Town Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening and welcome to the town of Garner's regular council meeting of June 2nd, 2026. And you talk about a beautiful evening in Garner, this is the best yet. Somebody said it feels like fall, but I said even better because we know it's not going to be winter next week. So this is a good thing. No winter next week. This is great. That being said, I'm calling the meeting to order and let's ask our town clerk to please call the roll.

Mayor Gupton.

Here.

Mayor Pro Tem Dellinger.

Here.

Council Member Matthews. Here. Council Member Singleton.

Here.

Council Member Stallings. Here. Council Member Vance.

Here.

And it's my turn and my honor to lead the Pledge of Allegiance and then a brief invocation. If you're able to stand, please do so as we recite the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance.

I think I've shared with some of you before that in the third grade, Miss Bass always came in with the thought for the day. And I've tried to remember that all the time. And today was a good day to call back on that. And the two words for today are thank you. I had the privilege today of meeting at a quarterly meeting with retired teachers from Garner High School they all look younger than me somehow i don't know how but i told them i never told you thank you enough these people changed my life so many of them in so many ways but like so many of us kids we didn't take the time to say thank you so i tried to say thank you and to remind them for every thank you they heard there were 100 more who meant to say thank you so please don't miss an opportunity to thank the people who help you, whether it's the fire, the police, first responders, whether it's your neighbors or your kids or your parents. Please remind them that it's thank you and we appreciate what they do. Saying that, we'll move right along to adoption of the agenda. And I will ask the council members who have looked at this, is there a motion to adopt the agenda? So moved. Second. A motion by Mr. Stallings and a second by Mr. Matthews. All in favor of adopting the agenda, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed by nay? Hearing none, the agenda is unanimously adopted. That brings us to a highlight of this evening. We have a couple of great presentations. The first one is really important. I'm going to call on our inspections director, Paul Padgett, to give us a little background and talk about the special presentation here.

Thank you, Mayor, council members, staff and guests. Privileged tonight to be able to recognize one of our employees in the inspection department for his recognition for service. Bill Lamb will be retiring at the end of this month. May get a little emotional. He's only been with us for seven years. He started in 2019 as a supplemental fire inspector, transitioned in 2020 to our second full-time member of the fire prevention group, and in 2023 was promoted to fire codes administrator. During that short time, he has taken that group and done amazing things with it. We have a small fire prevention group, but they meet state mandate, which is pretty impressive across the state, which is a schedule set by the state fire code. He is a mentor to I think everybody in the inspections department, and I would dare say a true friend. A little bit about Bill's journey. So he started his public safety journey back in 1980 when he started volunteering with the Coates Volunteer Fire Department. And we'll stay on the public safety side and we'll go back because he's done a lot of amazing things. We'll fast forward to 1998. He began his career in local government with the city of Fayetteville Fire Department and served in many roles during his time there. In 2015, he transitioned to the Harnett County Fire Marshal's Office, where he continued in the fire prevention side of things and public safety. And then, like I said, in 2020, we were able to get him to come here full time. We'll roll back some years. Bill also served in the military here. He served in the North Carolina National Guard from 82 to 88, and in the U.S. Army Reserves until 2003. He retired at the rank of E-7, a Sergeant First Class. He's also extremely involved in his community. He's been a member of the Masons since 1990 and the Shriners since 94. He's also a trustee at Sansum Community Church, where he's been a dedicated member for 25 years, helping the community there. As Bill prepares for retirement, he plans to spend more time with his family, friends, especially he's got four grandkids. Now we're going to miss him, but Garner will always be a home for him. I would like to pass along the mic to Chief Penny if we can. Bill works very close with the fire department. That's all right.

Thank you.

mayor members of council and especially to to bill tonight i just wanted to stand up on behalf of the fire department and thank bill because many people don't realize he is the first line of defense to firefighter and public safety he's the one that ensures that our buildings are built to code And I can't tell you the number of times Bill calls our office, confides in our staff to make sure we're happy with things and that we're satisfied. So I just wanted to come up here and thank him for all your many, many hours of making sure that not only today, but for years to come, that our public safety and our general public will remain safe. And that's because of the work that you've done here, Bill. So thank you.

I've got a little certificate of recognition. Bill, if you could come up. So it's a certificate of recognition. This certificate is awarded in recognition of exemplary performance and dedication to the Garner community, to Fire Codes Administrator Bill Lamb, April 8th, 2019 to June 30th, 2026. Bill Lamb has consistently demonstrated strong leadership, exceptional attention to detail, and a commitment to upholding the highest standards of his role for our organization and community. This recognition is given on the second day of June, 2026. Thank you, Bill.

I want to just start off and say thanks to the mayor and council, Ms. Miller, Mr. Hodges, and Chief Poole. You know I can't call you Matt, so. But Chief Penny, for your words, thank you so much. And my family that came tonight, they drove all the way from Harnett County up here, and it's kind of a surprise to see some of them, and I appreciate that. And the staff, the inspections department that stayed late tonight will come back for this. Thank you all so much. I also thank y'all for giving me this hour to speak. I appreciate you taking out your time. But no, it started when I came here part-time in 2019 or supplemental. I had no intentions whatsoever working beyond part-time and the door just opened. The door opened for me to come full-time. It wasn't just about the members of the council, whatever, approving a part-time position coming full-time, it was an absolute blessing to me. At the time, I was needing something beyond where I was at, and this was an absolute blessing to me. And I'll say that from the beginning, and I'll say it tonight in front of everybody. It was a blessing to me. And I appreciate it. I do appreciate it more than you ever know. I appreciate the time I've been here. It was a little overwhelming coming here because the group, the fire marshal's office I came from down in Royal Hornet County, I had 400 inspections total. And here it's 400 behind when I got here. So of 2,000 and some, and we're sitting about 2,600 now, occupancies that we do inspections for along with the group. We've been able to bring on some other fire inspectors over the years that's helped out with that, and I think I will put them up against anybody in the state. It's a team effort, and I think we do a great job. But with that, I thank everybody. Thank you all. I hope everybody has a very blessed night, and good evening. Thank you, and don't go anywhere. Don't go anywhere.

No presentation is complete without a photo op, and I get to be in it. I get to be in it. Okay. But I want to just repeat the highest praise you may have heard tonight when our chief firefighter recognized the importance of the fire preventer. Absolutely. So thank you very much. I'm going to make my way over there. I'm going to ask Mr. Matthews and the rest of the council members for any comments or questions as I find my way. Mr. Matthews.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Growing up in Anger, I've been to old Harnett County, boy. We all wind up in Garner, so it's not a bad deal. But congratulations again. I know he's glad to get out of Coates and get up here. I've got family down that way in Coates and Dunn and Andrew and all that way. But fantastic job. You're going to be missed. And when you get tired of retiring, I bet they'll work a deal with you. He's already shaking his hand. And come on back because you know you've got a home up here. Congratulations and go fishing.

Yeah. Thank you, sir. Thank you, sir.

Congratulations on your years of service in public safety. Also a few years in the Guard and the Army Reserves. Thank you for your service there. And all your kind words about the folks that you work with. That makes us feel good because we hear it from people too. And to hear you talk about what a great team you have and that you work with, that's always positive to hear. Thank you and enjoy your, I got a feeling you might do a little work, enjoy your semi-retirement. Thank you. That's right.

Thank you for your public service. Just hearing your resume, it seems like all that you have done is rooted in public service. So thank you for your tireless passion and dedication and congratulations on your retirement.

Thank you, sir. Congratulations on your retirement and your years of service. It's you and your invisible hands and heart that protect the community, and it's good to see you pass it on to a strong team. It's a really strong legacy to leave in the town. So congratulations and enjoy your retirement.

Congratulations, Mr. Lamb. All that you've done is greatly appreciated, and your dedication and service to the town speaks for itself. Your professionalism leads an example for others. As has been said, your commitment is also an example. And wish you the best and good health in your retirement.

Thank you so much.

Well, now that was great recognition, but the next recognition we have coming up is for a whole group of people, and these are people who work really hard and really displayed a keen interest in the town. This is our Civic Academy graduation recognition, and they've all passed the test. There's no more tests. They passed everything with flying colors, and I'm going to ask our assistant town manager, John Hodges, to tell us a little bit about their journey.

Thank you, Mayor, and good evening, Mayor and members of Council. Earlier this year, our team had a vision to reimagine something that we used to do in our community, which was an academy to help the people that lived here learn more about the work that we do at Town Hall. So we pulled together a cross-departmental team of folks to reimagine something, think about things a different way, and started the Garner Civic Academy. We opened up for applications and we were overwhelmed with over 60 applications from people who wanted to participate. And we had the privilege of inviting 25 of those folks to be our first cohort for the new Civic Academy. So these folks have gone through an eight-week series of both classroom and experiential learning about the community they live in. We've had participation from our council members, which we appreciate you being a part of this as well. And last week, we had an official graduation ceremony for them. So we wanted to recognize them more publicly. And so we've invited them to be here tonight. And so we have some of our graduates that were able to come back. So at this time, I'm going to ask our Civic Academy graduates if they would stand up so we can recognize you. Thank you all, and we look forward to having you all actively involved in our community, even more actively involved in our community. Several of our graduates have already applied for vacancies on boards and commissions. Some of them will be recommended to you later this evening, and others are getting involved and staying involved in other ways. So thank you again for the opportunity to bring this program back in a new way. I did want to just thank our team here at the town who's behind doing this creative work. Rick Mercer, Bella Stoltz, Kyle Kettler, Rebecca Murray, Celeste Gore Purcell, Mari Howe, and Matt Poole. So thank you to the staff team who helped lead this initiative. I also want to thank all of our department heads and members of their staff who were responsible for helping create and execute the Civic Academy. We are planning to hold the academy again in the next fiscal year and probably moving that to a fall time series so there are fewer conflicts. So stay tuned for more information about the next cohort of the Garner Civic Academy. And congratulations again to our graduates.

I would just like to make the comment while you're up there, John, thanks for moving this towards the fall. That will give us plenty of time with the next bunch to complete their training and see which departments seem of most interest so that when it comes to springtime, the nominating committee composed of our first two folks down here might be looking for talent to be on citizens' advisory committees or other boards, et cetera. And this will give them a time to get oriented and then they can go through the screening process and find maybe a good volunteer spot. And with that, I'd like to get a comment from Mr. Vance and come on down about how you've seen this be successful.

Oh, yes. Congratulations to you all. We have several individuals who are already been accepted to be on several committees within the town and It takes commitment to do what you've accomplished. It takes time to learn about local government and be engaged with the community. So I appreciate just your enthusiasm that's been going all out. The energy has been quite evident, and just the insights that you've learned are invaluable. I will tell you just one thing. Be careful, because you may end up sitting in one of these seats up here. Thank you. Because I went to it many years ago, and look what happened to me. But congratulations to you all, and thank you so much for your commitment.

Yeah, it was good to see so many old faces and familiar faces, but then a bunch of new faces. And that really is kind of what Garner is all about. It's that mixing of old and the new and the past and the future. And it was really inspiring to come to the few sessions I was able to come to. And the future of the town is in good hands when we have residents like you who are willing to learn and continue to volunteer. So thank you all so much for your commitment. And thank you for what you will continue to do, I'm sure, in the future. Thank you. and thank you to staff for all the hard work and long hours across the town that went into this i think it's paid dividends for for everyone and reassures us all of the work we do every day so thank you so much

I echo my other councilman sentiments. Just walking in the first day that y'all were being onboarded and just seeing the energy and how excited everybody was to participate in the program and interacting with each other. I already knew that y'all were going to have fun throughout the duration of the program. So definitely congrats to everybody who went through the Civic Academy. I'm also gonna ask staff to let us know when the next application goes out because we definitely want people to participate so they can learn how the town operates and get more involved. But yeah, like I said, congrats and definitely look forward to the next cohort as well too. And thank you to staff for putting this together. This is an amazing program to help people get involved and learn the operations of the town. But kudos to y'all and look forward to the next cohort.

Yes, I was able to attend the last three sessions, and the first session was when Mr. Poole led the SOAR exercise, and it was great hearing y'all's thoughts and feedback and your comments because, you know, you look at it as a different set of eyes than we look at it, and so we need to hear from you, and hearing your feedback and your thoughts was very valuable. And thank y'all for sacrificing eight Thursdays in a row, and now you're here again, so you've been coming for nine weeks in a row. So it's greatly appreciated. It takes time. But you committed the time, and I want to thank all of you for participating. Thank staff also. It was really, really well done, and I bet you'll have plenty of applications in the fall for the next academy. But thank all of you.

