City Council Work Session - Regular Meeting

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If you all give us just a minute. Oh, there we go. All right. So we will call our August 24th meeting to order. We welcome those who join us in the audience, those who also... Those who are also joining us remote, we welcome you. At this time, as with every meeting, we would like to start with our invocation of prayer. We have Apostle April Hightower of the New Salem International Ministries. Apostle Hightower, if you would, if we could please stand for the prayer immediately following, if we could repeat the Pledge of Allegiance.

Gracious Father, we pause at the beginning of this gathering to recognize the responsibilities, duties, and assignment given to our mayor and the city council. May those who serve in this chamber be guided by wisdom, integrity, fairness, and courage. Give them the ability to listen carefully, consider diverse perspectives, and make decisions with the well-being of our entire community in mind. May they remember that behind every policy and every decision are people, families, children, seniors, veterans, workers, business owners, students, neighbors, and individuals from many cultures, backgrounds, and traditions that rely on their decision making ability to enhance the future of our great city. Help us to build a city where every person is treated with dignity and respect, where differences do not divide us but broaden our understanding, where opportunity is pursued with fairness, and where compassion guides our response to those who are experiencing difficulty. Grant our elected leaders patience when challenges are difficult, humility when perspectives differ, and wisdom to seek common ground without compromising the principle of justice and human dignity that represents our creator. Your word reminds us to seek wisdom, to pursue justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly. May those principle guide the work that takes place in this chamber on today that contribute to a safer, stronger, more compassionate, and united Fayetteville. Bless the mayor, the city council, city officials, employees, and all who contribute to the life and future of our community. Give them clarity when decisions are difficult, patience when opinions defer, and discernment to recognize solutions that strengthen the entire community. In everything, we give you thanks and praise with gratitude, humbleness for the opportunity to serve your people with hope for the future of our city. May we move forward together in peace. In your name, we prayerfully submit this petition on behalf of our leaders as we trust you throughout this process. Amen.

Amen.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic on which it stands, one nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all.

Pastor Hightower, thank you for that wonderful prayer. I've known you for a long time. You're doing great work in your ministry over on Murchison Road with the after-school care and some of the other things that you're doing. Tell the audience a little bit about yourself and your ministry.

Yes, sir. My name is Apostle April Hightower. I bring you greetings on behalf of New Salem International Ministries located at 4006 Murchison Road. right here in the God-blessed city of Fayetteville, North Carolina. The focus and purpose of our ministry is to teach biblical principles and strategies that's going to challenge you to change in order to improve your quality of life in four specific areas, spiritual growth, community and economic development, housing, as well as educational excellence. On this weekend, our community, and we are inviting the entire city of Fayetteville to come out we're having a community give back back to school program where we're going to have free haircuts we're giving away school supplies we're also giving away food clothing and we're also going to have information concerning our upcoming private school new salem christian academy that will be open up in the 2027 2028 school year so we'll be giving out information concerning that so you all are welcome to come if you're not busy this saturday from 10 to 3.

All right, thank you. Can we give Pastor Hattow, Apostle Hattow a round of applause?

Apostle Hattow. Apostle, what time would that be?

All right. All right. Thank you so much, Pastor. Thank you for that wonderful prayer. Council, as we move to the next item, we have the announcements. I will go to Council Member Jones.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just want to take a few moments to acknowledge my other half. She started a journey with me right after undergraduate school. She was a Winston-Salem State Ram. I was a federal state Bronco. I didn't hold that against her. But she decided to marry this young man at the time. So I'm excited to just share that on this Friday, we will be celebrating our 28th wedding anniversary. So Amisha, love you, hon. Just wanted to let you know that. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

You're a smart man, sir.

Councilman here. Thank you, Mayor. I would like to reiterate from I was trying to get it all on my, yeah. Just want to reiterate from last week that this weekend, it's Saturday, the 29th, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., we will be having the 34th Annual Umoja Festival that will be in the Smith or Seabrook Park, and we hope that you will come out there, enjoy the unity time, and bring your family. It's going to be a big day, a food trucks and you can get your blood pressure check and just a whole lot of great health and fun times. And for those of you that have not registered to vote, you will also have an opportunity to do that with the NAACP. They will have a table in partnership with a mega sci-fi fraternity, the Beta Chi,

chapter we look forward for you coming out and stopping at our table thank you mayor yes sir all right councilman davis thank you mr mayor i just wanted to announce that uh fable's very own fable cumberland youth council is having a member interest meeting on september 3rd From 630 p.m. To 8 p.m. Any ninth and twelfth graders who are interested in having being a voice for your age demographic Please join them at the federal Youth Council office at 725 West Rowan Street on September 3rd from 630 to 8 p.m. Thank you, mr. Mayor.

Thank you All right council seeing no other announcements. I moved 5.0 to city manager's report. Mr. Hewitt. I

Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Two quick announcements, and both of them very positive. On this past Wednesday, the Fayetteville Fire Department traveled to Chicago and earned the international accreditation from the Commission on Fire Accreditation International for the fourth time. So if we could, Chief Dove, if you and when you come up and give your presentation as well, if you could tell the council more about that. But the accreditation is a process of self-assessment verified through peer review. And our Fayetteville Fire Department is one of only 127 fire departments on the planet. Wow. To carry the ISO class one in internationally accredited recognition. So if we could. Thank you. Outstanding. The other quick announcement is this past weekend has also been very instrumental as well. Our assistant clerk Paula Hanbury. received her North Carolina certified municipal clerk certification the certification recognizes municipal clerks have completed over a year professional education and training focused on knowledge and skills essential to effectively serve their communities and pass the required exams the certification reflects a commitment to professional excellence continuous learning and the highest standards of municipal clerk service so Ms. Hanbury congratulations

That's all, sir. All right. Thank you. Congratulations again to Chief Dove and our great fire department. I know we look forward to hearing your presentation tonight, but thank you as outstanding of 127 on the planet. So that's huge. So we thank you and the hard work that you all do every day. And Ms. Paula, certainly we congratulate you. uh for your credentials and all the city employees we have a very hard working dedicated and qualified team that work hard day in and day out a lot of you don't see uh all the work that they do behind the scenes to keep the city running but we thank each and every one of you so So with that, council will move to the approval of the agenda. Item 6.0, I'll entertain a motion to approve. We'll use our sure systems. There's a motion by council member here. Is there a second? Second. All right, we're going to use our sure. I heard council member McNair down there. All right, so any discussion on the motion? All right, council, I'll look to you for your votes to approve the agenda. All right madam Kirk is unanimous moving to the consented items. We had a couple of consent item questions think councilmember Jones 7.0 a 5, I think all right and counsel if you could for a separate up and down 0, a 6, I know we've had this is a continuation. So if we can approve the agenda with those 2 items. Councilman Jones you want to make a motion yes I move to approve the consent agenda with the exception of pulling 7.805 and 7.806 all right there's a second second by Councilman Davis I saw on the sure system all right discussion on that all right council I look to you for your votes this is to approve with the exception of those two items All right, motion carries. Item 7.085, I'll go to you, Councilmember Jones.

Thank you so much. I just wanted to provide some clarity for the community in regards to this item. I am in support of it as it is written at this time, so I wanted to just provide some additional clarity. So what I want to do, I just want to recap my understanding, and you can fill in the gaps. I don't want to take a lot of time. There were obviously some concerns from the community in regards to this particular rezoning, and so I just wanted to provide some information to address those. The first aspect of that, it was originally planned to rezone, again, about 123 acres from LI to HI. And part of that rezoning, per my understanding, was one, addressing temporary storage, and then another aspect was some building. modifications there. So those were two things. So the current recommendation, which was revised, which again, I'm in agreement with, is to reduce that rezoning down to 61 acres. And that would be for the area where they're actually going to build the extension of the steel fab manufacturing. All right, in addition to that, there were some concerns with the Roses Lake bed possibly being touched, and then there's a conservation district out there. Then beyond that, there was a layer of trees there, and just providing some visuals. So as currently met, the Roses Lake bed will not be touched. The conservation district, they have agreed to keep that in place as well.

Yes, Councilman, that's all correct.

All right, and then thirdly, just to address the aspect of ownership, this isn't an odd situation. This is something that actually occurs very frequently within real estate where if someone doesn't necessarily own a property, they can do an affidavit of ownership. Is that correct? Correct.

That happens almost every rezoning we do.

Yes, and it's not just big organizations, it's smaller ones as well, smaller businesses as well. And basically, I just wanted the community to know it's, hey, I'm wanting to buy this land. Before I buy it, I wanna make sure that I can do what I need to do with it. And it's no different than if I was opening a salon or something somewhere, I want to make sure that I can get that. So that has been, Third, fourthly, and the last aspect, part of, a small portion of their operations would be moved from the front of Steel Fab, which is right there located near one of my Witchburn Pines community, to the back. So that was a plus for this particular community. spoken with those of Whispering Pines, and we just had our Hillandale West meeting as well. And I know some of the individuals did go to the zoning commission as well to voice their concerns. And so I just wanted to provide that. So if there's any aspects that I've missed that would provide some clarity on some things, if you would do that, I would greatly appreciate it.

think councilman you you covered it pretty well right there I think you've been pretty much involved in this for a while so you you know well what's been going on and what the concerns are out there okay all right and mr. mayor I'll be ready to make a motion all right yes sir it's on you all right so I'm moved to approve the amended

map amendment to heavy industrial and retaining the current city area as presented on the evidence base submitted and findings that the rezoning is consistent with the future land use plan as demonstrated by the attached consistency and reasonable statement.

