Town Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening Garner and welcome to the town of Garner Town Council regular meeting of May 19th, 2026. Another beautiful summer day in in Garner and if this is not beautiful enough for you, come Monday morning to Lake Benson Park. The Memorial Day service is guaranteed to have the best weather of the year. It will be perfect come then. That being said, let's get kicked off here. I'm going to ask the town attorney to please call the roll.

Mr. Mayor, Mayor Gupton.

Here.

Mayor Pro Tem Dellinger.

Here.

Council Member Matthews. Here. Council Member Singleton.

Here.

Council Member Stallings. Here. And Council Member Vance.

Here. Our Pledge of Allegiance and our invocation this evening will be led by Mayor Pro Tem Damian Dellinger.

Please rise if you're able. Please join me in the invocation. As we gather this evening, let us take a moment to pause and reflect on the shared purpose that brings us all into this room. We invoke a spirit of peace. May it ground our discussions, guide our decisions, and allow us to listen to one another with open minds and calm hearts. Let us remember that we share the same destination, the well-being of the people we serve and seek to protect. We celebrate our community and the people and places that make our town a vibrant place to live. May our work tonight honor their trust, protect their well-being, and build a stronger foundation for generations to come. And above all, we commit ourselves to each other and our neighbors. We recognize that the true strength of our community lies in the diversity of us all and our varied experiences, backgrounds, abilities, and paths to this place. Let our leadership tonight ensure that our residents do not just feel a sense of belonging, but know through our words and actions that not only do they belong, but that Garner is their home. With gratitude and the opportunity to serve. Amen.

Amen. Thank you, Daniel. Item B on our agenda tonight is the adoption of the agenda. Our council members have had a chance to look this over. Is there a motion to adopt this agenda? So moved. Second. Motion by Mr. Matthews, second by Mr. Stallings. There's no discussion. If you are in favor of adopting the agenda, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed by nay? Hearing none, it passes unanimously, which moves us along to item C on your agenda, the first of the presentations. And this is a very exciting one, well-earned, hard won. It's about the North Carolina City and County Communications Awards. And here to explain what this is and how we were named is our communications director, Mr. Rick Mercer.

Hey, good evening, Mr. Mayor and Council. It's great to be up here to talk about this for just a few minutes. This year, our team won four awards, statewide awards, from North Carolina City and County Communicators. That's like the statewide professional group that we're a part of and that We gained a lot of professional development experience from, but they also have a robust statewide awards program, and we brought home four this year. We had a second place award for a social media post about our parks, and Ms. Bella Schultz did that, and we had a third place award for reels and shorts that Ms. Schultz also did, Schultz also did. We had a third place award for external newsletter, and this is a print newsletter. It's a new product. rolled out in 2025, we were hearing from our residents that they still wanted some print materials that were distributed around town, around facilities at events. That work was Ms. Salt's with a little bit of light editing work for me, but Ms. Salt's carries such a big load for us. She's been an incredible addition to our team. And then the fourth award was third place in the special programming category. I think some of you had the opportunity to come to our Juneteenth celebration last year. We did something a little new where we did a multimedia type approach and we incorporated some video segments. Mr. Kyle Kettler, Y'all know his work, he's spectacular with filming and directing and editing video. That particular project, we called it a sense of home because that was sort of our theme last year for the Juneteenth celebration. We broke those clips up for the live event, but then we put them back together as sort of like about a 30 minute documentary that's on YouTube. Folks can go watch that. Really proud of that, proud of all that work, proud of my team. They work nights, they work weekends, they work holidays, they're always out there engaging with the community. We saw our national community survey results a couple weeks ago, or last month, I guess, we shared those with you. A couple big takeaways were the confidence, residents' confidence in our government has increased significantly. We saw that we continue to be seen as a really welcoming community for folks from all walks of life. And there's no doubt in my mind that a lot of that is traceable back to the work that the communications team does. I'm here to celebrate them. Also here to celebrate our Juneteenth committee for their work, their creative input into those videos. It's great. It's been an honor to work with them. And we're going to have another Juneteenth celebration a month from today almost, June 20th at GPAC, 11 a.m. Please come join us. and i i'm not usually in this position but i was going to invite um the communications team as well as our juneteenth committee uh members who are who are here to to join us for a photo and uh that's what i have mr man you know that no action is not is not complete until we have the photo log yes but before we do that i would like to uh open the floor to comments from our council members let's start with mr matthews and work away this way

Rick, congratulations on that team. You guys are doing fabulous work. And the things you do, especially with the drones and presentations, most recent thing, I can think of was our budget. It's coming up with that. And some of the things got put on there about individual department heads. And communications, I know the mayor's mentioned a lot of time, we all have, communications is a big key. We've got to communicate to the public what's going on, what we're doing. and make it readily available for so there's no surprises out there but uh you've got a fabulous team like you said every time i turn around there's somebody out there from your team uh on top of it not counting the sound work that you guys do and i know you all have a big a lot to do with monday come monday memorial day setting up sound and all out there so uh thank you again congratulations well deserved

singleton yes rick thanks to you and your team for y'all's good work out there uh you're right they're out on the holidays and weekends they'll be be there next memorial day working it'll be july 3rd all kinds of events so thank you for the work congratulations also congratulations to the juneteenth committee the story last year was outstanding the uh the merger of consolidate the merger of garner high school and garner consolidated high school into one school and how that was uh done so smoothly because of the great leadership in the school and great leadership by the students and the parents of the students uh that that had what could have been a tough situation really a smooth situation one of the most important moments in our history of our town so thank you all for the work you did on that because that was an outstanding presentation thank you mr gallons

Rick, I want to say congratulations to you and the communications team on the well-deserved recognition. All of us normally get to enjoy the final fruits of y'all's labor, but there's definitely long hours that go into making sure that the town's communication with the external public is well-positioned, professional, and effective. So that work often happens behind the scenes, but it definitely makes a real difference in how residents experience and engage with us as a town. So thank you for all the effort, consistency, and the care that y'all all put into every single day. So thank you.

Thank you. Mr. Gallinger.

Yeah, having served on the committee since its inception, I've been able to see firsthand the work. Rick, I don't want to say he puts in a lot of work. He wants to put the work on it. He works really hard. The rest of the committee works really hard, staff. We have some of the most talented and hardworking communications staff. That sort of, they're very passionate about connecting people and places, and that's really what keeps the fabric of Garner together. And the celebration bridging Juneteenth with July 3rd and really telling this narrative of the freedom of all people and how important that is, and it's about everybody. And everybody's taken that really to heart, the staff and the committee members who put in long hours as well. So it's well deserved. WHERE PEOPLE GO AND WATCH THE VIDEO, THE NUMBER, I DON'T KNOW HOW MANY HOURS OF INTERVIEWS KYLE DID, PROBABLY LIKE EIGHT OR NINE OR TEN HOURS THAT GOT CONDENSED IN THAT ONE SHOW TO 15 MINUTES, 15 OR 20 MINUTES. BUT THAT JUST SHOWS THE LEVEL OF EFFORT AND TIME AND WORK AND COMMITMENT AND I THINK IT FLOWS TO THE REST OF THE STAFF AND HOW MUCH PEOPLE CARE ABOUT GARNER. SO CONGRATULATIONS.

MR. MERCER, IT DOESN'T SURPRISE ME. Since you've been here, your work has been excellent in communication and representing the town well. And with the recent surveys stating about the trust that the community has in the government, you are part of that. And the way that you communicate and pull things together and just provide an example beyond Garner, one that's now being noticed, I would just say to the staff and all the hard work, It's greatly appreciated what you're doing and how you're representing. And this award highlights what you are capable of doing, what your staff is capable of doing, and also the greatness that's within Garner. Thank you for your efforts. It's greatly appreciated. Wish you much success in the future.

And if you will assemble your photo op team here and tell us where to stand, I'm honored to be one of them.

I think we're gonna go up here and we're gonna invite Mr. Naylor with the Juneteenth Committee was able to join us, so that's great. And oh, Pastor Ben, that's right, Pastor Ben is here too.

pressure in itself

Talk about a good-looking team for a photo op. That's the best we've seen today. Maybe the best we see all night. And that brings us along to part D of our agenda, which is petitions and comments. And I'll ask our town attorney, has anyone signed up to speak in this portion?

Yes, we have two individuals who have signed up tonight.

And the first one would be?

Mr. Pierce, do you want to read the instructions first?

Yes, I certainly do. This portion of the meeting is to receive comments from the public on items not included in this agenda regarding matters germane to town policies or business or subjects within the town council's real or apparent jurisdiction. Individuals or group spokespersons must sign up with the town clerk prior to the meeting to the beginning 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 segment topics requiring further investigation will be referred to the appropriate town officials or staff and may be scheduled for a future agenda each speaker is limited to three minutes we have a number of other speakers so thank you for your courtesy and making sure that everyone gets to be heard and let me say again we always want to hear from you whether it's Petitions and comments, whether it's about an item. If three minutes is not enough, please email any council member. Let our town clerk know that you would like to talk with one of us. We are here to get your input, here to listen to you, not just the three minutes here. This is just your infomercial, and we'll be glad to talk to you later. That being said, our first speaker who has signed up, Mr. Pierce, if you would approach the podium and identify yourself and your home address, please.

