Town Council - Regular Meeting

good evening and welcome to garner to the town council regular meeting of september 1st 2026 and as i call the meeting to order i just have to say again what a beautiful day it's been in garner not just weather-wise was a little warm but it started out great for me i was able to attend a local business here where one employee had saved the life of another through his diligence and attention and care and it just and they came from all over the country to recognize this guy And it just really started my day off thinking about love and helping our neighbor and what a great place Garner is and how lucky we are to have the great team working with us here. It started my day on the right foot. I even went home and put my little heart up here. It's just a lovely, lovely day to certify. So thank you. And that being said, I'm going to ask the 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. And Council Member Vance.

Here. Yes, I'm going to ask Mayor Pro Tem Dellinger to lead the Pledge of Allegiance and Inspiration. Please stand if you are able. Invocation?

Yes. You. I know. Please join me if you want. Thank you, Lord, for this day to live, be, and serve in this town we call home. Grant us the wisdom and grace to lead, but also to follow, speak, to listen, and to be heard and to hear, and be with those in need of your comfort. In your name we pray. Amen.

Thank you, sir. Item B on our agenda is adoption of the agenda council members. I think I've had a chance to look this over. Is there a motion to adopt the agenda? So move 2nd, there's a motion by Mr. Stalin's 2nd, Mr. Vance. If no discussion, we'll have a voice vote. All in favor of adopting the agenda, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed by nay? Hearing none, that passes unanimously. Thank you. Item C, presentations. I don't think we have any presentations this evening. Takes us along to item D, which is petitions and comments. I'll ask our attorney or town clerk, any folks signed up to speak tonight?

No, sir.

Golly, that's simple, isn't it? Moving right along to item E, and this is the consent agenda. This is a relatively small number of more administrative kind of factors. Our town council has had a chance to look at these. And to see if we can pass these in mass as 1 motion, or if we need to pull 1 out for more attention council members over any that need to be pulled out, discussed individually. If not, I will accept a motion to approve the consent agenda.

So, 2nd.

Boy, there's an echo in this room. I think Mr. Dellinger made the motion. Mr. Vance seconded. Close enough? Okay. All in favor of adopting the consent agenda, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed by nay? Any that are opposed, please signify by saying nay. And there are none. And that passes unanimously. The consent agenda is adopted. And moving right along to item F, public hearings. And we do have several of these, and some of these are interesting as usual this evening. They're all interesting indeed. The first one tonight is a public hearing concerning the voluntary contiguous annexation of Timber Thompson Commercial. Our presenter is our planning director, Mr. Jeff Treisenberg. If you please give us a little overview of the situation and what we're working on this evening. Good evening, Mayor, Council.

Yes, tonight we have just one brief annexation request for you. The public hearing was set for today with proper advertisements. It is a contiguous annexation at the corner of Timber and Thompson Road. Scroll down here. You can see the site in question directly across from Timber Drive Elementary School and the EMS station. The property is zoned NMX and the property itself is 3.68 acres and the intervening right of way shaded in red that we'll be bringing in with it is 1.87. The project itself, again this was a site plan that was reviewed by staff. About 19,000 square feet of office retail and about a 10,000 plus square foot daycare divided into three buildings. And that is basically the general information associated with it. We do have the ordinance 2026-5398 prepared for you should you decide to adopt the annexation. Mr. Daniel Gunter is here tonight in case you do have any questions of the petitioner. But otherwise, that's all I have for you this evening.

Okay, that was pretty direct there. Are there any individuals who have signed up to speak on this item this evening?

No, sir.

And Mr. Friesenberg, does your applicant wish to make a presentation? Okay, so let me ask council members who wish to make comments or ask questions. Let's start with Mr. Vance, related to this project, the Timber Thompson commercial. Questions, comments? No questions. Mr. Dellinger?

No questions.

Mr. Powell?

No questions.

Mr. Singleton? No questions. Well, thank you. This is one that you've done your homework on, I'm thinking. We've looked at this. And there are no individuals who signed up. So we will close the public meeting now. And we will ask if there's a motion and a second to approve Ordinance 2026-5398. So moved.

Second.

Motion by Mr. Singleton and a second by Mr. Stallins. Is there any other discussion regarding this particular project? Hearing none, we'll call for a voice vote on this one. All in favor of passing this annexation, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed by nay? Hearing none, this passes unanimously. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Treisenberg and all the folks that helped put this together. Our item under public hearings, item 1.2 is fire protection ordinance amendments. It's been given a lot of study by the legal staff, and I believe we're going to have Ms. Diamond Spain give us an overview of what we're looking at here.

Good evening, everyone. I am Diamond Spain, the assistant town attorney. We are going to go over the chapter four proposed amendments. So we previously discussed the addition of the North Carolina Fire Prevention Code being adopted. We also addressed the change in the structure essentially since the merger, which lays out the duties of Garner Fire Rescue and the fire chief. use requirements for recreational fires, outdoor fireplaces and fire pits and bonfires, which falls under our open burnings ordinance. We also remove references to negotiation between Council and the volunteer fire department again because of the merger. A larger portion that we added was the central station monitoring service this is again applicable to commercial properties. which will require essentially a system that makes for more efficient responses. There will not be a retroactive application. There's a grace period of one year to allow enforcement of this and maybe have some people have the opportunity to adjust. Residential enforcement options are more lenient. They are not required to have this particular Central Station monitoring service that is specific to commercial but we did go ahead and address the false alarms there as specific to the fire department response. The intent is of course to focus more on education than punishment for these failures to comply and so in the proposed ordinance we kind of have a tier tiered implementation of enforcement as far as giving them an opportunity to participate in a class first after the first instance of, after the first few instances of a false alarm, it eventually going up to a subsequent $100 civil penalty specific to commercial properties in the event that they are acting in good faith and they are attempting to bring themselves into compliance after triggering the requirement to update their systems if it's not a new one, that at that point, any civil penalties, we are willing to waive them so long as they are actually continuously making good faith efforts to comply with this requirement. So we did not receive any public comments specific to this particular chapter, but that link is still available for the public if they would like to do so, and we do encourage that. Any questions from council?