Yes, congratulations. And, you know, it's with towns having issues throughout the state of North Carolina, it's nice to know here in Garner we've got people who want to be involved, learn what goes on, making that time commitment, which is tough, I can understand. But having you guys learn all about this it's going to make us better for everything that we do and it's your town too and now we've got good input and i know uh mr stallins he does the youth council so we're getting it both ways now so you know and that's going to be future leaders one day and y'all going to be right on right in with it so congratulations and thank you for the time and effort you put into it it will make a difference and uh and looking forward to working with you

Thank you. Just another great example of input we get from our citizens and our residents here. We're very excited to hear everybody's opinion. Mr. Hodges, any further remarks?

No, thank you. Congratulations again, and thank you to Council for supporting us in this initiative.

Thank you very much and moving right along that brings us to section D of our agenda which is petitions and comments which is another opportunity to get input from our residents and friends here and I'll ask our town attorney has anyone signed up to speak.

Town clerk has those names.

Has anyone found those?

Yes, sir.

How many do we have? Two. Okay. Well, in that case, let me read the disclaimer here about petitions and comments. This portion of the meeting is to receive comments from the public on items that are 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 start of the meeting. The council is interested in hearing your concerns, but will not take action or deliberate on subject matter brought up during the petition and comment 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 to make sure we get a chance to hear everyone and to take care of every business. So that being said, Ms. Gibson, who is our first speaker?

Our first speaker is Anna Shelton.

Yes, if you would come to the podium, introduce yourself and name and address, please.

All right, hi, can you hear me okay? My name is Anna Shelton. I live at 1225 Sutherland Road here in Garner, and I am here to speak about the issue of flock safety surveillance cameras being used all over the town of Garner. I spoke about this two weeks ago, and I'm continuing my efforts today after many people at the last meeting expressed their concern with this topic as well. For those of you in this room who are unfamiliar with this issue, it's time to become well aware. Flock Safety is a private startup tech company that has erected 20 surveillance cameras on roadsides all around Garner. These cameras watch traffic and take pictures of your vehicle every single time you drive past, logging your license plate and other identifying features about your car. This technology was implemented at the behest of the Garner Police Department, who signed a five-year contract with the company worth $257,600 of taxpayer money. This begs the question for our quiet community. Why? Why mass surveillance at all times? It's purely dystopian. People should know that these cameras are able to capture your image so much and create a map of where you have been that it is directly akin to having a GPS tracker stuck directly onto your car. And it's not just your car. Flock Safety is not only a camera company, it is a data company and it manages the data of other third party cameras that are found in more places than on just roadsides. It has been documented that a Flock employee by the name of Bob Carter has access to camera not owned but managed by Flock Safety in Dunwoody, Georgia that is located in a children's gymnasium. Randy Gluck, another Flock employee whose LinkedIn profile lists Raleigh as his home, did the same thing three separate times on three separate days to a gym, a gym where children and families play, practice, and socialize. How does this make anyone safer? Why are flock employees claiming that they do not look at or interfere with footage they collect and manage when they clearly do? What's to stop them from altering this information for their personal gain? Do we not think that this private company intends to lobby for more lax laws to ensure their business success? What is to stop them from altering footage to create a narrative to be used against someone in any way that they wish? Are these the people and the company we want representing and controlling the data of the citizens of Garner? Why are our police putting unfunded trust in a corporation who has been found to be viewing children? Frankly, it's humiliating. Our police can't do the police work. They have to outsource it. Don't we think that that $257,000 would be better spent on affordable housing, which helps prevent crime in the first place, or even salary for new members of the department, or better training? my call to action is the same today as it was two weeks ago citizens do not trust these things and it's eroding our confidence in the police i have nothing to hide personally but i still have somehow everything to lose please follow pittsburgh and remove these cameras i have literature covering this subject for anyone that wants after the meeting thank you very much thank you for comments on a very important issue and who was our other speaker tonight mr sam adams

Yes, sir. If you would come to the microphone, introduce yourself, name and address, sir.

My name is Sam Adams, 304 Grand Silo Road, right here in Garner. I just wanted to bring up, super short, but last weekend I walked through White Deer Park and there were two individuals who were smoking weed in the park and I don't know if there's additional signage that the town could potentially do or like a system where people can anonymously send alerts or things like that when there's issues that come up because obviously i wouldn't feel comfortable speaking on the phone on the non-emergency number for the police department so i'm not sure if there's any way that just kind of bringing it up to the town to maybe put additional signage or just additional ways to maybe do proactive policing or even just having people from Arachnid Parks just kind of walk the trails and just kind of be around the area, especially with all the family members and other people in the area. So that's really all I wanted to just bring up today.

Thank you very much, sir. We do indeed depend on citizens to let us know of issues. It takes many eyes watching to keep up with everything that's going on.

No more speakers this evening? No, sir.

Okay. And that brings us to item E on our agenda, which is the consent agenda. These are items that have been reviewed by staff and by council members. Typically, these are a more administrative, less controversial issue that we can approve them en masse based on our previous inspection and education here. If there's no council member who wishes to remove any item for further separate discussion, I will entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda.

So moved. Second.

Motion by Mr. Vance, second by Mr. Stallings. If there's no further discussion on the consent agenda, I'll call for a voice vote. All in favor of approving the consent agenda, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed by nay? Hearing none, that is approved unanimously. And that brings us around to... Let's see here. That brings us to... Public hearings, all right. There's another big one coming up here. And this will be a quasi-judicial hearing. And I need to read these instructions every time before we embark on a quasi-judicial hearing. This is different from our usual rezoning and annexation, which are known as legislative hearings. This has more rules, more like a little court. I'll read through this and make a comment or two as we go. When a public hearing requires a quasi-judicial hearing, each council member will be required to disclose whether he or she has a fixed opinion prior to the hearing that is not subject to change, had any ex parte communications, any close familial business or other associational relationship with an affected person or financial interest in the outcome of the case. There's a little more explanation here, but I want to stop right here and say having read those four items, I can say a clear no on three, but I personally can talk about having a communication with one of the people in this. I don't know exactly what ex parte means, but I want to go on record saying that I did make a call this morning after seeing an email from our attorney that she had not heard back from their attorneys on a particular item. I saw that we needed to address that. I didn't want anybody to be surprised or ambushed here. I called the property owner and said, my suggestion is to have your attorneys call our attorneys so there'll be no misunderstandings. So I'll go on record as saying I had that communication. And if there's any other council members who need to address any of these, we'll get back to that. But back to the disclaimer here, quasi-judicial hearings are fact-finding hearings and only competent material and substantial evidence that is not repetitive is allowed. Only expert businesses based on training and experience may testify as to the impact on property values, traffic safety, or noise levels. All persons wishing to testify or provide comment must sign up with the town clerk and be sworn in prior to testifying or submitting written comment. The staff report will be offered as evidence in the case and will be accepted into the record unless an objection is raised by the applicant or other person standing. That being said, I think we'll take this time to get the witnesses sworn in. If you're going to be a witness, an expert, if you would meet the town clerk over here for the official swearing in. Thank you. Now the details of this evening's case is special use permit request SUP SP 23-03 concerns the Timber Drive East mixed use project there known as E-District and we have Mr. Joe Linsky, Planner 2, to give us a little background on this. If you would, Mr. Linsky.

Yes, thank you, Mayor and members of Council. I understand there's a storm brewing near Lenovo Center tonight, so I'll try to be considerate of everybody's time. I'm here tonight to present SPSP 2303, Timber Drive East Mixed Use. The applicant is Linda Vasil of McAdams, and this is Mr. Yergin's property, and we're here tonight because this project surpasses the 200-unit threshold for a special use permit. So we have 300 multifamily units and over 95,000 square feet of commercial space on the site here. And it's a 42-acre tract on a larger parcel that we'll look at in a moment here. So most of you are familiar with this. We're at... We're at the corner of White Oak Road and Timber Drive East. The parcel itself goes all the way up to 70, and you're familiar with this as well, too, with the Wake Med project. The project as a whole, you've probably heard of it as the E-District. So this is a large portion of it, but not the entire E-District. So adjacent zoning in the area here to the north, a lot of that area has not been planned and developed yet. To the south, we do have retail that is considered part of the E-district, and that is a separate staff approved, staff level approved site plan that was issued earlier this year. uh to the east we have you know the uh white oak shopping center and then to the west there is um some r2 parcels there that are vacant land currently So looking at the comp plan a little bit here, again, staff is looking at this for UDL compliance, but I think the comprehensive plan is important here as well to take into consideration. This does fall within both a regional employment center and a regional retail center. Which are you know, this area is kind of intended as a part of the larger White Oak area, you know to certainly be a part of you know The development and and growth here that you know, it's been going on over 20 years In terms of Land character type it is a mixed-use center and the develop intensity is a mid-rise typology So here's the overall site plan and I'll break it down and we'll zoom into a few of these sections individually. But we have 4 residential buildings you'll see in the South West corner there and on the North and South East side there we have a a bundling of retail and then on the South that larger building is a grocery store. So again, the apartments are kind of the primary trigger for the SUP, but we are approving the entire site here as a whole. So here are the apartments. They've gone through a few different iterations. Originally, there were seven buildings, one of those being a clubhouse. And the site has kind of changed to be four with two kind of central larger four-story buildings with the amenity area in the center there. um the road to the uh to the right you'll see of buildings three and four that'll be a public right-of-way that connects to uh what will be the carolyn drive extension On the South East side we do have the grocery store. And the parking for and you'll see there also 3 out parcels that are closer to the corner. We don't have any plans for those yet or we're not aware of what what is you know tentatively scheduled for them. And then this area here is being called the village center. So this is all single story retail and they do have a kind of a centralized gathering space between building seven through 11 and then two other buildings closer to White Oak Road. So again, the 200 units are threshold that trigger the SUP. I already mentioned the retail to the south, and then the Wake Med campus, which we'll also be utilizing Carolyn Drive, and we'll also be bringing Jump Sausage extension close to this property here, or part of the property. The Wake Med campus was recently issued the site plan. So looking at our neighborhood meetings, so they did have their original one back in June of 2023. So this plan was originally submitted, you know, after we did our UDL update in 22. But before we had adopted the current plan, and five people were in attendance at the first meeting, and then a few weeks ago, the second neighborhood meeting was held with four people in attendance. So looking at the open space for the residential, they are required to meet the 10% open space requirement and they are doing so in terms of acreage and have even some additional open space in the stream and buffered area kind of to the north of the apartments here. And the village center, as I mentioned, has a gathering kind of central space for people who are visiting the retail businesses around there as well, too. In terms of stormwater, there are going to be three wet ponds, retention ponds that abut the stream there that runs through the property. And they will be meeting the nitrogen offset payment requirements and covering for the 110 and 25-year storms. in terms of landscaping it does meet the requirements of the udo that includes tree canopy coverage so you'll see the numbers up there for that which are split out between the residential and the commercial and then street trees they'll have along you know timber drive white oak and Carolyn Drive and the new right-of-way that'll go through the center of the site. Along Timber Drive, we do have our RTO, our overlay there, and you'll kind of see in the image here, highlighted a little bit in the green. There will be a 20 foot buffer retained along the areas where there are existing trees, where the parking abuts the right of way. So that's a long timber. Some parts of the property have already been timbered in the past. So there's some areas that are not forested along the road and interior to the site. So kind of affects how they had to do their tree preservation. And then they did, in our view, we did find that they had a, the applicant had a 25-foot buffer on the west side of the property that butted up to the vacant R2 land. after some discussions with staff they had to go through a variance which was approved at the April Board of Adjustment meeting so that did reduce the buffer from 45 feet to 25 feet and I think the Board of Adjustment took into consideration the parking that was needed here for for the apartments to meet their you know their minimum requirements there and then also took into consideration You know how those other adjacent properties if they were to be developed in the future It's likely the buffer size on both sides of the property would be reduced at that point anyway So just something to take into consideration The site lighting meets our our specs for the UDO in terms of placement and photometric distribution In terms of parking, so breaking it down between the multifamily apartments, they're right at the 518 spaces required for the UDO. And for the retail, they're required to have 419 and they're proposing 618. For fire access The plan does meet that turn radius is required for emergency vehicles and has sufficient spacing for hydrants In terms of utilities There's an existing 12 inch water main along White Oak that they'll be tapping into and the sewer will be extended through an easement on the west side of the property and And for transportation, so you'll see in the image, it roughly shows where our transportation plan from 2018 called for the Carolyn Drive extension and the Jones-Sausage extension. So between this project and Wake Med, both of those will be in the works, not completely fulfilled to Timber Drive necessarily, at least Jones-Sausage that is. But it will be constructed as a part of this project and Wake Med. White Oak Road will be widened to half of a four-lane major thoroughfare. And Timber Drive East was already built out to its ultimate section. And the TIA was completed back when White Oak was originally going through its development. So they did not have to complete a new one for the project here, but they've been in and works with DOT to update that. So they think the applicant can probably speak to that better. But there will be curb gutter and sidewalk throughout the site. Most of the drives are internal to the site are private, too. So the only natural resource in the on the property is that that blue line stream you can kind of see so there's a news 50 foot news River buffer around that area that they're protecting. So the applicant did provide elevations for the three-story buildings. For the retail buildings, since the beginning, there has been kind of an agreement that these will be fully designed and approved by staff later. at a later date through site plan modifications so we do have conceptual drawings of what they intend the e-district to look like and you'll see the architecture you know kind of matches building to building but the exact you know architectural elevations we'll be viewing those later and if they if the you know the dimensions change you'll have to update the site plan with that as well These are the conditions of approval. Quite a few of them are to be completed prior to building permit. Considering the size of the project, we've kind of considered that to be the first building permit to go vertical. So if you have any questions on these, I'm happy to answer. Otherwise, I'll refer you to page 33 for motions and can answer any questions that you may have. Thank you.

