobs. Didn't expect that to happen.

We're in a university community, we're in a research region and things have shifted and entrepreneurial enterprise has shifted and what are we learning? This is a transitional period. It's not going away anytime soon and it will never be the same as it was a year ago. That is gone. When are we going to have the conversation about what does it look like next?

I've been through a couple of iterations in Carrboro where we had fabulous vision. Carrboro was the first municipality in North Carolina that I know of back in the day 2000 maybe. We put in broadband wiring. Does anybody remember that? Yeah, we put it in.

Why? Because we expected to jump on that Internet bandwagon, create the kind of businesses where folks would be working from home or working on the Internet downtown expecting co working spaces. We built for that. The Carrboro Board of Aldermen, we sat down and we read Michael Schumann's Small Mart Revolution. I believe it was Joel Brown who brought it to us.

And we read it, we all read it together, we had work sessions, we built a local living economy program entirely around that. It impacted Chapel Hill, Hillsborough and Orange County. What does a local living economy for Carbro look like in the next three to five years? I would like to see a visioning session on that as a component of this. Because things are changing and that impacts entrepreneurship.

You have a lot of folks who are ready, willing and able to create pop ups. I I don't know where in in this plan we have room for non brick and mortar business and where is that going to bud and blossom. Because that's always going to be Carrboro. I mean, we started Weaver Street, we started Quintiles, we started many, many businesses in Carrboro when they reached a certain capacity, they were gone, right? So we're a start up type town.

What is that going to look like? And for the businesses that are here, how are we going to help them manage? And I think that we really need to tease out the redevelopment question, because three to five years is an eternity that businesses, small businesses won't have. We do not have corporate businesses that are large enough not to fail. And, yes, we have fleet feet.

Yes, we have some things that have strong legs. But, in this economy, anything could fail. So those are my questions and my comments. And I know I've been long winded, I, as part of the Economic Sustainability Commission, I've been listening and I want to be sure that folks in Carver realize this is a living and breathing document that we're hoping everyone feels that they have input including and especially business folks who I'm not necessarily hearing their voices for how they expect they could grow and change or the option for what kind of development partnerships they see that are possible because they are the landowners. So thank you for your patience with all that.

Thank you, Councilmember Haven O'Donnell. Councilmember Palmer?

Thank you. I want I wanna start by saying a range of thanks. Thanks to my colleagues for your words, for your work on this since significantly before I started in December 2024. Thanks to folks who came out tonight and gave public comment. Thanks to town staff and Priest Nichols staff for the significant work that went into this document.

I've seen multiple drafts of this. I've seen how it's changed as you've gotten an engagement from the public, and we'll come back to engagement. My my first question, I'm going to start with a question. I went back, and the first budget item I see for this project is the twenty twenty three, twenty twenty four fiscal year budget, and that's 315,000. And I'm wondering if this is a better question for staff or for y'all, if you have a ballpark of what fraction of that was engagement.

I don't have the answer. You're asking what percentage of the Because

I know that engagement costs us money. I'm very aware of that right now because I just bought postcards and I'm in the process of distributing them to let people know about voting. Engagement costs money, staff time to show up and we put money into it. And I I don't need an answer right now specifically.

It was probably as as a staff question.

And I'm sure that there time between now and the next meeting that if I ask for a specific answer, we can get a specific number. But I I just wanna hold that we have a lot of budget priorities and that, as my colleague said, there can be multiple things that are that are true at the same time that feel like they're intention. But I think I think when we feel things that are intention, it's important to go back to our stated values and the threads that we're pulling together. Right? We're Danny Wilson, thank you for this presentation.

You did an excellent job of of grounding it in Carbro Connects, talking about those vision and goals, tying those threads together. I just wanna reemphasize some threads across the downtown area plan project. We've had reimagining Weaver Street. We have the UDO project. We've had a little bit of talk about harmonizing this work and that work.

And the Carbro Connects comprehensive plan passed in 2022 underlies all of this. Right? I just wanna reemphasize that we have that foundation of race equity and climate action together. So, again, there there are different audiences here that I've already thanked. They're my peers on council, members of previous councils that have worked on this, some of whom I saw at Weaver Street today, Garborough Town staff, Reese Nichols staff, residents of Northern Carrboro, I've heard mentioned tonight.

