City Council - Regular Meeting

I would like to call to order the Concord City Council work session. Welcome everyone. Councilman Sweatt is trying to connect to us virtually and has been unsuccessful so far, but he just sent a message that he would be joining us shortly. So we're going to begin the meeting with some presentations, which I'll come down front for. How are you, sir?

Okay, did you want to comment before I read the proclamation or

I can do it after.

Okay, Well, this is a proclamation for National Public Works Week, which I will now read. Whereas public works professionals focus on infrastructure, facilities, and services that are of vital importance to sustainable and resilient communities and to public health, high quality of life, and well-being of the people of Concord, North Carolina. And whereas these infrastructure facilities and services could not be provided without the dedicated efforts of public works professionals who are engineers, managers and employees at all levels of government and the private sector who are responsible for rebuilding, improving, and protecting our nation's transportation, water supply, water treatment, and solid waste systems, public buildings, and other structures and facilities essential for our citizens. And whereas it is in the public interest for the citizens, civic leaders, and children in Concord, North Carolina to gain knowledge of and maintain an ongoing interest and understanding of the importance of public works and public works programs in their respective communities and whereas this year, 2026, marks the sixty sixth Annual National Public Works Week sponsored by the American Public Works Association. Now therefore, I, Stephen M Morris, mayor of the city of Concord, North Carolina, on behalf of the city council, do hereby proclaim the week of May 2026 as National Public Works Week and urge all citizens to join with representatives of the American Public Works Association and government agencies in activities, events, and ceremonies designed to pay tribute to our public works professionals, engineers, managers, and employees to recognize the substantial contributions they make to protecting our national health, safety, and advancing quality of life for all.

Thank you, sir.

Well, thank you. Thank you, mayor. Yes. The, the May is is always the National Public Works Week, for APWA, American Public Works Association. And, this year, like many years, during that week, we'll have a celebration at the Brown Operations Center.

These folks up here are are representatives of the men and women that do that work day in and day out. I'll just quickly go through them. Water resources, Seth Blackwelder, Aaron Boyd, Chris Reed, Buildings and Grounds, Mitch Hodges, Transportation, Daniel Ledbetter, Solid Waste, Manson Cooper Fleet, Scott Dry and Electric, Luke Bowen. We have engineering, surveying, folks from purchasing and buildings and grounds. All of those departments are at the Brown Operations Center. They all make what public works is at the city and and make make the world go around here.

Great. Thank you. We certainly appreciate what you do, and I'll offer this proclamation to you, and I hope that you guys will give our council members an opportunity to shake your hands before you go back down and thank you. We appreciate you. Okay.

Great. Thank you. Yes, sir. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it.

Thank you. Next, I think I'm going be joined by Chief Hughes for our next proclamation. And I'll read this one and give you a chance to make a few comments. Whereas there are more than 826,000 law enforcement officers serving in communities across The United States, including the dedicated members of the City of Concord Police Department, and whereas since the first recorded death in 1786, there are currently 27,351 law enforcement officers in The United States that have made the ultimate sacrifice and been killed in the line of duty, including three members of the Concord Police Department who were killed in the line of duty. Officer William J.

Kearns, 09/02/1899. Ralph Chandler Kennerly, 10/20/1920, and Jason Nicholas Shooping, 12/16/2020. And whereas the names of these dedicated public servants are engraved on the walls of the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial in Washington DC and whereas three forty five new names of fallen heroes are being added to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial this spring, including one hundred and forty five officers killed in 2025 and one hundred and ninety five officers killed in previous years, and whereas the service and sacrifice of all officers killed in the line of duty will be honored during the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund's thirty eighth candlelight vigil on the evening of 05/13/2026. And whereas the candlelight vigil is part of National Police Week, which will be observed this year, May '16 and whereas 05/15/2026 is designated as peace officers Memorial Day in honor of all fallen officers and their families and US flags should be flown at half staff. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the city of Concord Council will observe May 2026 as National Police Week in Concord, North Carolina, and publicly salutes the service of law enforcement officers in our community and in communities across the nation.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you.

So, mayor and council, just thank you for this proclamation and for thinking about all the fallen law enforcement officers not just in Cabarrus County but across this country this week. And I would ask for you each to think about that each day as we go through the week and also to remember that that is sometimes the cost of the country in which we live in. And you have, thankfully, in our community, women and men like you have standing up here today that are willing to be that representative and be that person that stands in the stands in the gap between ourselves and and those people that would do harm to us and thank you again. Please remember our ones here in Concord and in Cabarrus County and if you have never visited the Cabarrus County Law Enforcement Officers Memorial, it's located right beside the government center and across from the sheriff's office. Would encourage you to stop by that has everyone's names in Cabarrus County that have been killed in the line of duty.

And interestingly, no government money went to that memorial. That was all done through public support and public fundraiser back in the day. So if you have a chance, just please stop by and read those names. You.

Thank you. We appreciate what you do every day and I'll present that to you. And I hope we'll get a chance to shake your hands as well. Thank you. Thank you.

You. You. Oh, picture again. Alright. Thank you.

Yes, sir. Thank you. Appreciate you. Thank you. Thank you again.

Okay, at this time I would like to ask our clerk Leslie Jenkins to come down and join me. She's probably not too pleased about that. She'll tell me later. But I am happy to present this proclamation in recognition of professional municipal clerk's week. Whereas the office of the professional municipal clerk is a time honored and vital part of local government that exists throughout the world and whereas the Office of the Professional Municipal Clerk is the oldest among public servants and whereas the office of the professional municipal clerk provides the professional link between the citizens, the local governing bodies, and agencies of government at other levels and whereas professional municipal clerks have pledged to be ever mindful of their neutrality and impartiality rendering equal service to all and whereas the professional municipal clerk serves as the information center on functions of local government and community and whereas professional municipal clerks continually strive to improve the administration of the affairs of the Office of the Professional Municipal Clerk through participation in education programs, seminars, workshops, and the annual meetings of their state, provincial, county, and international professional organizations and whereas it is most appropriate that we recognize the accomplishments of the office of professional municipal clerk.

Now, therefore, I, Steven M Morris, mayor of appreciation to our professional municipal clerk, Leslie Jenkins, and to all professional municipal clerks for the vital services they perform in their exemplary dedication to the communities they represent. Congratulations and thank you. Everything that you see operating up here smoothly, all the graphics on the screen, all the information we receive comes from Leslie. So we we could not do it without you and we certainly appreciate and value having you and invite you to make any comments you'd like to make.

Well, I want to thank first and foremost our city manager for giving me the opportunity to serve in this role and to thank the staff for words of encouragement and support. Thank you so much.

Great. Thank you.

Thank you.

Yes. And if I had to guess, she probably typed up this proclamation

for us.

So please give our council members an opportunity to say thank you.

Okay. Thank you so much.

Okay. Okay, next I'd like to call up Lindsey Manson to tell us about some awards that our communications folks have received.

Yes, thank you, Mr. Mayor. Very honored to be up here and recognize our team. We earned a first place, award for the North Carolina, City and County Communications Association for our work on crisis communications. We were specifically recognized for our work during the tree lighting incident. It was

a

very difficult and scary time for so many in our community, and we're both just very proud of the way that all of Team Concord responded in that night and throughout the days that followed. But I'm especially proud of our team for the way that were able to trust and just help the city get through a difficult time. The result was that we were able to proceed with the parade and the following weekend, residents felt safe coming back downtown for a successful small business Saturday. For Megan and I, something that really meant a lot to us and that we know that we knew in those moments we had done a good job after a lot of long hours was that we saw our words repeated back to us from the community in the comment section on social media and so that was really validating that we that they felt seen, they felt heard, that the message wasn't just received by them but they embraced it and again, the result was that we were able to continue with that weekend and just want to take a moment to especially recognize Megan. She really cares about the community.

She loves what she does. She works really really hard. A lot of long hours and she's just a really great teammate to everybody. So, cannot do what I do without Megan and without our entire public affairs team. And I'll borrow some words from our former aviation director.

He always said he had a small but mighty team and we certainly have that as well. We are a small team and it means a lot to get this recognition when we put our work up against teams that are much much larger than us. A lot more people, more resources, and we continue to be, you know, honored as the top in not just the state but across the nation and so small mighty, but well rounded and proud of the team that we've now earned these recognitions for social media, graphic design, or website work, a multi platform campaigns, writing, photography, videography, and now crisis communications.

Great. Congratulations. Thank you. And not fair that nobody came running out to make your picture. Yeah.