Yes, my name's Ricky Pierce. I live at 1810 Vandor Springs Road here in Garner. And as I've stated before in my other visits here since the first year, lifelong resident here. My family goes back to way before Garner was a town. They go back to 1820, having settled in this area. I hate to be the one that have to come up here and talk about what I talk about. This is very concerning to me. I've lived here all my life. There's been a lot of prominent people sit here on this board. They've done great jobs. And I'm a little bit upset by what's gone on this last election. And I've said that every time. So let me read you something. This comes from the Goldsboro City Council District 2, North Carolina. It pertains to you, Mr. Stallings. 2019 endorsement. Kelvin Stallings is running for the District 2 City Council seat in the city of Goldsboro. Kelvin Stallings may be a newcomer to the world of running for political office, but not to this world of professional politics. In terms of prior employment, Kelvin served as a political nonprofit professional with years of experience raising money, coaching teams, running electoral programs to create a tangible difference in people's lives. Kelvin moved back home and answered the call to serve because he hopes to cut through the divisive nature of the current leadership in order to pass policies and ordinances that will help push all districts of Goldsboro forward in an equal and equitable way. Great endorsement. Didn't work. You lost 696 to 312. Maybe they knew something about you that the people of Garner didn't. Now let me read what comes off of Garner's web information. Kelvin Stallings, nonpartisan. Kelvin Stallings is running for Garner Town Council member. Personal background, he lives with his wife, Alissa, and their dog in Wake County. Professional background, currently the director of a community engagement at a statewide nonprofit. He previously worked as the policy and advocacy manager at Children's Home Society, North Carolina's largest foster care agency, and as a legislative aide in the North Carolina General Assembly. political background. This is where it gets interesting. Kevin's campaign for town council member in Garner, North Carolina, is his first entry to politics. That would be a lie, wouldn't it, Mr. Stallings?

We're not here for a debate or a cross-examination.

Well, this is what I'm talking about. We're here because you people up there have character that you're supposed to represent the town. I've said it before. I'm not through. I'll be here one more Tuesday nights. But that's an absolute lie. Now, the town attorney needs to talk to you about the code of ethics to see if that's a violation. I told you I was going to do some investigation. I looked into the donors of your opponent, and I've looked into yours. Your opponent had some pretty prominent Garner people, but the one you noted was Nina Allen, the Democratic Socialist Commissioner for the County of Durham. She spent $500. My question is why? What was she expecting? I'll be back the third Thursday of June. I mean the third Tuesday of June. I won't be on first. Thank you.

Thank you for your comments, Mr. Pierce. And who is our other person signed up to speak?

Anna Shelton.

If you would approach the podium, please identify yourself with name and address and give us your three minutes.

All right. Can you hear me okay? My name is Anna Shelton. I live at 1225 Sutherland Road here in Garner, and I'm here to discuss the issue of civilian safety and right to privacy here in Garner. There's a company called Flock Safety. I'm sure at least some of you in this room have heard of Flock Safety before. as they have recently come under public scrutiny for widespread surveillance and monitoring of private American citizens by way of cameras called Automatic License Plate Readers, or ALPRs. They have already erected 20 of these surveillance cameras here in Garner. You and everyone in this room can leave this building today and spot these cameras as you drive around town. This is not hypothetical. These cameras are already collecting your movements. It is already happening to you. So what does this mean? Why should we be concerned? Flock Safety is a private startup tech company that erects these surveillance cameras on roadsides all over the nation and here in our town. This private company uses these cameras to collect a goldmine of our personal data, such as our license plate numbers and our transportation, driving, and shopping habits. Then they sell this data to whoever will pay. Collecting data about our private habits are how these tech companies make money. When they are able to collect and store your data and sell it to companies to create an ever more accurate profile of your private life, your cost of living increases. Has flock safety seen you drive to lows on 70 several times in the past month? Great! Now Lowe's, who bought that data from Flock Safety, knows that you're a loyal customer and will use dynamic pricing to increase what you pay online. You didn't even have to sign up for a loyalty card or give any other personal information by your own will. There are reports that flock safety cameras help solve crimes, which on its face sounds great, but the data shows that the costs far outweigh the benefits. People say, I have nothing to hide. I don't commit crimes. But famously, a Colorado man has been pulled over and wrongfully arrested multiple times because flock cameras falsely alerted law enforcement that he had a warrant that didn't exist. All that man had to do was drive past a flock camera and he would be immediately pulled over and detained for the simple act of driving around town. This could be you too. Surveillance does not help people feel safer. Whenever you've been to a neighborhood with a strong police presence, did you feel safer? Likely not. This is the same with these cameras. When we're watched by Big Brother, we feel uneasy, violated, and it feels as though we are being treated like criminals in our own town. So what I want is this, what I'm asking for is this, work to remove these cameras from the town of Garner and stop using them to track innocent citizens as we merely move through our lives in a public space. And for everyone in this room, this is happening to you already, but you have a choice to be informed. I have pamphlets for anyone that wants one after the meeting. Thank you.

thank you for your comments on an important topic are there any others signed up to speak this evening

No, none for petitions and comments.

Thank you very much. At this point, we'll move to item E on our agenda, which is the consent agenda. And as I mentioned before, these are typically some more administrative or non-controversial issues that council has had a chance to look over and think about. And if there's no need to pull one off for further discussion, we can approve them as a group. Does any council member see the need to pull any of these items off for further discussion? Hearing none, we will move ahead. Is there a motion to accept the consent agenda?

So moved. Second.

A motion by Mr. Stallings, second by Mr. Matthews. All in favor of approving the consent agenda, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed by nay? Hearing none, the consent agenda is adopted unanimously. And that moves us along to item F. And here's the fun part coming up. Public hearings. We get to hear some more from our constituents and our residents, our neighbors right here. And we're going to start out with 1.1 is the item number. This has to do with the voluntary contiguous annexation related to the Gregory Poole Equipment Headquarters. And this presentation will be started by our planning director, Mr. Jeff Treisenberg.

good evening mayor council members members of the public um yes tonight we are having the public hearing for the annexation of the gregory pool equipment headquarters site this project is located at the corner of south greenfield parkway right here, and US Highway 70. It is a fairly large site. All in all, we are asking for an annexation of about 141 acres. It does include some right of way that exists between this site and existing corporate limits across the way. As you mentioned, this is the site of the Gregory pool future Gregory pool headquarters They are moving ahead with site plans and review with our department now So they have fulfilled their obligations to submit their annexation petition and we noticed that at the last meeting and we are here to conduct the public hearing tonight there is a representative from From them in case you do have any questions But otherwise, I'll do my best to answer any questions that you might have.

Okay. Thank you very much. And let's ask our town council members, starting with Mr. Vance, questions related to this for Mr. Treisenberg. Mr. Vance.

Yes, Mr. Treisenberg. Thank you for the briefing. Have you received any public comment on the project as of yet?

Not as of yet that I am aware of. Okay. Well, I have right now.

You mentioned the timeline. What's sort of the timeline for them getting through the site plan process and then sort of a break ground kind of timeline?

So to my knowledge, sometimes folks will submit a grading-only permit to kind of get started. I'm not aware that they're doing that. I believe they're moving straight into kind of the first phase of development. So my guess is that by the time they get everything through and any construction documents for particularly water and sewer extensions, it may be about nine months or so before we see things start to move, maybe sooner. Thank you. No questions.

Mr. Singleton. No questions. Mr. Matthews.

Just a comment. This has been a long time coming and I'm glad that we're at this point here because it's going to be a great addition to have them part of the Garner family and bring everything with them. There's potential jobs and employment and it's going to be a great addition for that area out there. So just my comments.

Okay, thank you. At this point, we will close the public hearing on this. And at this point is our duty to take some action related to Ordinance 2026-5384. is there a motion related to that so moved second there's a motion by mr matthews and second by mr singleton uh to to adopt this now it's time for us to have further discussion or comments related to the motion uh to approve the ordinance and this annexation so let's start with mr vance again down here uh any other questions or comments before we uh vote

I would just say that this is a significant economic development project that's coming to Garner. And as we looked at trying to balance our tax base as it relates to the citizens' input versus the business input, I believe that this would be a great addition to the town to bring in significant jobs and industry to the town of Garner. And my hope is that we're able to move forward with this project coming online and being a valuable asset to the community.

Thank you, Mr.

I would 2nd that as well. I think that we are entering into a time where we need to shift that pendulum towards more commercial development to diversify our tax base. So welcome addition as well. No comments.

I had to see this process moving through because they came to us about 18 months ago when this process got started and they talked to the staff before that. So let us continue to move forward.

Just excited it's coming and ready for them to start breaking land out there. Thank you.

And I would add my... Mr. Mayor, sorry. Just for the record, I did want to let you know that Mike Davidson from the Timmons Group was here to answer questions if you had any, but no members of the public signed up to speak.

Yes, I think you've mentioned that. Were there any particular questions for the engineer related to this project? And I don't think that you particularly want to make a presentation. You were here to answer questions, if any. But if you'd like to make a presentation, we'd be glad to have you. I'm Mike Davidson. I'm the project manager for the Garrett Report expansion.

And we're really excited to come here.

We're excited to be a neighbor and looking forward to working with staff in the coming months and years to get a permit.

Looking forward to the opening some day.

Well, who said you were just an engineer? You're a PR master on this stuff. No, seriously, we're so delighted to have the Gregory Poole Company be part of the Garner family here. They started locally here, a small business in Raleigh, by Greg Poole No. 1. Now we're on Greg Poole No. 4. It's a family business, fourth generations. That's a rare occasion. We love small business. Garner was built by small business, and we're glad to have this very successful business formerly small business, come to make their headquarters here in Garner. So thanks for all the work you've done. Thanks for all the work that our planning staff and council has put in. We're anxious to see some big yellow out there, some big yellow iron.

Yellow and black.

There you go. Thank you. Thank you very much.

I mean, before he leaves, as he was walking up, he was stating his name, but I just want to catch it for my records. Mike Davidson with Timmons Group. Gotcha. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you, sir. Okay. Now, if there's no further discussion, we had a motion and a second. I sound generally positive about this. We can do this with a voice vote. All council members in favor of approving this ordinance and completing this annexation, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed by no? Hearing none, this passage is now. Thank you very much for all your good work on that. And that brings us along to item 1.2 on the agenda, which is a public hearing. And this is related to what many of you came for this evening. And that has to do with our recommended budget. And our budget director is here to give us a little background on this, bring us up to date of where we've been so far, what we're doing here tonight, and the other steps to follow. Ms. Sarah Warren.

