Town Council - Regular Meeting

of March 17, 2026. And as usual, it's a beautiful evening in Garner. And half of us remembered it was St. Patrick's Day, judging by the green in the audience in here. And about half of us kind of forgot about it. But we we will be forgiven. And party on you Irish guys. Here we go. Uh, that being said, uh, I will ask, uh, that we call the role. Town clerk, Mayor Gupton here, Mayor Pro Tim Dinger here, council member Vance here, council member Singleton here, council member Stallings here, and council member Matthews here, and council member Phil Matthews will lead us in the pledge of allegiance and then the invocation.

Please rise. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. [clears throat]

Let us pray. Most gracious heavenly father, we come before you tonight, Lord, asking your counsel and grant us wisdom as we conduct our meeting tonight and do those things we need to do for our town and the people we represent. Lord, I ask that you be with our military and uh our leadership as we have a war around the world trying to bring some peace and calm that region. Be with them and hopefully they can accomplish that mission as quickly as possible. So be with the families and our military in that part of the world. Lord, we just bless those and be with those that are sick. A lot of folks in the hospital and uh we pray for your healing. Lord, just grant us wisdom as we move through tonight. And we give you the praise and glory in Jesus name. Amen.

Amen. Amen. Thank you, Mr. Matthew. Yes, sir. That brings us to section B of our agenda, which is petitions and comments. And I'll ask the town clerk if we've had anyone sign up to speak at this portion. Yes, sir. We did.

Okay. With that being said, I will read the little disclaimer, the description we always have. Uh this portion of the meeting is to receive comments from the public on items not included in this agenda regarding matters gerine to town policies or business are subject within the town council's real or apparent jurisdiction. Individuals or group spokespersons must sign up with the town clerk prior to the start of the meeting. The council is interested in hearing your concerns, but will not take action or deliberate on subject matter brought up during the petitions and comments section. Topics requiring further investigation will be referred to the appropriate town officials or staff and may be scheduled for a future agenda. That being said, who is who is our first speaker?

Mr. Ricky Pierce. Mr. Pierce, if you would approach the podium and identify yourself, name and address. Sir,

my name is Ricky Pierce. I live at 1810 Vandor Springs Road in Garner. First, I must apologize for leaving after speaking last month. Um, first Tuesday of every month, I host a gathering of s uh classmates. Uh, we've been doing this for 16 years. Last last month we had 28 present. Most of them garner citizens and taxpayers. Had some interesting conversations while I was there. Everybody knew where I was at and what I was doing and I was congratulated for taking the step up. Uh, one of them made a point to tell me that uh, he had voted for you eight times great, but he wasn't doing it again. Um, last week at the grocery store, my wife ran into a friend of ours who her and her husband have a longtime business here in Garner. She too told my wife to make sure that I knew that she was proud of me for standing up and doing what a lot of people would like to do but won't get up here and talk about. She brought up u at my meeting an interesting thing was brought up. In 1990 the population of Garner was 14,967 people. Today it's 32,593 and we're growing and there are a lot of things happening. We had five council members back then. We have five now. She said, "It's time to add two." And I agree. Why? Well, the past election, egos got best of a couple of you guys, and you no longer were happy just to sit on the board. You wanted to control it. And to do that, you needed a playmate. You knew the gentleman on either end, Mr. Matthews and Mr. Vance, wouldn't be willing to do that. So, you had to get the party to give you one. Uh, and I saw that he helped you out at Bur's second meeting, Grace. So, you ought to be proud of that. We have got a problem. I don't trust you guys no more. I think I've said that before and and there are other people that are seeing that too. Um town needs to know what's happening, what's going on with our people. We need

to trust you. Trust is important. Uh my tax bill last year was $4,964. I'm retired and fixed income, but I paid it. That's the price for owning stuff. I guess when you only own a couple cars and don't own any sore, yours wasn't quite that much, was it, Mr. Stone? Read your definition of a word. Deception. The deliberate act of misleading, lying, or distorting the truth to cause another to believe a falsehood. It involves intentionally hiding facts, omitting information, or creating a false impression to gain an advantage or manipulate a situation. Synonyms for deception are deceit, deceitfulness, trickery, dishonesty. Gray, after 40 years, that's the reason you and I are no longer friends.

Okay. Uh, were there any other speakers signed up for this evening? No, sir. Okay. We'll move right along to item C on our agenda, which is adoption of the agenda. I hope some council members have had a chance to look this over. Uh, is there a motion to adopt the agenda? So moved. Second. Uh, motion by Mr. Matthews, second by Mr. Stalins. Uh, if there's no discussion, all in favor of adopting the agenda, please signify by saying I. I.

Any opposed by nay? Hearing none, the agenda is adopted unanimously. As we mentioned, section D, no presentations. Uh, which brings us along to the consent agenda. Item E. Uh there's six items on here that we've uh been looking at over that we've had a chance to look at over the last month or so. Some of them some of them for the last few days. But typically these are more administrative uh less controversial items that we can approve in mass. But by the same token, if any council member wants to remove one of these items for further discussion, we can do that. Uh, is there any uh need to move any of these off of the agenda item?

Just like to ask move item five off, Mr. Mayor. And if no one else has anything to do with mo move that we approve the other five items. Okay. There's been a motion to remove item five for other discussion and approve uh the rest of the items. Is there a second to that motion? Second. Okay. Second by Mr. Stalins. Uh that being said, all in favor of uh passing that motion and approving all the items except number five, please signify by saying I. I.

Any opposed by nay? Hearing none. We will adopt the consent agenda and move item off item number five for further discussion. And let me double check with our parliamentarian and uh attorney. Do we bring that item up now for discussion? You can bring it up now or you can move it to new and old business.

Let's move to new and old business. Uh that makes and if you will remind me again as we get there that will be in the proper order. And we move to item F which is public hearings and these are legislative hearings as it says here on the fine print. Do not require sworn testimony. Uh however, all persons interested in speaking must sign up with the town [clears throat] clerk. And we'll start with the sponsor, our presenter of the first item, which is 1.1. It's the fiscal year 27 initial budget hearing and portal launch. And our sponsor and presenter this evening is our budget director, Miss Sarah Warren. Take it away.

Good afternoon, mayor and members of council. Um so this is the uh proposed FY27 budget portal launch and initial public hearing. [snorts] Um what that means is we have opened up our online web portal to receive information and feedback from the community um as it pertains to the upcoming budget. Um, and we are also holding an initial public hearing for residents to sign up and provide input on the upcoming proposed budget. Just a reminder of our current calendar, we did start with the FY27 budget development with our kickoff in December. We received uh departmental requests and other information from our departments mid January. In early February, we came to you to discuss um upcoming horizon item CIP projects and the last touch point was our council retreat um in midFebruary. Tonight we're here at the initial public hearing and budget portal launch. Um over the next um month and a half, we will continue to take in additional information as it relates to the budget development. Um and then when we have our second public hearing, it will be a time for um the public to respond directly to the proposed budget. Uh this is where um as a screenshot from the current FY27 budget portal, there is u a public comment form for which residents can provide input. Um, also beneath that, I didn't capture it, but is a calendar of all of the important dates which I referenced on the previous slide. And for those that um are here and want to take a little snapshot of

the QR code that will direct you that will take you directly to our online portal. And that that's all I have for right now.

Golly. Well, that's not a lot, but there's a lot of information. I'd like to point out that we've got at least two full-time employees who work year round on this budget, as well as the town manager, two assistant town managers who are always working on this, the department heads, the other folks. A lot of work goes into this year around. And what we're seeing as we uh do even more work and pay more attention here in the home stretch as we move toward that July 1 effective date. So, a lot of thought goes into this, a lot of work. We want a lot of input from the public. We want all the input we can get. We want all the eyes looking at this that we can to make sure we're doing the right thing, meeting our needs, and making good decisions. Uh that being said, uh let me start with Mr. Vance is in that come this way to see if there's questions or individuals from the council members questions or comments. Mr. Vance.

Uh no questions.

Uh just a a couple comments and then I'll pass. Um one I'm just very glad to see the opportunity for earlier and multiple inputs for the public on the budget. Understand we're at the very early part of the process now and these all these numbers are still in flux a little bit. So, want the public to kind of be aware of that as well. Um, I did want to read something. It was an article published last Mar this last week on March 9th talking about the tax loophole. And there's a quote from the tax assessor that says in his opinion, it's the biggest threat to revenue streams in the county he could ever imagine. And that is this practice by which we have some applicants who now have the opportunity to what he also quoted as saying rent a nonprofit to avoid paying their property taxes on development. And so also followed up and saw Aaron Pereé on the news the other day talking about how they're going to take this issue up which is good because as much as we don't want to pay taxes we we growth may not always pay for growth but it's got to pay for something. And so I'm hoping that our friends at the General Assembly will take action because we face a trying budget every year to continue to deliver the level of service that we want to and citizens expect and and opportunities like this for people to get around that are not helping the challenge we have in front of us. So I have a few more comments, but I I just wanted to put that out there that we have a hard task as it is and doesn't need to be made harder.

Thank you. Good observation, Mr. Stalins. Um, I just appreciate the budget, us getting the budget so early, us discussing the budget at the retreat. Um, I just I'm I'm definitely thankful to um be able to it's a lot of information to be able to synthesize it and um get it earlier so that we can um try to make sure that we have the best working product um as we adopt it later on this summer. Thank you, Mr. Singleton. Yes. Uh M. born on page uh your I think your budget page 23 our agenda page 88 the working revenues pie chart Mhm.

says that that's uh working revenues for FY27 $9.6 million based on the pieces of the pie and the number shown correct yes okay well y'all need to redo your numbers because that number is cor wrong this is not $90.6 6 million is 861 174835. You need to go and correct those numbers. So, so, so where are you looking at the 86? That is wrong. So, those are So, that is our FY27 working base budget.

It's still $4.4 million off and it's a printed document. I had it seven times. Got my wife to do it twice, my son to do it twice. is 90.6 and those blue numbers do not add up. We need to get that corrected. All right. Next, uh down here on the uh not the portal, the uh dashboard. Now, it has a link on here and I tried to get on and I I have to get y'all to tell me how to link on this. The one that you're shown on here is Are these just working numbers? Are these actual numbers? You just kind of model numbers for us to look at.