Okay, thank you. And do we have questions at this point? Would we like to hear the applicant, the property owner's point of view? Yeah.

Good evening, Mayor, members of the Town Council. Toby Coleman with Smith Anderson here on behalf of the developer and applicant Chartwell Property Group. With me tonight, we have a team of far more illustrious people than myself. Jack Dunn, the managing partner of Chartwell Property Group. Sarah Van Every, who's a planner at McAdams and knows a lot of the details, along with Linda Bassel, who's the project civil and knows even more details. And as well as Rich Kirkland, who's an appraiser. We brought him just to make sure that we're checking all the boxes for the special use permit process and meeting our obligations as the applicants. um we are thrilled to be here tonight um as you saw in that presentation this has been a three-year process to get in front of y'all on this special use permit um it's it's really been a a process where there's been a lot of uh cooperation work both with town staff and uh and with town leadership um you know this is part of the e-district uh something that i know that that the leadership of of the town has been involved with and this is really the first mixed-use phase of the E-District. It's gonna be a high-quality development that the town can take pride in, a new destination garner for experiential retail, the type that you see in North Hills or Fenton, with local restaurants, retailers, a new grocery store, and as you heard, 300 apartment units, which is what's triggering the special use permit requirement here. because it's already zoned CMX, it's already zoned commercial mixed use, so most of this stuff is otherwise permitted. It's really the departments that are triggering the special use permit. Y'all have already heard some about the public benefits of this project. There was a, you guys have discussed a little bit, a business incentive grant. You approved it back in November. And as part of that, you heard that Chartwell Property Group expects to invest, put capital investment to the tune of at least 105 million into the project. And that along with the Wake Med facilities, or the Wake Med facilities that are expected, this development along with Wake Med are projected to create 1,250 jobs. And in light of these public benefits, there was this, the council did vote back in November to award a business incentive grant to this project. And I'll just note that, you know, I think the resolution that y'all passed back in November said it well, which was that the investment that Chartwell is making in this project will enable other types of positive development in the town of Garner. And I really think that's true, both for this corner and in general. So here's the sort of village rendering for the E-District and for this first phase. It's a total, as you heard, of about 48 acres on that parcel. It's gonna be centered at the corner of White Oak and Timber Drive East. The heart of the development is gonna be this village green that you see up on the screen, surrounded by restaurants and retail. And as you see, there's gonna be wide pedestrian ways and really sort of, it's gonna create a gathering place for people to come and really provide experiential retail, a real destination for folks. Here are the apartment buildings, renderings of the apartment buildings. As you've heard, we're gonna go through sort of final site plan approval with staff as we move forward, or at least with the elevations, but these are the current elevations. What you see here are the four-story apartment buildings. We expect the retail's gonna be more like one-story. The big grocery store will be grocery store size you could have two stories in it but these will be the tallest buildings in the project as was as staff noted these are going to have internal corridors there are going to be elevators served and they are going to be a high quality product really i think consistent with what the town has indicated it's looking for in this type of development This is just an overall site, but I do want to note, just for the record, this development does satisfy all the criteria for a special use permit set out in the UDO. It's not going to endanger public safety. Among other things, as you've seen your staff report, the planning and engineering staff have determined that the existing road improvements in the area, including plan improvements on White Oak and the construction of new public and private roads within the development meet all town policies and requirements and also is noted really what happened here just to give you all some context is is that I have to remember how to do this so When you look at Timber Drive, there's a bunch of little sort of bumps on it. When Timber Drive East was built about 10, 12 years ago, and my math may be a little off there, DOT actually set where the entrances would be. And as part of all of that process, there was a TIA done where basically everybody assumed that there was gonna be sort of mixed use development. And that's why you heard tonight that there was not another TIA that was required was because as part of sort of the overall process of the Timber Drive East improvements done back then, TIA and other estimates were done. And there was extensive discussion as we're going through the three years, three years of process in this plan about what was needed. And ultimately, both DOT and the town agreed that a new TIA was not required at this point because it already sort of been baked in to the prior with the prior project. Mr. Kirkland will testify that this project will not substantially injure the value of adjoining property. We'll have him on in a little bit. You saw in your staff report that the TRC, staff has concluded through the TRC that this project does meet all applicable UDO requirements. You also saw sort of an outline of the Garner Forward applicable, designations, and this project really does meet all of those requirements. As you heard, this area is designated as a regional employment center, a regional retail center. It's also designated for mixed-use center. you know, this is going to meet all of those requirements. This is the, you know, what the regional employment center and the regional retail center call for are for, you know, are both to provide for the employment centers, but also to provide a hub for people to live near those employment centers and people to, you know, play, eat, shop. And that's what really this mixed-use center is providing, because it's going to be right next to the, you know, the E-District is, anchored around the new Wake Med whole person health campus, trying to make sure I got that right. And and so this will provide the housing and other things both for that and for what's planned to come for the for the rest of the district, which is the hope that has always been talked about. by the team that's really developing overall in district is that this is going to be a place where you're gonna see biotech where you're gonna see other research and other sort of work and so this is sort of the The live and the play part of that that's coming in and really an important part of it The The I'll go on this. This is the overall site plan. It will be compatible with surrounding uses, largely because most of the surrounding uses are either the shopping center, the shopping centers on the other side of White Oak, or the future e-district parcels. Really, the only parcel, the only adjacent property that is not part of the e-district or part of a shopping center is on this screen is that bottom left property owned, it's a church-owned property, it's vacant, and it's designated for mixed use under the Garner Forward Plan. I would submit to you that although it's currently zoned residential, It's very unlikely that anything currently on Timber Drive East that is vacant next to this project is going to ultimately be residential. So we think it is very consistent, particularly given the comp plan designation with all surrounding properties. There's no adverse impact as the staff report on natural environmental things. There's no wetlands or other major environmental sensitive, environmentally sensitive areas within this development. There is a stream that's outlined there. There will be required buffers provided for that. And as the staff report noted, except for the crossings over that stream, those will all be protected, tree fenced, all that stuff. There's gonna be adequate facilities, and all necessary continuing maintenance assurances will be provided. And so with that, I'll go ahead and call Mr. Kirkland up to provide his findings, and then after that, we'll be available for questions. Let me get you. So, Mr. Kirkland, before you start, I'm showing you a letter on Kirkland Appraisals letterhead dated May 30th, 2026. Is this a true and accurate copy of your letter regarding your analysis of the impact of this development on adjoining properties?

Yes, it appears to be.

Quite good.

Perfect.

Good evening. Again, my name is Rich Kirkland with Kirkland Appraisals. I'm a state-certified general appraiser in North Carolina. I've been appraising here for 30 years. I also have an MAI designation through the Appraisal Institute and as well as the ARA designation through the American Society of Farm Managers and Rural Appraisers. We did an impact analysis here and this is a fairly unique situation where Really, most of the adjoining property is actually the parent tract that this is coming out of. So we definitely don't see any negative impacts on the parent tract. The developer's pretty consistent and happy with this use. The only two adjoining uses that are not the parent tract is the White Oak Shopping Center and the out parcels of that, as well as the First Baptist Church of Garner land that was discussed earlier. Again, there's plenty of evidence and there's literature that I've cited, some references that are published by the Appraisal Institute in here that speaks to mixed-use developments actually being considered an enhancement to shopping centers, increases the broad base of customers and foot traffic that might be provided to the White Oak Shopping Center. So for the shopping center, we see this as actually an enhancement, not a negative impact. And the land owned by the church, again, the highest best use, we would look at that as going to commercial mixed use in the future. The future land use plan calls for that. I understand that it was purchased by a church about two years ago and likely to be developed by as a church in that capacity. Churches are very flexible. We appraise churches for construction and also for refinancing regularly. Churches are unique in that they are a fairly benign use that doesn't cause a lot of negative impacts around them. So you can find them in residential areas, but you can also find them in high density commercial areas as well as in industrial areas. We regularly appraise churches that are located in industrial areas. We cited a few examples of similar churches in commercial, high commercial areas and also industrial areas. Again, we don't see any negative impact coming from this, and especially when you consider that the area closest to that future or the land owned by the church is the apartment site, which, again, would be potential congregation for any religious building built there. So it's our professional opinion that the project has proposed. It's very consistent with any commercial mixed use that would go here. It's been zoned commercial mixed use for some time. It's been well known that it was going to be commercial mixed use. And when the land was purchased two years ago, it was clearly known that this land or surrounding land was going to be developed as a commercial mixed use. It's just a question of whether this particular mixed use has any impact. issues with this and we don't see any. So I'd be happy to go into greater detail but it's my professional opinion this would have no impact on the adjoining property values other than possibly an enhancement to White Oak Shopping Center and that this is a harmonious location and typical of what you'd expect to see in this location. Happy to answer any questions if you have any.

Okay, any questions for this expert?

Okay, thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, Rich. And with that, I would ask that Mr. Kirkland's report be entered into the record, our presentation be entered into the record. I'd also ask that Mr. Kirkland be accepted as an expert in property valuation and appraisal. And other than those three requests, we are available for questions.

Okay, so that's the general presentation, and you're ready for some more general questions? Yeah. Okay, well, good. Well, we'll start with Mr. Matthews this time. Excuse me, Mr. Mayor. Excuse me, go ahead.

Confirm for the record whether you accepted the reports into the record and Mr. Kirkland being tendered as an expert witness in this case.

Do we need a vote from council on that?

You can roll on that as the presiding officer, and then any council member who wishes to appeal that ruling could appeal that by motion.

Are there any objections or any discussion about accepting Mr. Kirkland as a certified witness on that? There are no objections. Yes, we do accept that. Thank you, Ms. Parliamentary. Thank you. Now, that being said, we will take questions from the council. We'll start with Mr. Matthews. We'll run kind of through one question each and we'll come back around with more questions for Mr. Coleman or for Mr. Linsky as appropriate. Let's start with Mr. Matthews. We'll ask a question and we'll keep going until everybody has their questions addressed.

No particular questions, just a couple comments that I know this project's been worked on for quite some time and it's most certainly properly located in that whole area there. And I like the fact that the major food store is going to be, I'm sure, will be a big hit and I like all the commercial activity you've got all in there. So it looks to me a well-planned project, and I'm looking forward to seeing things starting to happen out there. So I appreciate you working with staff and with us, and I know trying to get everything clarified up, and we've got a good staff, and they know what they're doing, and I know you guys have been working with them. So as long as we've got that going, we're going to be all right. Thank you.

Thank you. Mr. Stinkle, any questions or comments for Mr. Lenski or Mr. Coleman?

Yes, Mr. Coleman, I have several questions, and I think you know where I'm going. Due to being here at a previous meeting, the concern about the Blue Ridge loophole and rental property and the property tax exemption, and I got a correspondence from our attorney in regards to that. I think we're concerned about it. I would hope we could get a condition added to the SEP because of the impact that If the property owners and then you can say that they don't may not plan to do it, but if it happened Or if we got sold and another owner decided to seek it the impact it would have on our town services on infrastructure on Public safety on public works on those projects as they become town streets. We care for service calls with fire police and rescue It's just an impact that we we need some kind of We need some kind of assurance, and again, if additional conditioning will be added to the SEP permit, that will give us at least something, because the General Assembly is obviously not in a hurry to pass this loophole, or to repeal the loophole, and we don't know what it's gonna look like. I think one side has approved something, but not both. So I'm concerned about what's gonna happen and what we can do to help kind of ease some of that concern, because we can't be building a project, and this is a very good project that's been working for years, even before three years, and it's got an incentive package that we sure can't do having incentive package and then have property tax exemption at once. That would be crushing for the town. So we need to get something with you, Ms. Jones, to assure us, and I hope the rest of council agrees about what we can do to know that there will not be the property tax exemption sought for this project, for the residential part of the project.

