Town Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening and welcome to the Town of Garner Town Council regular meeting of August 4th, 2026. And as usual, it's a beautiful night in Garner. Let's get right to business here this evening and start with the roll call.

Mayor Gupton?

Here.

Mayor Pro Tem Dellinger?

Here.

Council Member Singleton?

Here.

Council Member Stallings? Here. And Council Member Vance?

Here. And for Pledge of Allegiance this evening. House Member Matthews.

Here.

You've got to speak up quick here. You can't hesitate or you'll be lost. Our Pledge of Allegiance will be led by Council Member Stallings. If you're able, please stand up.

Alrighty. Pray with me if you choose. Heavenly Father, as we gather to conduct the public's business, grant us wisdom that is steady, discernment that is clear, and hearts that remain focused on serving our community well. Help us listen with humility, speak with integrity, and make decisions that reflect both compassion and responsibility. We are mindful that every item that comes before us tonight ultimately affects the lives of our neighbors, so give us the perspective to see beyond the moment and the courage to do what's right and the grace to work together even when we disagree. We also lift up those in our community who are facing hardship, uncertainty, illness, and loss. May they find hope, strength, and support in those around them. Guide this meeting and bless everybody present, and may our work tonight contribute to the overall well-being of the town of Garner. Amen.

Thank you very much, sir. And before we jump into the adoption of the agenda, I do want to give a big shout out to our viewers at home. Some watch it live, some watch it the next day. Last week, I had the opportunity to watch it the next day I was absent. But I want to give a real big shout out of thanks to our whole team and everyone here who was here. And it's so much easier to watch from home. I may do that every week from now on. But it was great. They did a great job. I did learn one thing as I was watching it the next day. I noticed that there were some comments from the viewers coming along in the sidebar there. I did notice it until about 45 minutes in, and one person's comment was, all you do is talk about developments. And I said, well, it seems that way after 45 minutes. But he should check back in about two hours into it when we talked about fire and police amendments, e-bikes, speed limits on the greenways, noise ordinances, housing affordability, housing preservation. That's where the real work came in. That's where the fun stuff comes in. And you guys, all of you here, did a great job of pulling that through. So thanks very much. And you folks at home, just fast forward through the commercials, get to the parts you like, and try to learn something from us. That being said, we're at item B on our agenda, which is adoption of the agenda. And is there a motion to adopt the agenda?

So moved.

There's a motion. Is there a second? Second. There's 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, it passes unanimously. Item C, presentations. We have none this evening. We've done plenty of presentations. Item D is petitions and comments. And I'll ask our town clerk, do we have anyone signed up to speak? No, sir. Wow, boy, we're moving right along tonight. That brings us to the consent agenda, item E, and these are items of a more administrative or more routine nature. There's four of them on there this evening. Most of these have been reviewed by council members in detail, all reviewed by staff, and they appear to be four items that we can kind of pass or make a decision on en masse. Is there any of these items that need to be pulled out for further discussion? If there are none, I will accept a motion to approve the consent agenda. So moved. Second. There was a motion by Mr. Singleton and a second by Mr. Vance. All in favor of approving the consent agenda, accepting the consent agenda, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed by nay? Hearing none, that passes unanimously. And we get to item F, which is public hearings. None of those this evening. But we do have some new and old business, item G, and some interesting stuff, very interesting stuff tonight. And let's start by calling on our town attorney. Well, actually, she's the sponsor. But I believe we're going to go straight to the real speaker, our legal intern, Jessica Lely, to tell us about the participant guide for quasi-judicial hearings. And this is important, and it is technical, and it's already summarized in a three-panel trifold. Thank you very much. It's all yours.

Hi, council. My name is Jessica Lilly, as the mayor just told you all. So tonight, we have this quasi-judicial proceedings guide that we've spent the summer creating. So just to start, a quasi-judicial hearing is a public hearing used to decide certain municipal matters where the governing board acts like a court.

Jessica, you want to bring up the slides?

Oh. Sorry. So we've created this guide that outlines the state guidelines for quasi-judicial hearings and who may participate. will start um so to start there are two types of hearings that come in front of you all for quasi-judicial proceedings that includes administrative hearings which include administrative appeals and these are usually used to review a decision made by the town council or by the board of adjustments and then there are the development hearings which include special use permits, variance requests, and certain subdivision and site plan approvals. And these are usually used to review special requests for permitting or when there is a need for some adjustments to the local ordinances. And these decisions are based on standards in the ordinances, but the standards inherently involve some judgment and decision on the council's part or the Board of Adjustment. So next in the guide we have the hearing process. It's actually in the middle page here when you open it up. So we start with the town staff presents the request and relevant facts and so after that is done the applicant presents their evidence supporting their case. Once the town has presented their case and the applicant has presented their case it's the floor is open to public testimony and we start with proponents of the applicant followed by opponents and after all that testimony the board or council may ask questions of any party or witness and then after that is all done the border council deliberates votes on the evidence and then they issue a written decision and once a written decision is issued the applicant has 30 days to appeal to the superior court if they wish So next, we ask who can participate, meaning who has standing. So a party with standing is an aggrieved party that would suffer special damages from the outcome. That usually includes the applicant, the town including staff or the town attorney the owner of the subject property any type of associations associated with the subject properties such as homeowners associations as well as individuals suffering special damages and special damages may include proximity to the subject property impact on property value and adverse effect on one's enjoyment of their property So once we clarify who has standing, we look to what type of evidence can someone with standing bring? So there's three prongs to the evidence, starting with competent evidence, which is evidence that is trustworthy and reliable. We look for competent evidence to try to limit opinion testimony, and examples of competent evidence include firsthand knowledge of the matter. And then the second prong of evidence is material evidence, which is evidence that is related to the question the board or council must answer. This can include site plans or professional reports or studies. And then the third prong is sufficient evidence, which is evidence that supports a finding which is relevant to the standard that is looking to be met. So this can include testimony from a licensed surveyor or engineer or for example, evidence that neighboring properties do not have the same conditions that the applicant is looking for. And then finally, we've included hearing tips. There's a few more than was just listed on the screen in this guide, but some include speak only after being recognized by the mayor or chair, do not interrupt other speakers, remain respectful of others at all times, address the board, not the audience, and be concise and stay on topic. the purpose of this guide is to aid those who plan to participate in quasi-judicial proceedings and kind of circumvent the the process and make sure that it is more efficient for not only applicants and people wishing to participate in the hearings but for the board and the council as well so hopefully this guide can give individuals coming to participate some insight on what to expect and how to better prepare themselves and hopefully it'll help you all as well in your proceedings participants that's all for tonight thank you guys and if you have any questions happy to try to answer them

Well, stick around. We might. Thank you. This is important stuff. Too bad that we do not have a quasi-judicial hearing on the agenda this evening to practice on, but it gives everyone a chance to review the rules. If they have any questions, they should see you, the town attorney, town clerk. to make sure they're maximizing their effectiveness here. This is all about public communication, public engagement, just another way to help people be effective with their local government. So thank you for putting this together. And while you're there, let's see if any council members have any further questions. Let's start with Mr. Matthews.

Great presentation, and a lot of people don't know that we're going to be losing her. Her tenure is coming up, and the attorney might be talking about it later, but... She's done an outstanding job, and what a way to leave is giving us a great presentation like this, so wish you well.

Thank you.

Mr. Singleton, comments?

Yes, thank you. I like your trifold, too. Very handy. Keep it in our bag with us. I just want to point out, under evidence, oath, and documents about evidence, you do mention here about expert testimony required for property of Asian traffic, and not competent evidence is not expert technical testimony. And that's something that over the years has been drilled into us who have been doing this is expert testimony. Because when we used to do SUPs years ago before it got even more refined as it is now, anyone could come up and talk or they could give an opinion. And it's been refined now where it has to be expert testimony. So that's something I think you've got it listed here, but it's very important to note that, that whoever is going present evidence because in most cases nowadays attorneys present these issue being shown I and that's the reason why because they will make sure they have expert testimony but thank you for your work on doing this I greatly appreciate it thank you mr. talent I'm great great presentation pretty comprehensive I have I guess I have a question for town staff will this be available in a digital copy online for the residents

Yes, so as a result of the interest in the variances for South Garner Park and the Garner Rec Park, we actually unveiled this that night with Board of Adjustment. So we have the trifold that we will have with the agendas and the speaker sign-in sheets. But we've also posted, whenever the Board of Adjustment meets, we're posting that with the agenda. So anyone interested in the agenda can also get into, it's not the trifold, but it's what's in your packet. So it's a little bit easier on the internet to look at and then whenever council will have a special use permit We'll make sure that it's also available with the agenda for for any citizens who might be interested in those special use permits is Follow-up is there's a place where this can be just in case anybody is curious about the quasi judicial process They can is so we have to put it on our board packets where the Board of Adjustment, like their rules of procedure are. We're revamping the website somewhat, so we're trying to figure out where the best place is for people who might be looking for this, because the public's probably not gonna search for quasi-judicial, but when they search for variance or special use permit or appeal or something like that, then it would trigger in a search bar.

Thank you. Mr. Dellinger.

Yeah, thanks for the presentation and making this a little more transparent. They're so maybe very intimidating for the public to get involved in the process. To Mr. Singleton's point, I think even pulling out the expert testimony requirement for the traffic impacts on the property values is maybe a special box. So it's like, you know you really have to be an expert to testify beyond and you know your own observation or something like that because that that does it trips people up it trips up board members it trips up the public um so i think even just like highlighting that piece out separately the only expert testimony on these two things i think that would like really draw that line okay thank you so much this is really good

I will just echo what has already been said. I'm always learning and have to have a short handout to go to to use during the judicial process would be very useful. And thank you for all your hard work.

Thank you all. And we'll take that, all of your comments under consideration.

And if I may add, this is Jessica's last meeting with us, so I feel like the summer has flown by. But as a follow-up, we've also provided these to development services, so if they have walk-ins and the planning staff who tend to get a lot of the calls about these hearings, to make sure that they can also refer this or send it by email to anybody who might be interested in participating in those proceedings.

well well excellent we greatly appreciate your work on this something we take for granted but it's always good to see it spelled out clearly in this way and communicate come back and see us anytime we'll give you some more progress thank you thank you and that moves us along now to item number two that has to do with garner microtransit and a feasibility study want to call on our planning director mr jeff treisenberg to give us more information about this something and we've heard a lot about this at different conferences and meetings we go to tell us what micro transit is please yes good evening mayor council members um yeah we thought it was timely to be giving you a just a refresher on micro transit

We have been able to pull the trigger on a feasibility study, and Julian's going to dig into that after I kind of give you a little bit of an introduction. But yes, this is something that we have been talking about for a while in one form or or another back in 2016 when we were doing the transportation plan back then. I don't know that we had really coined the term microtransit at that point, but we were talking about it more generally as peer ride sharing or car sharing. And probably I think the part that gets that a little bit more is the responsive route deviation. In some respects, I think transportation planners were maybe envisioning something a little more bus-oriented, but over time, I think it's kind of morphed into recognizing that while Responsive deviating the route responsively, you know in real time That really doesn't work as well for your traditional fixed route buses, but if you have smaller vehicles You can kind of emulate some of that fixed route service, but have more flexibility to be responding in real time on demand and So there's lots of definitions out there, but I've got one up on the screen I think that captures what microtransit is generally. I will note again, yeah, it typically uses smaller vehicles, which can still pick up more than one passenger if schedules and everything aligns. And in general, if they're at least traveling the same direction. um it allows us to serve populations where it's just not quite as dense so for garner that kind of means once you get off of the 70 and timber drive corridors moving further south to areas around the lake or even still some areas in our northern section which we don't have a lot of you know, connectivity yet, it could be useful in some of those areas as well. And so you see there again, there's Smaller vehicles, the largest one is going to be maybe a 20-passenger small bus. But a lot of times it's just a minivan. The key is that you do have vehicles that can offer handicap accessibility. So the ones where I've seen basically an SUV or a passenger minivan, they've been adapted so that a wheelchair can access from the rear. So as you notice here in the graphic, it says if accessible, you can usually accommodate one wheelchair passenger and one regular passenger plus the driver. But overall, even in the real urban areas, sometimes folks can, they can access a typical bus route, but it might be that half mile, three quarters of a mile, something a little bit further than what they would ideally like to walk. This microtransit type service can also help you fill that gap of getting somebody from their drop off on the bus route actually to their house, their front door, if they choose that they don't feel like walking that day. So there's been a lot of development even here in the Raleigh area in terms of implementing various forms of microtransit. Independent and sponsored may not be the exact term, but I wanted to kind of just break them down into two groups for you, being that the independent services, they're operated independently of the traditional transit providers in the area. So Morrisville, Wake Forest, Holly Springs have contracted with a specific microtransit provider using their infrastructure. They have agreements in place to lease vehicles, brand them. It's very scalable, very flexible. And you see there the different types, again, of vehicles that they've chosen to use. kind of goes with the type of service that they are providing. In Morrisville, you see a slightly bigger vehicle there. It's got the traditional kind of bus entryway. They actually use, and I'll point to this on the next slide, they use kind of a hub kind of system. So they don't pick you up at your front door. but they will pick you up and drop you off at specific points they've identified. With them being a slightly more urbanized community, they're able to do that. They have the density of destinations and origins that they don't necessarily have to go and offer that door-to-door service. but in Wake Forest and Holly Springs they do and so you see there that they have Holly Springs has a Volkswagen van the new variation of those that they use but Wake Forest uses pretty much traditional SUVs of various types. The one in the picture happens, I think, be a Buick-style SUV. But then again, you also have some communities that have worked with existing transit providers. And Fuquay and Rollsville used to have express bus service that was offered by Go Raleigh to get folks from their communities downtown. Those services were not being used with much frequency. So rather than continue to offer those specific routes, express routes, go raleigh offered to introduce a type of microtransit for both of those communities so you can still take their microtransit service in fuquay or rollsville And they'll connect you to another express route. So for instance, in Roseville, you can take the microtransit anywhere in the town of Roseville if you want to go somewhere there. But it also overlaps into Wake Forest and gives you the opportunity to actually connect to the Wake Forest Express bus service. which can then take you downtown to downtown Raleigh. Fuqua kind of has the same type of setup where, again, you can use the microtransit service within town, but then it will also connect you to places where you can link up with the existing fixed route bus system. Knightdale, Wendell, and Zebulon, I'm not as familiar with their particular service, but that is being offered through Go Wake, which traditionally... has been the handicap accessible service to get you anywhere in the county. They're using the same vehicles. They're branded differently. So it seems to be just a slightly higher level of service than what Go Wake Access was providing. And it's specifically targeted just to destinations within those three communities. So again, Trying to kind of simplify this down, there's different ways that you can decide to offer the service. It's very customizable, and I think that's the attractive thing about Microtransit is you can really customize it to your community. So as I mentioned, Morrisville uses this node-to-node network. So again, they won't pick you up at your front door. They won't even offer to pick you up at the closest intersection. They have about 20 predefined spots where they will pick you up and drop you off. Again, it works very well in a more urbanized environment where you've got the density there to support it within. You've got lots of people within walking distance. Some other folks have done the corner to corner, so it'll get you to your closest intersection. Some of the things that we've heard about that is it can be a little bit confusing for riders at times because you don't know necessarily which direction the vehicle is going to be coming from. So you might all be at the same intersection, but then when the car gets there, you may have to cross one street or two to actually get yourselves together and lined up. But it can be effective particularly in I think rural areas where you do have long driveways or shared driveways where they may not want to go down a fairly lengthy gravel private drive to get you door to door but you can walk out at least to the nearest public street. And then there's the door-to-door service which seems to be again really effective in your typical suburban areas Garner is I would say though kind of unique perhaps because we kind of span the gamut of those Living type situations and and land use patterns But we think the door-to-door is probably the way to go and But we don't know, and that's why we're asking somebody to come in and help us with that determination. So we had funding in the planning budget that we were able to work with The finance office to increase one line item a little bit to make sure that we could cover it But every year we have a set aside for some special projects such as this if they're not too expensive And so we we have put out a contract with via mobility LLC They do work worldwide, but they also do work here in the Triangle area and have a pretty good track record thus far with CAMPO and some of the other communities around us. And so the goal of the study is to answer some of these questions. Can microtransit improve our community's access to the BRT and specifically to that southern corridor that's coming down into the north-south station shopping area? Can it support veterans' access to the VA Medical Center? As you know, they're located kind of off the beaten path from the fixed route system, but we get a lot of questions about how can we get some type of transit service there. Can we connect more Garner citizens to our existing fixed bus routes? Both Route 20 and Route 7 are very well some of the best performing routes in the Go Raleigh system. So can we strengthen that even further? Can we support access to other major community destinations? So we mentioned the VA Medical Center, but maybe Amazon, maybe some of these other locations that, again, are just kind of outside the reach of our fixed route systems. And then overall, again, the big question is, is it appropriate for Gartner? So they will look at different service concepts, different operating models, and implementation pathways for each of those. And at the end of it all, After looking at probably the two or three best, they will come back with a specific recommendation. And to kind of walk you through the scope of work that they will be doing with us, I'll turn it over to Julian to describe that process.

Good evening, Mayor. Good evening, Council. Yes, so thanks for setting that stage, Jeff. We have decided to go with VIA. There was a RFQ hybrid put out for three different consultants, and VIA seemed to have the best qualifications as well as the best price. Just one point I did want to highlight about VIA is multiple jurisdictions within the Triangle community have utilized VIA for their feasibility studies, being Cary, Gurali, Wake Forest, Fuquay, Verena, etc., So this contract is for a period of 60 days, and they have delineated three different workshops to occur within this 60-day period. The first workshop will be occurring on August 11th. We've identified some staff, both with the town as well as in the region, to attend this preliminary workshop and kind of identifying the existing service data that is readily available, looking at community destinations, some of which Jeff had mentioned previously, as well as any data that they need to identify that they think that would be helpful for us to share with them. One thing that is interesting again about flexible about microtransit is identifying the service zone boundaries. So again, looking at the other jurisdictions within the community and the feasibility studies that have been conducted by VIA, different jurisdictions identify different service boundaries. So we want to identify from our standpoint what would be the most feasible, most efficient, and most effective type of microtransit that we can essentially provide to our community. And then we identified the consultant to-do list. So again, trying to identify those particular points. It would then segue into the second workshop. So this is trying to project ridership forecast based off of the data they've aggregated. Also looking at the regional partners as well and looking at their microtransit operations. Identifying what would be walking distances. I think it's Looking at wanting to do a point-to-point service, it hasn't been completely identified, but of course, going through the feasibility study, it would be looking at that, as well as acceptable wait times and hours of operation. Again, going through the different lists, looking at the service models, looking at the zoning jurisdictions, looking at the boundaries, could we have a noble system, or would we do a point-to-point estimating the travel patterns? Obviously, this is coinciding with our transportation plan, so this is a perfect time to kind of do something like this. ALSO DIFFERENT JURISDICTIONS DO DIFFERENT FAIRS AND BUDGET. SO WHAT JEFF HAD MENTIONED EARLIER IS THAT SOME OF THE JURISDICTIONS ARE DOING CFAP FUNDING, THEY'RE GETTING IT KIND OF DISCOUNTED USING WAKE TRANSIT OPERATIONS, HOLLY SPRINGS BEING THE ONE SPECIFICALLY FOR THE 30 SPLIT, 70 FUNDED BY THE WAKE TRANSIT PLAN. SOME JURISDICTIONS ARE DOING FAIRS, FAIR FREE, ADA COMPLIANCE, THINGS OF THAT NATURE, DISCOUNTED FAIRS, JUST KIND OF EXPLORING ALL THESE DIFFERENT THINGS ABOUT THESE DIFFERENT MICROTRANSIT OPPORTUNITIES THAT WE COULD PROVIDE. In between workshop number two and workshop number three, they've identified as doing a stakeholder listening session. We did do stakeholder listening sessions during our transition plan that seemed to be pretty effective identifying community members within the area to talk about their specific needs. So this potentially would be looking at Amazon, the VA hospital, looking at their traffic patterns, seeing who visits them at what hours and how they get there and the different modes that they take. They've identified as having six sessions, four individuals within each session, haven't completely exactly ironed out, you know, where exactly we're going to be pulling those people, but we have been bouncing off some ideas of different entities, businesses, organizations that we'd like to identify and incorporate into that discussion. Again, this is identifying specific transit needs, the travel behaviors, who's visiting, hours of operation, the modes that they're taking, and the different destinations. FOLLOWING THOSE PARTICULAR WORKSHOPS AS WELL AS THOSE STAKEHOLDER LISTENING SESSIONS, IT WOULD COME BEFORE THE STAKEHOLDERS. OBVIOUSLY WE WANT TO HEAR AND THE DECISION MAKERS. WE WANT TO PRESENT THESE FINDINGS, WHAT STEMMED FROM THAT FEASIBILITY STUDY, IS IT ACCURATE, DID THEY MAKE THE MARK, IDENTIFYING AND REVIEWING THE METHODOLOGY BEHIND THE DATA THAT WAS AGGREGATED, THE CONVERSATIONS THAT OCCURRED, THE DIFFERENT STAKEHOLDERS AND THE INPUTS THAT WERE PLACED. YOU KNOW, AGAIN, COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT INCORPORATING THAT INTO THE IDEA OF MICROTRANSIT. RECENTLY, ACTUALLY, AT THAT SOAR SETTING THAT OCCURRED AT THE REC CENTER, I GOT INTO A CONVERSATION ABOUT A PERSON WHO WAS INQUISITIVE ABOUT MICROTRANSIT. SHE DIDN'T EXACTLY KNOW EXACTLY WHAT IT WAS, BUT AFTER DISCUSSIONS, SHE FOUND IT TO BE SOMETHING VERY MUCH OF INTEREST AND SHE WANTS TO EXPLORE AND IS INVESTED IN THE OPPORTUNITY OF MICROTRANSIT IN THE EVENT THAT THE TOWN OF GARNER PURSUES THAT. So again, after that 60-day period, we would anticipate a brief and in-depth summary of the key takeaways, the methodology, the findings, and ultimately what kind of microtransit would be the most effective and efficient for the town. So that is essentially the period that we're kind of going through with the microtransit as regarding this feasibility study. More than happy to answer any questions as well as if they get bounced off to Jeff as well, do the best of our ability to answer that.

Well, thank you very much. Thank you very much, Mr. Griffey. One thing's for sure, more people than ever are riding the bus in Garner. Ten years ago, it was a rare thing. Now it's a common sight. And thank you and your department for being proactive to figure out how we can make this more effective, serve more of our residents all the way. So while you're there, let's hear some questions and comments. We don't have a decision to make tonight. This was informational, and there will be many more informational sessions to come. But let's get first response, first questions. Let's start with Mr. Vance.

Yes, thank you for the briefing. I appreciate it. Many of my questions were answered. I just want to make sure I'm clear in my head in reference to the timeline that was provided. I understand August 11th will be the first workshop held with staff, with the consultant for the feasibility study. And then after that, you're gonna have another stakeholder, another workshop. And between those, you have listening sessions. Between that, how did you determine WHEN TO HAVE THOSE LISTENING SESSIONS AND HAVE YOU THOUGHT THROUGH YET OR ARE YOU WAITING TO DETERMINE HOW YOU CHOOSE WHO IS GOING TO BE A PART OF THOSE SESSIONS?

SO THE TIMING OF THOSE WAS AT THE RECOMMENDATION OF THE CONSULTING TEAM HAVING DONE A LOT OF THESE AROUND THE COUNTRY AND I THINK you ask a very good question, which we are hoping to invite you all to give us your suggestions as well as to who should be in those listening sessions. We certainly, you know, over the course of time, we've been listening to y'all and we kind of probably know who some of the folks you want us to target, but definitely want you to please reach out to us and let us know of important groups and organizations and even specific people that you'd like us to incorporate. But we did want to, you know, kind of get the parameters out there that they do want to kind of try to keep it limited to those six, you know, keep it within the budget that we have, about four people per session. So 24 people, that, if we target the right folks, we think that'll be a good A GOOD REPRESENTATION BECAUSE AT THAT POINT IT'S REALLY GEARED TOWARDS FACT CHECKING OR MAKING SURE THAT WHAT DATA AND ANALYSIS THAT THEY'VE BEEN PULLING TOGETHER IS HITTING THE MARK.

AT THE END OF 60 DAYS, WHAT WILL BE THE END PRODUCT?

So there will be a summary memo along with a specific recommendation as to what they feel is the best option for Garner to pursue.

I guess one last question. What will be the next step after the 60 days? That's coming fast and be gone. What's the next step? Hasn't been thought about.

It really comes down to then, you know, the funding and pulling the trigger. So we don't know what that's going to look like. As Julian mentioned, we have a lot of opportunities I think with the community funding program. to tap into that at a 70%, 30% match. If you read the white paper that we attached to tonight's agenda from VIA, I think you'll see that they have a very wide open kind of look at how you can fund these things. I think you'll see there that they've certainly recommended to certain communities that they go out into the business community and seek sponsors. So there's options for folks that would like to have transit service for their employees or their visitors, their clients who aren't on the current fixed routes, that they could contribute and play a part financially to help make that service a reality. So I think there's a lot of ways to skin that part of it, but we'll see how it comes out. Okay. Thank you.

All right.

Yeah, a lot of good information. You touched on the money part, which is where I was going, and I did see the mention of more of a broader, holistic look at approaching the funding and involving the community at different levels. So I'll be interested in seeing what that looks like. And sort of two other questions. One, would there be sort of a... pilot window like after the fact like once we heard of green light like really kind of see what it looks like in practice is that what you're kind of envisioning is like needing some kind of seed funding for a small pilot in like over 18 months or something oh yes yeah absolutely

And this might also actually tie into some of the points that Mr. Vance made. I got taken back to grad school because I did the policy research basically of all the different jurisdictions within the county that have microtransit operations. And I think what we're seeking from this feasibility study is specifically trying to identify what their recommendation will be. We've seen across the different jurisdictions, five or six or so, that they're all operating differently. They're funding differently. They have different operators. They have different people digesting their information. So one community is operating, has a different operator for their physical like transit, but then they selected a different firm to analyze their data. So there's a lot of different options that we have. to explore and I think that's where in typical policy research and what I've done before is, you know, okay, there seems to be a common theme among something and this is not like that. They're all operating differently. So I'm curious to see what recommendation comes back specifically for the town of Garner. Going into that, witnessing the other communities was one thing that I kind of just to like look at each other's heads to see how the other operators are doing or the other jurisdictions are doing. AND IT SEEMS TO BE THAT THERE'S A CONSISTENT RAMPING UP OF A CONSISTENT RAMPING UP OF OPERATIONS. OPERATIONS. SO THAT WILL BE WHETHER DOING SO THAT WILL BE WHETHER DOING BRINGING IN ANOTHER VEHICLE AT BRINGING IN ANOTHER VEHICLE AT CERTAIN TIMES OR BUYING ANOTHER CERTAIN TIMES OR BUYING ANOTHER VEHICLE OR RECRUITING IT FROM ANOTHER VEHICLE OR RECRUITING IT FROM WHATEVER AGENCY THEY'RE WHATEVER AGENCY THEY'RE CONTRACTED WITH AND CONTRACTED WITH AND SPECIFICALLY THE TOWN OF WAKE SPECIFICALLY THE TOWN OF WAKE FOREST INJECTED ANOTHER I THINK FOREST INJECTED ANOTHER I THINK $1 OR $2 MILLION INTO THEIR $1 OR we'll run this for X amount of time. And then it seems to be consistently across the other jurisdictions is that they've increased demand and they're reacting to that.

Yeah. It seems like that, that, data analysis of the activity is like super, super important for tracking performance and projecting and that kind of thing. My other comment was, I know they're gonna do these smaller groups, but we've had such success with sending out community-wide surveys and getting such a robust response from the community, maybe sort of in parallel or maybe soon after this is over, tailoring a fairly short survey and where you live might be helpful. I do have, like, concern is a strong word, but if you have too small of a group of folks you may be missing perspectives in the community and we've just had like, we send a survey out and get a thousand responses, we might find some information there we had like no idea or need that we weren't aware of too. So I'll throw that out there as whether the consultant does it or we do it in parallel or near the end, that might also help.

Yeah, that's good feedback. I think that's something we can certainly maybe talk to Rick and his group about trying to coordinate if we can, keep it something pretty simple and a couple of questions. Cause yeah, that did come up when we were talking about it. Could we tailor something? Wasn't too lengthy, but get, get kind of a little more of that. Yeah. data that we would be looking for but there are some um there are a couple of them too that i think did start fair free and then they slowly they did introduce a fair um but they wanted to at least offer it fair free to start gauge the interest and then i think they did kind of like sample surveys of their riders to see how much they would be willing once they got familiar with it you know how how valuable is it to you yeah that's certainly a possibility as well

And I think the preference would be to have as near, close to the funding model as you want long term so you don't end up with like, oh, it was free last year. Why am I paying this year? But there are a lot of other examples out there. Thank you guys for the work.

And just real quick to that particular point, me and Rick actually had discussions last week about the school event that I believe is occurring on Friday and just developing a really just brief thing for people to respond to. Because one thing that was an interesting takeaway when I attended, it was a TPAC or a TCC meeting where they had two or three different jurisdictions present their micro transit, how it's been going and whatnot and seeing the demographics that are riding. AND ONE SPECIFIC POPULATION THAT SEEMS TO BE UP THERE IS GOING TO SEEMS TO BE UP THERE IS GOING TO BE LIKE YOUR HIGH SCHOOLERS OR BE LIKE YOUR HIGH SCHOOLERS OR ACTUALLY UTILIZING A GOOD BIT. ACTUALLY UTILIZING A GOOD BIT. SO TRYING TO HARNESS THAT AND SO TRYING TO HARNESS THAT AND TAP INTO THAT TO SEE THEIR TAP INTO THAT TO SEE THEIR RESPONSES ON THAT.

RESPONSES ON THAT. SECOND ROUND QUESTION. SECOND ROUND QUESTION. PERFECT. PERFECT.

I'M DONE. I'M DONE. IN TERMS OF THE COUNTY, I IN TERMS OF THE COUNTY, I KNOW YOU SAID THAT DIFFERENT KNOW YOU SAID THAT DIFFERENT JURISDICTIONS OPERATE THEIR Is there a comment, which one is utilized the most? Is it the door-to-door, node-to-node, corner-to-corner?

Yes. So the only one that I'm familiar with that specifically does nodal is Morrisville, contracted through GoCarry. They have, I think, about 14 or 16 or so, maybe upwards of 20 nodes, key points around the community that they have. I am not entirely sure about what jurisdiction is being utilized the most, but again, going back to the town of Wake Forest, I mean, the ejected quite a sizable amount of money into their operations because they had seen so many, I guess just the demand was that high. So,

I've heard that the Morrisville service is working very well for them. Again, like Julian was saying, I don't know that we know which one has the most riders. We could probably find out. But the feedback from Morrisville is they feel like their service is working well. And I would say the same of Wake Forest, because I think they've at least doubled, if not maybe more than that by now, in terms of number of vehicles and...

Yeah. And one other thing, too, it's I mean, it also, of course, depends on the attributes that your community has. So as an example, Fuqua often sees that there is an uptick and there's a downtick when Wake Tech is in session and when it's not. So they kind of have tried to revolve theirs around, you know, the school hours and various, you know, weeks in operation and things of that nature related to that. So.

So quick question, is there any model that's like multimodal where you may have, I might be using that terminology incorrectly, but where you have like door-to-door, but then you have node-to-node in certain situations. Is there any jurisdiction that you know of that operate?

I know that when they've gone at least into connecting different portions, Fuqua specifically, and I believe Wake Forest has talked about it, is to where their microtransit operations are getting into a hub on the fringe of their community to where they can connect to other places. So Triangle Town Center or the Wake Tech campus to where they can quickly get into downtown Raleigh. But that's on the periphery of their community. I know that that's kind of come up in our conversation. where we're bounded by go raleigh that has microtransit or fuquay on our western side that has microtransit can we connect those to where people can continue on to where they're going and kind of the follow-up on uh this is my last question the follow-up on um councilman delinger mayor pro temp delinger's question um or comment

I know there was a recommendation about trying to get veterans to the VA clinic. Is the Veterans Advisory Committee gonna be advising or consulted when it comes to any recommendations that come out of this?

I mean, I think it's certainly something that we can run by them. I'm not sure how connected they are to the actual VA operations, but if they are, yeah, that'd be a great voice to have checked in. I think we were probably thinking more of actual administration folks operating the site. But yeah, no, that's...

I just think in terms of perspective, by them, you know, may having some friends or other veterans, they may utilize the VA services. They may know of What's best practices or what what is the best way for them to possibly? Get to the VA clinic or would it be best to come to their house? Or would they be available to come to the front of their neighborhood? I just think you don't want to miss certain perspectives Especially if we're going to have a recommendation that affects them as well, too Yes, good points, thank you very much, mr. Singleton I

Yes, thank you for the information and look forward to these workshops. A couple observations. First, when you mentioned that the Fuquay direct service in downtown and Roseville and the three eastern towns stopped doing it, and what's the common link? They're the furthest from downtown. I mean, that's why we're butting right against it, so it's a whole different animal. I travel in other towns. I know Wilson has gone from completely doing buses to doing microtransit. It's either Rocky Mount or Kitson, I can't remember which one, which has, I think they cut whatever they did in half and is doing part microtransit, part something else. I think Beaufort County is doing microtransit now. I can't remember about Greenville. What's neat is looking at all these names on the buses. Greenville is great, Greenville Area Transit. Beaufort County is the BAT bus. We each have the CAT bus here. It's interesting because I know that here on Saturday, the homeless program, which is going to Methodist, they get out on Vanderbilt Springs, they come here, they fill up the bus, and they go back in downtown. There was 147 there two Saturdays ago. 147 people came. The resources were stretched and they ran out. And a lot of the people were riding buses back and forth. So that's still a definite need, but the microtransit in different parts of town, I think, I'm glad we're looking into it. Because yes, we are close to downtown. Yes, we have a Extremely large employer with Amazon, but the VA clinic and we were spread in all different areas And so the micro transit may be extremely helpful So I'm glad we're looking at this and moving forward and look forward to seeing what the transit Folks have to in regard to making recommendations Thanks.

Thank you. Mr. Matthews a great presentation. I think you're on to something strong here I know Wake County. I think they call tracks. I believe it is where they'll You can call and they'll come to your house and pick you up and take you to a certain place. So that is already in motion for the entire county. But as Mitch, I like the idea on the nodes that you could come from downtown Raleigh on the regular bus system, get off at a certain node, and then our transportation will take you from there down to the VA clinic or back up or to Amazon or wherever you decide Those spots are and kind of tied in with the other transportation. So it'll be a leg off what they've got going on and. But I think your timing is good because bus ridership is getting even stronger and just so we can kind of customize it to where. We think those needs are, and we can track it out and see how they're going. Plus, we can always change it around, but I like that node idea that somebody from Fuquay wants to come up here to go to the vet clinic. They can take theirs, and we've got a node on that side, and they can drop them off there and then catch ours and go right on down. So, great idea. I'm looking forward to see how the feedback comes, and let's put it together. Thank you.

Yeah, some of the things I've heard, and we'll make another round here, but clearly council is interested. We applaud you for being proactive and looking into this. There's a lot of variations of this stuff, and it's not just something for the future, it's for now. Our other towns around us are doing this. to complement their bus system. It's not to compete with their bus system. It's to enhance, get more riders 90% of the way there, then this helps them get that last 10%. So it's a great thing. We applaud your efforts. We look forward to hearing more as you go through the process of finding a partner who does the heavy work. And there'll be a lot more to learn, a lot more questions as we go. Are there other questions or comments we'd like to make now? We'll start back over. No questions.

No more questions?

Another question. In terms of in the county, the ones who utilize microtransit, is it call-based? Is there an app that they mostly use? What does that look like?

Yes. So again, going through kind of witnessing the presentations as well as just sifting through the regulations, it seems to be consistently that there is a call center. So people that don't have the actual app themselves or they're not the most technologically savvy or they don't have a smartphone, they can certainly call whichever assigned call center it is or if it's Go Raleigh itself. for those applicable jurisdictions or go away, excuse me. And then a lot of them do have the app as well to utilize that. And some of them, when they're first beginning, I believe Holly Springs did it and another community, probably Fuquay, is that if you signed up with the app, your first ride was free. So just to kind of showcase and get people onto it and see how they like it and utilize it and then go from there. Yeah.

Thank you.

Other thoughts or comments down here? Okay. Well, thanks again. There's a lot of ways to do this. I've even heard micro transit called an alternative to Uber under certain situations. Short, precise, but you actually go to the app. They come to your house an hour and a half from now. They take you to the bus stop or to the VA. Then you get the bus on the way out. So there's a hundred ways this can be very effective. Thank you for taking the lead and bringing us information. We look forward to learning more. Thank you. and that brings us to item three under new and old business uh while we've had informational items brought to us in the last two this one will be asking for a decision a vote at the end it has to do with their lmg master development agreement that this is our downtown development and here to tell us more about it and the opportunities that we have is assistant town manager john hodges

Good evening, Mayor and members of council. We have come to you back at your work session in February with an update to the LMG project or our Downtown Opportunity Site project. We had another update for you tonight, but a little background on the project. This project actually started back in 2020 when the town started working with the Development Finance Initiative at USC School of Government. to help us put together solicitation for proposals for the site, our opportunity site that is next to the recreation center downtown. Our goal for doing that was to increase the number of people living in our downtown and foot traffic to our downtown so that we could begin to see some of the goals of our historic downtown Garner plan that we did in 2010 come to fruition. And that plan that we did encouraged us to continue looking at density opportunities and also including residential opportunities as well as retail restaurant uses. So we did work with DFI to do the solicitation process. LMG was selected to do the project. And since that time, we've gone through a number of iterations of our project. And when they were here back in February, we reviewed some of those. But just again as a refresher, we started looking at a project. We ran into some challenges with the market where the market was just not supportive. of the project at the time. It did not make sense from LNG standpoint. It did not make sense from the town standpoint. We shelved that and we then looked at two other opportunities. One was to build even greater density in another part of downtown, but we were limited by the stormwater infrastructure that we don't currently have. and are not able to immediately implement. We went back to a third option, and that was a smaller building on the same site that we had always planned to have. And as we began to look at the realities of building that, actually realized that with changes in the market, it actually made more sense and worked better to go back to our larger and more dense project that we had been talking about at the very beginning. So when we came before you with an update back in February, council indicated support for moving forward with the original higher density mixed use project that includes 102 residential units, about 5500 square feet of ground floor, retail or restaurant space, all in a four story building. Also, a key component of this is a 142 space public parking structure that would be purchased back by the town from the developer, increasing our parking options to facilitate the development of the building, but also increasing our overall parking in the downtown district. So as we mentioned to you when LMG was here in February, Council gave us the nod to move ahead with negotiating the Master Development Agreement. We have been working for some months now under an extension of the previous Master Development Agreement, which keeps all of both parties working under the same set of rules. And so we've come to you a couple of times with extensions to that until we can get to the point of Council authorizing us to sign a new master development agreement so since we were here in February we've achieved some key milestones one of those in working with DFI our consultants and LMG is we have taken a pause to review some alternative financial and ownership structures to ensure that we were using the best model and we have determined in working with our consultants that the model we were pursuing is still the best one for for us We have worked to develop a model for operational maintenance of the parking deck structure and a strategy for how we can be prepared for long-term infrastructure maintenance on the parking deck once we purchase it back and own it. And then we've also worked with DFI to validate some components of the master development agreement and the overall structure of the deal with DFI. We thought it was important to take a pause just to go back and make sure that the structure that we were working under was sound and was in the best interest of the town. These have been some significant accomplishments that we've made since February, but we have not accomplished everything that we need to do to bring you back in the master development agreement to improve. So we do still have a few key things that we are currently working on. Those include confirming a structure for the parking lease agreement, developing a parking lease model that meets statutory requirements, finalizing a revenue generation model that is dependent on the parking rent model and other factors, Determining the structure of the condominium model that will be used to own the parking deck as it is a component of the overall project. Evaluating affordable housing opportunities. Incorporating language to address the Blue Ridge affordable housing tax loophole as you discussed with LMG when they were here in February. And creating a timeline for key project milestones beginning with the execution of the MDA. So we're still working on those items. We hope to bring you back an update at the end of the month at your work session. But in the meantime, our current extension for the previous MDA does expire on August 15th. So to allow us to continue working on these tasks, we would request an extension of the MDA, the extension, extension to our current MDA and we're proposing to extend that through February 15th. And I know that sounds like a long way from now, but I just wanted to make the point that once the new master development agreement is signed, this extension will not be valid any longer. It will not be in effect. So we will be starting a new timeline with a new clock whenever we can approve the MDA. So we really just want to extend that out to February to ensure that we didn't have to come back to you as frequently. should additional time be needed to do all of the due diligence. And as I said, we are hoping to bring you back an update with a little more specificity at the work session at the end of the month. So with that, I'll be glad to answer any questions that you have. And again, also asking for your action tonight to approve the extension of the MDA.

Thank you very much, Mr. Hodges. Let's start with questions and comments from Mr. Matthews this time and work our way down.

Well, I'm glad she was still trying to work on this thing and put it all together because it certainly will be a unique time for downtown and I have no problems with it standing the agreement to give you guys time to get it. Let's get it done. Right?

Thank you. Mr. Singleton.

Yes, sir. And just to.

Sure. We're just extending it. So in between this extension tonight and February 27th or February 15th, we're going to pass and update the new MDA.

Yes, sir. And then all the milestones start from that point, and we won't have these extensions in referencing older, former documents.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. Mr. Stowell. No question. Mr. Dellinger.

Yeah, I don't have any problem with extending. I think it'd be good to get, like, three-month updates. I know February's right around the corner anyway. I think this project has run into every market change that can happen with interest rates, with the market. And so even some of the projections in here on rent increases and things like that, I think we need to kind of just be regularly updated on what the market looks like, what their perspective of the market is. So again, it's ongoing. They're being patient. We're being patient. And Phil said we want to do it. We want to do it right. And I think the revenue model for the parking deck and all that stuff is important to nail down and get all those numbers in so we can see what the return on that investment is. So carry on.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Vance.

I do not have a problem with the extension.

Okay. Any other questions or comments here before we ask for a motion? Of course, before us is the idea of approve a third amended master development agreement and authorize the town manager to execute that agreement that we've talked about here. Is there a motion to that effect?

So moved. Second.

Motion by Mr. Vance, second by Mr. Dellinger. Is there any other conversation, any other discussion about the motion before us to make this extension? Okay, hearing none, let's call for a voice vote. And all those in favor of approving this extension, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed by saying nay. Hearing none, that passes unanimously. Great job, Mr. Hodges. Thank you. You and your staff, keep it rolling. Thank you. Very impressive project. Thank you. And that brings us to item H on our agenda. These are updates to council. The first one is committee reports. And we do have some council members here who work with our various committees. Let's start with Mr. Vance this time. Report on any committees.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. The nomination committee will continue with interviewing for the Affordable Housing Advisory Board committee this week and also next week. Hopefully be able to come to the council with recommendations by the end of the month.

Thank you. Mr. Dellinger? No reports. Mr. Stallings? No report. Mr. Singleton?

No committee report. Mr. Matthews?

No report. Okay. Well, let's go to manager reports here. What is the news from that end?

Good evening, Mayor, members of council. No official reports this evening. Happy to answer any questions council may have.

Okay. Well, of course, our door is always open. We'll move right along to attorney report. And I've been told there might actually be a report here this evening, Ms. Jones.

Usually the manager has a lot of reports and I have none tonight. I have a few reports. Well, mainly I want to give you an update on our summer conference. So you might recall the North Carolina Municipal Attorneys Association holds two conferences, one in the winter, which is in March, and then one in the summer. I do want to thank Council for our training and travel budget, which has allowed all three of your attorneys to attend this conference. We had six sessions that provide us with our mandatory continuing legal education that we have to take, and that included insurance and risk management, Chapter 19 nuisances, law enforcement agency recordings, otherwise known as body cam recordings, ethics, which had a focus on AI or artificial intelligence use, annexation which I was a panelist and then we also received the legislative update so I just want to give you a brief overview of at the annexation presentation and the legislative update In a strange turn of events, Jim Joyce, the professor from UNC School of Government, was ill that morning, so I ended up taking over his part of the presentation and did both of those. Fortunately, I got a little bit of notice on that and was able to do that. But I also want to give a shout out to Alex Bone from the Planning Department and Kyle Kettler from the Communications Department because they helped to give me these visual aids and also prepared a video so that we could show graphically the number and location of annexations that have occurred in Garner since January 1st, 2020. I really hope this plays. And as you look at this, you'll start to see in the yellow or gold color, those are all the annexations that have occurred again, since January 1st, 2020. And I thought this would be a good thing that our economic development department could use as they are showing business prospects about, you know, not only the amount of growth that we're experiencing, but where it is, where it is happening.

And important to note, these are all voluntary annexations. Yes. Because some people will hear that and will flip out. But yes, they're all voluntary.

Only people who ask for it. That's right.

Yes. So, um, I thought, you know, that was very impressive, um, way of showing this, that we have actually, um, with the one we did last week, we've done 97 annexations since January 1st of 2020, uh, going from just over well, 16 and a half square miles to 22 square miles. So that's a 34% increase in territory that's now in the corporate limits. And along with that, as you know from the updates you get from the planning department, we are just under 50,000 right now. And we still have more annexations being scheduled. But again, as many council members have noticed, we're still growing out. There's still land available to annex into the town. We're not experiencing the density that more urban areas are getting by by doing more high-rise kinds of developments Again, this is just it's a little bit harder to see on this map with the lighter or teal blue color showing where those those annexations and growth is and you'll see in the 2026, you know, it does show the 540 loop on there and And then one of the other things I talked about are annexation agreements. The green line on the top of the image, that represents our line with Raleigh where we can annex up to that line and they can annex down to that line. And there are places where our limits are now touching Raleigh's corporate limits. Uh, if you can see the dark blue line that's on the left or the Western part of the image, that's our line with Fuqua Barina. Um, we don't have a line with, uh, Clayton at this time, but as you probably heard and seen, they are growing, uh, towards us. Uh, we are somewhat growing, you know, in that direction as well. But, um, one of the things with satellite annexations is you can't annex more than, three miles from your primary corporate limits. So all of that contiguous area. So the lighter blue line, you see that's our three mile area. And the red line is Clayton's three mile area. And generally that area in between them becomes a limiting factor on whether we have the legal authority to annex. However, if we can get to an annexation agreement with the town of Clayton, we can create a line there and then that removes that impediment to some additional satellite annexations. One of the other issues that we discussed is zoning and the ETJ. So while this lighter pinkish color represents our current ETJ and the darker red is our corporate limits, as you see down towards the county line, Clayton County, might technically be able to annex area in our ETJ. There's no prohibition against that, but then they would inherit our zoning until they change the zoning and they would potentially inherit PERMIT CHOICE OR VESTED RIGHTS ISSUE FOR DEVELOPMENTS THAT HAVE ALREADY BEEN APPROVED BY GARNER. ANOTHER REASON WHY IT'S IMPORTANT THAT WE'RE ABLE TO GET TO AN ANNEXATION AGREEMENT AND WORK THOSE OUT. BOTH PLANNING DEPARTMENTS WE HOPE ARE COMMUNICATING AND TELLING ALL THE PROPERTY OWNERS THAT ARE WITHIN THAT SORT OF TERRITORY BETWEEN THE TWO LINES THAT THEY NEED TO POTENTIALLY WORK WITH BOTH JURISDICTIONS AT THIS TIME. BUT THAT IS A SHORT RECAP OF THE ANNEXATION DISCUSSION. HAPPY TO ANSWER ANY QUESTIONS YOU MIGHT HAVE ABOUT THAT PARTICULAR ONE AND THEN I'LL GIVE YOU A BRIEF LEGISLATIVE UPDATE.

Well, thank you very much. We keep hearing about growth. We hear numbers, but when you see that kind of visual graphic and see those kind of numbers, 34% more territory in five years. It puts another light on it. That being said, let's start with Mr. Matthews. Any questions or comments on this item?

Great report on that Clayton thing. It's been a little contentious from time to time. Do you foresee a timeline where we can actually draw a line and say this is yours, this is ours, or what are your thoughts on that?

Yeah, we had hoped to get some information back from Clayton in July, but we haven't heard back from them. You know, we've submitted what staff is proposing where we think the line should be based on our utility service areas and some other factors, but we have not formally received their counterproposal. But as soon as we have that, then the annexation agreement would have to come back to each council for approval. Okay, thank you.

Okay, Mr. Singleton. Thank you for the information, appreciate it.

Okay, Mr. Towles. No question. Mr. Delliger.

Yeah, on the annexation agreement, again, can you sort of reiterate what the negative impacts on development are for Garner and Clayton without that agreement?

So that area, and I don't know if you can see the pointer, this area here, there may be a legal impediment to anyone doing a satellite annexation. So we could still do contiguous annexations, but what happens is... particularly for in Garner, we require in order to get water and sewer, you have to at least petition for annexation. So there may be some impediments to developers who need water and sewer from being able to access that absent again, absent an agreement. The only other way would be to go to the General Assembly and ask for them to either, the General Assembly can annex or de-annex no matter where it is. So that might be an impact on property owners.

Thank you.

Mr. Vance.

Thank you for the brief. I have no questions.

Thank you. Excellent presentation. A lot of work. Always more questions coming along. Thank you for paying attention and being there to help us through all this.

All right. Well, I had hoped to have good news on the legislative front, but we did receive each summer conference and actually in the winter conference as well, we always receive a legislative update from the League of Municipalities and their legislative lobbyists that work for all of the jurisdictions in the state. um so they wanted to remind our elected official you know our attorneys and elected officials that they put out a league bulletin then they have some other resources which you can find on the legislative hub and they wanted to remind everyone that the town and state dinner will be february 17th 2027 in raleigh this is an excellent opportunity for our council members to meet with members of our delegation So try to hold that date if you can. They also always are talking about the growth trends. I will say that Garner didn't make this list because it's a rate of growth. It's not necessarily total growth. So although, and you have to, that this is from the 2024-25 year. So it doesn't include things this year. But again, notable is that Raleigh is over a half a million people now. And that one of the stats they gave us is the triangle is definitely the fastest growing region in the state when you look at, you know, particularly Johnston County and Wake County's growth in population. These were the nine kind of big issues that they wanted to talk about. As you know, there's going to be a constitutional amendment on property tax, infrastructure investments, always an important issue. One of the trends they talked about is that the number of bills being passed is going down, and it's a downward trend. but they're throwing a lot of stuff into omnibus bills. They throw add-ons into like the Helene recovery bills, into the budget bills. So while the number of bills is going down, the impact on municipalities is still going up. We had hoped that there would have been some help to the unfortunate downzoning bill, because as I talk to people around the state, there are some jurisdictions that are nervous enough about it that they have just projects on hold because they were hoping for a legislative fix to the issue, and that has not happened. come this session. But again, there's more local government oversight. There's more preemption taking authority away from municipalities. Again, property owners unhappy with their potential municipality or the municipality they're in are going directly to the legislature and getting de-annexed from whichever jurisdiction that is. And then it's not impacting us, but there's a lot of impacts to some local elections and municipalities.

A question on the constitutional amendment on the property tax. Have they finalized their language on that and what the provisions would be? My understanding was it was broad and in and of itself wouldn't create a policy. Is that still kind of what?

My understanding that that is in the bill and it is very broad and just to be clear, it's authority that the General Assembly already has. They could do these limitations on property tax. They could cap it. They could change the reappraisal moratorium. But the league's view is that they wanted a voter mandate on this. So that that's... why they've put that constitutional amendment in. But it's basically, they did add some language that says they can put a cap on with certain exemptions. So there's hope that it won't be, if they do enact legislation, if the constitutional amendment passes, or if they decide to do legislation, pass a bill with the authority they already have, that they will be cognizant that one One prohibition or one regulation is not going to fit all of the communities across the state, particularly those western jurisdictions that have had a lot of business loss, property, you know, valuation loss, population loss, and that they may have to fill the gaps with tax increases on what remains. The affordable housing exemption modification, the bill that was going to close that tax loophole, it has not passed yet. It is still alive. However, from the league is that with the budget being passed, not much action happened last week and and They're not hopeful at this point that it will get passed, but the legislature is still scheduling some days each month. So it's a possibility. As I'll talk later, this kind of interim quiet time is still a time to reach out to our delegation to tell them how important that is to the town of Garner. Downzoning, again, this was an add-on to a Helene relief recovery bill, I think page 500 or 600, like it was on the very last thing added. It's still problematic. TO INITIATE DOWNZONING WITHOUT WRITTEN CONSENT OF THE PROPERTY OWNER. THE PROBLEM IS THE OVERBREATH OF THE DEFINITION OF DOWNZONING, REDUCING DENSITY OR PERMITTED USES, WE CAN KIND OF CALCULATE. But creating nonconformities means you have to go out and look at every single property and you're looking for nonconforming uses, you're looking for nonconforming buildings, looking for nonconforming setbacks. So making changes to the UDO is difficult without this analysis being done. The Senate did pass a bill with the league's support that would have clarified the definitions and what downzoning would apply to, and that passed over a year ago and then sat in the House, and the House decided to completely gut the bill and regulate wake surfing. So that was a message that the House has no intention of fixing the downzoning issue at this time. So again, the League is hoping that we can reach out to our representatives in the House and try to get some of them to change their mind on this particular issue. Again, this is... Just some of the bills and laws that were enacted that deal that actually preempt municipalities from regulating. So I won't go over all of them. But for the most part, this is part of that larger trend to take away more and more municipal authority over planning and development. And then some other things like diversity, equity, and inclusion, elections, oversight. But most of these are based on development land use patterns. Again, this just talks, the two bottom ones are actually bills that passed, aren't enacted. And then those regulatory reform acts are also still in play. the extent that these provisions weren't added into the budget bill and have passed some significant things in the the land use and appeal again board of adjustment appeals can generally get heard quicker than the court and they still have the opportunity to appeal to court after that and then there are some um you know, extending some timelines for appeals, um, again, new permit choice, um, vesting rights, um, mandatory, um, costs, uh, to go along with the option of attorney's fees in some of these cases. Um, and then, um, prohibiting withholding of zoning permits to compel employment agreements. And when, um, As you see that bottom one, that was not, did not come out of a bill in either the House. It just got it added into the end of a bill. So that's another trend is that there's not really an opportunity to actually communicate on how some of these changes are going to impact particular municipalities. So public camping, which was a way of somewhat addressing unhoused persons and camps on this, this is fairly onerous to municipalities, so it was vetoed, but they believe that that veto will get overridden. All of his vetoes so far have been overridden in this current legislative climate. So we'll give you more of an update on all of the legislation that has passed in the coming weeks. But this is the thing they really, the League was encouraging us is to use this time to reach out to the legislators, talk to them about the impact, but also invite them to our success stories, our successful businesses, show them facilities and projects that we have, just get to know them as people so that they will actually hopefully reach out and ask us. It's a building of relationships time. So that's the ask that we received from the league this year. And certainly the management team we can work with facilitating that if you would need that. Happy to answer any questions you have. Again, there'll be more of a legislative update provided in the coming weeks as we go through all of these bills and provisions of bills that are impacting the town.

There's still a lot going on in the state legislature and a lot to be done. And it seems like we're going to be facing more and more challenges in an uncertain world here. So we're very, very thankful to have the great legal team that we do have here to keep us ahead of the curve as much as possible, see what's coming and help us take the right actions. as our legislators. Any other questions or comments?

Well thank you for the thorough brief and just wondering if is it possible to establish talking points when we talk with our legislators so that be consistent across the board as to what we are asking and talking about based upon the briefing you provided here?

Yes to some extent we get some of that from the league and then we can tailor that to our unique situation in Garner.

Okay, I would appreciate it if the council agrees to provide those talking points to us.

Yes, that would be helpful.

Thank you, that's all I have.

to echo something Mr. Singleton said earlier, but I think emphasizing the voluntary annexation part of annexations is really, really important. There are misunderstandings and miscommunications that happen around that and still concern from residents around us and surrounding areas. So I think that'd be a good thing too. put in that language and explain it. What do you mean volunteer? There's still legacy knowledge or thoughts on how we expand and so I'd make that recommendation for clarity. Thank you for the information.

And no comments.

Mr. Secretary?

Thanks again for the additional information.

Thanks for the hard work and effort. It's a work in progress. Thank you.

Indeed. That concludes your section tonight. Yes. Thank you. That's been a lot of information. Thank you very much. That brings us now to item four under updates, and that is council reports other than committee reports. I think we started with Mr. Vance last time. Mr. Matthews, any other council reports?

Yes, Mr. Mayor. Something I just want to share with the council and the team up here. I had received comments. I was talking about the VA reports. and we're a very strong military community. But Mr. Estes had reached out to me, and his business and property is right across from the VA clinic down that way. And he had been approached by some people about looking at the possibility of what we sometimes would call the small houses or tiny houses designed for veterans. And he was very interested in pursuing that. And I assured him, I said, you know, that location would be a great place for it if we were going to do that type of thing. And I think most of those are like 800-square-foot homes just for single vets. I know Lutz Casa down in Wake County, they do something similar with apartments already. But I told him I would share it with the council and also share it with Mr. – folks up here that were in the planning department. But anyhow, I just wanted to come and give some heads up. I told them, I said, talk to your people and basically come up with a plan or an idea and bring it up and make sure we have a good site plan so we know exactly what we're talking about here. He said he appreciated that and he would start pursuing it more from his end. So, plus that would help a whole lot. We're looking at affordable housing, especially for the veterans and it really ties in a lot. What we're talking about tonight about transportation out to and from and. right across from a VA clinic, what better place? So I just wanted to share that with everybody, that that's kind of floating around out there, and as it develops, it'll follow the usual course of coming before us through the planning department and those policies and procedures. I made no promises, just giving some thoughts and comments.

That's all I have. Excellent. We're always eager for new potential solutions.

Yeah, it's got three items. One, I want to thank Ms. Harrison for responding back in the email yesterday. We all got copied on that. in regard to working with DOT in Raleigh at Calabar Drive and some issues that the residents of Hunter's Mark have had with the intersection, the signal vehicles queuing up and the difficulty of them getting out of the subdivision. So I want to thank her for that information and following up and keeping in touch in regards to that. Just want to confirm on Yergin Park, looks like most of the road improvements to Garner Road have been done. And I know at one time we weren't going to be able to turn left out of Yergin Park, but apparently we're going to be able to turn left out of Yergin Park. We don't know yet because I noticed the marking on the road has a right turn and a left turn, but we're not sure. Ms. Maria is saying we don't know yet. Okay. We're not sure yet. Okay. All right. Thanks. I didn't know. And we have a temporary sign up there that looks good. So I want to thank for that. Third, I sent an email to staff this afternoon in regards to some properties on Highway 70, the former location of the Golden Corral, which was going to be a hotel. There's going to be another hotel, and it's never developed. The former Moon Runners and also the former Ragazzis, man, they look bad. I'm talking the grass is bad. This is the heaviest travel road in Garner, excluding I-40, the section I-40, and it looks bad. So I sent the staff. Ragazzis is boarded up, which is against our ordinance. We have an ordinance to address that. They're dealing with some homes now in North Garner. So It's got to be a focus area. This is a high traffic, high volume area of people coming into town, and it looks bad. In the mechanical boulevard side, it's the same way. So I asked enforcement to stay on this. And I also included Mr. Gruber in there if there's any possibility anybody looking at anything. Again, the former Golden Corral, former host sites of proposed hotels have been vacant for years. And again, trash everywhere. There's a hole in the parking lot. I could set this chair and lay down and you wouldn't touch any side. It's massive. It's just really, really, really bad shape. And we need to do what we can. If we have to send on our phone a 30-day reminder to go up there and check on it because it looks so bad. for enforcement. I know we're trying to initiate some enforcement. We need to be initiating enforcement there on a regular basis, so I just want to say it out loud so everybody hears it, and it's an area I hear about from people, and I turned another highgrass, I turned another highgrass one in today. I turned a couple in on the app last week, chronic offenders. I'll turn one in in a heartbeat, and The business ones are the ones that really bother me because, you know, they're supposed to be investing in town and they're not investing in their property by keeping it looking like most other, everyone else does. So that's my little rant, mini rant for the night, but it just takes away so much from the people on 70 and in town who are keeping their property looking right.

Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, we certainly don't want that to be a first impression through that gateway of Garner. Thank you, Mr. Singleton. Mr. Stallings?

No report tonight.

Mr. Dellinger?

Yeah, just a very short follow-up on the interviews and recruitment we're doing for the Housing Advisory Committee and kind of dovetailing it with Mr. Kelsman-Matthews. statements and sort of the excitement around getting that committee formed as being a place and a forum to bring those kinds of ideas. We're in a place getting closer to where we have a group of dedicated citizens and staff who can take in that information and evaluate that type of interest. So there's a lot of interest coming from a lot of different places and a lot of ideas. So really looking forward for that committee to get I'm rolling sometime this fall, so that's all. Just excited the direction we're going.

Yes, good stuff. Mr. Vance? The report. Okay, and I believe that concludes most of the business on our agenda. I'm told by our attorney we might have the need for a closed session tonight. Could you bring us up to speed on that?

Yes, we're requesting a closed session under section 143-318.11a3 to consult with the town attorney regarding litigation and also 143-318.11a5 to instruct staff regarding the acquisition of property.

Is there a motion from council to accept that proposal of a closed session? So moved. Second. A motion by Mr. Stallings and second by Mr. Vance to move to a closed session. If there's no further discussion on that issue, I'll take a voice vote. All in favor of moving to a closed session, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed by nay? Hearing none, we will transition to a closed session, and we will be back here when it's over. Thank you for coming tonight. Thanks for watching so far. Closed session back to the regular session and I'm going to ask our attorney to give us a brief recap of what we did.

Thank you Mr. Mayor. Council met with the managers and attorneys regarding potential acquisition of property which might include potential litigation through condemnation. No votes were taken but direction was provided to staff.

Thank you very much. Very productive meeting. Thanks to all the council members. At this time, if there's no further business we need to attend to or other items, we'll accept a motion to adjourn. So moved. There's a motion by Mr. Vance, second by Mr. Delliger to adjourn. All in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed by nay? Hearing none, it's unanimous. We're adjourned. Thank you all.