I talked to some in person canvassing this weekend and residents of Lloyd Broad, black residents from elsewhere in town. So all all of these different constituencies, stakeholders, whatever term you wanna use, bring valuable perspectives to this process, have made this document better over the course of its production. And sometimes what they share can feel in conflict. For me, I'm sitting with the future vision of Lloyd Broad and how it's pretty explicit that he wants to cap it two stories. And I'm sitting and thinking about how that interacts with gentrification.

How do we keep people in their homes? We only have so much authority. We only have so much budget. So how confident are we that the residents of Lloyd Broad understand that tension in their ask of us? If they're asking us for that height cap, are they aware of what that may do with the next cycle of revaluation?

We only have so much power to hello to any county commissioners who are in the audience at home. We are extremely concerned with the history and pattern twice now of disparate impact to black neighborhoods in revaluation. But what power do we have sitting here? We have the UDO rewrite. We have this document.

We have planning and visioning power. That's the power that we have. And so how are those intentions? We had one speaker speak to gentrification. No one uses the words housing crisis, so I will use it.

We need more housing. It feels beautiful and great to imagine a green downtown that is greener than any downtown in North Carolina. And I wanted it as green. Don't get me wrong. I want it as green as possible.

I want trees that I can hug and afterward scan a QR code of the little display and get information about that tree downtown. I would love that. But that won't exist if there aren't people who can live, work, and play downtown, and we need housing for that. So I hear folks I hear folks like the folks that I talked to in Lake Hogan Farms who told me they felt disconnected from downtown in my conversation with them. And and I had a moment.

I I said, oh, this is feedback I've heard from elsewhere. And it then it suddenly took a turn because they felt disconnected from downtown because they could not bike downtown. And they saw me with a helmet on holding my bike because I had biked there. And they asked me how I got there. And I had to admit to them I took a route that I wouldn't feel comfortable taking my kids on.

But is that concern a reason to hold up this plan? I think that the housing crisis takes priority. I do I biked here tonight. I have a deep commitment to moving us forward on our climate action goals. I think this plan does a lot for that. I think I've talked too much. Thank you for your time. I think we should move on this. I think it's good. I think council member Frey, your feedback was excellent, and I hope it's taken to heart. But I'll stop there.

You're good, Councilmember Palmer. Take all the time you need. We appreciate your comments. Mayor Pro Tem now?

Thank you. Thank you. Really quickly with something specific. This topographic map, how big a lift do I mean, think there's a difference there's a couple of different approaches to a topographic consideration, some of which I can envision being fairly light lift. Think, let me say a little more and then come back to that question because I think the total re character, total reconsideration of the plan in light of the topographic map, I think I want to address this a little bit.

I'm the liaison of the Stormwater Advisory Commission, which includes amongst its members, in fact, one of Carbo's former Stormwater employees. So some deep expertise, as is also required in a couple of those seats. And this is something that we're thinking really deeply about to an extent that I don't know that a full reconsideration of the document would be prudent to ask for. I want to be really clear about that. But I don't know that if there's a way to appendicize, like a topographic look at things. Is that doable within the next month? I could take a no there. That's a real question.

So honestly, I've been and I haven't had much time to think about this because it just came up during this meeting. I've been wondering what a topographic map would really show on this plan. So we are at a planning level. Right? We're not looking at site specific development.

So the plan does identify, you know, reducing impervious coverage, integration of green storm water infrastructure. One of the implementation recommendations is doing a a downtown wide storm water BMP or SCM, right, to help with the existing impervious coverage and also encourage redevelopment, adding street trees and canopy coverage to intercept stormwater and, you know, many other elements to reduce the stormwater runoff potential for, you know, myriad reasons that you're all well aware. Looking at a a topographic wide, we did look at flood plain. We looked at receiving water bodies as part of this project. Looking at the topographic level, really what we'll see is today's condition and where water would flow today, which will not be true once development starts.