And I will sing the praises both of staff and particularly Ms. Jones, your town attorney, because she reached out to us last week on this. And Mayor, thank you for reaching out to whoever you reached out to, because I'll make it clear for everybody that's listening. The application team has not had any direct contact with the mayor or council, but we did basically get the message that you had sort of passed on to whoever you passed it on to that we needed to confirm that. We did reach back out to Ms. Jones. We have confirmed that we do not anticipate seeking a property tax exemption. And in fact, this is an interesting case where the business incentive grant granted by the town The reimbursement that ultimately will come to the developer is based on increased property tax revenue, and you don't get any money until you pay the taxes. And so there's some disincentive there off the top not to take a property tax exemption, that said we appreciate the concern um as you noted i i was here last week i heard a little bit about y'all's concerns at a separate at a council work session about the same issue and i've talked with mr mr dunn about it he's the developer um and i've talked with with miss jones about it uh and uh she and this is our thought and obviously subject to council's thought but A property agreement not to utilize a property tax exemption I'm not sure. I've heard that maybe other people have said different things. I'm not sure that it fits well within a zoning determination. In this case, there's still an agreement that needs to be made for the business grant business. And I think that is the best place for that provision. And we are prepared. And Mr. Dunn has stayed as much happy to bring him up if you need him to. we are prepared to include that provision within the the economic development agreement the business incentive grant agreement that as part of that agreement and again in that agreement it would be you know basically for I think the term of the agreement, which could go up to 30 years, that no property tax exemption will be sought. And I think that, again, I'm not your counsel, obviously the town attorney is, but in my mind, in Toby Coleman's mind, I think that is a better place to put it because you're literally talking about tax revenues and then you're saying we're not gonna do X, Y, Z related to tax revenues.

May I ask Ms. Jones for feedback or thoughts? what Mr. Coleman said by putting it in the incentive agreement versus to the SEP.

In the incentive agreement, there would be a contractual relationship between the developers and property owners of this project and council. In order to impose a condition on the special use permit, you'd have to meet those factors that are outlined in the UDO. So there are factors that you can consider when you're imposing a condition. One of those has to do with the impacts on public infrastructure, utilities, services that the town provides.

So you're saying that you prefer we put it in the SEP or put it in the SEP in this other agreement or we're gonna wait to hear more comments?

You could certainly ask more questions, but the incentive agreement is an agreement between these particular developers and the town. There may need to be additional assurances provided for any subsequent property owners or purchasers of portions of this property.

I'll let someone else ask questions.

Thank you very much for asking a very important question. It is complicated, but I'm hearing that there is some agreement between the developer's attorney and our attorney that there is a way to put some safeguards into this situation. And it may be in the economic development agreement It may be some combination of things, but there seems to be a basic agreement that you respect our concern about not paying property tax.

We absolutely respect the concern, and we're happy to work with the town to address it. We just want to work with you to make sure that it's addressed in a way that meets your needs and, you know, is... Obviously, I think, as you guys have noted, I don't think you expect that Mr. Dunn or his group would ever ask for a property tax exemption. I think part of the concern is, well, what if you sell the apartments five, 10 years down the road, and you want to make sure that's binding? We understand that, and so we're happy to work with you on that, exactly how that sorts out and continue to talk about it.

Thank you. Mr. Stallings, questions, comments?

I wanna ask a similar question to our attorney. Would there be a longer lasting effect if it went into an SUP rather than the business incentive contract?

The SUP basically approves the development project and does not particularly address the ownership or tax implications. So once you approve the SUP, they may gain some kinds of vested rights to build this particular project. Regardless of the ownership structure.

Even with a condition attached to the SUP.

The condition, again, would have to apply to addressing the impacts of this proposed development. Whether this can survive any additional scrutiny from the courts in the future is an unknown question. So if you're looking for a long term beyond the period of the investment, the economic development investment agreement, that's unknown. But I believe you should ask questions of the applicants as to what they propose they might do to ensure that subsequent purchasers also abide by this commitment.

Is there any thoughts around any assurances we could have as a town if there were to be a purchase made to another owner?

I'll admit that I had not fully thought of that specific question, so I'm a little on the fly here. I think the economic development agreement term, I think, is probably your strongest place where it would probably be the easiest to survive a challenge if somebody down the road challenged it. Again, this is my legal opinion and obviously nobody's tested this issue. I am not, I frankly don't have an answer for you on whether owners can bind future owners as to whether they seek property tax exemptions. So for instance, one thing that I heard in that, one potential idea would be, could you do a covenant just don't know if you could do a covenant and I don't want to tell this council that something can be done and would work when I don't know if it can I want to I just want to be honest with the limits of my knowledge and this is this is a question that I think I think we're all working on a little bit on the fly so I this is not I'll be frank with you I do I all I do is land use that's that's my that's my practice area I have I This is the first time I've run into a question about basically taxation and property tax exemption. And I just don't know. whether taxation issues can be addressed within the scope of a zoning document. There are limits. For instance, the courts have held that you can't regulate ownership type, so you can't say people have to own property, they can't rent property. That's not something that a zoning law can do, according to the courts. I don't know what the courts, to my knowledge, the courts have never addressed property tax exemption and whether you could regulate that so I don't I don't have a great answer for you there I apologize for that but I think that's because I'm not sure that anybody does again I I've looked at Terry but I I think that I think we're a little bit trying to figure we're all trying to figure something out together I have another question as well too that's not

It's not similar to this one, but I see in the summary discussion items, I'm assuming this came from the neighborhood meeting, it says, do you already have designs for a multifamily? And it says, would assume higher quality to match retail. The answer was the architect is developing elevations for the retail now, but the multifamily elevation would be complementary to that vision. When are each of them being developed? Are they being developed separately? Because I've heard it been mentioned that you will go through a site plan review with staff on the multifamily. On the elevations?

Yes. I'll let Jack sort of answer you on sort of the timeline of these things.

Good evening, Jack Dunn with Chartwell Property Group. You got a sense for the multi-family elevations in Toby's proposal? The retail elevations are recently developed. We've hired Nelson out of Atlanta who did the architecture for Fenton here locally. They'd probably be the closest parallel. Because we still have this step to go through. The retail elevations end up being highly granular. When you look at a grocer, there's a lot that goes on mechanically inside a grocer in addition to just a pretty box. So the grocer has held off on their final elevation until we had full approval from Council because there are lots of things that have to transpire relative to refrigeration and loading and so forth and so on that will then have to work with them to make sure are done in an appropriate aesthetic manner but it's hundreds of hours and hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of work which we've agreed to work collaboratively with staff here in evaluating how we do that and making sure that they stay true to the general elevations that we've shown tonight the same transpired toward the small shop retail again you have a lot of granular details and whether you have a yoga studio or a food and beverage operator changes the elevation a little bit because the food and beverage guy has a back of the house function the yoga studio doesn't so forth and so on so from here we'll really get into those elevations and it'll be driven very much by the users that are going into the space in addition to just general elevations. Thank you. Does that answer your question?

Yeah, thank you.

It's a long way to, sorry.

Well, it's all important stuff. I'm glad we're taking our time, Mr. Dellinger, for a round of questions.

Excuse me, a couple of questions. Just getting clarity on the TIA, I think I heard that It was being revised but also that it had already been done and there is no any further TIA work which is there no more TIA work being done for this project?

There was safety analysis done with DOT because some of the road conditions had changed before for traffic volumes etc. I think the original TIA on this track that And the work that associated with that TIA has for the most part been done already. We're falling way, way below those traffic volumes. I think it was a million and a half feet of retail and I can't remember what the other.

When was that TIA completed?

2007, I believe.

When was it?

2007. 2007. And the road improvements, which included like the dedication of the land for timber and money as well, were all done, you know, two years later as part of the same TIA as well.

Sorry, we adopted a new comprehensive plan in 2023 that included some higher intensity uses than were in our previous UDO and comprehensive plan, including there's a change in the land use map and I'm looking at a comprehensive plan and this is a level four B area, is that correct? Area to transform mid-rise. That is specifically designed for mid-rise with a prevailing building height of six to eight stories. Is that correct?

That might be a question. Yeah, that is correct.

Okay. These are three-story. Four-story. Three, four. I think that the transformation of the comprehensive plan overlapping with this project has given way to a higher intensity use. I think that several concerns. One non-concern is the amount of commercial. The other concern is the deviation, significant deviation away from the comprehensive plan with regards to the verticality, particularly if the multifamily is the part that is a part of the special use permit, that there's not more verticality built into that multifamily component to channel. Mr. Singleton also see a dearth of open space. There's pool space and recreation space. I also have questions and concerns about the corner parcels on White Oak, and then sort of larger, beyond the scope of this hearing, the development plans for the rest of the, about the other parcel, rest of the parcel. And if this is gonna be a blueprint for the rest of the parcel, then we're gonna really miss the mark on what our comprehensive plan indicated for this parcel. If there is a, planned higher verticality use on the rest of the parcel, then there's a transition sort of happening here. But I don't see the rest of that plan, even absent that, three to four story multifamily does not fit within the scope of our comprehensive plan. I'll give a little bit of leeway that it is mixed use and it's diverse mixed use, which is good. But I think we're graduating away from three- and four-story apartments, particularly where we have the road capacity, which we have on timber here, and then we'll have subsequent road capacity with the pass-through traffic going up to 70 and Joe's Sausage extended. So I have a lot of hesitation in that it's just not consistent with the comprehensive plan, the multi-use part. So it gives me a lot of pause, and it sounds like you're in a little bit of a transition, talking with staff on how to develop that multifamily, is that correct?

I think the only dialogue with staff that is still to come is on the final particulars and the elevations. I don't understand.

We have more questions right now. Okay, Mr. Vance.

I apologize, Councilor Vance, but just to further address Mr. Dellinger's comment, statements. One thing I want to note is that in terms of consistency with the comprehensive plan, while we may not hit the six-story guidance in the Garner Forward Plan, we are hitting other guidance within the Garner Forward Plan. In addition, all of the uses are permitted under the underlying zoning. And so as a matter of law, that establishes a consistency with comprehensive plan just by hitting that.

And just to be clear, by right, you can do according to the UDO. three or four story it is explicitly inconsistent with the comprehensive plan that's not a question that's just a statement of fact so I want that on the record that it's inconsistent with the comprehensive plan I understand I'm just making the legal point that and this is something that was actually reiterated within the last couple years by the North Carolina Supreme Court that policies can change

If you if a policy if you want to enforce if municipalities want to enforce a policy they turn it into an ordinance And so what the courts have said is is that if you meet it is presumed that if you are meeting the ordinance requirements if you're doing the use is consistent with the ordinance then you are meeting the policy because the policy must Ultimately comply with that with ordinance. So that was my only point. I understand the point that it does. It is not hitting the height. I'm just pointing out that while that may be the case, North Carolina law is never required that you check the box on every single comp plan policy suggestion. So just wanted to note that for the record.

Mr Vance questions, comments.

Yes, this this is for the attorney. And it goes back to the general theme of the conversation, primarily relative to what's happening with the tax exempt status. Yes, sir. And the difficulty for getting for the record that we confirm that the development will not seek tax exempt status. That is an area of which is imperative to work through. One that we don't want to see happen. We've been blindsided, as you well know, by a project that said one thing but came back and did another. And it's imperative that we try to work out legally how we can prevent that from happening. so that we can keep the focus as for what is intended for this particular piece of property, as a piece of property with a large development here, E District is a key district, it's a focused district, one that's gonna be under scrutiny, so it's imperative that we get for the record how we can keep it from becoming tax exempt in the future. That's a major concern of mine at this point.