Okay. Next up, we have, another, proclamation, and this is for Frontline Worker Appreciation Month. Whereas frontline workers are the builders of our community, exercising curiosity, compassion, courage, and creativity to provide essential services that ensure the safety, health, and education of our residents. And whereas over 9,000,000 health care workers across The United States serve in hospitals, clinics, and long term care facilities, often placing themselves at risk to provide life saving care, and whereas firefighters respond to an estimated 36,000,000 emergency calls each year, over 800,000 sworn law enforcement officers nationwide work tirelessly to uphold the law and ensure public safety. And emergency medical services, EMS personnel respond to more than two forty million calls annually.

And whereas teachers dedicate their careers to shaping the future of our communities with over 3,700,000 educators in The U. S. Providing knowledge and guidance to our youth and whereas frontline workers embody the essence of builders, flexible thinkers, and constructive problem solvers who respect the dignity of all people by dedicating themselves to overcoming challenges and uniting communities. Now, therefore, I, Stephen M Morris, mayor of the city of Concord, do hereby proclaim the month of May as Frontline Worker Appreciation Month in the city of Concord, North Carolina and encourage all residents to join in recognizing and honoring the heroic contributions of our health care workers, firefighters, law enforcement officers, EMS personnel, and teachers. Thank

you.

Alright. Okay. We move now to informational, items. And first up, we have a presentation from attorney Paula Yost and Cabarrus County District Attorney, Ashley Shanley. Welcome.

Thank you, mayor. It's good to see you. I am Paula Yost. For those of you who don't know me, it's very nice to meet all of you. We our team decided that we wanted to do a little bit more outreach this year to our our towns and municipalities than just doing. This is a presentation we've done to the Board of Commissioners annually for at least thirteen years. And so we wanted to do it so that we have our towns better in touch with what's going on with our children as well. Just so you know, every county in North Carolina has to have a child protection and fatality team. And what we do is we review the fatality of every child who has died in the county. We also look at global means of protecting children in the county.

So we look at issues that could cause children to be in an unsafe environment, whatever those things may be. And then we work together collaboratively to solve those problems. We have about 30 some members who attend every month. The logos of those entities are on the screen. Of course, law enforcement is some of the most helpful folks that we have.

And since you all fund law enforcement, that's another reason we wanted you to see this presentation. Real quickly, these are our Department of Human Services numbers for 2025, just so you have some gauge on how many children we have in DSS custody and phone calls. Right now we have about 40 children who are eligible for adoption, 43 in foster care, 12 who have been legally adopted, and then 175 kids in foster care. I just wanted to take a brief moment because at the time that this presentation was made, it was at the end of last year. And we have had a development since then that I just wanted to bring to your attention.

And that is, of course, the group home that is on South Union Street. My team has been working really hard behind the scenes to try to do anything that we could possibly do to help that situation. And what I can tell you is that I think the resolution to that is probably going to take legislation. And so let me explain what I mean by that. We have group homes all over the state of North Carolina.

In fact, I believe Cabarrus County has 14 active ones. Group homes can be great. Those children do need to have somewhere to go and a really well run effective one can do phenomenal work to help our children get situated and their lives turned around. Every now and then though, we have one that does not work in an ideal manner. Things that we attempt to do to help with things like that are speaking with behavioral health agencies, partners is Cabarrus's LME MCO, Alliance Health is Mecklenburg County's LME MCO, DHHS is in charge of, of course, both of those entities.

And the reality is that if you own a group home, you can place children from anywhere in the state in it. So the legislation we would like to see modified would be to say if we have a group home in Cabarrus County, it's only Cabarrus County's children that can be placed there. And same for any other county. If you have a group home, it can only be children from your own county Because that way it's only impacting our resources. We pay the police, we pay EMS, we pay to McGinney Vento the children.

All of our services go to serve those children. And so we would like to see legislation that streamlines that. Right now, if there was anything I could do to help those situations legally, I would have done it already. I am a licensed attorney. I have spoken to other attorneys about this. I think right now we're sort of stuck and in a holding pattern. But if there was anything I could do, I would. That is a very unsatisfying answer for many of the individuals who live around that property. And I don't blame them. It would be a very unsatisfying answer to me as well.

So as you are meeting with your legislative delegates, that would be the strongest recommendation that I can make on how do we fix this problem both now and in the future. If there are additional questions about that, I do have additional information, but I'm gonna spare you tonight. But I welcome any of you to contact myself or your district attorney, Ashley Shanley. We've both been working on this a lot over the last month and a half. Human trafficking is a reality in our community.

These are our numbers for present age ministries of the children that they've served in Cabarrus County by age. These are our Cabarrus County child fatalities. I'll let you guys review this at your leisure, but the most important thing I'd like to bring to your attention is the suicide increase. We have had at least a decade or better of very stable years with regard to child suicide. We really haven't seen child suicides in Cabarrus County for a very long time.

We probably had a ten year run where we had zero. But we did have three during 2024. We believe we don't have all of our 2025 data in, but I think the numbers for it are somewhere between five and six. And we have had some teen suicides this year as well. So we are trying to do things to raise awareness about that.

And we just want you to be aware of that as well, We are seeing increases in those numbers. One of the most important things I can tell you in the district attorney will focus on this as well, is please encourage your residents to lock their firearms if they have minors in their home and to not leave firearms in unlocked vehicles. It is a crime for a minor to have access to a gun because of violence and suicide. This is also just a gauge of our fatalities. Twenty twenty four was the highest number we've had in history, but the population of the county has increased.

So thirty two fatalities for a county our size is not atypical statistically for the rest of the state. So I don't think we have a fire drill type of an issue or anything like that. That's consistent with where we are, but the suicide numbers are concerning. This is same data, just delivered in a different way. I will praise CHA for creating that. And then I'm going to hand this over to Ashley Shanley.

Hello council members, Ashley Shanley, district attorney, and I have Chief Hughes too. We're going to share the podium. Thank you first for inviting me to come. For those who don't know me, I'll be entering my second term as your district attorney, but I've spent twenty nine years in the Cabarrus County DA's office, working my way up from district court, superior court, and then I was your special victims prosecutor for twenty five years. And I handled all the homicide and sexual assault cases.

But this is my first time coming to the city council. And I thank you for inviting me. I think it's important that we note that if offenders are going to work together to hurt our citizens, we must work together to stop it. And this is how we do it. And so when our fearless leader, Ms.

Yosh, for the Child Protective Team says, you know what, let's go and go out just beyond what we did before. How can we make sure our cities, how can we make sure our schools, how can we make sure our community knows what was going on? I said, absolutely. And I asked Chief Hughes to join me, he was willing to do that too. The other piece I will say is that offenders act with a very low risk in a community that does not know what's going on.

And we've determined it won't be this one. And I appreciate the city of Concord letting us come and talk a little bit about one of the issues we wanted to focus on this year. Each year, our chair Yo says, let's pick a topic that we're seeing and let's discuss it, let's meet, let's get ideas, and then let's fix it. And this is the one we'd like to focus on, juvenile violence. You guys, we are seeing a level of violence I have certainly not seen in my twenty nine career. What about you, chief Hughes?

No hand signals.

And we wanted just to come and tell you what we're seeing. We put a couple of slides up here, increase in violent acts. And when we say juvenile, that's 17 and under. And I just think it's important for you to know this. These aren't acts that we feel are based on a mental health issue. It's based on targeted actions where these juveniles are shooting and killing each other. I don't want to discuss any current cases, but I just wanted Chief Hughes just to talk a little bit about what you and your officers are seeing.

Thank you. Yes, we've had the opportunity to discuss some before, so I won't get into great detail, but we're all familiar with what happened last year. And then over the past few months, we've seen additional violent crime related to juvenile offenders and victims. I think one thing without getting into the specifics of a pending case, I think it's important that we all are aware of the level of preparation that is taking place from juvenile offenders to the point that they're going either to the range or they're finding locations to improve their firearms proficiency. They're working on improving their tactics when they go and do whatever it is that they're intending to do.

And it seems to be very easy and without remorse anymore from what we used to see years ago when it comes to offenders, especially juvenile offenders. So I'm sure there's a whole complex set of reasons that we could come up with as to why it's happening. It's just the reality that it is happening here in Concord and other places across the state. I

know the next question may be, maybe not from council members, but from our citizens. Well, what are you doing about it? And so one of the first things we wanted to do at the end of last year is we held a juvenile summit. And it was attended by law enforcement, the DA's office, and then our legislative members because we knew there were some things that needed to change. And when we did that, we learned a couple of things, you guys, about our county, about our cities.