So, the numbers are pulling um they're the numbers in there are our working numbers for FY27. um the numbers um and we have validated those numbers in our system and with our software developer um the numbers that can be manually entered in the bottom um where there's a field those those can be manipulated however you choose um to navigate them and then they will populate up into the model.

Okay. So I know you're having discussion with department heads about uh employees additional FTS and so forth. Um, I was just curious under department needs, departmental needs, there's nothing listed for this year, but there's already numbers listed for 28. And I was trying to figure out how we got numbers listed for 28 if we don't have any numbers for 27 yet. So, the numbers that are listed in for 28 and beyond were numbers that were modeled in the prior uh multi-year model. Um, so we indicated that when we went over we we pulled the departmental needs from the from the model that we presented as part of the FY26 budget, left 27 blank for all the updates that we'll be doing as part of this budget process. Okay?

But they can be manipulated and you can add things in the outear should you choose in in your as you start playing around with it. Okay. And then on the tax rate analysis under assessed property value, that number is up to date or is it changing at the $10 billion is that's constantly changing. Right. The FY27 um assessed value is what we have programmed in. It's based upon the numbers we received from the county and have programmed in for the FY27 days. The numbers in FY28 and beyond are based upon the growth factors that are listed above. I think it's 5% most years and then I think 6% uh in 29.

Okay. Yes, it shows the uh the 5%. Okay. Because the uh I was looking at the growth from the assessed property value in the existing budget and that's about 4% and change. So, okay. So, that's the number you're going to be working with right now. Unless you get some updated information from the county. That'll be the number we're working with. Okay. And uh I'll ask at the end of the meeting y'all can tell us how to log in to get on here because I tried and had no luck logging in on the portal on the dashboard, excuse me. All right, that's all for now. Mr. Matthew,

uh just to follow up on uh Mr. Mr. Dillinger, you know, this uh deal with especially the uh apartment people and some of the loopholes that's going out and wanting the regular taxpayers to pick up the tab on it uh uh for what they don't want to pay. And I'm glad that we're very much on the forefront. I appreciate uh our our manager generating sharing those efforts with other towns and uh cuz uh this could be a horrible thing on how you plan for a budget and some some of the bigger comm some smaller ones it's going to be a mess. So hopefully uh the legislature will be on top of that and and people that's following this, they need to reach out to their legislative people and encourage them to to nip this thing in the bud because this this could be disastrous all the way around because uh I don't know what plan B would be if we don't get that. It would not be good, I'm sure. And I just want to make a comment

and thank you u Mr. Matthews and Mayor Prom Dinger for bringing the issue up. I just wanted to let council know that I did share um town of Garner's specific information uh with our delegation and with the league. Um I actually sent it yesterday. I know the committee is meeting on Wednesday. Wanted to make sure they had that information ahead of time. So, we're closely monitoring it, working with the league and our other partners and municipalities across the state to provide information that shows the impact that that will have and requesting that the general assembly take action as soon as possible to close that loophole. So, I will keep the council and the community updated on that. Thank you. Thank you. And let's go run back through again, Mr. Vance.

Oh, yes, Sarah. How will the budget input from the uh portal be used to shape the FY27 budget? So, we will um continue to take those comments in um and kind of assess what we what information that we get um and incorporate that in some of our deliberations. But we'll what we will also do is continue to share that those comments with you along the way. We do have a plan touch point on March 31st at your work session. We'll be sure to provide any and all any and all comments we've received through the portal to you at that time. Um and then we'll as we'll we'll work on some regular cadence to make sure that you've got all the up-to-date information from the public um before the budget is recommended in May.

Thank you. Mr. Dinger.

I know there's still work ongoing at the department level to when will those numbers be sort of um two two parts of this question. Um kind of baked enough to if it's possible get an export of that data so that I can do sort of my own analysis year-toear department stuff when what's the timeline for firming up? Um so we are working through department head meetings um this week to discuss departmental budget needs. Um what we can do is uh aim what we hope is to synthesize some level of information at the March work session. Um but we can also provide you with some additional information at that time um based upon what uh doing an export of data if that's if that's what you are asking.

Yeah. There can at some point just be an export kind of raw data. That would be helpful for me to kind of look year to year, department by department, but I don't want to go through all that. If y'all are still changing a lot of of numbers and stuff. Um, that's only comment. I just want to encourage the public to use the portal. Um, we'll have some tough decisions this year to make with regards to taxes and allocating funds and and your input will be kind of invaluable in helping us make some of those decisions. So, Thank you, Mr. Talons.

Um, kind of to echo Councilman Dillinger's point, um, for the public to please utilize the portal, make any comments, read the budget. Um, I know currently right now and when I guess my question would be when will the department data be added? Will there be another budget presented during the second budget hearing where we will be able to see those breakdowns for the public to be able to respond to? So the manager's recommended budget will be presented at the first meeting in May. Um so that's going to be the uh May 5th council meeting. At that time all of the uh departmental information whether items are funded or unfunded will be included in the recommended budget.

Okay. So that second budget hearing is when the public will be able to come and respond to to actual budget. Yeah. Okay. Most definitely. That was my Okay. Thank you, Mr. Singleton. uh the health insurance increase. That's a pretty firm number. We don't think that's going to change or increase any further, do we? I can speak to that, Mr. Singleton. Yes, that number's locked in. We filled out the paperwork and we had to do that by the end of February. So, that's a locked in number. Okay. Good. All right. Thank you. Nothing.

Okay. Well, if no other comments at this point, I think just to reemphasize again, this is a public process. We want input. We want many eyes on this. I'm glad to see it taking shape. Uh if anyone has any issue getting onto the portal or understanding it, feel free to call anybody from the town manager on down, town clerk, you know, make make sure we're getting that message in if our publication is not working correctly. So, thank you very much, Miss Warren. We look forward to hearing more as we get along on this process. Okay. Uh again, that's there's no decision to be made, just more discussion. It's a public hearing. It's a public hearing.

Yes, it is a public hearing. Oh, is there anyone else signed up to speak? [laughter] Yes, sir. Oh, Mr. Tim Holton. Excellent. Excellent. Mr. Holton, [clears throat] if you would approach the podium, identify yourself by name and address. We'll be glad to get your input as well.

Hello, Mr. Mayor. Town of Garner staff. By the way, I did use that and I have already submitted something and it seemed to work as far as I could tell. But uh my name is Tim Holton. I live at 411 Long View Street in Garner, North Carolina. And I am insane. I live in the town of Garner and I am insane. I'm sure most of you are familiar with the popular definition of insanity. If not, here is a reminder. [clears throat] Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. By that definition, there is no question I, Tim Holton of Garner, North Carolina, am insane. We just marked our 8-year Garner anniversary. Eight years ago, on March 5th, my wife and I and our beloved dog purchased our home here in town. We moved to North Carolina from a place up north, a place called Minnesota. My wife and I were raised in the upper Midwest. I grew up in Wisconsin, my wife in Michigan. We finally decided we weren't going to live out our time on this planet where the two feet of ice on the lakes didn't melt until April or May. It was time for a change of attitude and latitude. After some nationwide exploration, Raleigh won our hearts. We knew very little about the Raleigh area, but we knew it was fantastically green.

and naturally beautiful and it was warm. Well, we knew very little about Raleigh and we knew even less about Garner. When looking for a home, we more or less stumbled on this place. There were a lot of people talking about a place called Kerry, the containment area for relocated Yankees. But we knew we didn't want that. We were moving to the south. and we wanted neighbors from the south with the accents to prove it. Many of you have heard my story. Long story short, I was smitten by our tiny downtown and our big, beautiful downtown water tower. While I wish to escape the cold of the upper Midwest winters, the beautiful small towns where I grew up forever entwined my heart and my DNA. And tiny downtown Garner and its water tower lit up the DNA that lights up the synapses in my central nervous system. We had found our new home. There was essentially no research or analysis that went into the decision. Something much deeper made the decision. In the eight years since we purchased our home in Garner, a lot of things have happened. Some of them beautiful and some things very sad and some things very ugly. Sadly, we've lost wonderful neighbors over the years, longtime citizens of Garner. We've seen neighbors battle cancer. We see neighbors struggling daily with chronic pain.

We have some truly beautiful people surrounding us of all races and ethnicities. But we've seen some really ugly things. Shortly a after we moved in, my wife had a man expose himself masturbating at the corner of Avery Street and Powell Drive while on the morning walk with the dog, a mere block away from the North Garner Middle School. My dog has been charged by pitbulls. One time, thankfully, I was able to get in between and keep the dog from making contact. On a separate occasion, two years ago, a pit bull managed to disconnect from its leash and its owner and attack our dog. I know I I'm speaking for at least three or four people, so I please beg your permission to keep going.

I probably got another five minutes. No, we we do have a threem minute limit out of fairness to all the other folks that are in minute four almost five now. I am trying to speak for a group of folks. Yes, but you don't get all their time. Unfortunately, they but they are

they don't get to contribute that. Mr. Molton, I know you to be a committed citizen with with love of garner in your heart. We want to hear what you have to say. Uh and and you know, I'll meet with you any time and almost any council member will as well. But out of fairness to Mr. Pierce uh and Mr. uh all the rest of the folks that are here, we're going to stick to the three minutes and if you have to come back every every month or every other week uh as Mr. Pierce does to make his story told. Uh we're going to ask for sticking to the to the three minute. Does anybody have uh so far?

Yeah. Uh, is there not a timer there on your podium that shows minus 208? That's two minutes over that. I'm sorry, we didn't give you the orientation. It shows that you're two minutes over the three minute limit there. Um, it it shows Apple ID verification.

Uh, well, take my word for it when I say that Mr. Mercy is is running the speaker and uh you you you went five minutes versus three. It is a threem minute rule and we're trying to be fair to everyone so they have a chance to speak as well. So I I would ask that that you you know you know sign up to speak next time, talk to any one of us at any time. We're glad to hear but we have to be fair and have to be consistent with our rules. including 20 seconds, 30 seconds, we'll let you say goodbye gracefully.