I guess I would address two things. Number one, we are, again, I want to reiterate, we are prepared to enter, to document that there is no intent on behalf of the developer, and nor do we expect that if there is ultimately a sale that any future buyers would do that. That being said, we think that the best way to do that is through the incentive agreement, both because it addresses taxes and the payment of taxes, so clearly sort of on point. And I think what we could do would be to work to say that it runs with the land. and therefore work to find a way that it runs with the land and basically binds the future owners of the land. I would suggest that that's the best way to do it. Again, I will just acknowledge that under North Carolina law, when you're talking about a special use permit, it's a little bit different than a conditional zoning, right? You all can impose conditions. We don't have to sign off on them. So if you all saw it as you wanted to impose a condition that said thou shalt not seek a exemption, property tax exemption, that's certainly something the council could consider. Really what I'm trying to think about here and the reason that I'm being as open and honest as I am about The fact that I just don't have all the answers here is because I just don't know if somebody in the future got their dander up and said, I want to challenge this condition on a special use permit. I don't know. I don't know how that would go in a court. As Ms. Jones said, I don't think Ms. Jones knows either. I do think that if it was a contract that was made to run with the land and was a contractual relationship versus a special use permit, which is set out in 160D, I just think that's a stronger place to enforce from. that's toby coleman you know i'm not i'm not your counsel and that's something that ms jones can advise you as to but that's that was sort of our thought and why we when we talked when i talked with ms jones we said we thought that the economic incentive agreement was the best place to do it um and so that that would be my proposal today um if that does not meet the you know again That was sort of what we came to council today with. If there's other concerns, we will certainly try to meet them, but I just don't have all the answers right at this moment. So I just wanted to be open and honest about that. Gotcha.

Okay. Next question is that in your public meeting, there was one question that came up in reference to the grocery that's going to be there looking at 4-4-28. Yeah. That's less than two years away. So you already have a timeline in place as to that whole project. Right. when it's going to happen. Yes.

That's all correct?

I thought you were going to ask who it was. I was going to hand it over to Jack to tell you that I think they know, but we can't. It's not public yet. Is that correct?

We have a confidentiality obligation.

Okay, confidentiality. We'll just have to wait on that.

We don't want to steal their public.

OK, I have no other questions at this time.

OK, well, that was pretty. Pretty extensive initial questions. Let's let's run back through one more time. This is very important. It is a quasi judicial hearing. We have a couple of issues that it popped up. One, if we talk about the possibility of property tax exemption, kind of a new item. A lot of unproven ground there of S2 solutions. Also, questions concerning perhaps the initial zoning or rezoning, those conditions. Let's run back through again. Mr. Matthews, questions? No questions, I think.

My colleagues have asked best.

I've got 2, 1, I may have to ask staff. You showed a quick little diagram of what was going to be the open space area between the apartment buildings 1 and 2 with the pool.

Yeah, I think that was the staff's presentation.

Yeah. Yes, you're right. Thank you. Showed a little area. I just wanted to

This isn't the entirety of it, but yeah, this is a like the courtyard in between the two larger central buildings. And I can actually this might show it a little better.

I see that. So that looks a whole lot bigger than that little circle that you showed us. That's what my question is.

Yes. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah.

So it is bigger than it's 1.41 acres or 1.43 acres, whatever. Including the pool, correct?

Correct. Yeah.

All right. Well, quick question where you're where your pointers right now, those three boxes are. They're not going to build one of the 3 boxes.

Yeah, I think that's where the botchy courts are I don't recall that's an all 3.

Excuse me miss every if you're going to provide testimony could you come to the Mike, thank you, thank you.

Sarah Van Every, McAdams 621 Hillsboro Street, Raleigh, North Carolina 27603. I believe those are the bocce ball courts. I don't recall if they are three separate courts. I'm not as familiar with the

rules in play of bocce um but that's what those are so there's obviously then some space in between um as well okay i just want to know what the three is intended to be open recreational space for the residents okay i'm just curious what the three squares were i didn't know what i know i mentioned bocce courts but that's what it was all right thank you thanks thanks for that question okay back to the um big issue i reckon I'm just, we've got to figure out a way, and you're right, somebody can come up later and get in court and say we don't want to do this, throw it away, but your part about the incentive is you have to have the incentive policy to be in place, which is this is a portion of that. You don't have tax revenue coming in, you don't get any type of incentive, business incentive. So we consider letting, if we approve this with a, agreement here that y'all will work that out? I mean, if through the economic, excuse me, the incentive agreement, the contractual agreement, I mean, how do we move forward here? And I know, we all know we're in new territory here until the loop gets closed, and then who knows what that's gonna say.

It's a little unusual to tie special use permit condition to a subsequent contractual relationship so my recommendation would be if you found sufficient evidence in the record that you impose a condition indicating that no property tax exemptions will be applied for without the consent of council that will leave the opportunity to evaluate that in the future the problem will be is once the buildings are built And if they go ahead and do it without your consent, what is the enforcement? you know, probably unlikely to demolish the buildings at that point if they're not in compliance. But if you feel strongly that there's enough evidence in the record that there would be a potential impact to services that could be provided if a property tax exemption were applied for for many of, you know, particularly the multifamily, but any of the property, any of the development that occurs on the property, then you could put that condition in while we also work on separately on the economic development agreement. Again, the special use permit conditions do run with the land with respect to the development of the property. The contractual agreement, we can look at seeing whether that can run longer than the terms of the incentive grant agreement.

Okay, as you mentioned, we're concerned about if someone sought tax exemption would be the impact on infrastructure, public utilities, and services provided by police, fire, rescue, public works, and any other town department. That's our concern is the impact on not having potential tax dollars to provide the adequate level of services for this property.

Yes, and the reasonable condition that's necessary to address those impacts, that's what you have to craft. So is that condition that they can't apply for a property tax exemption? My suggestion would be that that is without advance notice and written consent of council.

Okay. I'll let someone else talk and we'll... If I could... Go ahead.

Yes, sir. I was just... We were just talking about this, and I guess only two things we would add, obviously, would be that in terms of the incentive agreement, we'd have two suggestions. One is oftentimes development agreements... of this nature can be made to sort of run with the land because sometimes in terms of the reimbursements um you may have you may you may want it to go to one party or you may want it to go to the owner as it sort of goes on you may want the rights to convey over to the owner The other thing is that we would be willing, as part of the incentive agreement, to the extent that the council's concerned, is that you want to make sure that there's a commitment not to apply for an exemption. The agreement, as set out in resolution, could last for up to 30 years, because it can take up to 30 years to repay. And we would be willing to agree to a term that provides that, that basically says you cannot apply for a property tax exemption for the 30-year term, even if the property taxes, or excuse me, even if the incentive amount is fully paid up prior to those 30 years. So that would give you at least a 30-year period. It may not give you a forever period, but that's one suggestion I have that may sort of address the concerns.

Okay, I want someone else to ask questions.

Okay, Mr. Stallings, those questions.

I have one question. If we tabled this to the next meeting, this hearing, would that impede any of your timelines?

Probably not. Okay, because I want- I don't really know what we resolve in the next two weeks either.

language um working out some forms of the agreement um i'm the new guy on council so i'm learning this process as we go um but i definitely do think it would give individuals time to wrap their heads around this and possibly for the two attorneys to get together and draft some language or figure more out around the situation this unique situation that we find ourselves in

yeah i i would i would say uh you know obviously we we want to do whatever uh would make help make council comfortable we would like to get the approval today if at all possible but we understand the concerns here um i will join with mr with mr dunn that i am not sure We may be able to come up with some language and sit down and come up with some language. I'm not sure that we're going to have any more clarity in two weeks, four weeks. Absent the General Assembly acting, what we're talking about is what would a court do in some unknown case in some unknown future? And so the hard part really is just that what we're talking about is an area of law that I'm not sure has really been fully explored. And the complication part is when we talk about the Blue Ridge exemption, there's one case from the Court of Appeals that has created this whole issue. And so how does it all fit? We don't have a lot of evidence or information here.

My other council members may disagree, but I think maybe sitting down and hashing things out for two weeks may give us a little bit more clarity to make people I feel better than what I feel tonight about the situation.

Again, we want to certainly try to do whatever we can to provide counsel with the information you need. Again, we would like to. Our priority is to try to get this done, but we appreciate the concerns and the desire to get it right.

Hey, Mr. Dellinger.

Yeah, I'm glad to hear my colleagues so focused in on the tax exemption, focused on tax revenue, because I've figured out a way to generate 50% more taxes out of part of this property, and that's to go six stories instead of four stories. The E-District with Wake Med is an economic development project. It is an engine for the future of Garner. It is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity at I-40 and 70 to generate revenue for the town. We've provided incentives for it. And I think when you, to build, a grocer would like nothing more than to build more density right next to them at a high value at a high level. So I'm gonna hammer that home. We gotta talk about taxes in two different ways. We have to talk about generating it, keeping it, but also taking the burden off of everyone else. And this is one way we can do that by following our comprehensive plan. I have two other questions. One is mentioned about accessibility and elevators. Elevators are included. How is that captured in the conditions of the development? Is that a staff question?

I think that's a staff question. I don't know that there's a suggested commitment, but I think that the designs have been provided.

Yeah, there's no current condition on elevators per se. And to clarify, I think two of the buildings are three-story. They are all four-story, okay. So I guess, yeah, they are all four-story. But yeah, there's no condition specific to that.

And they can't go lower than four-story?

Like, could we condition the four-story at minimum, you're saying?

They're all four-story now. If they came back and said, oh, we want to do three-story, could they do three-story and not put in elevators?

There's nothing, I guess if it's approved today for four stories, I would think they would have to come back if that were to change at all. But no, I guess we don't have a, I'm not entirely sure. I guess I don't think we have a mechanism to require them to remain at four.

I'll ask the attorney. I don't think they'd have to come back if they're doing lower intensity. Is that correct?

That would be an interpretation of the Planning Director as to whether they've met the conditions. I had asked Mr. Linsky if he could pull up the rezoning conditions. And are there any rezoning conditions that apply to these situations?

Not to the stories considered. Most of the zoning conditions were kind of catered to discussing Timber Drive East when it was coming through that area before it happened.

As I understand it, they're delaying that decision as to what the full scale of each building is and its elevations for a staff review in the future.

Mm-hmm.

Correct.

I would like, I bring it up because this has come up before where the building code doesn't require elevators if it's three stories or under, and that becomes an accessibility issue for residents. their ability to access these apartments and have visitors and that sort of thing. So it would include a condition regardless of height with their elevators. If it can be added to the special use permit, that would be great. I'll make sure they're talking over there.

We'd have to add. So we just agreed that we would, we're fine with the condition. I'm sorry, go ahead.

Yeah, the condition to require elevators regardless of height.

In the apartments. In the apartments. Yeah.

Yeah.

I know we can. If you want to, I was discussing that with Mr. Alinsky. If you want to impose to make sure that there's clarity on that these will be a minimum four story buildings and all residential buildings will contain, will include elevators for accessibility. Is that what I'm hearing?

I was just going for the elevator piece because otherwise I'd say six stories. So let's just say the elevator piece. I don't think we're... The elevator requirement. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah, so are you suggesting, so that be a condition? Yeah. Separately, okay. Yes, yes.

And that is acceptable to the applicant.

Okay.

And then the only other question, and this is a density, and is there any considerations for affordable housing been considered or proffered as part of this multi-use, multi-family development?

No, sir. Mr. Vance.

Going back to what's been said about the conditions relative to the, for the record, the tax exemption, there was mention about writing it in now as part of it. I know that times before when we had situations like this, we would get the condition agreed upon by the applicant. But then after that was agreed upon, then we went through with the process of writing of the sup of approving it and this is in my mind it seemed like a similar case where we we reached a point where i understand that for us to delay may not be of much uh much benefit because we come back to the same same thing and what i've heard is uh that the condition would be no property tax exemption with it will be applied with without the consent of council to a general to as a general statement so far to be refined is that something that we could refine tonight because i know there were times we would do that before can we do that now to get somewhat clarity so we can move on with the process possibly, with the understanding that we still have, we'll be looking at various agreements in the near future?

I'll be frank with you, this is the first time, tonight at this meeting was the first time a condition as part of the SUP was discussed, because we had mainly been talking about the economic incentive agreement and how we could put that language into the economic incentive agreement. that being said just confirmed with mr dunn we have no problem if you know if if council would like to include that as a condition we're happy to work with you either tonight or however you'd like to do it um to to address that again i you know my only question is is i have no you know i've said before i i don't know how enforceable it is uh i think ms jones sort of said like what would you do if somebody by the way said we have no intention you know but if you're trying to protect you know the next buyer or the buyer after that there may be some holes there but it may be the best we can do at this point yes uh tony jones actually got us there but have you already given it i've given the guidance i i don't think we can craft

the appropriate condition tonight. We also don't have the language for council to consider for the economic development agreement at this time. I gave you an off-the-cuff suggestion, but again, that just came up in this hearing and has not been fully vetted.