Yeah, so good evening, Mayor and members of council. I'm here tonight just to kind of recap what we've included in the budget ahead of the public hearing this evening. So just a reminder about how much we've grown. So our budget is, our proposed budget is 97.9 million. And it's about an 8% increase over the current year amended budget. Our property value continues to increase, though we see that it's slowing some, but our population is also continuing to increase. And so we've included a two and a half cent tax increase to help us cover needed expenditures for next year. As part of the recommended budget, we followed the following five guiding principles, including limiting property tax increases, addressing required expenses, fulfilling ongoing project commitments, leveraging our partner resources and maintaining the town's compensation strategy. So with that, we did propose a 54.5 cent tax rate. Included in that is 45 cents that will go towards our town's operating budget and 9.5 cents towards our debt service fund. We're also utilizing $2.2 million in fund balance that covers one-time costs in FY26. Some of the things that we continue to face as we prepared this budget is that there is pressure on our revenue sources. So we talked at the work session about our slowing housing market, some of the items that are impacting that from our General Assembly, from our revaluation appeals, and any kind of exemptions that are being filed for property tax. We also know that there's some things occurring across the nation and global events that could potentially affect our other revenue sources, particularly our sales tax revenue. We do propose a few fee changes to help us keep up with our service demands. There's increases for inspections and engineering, as well as some fee changes at our Garner Senior Center and then for our Yergin Park when that opens this fall. We've also included an additional grants position that would help us leverage external funding opportunities. And in that nine and a half cents towards debt service, as we discussed at the work session, it's really helping us build future capacity for future fire stations, a training center, an emergency operations center, and most importantly, our public works center. Reminder of what our community is saying. These are some of the results from our community survey. 82% rated the town as excellent or good at respecting residents and diverse backgrounds. Something you all noted when we discussed the SOAR analysis at our work session on Friday. 80% rated our recreation programs as good or excellent. As well as 74% rating emergency preparedness as good or excellent. And 65% rated the overall confidence in Karner government as excellent or good. For our parks department, we have included additional operating impacts for Yergin. This does include two additional positions, equipment and maintenance for the fields at that park. We also are including some temporary salaries, contracts and maintenance supplies for the opening of the White Deer Splash Pad. And we've also added $50,000 towards public art in FY27. We continue to support some of the civic engagement strategies as well as our new strategic initiative departments. Included in that is continued funding for the youth council and the civic academy. We've also, as part of the strategic initiatives, we've done some work around housing, including the hiring of our housing and community development specialist. as well as creating the Garner Housing Advisory Committee and then creating a sustaining funding source for preserving home. Also included for our town employees is the implementation of our pay in class study. If you recall, we do these every three years. This is the third year that we'll be looking into implementing this. The cost is approximately $950,000, and it would equate to approximately a 2% increase for most of our employees. We're also committed to still funding our merit, which allows employees to earn up to 4%. And then the town is absorbing the health care increases, which is going to be about 5.2% to the town. So all in all, included in the budget is recommended 374 FTEs, which is an additional nine over last year's or the FY26 amended budget. We've also implemented, based upon some feedback from our February retreat, continued funding for the stormwater utility study. So we are looking to implement the results of that study as well as a rate structure as part of the FY28 budget. And also to help us complete that work, we're recommending a stormwater utility supervisor. And then there's one-time funding that has been included to do some infrastructure improvements on the Peacock property in advance of the development of our public work center. On our public safety side, we have included funding and one FTE that supports the real-time information center that Gardner PD has been working on. We've included an additional analyst for Garner Fire Rescue, as well as additional equipment that will be cost shared with the county. And this includes some of our technology efforts on turnout gear, defibrillators and thermal imaging equipment. And then there is one FTE that's included for inspections to continue to support the fire inspections, functionality of inspections. On the administrative side, we've included two FTEs, including a paralegal and an executive assistant. These will help support leadership, but really support the town overall. We've also included some additional funding to support training efforts in strategic initiatives. This as a reminder, this department is helping support high priority projects that the town engages with, and really importantly oversees the housing affordability element of the work that we've started. Here's where we are as far as our timeline. So tonight we're here at the public hearing. There will be continued discussion at the work session next week, and we'll be looking to adopt the budget in June. A reminder that we are still taking comments and feedback through our portal. You do have an updated list of the comments that have come in to date. So I encourage everybody, if you're not here to speak, but you have something that you want to say, this is a great way to get this information to staff and to council. And so that's all I have as far as formal recap.

Okay, excellent. You've done an excellent job of refreshing our memory on this. This budget thing is a big deal. We have several people who have been working full-time on this all year long. It's been going on in an intense way since March, as the timeline showed. Still have several steps left to go, and the purpose tonight is to get input directly face to face from some of our residents and taxpayers here. Our portal has been opened with access. The information has been distributed. Let me say again, even though you only might have three minutes here tonight, we're eager for your input. Us individual council members, staff will be glad to talk with you individually or in small groups at any time. This is important stuff. This is your money we're trying to decide how to spend and we're going based on the input that we have. Having said that, let's see who might have signed up to speak. We have some people signed up to speak. Before we get into the individuals, I'm not going to reread the whole thing we did about petitions and comments. but I would like to emphasize the importance of courtesy and using your three minutes wisely so we'll have time to hear from everyone. If you have a large group and can have one spokesperson that carries your message, that's great, but we are here to get your input. That being said, Ms. Jones, do we have a first person that signed up to speak?

Yes, Mr. Mayor, we have five individuals who have signed up to speak on the budget tonight. The first is Katie Cardenas.

Good evening, Katie Carlinas, 1609 South Wade Avenue, Garner. Good evening, everyone. The budget reflects three priorities, revenue stability, public safety, and infrastructure. So I'm here to talk about the operational impact of the budgetary misalignment with our current housing trajectory. We can't look at housing and jobs as two different issues. The people who power Garner are being pushed out. Nearly one in four Garner households earns under $50,000. These are the Amazon workers, the nursing home workers, the small business workers. In high-growth hubs like Wake County, affluent influxes skew the math, creating an illusion that results in affordable housing units, being made for people making $106,000 a year, 80% AMI, completely abandoning the true working class. It creates an essential service stream. Garner brought Garner Fire Rescue fully into the town's operations. If the very low income tier is displaced, the EMTs and the junior staff we need will be priced out, leading to staff shortages and longer response times. There is a revenue paradox. While some worry about tax exemptions for affordable housing nonprofits, the economic cost of a hollowed out town is a much bigger threat to Garner's long term budget. When a huge portion of the population is cost burdened, they have less disposable income to spend on businesses in downtown Garner or at White Oak. The recommendation of the Affordable Housing Task Force focused on the preservation of NOAA units and the creation of affordable housing. However, this proposed budget fails to allocate any funds necessary to leverage partnerships for development. $50,000 was initially allocated for preserving homes. And while it was finally doubled, those repair funds are likely to be absorbed by elderly residents, not our workforce, meaning we will not see the return on investment before those units are lost to market rate turnover. Considering the community needs for housing support, $50,000 allocated for public arts and 13, a total of 13 full-time staff for the pay-to-play fields at Yergin Park compared to one full-time housing specialist and just $100,000 for renovations seems misaligned. I have been working across the county to build networks that can help more efficiently create affordable housing projects, discussing strategies with state legislators and organizing events to promote greater understanding of the affordable housing gaps and opportunities. Yet Garner does not even have affordable housing on its lobbying agenda. We need to prioritize affordable housing for those who cannot afford to live here but on whom we rely to keep our sense of home, as Rick said, in Garner. Please align this budget with our actual community needs for affordable housing. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Cardenas. I always appreciate your work. Thank you. And next speaker, Ms. Jones, would be Wolfgang Hertzlein. Yes, sir. If you would approach the podium and introduce yourself and your home address.

Good evening. My name is Wolfgang Herzling. I serve as pastor and mission developer at Lord of Life Lutheran Church on Buffalo Road here in Ghana. I'm here with a number of our members because as a local congregation, we are very concerned about affordable housing and what is and isn't happening in our town. You know that in Wake County, we are short some 60,000 units of affordable housing. And in some of the towns, and we are getting to that point in Garner too, if we're not already there, we are now in a situation where folks like firefighters and police officers and town employees can no longer afford to live in the towns that they serve and has to commute in from outside, even not just the town, but even the As a local congregation, we see the needs every day. People come to us and we had people moving out of Ghana because of the high cost of housing here. You as a council have done some important steps. You have taken some helpful steps. You had an affordable housing task force last year that did a lot of good work. You have added a position of a housing specialist to your staff. Those are all wonderful things. But speaking in support of Habitat for Humanity and other affordable housing developers, I'd have to say those steps just aren't enough. It's time to put our money where our mouths are. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Who is the next person signed up?

Pastor Ben Acton.