Uh, okay. Well, um I was under the impression that if you're kind of speaking for a sort of a group of folks that maybe you could kind of consolidate that time, but um perhaps not. Uh in any case, uh I'll I'll just end with my final sentence and while everything else maybe we'll follow up at some other time. There's a lot of talk about greatness and aiming high for Garner, but the town needs to deliver greatness and the now the town needs to hit the high target of a clean, safe, beautiful place to be. Please help.

Thank you. Thank you. And were was there anyone else signed up to speak? No, sir. Okay. So that that closes the public hearing on the budget session. Uh Miss Warren, did you have any other observations or I have no no further comment from me.

Okay. Thank you very much for carrying that message. Thanks for continuing the work. Uh all of you who want to speak to the idea of the budget particularly uh feel free to go to the portal, send us emails. There will be a time available to anyone who wants to participate in this process. Uh from staff and from council members. I can speak for all of us. We do want your input. So, uh, let me refer to our parliamentarian again. Are we ready to close this public hearing? Yes.

Okay. Uh, public hearing is closed. Thank you. And we'll move along to item G, which is new and old business. And we'll start first with the item that we brought over from the consent agenda. Uh, Mr. Singleton, you asked that we uh remove from the consent agenda the code of conduct and ethics, including the proposed amendments that was up for adoption. Would you like to address that and speak about just at the retreat I said that I would support it because of the rules and regulations which I thought were way too lengthy. That's all. No need for discussion. We discussed it. I just I didn't want to vote no for the consent agenda because I wouldn't vote no against the consent agenda. It's just that one item that I mentioned at the retreat. That's it.

Okay. So, um I'm not sure or there was a motion to approve the code of ethics along with the consent agenda and you asked it be pulled off or Yeah, I'm just telling you all I'm doing is I'm going to vote no. That's why I didn't vote no against the whole consent agenda. It was just the one item that I said at the retreat I would not vote on. So, that's that's all it is. Okay. So, I would guess I would ask the other council members. Is there a motion to to adopt uh the code of conduct and ethics? So moved. Is there a second? Second.

Motion by Mr. Vance and a second by Mr. Stalins to adopt the code of conduct and ethics as presented by the town attorney as reviewed by the council for some time. Uh is there's a motion and a second. Is there some discussion on that? Uh Mr. message. Let's start at your head. Any questions? Any comments? Any discussion on that item? No, sir. Mr. Singleton, any other observations or discussions? Mr. Stalin comments?

The only only comment I'll make is kind of the comments that I brought up during the retreat is um code of ethics, even how we have rewritten them, are very um restrictive when it comes to social media use. I know that's a new um it's it's something new that municipalities are trying to figure out how to regulate in terms of liability issues. Um but that's pretty much after the work session that we had at our retreat in which we revised a lot of what we had in the code of conduct and the ethics. The only thing that I was concerned about Mr. Dallinger.

Yeah, I think the it's an improvement on what we have. it's a little more um streamlined um but still covers everything he needs to cover. I think I everybody had their little reservations about different parts or um but I think it for now it's a good working document [clears throat] for us to work from. Mr. Dance, no further comment.

Uh yes, I thank you for your comments, Mr. Dinger and Mr. Stalins. Uh clearly it is a work in progress and always will be. Social media wasn't on the agenda 20 years ago, barely 10. uh it is an evolving thing. I think the idea uh with this code of ethics, it is a working document. Uh we are writing this. We are approving this. We can amend it in the future as we see the needs as we learn more about the specifics. But clearly there's no intention of the code ethics to curtail anybody's constitutional rights or be in conflict with any state statutes. So we're open to suggestions any time as we move. Thank thanks for paying the close attention. Uh if there's no further discussion, we'll call for a roll call vote on on this one. And u I believe Mr. Vance made made the motion. Uh if you're in favor of approving and adopting the code of conduct and ethics, please signify by saying I.

I. Mr. Dillinger, I. Mr. Stalin, I. Mr. Hamilton, no. Mr. Matthews, I.

Looks like that passes 4 to one. Okay. Thank you very much for your discussion there. Always important stuff. That being said, let's move along to item G of new and which is new and old business. And item number one is zoning text amendment, the comprehensive plan implementation. Uh and our our speaker tonight, our sponsor of this is our planning director, Jeff Trezenberg, who has been working on this particular project. Uh I'll let you fill in the blank here, Mr. Tenberg. How long have we been uh wrestling with this major final piece of the cleanup and and adjustment?

We've been chipping away at it, I think, for a little over a year. It's had its we we got off to a a start and then had a little bit of a redirect. So, that I think was kind of to be expected. Um, but I'd say more recently, probably a good seven, eight months of really trying to dig in dig into it and um get it to a point where we're here tonight um Mr. Mayor and council members to consider possible adoption. Um, so I will again I'm not going to recount the whole presentation. Um, but just to give you a brief summary of where we're at. Um, again the overall amendment approach. Uh, the comprehensive plan calls out a lot of housing form variability um at smaller unit counts per structure. Uh so the various you know duplexes uh it also talks about live work units uh cottage houses um less less so for the larger um apartments. Uh there's pretty much just one form type. Um, we did also have to kind of be aware of some other factors from the building code, some of the private utility uh policy requirements that we have in trying to determine what's the best way to to break up these types of housing forms. Um, and so those are reflected all these proposed changes are reflected in the list of specific uses now that we have proposed in the use table. Um, and then of course just the reminder that we do still have um that session law which I've put the actual um NCGS in here somewhere. Um, but the downzoning bill that prevents us from doing a few things. And so again, just to remind you, I did want to just

kind of pop up this u exhibit from the comprehensive plan. Again, you see all of the different types of housing. Most of them are four units or less. Um several of them are just single unit types. Um but you see there we have a number of minute differences um between them but the ordinance use table really didn't reflect that um as much as it probably needs to. So we divided up the entire amendment package into kind of these seven groups. Um I think in the first uh at the public hearing I probably called them purpose kind of like purpose statements or something of that nature. Um for purposes of tonight's meeting I've just referred to them by subgroups. Um so the first subgroup of amendments that are in this package were to incorporate sections of ordinance 2024 5286 which is an ordinance that we passed back in 2024. It was our first attempt at doing some implementation of the comprehensive plan. Um, but staff believes that that ordinance is now null and void due to that downzoning bill that was passed by the state legislature. Um, so a good chunk of uh the amendments that are in this package tonight are just taken directly from that ordinance. It's the pieces that we feel are not in violation of that uh Senate law or statutory law. Um so we want to get those back on the books. So that I think is pretty should be pretty straightforward. Um then amendments uh for subgroup two again kind of going back to all of the different types of residential forms that we have and the and the small differences between them. we wanted to be sure that we were

getting the text and the uses to align better with what is recommended in the comprehensive plan. Um, so that whole section of amendments that we talked about in this subgroup two are all kind of related to that. So, we've made some different distinctions between the types of town houses and the types of apartments. Introducing um the some of the other other types housing types as well. U made some clarity around duplex, triplex and quadplex and also further redefining what we considered house scale versus not house scale. Subgroup three was a group of a few amendments that targeted updating the the uh purpose and use of the R8 district. Um so we have a few things that we've changed there again dividing where um where town homes are now permitted in R8 and making that kind of distinct uh harder cut between R4 and R8. uh really trying to make R8 that true uh transition district between regular single family residential neighborhoods at an R4 or R2 density and the higher mixeduse districts. Um but then again ensuring that we are getting a higher density. So there was an amendment in as part of that package that the R8 district if you're going to reszone to it, you do have to at least achieve four units per acre. So something above what R4 would allow. [cough] Subgroup four, uh we focused on better differentiating MFA and MFB. Um, MFA [laughter] pretty much just becomes the

the catch-all district for typical garden style apartments. Um, some of the other related types of uses that you might find near apartments that folks would want to walk to. Um but then we the real change is for the MFB district where we talked about having a zoning district that would fulfill uh that level. I think it was 4B in the comprehensive plan. We had that map of vertical change that the plan expects to achieve. So we had one, two, three and four and four was divided into 4 A, 4 B and 4 C. Um, and we have that activity center district which allows us to do the high-rise development, but we didn't have a district that really targeted the mid-rise development from six to 10 stories high. Um, so the MFB changes are really geared towards trying to um, make that the go-to district for folks that want to do that mid-rise development in the very few. It's not in a lot of places, but it's in some places uh, targeted places where we want to have that higher uh, height limit.

Mr. Trezenberg, I have a question. So on the um rock corey project for example they had a condition that limited to 10 stories. Where did that condition come from? And was it or was it just designed to sort of be in line with our text amendment readright? I I think it probably was somewhat geared with the tax amendment in mind, but I think they actually took that directly from the comprehensive plan with the property assemblage that they were looking at. It was calling for that 4B uh height. And so they just wanted to kind of reinforce that that they weren't going to go taller than that. Um it didn't guarantee they were going to get up to that, but Right.

Yeah.