And I don't know if you knew this, but I did not. In Cabarrus County, we have a detention center. It used to be the old Stonewall Jackson property. Did you guys know that that is the biggest center in the state? We have more juveniles being held for serious crimes than anywhere else.

And one of the things we've asked for, and we're gonna ask for your, assistance with this, is currently there is not a law that makes it a violation for any of those offenders to escape. Not a single one. And how we found that out is, I don't know if you heard a year or so ago, we had two, they were Mecklenburg offenders who were being held there. They escaped and they carjacked a lady in Harrisburg. And so we could charge for the robbery, but we couldn't charge for the escape.

And so that's, to me, just common sense. There needs to be I think that was just amiss by the legislatures and we need to change that. We're going ask for your support with that. I think, did you make that as part of your presentation for your lobbyists?

We did. We discussed that in a couple of other points I'll touch on in just a moment. Okay.

The next piece we asked, and this is also something that it may be unknown to most people. When a juvenile crosses the line, let's say from Mecklenburg into Cabarrus County and commits some type of offense, we, the DA's office and our court system, will do the determination of whether he's guilty or not. But once that determination is made, that juvenile then goes back home to be sentenced. And I think you all can see that could possibly be a problem. And we think it's a problem because that person goes back and maybe they get a sentence that maybe would not be received here in Cabarrus County and then they come right back.

So that's another proposal we are asking our legislators to consider. Make that sentence be there at home. For adults, that's how it is. If you commit a crime in Cabarrus County, you're going be sentenced in Cabarrus County. And so we would like that change. The other piece is you guys have heard us talk about vapes. I had the privilege of meeting with every principal in Cabarrus County and every principal for the Kanapel School System as well. And we just discussed what do we have in common. And what they talked about is these vapes are a big issue for these kids. And right now, there is not a law that prohibits a kid from selling a vape at school.

And so that's another piece we're asking for. To me, that's just common sense. Personally, I don't believe a child should be selling anything to another child. They don't have a license. Shouldn't be selling it, but certainly not some type of dangerous item like a vape. So we're asking for some pieces there. And then the last thing I'll mention, we're seeing an uptick in domestic violence for juvenile offenders. We're seeing that in our high schools. And there is no type of protection like we have for adults, for those victims and for those offenders, where there's an immediate response, there is no protections for conditions of release, and so we're asking for some of those. Why are we bringing these things to you is because we know everyone sitting here has a lot of influence.

And we hope that when these bills are put forth in this state, that we will be successful and have them passed. And I truly believe that if our communities join together and say, these are some things we need to protect ourselves, I think we'll get a good result.

So just a couple things I wanted to I'm

going back this up real quick.

So just a couple things I wanted to talk about. You've already taken steps with the 2026 legislative priorities to address some of this. We we discussed and you all had talked about in point six about public safety and about that reckless won'tfully discharge of a firearm in either a public space or on somebody's property without permission. That's really focusing on those offenders that are just out there shooting at each other and they don't actually hit anything, which means we don't really have any teeth to hold them accountable. And so that's an important piece that you're already supporting.

I had an opportunity to speak with the Chiefs Association. They also are supporting that legislation, so it's just gonna be a matter of getting that reintroduced and hopefully getting that through the legislators. Also, on the part about the vapes. So just to kind of give you an idea, this school year, our SROs have seized over 150 vapes, And those vapes are all containing controlled substance of some kind. It's very difficult for them to know at the moment whether it is in fact marijuana or whether it's cigarettes or tobacco or some other substance.

But that's what we're able to identify. We're also, we've conducted several different operations into those that are selling the vapes. And they are selling straight up marijuana in vape pens. It's not even really trying to hide it. They're putting all the packaging that it supposedly conforms to the Farm Bill, but it doesn't actually do so.

I mean, the THC, Delta nine THC levels are extremely high. There's all the side effects that go along with extreme high THC levels in consumption within youth that we're worried about, but that's just the THC controlled substance ones that we're dealing with. That doesn't include all the ones that the schools are seizing as well, and these entities in our city and across the state that are selling these vapes, one, it's definitely not legal and two, it is not for a good purpose. They are taking that those funds that they collect and they are reintroducing them into, we'll just say the world of crime and it's being used against us later on. So just remember, it's not just the vape pen that your one kid may have.

There's a lot of other aspects to that as well.

Just to end our piece and we'll take it back to Ms. Yost. I've had the privilege of working with Concord Police Department for twenty nine years. And people will say, you guys, our county, our crime rate is low in comparison to other counties. Our crime rate for the city is low in comparison to other similar sized cities. And why is that? It's not luck. It's not a coincidence. I want to say it's their hard work. And I'm also going to say our DA's office is here to back them and here to back you.

So if there is anything that our office could do or if you have any ideas for any of these things that we addressed, we have our ears are open. We are we want to see some change. We'll be happy to answer any questions for us. If not, I'll give it back to Ms. Yost.

Thank you.

So we had mentioned a little bit ago, the suicide numbers. So the state of North Carolina has implemented the NC Suicide Prevention Act Plan. There's a lot of information about that readily on the internet. There's also the black youth suicide prevention plan. So you are more than welcome to Google those and see more about the coordinated state effort for managing that.

This is, I don't think shocking to anyone who has a child or who's familiar with the public school system. But these are the recommendations for school counselors and school social workers versus the reality of where we are sitting and also where Kannapolis City Schools are sitting. Also, numbers were shocking to us. So there is software that Cabarrus County Schools has that basically sends an alert message to central office anytime a student says something like suicide or harm myself or kill myself. Some of those things wind up being no big deal because the kid is just talking about Romeo and Juliet, right?

They're talking about something in the course of schoolwork. But some of the time what they get is something that is definitely concerning. Those children get flagged and they do get a safety assessment completed. Those numbers of safety assessments are going up dramatically, much like the suicide rates have gone up a lot. These numbers have gone up tremendously and that is just an increased burden on our school staff.

And also it highlights the need for the behavioral health center that we're actively building in the county. There are strategies for suicide prevention that are actively happening throughout both KCS and CCS. But again, this is a tremendous amount of work and it's a lot of undertaking. And most of it has to be done with parental consent. So we also wanted to make you aware of that.

Last but certainly not least, are happy to give this presentation or a similar one to any group in the county. We probably have, of the 30 of us, there's at least 20 of us that are halfway decent public speakers. So we would be happy to come to your church, rotary group, social circle, book club, whatever. We can also give you a tailored presentation if this is more information that you want. Probably one of the best presentations that I think we could do for groups is the human trafficking presentation, which Hannah Arrowood with Present Age Ministries will do, or Simon with the Lantern Project will do.

So that's an excellent one, if you want to learn more about protecting your children from online safety. And then last, I think almost every agency in Cabarrus County has gun locks right now going back to you do need to lock up your gun. It is a crime to expose a minor to a firearm. You can get those at most pediatricians offices, law enforcement, the partnership, DHS and CHA. All of those agencies have been incredibly helpful in helping us supply those.

I think that is the highlights of what we have accomplished this year. So I think that pretty much covers everything. Does anyone have any questions? I'm also happy to bring Ashley Shanley back up here if someone has something I can't answer or help you with.

Amy, yes.

I've got a couple of things. I've been taking notes, but I first wanna say thank you to everyone that's been presenting this. It is certainly alarming when we turn on our TVs, but even for those that have, I say young children, even children that are not at that phase yet from an age perspective. But I have a couple of questions. Tell me if you want them all at once or if

Let's we can do break one at a time.

Okay. When it comes to the trends in suicide, is there anything that's underlying that has been kind of seen across the board? Like, why are they committing suicide? I guess I'm trying to get to the root of it. Is there something that they all or most had in common?

That is an excellent question and it is one that we have also asked as a team and we have discussed internally. Every single situation that we have seen has been so different that there's not a particular theme. Some of the things that I do think are important, if I were gonna give you two takeaways that I think are the most important, the first one is to monitor your children's use on social media and on the internet. They are not living in the world that we grew up in. So I graduated from high school in Cabarrus County in 1998, when we had AOL dial up.

That is not the experience my children are having. And so, if you had a kid at school that was a jerk to you back in the good old days, you would just go home and then you don't see that kid all weekend, all summer or at night. Now these children have unlimited access to one another. So bullying doesn't just stop when you go home. If you have somebody who's being a jerk to you at school, they can be a jerk to you 20 fourseven.