So once you start building on a site, you change where the water is is going. In theory, if you design it correctly, you can make sure it discharges it pre and post to the same. But I don't know at this level how helpful that will be. That is something we can talk with town staff about. I would agree it it would be impractical at this point to go back through and and start from scratch and relook at it through that lens. But I'm honestly wondering the helpfulness of even doing a map showing how water is moving when the goal is in the future it will not be moving as much as it is today and all we can look at is today.

Yeah. That's a perfect answer for the intent of my question. Because, I think like the topographic situation of downtown like as topography is what it is today as it will be. And so I think one of the reasons in my scattered asking you prompted me back to the Stormwater Advisory Commission. One of the reasons they're so sanguine about this is it is a very comprehensive stormwater document.

To your point, with the native vegetation and the BMPs and SMC recommendations and the existence of this preexisting, almost entirely impervious, very little riparian impacted area. Think that succinctly put, the Stormwater Advisory Commission was like, great. But think that's a testament to your thoroughness. And so in pressing on that a little bit, I want to think about the public use of the document and think about is it worth dramatizing our thinking. And I'm hearing no, it's not.

And I appreciate that answer. And to that end, also this is one of those things where I want to Scott and Terry and Diane Linda and Lee Leanne, I really appreciated your comments. And I think this is one of those things where I think it's good we're delaying a month. This is one of these things where it's tough, right? We never like neighbor to neighbor, we never have anybody come in and say, you have come to me for feedback at the perfect time.

That's just not comment we receive very often. But 3% is like, unfortunately in 2025, is a bitchin' number for public feedback. That's like, that's just, it's a really good, strong and we wish that was higher. I work in social media engagement, open rates for emails. If you are doing 8%, you're a millionaire. It's very hard to get people's attention and it's particularly hard to get people's attention with this kind of subject material. And so I really appreciate your comments. And I just want you to know that we take them very seriously. And it's hard, I think, as individuals when we have these outreach things to feel that. But just kind of wanted to take it down.

Are high level values, freedom of speech and things like this that matter. But one of the things that I don't want to lose sight of is our communication staff is winning awards left, right, and center. And like as an individual, if I'm sitting there in your seat, maybe I'm thinking bully for them. I didn't know about this plan. But I just want to take a moment and we hear you.

And so I think with this public engagement plan, I think one of the difficulties with these huge documents is not we always have this range of considerations to balance, which we to several different points made, we have some disproportionate demographic reflections in who has heard this. And as is just simply true across all public comment, this is an ungainly truth. It's not one that I relish talking about in this room. But single family homeowners are always overrepresented in public comment to government entities. And that's not like, Scott, I think this is the first time I've ever heard you talk.

So I don't mean to be sitting here and saying, oh, we've heard what you have to say. That's not what I mean. I just when we look at how we structure these programs, it is very difficult at the individual scale to maintain the neighborly thing that we want here as decision makers in what is, in fact, a very small town, 22,000 And so I'm troubled by the racial inequity. But we balance this every time. This is just like how we have to do it every time.

We have to take some imperfect things. And I think that our staff the main thing that I want to come back to is that our staff, I really think, crushes these. And it's not that we get perfect data or that we can ever get perfect data. And so that's why I think this is long winded, and I just want everybody who speaks to feel like we're hearing you. With a big plan like this, I think the month extension you know, often we would come in and move on in tonight. That was originally the plan. We moved it back a month. I think that's totally appropriate. And we have a month. Help us out.

We'll help you out. We'll, I'm sure, be communicating a little bit about boosting some extra feedback, making sure that people have opportunities for engagement. I've been texting with some neighbors who work on some of these advisory boards and things like that, too. But hopefully within that month we can have these conversations. Really that's ultimately the substance here is that this is something we take really seriously every time and that we are always available.

And especially over the next month, we'll continue to be available. So please do encourage people to hit us up And mass or one on one, however you think is appropriate, I can talk with any of you about like particular neighborhood sessions in the next month for those of us as individuals. That's entirely appropriate and I think we should do it. Thank you, Danny.

Thank you. Councilman Poussard, order school.