Well, let me interject an opinion or two, if I may. This is a very important project. This is going to make or break Garner over the next 50 years, what happens at the district. It either lifts us up or stays the same. We want to be lifted up, and I'm hearing that universally from the developers and all their representatives and the property owners. They want to be the best that's ever been here. Also here, there is some concern about how do you lock in just property tax exemption that could rise back up and bite us severely again in the future. We're hypersensitive to this. I know it's a new area of law. We don't want to rush into failure. We want to walk into success on this thing. And hearing that a few more weeks may not be critical to the success or failure, that takes a little of the pressure off. I'm a little reluctant for us to try to redraft conditions and contracts here at a very short moment. I don't want to be rushed on that. Let me ask a couple of questions here, procedural questions. Are there any individuals who have signed up to speak tonight?

No, sir.

And so actually, I'm going to ask another question here. Could we conceivably close the public hearing but delay further consideration until a future meeting? Count this as the public hearing. Let us go back, research some of these topics, come back again and start with the motion at that time other than defer it, but a motion and then we can have discussion about the other details before voting on approval or disapproval. I guess I'm asking our parliamentarian for a procedure.

I would recommend that you continue the public hearing, otherwise if you wanted to consider any additional evidence pertaining to potential conditions that you would then have to reopen and we'd have to re-advertise the public hearing. But if you continue the public hearing tonight, you could limit that subsequent public hearing to the new evidence to be presented with respect to conditions.

Well, I'm kind of leaning that way, and it came from our rookiest new member over here, the idea of maybe don't rush, stop and think, to continue this to the earliest practical future date. It's kind of the sense that I'm getting a sequel. Instead of saying yes or no tonight, let's work through this in a more detailed way.

Let me make a motion. I move that we continue the public hearing two weeks from tonight, June the 16th, direct staff, the attorney, the worker, Mr. Coleman, the developer, to craft the appropriate language or language that Attorney Jones is comfortable with in presenting to the Town Council in regards to the SEP condition, if that way, and or the incentive agreement, and also the condition Mr. Dellinger mentioned in confirmation in regards to the elevators, no matter the height of the stories of the multifamily buildings.

Second. There's a motion and a second to continue the public hearing and this issue until June the 16th. There's a motion and a second. Is there any other discussion on this? Are we good with a voice vote on this? All right. All in favor of adopting, of approving that motion and delaying this to 16, please signify by saying aye. Continue. Continue.

Continue. Continue. Thank you. It takes a team. It takes a team.

To continue this hearing to June 16th, all in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed by nay? Hearing none, it's unanimous. We will continue this public hearing until the 16th. Thank you, gentlemen. Thank all of you. And I believe that brings us to the time that we have just passed. our appointed scheduled recess. So let's take a quick 10 minutes here. Be back in about three minutes before 8 o'clock, if you will. Thank you very much for your patience.

Bye.

And we returned from our recess there. We're back in business. And I just have to say that one of our citizens walked up and said, this is what America is all about, people exchanging ideas and finding a way to work through it. Just made my day. It's not always easy, but it's always what we do. Thank you all for your civility and your interest and your support on all of this stuff. And that brings us now to new and old business, item G. And the first item here is the NCDOT Benson Road widening project. And to tell us more about it is our assistant town manager, John Hodges.

Thank you, Mayor. Good evening again, Mayor and council members. Tonight we have an item that's a little unique. It is the purchase of right-of-way and easements that is required for an NCDOT project. and it is for property that the town owns. It is a widening of Benson Road, and since we're talking about this tonight, I wanted to take the opportunity to remind everyone watching and in attendance tonight how they can find out information about projects like this. So on the town's capital improvement plan project on our webpage, On the right-hand side, there are a list of NCDOT projects in Garner. This is related to the NC50 improvements between Rand Road and Buffalo Road. And so when you click on that, it's going to take just a moment to load because it's going out to another mapping, to another agency's website. But you will get to the actual DOT page for this project. And this project, as Council may recall, this is a widening project from Buffalo Road through the Rand Road intersection. This will add additional lineage to Highway 50, and it will also add a second bridge span over Swift Creek. So it's a project that we've been long awaiting. that we're very excited about and we've been partnering with Campo and DOT to make this happen. To make it happen though, there is right-of-way and easements required for property that is owned by the town on both sides of Highway 50 or Benson Road near the intersection of Rand Road. There is an updated memorandum at your seats tonight that has some additional information about the details beyond that that was included. The version that was in your packet has been updated, so please take a look at that. We have included in your packet the offer letters for each of the three parcels that the town owns. We've also included the appraisals for those parcels. The right-of-way agent that is representing DOT is here tonight should you have any questions. And also Attorney Jones has been working on this project And so either of us can answer questions for you tonight. But we do have three offer letters for three parcels of right-of-way and easement, one that totals $16,000, one that is $20,825, one is $28,050. And staff recommends the council's approval and acceptance of these in purchase of right-of-way and easements required for the project. I'll pause there, recognize Ms. Jones to see if she has anything to add, and then we'll be glad to answer questions.

Thank you, John. So you may recall when the town acquired the Lyles property on both sides of NC 50, basically the, and I always get this wrong, the west side is encumbered by a declaration of covenants that goes back to triangle land conservancy. The east side is partially declaration of covenants, but a large portion of a conservation easement that's held by the land and Water Conservation Fund of the state of North Carolina. So if you do accept this compensation amount, a portion of that money has to go back to reimburse the state for the grant that they provided to assist with the purchase of this property. We have We did receive a consent from them to go forward with allowing the right-of-way and easements to be taken out of the conservation easement area off of the property. So that's just an additional issue that had to be resolved with the state before we could bring these offers to you.

Thank you.

Yes, sir, we'll be glad to answer any questions that council has, and if not, council could consider action.

Excellent. Yeah, we did see a lot of the information in here and as usual, our assistant town manager and our town attorney have done their usual great job of doing the research, scouting us out, trying to figure out what do we have to do next to widen Highway 50, Benson Road. How do we obtain these right-of-ways and what's a reasonable price and the question for council tonight is should we accept the uh the amounts proposed and authorize the town manager to execute the execute the deeds of conveyance and any other necessary that's the question before us that being said let's start with mr transportation mr vance down here uh give us your thoughts on this process

Well, I'll just say one quick thing, that this is a very important segment of the NC50, which bottlenecks quite frequently during the peak hour period, and these improvements will be great for this area, which will make this whole segment of NC50 from from the beginning of 70 down to possibly to where the intersects with 540 become more palatable for higher scores in the future. It means that more improvements in the future. I agree with the proposed right of way and I have no further questions.

Thank you. Mr. Dell. No questions. mr stanley no questions mr singleton no questions mr matthews i agree with mr vance good judgment and our attorney and our town manager uh well if if there's no more discussion about this i'll accept a motion uh to to to accept this and move ahead is there such a motion so move okay second second There's a motion by Mr. Vance, a second by Mr. Dellinger, that we approve and authorize the town manager to move ahead with the diesel conveyance and other necessary documents to complete this acquisition of easements. There's no further discussion. It sounds pretty positive here. Let's go for a voice vote. All those in favor of that, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed by nay? Hearing none, that passes unanimously. Thank you for doing all your homework, Ms. Jones and Mr. Hodges, and making this pretty straightforward for us.

Can we ask Mr. Hodges, the public chair, and watching this, when may this project start?

I do not have a current timeline for the project. Let me go back to our project page.

As you know, since we've done this, somebody's going to ask this question tomorrow, and they can start on it. And we know it's some time away.

I don't mean to put Mr. Melkor on the spot, but do you know if all of the right-of-way has been acquired? Have you been waiting on the town, or is there other negotiations happening?

Can you come to the podium, please? Everybody else can hear you. Thank you. Thank you.

My name is Frank Melcher, 1076 Mill Street, Raleigh, North Carolina. Right-of-way agent on behalf of the North Carolina Department of Transportation. The let date is next year. I believe it's the beginning of next year, like March, something like that. But these are all real flexible. They always move. There's a lot of politics involved, so that's kind of a loose date, if that makes any sense.

But the good news is we understand DOT has allocated funds to move ahead with this, and we're working jointly with DOT to move ahead with a very important project here. We appreciate everything you're doing, appreciate what's going on here. It takes a while. Yeah, it does.

I believe you mentioned that the city of Raleigh also has to convey right-of-way.

They do. Yeah. And utility relocation takes place first, and that also is a moving target. We know with some town projects. Anyway, thank you for addressing that. Sometime in the next one to one and a half years, the project should be let and start.

We're hoping so. Thank you. Mr. Singleton, I brought back up the page that we linked to from our website. So if you scroll down to the bottom of the DOT page, they have a project timeline, which currently has right-of-way acquisition beginning spring of 2025. Obviously, that's taking at least a year to do, which is fairly typical. And then their tentative date for award of construction is summer of 27. And I'm sure that they will update those as things progress.

And thank you for pointing out that this information is available to the public.

Yes.

Okay, if we're finished with item one under new and old business, let's move to item number two, which is a code revision project update. This has been going on for some time. A lot of the details, this is many of our ordinances and codes other than the UDO have been worked on in bite-sized pieces, I might interject here. It's not one massive thing, it's a massive project. It's been broken down into phases. Terry Jones, our town attorney, is here, and I think you're going to introduce the presenters here.

Yes, thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'm pleased to have passed off a portion of this project to our assistant town attorney, Diamond Spain, who has been working with the Fire Department, Police Department, Inspections Department, and Parks and Recreation Department regarding some of the ordinances impacting our first responders as well as our miscellaneous offenses and weapons and explosives on particularly with respect to town property we've also invited Alex Bone, our GIS analyst from the planning department, to give you an update on the traffic control map that you saw last fall and where we are with potentially getting the traffic control ordinances into a map rather than a listing in the code of ordinances. So I'm going to turn this over to Ms. Spain and Mr. Bone at this time.

Good evening, everyone. I can't see. Hello, everyone. So I have taken the time to review our ordinance as it currently stands and address some of the significant changes specifically to chapter four, which is our fire prevention one. But first, let's look at the amendments that have been adopted. I believe the last update was in August of last year. And since then, we did proceed with the animal control ordinance and that was completed on April 21st of this year. There is a list available of all of the ongoing updates that have been made over time and they can be seen at this link. The town attorney, Terry, has completed the council rules of procedure and code of conduct and ethics. The sections that remain pending are chapters one and two and those basically reference our definitions, the impact of the code and changes that we make to the code. Chapter two also references the town council and how it functions overall. So there's still things that need to be changed there but those are ongoing and being worked on as well. And I tend to talk fast, so if I need to slow down, just let me know. The traffic control ordinance. So this was previously addressed, and there was a plan to create and interrupt mapping tool to address speed limit zones if you've ever taken a look at our ordinance there's a long list of these different specific places in town that needed to be addressed and they're now going to be located and can review them on this particular map and so that is where Alex comes in

Good evening, Mr. Mayor and members of council. So this is an updated version of the map that was shown off late last year. At that time, we had stop signs and school zones and speed limits on here. But now just to show the progress that we've been working on, we've also added yield conditions in addition to stop signs. We've also added parking restrictions. These include no parking zones, one hour parking and loading zones, which are on Main Street and residential parking permit zones. We've also added some miscellaneous restrictions, we're calling that now, and these are mostly just through traffic restrictions, just located on a few streets in town, mostly around 401 and 70, around Garner Road, and just off of Main Street and 70.

I have a question. I remember before with the school zones, we had only done it for town roads. Has state roads been added to the school zone mapping?

Not at this time. I believe there are more school zones in real life. These are just the ones that are in currently in our code of ordinances. I'll have to defer to town attorneys about whether we can put those in our code of ordinances.

So I think we'll be able to show them on the map. This part of the project would be to recodify all of those written ordinances listed in the code of ordinances, codifying them on the map. So we'll be updating the map as things get adopted. You'll still have to adopt ordinances where you have authority to do that, but I think we can create a layer that indicates that these are school zones, but we'll have something that says these are NCDOT adopted rather than the Town Council, which when Town Council does adopt traffic control, Ordinances with respect to state roads, we do have to have the consent of DOT to do that.

So we could just add a non-ordinance related layer on top of this map, basically. So all the ordinance layers would be grouped together, and then you'd have a non-ordinance school zone layer for state school zones so that you wouldn't have confusion as to what was referenced by ordinance and what was sort of added on for general operation.