Pastor, please address the podium. Introduce yourself. We're glad to have you.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, town council staff, everyone. I am Ben Acton. I'm the pastor at First Presbyterian Church of Garner on 503 Lakeside Drive. Most of what I was going to say, I would just invite Wolfgang back up here. Presbyterians and the Lutherans serve many of the same needs. And exactly right, partnerships that we have with Garner Area Ministries and Habitat for Humanity. We do good work. This council, this town has done good work. But as Habitat often says, We can't build ourselves out of our affordable housing crisis and so other solutions are needed. So I'm not going to repeat as much of what Pastor Wolfgang said, but I will draw then again on the photo op I had earlier in the meeting. I've not been able to be as involved. Having a 14 year old at East Garner Middle School running track in the spring has made it really difficult to be at our Juneteenth planning sessions lately. But the theme for this year is about the history of home ownership and land ownership. and an emphasis on the importance of access, not just economically, not just for someone to be involved in good citizenship and leadership in this town, but also for that sense of belonging and that sense of home to create the culture and the community that we have done in Garner and continue to do. And like Pastor Wolfgang, I believe slow and steady often does win the race. But again, as a parent of a track athlete who ran the 800, I can tell you those last 200 meters where everybody turns on the jets is also really, really important. and so now is the time for bold swings bolder swings than we've always done before and a trust that that the people of garner will back uh the council in so doing thank you thank you thank you very much jackie aiello jackie if you would approach the podium introduce yourself please

Good evening, Mayor Gupton and council members. My name is Jackie Ayala. I'm the director of advocacy at Habitat for Humanity, Greater Raleigh, our new name. You'll catch me getting that wrong often, I'm sure. Thanks for the opportunity to share comments about the fiscal year 27 proposed budget. Habitat has been serving this community for over 40 years. This year we're celebrating our 1000th home right here in Garner. As many of you all know, you've been out to our site in Garner right off of Creech Road. We'll be working in Garner for several more years as we hope to build our new Hope Grove neighborhood, which we're hoping will be about 400 mixed income units for sale, homeownership units. We are very lucky to have such great partners in you all, the town and the staff and the whole council for your support. Your support has been really valuable, so we really appreciate it. And we're very excited to see that the town is investing in affordable housing in this budget. We commend you for creating a dedicated staff position for housing. We're very excited to work with Lewis and for making affordable housing a strategic initiative of the town. And we're thrilled that the town is continuing to invest in home repairs, in particular for income qualified homeowners. As you all know, as the community grows, we really cannot forget about the thousands of folks who already live in Garner, call Garner Home, who are homeowners. um we want to make sure that we're investing in that home repair into the future so that they um can help they can age in place and we can prevent displacement uh as the con the council considers the manager's fiscal year 27 budget we ask that you continue to support affordable housing but ensuring that these priorities remain in the final version of the budget we are we know that we are in a very difficult budget season with federal funding cuts, inadequate state funding, inflation, gas, etc. But investing in affordable housing now will set us up for success in the future, as the speakers before me have said. And we want to ensure that Garner remains a very vibrant and affordable place to live. thank you for your time and for your for the opportunity to comment we look forward to working with you and we hope to see you uh in just a couple weeks at our home builders blitz events uh in garner thank you indeed thank you so much and rex whaley yes mr whaley if you would please come to the podium and introduce yourself with name and address thank you

Thank you, Rex. Weather 102 Pineway Street. Try to use my three minutes quickly here on my comments. I just got a couple of things I want to say. I haven't had a chance to dive into the budget real deep, but a couple of things that I would love to discuss with any council member that would like to meet with me. One, last year this time we stood here and there was $1.3 million extra money that was found. And there was some council members who advocated for saving that money and applying it for needs this year and possibly reducing tax increases. So I hope maybe some of that money's been looked at to redirect for this year to offset some of those tax increases. I hope that's been strongly considered. Second, I'm not sure why we need to do a one cent increase for the debt fund. Over the years, my last count, I think about $4 million between recurring and non-recurring operating money has been diverted from the debt fund into the operating. I think it's time for the operating fund to look at maybe paying some of that money back rather than a tax increase. The way I understand it, the unassigned fund balance has increased by about $21 million in the last two or three years. And I don't quite understand, and maybe there's some municipal rule that prevents it, why those funds, best I can tell, interest they're earning is not being credited to that fund. So let's look at ways to increase that money without going to the taxpayers. And the last comment I'll make is, I know we've talked about the pay increases, the 2% and 4% merit. That's fine. Employees need to be paid. But that one time there was that 27th pay period, and I know it's disappeared, and we're doing some accounting trend accruals and all. But I just wanted to clarify, it was like a million and a half dollars. I think that basically equates to about a 4% one-time pay raise for employees. So I think it's worth showing that if I'm understanding things correctly that they're also going to get that pay increase so maybe if we can consider some of these other things it would decrease the tax increase that's needed and maybe we can help some of our affordable housing people as we freed up some of this money like so i'd be glad to meet with any council member discuss these and some other things And I know we're showing that it's only $100 increase this year. But if you look at the increases the last two or three years, the Garner tax bill for an average homeowner is going to pay $100. And so you talk about affordability, trying to afford homes, all this adds up. And they also have to apply that rate when they go register their car. These tax rates accumulate, and it costs more just to get your car renewed. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Haley. Thank you. Thank you. Was there any other folks signed up to speak?

No, that concludes the public speakers.

Okay, thank you. Well, let me remind everybody here and at home, the purpose of this particular session here this evening is to get input, and we're getting great input. There were five great speakers there. Just a reminder, too, our... scan your qr code that you see up here our portal is still open for more comments more input our phone lines still work call us if you want to come and sit down we really do want your input i wish we could meet everybody's dream we're doing the best we can there's still a lot of discussion to be had among council and among staff this is an important step in the process We'll be talking about this again next week and the week after that and maybe the week after that. We spent one whole day last Friday digging through this. We know there's a lot of details, a lot of fine-tuning. We will keep pushing ahead as best we can. And now let's hear any comments or questions. There's not a vote to be taken, but let's start with Mr. Matthews for any comments you might want to make.

Just appreciate all the feedback. We take it all in. As Mayor mentioned last Friday, it was an all day crunching numbers and whatever we put out there, that's my tax bill too, so I gotta live with it. But we truly are trying to be good stewards of the money we take in because we are held accountable for it and try to set example move some other towns having issues that we don't have so i'm very respectful to our staff our financial department of being accountable to our dollars and we have quarterly updates and so we know wherever dollars being spent and But appreciate the feedback and submissive portals open and we do get a print out of everything comes in that portal. So we see your comments. I don't think it goes to waste. So thank you for being here.

Mr. Yes, thank you everyone for coming through your comments. We're going to be discussing it again next Tuesday at our work session. So if you'd like to come and listen to what we discussed, please feel free to come do so.

Thank you. Mr. Stallings?

All I'll say is we have a lot to think about over the next couple of weeks as we work to finalize the budget because the moral of the story is that people are struggling to put food on their table, people are struggling to put gas in their car, and they want us to be good stewards of their taxpayer dollars and make sure that their taxpayer dollars are working for them and that it provides the service they're used to receiving, whether it's public safety or affordable housing. So I'm definitely looking forward to the conversations ahead.

Thank you very much, Mr. Downs.

yeah um i just want to say you know some notes i got to read them i'm going to go on and on and on um that we're in the middle of this process now and coming out of our all-day budget meeting last friday so as other council members said we've had a lot to process and are continuing to process that i think in the big picture we have a revenue sourcing challenge ahead of us we've shifted our tax base too much towards the residential that by default puts the burden on the residents We need to, as a council, be very proactive to shift that balance back over the next several years. So that's a conscious effort that we make outside of this budget process to bring in the amenities and things and commercial things that citizens want. And we have to accept this as an economic development challenge and push and prioritize this type of commercial development beyond flex space and warehouses. You can't eat at a flex space. You know, you can't take your friends out to a warehouse. And we need more retail commercial and bring shopping, dining, and recreational amenities to the town. And doing that at the same time shifts that tax burden away from the residents. but that's decisions we have to make over the next several years well starting now right we're not going to wait but we have to start doing that now um i've been carefully watching what our municipal neighbors are doing in their uh recommended budgets uh it's sometimes apples to oranges in terms of what their challenges are what ours are but we are in the same market and so we need to look at what they're doing and adjust accordingly to what makes sense um That also said, we need to give very careful consideration to meet the future service delivery needs of the community, particularly from a capital projects perspective. By my estimation, we're lagging behind in our ability to pay and sometimes even finance some necessary projects from fire stations to fire apparatus. our public works facility that is about 50 years out of date and in a town that has grown by 50 percent in the past three years they're stretched in as well and they maintain all of our parks and all of our streets so we have to find a way to invest in that for the future and not to mention storm water improvements taxes are an affordability issue It's a mosaic, right, of affordability, and all these things chip away. You can't solve it in one night, you can't solve it in one budget, but you've got to keep making progress. And speaking of progress, it seems like it's been more than a year since we were sitting up here, and Mr. Singleton and I were fighting and fighting and fighting for that position, and now we finally have it, and we're fighting and fighting and fighting for funding. We're gonna get it, and we're gonna do good things with it. We are going to be the mecca for innovative housing affordability projects in this state, maybe. That's why the town manager's been good to set up her strategic initiatives department. The staff in there is amazing. We want people coming to us to say, what did you do? And if it's not going to fit, how do we adjust it to what we're doing? Housing affordability is a cornerstone of this community. It's what gives us our character. So I'm just really pleased at the progress we've made. I'm glad you all have shown up with urgency, and I hope we can meet that challenge sooner rather than later. Keep showing up. We're gonna be putting out applications in the near future for our task force and things like this. Everybody has to be involved, and we've got great partners in Habitat and the churches. So I'm excited. I'm at a place where I can be excited about it. So thank you all for coming out. And again, we have a lot of work left to do on this budget and a lot of hard decisions to make. But please continue to pay attention. Mr. Whaley had some good comments there on unassigned fund balance. I'm all over that. So thank you everybody for coming out and giving your comments tonight on the budget. Really appreciate it.

Excellent comments. Thank you. Mr. Vance.