Thank you. Madam Mayor, and I'll I'll be very brief. I have one question because this has already been a long time. You talked a little bit about the engagement, and there was a question around businesses. Can you dive deeper into what are the conversations and any feedback we've heard from the business community here in Carrboro on this plan?

So we had several business owners and Duncan, definitely feel free to jump in. I'm not familiar with everyone we engage with at stakeholder meetings, but in particular stakeholder meetings. I'm certain in other space as well, but had business owners in the downtown area come and provide feedback and thoughts and suggestions for the the plan and and what downtown would look like in the future and and different elements that could support their business. So again, a lot of things are woven throughout. So there's not one section I can say, look at page 37 and you'll see the description for this specific item, but really encouraging people to spend more time downtown, having it be a welcoming space for everyone.

Just a general quality environment supports local businesses. We did talk again a lot about a variety of spaces, having small startup spaces as has been mentioned this evening. That's a very common occurrence in the downtown area, having a lot of small spaces, then also having some spaces businesses can grow into, so they're not forced to leave. Once they do hit that point of being larger than they can accommodate in the space and looking at other flexible ways to encourage unique business opportunities. In the implementation table, there are lot of recommendations around the business environment, direct support, having a pop up storefront location that maybe the town manages or a nonprofit manages that helps businesses.

If they're located in a building that's being redeveloped, they can temporarily relocate and and be in that space until their new space is ready so they don't leave downtown. To just celebrating businesses, celebrating volunteers who support businesses and do beautification efforts. There are a lot of different elements woven in to this plan to help support the businesses. We did hear from specific business owners. Like, I don't know if you know have any more about engagement with business owners?

Yeah. Since Or the or the Carbara Business Alliance. I'm pretty sure.

Yeah. That's how I was

So economic development director John Hommer Brown was unable to be here this evening, but he did send me a note. He snuck in the back. Then honestly John, I'll just have you come up here and talk about this yourself. I don't need to read your words if you want.

Woo hoo.

He's dressed for it. Come on John.

I was wrapped by the the presentation. I didn't turn around once.

When is John not ready? Correct. Welcome, John.

Good evening. Yeah. I would say don't from the staff's perspective, we've sent out a series of emails to our downtown businesses to engage them with the process. The CBA has been very much involved with the downtown plan. We've worked with their staff as well to make sure that our business community in Carrboro was aware and engaged in the program as much as possible.

Certainly there, I'm sure were businesses that were missed, but we really try to make an effort there to make sure that we were reaching out and engaging with the business community during this whole process. I do know for sure that we've had a few businesses. I know a couple of the engagements that I was at. We saw some businesses attend business owners attend those sessions. So there there definitely is has been some engagement here or input here from our business community, but we can narrow that down as as requested.

Thank you. That was that was just one of my questions. And, madam mayor, just to give you a heads up, I'm gonna move that we do not close the public hearing until next meeting. And I think we were all in the same, but we would leave it open because I'm hearing from some folks tonight that they would wanna provide some feedback and weren't able to make it tonight. But I think by keeping it open, it would be giving that opportunity. I yield back.

I think on this point too, one of the points that was raised and has been raised, I think it was Terry, know, referenced the land use ordinance in Chapel Hill is where some of that economic balance stuff is laid out. And we hear that a lot in the UDO. I I think that that, this document and the way that it feeds into the UDO, in addition to making sure that the business owners have time, we definitely hear turning this into a revenue generating plan. I think the exact proportions by which we generate that revenue will, as they are in Chapel Hill, likely be made more specific in the UDO. So I appreciate that point and we hear it very much.

I think everyone, has commented or asked the questions. And so it has been suggested by council member Posada Orozco that we continue the public hearing to, to that would be November 18. Eighteenth?

Do I have the correct date? November 18?

Uh-huh. It's November 18. The Tuesday? Yep. Is there is there a motion needed for that, Nick, for to continue the public hearing till November 18? So we're gonna pop up and get that motion.

Alright. Madam May, I move that we continue to, have this public hearing open till November 18 or the meeting on November 18.

Seconded.

Alright. It's been moved and properly seconded that we continue, the public hearing to November 18. It will remain open. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. Six two zero. Thank you, council members.

Madam Mayor, may I request a brief recess before we move on to our next item?