Okay. Thank you. Um, in subgroup five, again, we have the live work unit that was described in the comprehensive plan, but did not exist in our UDO. Um, I'll talk a little bit more about live work units when I go over the planning commission, uh, notes. Uh, subgroup six, we wanted to, uh, go back and take a look at the density bonuses and realign those and make them more appropriate. We took the density bonuses away from the lower density zoning districts, so from the R2 and the R4, and we've applied those density bonuses to the R8 and higher, I think in the NMX district as well. Um, so again, trying to put those density bonuses where appropriate. And then finally, the subgroup seven was really the catchall. um some of the redundant language uh clarifying kind of reorganizing some things uh to make them read better and flow better in the document itself. Uh and some other just minor I would say adjustments to those residential uses where we were really trying to concentrate on making sure that there's not a lot of nonconformities out there um in our non-residential zones. So during the planning commission's discussions in January and February um and in response to some uh periodic calls that we get from residents in Garner, we're you're supposed to get a fence permit to put up your fence. Um, I always tell folks that it's really a good check for you just to make sure that you're putting it in the right place if nothing else and that you're also not putting up something taller

than what you should. Um, that being said, the vast majority of folks I would say probably don't get a fence permit. Um, unfortunate, but again, right now we just do complaintbased enforcement. um and then education. But one of the things that happens is particularly for people in corner yards or corner properties, so a street on the front and on the side. The way the ordinance reads today, you'll see on the left if you want to do a privacy fence, you're restricted to the rear yard and the interior sideyard. So your your privacy fence can come off that back corner, go around your backyard, and then come all the way up to the front on the side. Um, in the front yard and the corner sideyard, you historically have only been allowed to have a 4ft open fence. So if you wanted to have the picket fence, you could have a picket fence, but it couldn't be solid and it couldn't be more than four feet. Most of the purpose behind those regulations is to make sure that the sight triangle for the car that's coming up to the intersection is not blocked. Um, and admittedly pushing it to all the way here to the back corner of the house is probably more restrictive than it needs to be. Um, so staff had looked at uh some of our neighbors to see what they were requiring. Uh, and the the proposal that we came up to was a proposal that's used in a couple of neighboring jurisdictions where they do allow you to come up halfway along the side of the house with that privacy fence. So, you are able to enclose a little bit more. Um, if I put on my historic preservation

hat, uh, my historic preservation friends would say, "Well, Jeeoff, yes, you're not supposed to tie into the corner. That's not aesthetically correct." Um, so they would support bringing up the fence to the side somewhere in the midpoint of the side of the house. Um, that should, we determined in most cases, would not block the sight triangle. Um but again, if you're pulling your fence permit, if it accidentally should, um we do have that language to go back and tell people, you know, hey, you can't block the sight triangle, but you can come up, but we don't feel that halfway up the side of the house will will do that.

Joe, question in reference to that sight triangle. U how is that determined? So, at most residential intersections, we just use a standard 10 by 70 um sight triangle. from where the car would stop because some some intersections may be slightly curved and so how is that adjustment made? Um yes. So if if the if the property was curved, you would still look at where the stop bar is and where the car would be sitting and you would measure back 10 feet and then aim for that location that's 70 ft down the side street and draw the triangle between those two points.

Would the property owner do that or will somebody with technical expertise do that? Um we would review that as part of their layout. They would submit their plot plan and we could do the measurements off of that.

Thank you. So during that planning commission discussion um it was very focused. There wasn't a lot of questions about a lot of different topics. Um just a lot of clarifications. They wanted to understand the downzoning bill a little bit more and what what the uh prohibitions were that we had to work with related to that. Um, we did go over the term paired house, uh, which is really just two town houses together. Um, most of their questions did revolve around live work units and there were some good questions that came up and we had a good discussion. Um, they were just interested in kind of knowing a little bit more about how they work from an ownership perspective. It is owned by the same person. You live upstairs from where you operate your small business. Um, we talked a little bit about how they're similar to town homes but different from a use perspective, but form-wise they look very similar. And so you'll see in the use table where they are allowed mimics where town homes are allowed. Uh, and then also just again a little bit about those zoning districts that I just mentioned. um they felt comfortable with it after we all was said and done. We talked about a few cases where we've seen some both in Bedford in uh the northern parts of Raleigh and down in Fugquway Verina. Uh we did touch on the change to the CMX district um where if you're going to do a residential project, the introducing that requirement that it has to have a non-residential component in order to have that residential component. We did also talk a little bit about the

the benefit and ease of the revised way of looking at calculation of the building height. Uh and then we had a the last one was a question about uh the sorry it's escaping me. The limited access highway overlay uh which applies to 540 and 40. Um, currently I'd say this was an inadvertent outcome of us adopting that is that it did not allow any residential within and I think that district is like 1,250 ft deep. Um, and so we had prohibited any type of subdivision in that 1250 ft. The idea was that when DOT goes in and builds these highways and widens them, if a residential neighborhood exists prior to that construction, they will put up a sound wall if their sound study requires it. And so one of the things that I've always heard folks express some concern about at the DOT level is well what about neighborhoods that come in after and trying to keep the neighborhoods new neighborhoods from coming right up to the interstate and then having the residents, you know, inevitably someone maybe 20 years down the road will be like, well, why didn't I get a sound wall? they didn't really know that their that their subdivision was built after the highway was widened. Um, so there was some thought process there of trying to keep subdivisions from getting too close from a sound perspective and not to create a problem for down the road. Um, so the amendment that we have would just keep subdivisions 300 ft away. Um,

and there was a question from one of the uh commission members. Well, what if a developer offered to put up a sound wall? At first, that sounded like a plausible thing to consider, and we did we did talk about it. I think the issue there is is that you have a 50 foot preserved uh vegetated buffer. So, if there's trees right up against the interstate, that 50 ft, that first 50 feet is preserved. You're not going to be able to go back in and put the wall on the interstate side. It would have to go on the inside. And I don't know of anybody that would really necessarily want to have that in their backyard. They'd rather I think most people have the tree view as opposed to a wall view. Um, we did throw it out though to a couple of of uh subdivision builders and they said that it would also just be cost prohibitive for the most part. Um, so again, good question. Uh, something that we did consider, but we ultimately decided to leave it the way it was. So at the end of uh the meeting in February, they did adopt the consistency statement that we the planning commission find that although primarily mentioned in the context of promoting commercial development, the comprehensive plan does discuss the guiding principle of aligning the development code with our desired ends which in this case we would say is the comprehensive plan and that whether through consensus or a majority opinion the successful adoption of a revised regulation may be understood to represent the fulfillment of that princip. principal. Uh so they did make a motion to find consistent and recommend approval. That motion was made by Mr. Carson, seconded by Mr. Voiland and passed unanimously. Uh so the next steps we're here tonight uh for possible uh decision on plan consistency from you as the council and

a decision on whether or not to approve or deny. And again, just a reminder that for text amendments, there is no requirement for a reasonleness statement, just consistency. So, that's all I have for you tonight. I do have the rest of my presentation slides if you want to call anything out. And I've got my draft ordinance and staff report here. It's I know it's a lot of pages, but if you have any questions, I'll be glad to try to answer.

Excellent presentation, Mr. Trezenberg, as usual. Thanks for the year plus of hard work by you and your staff. Uh we we talked about changing the world is changing with the social media uh and it's changing with definitions and types of buildings. It's just a matter of trying to keep up keep our state-of-the-art uh control of what we have going on definition. That being said, we'll take questions and comments from council before while you're up there before asking for a motion. Let's start with Mr. Matthews then and work this way. Great presentation by the way and uh it's good we're getting out ahead of these things with some things we experienced of recent and going in there and I use term fixing a few things so it's is better for us as we move forward and and grow. So uh I appreciate all the hard work and uh this this is good.

Okay Mr. S. Yes sir. Two questions. One regarding accessory dwelling units, DDUs, they are allowed now and some of this uh legislative authority you mentioned at the beginning of the presentation, we can't pick them out. We can't remove them in certain cases. They are allowed basically whether or not a HOA that prevents them in any any res zoning and garner an ADU is allowed because the state law says it has to be allowed. But if a a neighborhood or newer neighborhoods have HOAs that prevent them, the HOA standards or the covenants hold up against that. Correct. Correct.

Okay. In regard to the CMX issue, we've talked about CMX and so forth and combining the the commercial business and residential all that this passes will start effective then. It's on no existing project as before because uh the teeth are now uh much sharper than they were before and and the requirements uh for those projects is much stronger than it was before with CMX. Correct. So anything that would come to us now after today uh if this is approved would have to be held to to this. But anything that was already in prior could opt out through permit choice. Okay, that's all for right now. Thank you.

Point of just point of clarification. excited to hear that last piece in reference CMX before you have to repeat it with me. Can you restate reference to what's currently in the pipeline and how that's going to be handled?

Right. So, any project currently that is in the process that's in a CMX district and is only proposing residential, they have the ability through their permit choice allowances to still go by the existing ordinance. But after tonight, if this is approved, any project that would come to us to get in the review cycle now um for a CMX zoned property would if they wanted to do residential, they would also have to come in with a non-residential component. Mr. Stalance, questions, comments?

Um just want to um echo Councilman Matthews statement. I'm glad we're we're getting ahead of a lot of these things. I know when I came on board, we we encountered a lot of unique situations. So, I'm I'm glad that we're we're getting out in front of a lot of this. Thank you. Yes, I'm glad this trunch is done because I have a lot of new ones. Yeah. Send to you and I didn't want to send them while you were doing this one. So, I'm glad this is finally

getting to the finish line. Um, I like the way you kind of the modifications made to the R8 and also the geographic requirement that quarter mile which seems really appropriate and quantitative and even looking at the zoning map the MF there's not a lot of MFB that one gave me a little bit of hesitation because like well but it's like there there aren't we don't have that many and so I think that works out well. So, I'm I'm glad to see that and hopefully it'll um turn into the type of zoning district we'd hoped it it was going to be of sort of a similar but a question about intensity and this is more related to things that are in the pipeline or we have approved and if they decrease the intensity they can kind of move forward. We've seen that happen, but if there's an increase in intensity, then there needs to be a modification or it comes back to council, right?

And I guess this is a question for you and Terry and our town manager. What is the definition of intensity? Is it just density or is there is there a legal definition of an increase or decrease in intensity? Intensity is usually applied to more commercial or industrial uses than to residential density.

So intensity could be you're not increasing for instance in a manufacturing you're not increasing your footprint but you're adding on new processes or something that might result in more smoke more vibration something like that. So intensity also sometimes refers to increasing the number of hours those work, you know, something going from one shift to two or three shifts. Those would be more intensity type changes. So it's not um your physical footprint necessarily. So, I guess I was thinking in in the context of either resoning we've approved or a special use permit that we've approved and a reduction in the number of units would not require it would still be a compliance, but an increase would be a they're both changes, but only one change is allowed and a downward I guess I'm trying to figure out what the legal language is for the the reduction in numbers. Is that legally a a decreases in in intensity or is it by virtue of the special use permit there's a maximum that is set and then anything below that is sort of you can you can just do that and it's not this intensity conversation that make sense

yeah I I would say that um maybe the one one of the things that kind of straddles both of those as an indicator would be uh trips generated Um, so if the trips generated are going up or down, that's certainly a measure of intensity, that's usually also tied to bringing the units down. Um, you know, town homes have fewer trips than a single family detach. So there might be some gray area there, but usually those two will move together. There's not like a hard and fast definition of what intensity is. there's some room for interpretation. Yeah.