So we do encourage parents to monitor their children's online access, partly due to that, but also because that's how human trafficking usually starts. Once upon a time, most sex offenders were someone the children knows. Now it's someone they've met on the internet. So first of all, I would say that monitor online usage. The other thing is for moms and dads, if your child says they feel suicidal, you need to take that seriously. I understand that many of us don't wanna hear that. I'm a mother of four kids. I understand not wanting to deal with something like that or not taking your child seriously. You have to take it seriously.

When it comes to the vapes and tobacco, I mean, I don't even know why they do it, but hey. My question is, lots of these kids are under the age of 18 as early as 13 and 12. I've seen a lot of

the

numbers just local, but at a national level, and it's alarming. But when it comes to those young kids, what is the accountability from parents when you find a lot of this in school? I mean, teachers are already, they're beat down with pressures of everything else. So what is being done about that from a parent perspective?

I think the education piece is going to be huge because I think parents aren't really sure what's in these vapes. And here's the problem, neither are we. The state lab does not have instrumentality to test those. And that's one of the pieces that we've put in these legislation is that they would gain those pieces. And so that's some of the holdup with the school. In fact, so much so our schools are asking, can we get this instrumentality and can we do it? How much is it? And I think what you're seeing is more and more local labs are opening up and willing to do it. So I think you're right. I think parents need to act, but they have to be informed first.

And I think we need to be able to help them understand the dangers of these devices, and then we all need to learn as a community what's exactly in them. Okay,

my last question, and these two kind of go hand in hand. So I know you presented a lot of the earlier numbers, and you mentioned the legislation for investigative deaths and fatalities. When you're investigating a lot of these deaths, are you looking at those that are in the system, that are at home? Like what is the actual breakdown of that data?

I'm sorry, I think I need you to explain that a little bit more. Are you asking about the thirty two fatalities that we have, how we're getting that data? Correct, is it with parents?

Did it happen in a hospital under the care of?

So it's all over the place. And it kind of depends on the cause of the fatalities. So what happens with our team is the state health department sends us the autopsies quarterly and they send us the fatality reports. And then our team pulls the medical data, DSS data, and if there's law enforcement or EMS involved, we talk to them. Some of these children died of natural causes.

I mean, you look at our data, the majority of the fatalities that we do have are some sort of natural situation like a childhood cancer or it's prematurity. We have a lot of children who die from just standard prematurity because they were born prior to twenty five weeks gestation. So they don't qualify as a miscarriage. But when it comes to things like suicides, most of the ones that I've seen have happened in the home. We have had some car wrecks. I mean, it just kind of is all over the place depending upon the situation.

Perfect. And then are we able to see a breakdown, and I'm not sure if this data is being tracked from the juvenile crime perspective. Have we seen comparisons of those that are engaged in other activities versus those that are not? I mean, I'm all about accountability and I teach my kids about accountability, but filling up a jail, a prison, whatever it is, is that really going to solve what we are trying to solve for? I think, and you serve on JCPC with me, and I think one of the issues we

have, I don't know why they collect the data this way, but they don't include the cases that Chief Hughes and I just discussed, not one of those cases are in the JCPC data. And so if we don't know, if we're not counting, I don't know how we actually approach it and how we handle it. The piece is this, I think, in my opinion, I think with these juveniles, we do too little too late. And so by the time Chief Hughes and I are seeing them, we're talking about first degree murder. What we would like to do as a community, as a city, is go in a little bit earlier.

And where we see there are some issues, how can we come alongside? And what are programming, what is other options we have, and that's why we serve on JCPC. Honestly, though, I feel like with, and I've advocated, we've got to do a full data review to make sure we're seeing everything that is there. I feel like sometimes the state just wants the numbers to look good. Yes, good question.

You. Steve, I have one. If we were to engage you in a speaking opportunity for a group, how do we contact you?

You can email the district attorney. You can also email me. I will give your clerk my email address so that she can distribute it to you.

Let's see

if I'm competent to do that Betty. Is that forward one?

Yeah, forward one.

What is safe sleep education? Thank you. So safe sleep education, one of the leading fatalities that we see in Cabarrus County consistently, and this is not recent, this has been since I took this over, is infants who are between the ages of birth and six months. So it's not the way it was when my parents were parenting me. You know, we used to sleep with our children all over the place.

We believe that that led to an increase in SIDS. So what Atrium and the hospital tells parents now is when you were bringing an infant home, you need to have them in a crib in a sleep sack without stuff in the bed. So don't have the bumpers that we used to see for sale. Bumpers, don't use bumpers, don't stick a bunch of lovies and stuffed animals all in the bed because your baby's face gets stuck and that's how they suffocate. So safe sleep education is basically making sure that all the parents who have had a baby at Atrium Cabarrus know that, that they're educated on safe sleep by their pediatrician.

There are services all over this county that will give parents cribs and pack and plays. But the sad reality is that most of the time when I see a child that has passed away in that age group, it's because there is a pack and play, but it was not used because it was full of stuff, or the child was in the bed with mom and dad, or there was some sort of drug use in the house. So the parenting that was being done is what I like to call impaired parenting. So the mom and dad didn't have the wherewithal that they needed to actually appropriately do the safe sleep stuff. Thank you. Yes, ma'am.

Any other questions for Paula or Ashley? I think given the current discussions that are occurring throughout the county now regarding our school system and funding, I thought the slide, and I don't know how difficult it would be for you to pull that back up.

I will back up. I'm actually getting really good at using your clicker. I'm very Good, proud of good. There you go. I think that's what you're referencing.

Yes, yes, yes, yes, is. I think that is information that probably the general public is not aware of. And I see the recommended ratio of social workers, one to every two fifty students. And in Cabarrus County, we're one to ten thirty six students. That's a pretty shocking comparison.

Yeah, and it's a statewide problem if you look at the DPI numbers.

Yes, yes, that is obvious. We thank you very much for this presentation, both you and Ashley. We appreciate you being with us, and we hope we will see you back again. Even though this is not a particularly pleasant topic to talk about, it certainly is an important one. I think it's one that education needs to occur. So thank you very much.

Thank you, Mayor.

Okay. Next, we are going to hear from coach EZ Smith to discuss the Cabarrus County Sports Hall of Fame. Welcome.

Good afternoon. I'm EZ Smith. I'm the chairman of the Cabarrus County Sports Hall of Fame, and with me today is our executive secretary, Harry Mills. First of all, I'd like to thank mayor Morris, city council members, mister Payne, our city manager, the administrative staff, and especially the IT team because just like miss Yost, I'm old school. I still write checks for bills.

So doing clickers, I was drawing on the board. I'd like to thank the distinguished guests and the presenters that have appeared before me. I've gained a lot of knowledge at going to meetings like this. The last time we were together, many of you, we were dedicating Webfield, and I want to commend you on what you've done there. Three generations of my family played there, my father, me, my my children, and I am one of those people.

When I was when Sheila invited me, Sheila Linker invited me to come, I was enthralled to be there because that was my field that I grew up on. And I'd like to thank you for what you do for athletics in our community. What I want to present to you today is a partnership. I'm not here to solicit money out of the city. I'm not here to do that, but I'm here to gain you or to give you some knowledge about a program that we're doing.

I've given out four different handouts for you, and I'm just gonna parallel a couple of things real quick. Cabarrus County Sports Hall of Fame that you're seeing on your sheet there is about four pages. And what happened in 2010, Tony McClambrok came back to Concord, and he established the whole thing. And for nine years, it was very successful. As you go through there, you'll see the things that took place. Then in 2020, COVID hit us. And so Tony had to have a period of time there. About two to three years, they did nothing. Then Tony became ill, passed away. So for five years, there was inactivity for Cabarrus County Sports Hall of Fame.

His wife at his funeral asked me, Harry, and a number of other people that were there, please don't let this dream die. Well, I and Harry, we're in several hall of fames, and I didn't wanna get involved. I just wanted to be a grandparent, a retired football coach, a member of the community, and help out when I could. But it gnawed on me. So in January 2025, I got 20 business leaders in Concord together and six committee members that they call their board, and we went to Old Charlie's.

And for three hours, we ate, laughed, talked, and we began a plan of how we could revitalize the Paris County Sports Hall of Fame. The next week, I was invited to the meeting to present the notes. Harry typed them up. We presented it. That's where I made my first mistake. Next thing I know, they've nominated me. I'm on the board. It was like and they don't do Robert's rule. I think they did. I nominate coach Smith. I second all in favor. I. Second thing, I became chairman. So tell them, anybody that knows me, and Steve probably mayor Morris knows me better than anybody in this room. I coached his son.