Yes. We will take a brief recess and come back at 08:15. We're in recess. Thanks. We are back in session and back from recess.

Town Manager Toni, could you take us to the next public hearing?

Yes. This next item, the purpose of the item is one, to hold a public hearing on the draft application for the town of Carrboro for federal community development block grant for neighborhood revitalization, and two, to authorize the town to submit an application for CDBG grant funds. Ann Marie, our housing director, will present this item.

All right, so I'm going to go ahead and open the public hearing, and we'll hear from town staff. I see Ann Marie and J. G. Welcome to both of you.

Thank you, Madam Mayor and town council. Let's see. So the I'm going to give you just a brief overview of the

Get to the microphone, Amaru. Just a I'm going give you a brief

overview of the application and introduce our proposed projects that we have for this particular grant. I have a quick message from one person who was going to be here from the for the public comments portion, and she had to leave early, but she said she would send her messages via email. So, Community Development Block Grant Neighborhood Revitalization Funds are managed through the North Carolina Department of Commerce. This particular cycle, there was a focus on the rural tier one counties. You can see that through a 4,750,000 set aside for those counties out of an overall, budget of of 12,280,000.00.

And then there's also another focus of hurricane Helene impacted areas. However, there is space for, the town of Carrboro as a small non entitlement area to apply for these funds. We can apply to, up to $950,000, and there is no local match required. However, leverage funding is encouraged and we do have some of that in our proposal. The project timeline, it must be completed within thirty months.

That means that our projects really need to be ready to go. They need to be, you know, pretty much turnkey projects. So applications need to meet one of three national objectives. The first one is to benefit low to moderate income persons. The second is to prevent or eliminate, slums or blight.

And the third, which is, a category that very few projects actually qualify under. It's to meet other community development needs that are deemed urgent. In addition to that national objective, the the application needs to meet one of three livability principles that the North Carolina Neighborhood Revitalization Program requires. The first one is to promote equitable affordable housing or support existing communities. That means targeting existing communities to increase revitalization within that area.

And the third is a value based principle to value communities and neighborhoods. And this would be enhancing any characteristics that are very unique about that particular community. So in discussing projects that we have, resources that we have with staff, with community partners, as well as with the North Carolina Department of Commerce, we came up with a couple of projects that we think will fit for this application. The first is we were meeting the national objective of benefiting low to moderate income persons. That that will mean, in this case, equal to or less than 80% AMI.

We will select the North Carolina neighborhood revitalization livability principles of promoting equitable affordable housing and supporting existing communities. And that means that whatever project that we select there will will support affordable housing efforts within that particular area. And in this project, we've selected the qualified census tract. But for housing, we can also do scattered site housing. So this grant will benefit not just folks who are in the QCT, but also outside of that.

So, our proposed activities, one activity has to be housing related. We've selected emergency home repairs for low to moderate income homeowners, And we're supporting existing housing in the designated area by improving parks and playgrounds, town commons for one, which is in the QCT, as well as Simpson Park, which is bordering on the QCT and will serve similar populations. The proposed project for affordable housing is, as I said, emergency home repairs program. The guidelines stipulate that these repairs are limited and essential home repairs to address health and safety hazards. And the way that that these these repairs will be funded will be through deferred forgivable loans per home, which means the homeowner will will have to take out a loan if CDBG funds are used for this, but it will be deferred.

It will be forgivable and the longest length of of that loan period is eight years. The work will have to be performed by a qualified nonprofit housing provider, and that will be selected through an RFP process. And then below, I've listed just a few of the repairs that would qualify under this grant. You'll see that there are some repairs that are repairs that we've typically done in the past, but also some which would qualify under our current weatherization grant that is still open and being worked on. So, for example, the heating systems.

So the way that we see these funds is that they'll they'll help us leverage our existing funds. We can use CDBG funds to perhaps cover some of the repairs that would be made under the weatherization grant, which would open up us to be able to explore weatherizing manufactured units that are owner occupied, for example. That's something that staff has been looking at. And, J. G, I think, can let you talk about your projects.