I would just echo some of the things that have been said. Many of the faces are very familiar faces when it comes to affordable housing and fighting a good fight. And I would say continue to do that because you are definitely being heard and we are moving forward and we are looking at affordable housing relative to Garner. How does affordable housing, workforce housing fit within Garner, not like how others are doing it, but what we can do as Garner to help Garner citizens, and particularly looking at how the citizens who are in the various positions of police, nursing, teaching, if they want to stay in Garner, how we can help them stay in Garner. and also trying to look at how we can help those who are possibly unhoused in certain areas and helping the churches in their endeavors and other nonprofits to continue on with the process of helping with this problem that we know there is affordability issue not only in Garner, not only in Wake County, but throughout the country. And it's something that I believe that we're gonna have to work together as a community to do the best we can to support the citizens who need to be supported and to do the civil and right thing. And at times it's a grind. Can we please everybody? It ain't gonna happen. We know that's not gonna happen, but we're gonna do our best to do the best for the citizens of Garner in helping them to live in a place where they can't afford to live. And that's going to be a continuous process. And as it has been said, y'all keep showing up. Y'all keep talking. I took notes. I'm going to see some of y'all probably tomorrow as well. So that's okay. And that's what it takes. They constantly grind. They constantly say and keeping the issue before the council and before the community so that we can work together. to make this happen. It's not just us, it's all of us in this together to make this happen because we all know somebody who is going through an affordable issue right now and we want to make sure that they maintain their dignity when it comes to being able to stay in a place where they love and not be pushed out because they can't afford it anymore. So we're in this with you. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Vance. The purpose of this segment of our meeting tonight was to receive public input. We've had some great input. We've had it for the last few months. We've had it more in the last few weeks. We've had great input and scrutiny by your elected officials, your council. It's worked very hard, as you can tell by the research they've done, and not to mention our staff. So thank everyone who's done that. If there's no other observations from council, I will close the public hearing, but I'm not going to close it without saying one more time, thank you all for the great sacrifice, the great energy. I wish we could grant everyone's dream, but we're not Santa Claus. We're going to do our best. Thanks for your patience and your citizenship and your residency here in Garner. Thank you very much. With that, we'll move along to item 1.3, which is a moratorium for data centers to be considered. And we'll be calling on our planning director, Mr. Jeff Treisenberg, to give us an overview. This was something that council expressed some interest in at a recent meeting. There's a process to go through. We just can't say no more of these. There's a little more involved. And Mr. Treisenberg can probably tell us about that process.

Yes, good evening again, Mayor, Council. Before I start, I would like to recognize two of my staff members, Aaron Joseph, our assistant director, and Josh Jensen, who is still a fairly new addition to our department as a planner too, working on Aaron's team. They've been digging into a lot of the research related to data centers, and they'll be eventually bringing forth some recommendations for text amendments as we seek to kind of understand and then hopefully present to you some regulations that make sense for Garner. So the request here tonight is potentially to adopt the attached ordinance, which is 2026-5383, to approve a temporary development moratorium on the permitting and issuance of various approvals for what we're terming data centers, data processing facilities, cryptocurrency mining operations, and similar undefined uses. We don't expect this to be, hopefully, any longer than a year, perhaps sooner, depending on if we can get an amendment package together for you to debate and potentially approve. Whichever one of those comes first, then the moratorium would cease. And our proposed timeline generally is that for about the first four to six months, we anticipate being heavily involved in research, our own independent research, as well as research that has been done by some of our counterparts at other jurisdictions, perhaps also at the local council of governments, and nationally as well. Then over the next six to eight months we do plan to produce the actual draft amendments for consideration and then use what would be our typical about three to four month process to run it through the necessary public review steps which would include the public hearing input from the Planning Commission and a final vote. Just to note, there are several other communities already. This list seems to be changing monthly, if not weekly. But in Wake County, Apex and Wendell have passed moratoria. Some of the counties, and there's actually quite a few jurisdictions out west in the mountains that have passed moratoria as well. So just as a background, these are emerging uses. To a certain degree, they are unresearched and unregulated specifically. The increase in the development pace has brought attention about potentially some of the negative impacts. And so many communities have chosen to put in a temporary moratorium just to be able to sit back and study and see what the issues really are and what regulations would make sense for their local community. We will note that there does appear to be a wide variation in the use and scale. It's a pretty all-encompassing term as it's used most often in the public. And so not all of the potential impacts are likely to apply across the board for anything that would fall under this broad data center definition. That's part of what we need to figure out and how do we break that down into those those proposals that might fit into our current regulations for other light industrial uses, and those that may be beyond the scale and scope of anything that we've really considered before. When we wrote the UDO this last time, we did put in the table of permitted uses. in almost every category there is a specific use that is kind of a catch-all. That being said, when we do have, are aware of a situation like this, one of the things that we have done as staff is we have looked at what those standards are for that catch-all category. And it's in there that we've kind of identified that, Yeah, for certain types of data centers, those very broad standards that we had are probably and maybe not appropriate. So it behooves us, I think, to go through this process, define them very carefully. And I would say that it's pretty well supported by several of the goals of the comp plan. I've listed those. They show up in the staff report. But yeah, we want to be establishing compatible standards, transition standards that respect spaces between both existing and future development. We want to recognize that new commercial light industrial in close proximity to residential areas should be limited in their use and be of a certain size and scale that are largely considered unobtrusive. We want to allow adequate time for forward thinking and close coordination with other folks who are involved in the development process. So again, I think it's our choice of using this moratorium option would be supported in this case by our own comprehensive plan. Some of the initial potential impacts that staff has identified, there is concern about energy consumption. This is probably a concern no matter what the size. They're going to use electricity, whether they're generating it themselves or they're pulling it from other power grids. They do have to ensure that they have around the clock operations. That's why people host their data in these centers, because they need it to be nearly 100% reliable. some of them may have significant water consumption we highlighted the word may because again depending on the scale not every data center will employ water usage for cooling We actually have one here in Garner. That's over on Garner Station Boulevard. I mentioned this I think once before. That has been around in Garner since 2012. It occupies a regular otherwise looking industrial building there off of Garner Station Boulevard. They have probably about a dozen or so commercial grade AC units. You can see them outside the building with a couple of generators. They're not using abundant uh levels of water they have the same regular water hookups that all the other buildings have in the park it's not like they're taxing that particular resource but again between the generators and the the ac handling units the electricity demand is probably much higher or higher than normal but when you get into the hyperscale the very large data centers we do know that At some point, traditional kinds of AC cooling are not going to work and they are going to probably employ some kind of water-based or assisted cooling system. Noise generation, at any scale, those outdoor power generating and air handling systems, they can disrupt neighboring properties when they're in operation. Hopefully they're not in operation very often. I'm sure folks that live in a neighborhood, they may have a neighbor who has a whole home generator backup system. There's one in my neighborhood, one of my neighbors has one. Fortunately, I'm about four or five houses away, so I don't hear it. But then again, it only comes on when the power goes out. In those cases, it's nice to have a neighbor who has one in case you need to keep something refrigerated and cool. Ground air pollution. This is one, again, it can be an issue. You hope it's not an issue. But again, it's unknown and it really depends, I think, on the specific installation. So that's one in particular that I think we'll need to learn more about. So the statutory requirements for a moratoria, there are four statements that do need to be included, almost as kind of like findings. They lay out the steps and what we've done and what we haven't done and what we intend to do. Those are required by statute, and you will see those in full in Section 2 of the proposed ordinance. I won't spend too much time on those, but we have worked with the legal department to ensure that we've laid those statements out as best we can. And our proposed timeline, as I mentioned before, we're looking at a year. So assuming that there's an approval of the moratorium tonight, you see that four to six months for research and transitioning sometime this fall from research into actual ordinance drafting. And hopefully no later than May of next year, we would have regulations in effect, if not sooner. Just as a note, consistency and reasonableness, the state statutes do not require that for moratoria you have such statements like we do for zoning map and text amendments. And so our draft motion for you tonight is to consider the adoption of the ordinance for that temporary moratorium and direction for staff to proceed with research and drafting as we're able. And that's all I have.

For the time being, stay right there. We might have a question or two for you. This is a fascinating new thing. Five years ago, ten years ago, who would have ever dreamed we'd be talking about something like this? A gigantic warehouse full of computers. has these issues. We never would have even dreamed it. Thank you for the presentation. We do have two functions, two missions ahead of us on this item tonight. It's number one, to hold the public hearing and get input, and then we will be asking council to make a decision as to what to do next. That being said, I'd like to ask our town attorney, have any individuals signed up to speak on this topic?

Yes, we have one individual who signed up, Joshua Graham.

Let's have that presenter, please, come to the podium. Introduce yourself, name and address, please. And thank you for the information you're about to give us within the three-minute limit.

All right. Thank you, council members. My name is Joshua Graham. My address is 409 Danielle Drive in Garner. I'm asking you to please consider taking up this moratorium. Right now, we are rushing headlong into a future that nobody really understands. The people who are really pushing for this, Kevin O'Leary, Sam Altman, all those folks are promising us a bright and prosperous future while also telling us that there's going to be major disruption with people losing jobs and being displaced, and they can't clearly articulate that. how this is going to be beneficial for people in general. The infrastructure that is required for these data centers is massive, and there's questions about who's going to pay for that. We've also seen councils like the county commissioners over in Person County who were railroaded a Microsoft data center through under nondisclosure agreements and closed door meetings. And that's not the democratic process at all. So like I said, I would appreciate it if you guys would consider taking this up because we need to put the brakes on this. This is going too fast. It is a race to build out infrastructure before it can be regulated. And that's not tolerable. Thank you.

Thank you very much, sir. No other individuals have signed up to speak.

No.

Before closing the public hearing and considering a motion, I'm going to ask if there's any council members who would like to make comments or ask questions. At this point, we'll start with Mr. Vance. Questions or comments before we move toward a motion?

Just an observation, I would say that Garner has done a good job in developing small area plans and using the tier one zoning in certain areas with the expectation of certain businesses and mixed use coming there. And without this moratorium, it's a possibility that something like a data center can slip in under that. So I would just point blank say that I'm in support of the moratorium. And I'll just leave it there.

Thank you very much. Mr. Dellinger?