So we'll have to work out exactly how that does and with the legend to indicate, because ideally people would be able to click on it and get back to the actual ordinance that adopted this. I don't know if Mr. Bowen wants to talk about, but in looking at the real life conditions, We have a lot more stop signs in the town that we have located ordinances for so we're still doing some research on that so we may have to bring in an ordinance to Basically establish all of the stop signs that have been adopted over the years Thank you when we are done with them they will have the ordinance number attached to them not all of these mapped

Ordinances have those yet most notably nearly all the stop sign conditions do But we're still working on adding that to all relevant layers And thank you you have some more information you want to share with us I No, I think that's it.

Miss Spain does, but I just wanted to thank Mr. Bone for all the effort. This is taking a lot of work and there's a lot of research going to to find all of those ordinances and make sure they're all correct and reflect the conditions that are actually on the ground and around the town.

Yeah, we have more streets than we understand. Sometimes there's a lot of, but want to make sure our council members had a chance to ask any other questions or make any other comments. We'll start with Mr Matthews.

No question. Thank you for showing the. Continue work that you're doing on this. Thank you.

Mr. Stallings? No question. Mr. Dillinger?

This is a lot of tedious work. Thank you.

And Mr. Vance?

No questions.

Excellent. Keep up the good work. Keep plowing through it. It doesn't happen in a day or a week, does it? No. It takes time. Thank you very much. Thank you. We appreciate your efforts. Okay.

Ms. Spain will continue with the presentation.

Okay, here we go.

So. Chapter four addresses our fire prevention and protection ordinance. So due to the merger that occurred last year with Garner Fire Rescue, our chapter four needed a bit of a restructure because it did not acknowledge them as a part of the town, which they are now. So we've made changes to address the establishment of it, the specific duties of the fire chief and the department. It's not going to be uh an extremely detailed list but something that gives the public an overall understanding of the expectations of the fire department we've also looked at adding provisions that speak specifically to prohibitions on interfering with fire rescue when they are attempting to carry out the work and services that we are thankful for them providing We also looked at adding some provisions that give clarity to the public on what they are or are not permitted to do, such as recreational fires and bonfires. There are technical terms that apply to these when we look at the North Carolina Fire Code, and there needed to be some clarity there so that people can still enjoy themselves, but do so in a proper way. It also will address the conditions that are necessary in order to do these particular things. so specifically the distance and the conditions this also will be done for outdoor fireplaces and fire pit regulations another area of concern is false alarms and proper monitoring of the alarm systems within the town and when we have false alarms of course that is going to deter fire rescue from being able to quickly or address issues as quickly as they possibly could if they're somewhere where there's a false alarm. And so what the fire department and our inspections department have informed me of that is that there is a system referred to as a central station system, which helps in monitoring that instead of me trying to articulate these technical terms, I have invited our inspections director, Paul Padgett here to explain this further to you, understand why it would be helpful to the public to have this type of requirement in place.

Thank you, Ms. Spain. Good to see a council again and mayor. So central station system is a layer within a fire alarm system and the way it's monitored. So currently the fire code states that any fire alarm system that is out there has to be monitored. And we're talking on the commercial side, not residential. So it gives the authority-having jurisdiction, which would be us, the ability to say how that is gonna be done. There's three ways of doing that. There's remote system, or sorry, remote station, proprietary, which is like a large campus would use, and then central station remote station and central station are very similar to each other however central station requires that system the installation and the maintenance to fall under a a listed entity So what that does is it holds that system at a higher standard of maintenance. The folks that are doing that have to be certified through one of three groups, either UL, FM, or Intertech. And then the maintenance uh is also held at that higher level so with that being done you're reducing the the number of false alarms that we normally see due to some of the maintenance items during that time there's a maintenance agreement that falls into place on a remote station they do not have to have that maintenance agreement the one for Central Station System requires them to have a runner service. So if a alarm comes out, they've got a runner coming that has to be on site within two hours. So that allows the fire department to free up their apparatus. For supervisory signals, it extends it out like to four hours, but they've got someone coming as soon as that signal is transmitted. If that signal longer than eight hours the the authority having jurisdiction is automatically notified we have one of these systems in place currently and that was Amazon so that was a condition to their performance based design so every time there's a signal that occurs out there our fire inspection department is being notified of it so we can follow up immediately I'll give you an example we had the shops over at Garner Station, they had changed their phone lines from the old POTS lines to voice over IP. Fire alarms did not know how to translate that change, and we had a period of time where those systems were not being monitored properly. We found it out on a fire inspection, got it corrected very quickly, but during that period of time, if we'd had an incident, it probably would not have dialed out appropriately. So having this in place will help make sure that those things are being monitored properly, we can address it properly. But the main goal, too, is to cut down false alarms, keep the fire trucks in place where they need to be, and then holding our fire alarms within the jurisdiction at a higher level to make sure that it's providing the public safety that's needed for our residents.

I have a question that's sort of related to this, but may also be related to the rewrite in general with the fire department. the jurisdiction determined by the fire coverage area or is it determined by like Garner or Wake County considering the fire serves both?

So for the way the fire code reads it would be the jurisdiction so we would cover anything that's town limits ETJ and that Wake County would would cover the county. There are a number of jurisdictions within Wake County that are looking at this. There's two currently in the state that do this. It's Wilmington and New Hanover County, and they've been doing it for almost 30 years. And I've had a couple of conversations with them, and it's interesting to see how they manage their false alarms through that.

I think the other question is sort of from Spain on our rewrite of our ordinance, what impact, are we having to cooperate with Wake County since our fire department operates outside of the town limits?

I don't think so, no. No, this is still within hours. That's not checking.

Okay, I just didn't know, okay.

I mean, what I can do is reach out to the Wake County Fire Marshal's office and see what their intent is with something like that. They would just have a bigger span because whatever they made to help support us would then address the rest of the county.

Did that fully answer your question, council?

Sort of. With the false alarm piece, yes, but kind of the more we're rewriting our town ordinance. What impact does that have in places that are fire department services that isn't within the town limits or ETJ? And is there like an agreement with Wake County on how we operate in the county part of the fire jurisdiction, fire coverage area?

So that would fall under the total county jurisdiction. They would fall under their code and be ordained, you know, organized by them. We're just talking about what's in the town limits and then what Paul and them dictate in the ETJ. So Wake County Fire Marshal's Office would still have jurisdiction on inspections outside the ETJ and the incorporated limits.

Thank you.

All right, so now to our Offenses so right now the police chapter seems to be pretty up to date. We are still reviewing any statutory requirements that might need to be updated. As far as offenses, Garner Police Department did inform me of a few specific issues. I also review the prior priorities of council as related to this and one of the things that you are on the same page with is the noise restrictions. Well, issues that Garner Police Department is encountering is in terms of the application and how they can have consistency in the way we address our noise violations. And so the language there, we are considering and still doing some research to determine whether it is appropriate or not. to incorporate decibels into the ordinance. And so based on the research that I've done at this point in time, there's some concerns about the potential for constitutional violations in regard to how environmental circumstances can impact sound and create a violation where there isn't one or infringe unnecessarily. And so We are working together to find the best language that allows officers to feel confident in the consistency in which they are applying the ordinance, but also give them some assurance that they are being fair as well. And so Chief Adams is here to speak specifically to the experience of what they have encountered when dealing with noise violations.

Yeah, our current ordinance does have a lot of subjectivity to it, as you can see. So an obvious resolution may have been to incorporate utilizing a device to measure decibels, but the more that we learn about other municipalities who have used that, there's some complications involved. So we just need more time to evaluate potential solutions. Is it one or the other or a combination of both? So we're not there yet. Still work to do.

Does Council have any questions about noise complaints specifically or any recommendations as to what they would like to see?

Yes. An issue or issues, I think y'all are aware of a specific issue where someone in the neighborhood plays loud music starting at 6, 7, 8 o'clock at night and plays it until the time restriction, which is 10 o'clock, I believe.

It is.

And it's created a lot of issues in the neighborhood. Y'all are aware of it. Somehow, some way, how that can be addressed. I know Raleigh did some stuff with their noise ordinance because they had a lot of issues around noise. downtown south area and so forth and so on but that's that's an issue is how can you help the people in the neighborhood whose privacy has been infringed by someone who thinks like someone who chooses to play music outside of big speakers as loud as they can that's that's something that that probably probably's ordinance uses decibels they also break theirs down further into weekday hours versus weekend hours uh

The decibel application will require additional equipment, which means additional costs and additional training, and so those are the things that we will work to figure out as well.

It will continue to be addressed, so in a particular neighborhood that's having issues, y'all are aware of that, so thank you. Yes, sir.

Yes, sir? I think one that hits close to home is cars.

Okay.

You should not be able to hear a car from over a quarter mile away. I don't care what the decibel level is. And I know that that seems obvious, but find in some way to find an acceptable level of noise emittance from a car that is at the same time allowing people to express themselves. I love cars. But you want to be able to listen to the person you're sitting next to talk. and not sit next to a car that's just like intentionally disturbing people around. I don't know what that balance is either. I just know that, I think it was like seven o'clock on Sunday morning, I could hear a motorcycle and it was probably half a mile away somewhere, probably on Highway 50. Again, that's personal preference, but also kind of, there's a reasonableness to disturbing other people's spaces in an intentional, prolonged way.

Understood. That's something we can certainly look into. Councilman Vance, anything?

I have nothing.

All right. So I have made note of those additional things as far as recommendations to keep in mind as we continue to work on that specific issue. Another thing that we do not have in our ordinance that was brought up by the police department is public urination and defecation. We don't have anything in there to address that. That language is pretty straightforward. that you are not to do that within public view. That's basically what that would turn into. They also addressed blocking of mailboxes. Our ordinance currently doesn't address this either. It mentions that mailboxes cannot obstruct the view of drivers, but it doesn't address drivers obstructing the ability to access your mailbox or really any postal box. It doesn't have to be a residential one. This is just in general across the board. And so we're considering adding language to address people obstructing the use of mailboxes. Grass clippings and debris was a safety concern. that is not addressed. It is addressing the sense of we have an ordinance that speaks to not allowing grass to grow to a certain height, but it doesn't address when people cut the grass and they just leave it everywhere. I think our stormwater ordinance also addresses not allowing debris to be blown into drainage that's really the extent of it but just simply leaving it in the street is not and so we're also considering language to address that as well and then we have the discharge of weapons in defense of person or property and we have language it is very uh brief i think that we just may simply expand on that language to make it clear that Discharge, of course, is not appropriate, but if you are within the law to defend yourself or your property, then you have the ability to do so. Does council have any questions on any of these items?

I have a quick question. Do we have the authority to, can we go back to the last slide?

I'm sorry, I could not hear you. You said go back to the last slide? Yes, please.

Do we have the authority to create an ordinance that regulates the discharge of weapons in defense of personal property?

So it's already pursuant to statute to some degree, but yes, we do. It's already in ours and we have the ability to do it. What we're doing is not changing it per se. I think we're just making it more clear that that is permissible.

So we actually have an ordinance that prohibits the discharge of weapons in town limits. We are preempted from preventing people who have concealed carry permits to carry those weapons and also open carry in town. So you can have your gun, you can't shoot it off in town limits. So this would allow people the right to not violate an ordinance if they're defending themselves. And perhaps, I mean, the police department, this was a concern that they raised. Yes, that's right.

Can I hear a little bit more background on this one in particular? Will you give me the question again, sir? I just wanted a little bit more background on the genesis of this ordinance addition.

Well, discharge of weapons and defense of property, other people or property, if we had something that was included, could just clarify that.

Okay.

Thank you.

I have a question on that too. Is there a specific language that will come back to us? Yes. Okay. Thank you.

And then we have e-bikes and other motorized vehicles. So I was not here, but I was informed that there was an extensive conversation on golf carts. And so I am not attempting to go back and force Council to deal with that again. But because e-bikes fall into a category with golf carts, there would be language, if agreeable, to at least define golf cart, not to the extent previously discussed, but just in alignment with the statute. And it's a very simple one. There currently is a uptick in issues with electric bikes or electric assisted bikes. And there is a statute that addresses it and states that it's a a pedal bike that has the assistance of a motor that does not exceed 20 miles per hour. What is seemingly happening is that they are being advertised in a way that is misleading and causing people to purchase what are essentially electric motorcycles. Also, there have been multiple issues in Holly Springs, Fuquay, Wake Forest, they have had issues with children specifically. I want to say it was Fuquay that had a 16-year-old that was in a head-on car accident riding their e-bike in the road. And so the statute does address it, but it allows e-bikes to be rode on sidewalks, trails, things of that nature. And so it would be up to the town to put any additional parameters on whether or not we want to allow individuals to ride e-bikes, but not just e-bikes, e-bikes, mopeds, anything that falls into these kind of categories that are not... outright defined you know what a car is when you see you might not know what an e-bike is you might not know what an electric scooter is and so i think it would be helpful if we were to at least incorporate these definitions and put some restrictions on where the town feels it is appropriate to allow these to be used if we just use the statute then they can pretty much ride anywhere The statute states that the laws of the road still apply to them, but I'm of the position that I think the town would want a little bit more to say, you know, we want to put some things in place that pedestrians are not at risk with people riding bikes going 20 miles per hour on actual public sidewalks and things of that nature. And so that is something that I think would be helpful. Right now, the proposed language that I have does include electric bikes, personal conveyance vehicles, which those can be the scooters, skateboards, hoverboards, things like that, mopeds, motorcycles to define them, and then also address the helmet requirements and put age requirements on that. That is generally 16. That seems to be pretty standard across the board. We don't have anything in our ordinance right now to address helmets for regular bicycles or electric bicycles or any of these. So I think just that language as to where we find that it is required is helpful to say if it's not going to be required by the state statute, at least we can put it in our ordinance to say if you're going to be on town property, you need to have on a helmet. And that adds an additional layer of protection there as well. And right now, those are all of the proposed topics that should be changed. And so we would just ask for your feedback and concerns and recommendations.