Thank you. And to feed off, Anne Marie was saying, the park projects also would help, ensure that all residents of Carrboro have the same quality of play and leisure activities in Carrboro. So we make sure we're providing the same similar amenities. And also so the Town Commons and Simpson Street Park are very similar in what the replacement be. Think of Baldwin Park Playground replacement be similar style of play equipment and size of both amenities.

We also wanna make sure we're providing inclusive opportunities for all residents. That's something that we're really focused on as we continue to improve, all of our facilities. At Town Commons, we would also, design features to mitigate the water flow issues. As you notice, some of that pour in play continues to come up. So we would fix that, erosion issues that we get with the as the water, comes down the hill there. And also like to incorporate some educational opportunities to engage citizens, you know, obviously, we have our farmers market here. So this is just an example of what the play we could do some purposeful play equipment to to mirror some of the farmers market and things like that as well. Are we

gonna do that?

That that's an option. Can do a theme

cutesy, Carbara's Cafe.

That's right. And so you get the farmers market logo in there. So again, this is just something that someone worked for us just to show some of the ideas that we can do to incorporate some of the educational and bring Carrboro into our play.

Right.

And then Simpson Street Park, again, it's another very similar. We'll make sure that everything is accessible features. We also wanna make sure we address any erosion, install rain gardens, and other features to mitigate runoff if you know it sits on top of that hill and how that water comes straight down towards Main Street. Then also we just had the proclamation knife for butterfly gardens, and we'd like to probably insert one here as well to help support pollinators and biodiversity. And again, more signage to help spread awareness about our importance of climate action and sustainable sustainable features that were included in that park as well.

Can we answer any questions?

I think council member Haven O'Donnell has a question. Thank you for the presentation.

Yeah. My question is for JG. Thank you for this. This is I love the idea of the Carbo Cafe kitty lattes. I think it's just great.

But my question is really not so much about this particular CDBG grant, but it's a larger question regarding Rex And Park. Is there any possibility in the near to mid term future that we can have community basketball park space in Carrboro other than Anderson that a lot of children can't get to. I grew up with, you you just go down the street and you could have a pickup game of basketball. You know, in some of the neighborhoods people have put up basketball hoops, but we really, I mean, we're a basketball town. There any possibility in the future of getting some regulation size basketball courts or half courts somewhere in parks around town.

Yeah. We could take a look. I know Brewer Lane has a basketball court down there off of Brewer Lane. We do have another one outside of Anderson there. Baldwin Park also thank you. Baldwin Park also has basketball court there as well. So we have at least two of those that have walkable communities that can get to those, but it's something we can look at throughout town. As we as we all know, we're looking at how do we provide parks within a ten minute walk shed to all residents. So as we continue to look at additional parks, that could definitely amenity that we can look into.

Yeah. That'd be great. I mean, because people keep asking me and, you know, I mean, you know, if I'm gonna play a game of horse, I just go right down the street and somebody's got a basketball court. But that's not true for everybody. Yes, Alright. Thanks.

Thank you so much. Any other questions, council members? Looks good, doesn't it? Everybody good? What do we have here? We have, attachment A.

Council members? Madam Mayor, do we have any public comments?

Oh, I'm sorry. I'm about to bust out. There was, one, but you said she would send

to leave. So she'll, the public comment period is open is open through October 26, so anyone can send in comments via email straight to me. But for the public hearing portion, we did have one person ready to speak, but she needed to leave at 08:00. So I'm not aware of anyone else, here, unless our town clerk knows of anyone who has signed up. Yes.

We

did do one public hearing, but we did not have anyone, arrive at that one. We've had public comments coming in via email rather than coming out to the first public hearing.

The sign language helped me. So there's that one person, and there's attachment A.

So I'll move attachment A.

For procedure reasons, do we need to close?

We were going to close it up. Yes, thank you. We'll close the public hearing. If there's no further questions or deliberations, council members, there is attachment a, and we will hear from the one person. Do you know anything about what, what they were wanting to say or relay to the council?