Yeah, I just want to thank staff for moving so swiftly to get this on our agenda. Probably one of the fastest legislative things I think I've seen us do in a long time and it's good to see because the urgency is there so that we can study and, you know, measure out the risks compared to our UDO and you all have plenty of time with town attorney as well to Craft a way that protects the town its resources in our community. So thank you all very much for that Thank you.

Mr. Towns.

Jeff. We were just talking about this a month ago and we moved lightning speed to get this done So definitely want to thank you and your team for pulling this together. I'm glad we're taking this action I support the moratorium because I definitely and I know a lot of others have serious concerns about the long term resource demands and that large-scale data centers place on communities, especially when it comes to power, water, infrastructure. So I know there's a lot of articles out there, but I'm definitely not convinced that the information is spiraling around, that this type of development produces the meaningful economic growth as aforementioned by a lot of others that it does. So definitely excited about us taking this action, and I support this moratorium.

Thank you. Mr. Singleton?

Yes. I want to thank Mr. Treisenberg and Attorney Jones. I started by talking to Attorney Jones several weeks ago, gave me some direction on how we needed to go forward, and then she sent an email to all the counsel. And Mr. Treisenberg followed up with steps how to move forward with this, and I'm glad it's at this point. I had a conversation last week with one of my best friends who retired from Duke Energy in 24. I sent him a link from PBS News about Nevada and a large proposed data center that needs three times more electricity than they currently generate. and they would have to use fossil fuels to do it. And he said, here in North Carolina right now, Duke's in a similar spot because wind is too unreliable, solar's too expensive. He said the only way to do it in North Carolina, if you're not going to use fossil fuels, nuclear, calls them small nuclear, SMR, small modular reactors, which make the most sense, but they're not commercially viable, and it takes five to ten years to process it, get through the steps, and get it built, permitted. I also said data centers are not all bad. Some of them are good. Some of them are efficient. And with the infrastructure required, we're all hearing about the first thing about AI and what they generate and the massive ones they're building that make all kinds of noise. And I think that's what everybody is concerned about. And rightly so because of the high utility use. I have heard in the news that, you know, up in Washington I talked about if you're going to be a certain size data center you have to provide your own electricity. You have to build it, pay for it, provide it. I don't know how you're going to build a small modular reactor. My friend who knows a lot more about this than I do says it takes five to ten years. I don't know how they're going to build a power plant that quick. unless they're going to use nothing but fossil fuel. So it is a very strong concern because of Tier 1 rezoning possibilities and some of the warehouse projects that have been here in the past and are currently here. I don't think those people are going to do that, this gives us the time to study it and learn about it because as you told us we don't even have a definition for it in our udo and we have to define it before we can determine where it could or could not be allowed in a certain zoning classification so thank you mr graham for coming with your comments and uh thank you staff for hopping on this because i think it's important to everybody thank you mr singleton mr matthews i think mr mayor there's not much more i can add to that but appreciative of the staff

making this thing a priority and bringing it to us. And like my colleagues, I do support this moratorium too. So the time is now. As the man says, let's get it done.

okay well yeah that concludes our public hearing we've heard from the people signed up we've heard from the staff we've heard initial comments uh from council members here so i will close the public hearing you may sit down if you like mr we will call you back if questions arise during the discussion uh the next task before us related to this possible moratorium temporary moratorium is to decide whether to adopt Ordinance 2026-5383, which would put this temporary moratorium in place.

So moved. Second.

There's a motion from Mr. Matthews and a second by Mr. Stallings. And now that opens the floor for any further discussion or comments. Mr. Dellinger?

I actually just have a question for Mr. Triesenberg on the timeline. Get back up here, Mr. Triesenberg. You didn't go far. The timeline for this basically text amendment is that going in lockstep with other text amendment considerations or is it going to be on its own track we would treat this as a standalone okay i think we would have to to keep it clear okay thank you

Any other questions or discussion from council before we vote on adopting this moratorium? Hearing none, I'm going to call for a voice vote. All in favor of adopting Ordinance 2026-5383, which is a temporary moratorium on data centers, et cetera. Please signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed by nay? Hearing none, that passes unanimously. Thank you for your consideration. Thanks for the input from staff. and planning department and our citizens who've looked into this. So thank you very much. That brings us along to old business. We're right here at the 7.30 mark. We typically take a short recess. Let's take a seven minute recess because I want to come back and give full attention to the garden litter cleanup update. This is close to my heart. Please be back here ready to go 7.30. Thank you.

Thank you. you you you Thank you. you

It's a serious issue. We make fun of it sometimes. It's litter. But every little bit helps. Every little bit hurts. We want to do what we can. And here to tell us about things that have worked well and things we might want to do some more of to keep our place, our town, looking as well as it possibly can is our Communications Director, Rick Mercer.

Hello again, Mr. Mayor. We are here to give you a quick briefing on some of the spring litter cleanup activities and outreach we've been doing. Some of the things I'll go through are things that are regularly on our calendar. and a few other things are new and we're bolstering what we're doing. In early, I believe it was about early April, communications and assistant manager pool, we came together to talk about ways we could Kind of empower and encourage the community to get involved in in litter cleanup. We've you know, we heard some concerns We heard concerns from council You know from time to time You know things things seem to reach kind of a tipping point around town and you know We we can see that there are some roadways and some areas that need a little little attention So Assistant Manager Poole and I, we came up with kind of an outreach and action plan to get us through the spring and to look forward into the fall, recognizing that of course in kind of the hot weather months, it's kind of hard to mobilize a lot of people to get out do litter cleanups along the roadways when it's 95 degrees. But we looked at a couple things we had on our calendar already. Our employees for the past few years have been doing some litter sweeps in April. It's our culture club that's sort of our internal organization that does a lot of work to bring employees together, kind of break down those silos that we sometimes live in here. as town employees and get us out and doing things together. We saw an opportunity, of course, to document and post on social media about that. Also, the Big Sweep and Litter Sweep, which is scheduled both for spring and fall and statewide, but we participate in Garner locally. That was coming up, so we promoted that heavily to try to get more involvement this spring. And then we, kind of another prong to our overall strategy was to look at our Garner info data and try to discern any patterns or the areas where we're getting a lot of complaints about litter, and then get public works and inspections to really target those areas in the spring, and that's been ongoing. So those were some components of our strategy. Some other components of our plan. This past weekend, we were able to carry out this next bullet point. We decided we'd try to engage our new Garner Youth Council to do a litter sweep somewhere. We did that. Ms. Sulz, who's kind of the coordinator, not kind of, she is the coordinator for the Youth Council, she's done a great job. We were able to mobilize about, I think 17 or 18 young people, some of whom are Youth Council members and a few others who are not members but heard about the opportunity. We went out, the council decided they wanted to clean up around Garner Magnet along Spring Drive. So we got there, we saw right away that the parking lot, the student parking lot at Garner Magnet needed a little extra attention, so we hit that and then we went up and down Spring Drive. We had, I think, about 17 or 18 young people. Mr. Stallings joined us, so that was great. And it was hot, but it was a good and productive morning. Part of our other continuing activities, we're gonna continue to reach out to HOAs, community groups, faith communities, and try to get them involved in organizing their own cleanups, even possibly deciding to adopt a stretch of highway, participate in the DOT Adopt a Highway program. Looking ahead to the fall, we're gonna promote the fall litter sweep really heavily, try to get great turnout for that. um typically what we do with that and i want to give a shout out to um the white deer park staff and also uh jacqueline standard in engineering who they've always done a great job in helping to organize the the big sweep litter sweep we focus on our parks we focus on some roadways for that and uh creeks i know in the spring i was out with the group we were at Jackie John senior park and they were they did they pulled a lot of trash and tires and stuff out of the woods and Did a lot to make that park look better for the community So that's that's a great thing and then you know, we're gonna continue to look for additional opportunities for other messaging Social media and stuff that we can do to encourage folks to get involved Results to date So the town staff cleanup that I mentioned, we have our own adopt the highway stretch now on NC 50. We were out there one day, staff were out in another section of town, got lots of bags of trash and some big debris. The big sweep, 44 volunteers, as you can see, 69 bags of trash, bunch of tires, other debris. And then Saturday, like I say, we did a pretty good job on the Garner Magnet. high parking lot and then up and down Spring Drive down to about, we went almost down the timber. This is some of our promotions and urging folks to get involved both through social media and the town newsletter. And then this is just kind of a final kind of call to action. If there's anyone out there watching and wants to get involved, they should feel free to email us at GarnerPIO at GarnerNC.gov. We're able to provide some support, whether it's, you know, bags, gloves, safety vests if you're on a roadway or along a roadway, not in a roadway. And then of course there's the NCDOT Adopt a Highway program. We have a lot of local groups that already have adopted stretches. This picture here, you can see the Zeta Phi Beta. It's a service sorority, do a lot of great work. They've adopted a stretch along Garner Road. I've observed Springfield Baptist Church has adopted a stretch. The town has, like I said. I think the American Legion Post has a stretch they've adopted. So it's a way to get involved. And if you Google DOT, adopt the highway program. You can find out more, find out what the, there's no fee, but there's some expectation that you'll clean up your stretch four times a year. Don't know how enforceable it is, but it's a great way to really give back to your community. And that is, that's kind of a summary of our outreach and our action plan. Happy to answer any questions or take suggestions for that matter.

Well, that's excellent report on an excellent program. A lot of success, a lot of notice. We want to keep bringing this to everybody's attention until we can get all the help that we need to keep it clean. Let's see what council members have to say. Any comments or questions? Mr. Matthews?

I've seen that picture you posted there with the group and tagged it again. It was on social media today. And great job for what y'all are doing. Like you said, just got to get the word out there in any way we can. And it's... It's an ongoing problem, unfortunately, but just staying on top of it, I guess, is going to be the key to it. Great job. Thank you. Mr. Singleton.