All right. Motion by Council Member Jones. Looks like second by Hare. Discussion? All right. Council, I look to you for your votes on 085.

Good question, sir. Good questions.

Madam Clerk, who are we missing?

Council Member Ferguson.

Pardon, what you doing there?

Okay.

All right, motion carries unanimously. Thank you. All right, thank you. 7.086 is a continuation of a special use permit that we heard a few weeks back, asked this item to be pulled for a separate vote. special use permits just to our audience are basically governed by state statute which says that there are a number of findings of facts six in this case that sworn testimony and uh evidence uh either support or uh or do not support or build a case to support or not support um these findings of facts for Council so Council I wanted a separate vote for this for consent uh and uh with that can entertain a motion uh to consider this item unless there was some further questions Councilman hundreds so move mr mayor all right all right as much about councilman mahondros and and that is to approve sir all right and it's a it's a special use does he have to read these findings okay all right so much about councilman hondros is there a second second about councilman mcgreen all right discussion all right council look to you for your votes All right and Kirk must carry 7, 3, those voting opposed Thompson Colvin Davis all right. All right moving to public hearing. At this time, we are preparing to hold a public hearing where the city council formally seeks your input. Individuals designed to speak in the hearing must have signed up to speak with the city clerk by name and address before the start of tonight's meeting. We'll begin with the staff presentation, then we'll move into the formal hearing. 15 minutes will be allowed by those in favor and those opposed to the item in the hearing. individual speakers are limited to 3 minutes each unless by previous arrangement a single spokesperson is designated which case the spokesperson may use entire 15 minutes when the city clerk cause your name please come to the podium please clearly state your name and address for the record you may then begin to address the council the light changes from green to amber that means you have approximately 30 seconds remaining and at the conclusion of your time the timer will ring or the light will turn red and so at this time I'll stop and turn it over to you sir Good evening.

I don't see the presentation. No. Thank you. Good evening, Mr. Mayor, members of the council. My name is Scott Walters. I'm with the Development Services Department. This will be a short presentation on possible text amendments to our sign code, specifically related to wall-mounted signage, window signage. and the downtown two district. The council's already seen this presentation once before at their work session on June the 1st. The original presentation had seven examples. Of those seven examples, four were selected by the council to move forward for public hearing. The staff presented the four examples to the Planning Commission at their July 21st meeting as part of the public hearing process and to get their recommendations. Tonight we bring it back before the council for your consideration. The first example in this is for building mounted signage and what we're doing with this example is we would remove the five sign limit that we currently have in place and then building mounting signs would only be regulated by the wall area of each side of the building using the increased allowance below. the way it reads unless otherwise stated the permitted copy area for building mounted signage shall be calculated as the greater of either currently it's 1 to 1 we would increase that to 1.5 to 1 and the second one is 10% currently and that would increase to 15% The next is the Downtown 2 District. This would remove the Downtown 2 Districts from the limitations of the subsection below, and it would place or allow the DT2 District to use the same standards as all other non-residential districts for building mounted signage. Currently, DT2 District is limited to one exterior building mounted sign per street front. Example F is window signage. And this would remove the limitation on window signage related to walls that have wall signage. It would increase to 100% coverage of the glazed area of every window and door on all sides of the building. And as a side note, the DT2 district is already regulated in the same as all other non-residential districts for window signage. Below is the current standards as you see scratched out. 50% of the cumulative square footage of a glazed area that would increase to 100% and we would take away as it says down there below shall not exceed the square footage of an installed wall sign And what that really means is if there's a wall sign up there smaller than what is allowed for the glazed area, then you would have to stick with the signage size of the wall sign. So we would remove both of those standards and increase it to 100% coverage. Our last example. In this example, we removed the five sign limit for building mounted signs per building or tenant space, allow full wall coverage of all building walls, so basically a wall wrap, whether it was one big sign encompassing the whole side of the building or a wall of the building, or multiple signs on any one side or all sides of the building. the only regulating requirement would be that they would be able they would be required to have a sign permit for any sign that they did place on the building the recommendations on July 21st the Planning Commission met and voted 5-0 to recommend the City Council approve example B and C as presented below is example B as we showed in the first slide and example C is this downtown two district example The options here approve with examples B and C as recommended by the Planning Commission, approve with some or none of the examples as recommended by the Planning Commission, remand back to staff with specific verbiage or changes as desired, or deny all text amendment options.

All right. Councilman Andros.

Mr. Mayor, if there's no questions, I'm prepared to make a motion.

Let me open the public hearing. All right. That will open the public hearing. Madam Clerk.

Mayor, we have no speakers for this item.

That will close the public hearing. Councilman Andros.

If there's no questions, Mr. Mayor, I'm prepared to make a motion. Yes, sir. I move to approve examples B, C, and F.

All right. Motion by Councilman Mahindra to approve. Is there a second by Councilmember Davis? I believe I saw in the SURE system discussion. All right. Council, I look forward to your votes on this item. All right. Madam Curtin. That is approved. Vote in opposition. Mayor Pro Tem. All right. All right. 8.02. Mr. Van Gans. Robo.

Good evening, Mayor, Council. Pleasure to be with you here tonight.

I don't know if that's right.

I'm a PDF. I got it now. I did that last time. Apologies there for the brief delay. And so you have before you, we're happy to be back again with another applicant for the Can Do Performance Financing Program. Tonight we have one project in front of you, but I think it's a really great one and one that we've been working with for some time. As you may recall, this program was developed to advance the city's goal of increasing the number and diversity of local vendors available to you and other institutions here in the community. Importantly, it is designed to address the typical barriers that keep small companies from growing, especially those in low and moderate income communities, and it overcomes the hurdles of traditional lending. It's administered by the 501c3, and we have a number of partners that have worked with us throughout this process, and will continue to. We launched with $5 million, $2.5 million from the city, $2.5 million from the state, and job-creating businesses can apply for up to $750,000 worth of funding. I would say today's a good time to say now's a great time to apply. Go to cannducarolina.com, and we'll share the link in a moment there, but we'll be making a push. to encourage people to apply for our next round of funding. But if the company creates required jobs, the funds are treated as a forgivable loan, meaning they don't accrue interest and they help that company move forward and grow.

We had 29 unique businesses apply.

Working through those, we had 17 candidates that were within the qualified areas or qualified as into the type of business that they were. Even though we can't fund nonprofits, a lot of nonprofits ask. Seven projects were submitted to the investment committee. Six of those went forward with one, I think, withdrawing to Seed, our partner for reviewing the financial due diligence. And we had one project that met the scoring criteria for this round of funding. Just as a reminder, the area's in blue and it does change, it has changed. There's a new link, but this was the maps that were in place at the time of this round of applications. These are your low to moderate income census tracts. And again, to qualify, they have to be a company that has 15 or fewer businesses, employees, sorry, operating in the census tract. And they have to create one job for $25,000 provided with at least 60 of those new hires being from low to moderate income households. They have to pay at least 10% above the local average for the positions by classification and create 50% of the jobs within 18 months and 100% within five years. Our applicant today that we're pleased to bring forward is Carlos Godwin and Camden Cleaning Solutions. And if you have a moment, we'd like to let him have an opportunity to say a little bit about his company and his project. Carlos?

Hello everyone. Good evening. My name is Carlos Godwin. In 2019 I started my commercial cleaning business. Of course it's called Camden Cleaning Solutions and we've been providing services to many companies around including Fayetteville State, Fort Liberty, Fort Bragg, and we've also done work with Seymour Johnson Air Force Base. And today we're asking for approval for $125,000 for capital equipment request. And these requests are broken down into three different categories. Category number one, we're looking for fleet. So we're looking for $55,000 to purchase two to three utility vans. so that we can deploy more crews simultaneously. We're looking at $28,000 for floor care equipment. This is specifically for our strip and wax service. So we're looking at purchasing buffers and scrubbers and also tile and grout equipment. and then our last bucket is $42,000 for our specialty equipment and this is for our pressure washing trailers our carpet cleaning and carpet extraction as well as some of our small business equipment like our mop buckets and our carts and things like that and we're also looking to invest some of that last bucket into facility changes as well as safety So this investment is just not going to help with the bottom line. We also want to increase our staffing so we're looking at hiring five people over the next five years with three of those to be in the next 18 to 24 months and we're hiring different positions such as cleaning technicians floor specialists supervisors as well as hr representatives so again just a quick 125 000 request for approval for our capital equipment so that we can approve our our our business and our and our infrastructure so i thank you guys for the time and opportunity i also want to thank the can do program for helping us go through this this journey thank you sir

Thank you, and I'm sure he's happy to answer any questions either now or during or after the public hearing that's required. We do respectfully request that you approve these funds. I think importantly for folks, these are to buy the items that allow a company to grow that typically would require a line of credit or instrument that adds interest costs makes it very hard to purchase equipment pay the debt pay your people do the work and wait to get paid and that's what the program is designed to do to allow them to get the assets they need to grow and for people looking for more information they go to can do Carolina fund.com we have a new application form going up tonight and with that thank you for the opportunity presented tonight thank you for support

all right thank you uh don't see any questions at the moment so with that i'll open up public hearing madam clerk mayor we have no speakers for this item all right so with that we will close the public hearing and council i look to you for a motion councilman have a quick question for the gentleman from camden where's um headquarters where are you based out of

We're off of Grove Street, 109 Grove Street. Awesome.