Yes, yes. It was Dolores Bailey of Empowerment, and she just wanted to express her support for submitting the Oh,

yes. So we're good to, you know, just kind of roll. So we'll close the public hearing. There are no further comments or questions. Council members? Move attachment. Thank you so much. Council Member Posada Orozco and Council Member Haven O'Donnell. All in favor of passing Attachment A, please say aye. Any opposed? Motion carries six-zero. Thank you. Anne Marie and J. G. Very good. Easy. Town Manager Tony, I believe this is the last item.

Yes, this is the only item on the general agenda. It's an information item only. No action is required. It provides you all with a presentation that will be done by Malden and Jenkins, and they are our independent auditor. And Chaz is going to kick this off, but I do want to say how proud I am of our finance department, and Chaz is doing a great job in shaping out his team. And so, I think this report will reflect that.

Thank you very much, Manager Tony. I appreciate you and your leadership. Members of the council, I'm here tonight to introduce Malden Jenkins, our independent external audit firm. This item is a presentation of the results of the annual independent external audit for the fiscal year ended 06/30/2025. I would like to extend a thank you to Malden and Jenkins for their work on this audit and recognize the contributions of the town staff who contributed to it. Particularly, Kelly Lee is the town's accounting manager. She's here in the audience tonight. And mister Darryl Key is the town's deputy finance director. But I will hand it over to miss Leanne Bagassala.

Good evening. I know that I'm standing in between you guys and leaving, so I will keep this short and brief. Last time I presented to you was in April. That was our fiscal year 2024, and you can tell that we got it done a lot faster this year and on time. So that's big kudos to the town and getting everything ready for us. So the presentation tonight, I'm gonna tell you who our engagement team is. Those are the folks that worked on your audit, and we'll go over the different audit opinions you have in your financial statements. There's a couple of slides on required communication, and then there's a couple GASB's, pronouncements that are coming up, so we'll mention those. However, we don't think they will affect the town that much. And then at any time, you can feel free to stop me, and I'll answer your questions.

So this slide right here depicts who Maldons and Jenkins is. We are a top 100 firm. We currently work operate in six states and have 14 offices. A third of our practice is government governments, and we have a lot of governments now in North Carolina. We have a office, based out of Raleigh, and we're expanding rapidly and gonna move into a new new building, next year to accommodate our growth.

I served as your engagement partner on the audit. That means I ultimately signed your audit opinions. Tim Lyons served as your quality review partner, so he just makes sure that our audit team does exactly what they need to do, and he he overall reviews the audit from a high level standpoint. And then Kayla served as your engagement manager along with multiple other staff that we had. We had the same team on the fiscal year twenty twenty five audit as we did on the fiscal year twenty twenty four audit.

From an opinions perspective, you have an opinion in the front of your financial statements that basically lets you know what our that our audit was performed in accordance with government auditing standards as well as generally accepted, standards in The United States Of America. We consider the internal controls of the town for purposes of expressing an opinion on the town's basic financial statements, but not for providing assurance on your internal control structure. Our our opinion is to provide reasonable assurance, not absolute assurance that the basic financial statements are free of material misstatement, but ultimately, the financial statements that are presented for the fiscal year are the town's responsibility. For the financial audit for fiscal year 2025, you received an unmodified or a clean audit opinion. That's the highest level assurance that we can provide that your financial statements present fairly in accordance with GAAP.

Our responsibility, however, doesn't extend beyond that report. Within your financial statements, you do see the we have the Carbrel Tourism Development Authority. We also audit the authority, and that report that we issued was dated September 24, and that they also received an unmodified or a clean audit opinion. Within your financial statements, you also have two audit opinions that are included in the back of the financial statements in the compliance section. The first opinion that is provided is our report on government auditing standards, also called a yellow book audit.

In that audit, you received a clean audit. There were no material weaknesses or significant deficiency identified, and we had no instances of noncompliance. So big improvement from last year. There was there was nothing to report. So everything that, you know, was brought up as a concern last year got fixed.

From a compliance report perspective, we do review the town's expenditures on federal and state grants. In the current year, there wasn't enough federal award program expenditures to require an audit over a federal award. The threshold is 750,000 this year. Next year, it would go up to 1,000,000. So we didn't have to audit a federal award like we did last year, but we did end up auditing your POW bill or transportation funds.