He was the center on our state championship team. And when I do something, it's wide open. I'm the I'm the engineer of the train. You get on it and ride with me. You get off. You can impeach me, but you're gonna do it my way. So I told him, we're gonna do it a certain way, and we started that process. We began redoing bylaws. We redid our nomination form. We had several things.

But then toward the end, I wanted it to be a league. We had nowhere to house our information. In fact, I was coming to I was gonna talk to mayor Dush about this. I wanted to see if there was a building in Concord that we could house our stuff. Before that took place in April, I had a meeting with county commissioners like this, and I made a presentation.

And then in June, they gave a proclamation to give us the front lobby of the Cabarrus County Sports Hall of Fame, which I will show you some pictures in a moment. So we decided we were gonna have an exhibit, and we began to raise money. The most money they had ever had in their budget was $4,958.32 when I took over. I had a goal of raising $35,000 because I wanted it to be special. And by the end of the year, we had over $50,000.

Going into January, I wanna move forward just a little bit. Going into January, I brought an initiative to our board. I want to earmark $12,000 for scholarships for Cabarrus County, Kannapolis City, and the three private schools. We want to give two $500 scholarships, so we passed that initiative. Then in February, we met to discuss these.

We also had some other initiatives. See, I wanna include in the hall of fame, not just Concord, Kannapolis, Central Northwest, Mount Pleasant. I wanna include Logan Logan High School. We've been to the Logan community. I wanna GW Carver, the black school that led into Kannapolis before integration. Harrisburg, Hartsall, Weinckoff, Odell, all of those schools. So we've brought them in, and we've done a lot of research for those. We've updated a 107 inductees now. We had our banquet in December. We added 14 new inductees and seven more teams.

So we have a total of a 107 alumni now. We got the wall taken care of. Everything is paid for there, and now our process is to establish this scholarship fund. To just give you an idea of what the Cabarrus County Sports Hall of Fame, we have a mission statement, purpose, and a vision. Our mission is to recognize outstanding athletes.

Our our our purpose is to make sure that we publicly honor them. And then further on down the line, our vision is to foster the community pride. That anybody that knows who I am and what I am, I'm all about young people and fostering leadership and pride in this community. That's what I did. I laughed Scott Scott Padgett and I were talking. He said, he said, might be the only person we ever gave two keys to the city. And I said, really? He said, yeah. One was to get in the front door, and if you don't keep winning 10 games every year, the other one's get out the back door. And I felt that pressure.

I'll be honest with you. I knew that going in every year, we had to be good. Well, this is what I'm looking for the Cabarrus County Sports Hall of Fame. I'm hitting the clicker, but it doesn't seem to be moving me to the next page. I might be the wrong person. Nope. That's the last page I wanna get to. Anyway, in January, when I took over, we had a lot of goals. And one thing is we were trying to raise money, and I'm excited about this scholarship fund. If you can pull that up for me.

Okay. We'll wait a second. And we just keep going. It's I think it's number 12 or 13, o 12 or o 13 on that list. Apologize.

Anyway, I'll keep talking a little bit about it as we go. This is the one I'm talking about. If you will look at this one, I'm excited about the scholarship opportunity. We have met with 12 principals and 12 athletic directors, and we have come up with that initiative. This morning, I presented two scholarships at 11AM, and this evening at 06:30, I go present two more.

Harry will be in Kannapolis tomorrow to present two. So we are making sure we are publicly repaying the community with money. Now where you come in that I hope we can gain a partnership is not to help us with our general fund, but with our scholarship fund. You see, every year, we need $12,000 minimum. And right now, we have a surplus that we're fine with.

But as time goes, that money at 12,000 every year goes out. So we have a fundraising process where we ask people to contribute and put scholarship down there. Now I'm gonna parallel us a little bit like the Boys and Girls Club. The Boys and Girls Club is not made up of just members of the city of Concord. Anybody in Cabarrus County that wants to pay the fee can come and go to go to the Boys and Girls Club and participate. And I believe, if I'm not mistaken, this committee, y'all y'all fund a little bit. Y'all have y'all send funds their way sometimes, contributions, have something there. Okay? We're a little bit like that. We're a nonprofit organization.

I want to enhance the city of Concord by giving scholarships to perspective student athletes that can go on to college and come back. Who knows? I'm gonna get emotional. You may have a kid, grew up in this town playing ball, and he went to a local high school. And he went off to college, and he got a partial scholarship, but he had to earn a little bit down the road.

And then all of a sudden, he decided he couldn't make it in the NFL. His lifelong dream was to come back to his hometown, be the head football coach at that school, and make sure he was an asset to this community, not a liability or a debit. That's what I decided. I want to offer that opportunity to every student athlete in Cabarrus County if that is a possibility. But again, I come to you in a partnership.

Now I do not know what you're capable of doing financially to help us at all. Just having your support verbally, physically, I want you to come. I'm gonna invite you to our December banquet. I'd like for you to see what we're doing in December. I'd like for you to know that we are an elite hall of fame.

I invited this past week the National Junior College Hall of Fame, Guilford County Hall of Fame, Stanley County Hall of Fame. We had people there, and they were like, oh my gosh. This is unbelievable. The members that were inducted that had never seen their their, criteria up, they were appalled. What we have when you walk into the arena, the next time you go to the arena, you're gonna walk in, you're gonna see this huge wall with a 107 Hall of Fame members with three bullet points that you can read.

Then you got a QR code. You go over to our QR code, you hit it, then you go to the class of 2011, you can see every bio. Twelve, thirteen, all the way through '25. You can see our state championship teams, whether it's the 1929 Concord High School football team that won the first state championship here, or if it's A. L. Brown's nineteen ninety seven state championship team, or Logan High School's 1968 men's basketball state championship team. You can read about that. That's what we need. We need help getting that out. We need help with the message.

So I wanted to make presentation for you to see what we're trying to do with the Cabarrus County Sports Hall of Fame and that we have a site, the Cabarrus Arena. And I would like for you to see in your time. I gave you what our wall of dedication ceremony was about. I passed that out and see how you can help us. I'm not gonna belabor the point anymore, but if I can answer any questions, I would love to.

Questions for coach Smith.

I just have one real quick. How do you, decide who's going to be in each each class?

That's a great

curious about what the process is because we

Comercio County over the years had lots of athletes.

Oh, listen. We have more than you can imagine, miss Clay. If you look on the page there, I've given you our website. We have our bylaws. We have our nomination form. You have to be at least 30 years old and out of your sport, retired, and you have to be nominated. It's not by word-of-mouth. So I'm gonna use Harry and I. Someone nominated Harry. Someone nominated me. It goes through the process, then you have to get 75% of the vote. We have 15 board members voting. You have to get at least 11 votes. And last year, we had one member that was hospitalized. We were we're lucky to still have him with us.

So it was down to ten out of 14 last year. That's our 75%. But you have to get approved 75%. You have to have played, participated, or brought honor to Cabarrus County. Now I'll give you probably our most prolific person, NASCAR driving or not. Dale Earnhardt senior is in our Hall of Fame. Dale Earnhardt grew up in Kannapolis, started racing out of Kannapolis, but, of course, moved to Mooresville where he had DEI. But he brought notoriety to Cabarrus County and to Kannapolis. So that's why that's how you get in our hall of fame. You have to be.

We have the winningest football coach. We have the winningest basketball, baseball, soft we have the winningest coaches. You can get in as an individual, as a coach, or a contributor, not financial. But I'll use one last example. Many of you remember Frankie Patterson who wrote for the Daily Independent out of Kannapolis for forty years before it combined with the Concord Tribune and became the independent tribute.

Frankie was a forty year veteran. Never played sports. Went to Carolina, majored in in, yeah, majored in newspaper and and media stuff, graduated, came back, went to work as a sports writer, became sports editor for forty years. He covered youth, middle school, high school, college sports. This is an example, if you look, of what our wall of fame looks like.

These are the examples of our inductees. And but he he came in as a contributor. He was not an athlete, but he contributed to sports in Cabarrus County. So that's how you can get in. That is that is our our big thing.

And are you including the private

are you including

the private schools? Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am. This year, they had never been included. And, again, I brought up this past year. In the fall, we brought it up. We voted on it in January. In fact, this morning, I presented at Cannon, two of their athletes. So we have Canon, Concord Academy, which was originally First Assembly, and Covenant Classical. All of them will have scholarships.