Yes, Rick. Thank you and the communications team for getting us out, social media for people to see, and thanks to all the volunteers out there who have worked and not spent many hours helping and getting the youth council involved. It's a good project to be involved with. Thank you.

And Mr. Stallings, if you could give us a perspective of someone who recently participated in this firsthand.

Oh, it was great. Just watching the kids compete with each other on who can pick up the most trash, speedily doing it. I mean, and just the questions they had, they were asking. I mean, they were talking about college and what they were going through in school. And it was just great to see the interaction with them. And while they were participating in service and having fun doing it, it was just amazing to see.

And it was all in the fun. Great. That was hot too. And hot, hot fun. Mr. Dellinger.

Yeah, I think we did some of that last year with a couple, a few years ago with some organizations. And I think it's that social aspect of it that you really need to kind of lean into. I think even video is more important, impactful than pictures because you're seeing people interact and have a good time. People can smile for two seconds in the picture, and they're like, that's not fun. But it is actually fun. You can get out there and do it. I also want to say that, also emphasize that the town will provide certain amounts of equipment, too, because that kind of, again, it's a barrier, like, I don't know, I don't have the glove, I don't have the, and so that might be helpful. I think also, as we transition, I'm not going to speak for Mr. Vance, but I'm going to speak. as a member of the nominations committee, as we look to the fall and how we're going to do more with volunteers and using the system we use to get applicants for things. I see Mari back there is like, yeah, all right. Using that as a platform to sort of get that as an interest so that people would like to pick up litter. And so it's another resource that we're organizing and can shoot that information out. and get more people interested. So just don't forget to reach out in the fall to us. We're trying to figure out what we're doing with the volunteer stuff. But this is great. This is really good.

Excellent.

Mr. Vance. Yes, I will say thank you to everyone who's been engaged with this process. I remember a citizen coming up and was passionately talking about the cleaning up of the neighborhood and having pride in the community. I want you to see this not only during the spring cleaning process or just a one-time event, but a sustained operation where we make Garner the place where there is zero litter in places, period. Looking at those hotspots, I know that may be impossible, but I want to share one very short 10-second story. I was going through a community where we were at a stoplight and someone threw a piece of paper at the car. And then the car behind the behind that person got out the car pick up the trash. They wanted to continue to make sure that their place remain beautiful and clean and what you want. And I just hope that type of attitude catches on here where we take pride in the beautification and maintaining the sustaining the clean this of the town because that's a part of the draw as well.

Excellent. Thank you very much. I believe this is contagious. I believe if you see results and you see it cleaning up and looking better, you get on the bandwagon. I dare say that anybody who's ever worked at picking this trash up will never litter again. They get a new respect for how easy it is to throw out the window, how hard it is to pick it up by the bag full. Mr. Mercer, anything you'd like to add here at the end?

No, sir. Appreciate the feedback and the suggestions.

Well, we will count this session as a success. We are spreading the word about litter and keeping garden clean. Thank you very much, Rick, for all that you do. And that brings us to item H on our agenda, updates to council. And let's start with committee reports from council members related to the committees that you are liaisons with. Let's start with Mr. Vance. Committee reports?

The personnel committee have conducted interviews and still conducting interviews for the various boards and commissions and that will continue on through June time frames and we'll be bringing recommendations to the council at that time.

Thank you, Mr. Delger. He said it all. Took the words right out of your mouth. What left you speechless? This is unheard of. Unheard of. Unheard of. Mr. Stallings.

So Parks and Rec met yesterday and had a lot of conversation. I know the nominations committee has met and made some recommendations. that will be presented to council to be appointed to the committee. But there was conversations around vacancies, conversations around possible liaisons to other community, other committees, as well as how are we going about filling those vacancies, possibly having an alternate and waiting just in case we need somebody to step in when somebody is removed or resigns from the committee. So it was a lot of conversation around that as well as a fee and loop presentation that happened in the Parks and Rec Committee yesterday. So a lot of great conversation. Talking again about the Garner Youth Council, they will be meeting for their final meeting of the year term tomorrow, as well as having their executive board elections. So the leadership that will serve next year will be elected tomorrow for the youth council. So definitely excited about that. And great work to Rick and Bella for getting this off the ground. And it's been a tremendous year so far.

It is indeed. For the first year, that thing has really caught fire, hasn't it? Thanks to them and thanks to you. Thank you. Mr. Singleton?

No committee report.

Okay. Mr. Matthews?

I think, Mr. Mayor, Monday is Memorial Day. It's one of the Veterans Committee's big events, and it's going to be outstanding this year. We've been assured by a lot of people praying hard the weather's going to hold for us, and we're going to hold them up to that. And But I appreciate the parks. We're going to have an additional stage. We're going to have a nice tent out there. And so we're having a tent with a little over 100 chairs under it. So we're going to get out from under that shelter. And so we're going to have some very special presentations, a great speaker, and everybody is welcome. It starts at 930. Today, I want to thank the public works and Mr. Poole and everybody involved with getting our new flagpoles out there that we're brought in and put up today, and they look extremely well. The lights, new lighting is there, and as I was leaving this afternoon, I sent Forrest a picture, and no more sending. Next thing, another electrician was pulling in. He was setting those lights up. And we will put two new flags for the first time on those poles that are part of our service on Monday. One will be a North Carolina flag, and the other will be a POW MIA flag. And they will remain flying from now on and with the new lights on. And so I just appreciate the committee and all the support from the town staff and those involved. You know who you are and we look for a great Monday invite people out and it should be quite eventful. I think everybody hopefully will be pleased to see what what's coming on. So we are a better friendly community and take pride in appreciate the support support.

It sounds like great progress on a very important thing. Our veterans are very important to us here to recognize them adequately. And by your exhaustive extensive setup, it guarantees the weather will be perfect and there will be no need for the tent, but the tent is there. So that was great. Thank you very much for your efforts. And that brings us along to item two under updates, and that would be manager reports.

yes good evening mayor members of council we have several of your quarterly reports for you this evening so the first is the development services update for quarter one i'll ask assistant manager hodges to make the report thank you miss miller uh mayor and council members your development services update is in your packet as a reminder we produce this on a quarterly basis not only to update council but also to share updates with the development community we have an opportunity to do that tomorrow we'll be meeting with the tcc group for their coffee chat which is the um something we do about every 18 months so this is good timing to be able to share this information with them a few highlights from this quarter's edition is announcing the move our engineering department uh to the 109 building uh that just as an update to council we're substantially complete on that project and have a certificate of occupancy we are working on some internal systems now and hope to have staff moving in uh around june 1st into that building so more details on that to come but we're using this opportunity to announce that to our development community there's also an update on some of our new commercial space coming online mr gruber will tell you more about that in other space in his report which follows there's also an article about our transportation plan and our public input efforts there's also a link there for anyone who'd like to visit the mapping system that mr treisenberg has shown to you previously And we're also using this edition of the Development Services Update to introduce Lewis Hurd, our Housing and Community Development Specialist, to the community. We have included his announcement in there, and we'll be introducing him to the TCC group tomorrow. Just as an update to Council, Mr. Hurd did join Mr. Groover and myself for Wake County Economic Development's growth and development summit today. We attended a housing session and Garner received a shout out from the Wake County staff and used our project with Tron Station as an example during the discussion. So I just want to pass that along to you. Also included are our quarterly statistics. Most of these statistics continue to increase over last quarter. You'll see there 165 permits issued, 239 certificates of occupancy issued, over 10,000 inspections completed. And I always want to make sure to remind everyone that these are being completed next day. So we are well ahead of our two-day mandate that the state provides, and our team does a great job staying ahead of that. Our code compliance cases are up almost 200 for the quarter and then fire inspections that are being conducted continue at a rapid pace. We also added to the statistics a few cycles ago. We started adding our population estimate that is produced by planning. Again, this is an update that we do based on certificates of occupancy uh each month and currently for uh may 1st i'm sorry the april 1st population estimate 46 218. if you have any questions about the development uh services update i'll be happy to answer those

Yes. Have we been tracking this data long enough to get some year-over-year comparisons? I kind of feel like there's a slowing velocity, and it'd be just interesting to sort of quantify that.

I think we're at two years of data, so yes, we've been talking about how to present that to you.

That would be really kind of interesting to see, because I can feel it, but it would be interesting to see it in the data as well.

Good. Other observations? Back to you, Ms. Miller.

Yes. Thank you, Mr. Hodges. The second report this evening is the economic quarterly update. And Mr. Groover. And Ms. Wood.