Thank you so much.

Councilman McNair, you had a question?

No, sir. I will if you don't.

Councilman Davis, you had a question?

I was afraid to make a motion, sir.

Y'all to fight for you to know he's going to make a motion, OK, I guess not real well, you don't have to fight over motions in here.

All right.

I saw the Davis make it.

Yeah. All right. Yes, we did. Thanks, man. I move our move that we approve Carlos Godwin and Camden Clean and Solutions LLC for the can't do performance financing funding in the amount of one hundred and twenty five thousand dollars and authorized the CDF to release the funds subject to the candidate entering into an Incentive agreement. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. All right.

All right. So let me get a second on that motion. There's a motion by Council Member Davis, seconded by Hare. And that is a District 2 business. I think he said Grove Street, right? Yes, it is. That's why I was kind of quiet.

All right. Thank you, Mayor. And I like this. I like whenever we can support our local business owners right here in Fayetteville. Mr. Robo, tell me who does this. Who does the verification that everything goes through in accordance to the request tonight?

It is a team effort. As far as from this point forward, it is our staff working with special counsel, and then we require dead instruments, and then we are also working with iParametrics, who is one of your monitoring groups for the funds that were provided at the time. and city staff is apprised of all the contractual documents that go into it uh everyone enters into a contract we enter in security grants for example for the vehicles we'll hold title uh in that case so uh should uh we know i have good faith in this project and actually in all of the companies we've been working with But should someone try to do something like sell our vehicle, they wouldn't be able to do that without, actually they would not be able to do that legally. So we do the right things we can. But we also know that these are small businesses, there's risk involved and they're trying to grow. But it is, we also work with seed. And then when companies need training or upskilling, we work with the hub at FSU or applicants who maybe aren't ready yet. So we do have a variety of different partners throughout.

Great, I'm glad to hear that and I'm ready to vote, Mayor.

all right i have a couple more questions councilmember mcnair and i just wanted to say before we vote to mr carlos congratulations because you do have my vote and i'm excited for you you and your new staff we do have a team of experienced financial volunteers that sit on our steering committee and michelle scott here is the one that has to uh check off and sign off on any piece of paper that comes in before it gets anywhere yeah all right councilmember mcmillan yeah thank you mr mayor

Yeah, encouraged by this program. I definitely want to see it grow and more applicants accepted. Question for Robo and then a question for Mr. Camden. I'll go with Mr. Camden first. How did you find out about this program? Would encourage you to apply. And then I'll go ahead and give you my question. Robo, my question for you is just what's the most common reason for denial for applicants?

Well, I was just searching on the Fayetteville website And I found it. I really didn't understand what it was. And then I think, I don't know if it was Shayla at the time, but I reached out to one of the people in the organization. They were able to inform me. So, and then we just started filling out paperwork and going through the whole process.

Okay. Glad that you did. Thank you.

And I think today, I would say that it's not so much denial as in, and this is something we're working really hard on by identifying businesses and sending out mailers now trying new ways to get the word out. We need as much help as possible on that. This fund is targeted for small existing businesses to help them grow. Like you've got right here a person who got working full time with the employees in that. I'd say the challenge we've had is we've had a large number of people that haven't yet really gotten started. So we've been working to try to get them the tools they need to become a fully incorporated operating business versus a secondary contract work. And so that's really been the challenge for the vast majority of folks that have come in. They haven't been ready yet. We have had some people that have come back and been able to grow through that. And others we feel very confident they will be able to. Sometimes they want to take a step from step one to step 14, and we've been working to try to help them get into something around step five and six before they come back and look for this bigger project. So it takes a lot of time, but also too, the other side is we have a lot of early, earlier stage companies. I know, I feel confident there's a lot of businesses that are out there doing the work every day and are trying to keep up with everything they have to do to keep their business going that haven't yet heard about this. I think your business is a perfect example. You've been in business how long now? Since 2019. Since 2019, so he's a perfect fit for this when it first came out, but it wasn't until the second round where he was able to hear about it. So I think we just need to get the word out to qualifying existing businesses. We have other programs for startups. We have other grant programs for really big companies, but this is unique in the sense it's for a small existing business to help them grow.

Right on. Thank you.

Thank you. And Mr. Godwin, again, good work. Very impressive. Robert, when we first talked about this, it was a gap that needed to be filled because, as you said, there's something here regardless of what stage your business is in. If it's a conceptual idea, you have the hub, which will help you with business plans and other services to help you get incorporated and tax ID numbers and all those kind of things that people need when you first start. Then you have those who have been in business, who've learned the trade, but now they're ready to grow and scale, which is Mr. Godwin. And then you have our community development. So there's something along the way, regardless of what size your business is, that some of these services in the community that are available to you, Again, we just want to encourage people to apply. There's a success story for, I think maybe the first one we approved, the local contractor. She bought additional equipment with it, and now my understanding is she just got recently awarded a $4 million contract.

The USDA grant from North Carolina Right, going to be able to grow up and have 16 employees now. quickly exceeding their job creation expectations. And I have a feeling while Carlos has five years to get it, because we didn't want it to be a burden on compliance for the company, I have no doubt he's going to meet those numbers much faster than that.

So fantastic. Well look, I don't want to delay this any further.

Councilor Davis. Robo, can you tell us when the next cycle for applications can come in?

We, if we get a large influx, we tend to run as a group, but you can apply anytime.

Okay.

So, and now is the perfect time because we've just worked through this approval here, and so we are absolutely ready. We've got a brand new form online that'll make applying even easier on our site, so now is the perfect time. It's always a good time to give us a call, and we can handle just about anything that comes in.

Thank you, sir. All right, council, I look forward to your votes. There are no other questions. all right motion carries unanimous congratulations let's go and look forward to great things all right all right council moving to the 9.01 staff reports starts out with our chief dove and our iso rated fire department 135 in the world, 127? 127. 127. Man.

I gotta say, I'm not really ready, it's only 7-11 at night.

Look, don't start to, hey, hey. I thought you wanted to get through this without a complication. I'm ready, you don't worry about that. Let me think of some questions for you. Yes.

i usually psych myself up i wasn't ready yet uh good evening mr mayor members of council kevin dove fire chief uh here tonight presenting the calendar year 2026 second quarter report We have three highlights for the second quarter that we're very excited to share. As Dr. Hewitt said, we went through our accreditation process and we're awarded accreditation for the fourth time. And what I need everybody to know is that's not done in a vacuum. That's not done just by the fire department. That's a whole group effort by the city. When our peer assessors come in, they interview city manager's office, they interview IT, they interview HR, finance, budget, and our 911 center, obviously. And if those folks don't have their ducks in a row, it doesn't work for us. So we also share this with them, and we're appreciative of their work. And also, I have to thank our partners at Fayetteville Technical Community College. They gave us that beautiful training center that we take advantage of every day, and that helps a ton as well. Also, we participated in a smoke alarm Saturday canvas where we visited 111 homes and installed 135 smoke alarms in three hours, all three of charge. And we held our groundbreaking for Fire Station 16. So it was a good quarter. Moving on to operations, we responded to 7,359 calls in quarter two, slight increase from 2025 with April being the busiest of three months. 4,452 of those calls were medical in nature, 1,115 false alarms, 1,018 service calls, and 317 fires. We have your heat maps that you'd like to see. This is your fire map, and it's followed behind with the medical map. As always, we're happy to get you zoomed in to your districts if you wish, help you identify any issues. The response time stayed consistent with the total response time average of 7 minutes and 31 seconds, which is well under our 8-minute expectation. I want to give special attention to the decrease in alarm handling time. We thank Ms. Reed and her staff for being very efficient. Calls are being turned out of our 911 center in an average of 1 minute and 3 seconds.

Say that again, Chief.

Calls are being turned out of our 911 center in an average of one minute and three seconds. Before we go any further on statistics, I need to share with you that the U.S. Fire Administration has changed how we collect and report data as the fire service. What was known as INFERS, which is the National Fire Incident Reporting System, is now NIRIS, which is the National Emergency Response Information System. Say that three times fast.

Hmm.

This change took place in January of 26, so several areas that we previously tracked are no longer tracked, and some have been manipulated, and some are collected different. So for about the next two or three quarters, you're going to see some things that may be skewed, but I'll try my best to point those out to you. All right, so for our fire statistics, there were 317 fire responses in the second quarter. Sixty-eight of those were structure fires. Twelve of those started in the kitchens. Sadly, there was one civilian fire fatality and nine civilian injuries. There were seven firefighter injuries, thankfully all minor sprains and strains and things like that. The percentage of fires confined to the room of origin is at 57%, which is one of the things, one of the changes. Previously, we would identify fires as starting in the room of origin, contained to the building of origin, or did it get to an exposure? Well, that's changed now. Now you just report 25%, 50%, 75%, or 100% loss. So that throws that out. What we're going to do from now on is to confine the room of origin, we're going to count in our 25% damage. That's the best way we can find to track that. The dollar save ratio was at 94.33%. We had some significant fire losses this quarter, which brought that number down a little bit. That was 2.681 million in total fire loss. Six of the structure fires were intentionally set, and we had three lithium-ion battery fires. We did use one of our fire blankets. We had a lithium-ion battery fire in the back of a tractor trailer. It was a tote of batteries that were taken off on us, and we used our fire blankets. The top three fire losses were the hotel fire on Sycamore Dairy Road. This picture is awesome to me, but I'm a fireman. It probably scares the heck out of a bunch of people. But one of the occupants took this out of their window that morning. The second fire was a residential fire on Adolphus Road, and then we had a farm equipment fire on Stony Point Road. You'll see a decrease in EMS calls. This is also another part of that nearest where some calls are now reclassified as service calls. Overdose responses in Narcan administration continue to trend down. Our hazmat team had a busy quarter. Natural gas responses increased almost triple. We don't know why, there was no smoking gun, but we're gonna continue to monitor that. And our hazmat team is actually right now getting ready to go to Hornet County for a CO call. So they're busy, they're always moving. Moving on to our most important piece is our human capital, our personnel. We held our sixth annual Women in the Fire Service Day. This is when we invite women interested in the fire service to the training center. They kick all the males out. Our female officers and firefighters are there to answer their questions. They walk them through the physical agility test, help them with interview skills, and basically show them what it takes to be a firefighter and what it's all about. It was actually a really good quarter for us in regards to separations. This chart looks a little dramatic, but we only had two resignations and one retirement in the second quarter. At the end of the quarter, we only had one vacancy, which was a permit technician and fire inspections. We filled that. But unfortunately, we are starting to see an increase in resignations over the summer. Our demographics remain very similar to quarter one simply because we didn't lose many people and we only hired one inspector. We can continue to currently be at 26% underrepresented population. Our staff completed over 32,000 hours of training in the second quarter. Moving on into the fire marshal's office. Fire inspectors completed 1,038 new plan reviews, did 323 new construction inspections, 3,471 maintenance inspections, and discovered 7,242 fire code violations. Luckily, most of those are education and fixed right there. Very few require a fine or any kind of additional action. We issued 143 new certificate of occupancies and distributed 106 educational flyers to businesses. Here are the top five fire code violations that we find. Portable fire extinguishers are still number one, with electrical equipment, wiring, and hazards being number two. Last but certainly not least is our community risk reduction folks. We interacted with 9,999 residents, and I was like, really? You couldn't find one more person to go talk to? But they gave me the real number, so that's what it is. We were at 104 community events, 392 smoke alarms were installed total, 116 carbon monoxide alarms installed, 105 children are now riding more safely in cars, 1,018 people now know hands-only CPR, and we did three youth fire setting interventions during the second quarter. And as always, no one should ever go to sleep without a working smoke alarm. Call us or scan the QR code for a free smoke alarm delivered to your home and installed by our fine firefighters.

And I'm happy to take any of your questions. I do have a couple. Council Member Heron and I had one.

Thank you. Pretty good report, Chief. Thank you, sir. I was trying to see. I think it was. Well, that says that, too. You had where a person had lost their life, but I've got it written down here, fire statistics, but you've got two or three that have that. I was trying to see, was that person caught that started the fire? No, I think you said the fire that was started. Was that person caught?

Yes, sir.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor.

Chief, on the page with fire inspections, second quarter's got years 24, 25, and 26.

Yes.

So you have a huge increase in fire code violations from 25 and 26. It doubled. Why is that?

Our inspections doubled. If you look at the new construction inspections, none of those were reported. We didn't do them in 24 and 25. And our planned reviews have almost doubled as well due to the additional staff. And a lot of those are found in the new planned reviews when they're going through the reviews and they say, hey, with this, you need a riser here or something over here. That counts as a violation.

Really?

Yes, sir.

it's just because it has to be noted but it's no but you know it's an education oh yeah the maintenance inspections are the 3471 those are the ones that are on the three four and five year cycle where we go into the uh the business and and get them squared away okay all right councilmember uh jones and then mayor protein

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. First, thank you all for what you do. I was able to attend some of the car safety events that you partner with the state and others with. You all do a good job. I just appreciated the engagement that you have with the community, how responsive they were. And I think a lot of them were surprised. They were like, oh, yeah. The fire department is out here. So you all do a lot of things. So I want to really, really thank you all. And the community is really, really appreciative of you. My question is quick. And I may be premature asking this. If so, you can just say so and we'll get it later in the year. I see that you're doing a good job with your staffing and your retention as well. And I know you mentioned some things. At this moment, what are your plans or what is in place to address the overhire?

situation we've been working with budget and we think we have a solution we're gonna we're moving we're actually moving forward with our second class of 2026 then we'll start in September we're gonna on board the over hires and we're gonna work closely with budget to make sure we can handle that Because we're realizing some vacancies and some coming retirements, so they're going to flush themselves out. The concern we have is probably for the first class of 2027, we may not be able to bring the overhires on. It just depends on what the numbers look like. Okay. Okay.

Okay, understood. I think we can address that at that time.

Thank you so much. Thank you. All right, Mayor Pro Tem. Just to piggyback off of what my colleague said about the partnership with state community services. I went out there and seen one of your events about the child car seats. And a grandpa and a papa like me did not realize that the car seat that I had installed was installed wrong. papa so i'm glad that i went out to that event and i don't know who the young lady was but she corrected me how do you get that information out because i had asked shakeshaft a few questions about why that exercise only lasted a couple of hours and how come we didn't publicize that more so pawpaws like me around the city can take their cars and get it inspected for the child seats that's carrying their loved ones

Well, I got the guy right here. I'll take the beating if there is one, but he can give you the information.

So that particular event that you were at was part of training new car seat techs. So that class was a week-long class, which included a two-hour car seat checking station for us to test our new techs at. However, there have been Since that day, there's been three more events there between the Target parking lot and the Harris Teeter parking lot. They're pushed out through our social media, and they're pushed out through our partners. It's not just the Fayetteville Fire Department. You have the North Carolina Safe Kids Coalition. Hope Mills Fire Department's been out to help us. Fayetteville Police have been out there to help us. So it's pushed out through all of our social medias. Fort Bragg Fire as well. So all of our partners are pushing out the flyers and the info and the businesses, our local business community. between Target and Harris Teeter and all these folks stepping up to welcome us to their properties, we're going to meet the people where they're at. I can put it out on social media all day long. We're going to go to where you are, where you're shopping with your family, and we're going to find you.

Great job. I appreciate that. Thank you, sir. Chief Dove, one more question. You talked about the lithium battery blankets. I believe when I first got on council, you told me that they were mainly used for parking decks. And I see you had three of them being used for two questions, two parts. One, does every department have one? That's three questions. Two, do you need more? And three, what do you do when you have a emergency and a blanket is not available? Let me back up because I know the phone that we're supposed to use, you can't use anymore because it's hazardous, if I'm not mistaken.

yeah well we we continue to learn about lithium-ion batteries every day um i think question one was where are they there's one on every other floor in every parking deck in the city to include the hospital the hospital came on and partnered with us and there's one in every battalion chief's vehicle in the city they're too big to go on our regular fire trucks without real remodeling the whole truck and we know those things are expensive enough as they are So the battalion chief can get to wherever they're needed really quick and we have some spare So this the question is we don't need any more right now. We're good What was your third part? That was it. That was all for up to you. Okay And we had used it there. They're multi-use. They were designed for a car fire my biggest concern as we were learning about battery vehicles is when they start burning you can't put them out in a timely manner and those concrete buildings they do you degrade the concrete they spall you can lose the building so that was the the first goal but as we're learning and moving you know we're getting more creative you just made me think of another question chief I don't know if you know the answer or not but

A while ago, it was a bomb threat, and I noticed that the police department had to go through the county to get a sniffing dog. Well, now ask the police department that question. That's okay. Yeah, my dogs don't sniff bombs. Yeah, I got you.

I got you. They make people feel better. Thank you, Chief. All right. Council, I don't see any further questions. We'll look for a motion to receive. So moved, Mr. Mayor. All right. So there's a motion by Mayor Pro Tem to receive the second quarter report, seconded by Hare. Any discussion? All right, Council, look for your votes to receive.

All right, Chief, you got off easy.

Yes, sir. All right. All right, good job.

Of course our residents here in Fayetteville. Good evening. Good evening.

So again, I'm Chief Bryan. I will be conducting our second quarter, which will be through January through June 30th of this year. Let me find, there we go. As you'll see our numbers here, persons crime, property crimes, felony arrests, you'll see pretty much in terms of our numbers, see the persons crime is up about 12%. I'll show the slides that are coming afterwards that will explain where the increase is at. But in all reference, you'll see that overall our crime is down. But we have an increase of 97 incidents, and again, that will be explained on the next slide here. You'll see our violent crime, you'll see for 2025 to 2026, we're at 54% less in terms of our homicides and victims, 46%.

Say that again? I want to make sure the press heard that.

Yes, 54% less in terms of incidents and also 46% in terms of victims of homicides. And then also we have a 29% decrease also in rate, and we continue to lower our aggravated assault. But our Achilles heel right now are the simple assaults, where you see here is about 18% up. And then overall, you can look at total persons, it's up about 12% across the board from 25 to 26. Here again, it reiterates our numbers regarding homicides. One of the things that we'll like to tout in terms of the average solvency rate across the United States is about 61%. Fayetteville Police Department has 100% of our- Clearance. Clearance, 100% clearance. So we're doing- That unit is doing a phenomenal job in terms of solving these crimes, in terms of those that have been victimized. During our aggravated assaults, again, you'll see these numbers in terms of where we are in these misdemeanors. But yet we have 16% decrease where we're partnering with the Phoenix Center to provide a wraparound service. We also have our officers and detectives that do follow up to ensure that those victims will not be a repeat in terms of being a victimization in terms of the domestic violence. As you see here, our sound thinking or shot spotter, where we had 213 alerts through this period with eight guns recovered, eight arrested, and 317 shell cases recovered. Property crimes. As you'll see, these numbers are also impacted, especially on our motor vehicle, where we're down 23%. You'll see we actually had a team that came together with a task force to address when we were starting to have a trend. And that particular task force really made an impact on our numbers. So you'll see that here reflected on this slide. And also our robbery, down 21%. In terms of these robberies, when our patrol arrived, we also have our CAPERS, our Crimes Against Persons Unit that also respond. And so with that, they're able to come out there and track any suspects live. As soon as when they get there, then they'll start investigating that particular case. And many times, they're able to get and arrest those suspects. So therefore, you all know that many times it's going to be one or two individuals in the city that are committing these repeat robberies. So therefore, we're being effective by utilizing our capers unit, and they're doing a great job as well. Next here is our juvenile data. As you know, this is across the nation, but also within our state. We've received calls from other chiefs in terms of what we're doing. Of course, you'll see here, the biggest change that you'll see in terms from 25 to 26 is our field contacts with juveniles. It's up 43%. Now, you also see that that's reflective. from 25 to 26 in terms of what we're doing in seizing. We're seizing 105% more weapons. We seized almost 70% more drugs from juveniles. But at the same time, you also decrease in breaking and entering among juveniles by almost 32%. And also, our motor vehicle theft has really been impacted also with these encounters that we have now almost 52% decrease in motor vehicle theft. So these are how we are encountering and making an impact in terms of crimes with juveniles. Now this slide here illustrates the crimes and contacts with juveniles during the curfew time which is 11 a.m. or 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. and if you're watching and seeing what's happening with some of our other municipalities they're actually looking at changing their time from 11 or looking at starting at early to 9 p.m. so but at this time we have right now where you see You have 38 contacts with those 16 years and below, where we had 17 incidents with 22 incidents that were charged. And 17 of these are involving juveniles. And then you'll see the reference to the different incidents that have taken place. Now, we actually had a total of 55 contacts during this time period. But once we engage with these individuals, always be aware that we're always utilizing either reasonable suspicion or probable cause before we are engaging with these individuals. And again, this is where I state that we're not approaching any of these individuals just based on because we think that they're 16 or below. And just to show that reflection, when we do encounter some of these individuals, we've had a total of 55. And we had about ten of them were 17 years of age, so that was above, and also seven were adults. So many times this kind of reflects again that we can't really tell what their age is until we actually have some type of reason to engage with them through regional suspicion or probable cause. Here's our school resource program. As you see, we have the 18 certified SROs, of course. Today was the first day of school, and so we're going to be up and ramping up. And one change is different in terms of how we're looking at our numbers. You'll see previous year, we done it as the school year, but now we're just going to do it as the calendar year, just to keep it consistent, because that's how we usually track all the rest of our numbers. So we just want to have that consistency. Again, this slide demonstrates our partnership with our federal partners. You'll see here our ATF, we had six federally sentenced during this quarter, four federally indicted, and 48 firearms seized. So with those 48 firearms seized, those are all charged federally through the ATF.

Chief, you said six federally sentenced? I'm saying 13.

So six federally sentenced, this is with ATF.

Okay, okay.

This is specifically with ATF. Four federally indicted and 48 firearms charged federally. And then between our federal partners of DEA, FBI, and the US Marshal, we sentenced seven federally, 17 federally indicted with 28 firearms and nearly 600,000 in currency and assets seized with those partners. Here you'll see our vice narcotic suppression. Of note, you'll see meth. We're definitely rising in terms of seizures of meth and also marijuana. The marijuana was a result of a federal case that we had with DEA. So therefore we had a pretty good seizure from that particular case, which also increased what we had from 25 to 26. But across the board, we're starting to see an increase in meth across the community in terms of usage. These are our numbers here for our 911 communication center. You'll see 911 calls, we've processed 125,000 plus calls. And between that and our admin, you're almost pressing up to 200,000 calls. Calls for service or dispatch is about just over 103,000 calls. So we're continuously pushing forward with our 911 center. one thing that we've been having in terms of traffic enforcement and we're hoping that these numbers are being reflective of what we're being able to do in the community so if you see in 2025 we had 14 fatalities resulting in these crashes and now we have nine and then as far as the the fatalities the numbers was 16 last year when we have nine on there as well so I hope this is reflective of what we're doing in terms of slowing traffic down and making sure that those that are coming through here understand that you need to slow down when you're coming through the city of Fayetteville. Then you'll see the circumstances that contributed to these fatalities. As you see there in 2025, ten of those incidents were speeding that contributed to those fatalities. For this year, we have five. So I believe the message is getting out there. On here is our traffic stop reporting, where you see we're almost 2,500 stops, 2,300, 2,400 more stops than last year. Again, that's with the increase of what we're doing also with our personnel. We're having more personnel on the streets, so then we can be a lot more proactive versus being reactive. Again, you'll see the demographics regarding the vehicle stops, vehicle searches. In between there, if you look at 25 among all three of the demographics, the numbers isn't really changing. What you will see, there was increase in vehicle stops, but you also see that there was a decrease in searches. But we still have maintained the same numbers across the board between all three demographics. This is one of the initiatives with the Governor's Highway Safety Program where speed kills and know the limit 2026. In these particular traffic enforcement activities, you'll see that we had over 600 citations issued with speeding being the overwhelming citation during or violation during these particular encounters. Here we are, our internal affairs unit, where you look at our numbers, use of force has increased by 10. But then you'll see that the most number that's going to stick out to you right now is our internal departmental investigations. And that's been as a result of officers not appearing at court. So we're holding our officers accountable, and we're just making sure that they understand that it's critical for them to be at court. So you'll see the numbers being reflected, and then you'll see our exonerations sustained and complaints, VOTCs, and unfounded allegations. Again, this slide again will reflect in terms of the biggest standout is those suspensions. And again, the majority of those are what's driving those are failing to appear to court. As you see, our department, mental staffing and that's as of August 12th and if you see we're in the 90s in every one of these categories every one of these categories and if you notice our numbers last year around this time we were at 64 vacant positions and we're at 32 now but that's with the eight additional that that was added so we would actually be at i want to say at 23. so so you see uh we're well into um the uh in that in that downrange in terms of reducing our numbers we're projecting based on what we see right now we have about 17 or 18 that are in the pipeline and we're we're projecting that by january's class we will have every vacancy filled that's awesome

That's the first time that I can remember that being the case.

And there's a lot of, in terms of what we're doing, we're also attracting a lot of laterals. And those laterals are critical because we're able to get them on the street anywhere from four weeks to six weeks. So that's how we're able to do that, but we're also doing some innovative recruiting in terms of we're bringing in canines from other states. People are applying from Connecticut to become a canine officer here in Fayetteville. We're attracting officers from New York, Kentucky. We have a really wide scope in terms of what we're attracting and we're bringing them here. So what that's doing is helping us to increase the level of experience. from you know like i said when we first got on here uh when i first got on here last year 75 of our officers had five years or less of experience So now with attracting and bringing in these laterals that have left and came back, so we're really making an impact in what we're being able to do in some of these innovative programs. So I know patrol is really happy to see what we're going to be able to do in terms of 15 officers per squad. So then now that's going to entail that we'll be able to be proactive and not only reactive. And then we'll be able to bring back our CERT team as well to deal with any kind of projects that we may have in the community. So again, we're definitely in a great spot in terms of what we're looking at right now.

Fantastic.

Again, this is our departmental staffing. Of course you know we are in a very transient community where we have a significant, a lot of our employees are also military connected. So many times we have those that when their spouse is ready to PCS, we're also losing those good employees. And then we have some that come in, but we always take them. But we have that understanding that this is a transient community with Fort Bragg. But we always value the experience that those employees bring to us day in and day out. For those that are unaware, in April we launched our Fay PD podcast, and so we're utilizing these to kind of make sure and put that narrative out there in terms of our local policing, our department priorities, and letting people know the people behind the badge, and also our professional staff. So you can catch it, I believe, the second Friday of each month, either on Spotify, Apple, iHeart, and YouTube. So we're getting out there. We're going to try to have that. That voice out there, Mr. Ferguson, I know you have that voice. We're going to get you on there so you can help us out.

Martin, Martin.

Now you'll see our community events. We have several, our Citizens Police Academy, our graduation there that's depicted on this slide. Also our Special Olympics, our fundraiser for the Torch Run. And I don't know if you saw that slide on the bottom left there. We were running in the rain. We were running in the rain. That was a tough one.

That's commitment.

Yes, sir. Then our other community events were Child Abuse Awareness Month, the pinwheels for the Child Advocacy Center, And we're also showing our telecommunications week where they had cultural foods from New Orleans, Latin food and Italian food also displayed during that. It was very festive during that week. And then here on this slide, here's our national police week. where we honor those officers that made that ultimate sacrifice while recognizing the dedication of those that continue to serve. And of course, we had our awards and promotion ceremony, which we also recognize the dedicated hard work of our officers and professional staff. As you see here, our motto, faith in service, pride in commitment, and dedication to excellence, and our vision statement and mission statement. And at this time, I will take your questions.

All right. Thank you, Chief. We do have a couple of questions. We have Council Member Hare.

Well, thank you, Mayor and Chief. Thank you for you and our team for all that you're doing. Man, I'm glad to hear that number is going to change where we're going to be fully staffed real soon. and I've go back a you know a few police chiefs and so this sounds real great so thank you and everything that you're doing and that your staff is doing and of course the council with putting in the budget to help give additional dollars to pull our many women in I got a couple of questions one when you said about the lateral folks are coming in, you said some are coming back. Yes, sir. And first explain what that meant.

So we've had officers that were previously employed with FPD that went on to other departments or sought employment in another career field, but they are also coming back now to the police department.

So we're looking more and more inviting to support them coming back, correct?

I believe so. They're getting the message. They're seeing what's going on, sir.

Explain to me what you meant on the K-9. You're getting some K-9 folk that are coming in lateral. And I don't know if this is getting ready to be a dumb question here, but when you said K-9 and a guy, homeowner that owns German Shepherds, I immediately thought about the dogs also. When they're coming in lateral, is that just the individual?

So we've actually have two two candidates that have canines that they want to bring those canines with them. So that's really when you can bring on a team like that right off hand, no training, they'll just have to get some of the standards in terms of how we do things and our policies and SOPs, but pretty much they can hit the ground running when it comes to stuff like that.

Okay, now getting close to my end here, Go to your slide with sound thinking, yeah, sound thinking shots spotter January through June 26. Say those numbers out loud once again because I don't want to mix them up even though I see what I see in front of me. Tell me the support with the sound thinking shot spotter for that timeframe of the recoveries.

So, hold on just a minute. So out of the 213 alerts, we've had eight guns recovered, eight individuals arrested, and 317 shell cases that are also recovered.

Okay, so that's been a big plus.

It will, and one of the things for us, we understand that this is just one tool in our toolbox. But as we continue moving forward and collecting these shell cases, those will help us connect the dots on whether there's aggravated assaults, shooting into occupied dwellings or vehicles. And that's what we continue to just kind of hold on because it is going to connect a dot when we get an individual or we seize a weapon. And at that time, we can pin or connect the nexus to those individuals with those weapons and those previous incidents.

Yes, sir. Thank you. I don't want to take up all the time. I know my colleague's going to have some questions. I was also looking over at the juvenile data report, and I'm glad to hear because of negative things that have been said, I'm glad to hear that until you come up on a young adult, that's when you find out the information that's needed about that particular person, not just running up on them. So it was good to hear that and also wanted to say congratulations to you. I don't think you've been before us since you were put into the governor's committee, whatever that. But congratulations on that, sir. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Mayor.

All right. Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Chief. Great report. Numbers look great. I just want to add a few comments. One is your Emporium speeding campaign. I'm glad that the numbers are going down and the speeding. I know that is your motto to make sure that when they come through Fayetteville, they know that they need to slow down. But I'm going to emphasize, school started today. I'm going to say that again. School started today. Yes, sir. I know you did a campaign around the school zone. I know you did on 295, Rayford Road, Raleigh Road, Ramsey Street, Morganton Road.

school started today might want to think about that Sir I already tell you Chief Wallace already has plans about what's going on so he already talked to me this morning and he already has a plan in terms to address some of those you know in terms of that as well

Well, let me just say this. I was talking with the mayor this morning. I was telling him I was going out to one of my hot spots in the school zone, and I was glad to see that Chief Hunt had his people out there at Stony Point and Century that we talked about, Mr. Mayor, with DOT, about that traffic. I just want our citizens to know that we're going to do all we can to make sure our kids are safe. in school zones and outside of school zones, not just this year, but every year. Speaking of that, I wanted to make sure you gave some prop to your crime prevention specialist, because I think the reason the motor vehicle theft break-ins has went down, because every time I turn around, they are emphasizing motor vehicles, lock your vehicle up and don't leave your guns in your cars. The 9 p.m. routine. The 9 p.m. routine. I mean, they recycle it over and over and over again. I know my colleague recognized, McNair recognized one, I can't remember what her name was, but all of them need to be recognized for the great job that they do at all these communities that we have across the entire city, emphasizing that. The second one is for Chief Hunt. We just renewed our SRO contract. Are we meeting our obligations with how many SROs we need to have in the high schools, the junior high schools and elementary schools, so forth and so on?

Yes, sir.

And what is the next requirement that we have? We have how many schools, 33? And we only have 18 SROs, I think?

Yes, sir. So is it still shared services? I mean right now the Cumberland County school system is paying for that and so there will be some talk in terms of adding at least another three here when we come up to that point yes sir Last question I was going to ask Chief Dove and I'm going to ask you do we have dogs bomb sniffing dogs We have one Yes sir

Thank you, Chief. That's all I need. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

All right. Thank you. Council Member Jones.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Very quick. Thanks for the report. Provided some excellent information. Just to make sure I got that correctly, homicides are down a little over 54%. Was that correct? That is correct. All right. Now, I wanted to bring that forward because a lot of times I hear in the community, and they say, when you hear of a homicide, And it's in the media, and it gets attention, I get it, and it gives the perception that it happens a lot. I know one is too many, I totally understand that. But it gives the perception that it's consistently occurring. And so I'm glad that you brought that statistic up for that. So I really, really am glad for that. especially with your clearance rate, that's phenomenal. And I want to tie that into the sound thinking. A lot of my areas, some of them, they wish they had it in their areas as well, but they were, for the most part in support of it once they kind of understand. I think you did, I don't think, you did a good job with elaborating such as the shell casings and how you may not see that immediate effect, but through the process of your investigation, it might be six months down or whatever it is, it could lead to something. So I think that is a benefit of that. So my three quick questions for you in regards to the youth contacts. You mentioned the reasonable, suspicion, probable cause aspect. Can you just give us an idea, give the public an idea of what that potentially looks like?

So what that looks like is 911 call comes in, says, hey, there's two suspicious subjects pulling car handles in the community on the street. We arrive there, we see two individuals matching that description, that's when we approach them. Then we determine that they're juveniles, and that's how they get related in our statistics.

Understood, understood. And again, I know there may be some nuances, but I wanted to share that just to let folks know, I really don't believe, and again, this is me, that you all are out there just looking just randomly doing it, and you stated that. So I appreciate that, because I wanted to bring some clarity with that. Number two, as it relates to vehicle searches, I do get a lot of this question from our residents. They say, well, we're smelling marijuana at stoplights. So hypothetically, someone stops, you stop somebody for an equipment violation or something. Is that smell of marijuana, is that considered a reasonable cause to Ask, you know, ask, or however you want to do it, ask about these.

To go ahead and ask, yes, yes you do.

Okay, okay, and I know it may sound like, but a lot of the, I get a lot of those questions, and that's some of the things, and on the other part of it, some were saying, well, you know, they can't really, if they stop me, you know, if they smell it, can they really ask me to search my vehicle, or things of that nature, so I just wanted to. Yes, at that point, yes.

All right, thank you, thank you.

And lastly, how are your areas, I know you all use some data and things of that nature and just feedback. Areas that you plan for your speeding campaign, how are those determined?

so a lot of those are based on the calls from the citizens here the residents here a lot of the times you all receive complaints as well and so we we go ahead and target based on the feedback that we are receiving in terms of where the calls are coming from and that's what we direct our resources to

Absolutely. And this is it. I do thank you for that. I would like to put out there Rose Hill Road. And I want to give your staff a lot of credit. I've seen an increased presence along Rose Hill Road. I mean, at very strategic times in the morning, midday, afternoon, I see them. out there. So I know that's a major cut through for some areas. But definitely put that on your radar. I know it's already out there. So with the increased signage that they have out there and some other things that were done, I just wanted to put that out there. But thank you so much. You're welcome. Thanks, sir.

oh yeah all right thank you uh councilmember mcmillan yeah thank you mr mayor thank you chief appreciate all you do and thank you for this report thank you um had a question about how we track how we track traffic stop data Earlier this year, earlier this summer, the governor signed a budget that did not include a general statute that's been in place since 2002 that really forced departments across North Carolina to track incidents by race, to be able to look at disparities, especially in policing and traffic stops. As you know, in Fayetteville, it's caused us to see that there are some disparities. We've dealt with driving while black as a result of some of those disparities. I wanted to hear from you what your department's take is on the loss of this requirement and what your intention is in terms of continuing to track this data.

Yes, sir. So when we received that information, for us it was also, we were surprised that that actually went ahead and passed. but from us after discussing with my staff and we had a overwhelming agreement in terms of for us as a department it's going to continue to be in our policy so that we have that transparency for the community and maintain that trust so for us as a department even though it's no longer a requirement we will be continuing the traffic stop reports as part of our requirement in everything that we do as a department

I appreciate hearing you say that in public. Also would ask the council to think about what we can do to ensure that possibly that's an ordinance or something that's solid, especially in light of how things are changing legislatively at the state level. Also wanted to ask Chief about information on the SRO program. We had a discussion earlier this year about what an awesome responsibility it is to have police officers uniformed in schools, and also how we need to take some safeguards and understand what impacts that has on our students especially. And I want to make a request tonight. If you look at slide 10, it does show some responses. It does show some very basic information about our interaction. But the point that I brought up earlier this year that I think data would allow us to look at is how this could impact the school to prison pipeline and having juveniles kids and students who are justice impacted and how important it is that track that so there are some there's some measures like school-based arrest number of citations school-based arrests like tracking that tracking citations, tracking the number of court referrals that come through the SRO program, especially tracking use of force incidents with our students. And then those same type of racial breakdowns to ensure that we're not repeating some racial disparities that exist on a broader level. I would like to see those, and I'm sure more of my colleagues would be interested in seeing that on a quarterly basis.

And just so you know, too, for, you know, I actually had one of the SROs that was talking. He actually came from the county and transitioned over to the city. And, you know, one of the I don't think the public really knows how much of an impact it has in terms of having these SROs in our schools because he told me a story of one of the students in the school that she never spoke to him and at one time There was an incident where he had to restrain her from a fight that was going on in the school. And she was very, very disruptive. But he maintained, continued speaking with that young lady. By the time the end of the school year came out, she came and hugged him. And for him, it was just one of those things where he sees the difference in it. I mean, and this is happening across our schools, but nobody ever really knows that because we're not talking about that publicly. And I just also want to make sure that we do a better job in making sure that we're highlighting a lot of these positive encounters that are happening, because it's happening every day. We don't hear about them, and we only hear about when it's negative. So I just want to make sure that we also take that opportunity to also highlight when the good things are also happening with our SROs as well.

And I think we also saw one of the good things, Chief, tonight in hearing you underscore the importance of having probable cause and reasonable suspicion prior to approaching any individual, regardless of age, here. And I appreciate that that is a part of the enforcement and part of what we're passing on to our officers as they go out into the field. So thank you for saying that publicly as well.

Yes, sir. All right, thank you. Councilman Davis. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. First of all, thank you, sir, for the presentation. I think I wanted to speak towards the speeding. You guys have been on a tremendous job, almost to the point where I'm scared to leave my house sometimes. But I don't speed. That's what we're trying to do. I don't speed, by the way.

What are you scared for?

Mr. Mayor, I did want to ask you, though, there was a comment made, a question asked at the Coffee with the Mayor this morning in reference to officers having to meet a quota on giving out tickets. Could you speak to that so that we can, you know, disband that?

There's absolutely no quota with tickets. Okay. That does not exist. Thank you, sir. That does not exist.

Thank you.

All right. Before we go to round two for Mayor Pro Tem, I did have a couple things I want to say. One, Chief, thank you for the thoroughness in the report. I wanted to point out something for the listening audience that, You know, we've heard from two of the three components of public safety tonight. We've heard from fire, we've heard from police. I see Mr. Jones back there with OCS. The combination of what you all are doing are leading to these positive numbers, that homicide's almost in half, that these juvenile-related issues that we have are trending in the right way. And so, you know, we've gone through some tough times to make some tough decisions, But numbers don't have an opinion. They don't have an affiliation. They're not biased. They're numbers. And these are factual numbers that say, that the combination of these things are working together for a good outcome and i want to make sure we point that out from you know the sound thinking and shot spotter we had you know there was some public concern about that but you're getting guns off the street we've seen arrests that come out of that and and i want to make sure we highlight that the sro program when we recently renewed that it was concerned that it was somehow going to have a negative impact what I'm seeing and I want to turn to this slide while I'm saying this if you could the school resource officer program slide I want the public to follow this for a minute I think it's slide number it says 10 but it's page 5 in the overall scheme of things yeah so basically The orange is 22 is reports. Yeah, this incident reports. Okay. And then the calls for service. Okay. And so the comparison from year to year. Where is that that component because

because you you have a uh cost of service versus incident report so how do you compare uh year to year on that so we're into our second year of doing this now and so now as i stated we we're changing up our numbers from how we were we were first doing it from august From their school calendar year? So I would say probably the end of this year then we'll be able to get you know full year and then start making a comparison.

So it'll be a solid 12-month comparison? Correct. Okay okay all right that was one of the questions and then two I saw that on your on your gun seizures I had wrote myself a note on that you had there out of the traffic stops 2025, there were 167 guns collectively seized. And of course, these are illegal weapons, not legal weapons, right? Or does this count everything? Well, why would you seize a legal weapon?

It could be if it was used in a crime or it wasn't, you know, it had to have been some type of crime. So something that prompted the seizure.

Correct. So there's 167 seizures last year, 143 this year. These are just from the vehicle searches. Now, does that also include, are any of these statistics in any of these other categories like where it says the number of weapons recovered from shot spotter? So is there a possibility that you responded to a shot spot alert, but it also shows up on a vehicle stop? Probably not, correct?

Well, probably a chance, but, I mean, what we did, we kind of isolated the shot spotter and made that specific on those particular sides, so where you see the eight weapons that were seized, that was specifically to shot spotter.

Got you. Because I'm just trying to get a collective total, because that's a lot of guns that's coming off the street between what I saw from the juvenile report, which was, and I don't know if the public is tracking that, but cities across the country, I talk to mayors all the time, there has been an influx of guns and availability of guns. And this is huge, that you're scoring 130, 140 guns in traffic. You're getting some from Shot Spotter, you're getting others from other sources. So you want to speak to that?

So in terms of this, so let's say for this traffic stop. So I'll give you an example. You could have an alert that goes off on the street here in Fayetteville. and officers respond to that alert and within the alert there was a maybe let's say there was a 911 call that accompanied it and say hey there was a vehicle in this area looking you know stopping and so then we have a vehicle that would respond and in the course of responding to that shot spotter alert They went ahead and stopped this vehicle. Gotcha. So then now you stop that vehicle and then now you determine it was a crime, whether related to a break in or possible other possession of marijuana or anything in there. And then now you recover a weapon. So now that. Particular incident is included in all these traffic, right? I understand but you also have what we have the the shop spotter though So what we'll do was tie that specifically to that which is that separate slide? But I would say that all that data is encompassed in the traffic stop report that may have been Under or from a a shot spotter alert catch. I

All right well that's all the questions I have I just think that you know and then I guess the last piece I'll say I want to I want to one publicly commend the participation of the parents right that that in the curfew there was a lot of concern about that but what we see in the numbers again numbers don't have an opinion and that Drug seizures are up 70%, weapons up 105%. So in other words, from 19 to 39 weapons, from 19 last year to 39 this year. And that break-ins are down 31%, and motor vehicles are down 51%. So thank you to the parents that are participating. to just help us help keep some accountability in place. And thank you to, and the way this fits in, and I'll get ready to pass the mic over to my colleagues, but the way this fits into the overall scheme of things, the way your departments work together is that also Mr. Jones is going around the city creating programs that are alternatives for these kids or some of our people in this community to have alternatives. it's working together thank you and good good good work for and thank you for the report tonight so i'll go to uh council member mcnear for the first round and then we have second round lights

I'm ready to make a motion Okay let me let me catch your colleagues Mayor Pro Tem Thank you Mr. Mayor I just had a comment and one question that I forgot we were talking about SROs and I had an opportunity to speak to Jack Britt students and 71st students this year I talked to principal Dr. Tillman at Jack Britt and Dr. King over at 71st They applaud the SROs and the great jobs that they're doing. When I spoke to 71st High School seniors during their graduation practice, the SRO was at the door giving out pounds to all 300 students that was graduating that year. I thought that was a testament to the great job that they're doing. Speaking of schools, my question I forgot to ask earlier is we had a battalion of TCOs coming here about some complaints a couple of months ago. Have all their concerns been addressed? I can't even remember what they were.

The concern is the speeding, the careless and reckless driving in the school zones. So that issue is still being addressed in terms of with our traffic department and enforcement out there. Now, the commission just recently met and we're on track to get the approval with all the standard operating procedures and everything else and will be consistent throughout the state by January is what we believe yeah January of this upcoming year we believe that the approvals and everything else will be done by the Commission and then we'll be able to implement the school zones and the red light cameras and how many TCOs are we short for this school year so our numbers fluctuate we have about 65 on average And those fluctuate because it's a part-time position. So therefore, we're always, if you'll see, regarding when our turnover, that's probably our highest turnover within the department for one reason or the other.

But if we have residents that are looking for some part-time work for $20 an hour, we can sure enough use your manpower. Thank you, Chief. Yes, sir. All right.

Council Member McMillan, second round.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Chief, one of the things that kept me engaged over the years with council was pushing to ensure we had a humane response to crime, to mental health response, mental health crisis. According to police scorecard.org, we remain and have been for a while near the top of the list in terms of small cities in North Carolina in a statistic called a deadly force per arrest. And there's some people who have died over the years. Jada Johnson is one of them, Adrian Roberts is another one, Joshua Oxendine. and questions about whether or not we could have had a different response. When I see the numbers of use of force going up from last year to this year, of course I have that same concern. I wonder that we didn't move far enough policy-wise to address that. I'm wondering what your take is on the increase. I think it was from 37 to 47, a 27% increase in use of force. What does that mean for us as a city, and what are we doing to address that?

Okay, so I can start with, I know today we actually had a meeting with Chief Wallace and Office of Community Safety Director Jones, and coming up with plans and strategies for the alternative response. So as OCS gets their teams together, then we're going to have a better approach in addressing some of these issues with those that are in mental health crisis. But unfortunately right now, when those calls come out, We are the only answer until we can get some of these other resources in place. I would also state in terms of there are multiple, multiple incidents that occur every day in this city regarding mental health crisis. But you don't hear about them. And you don't hear about them because we've been successful in being able to mitigate those situations. So the ones that you do hear are the ones where we have the unfortunate situations such as that you relayed. But there's always other circumstances that not everybody's aware of also. But I will tell you that we have an excellent in terms of how we deal with these situations. Just this past week, we had barricaded subjects. No one knows about this, but we deal with that and we are utilizing our particular tactics and everything. to make sure that we have a safe outcome for our officers as well as those in those crisis. So it happens so many times, but our public is unaware of it. And we deal with that on a day, day-by-day occasion. So I believe we do the best we can, but future and future-wise, when OCS gets their staffing, we're looking forward to being able to address those issues in even better ways as well.

I appreciate that. Looking forward to tracking the numbers and seeing those numbers come down. Downrange, there's something called storyboard reporting, where we get in this habit of holding up examples, good news stories, anecdotes, and maybe emphasize those a little bit more than the data. Would love to continue to hear the good news stories about the things that your force is doing on the streets. And especially a shift in our approach to how we engage with citizens. But also would love to see data like use of force that matches that shift in terms of policy and- Council member, time's up, second round.

All right, Council Member Jones, I think it's your first round. Is your light on? Are you ready to vote? You ready to vote?

No, just a quick, I was waiting. She's got a motion to make. Okay, all right, very quickly. I just wanted to find out, Chief, about the mental health support for your staff. I know you all do, you encounter a lot of things, your officers and other staff, they have families too that they have to go on to. So can you just speak to how, What does that look like right now? And I know there may be some opportunities in the future, but what does that look like?

Right now, we have our chaplains program. Whenever we have a critical incident, we call our chaplains. And they'll come out 2, 3 o'clock in the morning when we have critical incidents that officers are dealing with. And so we have that partnership with them. We also have our peer support program as well where we monitor how many critical incidents that actually happens with our officers. And then we'll make sure and reach out to them to get them any counseling services or requests for counseling services. But you also know we received grant for a licensed clinical social worker so we're in the process of getting that that all laid out so that we can do that advertisement and have that person on on board full-time thank you so much Thank You mr. mayor yes sir councilman hundreds first round

Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Chief. And my colleague to my right here stole my thunder a little bit, but this question was for Chief Dove and Chief Bryan. Are we doing all that we can to support our women and men in uniform? And as my colleague mentioned, we dial 911 in the worst moments of our life, right? You guys respond and you deal with that. So As a council, are we doing everything we can to support, again, the men and women and men in the uniform and our 911 operators? I mean, they're on the call that sometimes ends tragically. So what can we do to support both agencies and, again, the 911 operators?

I would say it's one of those things where when we come to you and request the support where resources that you know and I would say you know just continue supporting us but it takes more than counsel the community the community is critical in terms of the morale of our officers so for example this weekend on Saturday Lewis Chapel Missionary Baptist Church the men's ministry They served our officers, all our first responders, firefighters this weekend, they served them lunch. And the morale and just to have the community come in on their own dime and on their time off to come and serve those officers. So those type of things are what we need from our community. And it's very much appreciated. So I can't just tell you, and what we do in this term is continue to having support. When you see our officer, we continuously get attaboys, what we call in the military, where people call or they send. I received a letter today where people in the community, they send it and let us know, and we make sure and relay that message to the officers. a call from an elderly man that actually was talking about our cadets that stopped and helped him two weeks ago. He left a voicemail, so we're making sure, so when we get these calls, all of that helps in terms of the morale and the mental health capacity in terms of knowing that, hey, you know that your community has your back.

Real quick, Mr. Mayor, since you're on that note, Chief, talk about National Night Out. Because you didn't speak about National Night Out, and that just happened last week, or a week before last.

We didn't talk about it because it happened during this quarter, so we were going to present that during the third quarter.

I just wanted you to know that the community appreciates what you're doing, because they showed up in droves at National Night Out, even in all that rain. So we do appreciate you. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. All right.

Council Member McNair. thank you chief great report and thank you for the ride along I like to encourage my colleagues if they haven't scheduled a ride along with the chief you must do so district 7 it was an awesome time that day it was calm it was right he invited me people are slowing down they're getting a message he invited me to to wear a bulletproof vest i'm like no no wrong that's it so um that being said uh i would like to make a motion to receive um the favor police department 2026 second quarter report all right so much by councilman mcnair seconded by council member ferguson

A lot of discussion on this council seeing that I look to you for your votes.

In the meantime, I have an alibi. I'd just like to mention that our class 26-1 graduates tomorrow. We have 20 officers that are graduating. We started out with 22. So that is a phenomenal rate in terms of what we're talking about, graduating rate. But in addition to that, we've had almost 50% of that graduating class were females. That's awesome. So we're bringing them through.

That's a great statistic, and thank you. Congratulations to the new graduates, and Chief, thank you, and all of the members of our law enforcement, as well as our fire department, OCS, thank you for a great job of keeping our community safe. So we appreciate it.

Thank you.

All right, Council, moving to the final item is 10.01, authorization for fire station for site prep.

Evening, sir. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Mayor Pro Tem, council members and staff. Yes, sir. Okay. Now I have to find it. Sabina, any help with this?

Got it up here.

Oh, oh.

There you go.

Thank you very much. All right, so council members, thank you for having me here tonight. My name's Dan Lamontagne, I work with Friesen Nichols. I work under contract for the city with the construction management department. I'm here tonight to talk to you about fire station four, phase one, and ask for authorization to move forward with phase one, which is site preparation. That will consist of establishing a new project using approximately 1.53 million of geobond premiums remaining fire station for project funds we will prepare a safe stable build ready site that consists of site clearing grading filling stabilizing the site installation of security getting permits and inspections and then of course testing documenting and closing out the project of the site clearing We also ask you to authorize Cumming Group to provide project management services under their scope. And we're asking for authorization to begin the competitive qualifications-based construction manager at risk selection process. Construction pricing schedule and such will come back to council for authorization later when that is complete. We have a schedule, this is just a working schedule. This will be refined as we move forward and get the construction manager at risk on us under contract. We're here in quarter three, council considering this phase one authorization. We have to complete the ongoing salvage this month, advance the site preparation procurement, that's the contractors for that, and also begin that CMAR evaluation. In quarter four, we plan to begin site preparation. We've finalized the CMAR selection and onboarding. Validate the design, the project cost, and the schedule. Then in first quarter 27, complete the site prep and pre-construction. reviews the council will consider that proposed construction price schedule and authorize that and first quarter and then following this Council's approval will begin replacement construction will pull it publish the validated milestones after with the CMR and when the final completion move-in day would be And finally, I want to point out that the city has put together a project website for this project. We know there's considerable community interest in it. So all information to be able to go to this site and find out everything that's happening on the project. And a very short presentation for you tonight. So that's the end of that. Not mad with that.

All right, Council, any comments or questions? I think we covered a little bit upstairs, but basically you may have covered it tonight. This is the approval of this. Mr. Yates, was there a component that you needed to explain? No?

Okay. Yeah. like Ms. Murray to address some of the budget.

Well, Mr. Yates had been the one we were working on. How you doing, Ms. Murray?

I'm doing fine. Are there any questions for me?

I don't know. I just wanted to make sure there wasn't. So basically with this, this is kind of a new phase. We'll site prep it, and we'll move here. I think you talked to us about that the expenses related to this will be tracked separately, and the other or the older expenses, that particular bucket, for lack of a better word, will be reconciled and closed out. So this phase will have its separate line of expenses and costs, correct?

That's correct. We're going to close the old project and do a new project, and that's part of the action tonight.

Gotcha. All right. Thank you, ma'am. All right. Councilman Mahandros.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Dan and CFO. I appreciate you all coming up. So the question I asked of ACM Yates upstairs was the CPOA 2019-34 in our agenda packet, as well as CPO 2027-1. which is, as you stated, closing out CFO Murray, the old project, and starting this new one. But can you speak a little bit to the funding of those numbers? How much have we spent to date on that project, the one we're closing out? How much are we transferring over and those things, please?

Yes. Sorry. So the original project, when it was brought before council, was for a total of 11.4 million, almost 11.5. Of that, we had a general fund transfer of 1.2-ish, and we did a financing for 10.3. So of that funding, we've spent a little over $7.6 million So that's what we're going to be closing out in this particular project. And we're going to transfer the remaining funds, which is $3.8 million, into a new capital project, along with some bond premium that we received from the issuance of the first tranche of the $97 million referendum. If you remember earlier this year, we issued $40 million, and we're going to take some of that premium assign it to this particular project in order for us to move forward.

And the premium came from rate reductions in our stellar credit, is that right?

The premium did not come from rate reductions. Okay. The bond premium, essentially when the city decides to issue bonds, and we issue bonds at a premium, that is because the rate on our bonds is higher than what the market is currently. So they give us additional money or they pay additional money on the face value of the bonds. Essentially what we're doing is we're getting upfront money, but we'll pay higher interest rates over the life of the bonds.

Very good. And I also was thankful that we finally got the website page where residents can track the progress on the project. Will the budget information be on that page or not?

I have not looked at the link for that page, so I will have to defer to Dan.

Very good. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

All right. Council, I'll look to you for action on this. Mayor Pro Tem. I recommend that we approve phase one, Mr. Mayor. All right. Motion by Mayor Pro Tem to approve phase one. Seconded by Davis. Discussion on the motion? All right. Council, I'll look to you for your votes.

Thank you, council.

All right. All right.

Thank you. Have a good evening.