They will be inducted as they're nominated and voted on. Their state championship teams will be listed chronologically like ours are. The oldest team we have right now is a 1933, fire department real team out of Kannapolis, and the youngest is this 2025, '26 JM Robinson won the indoor state track championship. So we've got them from 1933 to '25, and we got 50 of them we gotta look at and vote on.

How are you choosing the scholarship recipients?

We give the money. We I meet with the principal, the athletic director, and the chairman of the scholarship committee. I give them the criteria. They have to be going on to a college to participate in a sport. It can be cheerleading, can be a major sport, minor it doesn't matter, but they have to be furthering their education. Let me use you as an example. Let's say you played volleyball, and you wanna go to Catawba College. Catawba College rarely gives full scholarships. So Catawba gives a partial scholarship on athletics, partial on academics. You fill out your FAF form, and they give you some money there.

Then they have a work study program, but you still owe a little money. Mom and daddy gonna have to write a check. We wanna give you $500 to enhance your opportunity to play sports. The school committee that knows those young people, that they've been there four years with, they make the decision. We have no say in that. We just give them the criteria, and they choose them. That way and we decided we had we originally thought, give $1,000 to each school. We talked about it. What if it's all boys? What if it's all girls? Well, let's do one boy, one young man, one young lady that are seniors that are going on. And then eventually, they will be honored at our awards day.

You know? So Second question.

Yes, ma'am.

Was mayor Morrison good? Blink twice if you can't answer.

Look here. You see you see this ring right here? We wouldn't have got it without him.

Oh, that's good.

That's good. Well, you for was one of my favorites. You know, I was I was blessed to have him for four years, but just like if you saw the young man that hugged me, Chris Reed, on the way out, he was on that team. He was one of my boys. And several other people here worked for the city and cheered. They worked with us. So I hope the integrity of the Sports Hall of Fame excites you like it does me. I think you can tell. I didn't come in here to beg. I came in here to inform.

But we're going to get the job done. We're going to give scholarships. No matter what we have to do, we're going to go out there doing that. We have donors that give us $50 We've got donors that give us $10,000 I'm hoping somewhere you look and you see, can we help y'all? Now we have meetings set up with Harrisburg City Council. Harry has met with Doug Wilson, mayor. Doug and Darryl Hennett were both two of our affiliates, so I'm gonna call you and get you on our affiliates list. You know, that's somebody that has knowledge to help us. But we're gonna meet with Kannapolis city council. We're gonna meet with Harrisburg.

Scott Berger, former mayor at Mount Pleasant. He's got a set up to meet at Mount Pleasant. Tim Firs getting us Harrisburg in Midland. I'm making this presentation on behalf of the Hall of Fame because we want you to see it's about young people. It's not about us. It's not about a building. It's about us enhancing young people's education. I would never come to you and ask, hey. I need some money to help me put plaques on the wall. We can find that. We need help with our scholarship fund.

Right. We very much appreciate both both of you being with us here tonight. We'd love for you to talk longer, but I'm scared about what you might say. So

You know you know how I am, mayor. Usually, don't take a breath first ten minutes I talk, so I tried to be quick today.

Right. Excellent. Thank you very much.

Thank you all very much. Appreciate it. Have a good evening. You too.

Thank you

for what all you do for the city.

Okay. Next up, we have presentations of petitions and request. First up is consider authorizing the city manager to execute amendment number one with Talbert Bright in Ellington for the North Apron Roadway Project at Concord Padgett Regional Airport, and I'll turn to the city manager.

Thank you, mister mayor and council. Just want to take this opportunity to welcome our new aviation director, Eric Pratt, who's gonna come up and present to you for the first time. He has the first two items on your agenda, so please be kind, Eric.

Thank you. Good evening, mayor, members of council, mister Payne, missus Kolchinski, and missus Jenkins. The first item that you have before you tonight, it is an amendment to the contract that we have with Tolbert, Brighton, Ellington for their work on the North Apron Access Road, and the change is for an additional cost of 4, I'm sorry, dollars 72,250, which this is to cover the additional expense for testing for unsuitable material that was found at the project site, as well as the need for security guard at access gates, which was a requirement set forth by the TSA. And this brings the total for this contract to $471,671.59 And with that, I will open it up if there are any questions.

Okay. I don't see any questions, so you can proceed with the next item.

Alright. The second item that we have is another change order, and this is for the contractor, Mountaineer Contractors Incorporated. And this change order number two is in the amount of $229,415, and this is for them to actually remove that unsuitable material that was found at the construction site as well as replacing it. This brings the total for the contract to $2,511,535.49, which this project, as well as the engineering cost, it is covered by a grant that we have received from the North Carolina Department of Transportation. And with that, I will open up if there are any questions on this line item.

Any questions on that item? I think the most important part is the last part, that this is not coming from city funds.

Yes, We

were very fortunate

to

have that grant.

Thank you very much and welcome. We're glad to have you on board here in the city of Concord and look forward to seeing you at many of these meetings. I know you're excited.

Thank you. I am.

Yes. Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay. Next up. Consider adopting a resolution authorizing an eminent domain action for property known as Lot 3 of the RB Lee Subdivision. And I'll turn to our attorney for that item.

Thank you, mayor. So this property is needed because there are culverts that it's a long skinny piece that runs down the creek, and there are culverts at both ends that need to either be reconstructed or maintained or some sort of work needs to be done to those. There also is an intention to put a greenway on this property and a sidewalk on the street side. So, lots projects going on with this property. It's a very small piece of property and it's almost completely in the floodplain and there's no part of it that's buildable.

This is the tiniest little piece. So, making this property buildable in any way would require significant expense of cut and fill situation to account for floodplain area. In addition, the title to this piece of property is in a very weird situation. Mr. Lee, who is on the current deed that's on file, passed away.

And when his estate was filed, it was all filed and everything was done appropriately and correctly, except that this piece of property got lost. His will directed that his property, some of it was distributed to heirs or friends or what have you, and the rest of it was to be put into a charitable trust for whatever purpose of the trust. This property was never and all of that happened with all of the other pieces of property this gentleman owned and all of his assets were appropriately handled, except this little piece of property just was not ever listed in the estate, was not placed into the trust. It's just hanging out there, abandoned, still under in the estate of this deceased gentleman. So I did I have tried to reach out to the attorney who is the trustee for the charitable trust and have just gotten no response whatsoever.

This property is necessary for these three various projects, four various projects that the city needs to undertake, particularly the culverts need to be fixed so the roads don't collapse. We're gonna deposit $2,000 even though that's a couple $100 more than the tax value.

Happy to answer any questions.

Questions for Valerie. All right. Thank you. Next up is number four, consider adopting an ordinance ordering the demolition of the structure located at 295 Lincoln Street Southwest owned by Billy B. Smith Estate and Lisa P. Smith. And I think chief Hughes is gonna talk about this one.

Yes, sir. Thank you, mayor, members of council, miss Payne, miss Kulczynski, and miss Jenkins. So before you is a request for demolition of 295 Lincoln Street. This is a structure located on a single parcel with a building tax value of a $102,420. Code enforcement determined this building to be dilapidated, and they had opened the case on 10/29/2025, had a finding of fact in order to repair or demolish ordered on 12/05/2005, and that order expired on 01/06/2026.

It was extended two different times. Both of those extensions were approved by the requester with the second extension expiring on 03/13/2026. Since that date, there's been no attempts to come into compliance with the case and no further communication with the requester. There's no civil penalties and there is outstanding debt on the property from my understanding.

We

happy to answer any questions?

On that item? I think you've got the next one.

Yes, sir. Number five is for 241 Hilltop, Same, situation. This is a single structure or structure on a single parcel. This tax value is for the building is $68,250. Code enforcement determined that building to also be dilapidated. The case was opened on 10/29/2025. The finding of fact in order to repair was issued on 12/05/2025, and that order expired on 01/06/2026. It was extended twice also at the request of one of the owners. Both the extensions were approved. The second extension expired 03/13/2026.

There's been no attempts to come into compliance with this case. No civil penalties and there is also outstanding debt on this property as well. And so the request is to, demolish that structure. Any

questions on that item? Yes, ma'am.

Chief, I have like a logistical question just because I noticed on both of these there were two extensions. What's the process or I don't know what I'm saying, like can you have seven extensions? Can you have two? Like what what does that look like from a from an extension standpoint?

So it's based off if there's any progress made. Okay. And so if they're making progress towards coming into compliance with what with whatever the item is, then generally speaking, there's an extension

Got it.

That's been granted. Okay. There's no compliance, then it stops. Okay.

Thank you.

And one other thing I heard, there's debt on both of these properties that we just discussed. What happens to that debt?

So, my understanding is those are back taxes that have not been paid yet on that property. So I think that would be the county's piece. If the our piece goes with the demolition. So the city of Concord would absorb that cost for the demolition, and then that's placed as a tax lien on the property. So if it were to ever be sold, at some point, the city may get back monies from that, if

that's I wouldn't hold my breath for that to happen, but if there are existing taxes that are due, that they just that demoing the structure doesn't change that situation. Those taxes are still just out there on the books until either the county does something with it or we condemn the property for some reason.

The debts defined as taxes?

Yes, sir.

Okay. Any other questions? All right. Thank you.

Thank you.

I think Fred Womble has the next item. Number six, consider adopting a resolution of intent in the matter of closing the right of way comprising of 0.242 acres generally located between Travis Lane Northwest and Chadbury Drive Northwest. Welcome.

Welcome. Thank you, sir. Good afternoon, mayor Morris, members of council, miss Kluchinski, mister Payne, and miss Jenkins. The item before you again is right of way closure application for your consideration. The right of way in question is an unopened and unimproved approximately 30 foot wide area generally located between Travis Lane and Chadberry Drive Northwest, and is depicted there on the slide, the portion on the right side of the screen there.

The area of closure has an approximate area of 10,541 square feet. The petition was presented by Luke and Megan Roffers. They filed this petition, and they are the owners of the portions of the land adjacent to the area of closure. And they will receive a portion of the right of way that is to be abandoned. Just to recap this request and provide some additional details.

The petitioners for this right of way closure request are, again, the adjacent property owners, which were mentioned previously. The area of closure is an unimproved and wooded, and consists of approximately 10,541 square feet. There are no utilities present in the area of closure. Additionally, no objections were received from the reviewing departments by the planning department. As typical with right of way closures, any adjoining property owner, particularly the petitioner, they have been briefed on the ownership requirements of the North Carolina General Statutes, and of the impact of the closing.

In regards to next steps, councils consider adopting a resolution of intent to set a public hearing for June 11. And then if adopted, our staff will conduct the public notice process consistent with the general statutes, which includes mailing certified mail to adjacent property owners posting signs on the property, as well as running ads in the local newspaper for four consecutive weeks. That concludes my presentation, and I'll gladly answer any questions that the council may have at this time.

Any questions for Fred? All right, thank you sir. Kaylee Caton has the next item. Consider authorizing the City Manager to negotiate and execute a contract with Bolton and Mink Incorporated in the amount of $60,000 to complete the Downtown Concord parking management plan.

Thank you, mister mayor, council members, mister Payne, miss Kolchinsky, and Ms. Jenkins. So this item, as Mayor mentioned, was for the Downtown Parking Management Study. Just some background. The last study that we had done was in 2021, and that was an update to a 2015 plan. So this would be a really new fresh look at our downtown parking conditions. So we had an RFQ that went out. We did have nine really very qualified submissions. We interviewed the top three and ultimately chose Bolton and Mink as the best candidate for the plan. So I'd be happy to answer any questions you might have.

Any questions for Kaylee? All right, thank you. Thank you. And Autumn James has the next item, consider an appeal to a preliminary review of an application regarding a proposed amendment keeping of chickens of the Concorde Development Ordinance.

Good afternoon, mister mayor, members of council, miss Kulchinsky, mister Keene, and miss Jenkins. This is, a review of a preliminary application that we did receive that was presented to the March 2026 Planning and Zoning Commission. At the time of this presentation, they did decide to deny it. The applicant did decide that she did want to go ahead and appeal that to City Council. So at this time, we are looking, for your guidance and how you wish to move forward.

To give you a little bit of a background on the ordinance related to the keeping of chickens, this first went to Planning and Zoning Commission in April 2024. At that time, they did provide guidance on what they thought should be added to the ordinance. When it came to council in May 2024, that was changed slightly. The maximum number of chickens allowed was decreased, and the acreage needed for chickens was increased. Planning and zoning had said that they were comfortable with half an acre.

Council decided that they would prefer the minimum lot size to be at least an acre. So there is only part of the ordinance that the applicant is looking to amend. The maximum number of chickens at 15 per lot would remain the same. However, the new language is underlined in bold here. Up to six total chickens may be kept on a lot.

That is less than one acre, but not less than one acre, but not less than 0.25 acres. So it would be between a quarter of an acre and an acre. So to give you a little bit of an idea, some of you saw this map in 2024. Currently, there are approximately 1,900 parcels that could possibly have chickens, in the City Of Concord. If you were to move to the quarter of an acre, that would take the parcels up to approximately 16,000.

Now, to be clear with that, just because the parcels are eligible for chickens to be there, there are other standards in the article that have to be met, including where pens can be located, etcetera. HOAs could also have rules against chickens, so that could also decrease some of these parcels. And then all of the lots must be utilized and zoned for single family detached or manufactured home dwellings. So that would also cut down on the parcels. So the feedback that we got from planning and zoning, we did have one commissioner who was fine with allowing six chickens on a quarter acre.

However, the majority of the other commissioners felt that it was going in opposition to what council had approved in 2024. So at that time, they did decide to go ahead and the motion was to deny the application for the text amendment, and that motion did pass. So at this point, planning needs to find out whether or not counsel would like to see a written ordinance and have a public hearing in terms of changing the language for the text amendment, or on the other hand, you could deny that request and not accept the amendment. So if you have any questions, I'm more than happy to answer those.

Okay, questions for Amber.

I have a question,

and this is just more process driven. This is just like a P and Z appeal.

Yes.

Okay, because I was at first, I'm like, why are we hearing this? But so it went to P and Z, so since the decision, the applicant decided to appeal it, and that's why it's rolling up to counsel. Right.

So generally, when it is not a text amendment that staff is bringing forward, we have a preliminary review to see if PNZ thinks it is something that council will support.

In this case, they did not think that council would support. So can any, I'm just, I've never seen this before in my whole lot of years that I've been here. Usually the appeals are, rezone, whatever that might be. So can any individual in the city come in and challenge whatever the proper word is, from an ordinance perspective, and then it would go through this process that it could go through PNZ? Or is there a staff review of that? Like if this had come back and said, we want 24 chickens on 0.2 acres, same process would happen?

Essentially. So we do ask that we speak to the applicants beforehand in planning and talk to them about what we've seen in the past, what the ordinance currently says, if there have been past conversations like there were, you know, for the chickens. But if anyone in the city can propose a text amendment to the ordinance, and then it would go through this process.

Any other questions? Yes, ma'am.

Maybe you can refresh my memory. When we went through this process before, didn't we have some requirement in there that the chicken coop had to be so far off the property line?

Yes, and that wouldn't change. It's still five feet from was five feet.

Only thing that would change would

be the minimum lot size. Okay.

Great. And you are seeking input on this in form of a vote at our regular meeting, correct? Yes,

is correct.

All right. Any other questions? Y'all got time to think about the chickens till Thursday? Thank you. Okay, next up number nine and Philip will be back with us on this one considering adopting a municipal ordinance for declaring no parking along the full length of Corporate Drive Northwest.

All right. Thank you, Mayor, members of council, Mr. Payne, Ms. Kuljenski. Ms. Jenkins, this first item is for no parking along Corporate Drive. Just a quick refresher of why these items come to council. Our ordinance says that I am allowed to designate up to 200 feet in length at any given time with no parking. So anything above that would come to you all. So this request is for the remaining 800 feet of Corporate Drive.

We do have a 75% requirement for property owners to sign a petition. There's only one property owner in this situation, which is Sysco Foods, who obviously is the one that requested and agreed to this. So, for reference, Corporate Drive Northwest is off of International. Sysco Foods is to your south. To the north side of Corporate Drive, it is already completely signed, no parking.

So there's there's really no gaps there. No vehicles can can park or stand there, meaning they can't sit under the wheel while it's running either. So on the South Side, there had been a movement years ago due to some site distance issues at Cisco's primary employee drive. And so those those other two signs were posted, as you can see, the South Side. Cisco has you can see it in the aerial.

There's some some tractor trailers currently parked there, as well as I'll have some pictures here in a moment of the current situation on Corporate Drive. So, in essence, we would be just filling in the rest of this road and completing full length. So, they did send an official letter from their organization highlighting the road they would like, as well as the requested times for the restrictions, which is not uncommon. Many of our new parking signs are either all day or a time restriction situation like that. And that is a picture from about two weeks ago.

So there are trucks that are unhitched or attached, as well as vehicles of those utilizing those trucks. So again, it's at the request of the adjacent property owner. They're the only ones really impacted by this. The road has width either way we go. The next step for you all would be, if you approve it, we would then our traffic services would call and locate, fabricate the signs, then we would inform both Cisco Foods and Concord Police Department for enforcement. Any questions?

Any questions on this one? I think you have the next one as well. I do.

All right. So, Jacobs Crossing. This one is a little different. So, again, there's the ordinance, But this request is for the full length. There are no current signs on this roadway. It is about 1,350 feet. Again, with the 75% property owners, 100% of the property owners signed the petition and those are listed there. They are all holdings, LLCs. Next slide will show that road. Jacobs Crossing is adjacent to Robbins Way and Samuel Adams at the the right of your screen.

We came about a year ago regarding Robins Way. There have been a large amount of litter, sight distance issues with the curve, and so forth. And you all agreed or passed the motion that we would sign that. So we did that at that time. And I guess as expected, everybody moved.

That wasn't already on Jacob's Crossing, the rest of them moved to Jacob's Crossing and essentially filled up the rest of it. This is another there's been litter for years, but the property owners did request this specifically. Our understanding is they've been trying to market market these properties and claim to be unsuccessful due to the appearance and the amount of items along this roadway. For fun, there's stars showing signs. Fun with PowerPoint.

Okay, so they did request that. Here's some pictures, some current pictures of what is going on there along the roadway. At current conditions, they've had dumpsters out there at times. Police Department has been involved pretty regularly with them as well. So we talk about this probably monthly at our Traffic Safety Advisory Committee that we have internally with police, fire, and our staff.

So it is a common occurrence. Now that the development is trying to to move forward and they are requesting this officially, it's coming before you all. So same next steps. If you approve, we'll do the locates, fabricate the signs. We'll work with Concord Police probably on the installation of the signs as well to make sure all is well and good out there and contact everyone.

Okay. Any questions on this one? All right. Thank you. Thank you. Next up is Mary Carr with number 11. Consider adopting a resolution to sell 449 Cabarrus Avenue West to home buyers Anna Gonzalez and Andy Rodriguez.

Mr. Mayor, before she starts, and I apologize, may I interrupt? My son tonight is given his profession of faith. He's going to be installed as a deacon at First Presbyterian Church on Sunday. And so I'm having a proud mama moment, But I would like to ask if I may be excused for the remainder of the meeting. I'm sorry. I'd like to go hear that. And so I didn't wanna just rudely leave. And so if you would excuse me. Yes, ma'am. Please.

I'd appreciate that. I hope the rest

of you have a lovely evening. Thank you.

Mayor, members of council, mister Payne, miss Kolchinski, the item that I'm presenting this evening is the request to adopt the resolution to sell 449 Cabarrus Avenue. This again is a home that is being sold through community development. This as with past homes that we have sold, meets and exceeds those system vision standards. This will be the last home that will be sold within that Hawthorne, within the Hawthorne Street block that was purchased by the city several years ago. This home will be sold, as stated by the mayor to miss Anna Gonzalez and Mr.

Andy Rodriguez. They do meet the HUD income limits and the HUD requirements to purchase this home and the purchase price, is the full asking price. Again, we worked with a realtor on this and the purchase price will be $306,500 and I'm happy to answer any questions that you may have.

Any questions for Mary? Okay, I think you have the next item as well.

Yes, sir. Mayor, members of council, Mr. Payne, Ms. Kolchinski, my second item this evening is the request to authorize the city mayor to execute contract with neighboring concepts. This is for the architect and engineering services related to the RAD conversion of the Wilkinson redevelopment with public housing.

This request is coming as council has supported the movement forward for the RAD conversion of Wilkinson. Staff had 10 firms to express interest in the A and E services, the architect and engineering services. We had six to submit bids. Of those six, when they were scored, three were, moved forward into the interview process. During that interview process, neighboring concepts moved forward as the company that aligned best with Concord and also met the requirements for the RAD conversion as having completed several of those prior.

They have expressed the desire to meet all of the HUD requirements through the home and the home ARP that will be associated with this project. And as I stated, they have done RAD conversions, worked on similar projects in the area, and we also have present, should council have any questions, members of the team from Neighboring Concepts, and we also have our consultant, Sheila Jones, who also who along with staff helped to score those proposals for the A and E services. So if there are any questions that you may have, I'm happy to answer them or they are here should you have questions for them.

I don't have any questions, just comments, and I'd just like to thank Marcella, you Mary, Jackie, I see Sheila back there, and her team for moving this project forward.

Thank you very much.

Thank

you. Great. Any other questions for Mary? All right, thank you. Thank you. Okay, next up is Rick Blatt with item number thirteen and fourteen and fifteen.

Ed Morris, members of council, Mr. Payne, Ms. Kolchinsky, Ms. Jenkins, I'm here to present the item for the David Phillip Park development. This project is part of the Bonds projects, the Parks and Recreation projects, Bonds projects, and this project is going to involve, do we have the slide?

The

next one. Okay. Basically, the project includes terrace gardens, includes a storm water control measure that is stepped, is also like a cascade feature. It has a greenway. It also includes overlook pavilion, renovations to the existing bathrooms, and basically a trail that is going to be through the wooded sections of the park.

It's a beautiful piece of property and it's being developed in honor of Mr. David Phillips. We bid this project through the formal bidding process. We got a lot of competition on this one. We got eight bidders and the lowest bidder that we received as a standard procedure for us, we checked references in each the bidders and the low bid.

We checked it and basically the references did not show that the contractor had enough experience in this type of project. He was only doing smaller pieces of property and did not have any experience in parks and recreation projects. So, because of that, we decided to move to the second low bidder, which is HOS Construction. And they put a bid in the amount of $3,566,000 for completing the park, and this includes alternate one. This alternate one is to replace the existing walls or the walls that we're going to cast in concrete, and it's gonna replace them with masonry walls with a brick veneer, which has had much better, it looks much better.

So, that bid for the alternate one is $149,750 So, the total amount of the project is still below the budgeted amount for the park. Our recommendation is for council to authorize the city manager to approve this contract. Any questions on this item?

Any questions on this one? All right, and I think you have the next one.

Yes, the next project is for approving a contract for bioinomic services for the removal of this lodge. Colorado Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant, as water is treated, this byproduct is generated and it's basically a sludge that is created due to treatment and this is stored in lagoons. These lagoons, over time, they filled up to capacity and they have to be removed. And we have to have a contractor come in, dredge these lagoons, go through a drying process, and then transport this sludge to the landfill, to the Republic Landfill by the Speedway. So, the contract amount for that is 685,800 with 50¢.

Okay, any questions on this one? All right, I think you have the next related one.

Correct, this is related because once the sludge is removed and transported to the landfill, we have to have a contract or an agreement with the landfill to take the waste. And this year, we negotiated a price of $86 per ton, assuming we removed the total of 3,500 tons that we are expecting to remove for a total amount of $301,000

Okay, any questions on this one? Thank you.

Thank

you. I think Jackie has our next item considering a preliminary application from Jake and Raz Management LLC.

Thank you, Mayor, members of council, Mr. Payne, Ms. And Ms. Jenkins. This evening, I have a preliminary We've received a preliminary application, from Cary Custom Properties.

It's located at 4 Mary Circle and it's 0.74 acres zoned LDR. It's located within Area B, and the owners wish to connect to city water to build one single family home and it is considered served by water, And I can share with you some maps or a PowerPoint if possible. Do you have any questions on that item?

Any questions for Jackie?

All right. The next item is Jake and Raz Management LLC, submitted a preliminary app to, receive water service outside the city limits at 6299 Rocky River Road. This is a 3.7 acre parcel also zoned LDR and it's located within Area B. They wish to connect to City Water to build one single family home, And the recommendation is to have the applicant proceed to final application phase excluding annexation.

Okay. Any questions on this one? All right. Thank you very much. And I think that concludes all the items.

No one has made me aware of anything on the consent agenda that they need to discuss. We do have need of a closed session tonight. So I would entertain a motion that we go into closed session pursuant to North Carolina General Statute 143 dash three eighteen point one one a three and four in order to consult with an attorney to protect the attorney client privilege and to discuss the location or expansion of industries or other businesses in the area served by this public body? I have a motion and a second. Is there discussion?

Hearing none, all in favor, please say aye. Aye. All opposed, no. We are now in closed session and I will encourage council members to move rapidly because there are a couple others of us that have 06:00 appointments as well. Thank you all.