It tends to be interpreted by the courts and so it's very case by case. Okay. Thank you. You you have already gone through this but I just for for clarification for the audience in reference to um these changes. What might the uh public and developers see going forth relative to the changes that we made here? How is that going to change what we what we see coming forth in the future possibly? In general terms,

I mean, I think I think the biggest things hopefully that you'll see is that you'll see projects and zoning districts that they're requesting matching up better and truly fitting better what the comprehensive plan calls for. Um, most of the things that you see are going to be zoning related cases. So, I would point I would point to that as probably the biggest change hopefully. Um the rest are going to mostly be technical things that we will see as staff from an a review perspective of the plans and be enforcing the new rules. So what hearing is more in line with the conference of plan? Yes.

Okay. Excellent. Excellent. Excellent question. It's a good round of discussion. I think it may be appropriate to ask for a motion at this point and if we get a second we can have some more discussion. So I'm asking is there a motion to adopt ordinance 20265380 that includes the the changes that Mr. Trezenberg has just explained.

I move that the town council accept the planning commission's written statement reside regarding consistency of the zoning amendment request with the adopted land use plans to detail in section three of the staff report as our own. And I further move that the town council adopt ordinance number 20265380 approving text amendment ZTA 24 0001.

Second motion by Mr. Second by Mr. Stalance. Okay. Well, thank you Brent. We have a motion and a second on the floor uh to adopt this ordinance. Is there some more discussion you would like to have? We'll start that soon. Mr. Dinger and Mr. Tall are the comments. Mr. Singleton. Okay. Hearing none, we'll call for a vote on this, let's go with the voice vote. All council members in favor of adopting ordinance 2026 5380, please signify by saying I. I. Any opposed? By nay. Hearing none, that passes unanimously. Great work, Mr. Trees, and work. A year well spent just to keep up.

We'll get the we'll get the train started up again. Oh, yeah. Uh the work work on the next revision starts today. That's right. Thank you very much. Always a work in progress. Uh that brings us to uh number two on the new and old business, which is the delegation of authority. Delegation of authority. Our presenter, our sponsor is our town attorney, Miss Terry Jones. Uh please tell us what we're looking at here. Uh this one, there's no action required tonight. This is a presentation an ed an information exchange for some comments but there's no uh vote that we have to take on anything. I understand

that's correct Mr. Mayor. So this uh concept which was under the title signature authority which is generally a collection a term used in a lot of jurisdictions um to provide delegation of authority to sign documents as well as to take certain action. Um since I first presented uh this uh to you back in November December um it's been continued for several times. We haven't had a a formal discussion on it. So tonight would be that opportunity. But some of the comments that I received from council members uh was u to break this into separate types of authority. So these are all now under um the titles u delegation of authority. So the first one as you can see on your screen is a delegation of authority um to the mayor. Um so the mayor has certain um responsibilities that are specified in uh state law which is generally to preside over uh council meetings and to be the ceremonial um head of the town. Uh and then there's some authority conferred to the mayor in your rules of procedure and your code of conduct and ethics. Uh but this um provides a document that kind of fleshes out some of those other um items that the uh mayor um mayor Gupton and previous mayors you know have uh carried out on behalf of the town and and really that goes into about five categories. one is issuing these proclamations, letters of support, um certificates of appreciation, uh recognitions. Uh as you know, some

sometimes you will be um voting on a formal resolution of these, but oftent times the proclamation uh is done and issued by the mayor and presented at a council meeting. Um in general the uh mayor is the first person uh that the media and um other governmental officials go to as the spokesperson um for the town. uh also the master of ceremonies or the host for our town events um and other events um as invited by external organizations and then to participate um as the town's representative um unless another council member has been appointed or designated by the council. So those would be um organizations such as the League of Municipalities um and our um Central Pines um regional council of governments. And then um specifically it's already adopted in the code of ordinances, but the mayor uh does have the authority to declare a state of emergency. Town council also has um the ability to declare a state of emergency, but often because there are emergencies um there is not always time to convene a council meeting in order to do this. So this is probably um the least detailed of of the three proposed resolutions. Uh but these have been the typical uh responsibilities uh that the mayor um does. Now, this is in addition to the mayor carrying out everything that council votes on and adopts. So, um when you adopt an ordinance like you did just previously, the mayor is the one that signs those, but that is after official action is taken taken by town council. So, that's not really a delegation of authority.

It's just merely um the ministerial act of completing that ordinance or resolution or contract process. We can either take questions on this or I can move on to to the other the other two resolutions. One I think each one. Yeah. Let's start with Mr. Dance with questions. I kind of have a wish for Dinger.

Yeah. I just want to um thank the town attorney for codifying a lot of these things that the town had and council had done and authorities given to the mayor. Um it good to kind of get all of it in one place. I think the It's important to note that getting it documented is important and these are about roles and not individuals. Um, and it's just important to make sure everyone's clear on the delegation of these authorities and who's giving the authority, who has the role. Um, I think and and then a lot of things can be worked out between council and the mayor where there are grays areas. I think the one that stems stands out to me is just as the town's spokesperson just that there are circumstances when that's clearly the case, but it's not necessarily speaking for individual council members. And I think the mayor does a good job of doing that. Um, but I think that may be in the future sort of a clarification in in this document. Again, not for this council necessarily, but just making sure that no one is speaking for the body unless the body is is granted that authority added for a purpose and and media inquiries and things like that. I think we all agreement on that. Um, but yeah, I'm glad we're finally getting this written down. And one thing that it it doesn't say in this, but you brought up a good point. Um, this delegation of authority to the mayor would also go to the mayor prom during the mayor's absence. So, I can in a future draft, I can put that in to clarify that in in those situations where the mayor is unable to fulfill the roles, then the mayor prom would have the same powers or authority.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Stal. questions, comments. I had a question on on number E. I know it says pursuant to town codes and ordinances. Um is there state law that the mayor um has the authority to declare a state of emergency? I agree with the mayor being able to declare a state of emergency. I'm [clears throat] asking is it is this granted by the code of ordinances or is there state law giving the mayor that? [snorts] Uh it is specifically in our code of ordinances because um state law requires that there be an ordinance adopted or or or there be some way to say whether the mayor is allowed or not allowed to declare states of emergency.

And and this is often done as we opt into the Wake County state of emergency rather than having a localized emergency. Okay. So, the mayor has granted that authority via our code of ordinances. Yes. Okay. And that's um we'll be doing a little tweaks to that because the the state emergency management act was adop um revised a couple of years ago. So, we'll be I'll be bringing you a package of that to bring that um the language to tie in closer. But it is the general authority is in accordance with the state emergency management act.

Okay. Yeah. because I definitely do agree with the mayor being able to declare a state of emergency because we have to be nimble and we know it's it'll probably be hectic in certain situations to get town council together to take action on that. So I I definitely do agree. I just wanted to know was it state law? Was it codified by our code of ordinances? Thank you. Thank you Mr. Sson. No sir. No question. Okay.

Any other questions comments come to mind on that portion? Back to you Miss Jones. And I'm gonna um jump ahead to the one for the attorney, the town attorney, because it's a little bit shorter than the one for the manager. I think we'll have the most discussion on that one. And while you're thumbming through that, I'll just add the comment that I agree with what I'm hearing from council. Just want to reiterate that the mayor's duties and authorities are based on what the council does. The vast majority, you know, it's not that the mayor is making decisions on behalf of the council. He's reflecting or putting that final signature on the thing. That's the intent with the exception of the emergency. Plus, I get to cut the ribbons, kiss the babies, shake the hands, you know, the glory, the glory jobs, you might say, unless I'm not there and we have a mayor pro Tim step.

Back to you, Mr. Jones.

Um, so with respect to delegation of authority to the town attorney. Um so the the first one is basically provided there's a budget appropriation um authorizing the town attorney to um award contracts which most of the time that relates to retaining outside council to help in the town's um defense and representation. Uh obviously if there's not a sufficient budget appropriation then a budget amendment needs to be made and that would be coming to council. Um and then an issue that you know has come up uh from time to time is um who may give informed consent to law firms that may have a um actual or um perceived um or current or concurrent conflict of interest. Uh so this comes up from time to time. There have been law law firms um attorneys that have been retained to represent the town in something and then they have a private client who wants to come and um either apply for something at the board of adjustment or represent um a developer before uh town council. So um informed consent uh of the conflict of interest has to be provided. Uh so I would propose that that um you would allow the town attorney to do that. Um you know obviously uh there are some caveats to this that you know that there's not a concurrent meaning um they're working for the town and um this private individual at the same time. um that within any firm there's a firewall uh making sure that any um confidential communications um are maintained. Um and then I've added a protection to the town

and that's to make sure that they will not seek attorneys fees um against u the town in a development matter. Uh, and part of that is because they may have some some prior knowledge um through either public events or or something. Uh, obviously if if the law firm doesn't like these caveats, they could come petition to council um to ask you to wave the conflict in in that situation. Uh and then um again um the town charter u allows me to defend lawsuits against the town. So I don't need to come seek your permission to defend that. And that's because there's sometimes not time to convene a a meeting on that. Uh but it just clarifies that um I can retain other attorneys as necessary to defend the town. And then there was a previous uh resolution um that basically uh while the cho while the town charter says I'm obligated to defend the town, it does not say that I'm authorized to take action on behalf of the town as a plaintiff in in a lawsuit. Uh so we had a previous resolution uh which did allow me to initiate enforcement action regarding violations of town ordinances including abatement of uh state law chapter 19 nuisances and then to um initiate actions to collect civil penalties or other debts owed to the town. So again, this is to put um these um delegations of authority that have been typically either approved in a closed session uh or in general into to one ordinance. So happy to answer any questions you might have on on this delegation of authority.

Hear no questions. All right, bear with me as I'll go back to the third proposed resolution and this is regarding authority to the town U manager and other town officials. Um and where this really comes from is in state law. There are a lot of provisions that say um council is you know the town or municipality is authorized to take some action or to do something and then it will specifically say as approved by the governing board or as adopted by a resolution or adopted by an ordinance. And in those uh situations, council must meet and take action. And that's a non-delegable um duty of the board. Um council being that governing body or that governing board. There's a lot of a lot or the majority of things in state law say the municipality or the town may do something and it's not clear who who has that authority. And in these cases, council uh as a body can delegate that to the town manager um or sometimes to some other officials uh below the town manager. So, this is um an attempt to kind of consolidate all of those kinds of options u in one resolution to make that um more user friendly for um staff to know when they need to bring things to council and when they don't. And also it would provide um in the event that there's some challenge or we need to provide some documentation

that the manager has taken some kind of action or signed some kind of document that there's some kind of there's authority um beyond that when we don't have the council minutes to show or a formal council vote uh to show. So um it contains a lot of of different items. Uh if you want I can go through them or if you have any questions on any specific items however you want to proceed.

I hear go through them.

I I I think this is a pretty long document. If we could go through and have like a broad overview of of each section. Okay. So, um in the broad overview, the the first section is really um has to do with contracts and then um again it it specifies that contracts as with respect to um deeds of the town um have to be executed by the mayor unless there's some kind of special authority. And you'll see when you get agenda items, the action is often to authorize the manager to execute the necessary documents. Sometimes it's to to authorize the mayor. So those were some but the broad range of contracts is basically because the manager is the one who implements your budget and implements all of the town functions is um the authority to make an award and sign the contract documents. And again these are under state law. These are all of the different types of contracts that do not specify that town council has to adopt an ordinance or resolution to affectuate that contract. And contracts include leases and then some some other types of agreements. So that's probably um broadest area. Now, you'll see that there's some other um town officials specified in certain places.

So, like um state law allows the police chief and the the fire chief to enter into what's called mutual aid agreements, but they're really under state law talk about temporary assistance. So there's an emergency, they can go render aid and help out like that happened in um Hurricane Helen. And you know, sometimes it's very close to home and sometimes it's other parts of the state impacted um by not only natural disasters, but sometimes by other um types of emergencies. Uh however um oftent times these partner organizations and agencies would like to have a standing document you know a protocol for how you're going to handle it uh that are longer than just each temporary or each immediate uh emergency. Um, so this would clarify that um that these longer term standing agreements could be entered into and not a a oneoff for each each time, which again, state law allows the police chief and to some extent the fire chief to go ahead and do that in in an emergency type situation. Now and and the one caveat is certain things that require an interlocal agreement between the two governing bodies under state law those have to be passed by a resolution of council. So these would be the types of agreements that don't requ that that don't constitute an interlocal agreement.

Then wait the section three sorry on the contracts piece specifically related to like real estate. What is sort of velocity of those types of contracts that we enter into or modify?

Is this like a weekly, monthly, quarterly frequency? So, um, so real estate contracts where the town is the purchaser when the town's acquiring, that's only done after a close session where council gives guidance on um the terms and conditions and the bargaining of those. Um, so generally what we do is in the close session authorize the manager to be able to execute um your contract for purchase and sale of the property. uh and and then throughout the process to be able to sign any closing documents including the settlement statement. Uh now there are other real estate type um situations where for instance town property um one of our partners may need to temporarily use property that the town has that the town's not using. say um in downtown there was um like some of the vacant town property was used for lay down equipment for other construction um jobs either like I think Raleigh has has used our property in the past. So um generally for very short term there was a resolution that allowed very shortterm I think it was less than 60 days that the manager could do but sometimes these projects take longer than 60 days. Um we've had quite a few that have come to um council uh before about like Duke Energy. Now, sometimes Duke Energy may, you know, would want a resolution by um town council, but but typically um some of it's to make sure that we can get service to our our facilities and buildings. Some of it's to facilitate um

service going through town property um to to another property. So, this authority um again there's a lot of um street light agreements that are signed by the manager that type of of property use. Were there any other areas that I was just curious as to what the again the velocity how often is this uh coming up and you know that was really my question. Yeah, I mean most of the real estate contracts have to do with the purchase and sale contract and then again we Oh, sorry about that.

I saw like leases in there as well. And like I guess right where are we now in terms of the town approving or continuing or entering into lease agreements on property the town owns?

Yes. So, um, under state law, there's limited the ability for the manager. You can authorize the manager up to a year. After a year, it still has to come to council for approval. So long long-term leases um because that's the way the state law is written that that that's not necessarily delegable. So section three again that that talks about um surplus property. Uh so uh you've probably seen these before. um our our canines when they're retired, uh you adopt a resolution allowing um that canine to go with the police officer that the the service dogs are considered property of the town. So, there has to be a formal way to dispose of them. Again, we often have um surplus personal property such as uh vehicles, computers that um there is an ability um to actually dispose of those. Um sometime you've seen some agenda items about surplus vehicles and where they go, but this would um kind of codify some of the options that are there and make it um a little bit more efficient uh when disposing of those. And again, they still have to the disposal of the property, meaning is it a sale, is it an auction, um is it a donation to another jurisdiction, they all it still has to follow state law and the state parameters. And then again, in this um

we already do this, but there's a a record of all of this. So if council would want a report of how much property was disposed of in a year that could be provided. uh we have to maintain these records anyway, but but the resolution would uh make that clear for the public and for staff. again um and again reiterizing that I'm sorry emphasizing again that um we are using some public auction abilities to dispose of property to get us um the highest return with the least um amount of effort and resources by town staff. Um and then um just to uh clarify that the town manager can accept donations of personal property. Um and that's you know the town manager would have to determine that this donation is not going to um incur an unreasonable cost. Now again these um you've probably seen um some people donate benches. We have a process for benches at the park, but there's times when other entities or individuals want to donate to the town and this would allow um the town manager to to accept those on behalf of the town. Uh this probably you don't deal with this in a much of a day except for when someone wants some kind of tax, you know, letter and then who gets to sign that letter to say that this was the the the value and you made a donation um to the government? We need someone to be able to sign those. And then um again um talking about dealing with

appeals and and settlement authority and defense of employees. Uh it just again would clarify the manager's role in being able to sorry um you know to appeal fines that are issued by another agency such as if a state agency would impose fines on us. um the manager would be able to go ahead and file that appeal without waiting necessarily for a a meeting or convening a special meeting of council. Um again, settling of uh workers compensation claims. Uh for the most part, I think uh because the league is our provider on workers compensation, I don't know how often we're um being asked to settle those And then again to make sure that there's a defense of current and former council members or employees um in civil or criminal actions. So that's um and then to be able through the appropriated budget to be able to pay out any of those settlements or claims if necessary. Then we get into a some other kind of unusual situations you might say, but um we didn't have a clear policy or something on um trespass on town property and facilities. Um, so this would allow the town manager, assistant town managers, the police chief or the designated staff person who manages a property or facility um to be able to um tell others that they either have to

leave or they may not enter the property. And you can think for example, White Deer Park Nature Center. uh we have staff that are are there uh but not necessarily the manager or the police chief is there. And if if someone was causing a disturbance, this allows them to to do that formal notice that allows then the police to charge someone with trespass if they refuse uh to leave. Let me get into the the finance director with um again disaster assistance funds. This just makes it um easier to u receive federal and state um assistance if we would have an emergency where we would be making claims. Um you know it um and in this day and age a lot of these claims you have to submit these things online. So you need an individual that's designated to that with an email address to receive these and to be able to upload information into different portals. again. Then there are certain um issues to do with our finances. Um, and also to be able to use electronic methods of bidding, you know, so if we're asking for someone to bid on um, you know, our need for goods or something, you know, that this is generally delegated to the finance department to be able to handle um, these uh, particularly our bank accounts. um someone has to be able to sign off on the checks and this has been approved in the past to be the finance director and the town manager. So this would just again clarify and um put that in in one particular

place. And then again um group purchasing. So we're in some cooperative and different group purchasing programs. Uh sometimes you've probably seen these on your agenda. we bring these forward to say we'd like to enter into this group purchasing policy. This would allow the finance director to go ahead and and and opt into those programs to be able to reap the benefits of group purchasing. Again, any contract would have to go through the the regular town approval process.

Yeah, that sort of like this is after the approval by council. This is an not um this is administering on the authority given through that review by council. Correct.

Yes. In some some cases you're giving that approval through the budget. I mean some of these are recurrent supplies and things that we need. Um, you know, if if there's like, you know, if in the budget you're allowing for a new employee that needs a vehicle, this would allow us to be able to use the group purchasing to to purchase that vehicle or equipment needed for that, but not necessarily, you wouldn't necessarily have a individual council approval of each item other than uh through the budget. So these are more routine procurement items, not like group health insurance and things like that.

No, these would typically um be for goods and sometimes for like IT type services. Okay, thank you.

But again, this is a method of trying to get the best price for it. This does not award necessarily award the contract without going through the other process. Um and again just reiterating that you previously had authorized um being able to solicit uh by electronic means um basically on our website instead of having to uh buy newspaper ads to solicit for uh either put out requests for proposals or invitations for bids. And the next section has to do with scheduling of public hearings. And this is again basically to get the notices out. Um, for most things under state law, 10 days is a minimum amount of notice prior to a meeting where council's going to take action and including holding a public hearing. Uh so this just um just basically codifies that these individuals can go ahead and and put the notice on the website and again through the the pending agenda report that you get you get a um in most cases you're going to receive advanced notice of when we anticipate the public hearings uh to occur. a question because I think that and and

I think there needs to be a little bit more clarification in here because I think the point we had gotten to with regards to public hearings is that council schedules them because we have to meet the public in the public hearing. And so I think the practice has been that these notices for public hearings go at least on a consent agenda for our awareness and we approve it as part of the consent agenda. But but the way this is worded is it seems like almost anybody on staff could schedule and do the notice for a public hearing. So only annexation public hearings require that council adopt a resolution setting the public hearing, right? Um none of the other types of public hearings, whether they be for planning and zoning items or economic development um or some disposition of p of property um require that action to be taken. So, um just to clarify, I was saying that you you generally receive um notice that there's going to potentially be a public hearing um on the pending agenda report that comes out at the work session each month. Um, but this allows these individuals to actually go out and either put the notice on the website and with respect to um the planning department to issue those letters that have to go out to certain individuals either adjacent to the property um or in a surrounding area. That's typically for like board of adjustment public hearings. Yeah, I'd understand the statutory sort of narrow scope for the annexations, but I think we ended few years ago, we were in a situation where there were public hearings and council wasn't even aware that there was a public hearing or that one had been scheduled. And so, I just

want to make sure that the the cadence and the timing is that there is an an awareness or notification of council that there's going to be one. council may not want to hold the public hearing. And I think I'll speak for myself. My position is that since council is the one that has to conduct the public hearing, it should be authorizing the public hearing. Staff should not be authorizing a public hearing that council then has to show up to is there sense from the rest of count I mean I I understand your point. Um, that's that's not how it's been done in the past. So, we could develop a process if you want to do that. I mean, we can also, you know, you could require that the manager provide you with email notification before they're scheduled.

I'm waiting for anybody else who has thoughts. just I mean but this has to do with the the actual mechanics of getting the notice out and I think the step missing before is any involvement of council even awareness or again council may not want to have a public hearing and this isn't one necessarily limited to you know I just let other people chime in at this point

these are very good points some very important points and and and history and experience has shown us that the more we can make this clear, the better it is for everybody. The good news here tonight is we don't have to take a vote on this. This is a discussion and there's room for a lot more discussion after this with questions can be outlined and concerns outlined and other discussions. So these are very important points and we want to talk about them. Uh and as we look over this, we can tell number one that the vast majority of the powers that the town has are are given to us by state government as evidenced by the North Carolina general statute citation in almost every paragraph as we go through here. So based on our charter and based on state laws, we're just trying to fill in the details here. So uh I again this is a discussion. This is comments. We're not making a decision tonight. This will be reviewed at a future uh council meeting sometime in the future. So, in the meantime, I would encourage every council member and every citizen, every resident who has some specific concerns or just questions or or points. Maybe we could do this. Now's the time to send that in. Now's the time to sit down with the attorney and work through these and and make sure this is doing uh the will of of the council. Basically, that's the other parameter that's in here just like for the mayor. The mayor signs off on what the council has done. And at the end of the day, that's very similar for the town attorney and and the town manager. Their their powers derive from the council's decision in the broadest sense and how to make it where they can practically get the work done and still be responsive to council. That's the the the very important details

and and a clarification and understand that there are required public hearings. I think it comes to the timing of those hearings, not whether or not we have them if they are sort of required. So I think that's again another part and function of the the council and the agenda is being able to set the timing of the agenda. Um, so anyway, I just provide that feedback for

and if I may, there are some situations where once someone has applied for something, they're entitled to that public hearing. You're not required to grant that to them, but they they for instance, if someone wanted to petition to close a street, you have to give them a public hearing, you might choose not to close that street. Uh but and there don't tend to be time limits in there, but I mean we wouldn't want to not schedule that for some time. But again, it if a public hearing was scheduled, council still has a prerogative to continue that to another night. Thank you. Good point. Good points.

And then it um so the like for parks, recreation, and cultural race resources. They have an internal um policy right now that um allows them to wave registration um fees for certain programs where people demonstrate that um they need financial aid in that. Um so that's already being done. So they had requested that that's be clarified that they have the authority to do that. Uh again, rental fees for the GPAC and some of the other facilities. Um and then um along with that um allowing the town of mana the town manager in consultation with the town attorney to wave or reduce civil penalties or fines for violations of town ordinances where there's um good cause and again for most um for most things you know staff is looking for people to get into compliance and not to be punitive with the residents. Um so this um also give would give the town manager again authority to to look at um extenduating circumstances in certain cases um to wave those civil penalties or fines. And then um section 10 just is clarifying about um so even if this provides authority the delegation of authority the town manager can always say I I want this issue this is an important issue to go to council uh regardless but it talks about subdelegation um It's and this is sort of a cleanup ordinance. Um should the parks,

recreation, cultural resources department be cha have a name change that this would survive the name change. Um and then um covering that an acting town manager or interim town manager would have these same authorities until um you know such time as these resolutions would be amended by council. And then finally, um the budget amendments, um the certain budget amendments are brought to council, but budget um transfers between a department's budget that don't involve um salaries and thing um can basically um be granted by the budget director and approved by the town manager. So these are um typically done to um you know you have money in one one thing that you haven't spent on but you need to spend it on something else uh in a different category uh within the departmental budget to be done. And then um just clarifying that um one department can't transfer their their funds to another department or transfer um money to a capital project without getting town council approval. So again for tonight this was uh basically council's first um opportunity to have a full uh discussion ask uh further questions about this. Um certainly we can bring this back at a future council meeting uh for adoption of one or more of these delegations um of authority resolutions.

Excellent. Excellent presentation. A lot of hard work. We're depending on on your years of experience and and great uh knowledge of the state statutes, federal statutes keep us between the guard rails. Not to mention generally accepted best practices. Trying to fit all these together to make a living document we can make decisions based on and stay within the confines not only of the law but of what council wants us to be doing. That's an important element. So it is a work in progress. We will see this again at a future date. In the meantime, I encourage all council members and all residents and all staff members for that point to raise your questions with the town attorney, the town manager, any concerns, any questions you have the next several weeks or whatever turns out to be. We want to pay attention to this. I don't think this is a radical change from what we've been doing. It's a cleanup. It's an update kind of like what Mr. Trezenberg's been doing on the UDO. It's a work in progress and always will be. And as long we're within the law and within the state statutes and within the will of council, we're on the right track, we can always adjust it again as we see the need to. So, thanks for everyone's attention. Thank you for the hard work on this.

And I should have led with when I first got here, I asked where was your signature authority resolution? We didn't have one. This has been on my work plan for five years now. It's been a back burner issue, but um it is important that every time that there's a new council, so every two years that it it be looked at. And um once you would adopt these, we would um be scheduling this the same way you would be reviewing your rules of procedure, your code of conduct, and ethics um as each new board comes together uh to decide what you're comfortable with. And again, if there's any specific areas that you have questions about or um what some other jurisdictions do is they delegate authority, but they require reports so that there is some oversight um and transparency about what is done. I mean, we can also work that into this document as well. If if there's particular areas that you would want monthly or quarterly reports on, uh that could be provided as well.

And that was my question because I know it's a work in progress. how we'll be how we stay up to date on what's happening. Uh and uh so I'm hearing there there will be a process in place where be reporting back as to what's going on relative to the actions within the various uh documents that that are before us. That's what I'm hearing.

Yes. Yeah. I think we've had good feedback, good interaction, good guidance consistently uh through the years. So, please keep that up. Keep asking the questions. Keep raising your concerns. If in doubt, what was our takeaway from the school of government? If in doubt, ask your attorney. We all memorize that one. If in doubt, ask your attorney. Uh, and if all else fails, ask me, then I'll ask her again. And no hypotheticals. [laughter] Hypothetically, speaking. That was the other concept we learned over there. Well, no hypothetically. Great job, Mr. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Uh and that moves us along to uh committee reports and let's start with Mr. Matthews in and come along. Any report from your committee, sir? Uh we had uh met uh uh last week and uh reviewed a lot of things we got coming up uh on key events on the veterans committee and uh we got a good staff working with us over there helping us out and we got a a very good team of worker bees as I like to call them and uh get a lot of good input and uh it's going to be a good year on events and uh hopefully uh everybody see the proof of that as we move into it. Mr. S,

the senior citizen advisory committee will be meeting this Friday. You have some heavily involved people committed over there. Yes, sir. Mr. Talons,

so um DJ, Garner, uh downtown Garner Association, we met on March 5th. Um had a packed meeting. Um everybody was there. Um it it was a great meeting. We talked about a lot. We finalized the swag. I won't mention what what the items are, but but everybody was definitely excited about getting that ball rolling and the events that we have coming up. So, and I know there's going to be another announcement made during the talk of the town that we discussed during the meeting. So, so definitely some good news coming out of DGA. Um, we had to reschedule the parks um and recck committee yesterday because of the weather. So, um definitely look forward to having that one later on this month. Um but I know the Garner Youth Council will be meeting tomorrow night. um at at 6:30. Um so definitely excited to be with them and they're they're just geared up and and ready to rock and roll and and learn more about the town, their their processes and operations. So so it's just exciting um seeing how excited they are to be a part of of of the youth council.

Well, not to mention how excited you are. Oh yeah, absolutely. That's a good thing. Thank you, Mr. Dinger. Uh no reports, Mr. Vance. uh just that the transportation committee will be uh meeting uh have a second meeting in April, April 9th I think it is. Uh but uh next week there will be a workshop schedule for uh the community to come out uh to provide their input relative to our update on on the transportation plan and if that will be held at the GPAC and the date skips me right now as to the actual date next week when when it's going to happen but it will be happening next week. We ask that the public comes out

on March 24th at the Garner Recreation Center, Mr. Vance, and that's from 3 to 7. It's a floating 4 hour window. Gotcha. Okay. And uh that's all I have. Excellent. Excellent. I believe that takes us to manager reports. Yes. Good evening, mayor, members of council. Uh one report before you this evening is your March uh 2026 talk of the town report. I'll ask Mr. Hodgeges if he'll review the report. Mr. Hodgees.

Thank you, Miss Miller. I'm going to ask Mr. Mr. Treesburg, if he'll come up to the podium to help us with one of the items. While he's coming up, I'll go ahead with a couple of other reports. Our spring extravaganza, one of our most popular parks and recreation events each year, will be held on Saturday, March 28th from 10:00 to 12:30 at Lake Benson Park. I'm also a note that summer camp registrations have begun. U as well, excited to report that we have had overwhelming response to our Garner Civic Academy. This is a reimagining of our former Garner 101. Uh we received over 65 applicants. Um so we've increased our class of 20 to 25 and we're in the final um final stages of confirming all of their participation um and notifying our other folks um of future opportunities and those classes will start on April 2nd. We'll be sending council some additional information from what you've already received about the dates that we hope that you can join us for that as well. Um, another one of our most popular events in town, the unprepared trash collection began earlier this week, even in uh some iffy weather. Uh, but this is the time of year that not only unprepared yard waste, but other trash items uh can be picked up. And there's a schedule on the website that coincides with your trash pickup schedule. So, citizens can see that schedule on the website. Uh, and lastly, just a note that the GPAC will host GMY award-winning uh, singer songwriter Susie Bogus uh, March 28th. Um, what I want to circle back on, ask Mr. Trezenberg's help with was an item that Mr. Vance actually mentioned was the transportation plan in addition to the public workshop that he mentioned um, on the 24th. There is a a page out for residents to go and give input on. Um, and one of the things we just wanted to point out to you tonight, um, is if you scroll down on the page here, um, I believe it, um, it gives an opportunity for the survey, but then also a comment map. And so the survey is fairly

self-explanatory. The comment map is a a tool that I don't think we've used in any of our long range planning efforts before, but I was just going to ask Jeff if he'd open that up and just give you a brief overview of how citizens and council members can use uh, this unique tool. Thanks, John. Um, yes. So, Garnerforward.com is back. Um, and instead of a land use component, now we're looking at transportation. Um, and as John mentioned, there is that in addition to the public workshop. If folks can't make it there, um, whether or not they do, we'd still love them go to go to the website, take the survey. Um, but there's also this, uh, pretty nifty little, um, interactive mapping tool. Uh it pops open with a uh just an introduction screen to kind of tell people what this is all about, what they can do. Uh they can either take a tour to kind of learn the functionality of it or they can click continue just to go right in. Um and it takes you to a preset uh map of Garner. You can turn on if you're not good just with streets um a street map and you want to look at aerial photography and you want to see Lake Benson and visually where you're at, you can turn on the aerial photography. And then there's these five buttons here on the left which they've uh identified kind of five broad categories. I wouldn't uh say people should limit themselves to these five categories, but if there's one that's close uh to the comments you want to make, go ahead and use that. Um, but you can click any one of these and then zoom into a particular intersection or location on the map. Um, and you can add uh your comment about it. And you can also see the other comments that folks have made. Um, so here's one at the uh intersection of Aversboro and Fifth Avenue recommending that we should

longterm be looking to do a roundabout. Um, and if you like that comment, you can vote it up or down as well. Um, so again, this is just a it's a good tool to kind of get a hopefully as comprehensive as we can look at people's favorite destinations, areas that they perceive as having some kind of problem that needs to be addressed or solved, whether it's an intersection, uh, traffic congestion, sidewalk issues, uh, places that they'd want to have more greenways, uh, and things of that nature. So again, just encourage folks to come out to garnerforward.com and they'll find this uh mapping tool here where they can go ahead and input any kind of comments about transportation that they would like.

Thank you, Jeff. Um and council members, lastly, we have your Garner Info monthly analytics. Um we are ahead of tall grass season, so you'll see that most of our reports here are miscellaneous street type of maintenance things. We expect we'll see that changing soon with the the warming months. I will also give you my regular disclaimer that um in in years past you would have seen a number of those type things reported in Garner Info. Our um co- compliance team has now moved to a much more proactive uh means of looking at things like tall grass, junk vehicles, uh code compliance issues, and sign violations. And so they're out um every day looking at those proactively. So you'll actually see the numbers of those things in Garner Info go down and we'll be reporting those as we do on a quarterly basis in our development development services statistics to keep you apprised of that activity. That's all I have. Miss Miller,

thank you. Mr. Hodgees, are there any questions to council? Yes, Mr. Singleton. Uh by March the 9th on the summer camp, 76% of the spots were available. That's been eight days ago. Uh are we close to being full? Do we know? I do not know. We will follow up with council on that unless Mr. uh Mr. P know. So, we'll follow up with that. Okay. Thanks. Just curious.

Um finally, I just wanted to follow up on a question that Mr. Singleton had earlier about the budget. U there were some questions regarding the revenue information shared at the retreat. Uh I have been able to verify um the total working revenue that we're working with right now is 90 u 90.6 million. uh for greater transparency and easier tracking, uh we're pulling out the fire revenue coming from the county and as a separate intergovernmental re revenue. Uh we're going to call that fire. Um and so I think that's where um the the missing piece is there for that. And so I just wanted to to verify with council and Mr. Singleton that that math is correct. I understand his concern. We'll make sure we highlight that going into the budget work that we're doing forward. Um, but that's what that's where the difference was there.

It needs to be shown because again those numbers don't add up to 90.6 and so it needs to clarify where the other 4.4 is. Thank you. Okay. Does that conclude the manager reports? Does that conclude the manager reports? Yes. Yes, sir. Well, attorney reports are next. You surely have some more things to share with us.

Uh, thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just wanted to let council know that um next week um Wednesday through Friday is the municipal attorney's winter conference. Um so Miss Spain will be at the fundamentals course on Wednesday and then I'll be in Chapel Hill with her on Thursday and Friday for the conference. And um attorney Pierce, she will be um taking the the remote or virtual option while she's still out on leave. Um, so all three attorneys will be uh learning a lot about updates in municipal law and happy to bring back information to you after that, but uh the legal department will basically be in Chapel Hill or virtually in Chapel Hill um next week.

Okay, thank you very much. And back to council reports other than the committee reports. Let's start with Mr. Vance and come this way. Any other reports? Oh yes, just want to say that this past Sunday had the opportunity to participate the Holly Fest at Bryant Elementary School. It's a the Indian community, South Asian community. Had a great time there. Uh it was a fun time. The f is also called the festival of colors. Uh this in ushering in spring. It was just a great uh time of song dance, jumping around and getting painted with various colors. It a good time there. And on Friday had the opportunity to participate the Black History Month read at Vandor Springs Elementary School. Who great great time to interact with the children and my hats go my hats off to the all the teachers out there and what they're doing. They do they're doing a a yo person's job and working with our kids in this community. And then I finally had opportunity to uh take part in the ReadAcross America program at Timber Drive Elementary as well. the same thing with the kids and had a chance to sit down with them and again my hats off to all the teachers uh within Wake County who are working with what they have to do the best they can for the kids within our community. That's all I have.

Thank you, Mr. Dinger. Yeah, just a you know comment on the budget and data and stuff and you know sometimes you can get really close to the data and so anytime you can need to make those disclaimers or explanatory statements on that um definitely it's very helpful for the public. Um, but I understand sometimes you can be so familiar with it yourself that you're not really kind of communicating kind of the uh assumptions that may be present in the data. So, just a a good piece of advice there. Thank you, Mr. Stout.

Um, I kind of want to echo um Councilman Vance's um statements around the Black History Read at Bora Springs. Um, it was a great program. We had a lot of staff that attended as well, too. I mean, it was a I would call it a family affair. It was a great time. I picked up a book. It was supposed to be a kindergarten grade book and then I started reading the words. I was like, "Oh, I some of these words I don't even know myself." So, [laughter] so it was a great time. Kids ask a lot of questions. So, um it was a amazing program um to be a part of. I also want to highlight on um March 12th um the North Carolina Main Street Conference had went on and one of our own Joyce Stevens had actually won um the Main Street Champion Award. Um, so she she was recognized there. It was 42 individuals who were recognized as Main Street champions. So definitely want to say hats off to Joyce um who's our our former DGA chair. Um, and congratulations on the award.

Well, she has earned that. Thank you very much, Mr. Singleton.

I got a question I get asked the folks and um, Mr. Hod just brought up the uh, maintenance yard maintenance grass and so forth. And this property was on Highway 70. the former Golden Corral that was going to be a hotel that's kind of come and gone over the years. The former Moon Runners and the former Regazis. I get asked by people what's happening there. Um the maintenance of the yard, the the maintenance of the property. I rephrase that. The former Golden Corral location, the hotels, the porest of the three by far looks they keep that pretty well cleaned. Just curious, people are asking what are going to happen to these buildings. Are these properties going to be maintained? I would ask specifically that staff keep an eye out on those particularly the former hotel former gone corral site because that one's the one that gets the messiest. Uh any update? You don't have to give it to me now but anything that's people may be looking coming in proposing thinking about doing there people ask all the time. That's some that's some valuable property and uh people ask what may happen there and I know that uh the two restaurants one have been closed longer than the other but the former growing corral hotel site has been vacant for years and years. Any information staff can pass along would be appreciated.

That's all. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Matthew. Uh just one thing quite fortunately we averted some bad weather and damage and what have you and I like to commend the staff for keeping everybody alert and playing it safe and and it's always better to opt on side of safety than do some or somebody gets hurt. So, I think you guys kept us informed and thank you for all of that. And we always got a Mercy operation plan and ready to go. So, thank you for that.

Excellent. Well, as usual, there's been a lot going on. Uh, a lot covered here tonight. I'm glad to see participation by our department heads and staff, our fire chief and police chief both here. I feel secure. This is a good environment to be here in uh that we're at the point now that we may be soon asking for a motion to adjourn. But before we do, I want to make uh one more recognition of a special guest we have here. A longtime servant of Garner, longtime council member, and a great mayor who taught me everything I ever learned about being a mayor. Uh Ken Marshburn, if you would come up to the podium here for just a moment. I need your help to do one of the most uh fav favorite things. It has to do with adjournment. You you don't have to say anything. You just have you have to come all the way up here though because what I'm gonna do No, you need to come all the way up here. Unless you have some prepared comments you'd like to share.

Well, make a public.

Well, excellent. that I knew you would have some news for us, but now I need your help. I'm going to ask for a motion uh to adjourn in a second and then then you know what comes next or something to do with this gavl. Let's see if you still got the time comes. I want to see if you still got the wrist action that [laughter] made this work. Now be patient. I think he broke one one night when he hit it. So you let me back [laughter] Let me back up a little bit. Let me get it. Get a good grip on that thing. Don't move until we say go. I mean, I know you're anxious. We're anxious to adjourn, but we have to go through a little process. Is there a motion to adjurnn? So move. It's moved by Mr. Stalins. Is there a second? Second. Second by Mr. Vance, I think.

No, Mr. Oh, Mr. Dinger, excuse me. Okay. Uh, so all in favor of adjournment, please signify by saying I. I. Any opposed by nay? Hearing none, it's unanimous. The voting is now adjourned. All right. You [applause and cheering] still got it. And nobody was injured in the adjournment. [laughter] [music]

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