And in that report that we issued, we issued an unmodified or clean audit opinion. We did not find any material weaknesses or significant deficiencies related to that program. So the next step for us to do is to submit your financial statements to the local government commission. The the TDA's already been submitted and accepted, but we'll go ahead and get the town submitted. The due date is not till December 31, but it's on my list.

I'll get that done as soon as possible. And then we'll just wait to hear back from the the local government commission to see if they accept it. One of the things that you might have had to deal with in prior years are what we call the financial performance indicators or concern, where the town has to respond and say how you're gonna fix those. You have none this year, So y'all will be done after this presentation. So very, very clean audit opinion. So a couple of our required communications. These are presented to you in the form of a presentation instead of a letter. There are a lot of significant accounting policies included in the financial statements. They're in note one. In the fiscal year, we did implement two GASB standards.

One is called compensated absences. That's GASB one zero one and GASB one zero two, which are certain risk disclosures. They're not material to the town. So we implemented and determined they were not material. So you don't see any changes reflected in your financial statements for those.

And overall, we did review all the policies that the town had and ensured they were in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles. Also, within your financial statements are a couple estimates that are made by the town. Those some of those were related to, like, your pension and OPEB, which are actually determined estimates, and our review of those just determined that we didn't have any issues with the estimates that the town was making. From a relationship standpoint, like I mentioned, we had a very good audit this year. We got everything done and received timely.

We got full cooperation from town's management and staff. There were no disagreements that we had during the audit. If there was, I would let you know if we had any disagreements. As part of issuing the audit, we do require management to sign what's called a management representation letter that basically says all the information they gave us was accurate and complete, and so that gets signed in order for us to issue our audit opinions. During the audit or even during the year, we are not aware of the town consulting any other accountants.

We like to be the primary person that gets consulted during the year with implementations of new standards or just anything technical. We like to be there throughout the year to help with those and the the financial impact that they would have. And then the last point on here says that we are not aware of any significant issues related to management's plans, conditions, or strategies that would affect the financial statements. From an audit adjustment standpoint, there was no past audit adjustment. So the books and records that we received were very clean, and we didn't have anything that we found needed to be recorded.

From a financial disclosure perspective, we review the financial statements to make sure that they are clear, consistent, and mutual, and we have no issue with the disclosures. They support the financial statements. The third one I'm here, this is the one that always trips me up, but basically it says that when you provide your financial statements to anyone, don't take out our opinions or don't add to the financial statements, just give them as they're presented. And then the last one is external auditors, we are independent of the town, are paid by the town to perform an audit, but we are not a part of the town or the TDA. In this next slide, there is a standard, there's actually two that are coming up, but this one that I presented here is a GASI one zero three financial reporting model.

We will have to implement this in the town statements next year. It just helps clarify something. So there's a couple different adjustments that we'll make to the management discussion and analysis, but no financial impact will probably come from this standard. It'd be more of a disclosure perspective. The only thing we will do is we will move the budget schedules from the front of the statements to the back of the statements.

And then there's always projects going on, and these are the same slides I presented in April. There has not been any movement on these projects. When whenever there is movement on these, we will meet with the town to make sure they understand any GASB's that come out to make sure they're properly implemented. And my last slide basically tells you that as an added service to all of our government clients, we offer free continuing education. That's the the CPE that folks need to maintain their CPA license, and we provide that free of service. But also, just if anybody wants to attend a training on different topics, we have a lot of those. We do those quarterly. And in this slide, it gives you an email address. If you would like to be added, I can add you to that. Any questions?

Thank you for the presentation. Thank you, Chaz, and the team. Council members, any questions or comments for Chaz? I see Councilmember Frey. She's sliding to the microphone.

Just leaning in to say this is a great relief to us to have good support in the town's management and good support from our auditor. So thank you both.

Do you wanna do any inconsistencies next year to like I

don't know what.

No. I

do not like spice. I like clean Danny.

Thank you both so much.

Anyone else, council members? So we will, accept the report. And thank you so much.

Thank you.

Very good.

Is there a motion to adjourn?

Second.

It's been moved and properly seconded that we adjourn this meeting. Are you ready for the question? All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries.