Board of Commissioners - Regular Meeting

We'll call to order our August 17th, Monday, August 17th meeting of the Cleveland County Board of Commissioners. Madam Clerk, would you take care of the roll call, please? Yes, sir.

Commissioner Smith? Here. Commissioner Howard? Here. Commissioner Hunt? Here. Commissioner Mason? Here. Commissioner Mitchell? Here. Vice Chairman Jones? Here. Chairman Bucher?

Here. Next, we will do the Pledge of Allegiance. But prior to that, the attorney, Mr. Grady, will give us a prayer. So if you'd all stand.

Loving God, you are author of life and origin of all created things. We ask that your grace and blessing be bestowed upon the men and women who have been called to serve our county. Help them to represent their constituents wisely with an eye towards safeguarding the deeper truths of human life that come only from you. Bless the county that they represent. Bless our country. Help our commissioners to take actions that will uphold the values of peace and justice in our land and throughout the world. We ask this in God's name. Amen. Amen.

indivisible, with liberty and justice for Commissioners, you have in front of you the agenda today. Are there any changes or additions? And if not, entertain a motion to approve it. So moved. Second. We have a motion and a second. Madam Clerk, call the roll, please.

Commissioner Smith. Yes. Commissioner Howard. Yes. Commissioner Hunt. Yes. Commissioner Mason. Yes. Commissioner Mitchell. Yes. Vice Chairman Jones. Yes. Chairman Booker.

Yes. Ladies and gentlemen, if you have not already done so, please silent your phones to make sure we don't have an interruption. And I would like to mention that we have, I'm going to take Chairman's privilege right now. And I'm going to introduce Mr. Chip Shagnon, who's going to come forward here and have a few words for us.

Thank you very much, sir. I appreciate the opportunity to jump into the agenda. I know that's a hard thing to do. So as you know, we've recently had a convention here, the Purple Heart, the Military Art of Purple Heart. And thanks to this great council and our citizens And Jack and his fine staff, it was superior. It's not that I say that. Our surveys indicated that it was the best one since we've been doing this in 10 years. And Craven County even beat out Reno, Nevada. So I just want to let you know that we did a great job. I've been asked by the department commander to make sure that we give you a little memento. This is our convention coin. It's a challenge coin, but as you can see, this is a rather large one, and I can't very well shake your hand and put this thing in it, but we'd like to ensure that each and every member, madam. Thank you. May I approach the board?

Sure. Thank you, sir.

Thank you, Jim. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you, sir. Thank you, sir. Appreciate it. Thank you, sir. And, of course, Ms. Mitchell participated in many ways, and we honor her dad.

Thank you.

Thank you, gentlemen.

May I go over to the camera? Thank you. Appreciate your comments.

I also mention that in our audience today we have Josh Whitford. Josh is the next person who will sit in the seat right here on my left come December. So welcome, Josh. Number one on our agenda is the Owls Wildlife Center and the Ambassador Enclosure Project. Presentation, Christy Davis. If you would. That's so everybody at home can hear you.

Okay, good morning. Good morning. My name's Christy Davis. I'm treasurer with Owls Wildlife Center. With me I have Carla Aldridge, who's the vice president and the board of directors, and Pam Bader, who is also on the board of directors. So our mission with Owls Wildlife Center is we rescue, rehabilitate, and release native wildlife within North Carolina. We receive over 2,000 animals each year. that we try to rehabilitate and re-release back into the wild. Some of those animals cannot be released if they are young enough. We try to either find placement with another education center that can use them to help educate the public as to the importance of the animals. One, why it's important not to keep them due to imprinting, special diets, stuff like that. And then two, it teaches, we're able to use the animals to teach why they're important to the environment. For Owls Wildlife Center, we have four right now. We cannot have more because we need to progress into the USDA permit, and that is the goal with part of our Ambassador Education Project. We have a barred owl, a great horned owl, Pearl, our eastern screech owl, who looks like she's going through menopause right now. All of our ambassadors are molting, so poor things are not up to par what they should be. She's normally cute, but she's grumpy. She's a grumpy woman today. We can all understand that. And we also have Isabeau, our red-tailed hawk, who is mid-20s. She's in captivity, will live close to 30, but she's retired and on display. because she is starting to show her age. So as we requested a grant with the New Bern Board of Commissioners, you graciously gave us a $6,000 grant to go towards, if you can go to the next slide, our education ambassador enclosure. Why we're asking for help with that, because that enclosure alone to house those four animals and to progress into federal regulations is going to take close to $30,000 to build it. We have an additional grant from the Hover Foundation of another $6,000 so we can start progress on building that. Why we need your help? We rely on the community. We rely on grants and donations. That is how we fund our operations. We received no state or federal funding at this time due to those specific regulations. We are looking to branch into that, but it is very specific regulations and rules that we have to follow with that. So we rely local communities, businesses, grants from the local community. How we do that, we do education and outreach. This year we have already completed around 50 education visits to schools. and also had schools come and visit us at the center. We show them our education ambassadors, we teach them why it's important not to take them out of the wild, and why it's important to let them stay native. We're a community resource. We are one of the only local rescues within the area that takes in birds. There's many mammal rehabbers, but we're one of the only that take in birds in the area between us and Raleigh and us in the Outer Banks. The other closer one is Possumwood Acres in Hubert. And we work together with the other rehabs and rescues to make sure that we work together and get the animals rehabilitated. And with that, we've started reaching further and further. Last year alone, we helped over 21 counties in North Carolina, 70 to 80 cities, and we continue to reach further and further. We started receiving animals from the Outer Banks to help them out as well. So we have a very robust volunteer program as well as a volunteer transport, and they do that on their own dime. We give them no money or anything like that. They donate their time and their energy or their gas. Next slide. So why do we need new education ambassadors? Come up closer to the mic. I'm sorry. That's all right. While we need new ones, our current enclosures have been there since we looked at some of the historical information since 2007. And we've done what we can to ensure that they're patched and continue to meet the regulations that were set forth by federal and state regulations. So what we want to do is we want to progress into USDA, which will also allow us to have mammal ambassadors. USDA took over in 2023, if you want to go to the next slide. So they took over in 2023 governing ambassador, birds of prey, wildlife, stuff like that. So to be able to progress with USDA, there's very specific regulations above the state and federal regulations that we're already governed to. So we have to rebuild our education ambassadors because we have to separate rehabilitation and education. And if any of you visited the center, you know that our education is smack dab in the middle of all of our rehabilitation because that's where we were built. And as we grow, we continue to strategically plan where we need to put the next enclosures so that we can grow and meet and get our USDA permit. And this is the last, one of the last big steps that we plan and hope to make this year to actually meet the USDA regulations and get that permit going. Next slide. So part of this is we have a very specific design that we go to as well. We are governed by the federal regulations which require very specific enclosure sizes. We're going to build, what is it, a 20 by 50 and then 14 feet tall because we need to help progress building them bigger than technically what is required by the little 10-foot enclosure because our birds are fully flighted. To keep the weather from damaging, we've started fully researching, working with engineers when we're building our enclosures to make sure that they actually do stand the test of time and the weather. Our enclosures are insured. Our bigger enclosures that we know will take a lot to replace are insured because, well, we're right there on the coastline and we know how hurricane seasons are with us. So to help protect that, we take every step possible to make sure that those are built to the best that they can be built and they will withstand weather and time, which is what has not happened previously when enclosures have been built.

Next slide.

In the end, what this gives us is room to grow. It gives the animals better welfare, more outreach for us, and it gives us the durability and the lasting value. And we appreciate everything that you've done for us so far. And we wanted to take the opportunity to show you what we do, what we're about, and give you or tell you thank you for everything that you've done.

Thank you, guys.

Okay. If you wait up there, you may have some questions. Yes. Okay. Questions from the commissioner?

For the benefit of the people who are listening, could you tell our audience what these predator birds eat that is part of the nature cycle here in eastern North Carolina?

Yes. So part of the bird, and this is for rehabilitation and for education animals, we give them exactly what they would eat. No, ma'am.

What do they eat in the wild?

So they... In the wild, they eat pretty much anything they can get a hold of, depending on the species. You've got Pearl, she would eat snakes, bugs, worms. Our eastern screech owl. No, it's not breakfast. When you get to the bigger birds of prey, owls... what is it, the hawks, stuff like that, they'll eat squirrels, rabbits. Chickens. Chickens, yes. Some people like to think they eat some of their pets as well. But small animals like that. Rodents. They also eat other birds. Especially during mating season, they get in fights and they will eat whatever is at their disposal. When you start talking about osprey, eagles, They eat fish and deer, which is where they get the lead poisoning from because of the fishing hooks or the lures and the ammunition that still has lead in it. And we have seen a lot of that this year.

Other questions?

During the snowstorm that we had this last year, I heard a couple of stories of rescues. Were there any kind of interesting rescues? Was it flamingos I heard about? Is that what it was?

Pelicans. Pelicans, that was it? Yes. So the pelicans really struggled in the cold this year. We received 20 or 30 at that time, and a lot of them were frostbitten. If you go to our Facebook page, there is a story about that earlier this year. they really did have a hard time cause they're not used to, a lot of them don't migrate from here. Um, because it stays kind of warm. And so when it got cold and they couldn't either get in the water or the water was too cold or the ground was too cold, they did suffer a lot of frostbite on their feet and on their actual, their bills.

So like 30 or 40 at that, at that one time you guys had to do intake for, it's amazing.

And the amount of, so they would eat, um, When we take them in one Pelican will eat about 20 or 30 finger mullet, uh, per feeding. So, and we normally give them about three or four feedings a day. Wow.

Yeah. One of the smaller owls.

It is. Yes, ma'am. That is a Eastern screech owl. She is the smallest down. She's actually a full grown. She's an adult.

So I've gotten a lot of calls about wild animals, when people find them for various reasons, what to do, where to go with them. And a lot of the calls are about squirrels. Yes. And as far as I know, you've never turned any of them away, correct?

No, ma'am, we haven't. We've never turned an animal away, even if it's an animal that we can't take in, which we just recently got our rabies vector species permit. There's a policy you can hold the animal for 24 hours and find another rehabber that can take those in. We've never turned one away and we are very inundated with squirrels right now. For some reason they started a little early this year for the second season. And they are, we have a lot of them right now. We probably have about, what, 40 in the mail in our sharing? Of all sizes, still requiring feedings every three hours from the little tiny pinkies to the other ones. And I live here in New Bern, so. I can leave my card if you need or owls we answer we don't answer 24 7 because we do we do sleep but if you can't call if you know you call us text us we don't answer we do have email and facebook messenger that we reply well everybody's been able to get a hold of you in a timely manner so thank you for everything you do you're welcome what's your success rate as far as an animal coming in and going back to the wild is there a pretty good turnaround on that It is a good turnaround. It's gotten better over the years as we've started working with more and more veterinarians. We're at a 55% success rate right now, up from about the low 40s three or four years ago.

So if they fail at that, they become ambassadors, huh?

Not always. We can't keep every animal, unfortunately. We have to. We're governed by federal regulations, and that is one thing we do take pride in is We don't keep an animal just because it can't be released, because that can be inhumane. It's like, if it's young, if it's a baby, we do have, for example, we do have a barred owl that we got in that was a week old. We have been working with it to try to make it an education ambassador. We will post it on the National Rehabilitators website for everyone within the United States and Canada to be able to see, to offer that animal in the home. Which we did have success earlier this year where we sent a possum who couldn't be rehabilitated up to New Hampshire to be an ambassador for an area up there. We can't keep an animal just because it can't be released. It's like taking you as an adult and putting you in a cage after you've already known what it's like to be free and then not being free, so it can be cruel to them.

Any other questions? I have one. Yes, sir. Where are you located?

We are located off of Highway 24 in Newport.

Okay. All right, if there are no other questions, we appreciate you coming and sharing with us, and we appreciate that you brought Pearl. Thank you. We appreciate what you do. Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. Item number two on the agenda, Eastern Carolina Workforce Development Board Update. Mr. Bill Green. Morning, Bill. Good morning.

Commissioners, thank you very much for letting us come today. Let me first recognize Rasheema Walker. He's our center manager at our News Boulevard Career Center covering Craven. He also covers Jones and Pamlico County. So we're here to just bring you an update about our workforce. I'm going to give you just an overview of several points and see if there's any questions. So again, I'm Bill Green. I'm the Executive Director of the Eastern Carolina Workforce Development Board. We were established Many years ago, along with 19 other workforce boards across the state, and we are primarily the funding source and the managers for the NC Works Career Centers and the WIOA job training dollars. And so those funds come from the Department of Labor. So for 36 years, I'm a native of New Bern in Craven County. For 36 years, I was a commercial banker here in town. This board appointed me in 2012 to be a private sector board member of the Eastern Carolina Workforce Development Board. And around the time that I was given the opportunity for an early retirement, Our longtime director, Tammy Childers, decided her time was up for retirement. So I stepped into this role, and it's an interesting thing, a little different from banking, but it covers the same counties, same work that we've done, that I've done over the years with commercial businesses in our area. So let me walk through several things. So as you see, we're a 501 nonprofit. Most of the other workforce boards across the state are part of a council of governments or some other entity. Next slide. So our mission is to engage leaders to assist job seekers and to support employers. So our leadership contacts that we do are with the commissioners, with the municipalities, with the economic developers, with the chambers of commerce, with our community colleges, with our school systems, and with the State Department of Commerce. and the Federal Department of Labor. So we connect to a lot of entities and a lot of players that are involved with economic development as it relates to workforce development and ultimately our community development. So from a leader standpoint, that's what that looks like. Our assisting of job seekers. The one word I want to leave everybody here in the audience is NC Works. NC Works is our statewide brand. It's our statewide system of career centers across all 100 counties. It is our completely free service that we provide for job seekers no matter who or what they are. We focus on adults, youth, those reentering society, those with substance use issues, those with mental health issues. So we cover as many people, what our goal is, is to get as many people working as best they can. at the level that is highest for them. So job seekers are helped through our NC Works centers. Also, ncworks.gov. So I want everybody to remember ncworks.gov. That is our website that you can get to any position, any career center across the state, including our one, which is a premier center here in Newburgh. So job seekers, ncworks.gov, and that. And then supporting our employers. So we work directly with employers. Rashima and her staff work with employers to place job orders, to provide labor information wherever we can from the sources that we've got from the Department of Labor. So those are our three stakeholders. There's our mission up there. But our mission basically is to improve the economy by making sure our workforce is where it needs to be. So let's look at the next slide. Craven County, of course, I was born and raised here, so if I'm in another county, I won't say this, but of course, Craven is our center hub of our office, as you can see at the very top in the center. But we also cover, we take a regional approach because all of the counties work together in some form or fashion. So Carter, Craven, Duplin, Green, Jones, Glenora, Onzo, Pamlico, and Wayne are our core group, we call it the heart of eastern North Carolina, and Craven County is the center of that. So we have comprehensive career centers in Craven, Carteret, Lenore, Onslow, and Wayne, and then we have resource centers in the other counties. So that's how we serve this. And those nine counties were separated out, again, years ago. And there's different groupings of counties that are covered by other workforce boards. Next slide. These are some of the things, and I'm going to be the chatterer, but Rashima could probably do a better job of this and maybe answer some questions. But job matching, we can sit down with a job seeker and just say, what are your interests? There's a number of tools we can use to help people to try to find a pathway. Training and education through Title I of WIOA, we can pay for training. for adults, dislocated workers, and youth. We can help with career assessments. Where are you with everything that you're doing in career advising? If you don't have a resume, we can help you get a resume. We can help you build that. If you're concerned about interview skills, we can provide those interview skills. So when you go into the Career Center, you can get all of these services as a job seeker. And then, as I've mentioned, employers, we do job fairs, hiring events, and place job orders, just like any other for-pay service, but ours is, again, a free service. So those are some of the things that we do. Next slide. For business services, we can do recruitment and screening, labor market data, on-the-job training, depending on funding, tax credits and incentives when they're available and when they've been renewed, and then rapid response. Rapid response is if there was a plant closing or a reduction in force, we can go to that plant within two or three days and set up Oftentimes with our mobile unit that resides in Raleigh, the NC Works mobile unit has two banks of computers and job seekers can go on board and very rapidly deal with those concerns that they've got where they've just lost the job through no fault of their own. So those are some of the things that we can do. Next slide. Next gen youth. We focus, ages 16 to 24, one of our goals is to get youth involved in more knowledge than they currently see. I believe youth sometimes see only to see the things that they see, whether it be Starbucks stores that they see, but our goal is to get them more involved in career exploration and our focus really is also on out-of-school youth those that have fallen out that are not involved with school not involved with work and we think there's a lot of a lot of resources there we can get to them and we've got dedicated youth specialists at the Career Center that can work with that So that's a big issue for us, is those youth that are not involved. Next slide. So again, we talked about NC Works Career Centers, and of course we have the one main one on Neuse Boulevard. And if you don't know, it's 2836 Neuse Boulevard is one of the three buildings up front at the Furniture Fair Burger King shopping center there. So employment services, training programs, and career planning. Those are all the things that we do at the career centers. And again, we co-manage those with the Department of Commerce among all of the other nine counties. Next slide. Our future NC, or our future ENC, if you're not familiar with that group, you probably are. The goal statewide is to have an additional two million credentialed or deployment individuals in the ages of 25 to 44. so that North Carolina remains one of the top business-oriented workforce communities so that as industries come in, they know that we've got the workforce, that they're trained, there's training available. From a Craven Channing standpoint, we learned back in the spring that My Future NC, which is again a 501 nonprofit as well, has targeted eight counties across the state to receive funding to add a position to help drive credentials and diplomas. And Mr. Jack and his staff, in cooperation with the workforce board, we were the convener with the school system, the college, the chamber, and the school system, the college chamber chambers and our workforce board. So we, the workforce board is the fiscal agent and we will should announce this week an individual that will work for the next year and probably a second year to really make Craven County one of those eight across the state that will really drive this so that we our people, our young people, are getting the credentials that they need and know that they can get. So, next slide. So, just some information. So the Workforce Board has been around for 30 plus years. We have a lot of success in on-the-job training, where we can, depending on funding, actually go in and provide the first several months of salaries for individuals that are working in new jobs that may be not traditional, that they couldn't get the job otherwise, so we can support that effort. And we have a very strong veteran support. In fact, if you come into the Career Center, there's special seating areas for our veterans that are looking for support, and we've got specialists that can sit down with the veterans and help them. One of our goals as we look at our nine counties, our top employer is the U.S. government. If you look at our military bases, Seymour Johnson and all the Marine Corps bases, our goal is to keep those folks here. Once they get out, we don't necessarily want them to go back to Nebraska or wherever they've come from. We want them to stick around because they've got skills that we need to promote ourselves as an employer-friendly community.

Next slide.

So that's just some summaries. There's our phone address. Anybody needs to ask me any questions afterwards, we'll be glad to do that. Thank you for the commissioners for appointing us. One of our consortium of our nine counties is a commissioner from each county. Ms. Smith, you are a faithful member of our board member meetings, and so you represent Craven County for us. And then there's eight other county commissioners And then the commissioners establish the workforce board, hire the staff, and then there's a board of 28 people, three of them from Craven County. And we have representatives from Chatsworth Products, the International Machinists and Aerospace Workers Union, and then Craven Community, oh, I'm sorry, Carolina East Medical Center. So those are our three from our cabinet. So I think I've shared all that I can. Let me stop and see if there's any questions of our workforce efforts in our area.

OK, questions for Mr. Green.

What is considered a high quality credential?

A high quality credential?

Well, it just depends on the individual, but I would say it's the credential that gives them their best chance for success. A credential could be a PhD, but that's not going to be needed for everybody. They're going to need a short-term degree from the Volt Center that is going to give them what they need. So I'd say it's the one that maximizes the highest and best opportunity for that individual.

But it would include like welding certifications or licensing?

Yeah, that goal is any four-year degree or beyond or it's a short-term credential and anything in between. Thank you.

Anybody else?

Yeah, I want to expand on that one. I understand that the best credential is the one that gets you hired. Okay, but what are the credentials around here that are needed to get people hired specifically?

The industries that are or the great opportunities are in the trades, in advanced manufacturing, welding, is a big issue that you can get a welding degree both at the college and at the Volk Center. Manufacturing covers a lot of different areas. Our third main one is health care, and we have a health care collaborative between Carolina East Medical Center and the workforce board, and it's actually broader, and we have providers that come in with multiple counties so that we can address the need, all the various needs at the hospital. And of course, the hospitals need nursing, phlebotomists, all those things, but they also have HVAC specialists, electricians, food service, all those things.

As a trustee with a community college, how closely do you work with Dr. Stats?

Dr. Stats and I meet periodically. He and I are both on a Craven Pipeline Consortium that includes the college and multiple of his staff. Also the Craven Holly with CTE director at Craven County Schools, so we connect all those pieces together, but yeah Dr. Statz and I are involved with each other frequently. Thank you.

Anybody else? I would only ask, I don't think a lot of people know of your organization. Would that be a fair statement?

That is a very fair statement. When I talk to people that have known me from the past, it was easy to say what I did before, I'm a banker. But now most people don't know about the Workforce Board, which is fine. If you all know about the Workforce Board, the school systems, the county, all those things know about what we do, that's fine. For the job seeker and for the employers in our area, NC Works is what we want them to know about.

Anybody else? We thank you very much for coming. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Appreciate what you do. Thank you. Item number three, Southeastern Integrated Care Program Overview, Stacy Williamson and Annalise Duesing. How did I do on that? Okay, good. And you've got a third member with you, or a fourth member with you.

She is our marketing specialist.

Okay. Yeah.

Good morning, Commissioner. Good morning. Caitlin Godley with the Craven County Opioid Epidemic Response. I just wanted to introduce our guests today. We have Stacey Williamson and Annalise Dusling, as well as Maggie Moody. Sorry, I almost called her Maggie. They are with Southeastern Integrated Care, and they're here to tell you about the mental health and substance use treatment services that they're now providing to Craven County residents. Thank you.

I will start off. Thank you guys for allowing us to be here today. I appreciate your time. We are Southeastern Integrated. Again, I'm Stacey Williamson. A little history about me is that my husband and I started a behavioral health company in 2007. We sold our company in 2021 and tried to retire. That didn't happen very well because we came back into it with consulting and assisting other agencies to grow their businesses across North Carolina successfully. So we started with Southeastern Integrated just consulting and then we quickly partnered with them because we did see how well they did things and how exclusive they were in their service lines. So across the state. So we started with Southeastern Consulting and then the MCO, which is Trillium MCO, asked us to open a office in Carteret County to service those clients in Carteret County because there was a gap in services. And in that gap of services was ACT Services, which is Assertive Community Treatment Team, which is a high, severe, population with the severity of schizophrenics and those living in the community that needed that help. So it is a huge wraparound service, which is a great big deal. So we get hospitalizations coming straight from the hospital that we treat at home. and keep them in their home. And then we do community support team, which is a continuum of that, and then peer support services. So that's how we started out, and also Intensive In-Home for Children. So that's how we started out our program, and then we quickly transitioned to our substance use programs, which was Say Hot and Say Up. And those services are also through Trillium, and are provided through Trillium services. So we have to get a state licensure for those services and for our buildings to provide that service. So we quickly transitioned into those services as well. And then we started residential and that is something that kind of fell in our lap. But we embraced it. And we started we bought some homes out in Carteret County and we started housing in individuals So we started a program. That's a hundred and eighty day program so in this hundred and eighty day program with our say cotton stay up services is You intern to the program you come in you get an assessment completed if you qualify for this program you will enter into the housing, okay? And in that housing, in the first 90 days is you have zero communication with family, you have zero cell phones, you are monitored 24 seven. We have house managers who live in each of these homes. We have transportation. So you go into the home, you get transported to our agency from nine to two and you do SACOT services, which is the therapy services and group therapy for SACOT. So then after two o'clock, from two to five, we have someone coming in like a banker to talk about things like when you're leaving this facility and this program eventually in 180 days, how do we get our lives back on track, okay? We bring in workforce people, we bring in those types of folks to help transition them back into the community. So at five o'clock they leave, we provide meals. They leave, they go back to the housing. So this is seven days a week for the first 90 days. The second 90 days is our say out program. So they transition if they have successfully proven that they are on the right track of recovery, we put them in the next 90 days, which is our say out program, which is a three day program. And in this three day program, then they have some flexibility because they have proven recovery with us. Um, on the other two days they can come in and get med management or therapy and they can also enter back into the workforce. They are completely still monitored, um, in the housing. They do not leave the housing after hours. they do unless they were with one of our house managers. They're still transported to and from work. They're transported to and from our office for the say up and then 30 days prior to them leaving our say our program, we transition them into a part time community support team, which is what we also provide for mental health and substance abuse clients. So we know that they're gonna need ongoing recovery, right? And so it's important to us to continue to provide that for them, so in their community. So we start finding housing, appropriate housing, trying to reconnect them back to families that they've lost because of their addiction. And so we work with them to do all of those things and make sure they have secured a work, a job, housing, And then we continue to work with them through the week in community support team in their own space. So that's important to continue that service outside of the housing service. I'm gonna let Annalise talk a little bit about, cause I'm sure you guys have heard about all the services that we provide as far as the mental health, not specifically us, but in the community. You've heard about act services or community support team or intensive in home for our children. And with intensive in home, we also help the families. It's just not about children. It's also about the family unit because we can kind of help the kid get back on track. But if we're not helping with the family and we put them back in that environment, it's not going to work. So we have a clinical regional director that comes in and she monitors all of our service lines. She ensures that the training is complete. She is constantly giving our team leads who are clinicians that go out into the community to work with these individuals, training and monitoring and feedback of how we can get clients better and they can do better in school and in their work and hold a job and so forth. So it's very important to us to have good outcomes. It's not just about treating the client, but the outcomes are important. So we have really good outcomes because of her and Annalise providing that extra ongoing trainings for our staff. So I'm gonna let Annalise talk a little.

Hi, I'm Annalise. I'm a nurse practitioner. I've been working with South Eastern since it started down in Moorhead, and we're really happy to be expanding. So, as Stacy was saying, she kind of went over intensive in-home, encompassing treating the entire family unit and not just the child themselves. What I do is I do a lot of medication-assisted treatment, so working with the clinicians as they're providing therapy and making sure the medications are on track with the client, and it's very specific to each client. We also work with the school systems and the counselors at school, teachers, and things along those lines, and if DSS is involved, we work with them as well. The community support team. So I do medication management for these clients. When anyone comes into our doors they get a clinical assessment done by a therapist and then they see myself for a psych eval and we work together for the placement as far as what service would this client best be fit for and what success they would have. That being said, in the community support team, they get a peer, so someone that is very relatable to them, helps them set up things like doctor appointments. If they're looking to go back to school for GED or getting into the construction academy, we do utilize NC Works a lot, so very helpful and thankful for them. We also do, with all of our clients, substance use, not only is it part of mental health, but a lot of that stems, it just meshes right together. So we do do urine drug screens, and especially with the residential, and like Stacy was talking about earlier, so that's just another way that we go ahead and we monitor them, make sure that they're on track. Moving up to the ACT, so On the ACT team, the Assertive Community Treatment team, there is a physician that they see, there's a therapist, there's a vocational therapist, someone to help with housing, a qualified professional, which is kind of like a case manager, all encompassing other stuff a substance abuse counselor nursing nursing staff yes a huge part of it so a nurse actually comes out to their home helps them with medication management we work closely with a specialty pharmacy that sets up their medications in blister packs so all they have to do is go ahead and punch and So for the morning, the afternoon, for nighttime. And they work with them closely with that, setting up primary care, working and facilitating, just streamlining care across the board for them. And a lot of education as well. So that's something that we do with that. And then we also have the mobile outreach clinic that we've just started. So that has been amazing. It is out in the community. And people are actually able to just walk on, get an assessment, and from that assessment, determine placement for them and what program would best suit them. So that's been really fruitful and a really big blessing to our community lately. We can go to them. So if they've called the office and they're looking for some type of referral or assessment, we're actually able to go out and cater to the client specifically. So whether that's meet them in the Walmart parking lot, like we've done, or different churches, wherever they need us to go, we can actually go to them. So that's huge.

The mobile clinic is a very big passion of mine because we're meeting the clients where they are, right? So the transportation is always a barrier for our mental health population here. So we have been coming into Havelock, we've been coming into New Bern a little, but we started this out with Trillium. Trillium wanted to partner with us and launched this mobile clinic. And as I had a little reservation of like how this was going to work and, you know, finding locations for this, but from down east, you know, those clients are unable to, you know, get into Moorhead to get treatment. Um, and then we've been so successful at a church in Havelock, um, and, um, the Walmart parking lot, like she said, um, and the homeless population where they located so that, that we can, get this homeless population treated, get them into housing, get them off the streets, get them in the workforce, and help them be a successful individual in the community. So that's been one of my passions. We also do transportation. So if a client does have problems getting to the office, we do have a transportation system that we're able to pick the client up, bring them to the office, and do an assessment. So we do have an office here now, 2807 Neuse Boulevard. We're in suite four here in New Bern. We are actually interviewing for therapists. We're having our office manager starts on August 31st. We've had the office for a little bit. It's just Trillium throws things at us sometimes and it's like go, go, go. So we're prioritizing things to make things work quickly like the mobile clinic. So we launched that in may and the success rate for that has been amazing. Uh, so that is kind of who we are in a nutshell. We do have the Southeastern life center. So the residential part of what we do is separate than what we do for say, cotton say up in all of our services through the state. So we do have a nonprofit side to our agency. So that residential part is the nonprofit side to our agency. as well as we have in other counties. Just to let you know the flexibility of what we can do, we have group homes for children, not in these counties, but we are able to have first look. And we had a client that was a kid who we were able to get into one of our group homes that stayed in the hospital for six months. We were able to get him into one of our group homes. He was being put in a dog cage. He was being chained to the backyard. He was suffering from wounds. He had been, you know, there's a lot of things sexually molested. This kid was torn and he is thriving. He's still in our group home, um, eight months later, but he is thriving and doing well, doing well in school. So that's just one, one of the, you know, commitments that we do. And we have adult group homes. We have, um, equestrian like center where we can do equine therapy for our clients, for children. We have a farm in another county, in Bladen County, that we can send clients to. We have a detox center in another county. So we're able to move our clients back and forth. So when they finish with those services in that county, we get them back. And then we're able to provide ongoing service as a continuum for that client.

Okay, well you've got a lot going on.

We've got a lot going on.

I've got several questions here. Don't interrupt me.

First I want to say I'm encouraged and I think our whole board is to hear your presentation today. One of the greatest needs we got in this county is what you're addressing right now. Something that we've debated and talked about and tried to have collaborations with others for many years and have not been as successful as we would like. You may have said it, and I may have missed it, in your group homes, if Craven County wanted to join on with you and utilize your services, and let's just say for our inmates to begin with, several questions where that would be number one is how many beds do you have available number two is you know if we have an inmate that would come from Craven County to your facility that would be eligible who would pay for that you want to address those two yes so we have 48 beds right now we are hoping honestly if we do eventually get a contract with Craven County for jail diversion and inmates

We would love to, I mean, we've already started looking at housing here because we do have a contract with Carter, and we have a contract with Onslow. We have 12 open beds currently. The current process, I can tell you, is we get a call from Jail Diversion. They call us and say, hey, we have this inmate. They can be picked up at 3 o'clock, and we're like, okay, we got a bed. let's go get him, or they bring him to us.

And they also go through a whole process because the last thing that we want is to take a client that may need a higher level of care such as inpatient stay, because we are not an inpatient facility. Even though we do have the residential, it's not inpatient, so there is no medical monitoring. That being said, an example, so before we had this process in place, we received an inmate who was in diabetic ketoacidosis, which is very scary. It requires an ICU stay, an insulin drip, and we're just negating things along those lines because we want to get people the correct treatment right off the bat. so if they do need a higher level of care the paperwork is sent i can review it myself and either say yay or nay to the client um so that's also kind of a safeguarding process that we have in place as well but if one's coming from jail and usually that doesn't happen normally they're accepted and everything but just to make sure for the client's safety but if

Once they get to our agency and then we do the assessment, we place them correctly and then Annalise will see them for the medication management. What we don't do is Suboxone or Methadone. She is, no, she's not gonna do that. So if they're coming off of that or we're assisting them with that, Annalise will assist that with other medications that coincide and is not a contraindication of anything else. What we do is get them into the housing immediately, and they start our program. So once they start our program, SACOT is paid for by the state. So we bill SACOT services to Trillium MCO. The housing is paid for by the county, if the county has a contract. So right now, Carteret County has the contracts, and Jacksonville-Onto County has the contracts. So they pay for the bed. And I think that bed is $50 a night.

$55 per night. Can I answer your question?

I'm sorry. And we also provide female beds too.

That was my next question. How many?

Very difficult. Yeah, we have 15 female beds.

And are they full?

uh we have two availabilities right now commissioner howard just on the um working with a lot of times the first line of defense is law enforcement do you guys have some good relationships with like the sheriff's office local pd because a lot of times they're the ones getting the call and they need to be in touch with you guys pretty quickly right yeah so we do we have good relationships right now with local pd

They'll even come and monitor our parking lot sometime or stop into our office a lot of times just to say, see if we need anything there's a lot of times that law enforcement contacts us not for say cotton say often residential but there's to the mic so people can hear you sorry i'm always talking in loud and all right okay so um but um so a lot of times they'll call and say we have this client that may be talking to themselves hallucinating and we get them in the door we do the assessment and they need a different type of service so it's important again to identify the right service so we're getting the right treatment for the client to be successful yeah thank you other questions we're also usually in contact with parole officers yes as well that's a huge a huge thing um so as long as HIPAA compliant obviously but um

That's always an open door with communication.

Thank you. That's true. One last thing. You made mention about potentially having a home here in Craven County.

Yes, sir.

How far do you see that's out? I mean, do you think that's going to be a reality soon?

We do. Um, so we had a small office in little Washington. Um, but Pamlico County has reached out to us several, several times. We've been to several meetings there, but we are definitely, um, Kelly, um, is definitely looking. He has already been looking for housing here to see. There's a couple places that were group homes here a while back. I think RHA or Monarch, one of those two had had some homes here and they're for sale. So we have been really looking to hone in into that because we are getting more traction here because we do serve clients here already with our community-based services for ACT and CST and intensive in-home. So we're all over the three counties with those services already in our mobile clinic. So it would... It would be exciting to be here for that as well as having a home and a house manager and setting the whole system up just like we do Carteret County.

Yes, Ms. Smith.

Now, do you get your clients from references or can a person walk in off the street and say they need help? Yeah.

Yes ma'am. Anybody can walk in off the street and need help. We can, um, we can do the intake right then. We may have to schedule them the next day for a CCA, but if we have a clinician that's available right then we can do that as well. Our regional director, clinical director is usually on call for those type of walk ins as well. Annalise is usually available as you know, the psych. provider to be able to provide the psychiatric evaluation right then as well. But we do get a lot of referrals. Maggie does a great job educating the community and making sure that they know that we are a resource to their community.

All of your clients are not inpatients, are they?

No, ma'am.

If they do need inpatient stay, so... Around here when I service clients in the New Bern area, we have had to IVC a few clients. So involuntarily commit them or voluntarily. So I personally have brought people to the hospital before where I'm visiting with them and they're saying, they're expressing that they have thoughts and a plan to fund themselves. So I'll go ahead and I'll transport them to the hospital. And then we work with the hospital getting like discharge paperwork. But while they're in an inpatient facility, we're not currently providing services to them. It kind of goes on a pause. And then once they're discharged, we work closely with the facilities to make sure, for me personally, if there were any medication changes, if we need to go administer a long-acting injectable, which is something that we do frequently due to noncompliance issues, especially in the community, that's something that we do as well. So as long as they have Trillium and Medicaid, their high PRS state funds, we're able to serve them.

I have one other question. When you are working with clients, do you work totally with getting them well, or do you do work in giving them a first and getting them back in the workforce, active in communities?

Yes. So that is something that we do. Our goal is to make the client or help the client achieve the best possible version of themselves. So that is a working, functioning member of society, happy, stable as far as their mood, contributing, and also receiving from their family and employers, and just the all-around encompassing service. So while they're in our services, one thing that we establish with them right off the bat is a person-centered plan, which we achieve their goals. So we look at their goals, we set them, with the client and then we continually reassess those goals and say um thank you and make sure we're helping them meet those goals and if not if they're not meeting those goals then we'll go ahead and adjust and tailor their plan to more realistic expectations and go from there

But we do not want to put them in the workforce until they're the best of themselves so that they're successful in that as well.

I said one other question, but I guess I'm like Columbo's. I have one more thing. Do you try to connect them with programs such as NC Works? Yes. Work with others. Yes, absolutely.

We love connected. So the thing about our agency, and I always say this, is there's enough sand in the sandbox for all of us, and we're not competing with anybody. We want to collaborate with all other individuals and resources, and we want to make sure that we're collaborating. If we have a client and someone else does the same exact service we do, but we are not connecting with that client, I'm going to refer that client to another agency so they get what they want. It's about the client. and their needs and getting them what they need, not about us. So, thank you.

I have a couple of things. First of all, thank you for your presentations. It answered a lot of my questions, as did the other ones there. But I have a couple more. SEIC's been around for a very long time. What is their recovery rate?

So for us here in Carteret County so far, it's been about an 85% to 89% recovery rate. We have seen a lot of our clients graduate and get jobs, and it's just been amazing. The other thing is that we've had clients that transition from SayCot to SayOp and realize, I'm not ready. I'm not ready for SACOP and they say can I continue into SACOP for a little bit longer because the first couple of weeks what we've seen is clients come into our door especially from jail diversion and they don't want to be there and they're angry and why do I have to do this and then they start the program and they start to lean in And I mean, I've had six foot five guys, massive, to cry in Annalisa's office.

So you're not talking recovery rate. You're actually talking about graduation. There's a difference. You haven't been in Carteret County for five years. No. No. I'm talking about recovery rate.

So for us, I mean, for the time we've been here. So you're talking about graduation rate.

Right. So recovery, when it comes to mental health,

I don't know that a person's fully recovered from substance abuse in six months. No, no, no, no.

That's the reason we do the ongoing, like I said earlier, the ongoing services like CST, and we engage them in the community because CST has that substance abuse component who's a licensed substance abuse specialist that continues to work with that client and follow that client into the community to make sure they are still getting your analysis because we do labs on site. So they're still doing your analysis, they're still getting medication management ongoing from Annalise.

And quantifying recovery rate, that's something that I have, in a roundabout way, a conversation with my clients a lot because one of the questions is, for me specifically, do I have to take this medication for forever? And that's a whole discussion with them saying, Studies have shown, and then I go into my spiel about, you know, if they have a crisis or a psychotic break, studies have actually shown that gray matter in your brain decreases every single time. So then we weigh the pros and the cons of medication. So recovery exactly looks different for everybody. So that's kind of the conversation that I have on a daily basis with clients, just getting them to the best version of themselves that they can be.

And can you explain your detox process? You said you don't have detox facilities here?

No, so we are not a detox facility. We've been partnering closely with Wilmington Treatment Center, with Easterseals, and again, when they are done their detox, or even prior to getting done detox, that way there's no gap in treatment, we send our referral packet, or they send it to us with all the information, and I go ahead and I look over If they're a good fit for us, and if they are, then we'll go ahead and we'll set up transportation and coordinate with the Southeastern Life Center, make sure that they have a bed available. That way, if we don't, we can tell them and they can look at other avenues and we can provide that information to them. But that, we do not do detox on site. That's not something that we're offering right now.

And then about the mobile unit, I've been seeing it around. What is the utilization rate?

It's a lot higher. Trillium is very pleased because I think prior to another agency had this and there was no usage of it. And so we've been very successful. Like I said, there's probably 16 to 22 clients a month doing outreach with this mobile clinic, which is great. It has been extremely successful. But we've done a lot of outreach prior to launching this mobile unit, like getting a calendar, getting it out into the community, locations, making sure people understood where we were at, our referral sources, stakeholders know where we're at and what we're doing. So if they have a client, they can refer, hey, the mobile unit's going to be in this location today or tomorrow, and this is near where you live. So that kind of thing. But it has... It's been very successful so far, so yeah. Okay, I look forward to seeing that Green County more.

Even if we don't contract with SEIC or anything like that, I would still like that information to share with people.

Absolutely. Stop by, too, and check it out.

I wanted to, but I knew you guys were coming, so I decided to come.

Yeah. And what we have on the mobile clinic, just to let you know, is a clinician and a peer support who does all the outreach. And our clinician, it's amazing, she's from a different country, so our clinician says, like, she never had, like, care, like medical care, mental health care in her country, she's from a very small country, a bus would come once a month and they would line up around the and the bus to try to get to it before the end of the day. And sometimes they would have to wait till the next month. And this is such a passion for her. So she stands on the streets and she's like, hey, come see us. We want to invite you into the mobile clinic. And then the hospital also has asked us to partner with them a few times with their mobile clinic. But we will be more engaged in Craven County very soon with that.

Any other questions?

No.

I'll only make one comment, and that is that we have very close to here a homeless shelter. It's called RCS. And the people that spend the night there, the men that spend the night there, they have a family unit also, they have to leave in the morning. They can't stay in their room or in their bed. What happens is a lot of them, I go by there regularly, they just go across the street and set up and sit there all day.

Underneath the trees.

Underneath the trees. So when we talk about a mobile unit, my first thought was, wow, we ought to set one up near RCS because those people need, and the goal is they can only stay there for a certain number of nights. the goal is go out during the day and look for a job. But most of them just go across the street and sit. And that's a sad situation. And so when you talk about what you do, that immediately came to my mind. We need to

the society I agree and thank you for that because if we don't know we don't know you know how to help so this is important for us putting the clinic over there would be a great idea but we do have a client over there who was nearing the end of the time that she could stay there and we've been working with her probably for about six months and now she has housing we got her set up with her social security card, she's doing her disability interviews, we're facilitating all that, getting some past legal things taken care of, she's on medications, she's compliant with them, our nurses go out there regularly to see her, She's doing awesome. Okay, good.

Well, thank you so much for your presentation. Very informative. And we look forward to you becoming more involved in our community here in New Bern specifically.

Thank you. Thank you so much for your time. Okay.

guys are fine no sorry I just so over the last three or four months Caitlin and I have been meeting with SEIC they attended your annual meeting for your opioid settlement they were part of the REI group you know just looking for direction moving forward we wanted them to come and meet you as we talked about during budget anybody we're going to partner with wanting to come and have this presentation are you interested in us Caitlin Sheriff and I and Scott continuing to further these conversations about a partnership

Very good.

Okay.

Okay. Anything else? Okay. Thank you. Thank you again for coming. Item number four on our agenda is the consent agenda. The minutes from the August 3rd regular session, the tax releases and refunds, recreation and parks, amateur sports, youth grant, budget amendment, UNC School of Government invoice, budget amendment, human resources, holiday schedule, and the proclamation of support for the 17th 75th anniversary of John W. I'm sorry, John Thomas Barber's education legacy. All those things are on the consent agenda. Do I have a motion to approve? Motion to approve. Second. I have a motion and a second. Roll call, please.

Commissioner Smith? Yes. Commissioner Howard? Yes. Commissioner Hunt? Yes. Commissioner Mason? Yes. Commissioner Mitchell? Yes. Vice Chairman Jones? Yes. Chairman Bucher? Yes.

Yes. Next item on the agenda, Donny Lavelle is going to talk to us about a cell tower, a tall item.

Good morning, commissioners. Good morning. How are you today? I'm in front of you today to talk about the Creeping Swamp Cell Tower. This is going to be, this property is owned by Alvin Coward. It is, the applicant is Harmony Towers. It was engineered and consulting was done by Saber Industries and Tri-Late. This is located on the very northwestern part of our county, approximately 3700 NC Highway, 43 northwest of Vanceboro. The tower height is 285 feet above sea level. The physical structure is actually 255 feet tall. It is a self-supporting communication tower. The county has received communication from Seymour Johnson Air Force Base as well as Cherry Point that it will not impact their operations. The county has also received approval from the FAA for these towers. They have to give their no navigation hazard letters. The proposal does meet the standards and the requirements of our tall structural ordinance. This was approved at our May 28th, 2026 planning board, where they made the recommendation for you all to approve this cell tower. If there's any questions, I would be more than happy to answer those.

Questions for Don? chairman if i could yes sir this is in commissioner mason's uh district but um i do know that this is an area that's not served with sales service um do we reach out and no it's probably not required do you reach out to any of the adjacent land owners to uh just let them know about the proposed site or no sir we do not okay um as far as I'm looking at the map here. It looks like it's in the middle of a field, not where you're going to put it, but there's no chance if it was to fall that it would encounter the highway or the adjacent home that's there.

That's why we have the setbacks that are in the ordinance and also those towers, I'm not an engineer, but those towers are designed to kind of collapse on themselves. I don't know of many of times of that actually happening. I know it's not happening here, but of course it's possible.

I think the main thing is if Commissioner Mason or Mr. Whitford, either one, was to get called about it, you know, that may from residents when they start seeing it go up, you know, of the concern, just I think that's to take note of it.

I served on a planning board in another state years ago, and this very kind of question came up. And the engineer was in the room to get the approval. This was in a town where there were other houses really close by. And he said, these towers don't fall like a tree. They don't go like that. What they do is they collapse. in the middle. They're designed to do that. So they kind of fall on themselves. And he said, there's really no risk of this thing falling where it's designed. So that was reassuring and we approved in that case many years ago. Any other questions for Donnie?

I just have a comment. Even if the diagram, even if it did fall like a tree, the diagram shows it's well away from anything else and would probably ruin some crops, but nothing else.

Okay, do I have a motion to approve? So moved. I have a second. Okay, we have a motion and a second. We do not need a roll call on this one, I don't believe. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Thanks, Donnie. Have a great day. Diana. Diana, she's a regular at our meetings lately. She comes to every meeting.

It's a pleasure. Good stuff, right? Yes.

All right, Diana.

The State Maintenance Assistance Program, or SMAP, is a state-funded public transportation grant program administered by the North Carolina Department of Transportation Integrated Mobility Division. The intention of this program is to provide operating assistance to urban, small urban, and urban regional fixed route and commuter bus systems. Eligible uses of the funds are limited to a system's operating costs. On August 3rd of this year, CARTS was notified that we have been allocated $131,691 for fiscal year 27. This is an increase of $771 from last year's allocation. SMAP funding cannot exceed the amount of local match for CART's operating expenses, and funds must be spent by June 30th of 2027. A public hearing is not required. CART is requesting approval to apply for the $131,691 in SMAP funds. A copy of the application budget, cover letter, and certified statement are attached in the agenda packet.

Okay, questions for Diane? Hearing none, do I have a motion to approve? So moved. Second. Motion and second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Thank you, Diana. Departmental matters item number seven, social services, Mr. Jeffrey Merritt. Hey, Jeff.

Hey, Chairman, Commissioners, County Manager, thank you for having me. Today we bring before you a budget amendment related to our special adoption promotion funds. We are asking to roll over unspent funds from last year and also the addition of funds that were allocated us by the state related to the number and types of adoptions that were completed. during the last fiscal year when we report that information to the state. The rollover funds in the amount of $70,665 and the additional funds in the amount of $144,339 that would bring that line up to $215,004. Questions for Mr. Merritt?

What sorts of things does the money go for? I know they're to promote adoptions, but what kind of items do they actually pay for?

So they actually just changed those requirements in April, Commissioner Mason. Some of the things they go for, they help us with recruitment of adoptive families, some pre-adoption training, post-placement supports, the services provided, and other supports that could help promote placement stability, given some of the challenges that some of the children have. and in those adoptive placements, so we try to make sure that they remain stable through that child's entire life. And also the facilitation of legal procedures. There may be some complex things that our attorneys may not be able, may not be, you know, trained in where we can hire outside legal counsel to assist with that. So there's, you know, we used to be able to do more. They've restricted that. You know, it could be that we've got, you know, We need some extra help temporarily due to the number of adoptions we're having processed. We can contract with someone to do that. So there's things that we're going to be looking at given these new procedures and how we can try to utilize some of these monies. And we also try to look at it with their children that are in the process of adopting are there things that they need that we can utilize this money for to help you know get that adoption off across the finish line you know i will say that our staff um i was looking at our data and there were three children ages 14 or over that we completed adoptions for and two of them were 17 and we think that's very significant um given that you know these these um three children are going to be in our adulthood very soon and we always find and see that when you know you have that you know that family that you can rely on once you're going into adulthood, it creates higher chances for success. And we do see children age out. That's not what we want to see happen. Some of those production things we could help with mental health services or something like that. So it's something that we're really looking to see where we can try to utilize this money and get children adopted. And I will say the board was, I don't know how many years ago, we got an additional staff member that helped you know, just solely focused on adoptions in our foster care program because many times we have children that are going through traumatic situations, crises, and our adoption are more stable and their administration time had to focus on those children. So now when those children are eligible for adoption, that's what that worker does. She works just on that, just on those children that are adopting. I think we're starting to see some of the fruits of those investments with children in our county. And again, You know, we really still need foster homes. If someone's interested in becoming a foster parent, 252-636-6472, the Hope Family Resource Center. You know, 92 children were in care in Craven County at the end of last month. There's over 10,000 in North Carolina. So even if it's a child that may not be available for adoption here that someone will want to consider, we could also assist and try to help them find another child if that's the case within our state. So that is something that we're in very desperate need for. We don't like to have unfortunate situations that happen where children have to come into custody. And instead of being able to find a home in Craven County, we're having to drive two hours one way or three hours one way to place children there. We really want to try to get people to come and be licensed foster homes in our county so that those children can stay in their community and where they can hopefully still attend the same school, see the same surroundings. It's going to be a very traumatic event, but anything you can try to do to lessen that traumatic event, even some things that would seem incremental to us, it may mean a lot for a child to have some sense of normalcy. move a seven-year-old like we had to do the other day three hours away because there's no homes available here to take that child you know they're in a totally new place even with new people and that just magnifies that experience thank you okay any other questions yeah um you dropped the number 92 children in foster care that's just one month's notice when i talk to foster care about it to other people we've maintained approximately 100

children in foster care.

We go up a little bit, we go down a little bit, but overall... We have sometimes, I think in reports you see, we tell the number of children that enter custody and the number of children that exit custody, and all those children are involved in the legal system. So it will go through that legal process and there's different ways in which children could exit custody. One of them is an adoption that does take longer but it is the most secure permanent placement which the federal government wants us to try to pursue. Those legal hurdles sometimes can be high to get a termination of parental rights. There's also guardianship with another individual which is the second most secure placement. You have to prove that person unfit in order for the child to be placed out of their so-called guardianship or custody and then just primary custody. and also children age out. But we do have our 18 to 21 program which was something I really believe the state did a good job in because previously in child welfare service when they aged out there was nothing. A lot of times they would still call their social worker and say hey look I'm trying to do this but now we have a very good staff member and supervisor that work with those children and help them to you know in that transition to adulthood it helps them with there's funds that the state pays for with and with room and board. We help them. We have kids go to college. We've got kids graduating. We've got kids going into the workforce. So I really think that that's a good program too.

And have you told me before that about 50% of our Craven County foster children are out of county?

That's approximately it. I'd have to get that number, but I would dare to say that that may be even a conservative number now.

That's a huge need, foster homes, yes.

Any other questions? Okay, do I have a motion? Motion to approve. Second. Motion and a second. We need a roll call on that one. Madam Clerk?

Commissioner Smith? Yes. Commissioner Howard? Yes. Commissioner Hunt? Yes. Commissioner Mason? Yes. Commissioner Mitchell? Yes. Vice Chairman Jones? Yes. Chairman Bucher?

Yes. Thank you very much. Thank you. Have a great day.

Sheriff Hughes? Several items for us today.

Yes, sir. I've got three items for your consideration. First is going to be donations that we received in the fiscal year 26. I want to move them to FY27. Those will be used for various items that we need, sometimes equipment, training, uniforms, et cetera. It's in the amount of $41,894. Okay. Do I have a motion to approve?

So moved. Second. Motion and a second. Roll call, please.

Commissioner Smith? Yes. Commissioner Howard? Yes. Commissioner Hunt? Yes. Commissioner Mason? Yes. Commissioner Mitchell? Yes. Vice Chairman Jones? Yes. Chairman Bucher?

Yes.

Next one is insurance funds. Yes, sir. This is, and the amount of $30,854 was from fiscal year 26. I want to move that over to this year for use of repairing vehicles.

Okay, do I have a motion to approve? Motion to approve. Second. Motion and a second. Roll call, please.

Commissioner Smith? Yes. Commissioner Howard? Yes. Commissioner Hunt? Yes. Commissioner Mason? Yes. Commissioner Mitchell? Yes. Vice Chairman Jones? Yes. Chairman Bucher?

Yes. And the third one. Yes, sir. This is going to be in the amount of $86,138. This is for the first payroll of this fiscal year. We've had members that have retired, so this would be the payout for holiday pay, vacation, and any comp time that they had occurred throughout their career.

Okay.

Motion to approve the budget amendment. Second. Second.

Motion and a second. Roll call please.

Commissioner Smith. Yes. Commissioner Howard. Yes. Commissioner Hunt. Yes. Commissioner Mason. Yes. Commissioner Mitchell. Yes. Vice Chairman Jones. Yes. Chairman Bucher.

Yes.

You have anything to share with us this morning?

First day of school is going to be August 24th. Our SROs are already in the schools working closely with the staff to prepare the schools doing security assessments, making recommendations to any security needs that might need to take place in that school, and just working closely with the staff to make sure this is going to be a very smooth transition, but we are ready to go.

Very good. Anything else? Anybody have questions for the sheriff? Thank you for coming. Thank you, Jeremy. Appreciate it. Item number nine, appointments pending. Community Child Protection Team, Craven Aging Planning Board, ABC Board, Clean Sweep, Crime Prevention Council, and Advisory Council. Those will be coming up. Under current, we got the Emergency Medical Services Advisory Council. Deborah Rogers seeks reappointment.

I would make that recommendation that we reappoint Deborah Rogers.

Do we have any other nominations? Hearing none, she will be appointed by acclamation. Craven Aging Planning Board, Pam Woods seeks appointment. Nominate Ms. Woods. Do we have any other nominations? Hearing none, Ms. Woods will be reappointed. Craven County Clean Sweep Committee, Debbie Titus seeks reappointment. Do I hear a nomination?

I would nominate Ms. Titus.

Are there any other nominations? Hearing none, she will be reappointed by acclamation. Craven County Planning Board. Sharon Marion seeks reappointment. That's an at-large seat. Do I have a nomination for Ms. Marion?

I'll go ahead and nominate her.

Sharon. Any other nominations? Hearing none, she will be appointed by acclamation. River Bend Planning Board, Bernard Bush, seeks reappointment. ETJ.

I nominate Mr. Bush.

Are there any other nominations? Hearing none, he will be appointed by acclamation. And lastly, the Voluntary Agriculture District Advisory Board, Marjorie Tyker-Gonzalez.

I'll nominate Mrs. Gonzalez.

Are there any others? All the nominations, she will be appointed by acclamation. We have no upcoming appointments to review at this time. Next person on the agenda will be our attorney, Mr. Grady. Welcome, sir.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Commissioners, good morning. I have two items for your consideration this morning, both involve county-owned real estate acquired through the tax foreclosure process. The first parcel is located at 315 Drymonia Road, parcel ID number 9045169. This is a final approval after the expiration of the upset bid period. I will also note that Craven County owns this property outright. There's no joint ownership with any local municipality. The offer amount originally was $9,000. We received no upset bids. So that becomes your final purchase price. The original past due taxes and cost of foreclosure together were $9,076.01. And the tax value on the property is $9,000. I would ask that the board consider giving final approval to this so we can settle the transaction and get it back on the tax rolls.

Okay. We need to adopt a resolution approving the conveyance after upset bid for parcel 9045169. Do I hear a motion? Second. Got a motion and a second.

Yes. Commissioner Howard. Yes. Commissioner Hunt. Yes. Commissioner Mason. Yes. Commissioner Mitchell. Yes. Vice Chairman Jones. Yes. Chairman Bucher.

Yes.

Item B. The second and last item is another final approval for property located at 405 East Maple with a parcel ID number of 7006083. As with the first parcel, the county owns this one. outright, so there's no joint ownership with another municipality. The offer amount originally was $3,500. There were no upsets during the upset bid period. The original past due taxes and cost of foreclosure were $4,928.87. The tax value of the property is $9,800. As with the other parcel, I would ask the board to give it final approval so we can close the transaction and get the property back on the tax rolls.

Okay, we're being asked to adopt a resolution approving conveyance after expiration of upset bid, parcel 7006083. Do I hear a motion? So moved. Second. Motion and a second. Roll call, please.

Yes. Commissioner Howard. Yes. Commissioner Hunt. Yes. Commissioner Mason. Yes. Commissioner Mitchell. Yes. House Chairman Jones. Yes. Chairman Bucher.

Yes. Thank you, sir. That concludes my report. Okay. Mr. Veidt, County Manager's Report.

Mr. Chairman, Commissioners, thank you for the opportunity this morning. Not a lot to report, but just keep you up to speed. Last week I attended the Griswama meeting, which is our local landfill, starting off in the new fiscal year. They did a study in partnership with the state to look at what is in the waste stream, right? What is in the trash that goes to the landfill? I found it very interesting. Commissioner Jones and Mr. Asher were there as well. Surprisingly, Craven County scored very high in a couple categories, which was recyclable items that could be recycled. We were much lower than the other counties that were studied at about 16%. The average there was around 23% finding recyclable materials in there. A lot of other things that were found, but one that I do want to point out for the record was there is an issue that's developed recently not only in this study, but in instances where we've had certain fires and things like that, which is people disposing of lithium batteries in their trash. And oftentimes when those things get mashed down into either the truck or into the yard, they catch fire. And we've had two instances where that's happened here locally That's something that a lot of folks don't recognize. If you have an item that's rechargeable and that recharge stops, that doesn't mean that item's ready for the landfill unless you remove that battery and recycle it at one of our seven convenience sites or at local retailers that have that service. So a little PSA there for you this morning for the landfill. Last week, I was also able to meet with Smart Start. I talked to Commissioner Smith about that last week. We were able to have a conversation with them that was a carryover from our budget process, and we talked to them a lot about the Dolly Parton Imagination Library, where we're helping them sustain that program after they had some funding cuts. I believe we got on the right track there. There were a lot of things they shared with us. I did invite them this fall or winter to come and present to the board and share with you guys what they're up to out there. Later this week, some of us will attend the NCACC Group of County Commissioners State Conference in Durham. Looking forward to that. One of the highlights I just made a note of is, as you know, the legislative session has now ended. There is a lot of legislation that was passed that we're still sorting through at the local level, whether there's fiscal impacts or operational impacts. So I'm very interested in how other counties are viewing some of that legislation. Also, in talking about the legislature, there is an adjournment resolution that does bring them back in late November. So we'll obviously keep our eye on that for opportunity for additional legislation or fiscal things that we may be interested in. And on Friday, I was able to meet with our DSS director, Jeff Merritt, who's here, and he shared a lot about adoption. Jeff and I meet every month to talk about how DSS is doing. He'll be here with you in the fall. Again, some of those legislative changes are going to impact how DSS operates. So in October at your work session, Jeff will be here with his team to share some of those fiscal issues with you. Other than that, Mr. Chairman, that's all I have unless you have things for me. All right. Thanks so much.

Thank you. Okay. Next item on our agenda is commissioner's report. Start with you. Nothing today.

Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'd like to go back to the Southeastern Integrated Care Program. I believe the county manager was asking for some direction from the board in terms of how did we want to proceed.

Right. So, you know, before, and Caitlin's already left, but before we spend a lot of time negotiating a contract, just wanted to get your thoughts. Is this, what you heard today, something you want us to begin that process? Obviously, we'll include Sheriff Hughes and Scott Harrelson, Jeff Merritt, folks who are impacted by individuals that need these services. That may take a month or two. If you guys give us kind of the head nod to...

I was impressed with what I heard. We're short on services. I would recommend that we go forward. If you need a motion, consider that one.

I'll support what E.T. said. We discussed it, and I think that, yeah.

You need to vote. I just need a head nod. I mean, if that's something. Because we'll also have to bring the contract back to the board.

Everybody was favorably impressed. At least that was the impression I got.

I wanted to say a little bit more, but they did such a good job. But one of the things when we've met with their team is their inclination to acquire property here in Craveman County, whether it's an office, a house or two. They said something, and it really resonated with me because we have such a struggle, is they want to focus on female. Mm-hmm. individuals here we've tried for at least half a decade to get somebody to do that and they seemed interested so i mean if we could crack that nut that would definitely be a big win for us all so okay all right so we'll proceed with that and get back to the board probably in october my guess is we'll be back at that work session that was all i had okay commissioner smith um i have i may be out of commission for the first meeting in september

Because I'm having surgery on the third. Hopefully I will be back by the second one, but I'm not sure. But I will be not available for our first meeting. Okay.

Thank you. We'll keep you in our prayers, and I hope that goes well. Thank you. Okay. Commissioner Hunt.

No report. Okay.

In our proclamation of our consent agenda, we did a proclamation of support for Mr. John Thomas Barber's 75th anniversary legacy. It is sad that the school that he's named after him is so old and really is in need of replacement. It would be nice if we could come up with a better school to reuse his name on.

Okay. Anything else?

No, that's it.

The only thing I want to remind the board, if you will, put in your calendars. Coach City is having their Fireman's Day on September the 26th, 10 a.m. They'll have their parade, and they have extended an invitation to this board to come and be a part of that day. That's it.

I have nothing to report. The commissioners were being asked to go into closed session. pursuant to NCGS 143-318.11a4 to discuss the location or expansion of industries or other businesses.

Do we have a motion?

So moved. Second. Take a five minute recess and we will go into closing.