Hello, Mayor and Town Council. I am happy to report for you tonight about what we are doing to support entrepreneurship and small business in Garner and in downtown Garner. An update on our Launch Garner program. So we have 15 students who completed the classroom portion and they are currently in their mentoring. phase of Launch Garner. I would also like to highlight that we had two businesses compete at the Wake Tech Blueprint to Skyline Business Pitch Competition. There were 160 businesses that applied, 15 finalists, so we had two of those finalists and they won in their respective categories. i will see joy won five thousand dollars and the borrow bar won three thousand dollars all together wells fargo who was the sponsor awarded fifty thousand dollars that night i also have an update on um the borrow bar they have made it to the state pitch competition and she will find out in september if she is a winner and she has invited me to attend the dinner with her so i will be there to cheer her on firsthand Also, please go ahead and mark your calendars that we will have Launch Garner Graduation on August 26th at 5.30 and that will be at the Garner Performing Arts Center. Main Street Conference, we had six delegates who attended the Main Street Conference, which was in New Bern. And this year's theme was focused on how Main Street drives meaningful long-term transformation. There were more than 800 community and economic development leaders who attended the conference. And this is one of the largest conferences in the country. here at the North Carolina level and I'm happy to report now I can report that Joyce Stevens who was here earlier was our North Carolina Main Street champion from Garner and she has served on our board for many years and she has been board chair for the last three years so we congratulate Joyce on that award Also, I am so excited that Downtown Garner received a $15,000 grant from the Duke Energy Foundation. This is money that will stay in Downtown Garner. It is to support our business incentive grant program so businesses who are located in downtown can submit an application to receive up to $2,500 for various grant projects. As far as community promotion and marketing, I am also happy to report that based on our work that DGA accomplished in 2025, we have been recommended for accreditation with Main Street America. This is the highest level. So we are excited to have that again in downtown Garner. And I'll just put in a little shameless plug that last year when we missed it by just a little bit, the North Carolina Main Street Committee actually told us not to be surprised if we did not receive our accreditation this year because most first-time Main Street directors do not receive that. So I personally took that on as a challenge to push our team to do our very best, and we were awarded that this year. So I'm super excited. Also, we had our food truck rodeo April 12th. We tried it on a Sunday afternoon this year. I know when John was on Main Street, he had them on Sunday afternoons because I used to attend those. And we had an overwhelming response to our food truck rodeo this year. There were over 3,100 people total on Main Street that Sunday, which is incredible. And we had over 1,300 people who were there just for the food truck rodeo itself. we also have celebrated small business week which thank you again for the proclamation and for supporting us on the first week in may we did a joint ribbon cutting with the garner chamber of commerce to kind of open up or kick off small business week and then we also hosted a business after hours event that week Also the DGA wanted to try something new this year. So we supported a new program called downtown bucks. And basically if people spent $20, at least $20 at participating businesses, they were awarded a $5 downtown buck. So it's kind of like a gift card or Kohl's cash. So they were awarded these bucks during small business week. Then they come back to redeem them in June and July. which we have heard from business owners, tends to be the slowest retail months. So we're trying to spur more economic development later this summer. And lastly, I would just like to give a shout out to our first concert, Groovin' and Garner. We had Rockzilla, who performed this past Friday night. I saw several of you there. Thank you so much for supporting us. We had a great number in attendance. I will have those numbers for you next time because we're still waiting for that data from the Placer AI report. Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. I appreciate the opportunity to close this out here and definitely want to give April a shout out for all the good work that she's been doing, especially around accreditation and the concert that was held last Friday, that all the feedback we received was overwhelmingly positive. I wanna be sure to highlight two new development product offerings here in the town that I am especially excited about because they fill a missing part of our product development offering to the business community. So the two flex spaces that you see on your sheet, they're important because they allow new opportunities for businesses that maybe are searching for spaces between the 10 to 30,000 square foot range. So that's very important to make sure that we have a diverse business community of all shapes and sizes. I know the mayor frequently mentions that Garner was built on small business, so small business, the space that we have available here, that we are proactively marketing and also responding to request that we get from our local partners and county partners so i hope to be able to provide without putting too much pressure on myself at the next update to let you know who the tenants are and what their job numbers are and when the ribbon cutting for that will be Moving right along on the business retention and recruitment fund, we did have the opportunity to attend the Jones Lang LaSalle Hotel Summit back in February. That was a unique opportunity for our team to present available parcels within the town to hotel developers and hotel operators so that they could kind of get a feel of what the real estate looks like so they could get back and share with their investors and ownership groups to see if there's any hotel sites that we have available. We did have two that we marketed and received about five or six inquiries on that and still working with those individuals as they collect their data and analyze their sites. And then moving right along, you can see there are quarterly requests for information and the RFI statistics there. And also too, wanted to mention, like Mr. Hodges said, we had a great day attending the Wake County Growth Summit, where we learned all about the importance and reinforced the importance of infrastructure and housing and making sure that Wake County stays strong to the world, which we're a known commodity, but making sure that we reinforce our presence as a strong workforce, with obviously workforce being one of the major drivers of economic growth. With that, happy to answer any questions.

i don't direct questions so i i comment just generally around um building together sort of the growth trajectory of the town in mixing economic development as a part of our sort of broader land use considerations and being an active part of this shift uh the shift towards commercial and more mixed use um particularly on the corridors that can support it with the infrastructure um I was thinking back to the community survey and how it was broken into four garners. There were like four territories that really needed to be five. And as you were talking, I was thinking about the distribution of this kind of work and how really need to sort of create these local these garner nodes that have almost everything in them there's commercial retail jobs uh residential and those kind of amenities and i think we need to incorporate that sort of in the top of mind for when we're when you're looking at our land use map and saying hey maybe we should do something different over here and we're doing the same thing the example i use the south garner area all that area down there we got six thousand homes and no commercial within you know we need to bring more folks in who can look at those areas creatively and talk to landowners because we're also doing a disservice, not you, but we as a community to our landowners when we're just letting the track builder come in and do that instead of elevating that property to a potential mixed use or commercial use. We're actually, it's more beneficial to our residents who live here. So I think, again, kind of thinking out loud, but we're a bigger town. We want people to not have to drive across town to get to things. And hopefully like the message like tomorrow that we're kind of sending to our development partners is that Garner's open for a new kind of business. I think that's the kind of what we want to project. We're going in a slightly different direction and those of you who can meet the needs we have, we're welcome to have you. The rest of you, there are other opportunities out there for you.

Yes, very timely observation given our partnership meeting tomorrow. Thank you very much. Questions?

I would just like to say for April, for your commercial that you put on, But for the downtown, I tell you, it's really eye-catching. And it's something that's very new and fresh to see. I'm bringing history here, kind of like Greg, going back some years. I remember when. And now just the growth and everything that's going on there, my hat's off to you and what you're doing there and advertising and putting downtown in a positive, strong light. Appreciate it.

Thank you, Mr. Vance. And I would also like to say, yes, Bella is still here. Thank you to Bella. She is always the person who is recording my videos, and I really appreciate her support.

Indeed, indeed. Other observations, comments? Back to you.

Thank you, Miss Wood, Mr. Gruber. And the last report this evening is your monthly talk of the town. I'll ask Mr. Hodges to quickly go over the highlights. So, Mr. Hodges.

Yes, ma'am. Just a moment. Sorry. Your talk of the town report includes the schedule for the boathouse, which opened this past weekend, and some dates and hours for that. The law enforcement torch run will be held tomorrow morning at 9 o'clock, and this is a benefit for Special Olympics. Participants are asking to meet at the police station before the run begins. We've already talked about our Memorial Day observance. April mentioned her concert that was held this past week. But in your talk of the town you've got a commercial message for the next one which will be June 18th This will be on a Thursday due to the holiday that is on Friday, and this will be Jim quick and coastline Also in your report are also statistics We are beginning to see our tall grass and weeds numbers creep up as they typically do this time of year along with things like miscellaneous straight street calls and parks and town property As always, I'll just give my reminder that the numbers you see here for things like Tallgrass and some of our other code compliance issued numbers are not complete because our team has moved to be such a proactive group that they're out ahead of these before they get reported in to the Garner Info app. So you see these numbers rolled into our development services numbers and not always in these numbers. But if you have any questions about any of the announcements or any of the statistics from the Garner Info app, I'll be happy to answer those.

Any questions, comments?

Mayor, that's, and mayor, members of council, those are all the manager reports this evening. Happy to answer any additional questions that council may have.

Hearing no more questions, I do have one more comment about the food truck radio April 12th. It was a huge success, and I discovered one of the little-known benefits of such a rodeo. If you suddenly find out that it's your turn to host the in-laws' family reunion, you say, meet me on Main Street. Unbelievable menus, all you can eat and drink at your expense all day long. We don't set up, we don't clean up, we don't pay up. Y'all have fun. Turned out great. And I guess that brings us back around to attorney reports.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I am pleased to introduce you to our summer legal intern, Jessica Lely, who is in the back of the room with our assistant town attorney, Morgan Pierce. She is a current law student at the state's newest law school, High Point University School of Law, and she served as a paralegal before she entered law school, so she is a unique set of skills that she brings to this. But I do wanna say like something that caught my eye in her application was she put in her cover letter that the opportunity to research legal issues, observe council proceedings and assist with matters involving planning, development and municipal operations would provide invaluable experiences as I continue developing my legal skills. So definitely with an interest in municipal law, we're pleased that she's joining our team for the summer.

And I'm pleased. I was only slightly confused. She started out in a beautiful corner office with a view, and then I look around, and she's in the lobby with headphones on. It's very confusing, but I'm sure it'll all work out. And that concludes my report for tonight. Wow. Now we're to council reports. Other than the committee business that we talked about, let's start with Mr. Matthews and see if you have any other council. Nothing else. Mr. Singleton?

So based off the email we received today, there will not be a formal ribbon cutting for the splash pad, but it will open this weekend, a soft opening.

Yes, so I sent and members of Council and update we're working with the County Health Department to get all our approvals to be able to open. We're finalizing that and will be finished with that the goal is by the end of this week. Unfortunately, the weather is not going to cooperate for us towards the end of the week. But what we're going to do is a soft opening for the weekend for the holiday weekend and then we'll do an official ribbon cutting shortly after sometime in the near future.

All right. Thank you. Thank you.

Mr. Stallings.

I just want to say I want to thank the council for the action that we took on the data centers. I know the community appreciates it. The fast movement and the fast pace of the planning department. Definitely excited to see the action that we took this afternoon.

Mr. Dellinger?

No report.

Mr. Vance? No report. Wow. Wow. And there's no closed session, I understand, this evening.

That is correct.

So it looks like we've covered all the things on the agenda. It's only nine after eight. If there's no further business, no further items we need to... Something up.

If you want to stay a little longer, we could...

Ha, ha, ha. Make my day, come on, make my day. Give me something else. If there's no further business we need to discuss, I will accept a motion to adjourn. So moved. Is there a second? Second. Moved by Mr. Vance, second by Mr. Dellinger. All in favor of adjournment, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Anybody that wants to signify that they're not in agreement, just stay as long as you like. Meeting adjourned.