Yeah, I think you've already gotten some. You'll be getting a lot more if you see the specific language. I already see I have an interest in e-bikes. I have one, and I want to do what's legal and not run over people. And there's a fine line between an e-bike and an electric motorbike, isn't there? Fortunately, North Carolina general statutes have laid that out in a lot of detail. And the manufacturers, councils, and even the federal government have ways to distinguish between a pedal bike that gets a little electric boost and an electric motorcycle that doesn't even have pedals on it. But thanks for pursuing this. We want to be ahead of the curve. Let's see what our neighbors have already done so we don't have to reinvent the wheel, so to speak, on this. But we want to be safe and consistent. So thanks for the work you're doing on that. Thank you.

Mr. Mayor, I have a question and just a suggestion. I think the definition of these things could be important. I think their common theme is that speed is the key element in some of the danger associated with some of this. And also I think when it comes to things like helmet requirements and things like that, I think we need to think on the back end of what is the reasonable enforcement of such an ordinance. I'm all for us telling people you should wear a helmet. I don't know that I have a strong position about requiring it. I think people have choices, but I also think you can help people make better choices. And again, there's that enforcement piece. If we're gonna have the rule, how are we gonna enforce it? When are we gonna enforce it? And what does that look like? And does it look just like encouraging people to wear a helmet. So just think about that in terms of enforcement and what strain or what that looks like from an execution standpoint.

Thank you.

Any other observations or feedback? Because you are available very often during the day.

Yes. I just have one question. Are we considering slingshots to be a part of this definition?

I had not. But if there is need for it, that we can. I can look into that and see if anyone else has done that.

It might be a tad bit controversial, but I mean, it is a three-wheeler. Interesting omission.

Well, and it's interesting to see how much of this is already covered by North Carolina General Statutes in detail and DMV requirements and rules. We don't have to reinvent the wheel. We just have to understand it, know when to apply. Slingshots, there's a whole new category for those guys. And they're legal on the street, and they have to have plates and insurance just like four-wheelers and three-wheelers and low-speed vehicles. There's a lot to it. Who would have ever thought 20 years ago, 40 years ago, we'd even be worried about things other than bicycles and cars. Now there's every shade and every shape, and we have to keep up with the world. So keep up the good work. Get lots of feedback. Ms. Jones, you got other questions? So

so thank you we just wanted to provide you with this update on this ongoing project with as with all other um ordinance revisions we will present with you to you a draft at a subsequent meeting and then you can determine whether you want to have a public hearing prior to adoption of that we will also update our code revision project website to say that that staff is considering proposing this to let the public know when we will bring back actual ordinance amendments for your consideration.

Excellent. Thank you very much. Does that conclude your portion of the program? Yes, it did. We don't have to make any decisions, but they want our feedback and then our input. Good questions all around.

Thank you.

Thank you. And that brings us to item three of our new and old business, and this might be what some of you have stuck around to hear. It has to do with the nominations committee, who has come up with a committee recommendations and appointments on our various councils and things. And the hard workers on this have been Mr. Vance and Mr. Dellinger. And I'll let you decide how you want to proceed with this part of the program.

Thank you, Mayor. Mr. Dillinger has passed it over to me. And I will just say that the Nominations Committee has met on numerous occasions to review applications and consider reappointments to the various boards and commissions, and all the applicants are located within the town limits. Following its review, the committee respectfully submits the following recommendations for council considerations. For the Board of Adjustments, a term beginning July 1st through June 30th, 2029, a reappointment of Ms. Tiffany Gadley, Katie Davison, Belinda Butts. For the Planning Commission, for the same term period, reappointment of Mr. Ralph Carson, Maria Bishop, Ben Williams, Appoint Ken Shay Tapper, Christopher Frederick for Parks, Recreation, Cultural Resources Committee for the same term. Reappoint Pauletta Thompson. Appoint Pardesh Yalapada. Apologize if I mispronounced it, Pardesh. Fernando Guzman. Sandra White for the Senior Citizens Advisory Board for the same term. Reappoint Ernestine Ledbetter, Ernestine Derm for the Veterans Advisory Committee, same term. Reappoint Tim Stevens, Jeff Hicks, appoint Matthew Padone, Carrie Bellet, appoint as American Legion Ex Officiel. Terry Chatfield, appoint as American Legion Ex Officiel Alternate. Barry Nicklow, appoint as Disabled Veterans Ex Officio. Willis McCoy, appoint as Veterans of Foreign Wars Ex Officio. William Garrison, appoint as Veterans of Foreign War Ex Officio Alternate. Bob Carler. The nomination committee appreciates the willingness of these individuals to serve the community and respectfully requests the council approval of these recommendations.

Thank you very much for all the work you've been. What would you like to add, Mr. Dellinger? You've been pretty involved in this, too.

Second. There's a motion and a second.

Oh, yes. Thank you for your success. And I would just add there have been a lot of just great applicants. It's a lot of work. We're going through a lot of great people. We will continue with the interviews this week. Thank you for all those out there who applied and are willing to work. And a number of the individuals who are on the committees now are part of the civic exercise that we just recognized earlier today. So just keep up the good work. That's all I got to say.

It's a real testimony to all of our citizens and all of our officials and staff that we had way more good applicants than we had positions. It's great. We have a lot of people who want to serve. And anybody who didn't make it on the first round, I understand, will be on the bench in case anybody moves out of town or are no longer able to serve. We already have a good backlog of people to fill in these spots. This is a key interface. between your elected officials, your staff, and yourselves, the citizens. So thank all of you who have been involved in this. Thank all of you for your future.

Yes, Mayor, if I could say one last thing. I would like to thank the community for coming out and for supporting of Ardesh here. This is his family and friends and neighborhoods who are here now to support him.

So there's a motion and a second. So there is a motion and a second, and we're going to hear some conversation from our other council members.

I just want to make one clarification. I know it says on the planning commission, the term is July 1st, 26th through June 1st, 2028. Thank you. I just want to make that correct.

Appreciate it. Good catch.

It takes many eyes to look at this, doesn't it? Thank you.

Other questions, comments, other discussion about the motion that's been made?

Well, thanks again. Yes, sir, Mr. Billinger.

Yeah, I just want a big help from Rebecca Murray and Stella Gibson who really help us with our nominations process. We really could not do it without them, so thank you all for your help in that process.

Yes, and thanks for implementing a systematic computerized format for tracking all of these positions, all of these applicants. Both of these gentlemen down here have been working overtime recently going through that process. Our hats off to them. That being said, there's a motion and a second. All those in favor of approving the recommendations of the nomination committee, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed by nay? Hearing none, that passes unanimously. Thanks for the great work of all of you, and thanks for the great devotion and dedication of our citizens as well. Great stuff. And that moves us right along here to the next item on the agenda, which is H, updates to council. And the first part of this is committee reports. Speaking of committees and boards, we have representatives on this thing. And we have staff liaisons and we have council liaisons on most of them. So we'll be hearing from our council members who are the liaisons with each committee. Let's start with Mr. Matthews down here. What can you tell us?

No committee reports at this time, sir.

Okay. No, sir. Mr. Stallings?

No committee report.

Mr. Dellinger?

Just an announcement that the Affordable Housing Advisory Board applications will be opening tomorrow. We did the official adoption of the committee tonight, but those will be made public tomorrow, and I believe they'll be open for a week. Yes, a week.

Or she's saying?

Three weeks. Three weeks.

We'll talk about that. Thank you.

It's still a work in progress. Your work is not quite finished.

I'll just reiterate that the nomination committee will meet tomorrow and also on Thursday to continue with review of the applications.

Okay, excellent. So any other committee reports? That gives some cover there, okay. Now we turn to manager reports.

Yes, good evening, Mayor, members of council. Just one quick report, but an exciting one. The splash pad at White Deer Park is open for everyone in the community to enjoy. We've had a soft opening for the last two weeks to be able to let residents and families enjoy the splash pad. We've had to reschedule our official opening ceremony due to some weather and some scheduling conflicts. The official opening ceremony will be June 12th at 3.30 at the splash pad. Hopefully we'll have good weather that day. I've already seen great buzz online about it for people in the region who have come out and taken videos and pictures, and that place is packed. On days that it's sunny and hot, there's lots of kids playing, having a good time, and it's such a great project that I know we were all eagerly awaiting, so I'm excited to share that it's open, and we'll be celebrating that open on June 12th. Those are my only announcements for this evening.

Wow. An attorney report, Ms. Jones.

No report this evening. I think we took up enough time on your agenda.

Well, you've got a lot of good things going on in your department. That brings us to council reports. Let's start with Mr. Vance. If there are any other council reports other than the committee reports.

I've got about 15 minutes of council reports. I don't have anything.

Have fun all by yourself. We're going to adjourn. No, no. Mr. Dellinger, any other?

No reports this evening.

Any other reports, Mr. Stallings?

The public just heard the Affordable Housing Committee is forming. Please apply.

There you go. Good advice. Mr. Singleton.

Yes, I do have a few. I sent an email to staff in regards to some issues with crosswalk safety at the old Scarborough-Agnisville Road crosswalk. Matter of fact, when I met last week, one of our citizens at our break grabbed me and talked to me about it. I appreciate the feedback from Ms. Harrison and Chief Adams in regards to looking at trying to make that crosswalk safer. And let's be honest, a lot of things can be done and hopefully will be done. It still falls under the purview of whoever's driving the car to pay attention. And I take it from somebody who comes out on Buffalo every day where there are crosswalks, you have to pay attention. But anyway, I appreciate the feedback from staff, greatly appreciated to address that. Another item I want to bring up, I turned in a couple weeks ago. Four houses, three that had been boarded up and one that had been overgrown for years. One of the boarded up houses had been, I think, a house that the police were aware of on Broughton Street. Well, they had some issues there at Broughton Street years ago. Anyway, the concern is that that one had been boarded up for some time and the person who turned it in to me told me another one on Powell Drive had been that way for six months. I just wanted to make sure we're communicating and that people who are out there every day on the roads, I know police, fire, rescue, maybe some public works people, if you see a boarded up house, I'll write our ordinance and they need to reach out to their department head or inspection so they can know about it because we've got a process to try to get these Board of houses are not supposed to stay boarded up long. We have an application process that's supposed to have a plan because they create blight and so forth. We did this many years ago, 15 years ago or so. We had some issues. They've been longer than that. And so I just would hope that we could communicate this to the people who are out there on the streets working. If they see something like this that they pass along, hey, there's a boarded up house all of a sudden that hadn't been there. can y'all get inspectors to address it and gotten back inspections have addressed it they've told me you know i know the process i read the ordinance you get five days to do this five days to do this it takes time i told the resident this is not a this is not a two-week adventure this takes some time but anyway just want us to make sure we communicate to everyone to know if they happen to see one to please turn it into the appropriate people So thank you. And most of those board of houses are going to meet all the neighborhoods. And I can meet a neighbor in the house that got built five years ago. It's going to be an older neighborhood. We realize that. And all of these happen to be in the North Corner area. So thank you all. I appreciate your help with that.

Thank you. Mr. Matthews? Okay, I understand we do not have a closed session this evening, so if there's no other business that needs to be taken care of, I would accept a motion to adjourn. So moved. Second. There's a motion by Mr. Stallings and a second by Mr. Vance. All in favor of adjournment, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed by nay. Passes unanimously. Meeting adjourned. Thank you all for coming. Thank you for tuning in at home and watching us tomorrow morning. Thank you.