Any questions at this point for Ms. Diamond? No.

A similar to what we saw previously with chapter 18 and 11 council will have to vote twice because in this chapter we are including additional criminal penalties. these will be specific to these sections listed here where we included provisions for interfering with uh vehicles that are interfering with or people who are congregating where uh garner fire rescue is assembled for the purpose of of course carrying out their duties uh interference with the firefighter or the apparatus or in regard to our prohibition of certain open burnings because we added those sections that specifically indicate recreational fires fireplaces fire pits and bonfires those also could bring about additional criminal penalties and so we would need that second vote and as far as chapter four that is all of the changes that we are proposing at this time

Okay. Have any individuals signed up to speak on this item?

No, sir.

No. Okay. So let's run by council members again and ask if there's any questions or comments related to this fire protection ordinance amendment. Mr. Vance? No questions. Comments? Mr. Dellinger? No questions. Mr. Allen? No questions. Mr. Singleton? No questions. Okay. Everybody's done their homework. And that, I believe, we will close the public meeting now and we'll move along to asking council members, is there a motion to adopt ordinance number 2026-5396, amending chapter 4, subject to the enactment of general statute 160A-175? So moved. Motion by Mr. Vance. Second. Second by Mr. Stallings. If there's no further discussion, I'll call for a voice vote on adopting this amendment, this motion, this ordinance. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed by nay? Hearing none, it passes unanimously. Thank you very much for your good work. The legal staff spent a lot of time getting all this stuff in order with state law and all the things we have to go by. And for the next one, item 1.3, we have a similar situation, traffic control ordinance amendments, and our presenter here is our town attorney, Ms. Terry Jones.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. As you know, this project is near and dear to my heart. It's been a long time as we're working our way through our code of public, our code of ordinances for the town of Garner. Again, the legal department's been working on several of these. I'm particularly pleased that we can do changes to chapter 10. This will reduce the number of pages in our code of ordinance by a great deal by the adoption of an official traffic control map. So as you can see, a brief summary of the changes to Chapter 10 are codifying various traffic control measures on an official map, which is authorized by state law. Some new additions are creating a penalty for grass or weeds that are obstructing drains, gutters, streets and sidewalks, also prohibiting the obstruction of access to mailboxes and mail zones. Many new subdivisions are required by the U.S. Postal Service to have a designated mail area rather than individual mailboxes at the residences. And then what Assistant Town Attorney Spain talked about in some detail at the work session was regulating e-bikes or electric assisted bikes, defining them and regulating them, and that creates an entire new article to Chapter 10. So again, with the implementation of an interactive mapping tool, several of these sections you'll see will now instead of being listed within the code of ordinances they will now be shown on the map as new subdivisions come online you'll still need to adopt an ordinance adopting stop signs but what we'll do is they'll automatically go on the map instead of being sent to our codifier muni code to put into the code so these are seven of the provisions that we can add to the map at this time. We can also add additional ones as they become As they become adopted in the future, some of our older ordinances, we will have to do a few corrections to because the ordinance didn't come with dimensions that could be mapped, like for a no parking zone from a specific point to another specific point. So we'll be bringing those back to you as those are uncovered. At this point, I'm going to ask Mr. Bone to come up and demonstrate what we have on the map to date.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, members of council. I don't think anyone is a stranger to this. I've been shown off at a few other meetings. Like Ms. Jones said, this is codifying a map that will hold all of our stop and yield conditions, our school zones, speed limits, several different parking restrictions, as well as through traffic. And not only do these put like a location on these, but they also retain the same textual elements as they were when they were on the code of ordinances.

There it goes.

Parking restrictions include our no parking zones, our residential parking permits, our one hour parking, and our loading zones. The latter two are just one section off of historic downtown. Are there any questions about any specific sections or the map in general?

Any questions?

Mr. Dellinger? Will this be open to the public? Yes, absolutely. Okay. Will we be able to find out where it's pretty easy access for the public to go to this map and find it? Yes.

Mr. Dellinger?

I just wanna, I think I've mentioned this before, appreciate all the hard work and taking all that code and putting it in the map, the keystroke behind every single one of those, and I commend you all for putting in the time. It'll save a lot more time in the future, so good job. No questions.

Mr. Singleton?

No questions.

No question. Well, I'll just add to what's been said. A whole lot of work went into this. We take for granted having stop signs and no parking signs at the right place. It doesn't happen by accident. It happens by hard work. And what you've put together here, again, we can find it and get the answer. The police officers can look at this and find the evidence that they need, find out what's going on. Thank you very much for all that you've done there. And I'll ask our town clerk, have any individuals signed up to speak on this item?

No, sir.

No one signed up to speak. With that being said, I will close the public hearing and we'll move along to a motion to adopt ordinance number 2026-5397, amending chapter 10, motor vehicles and traffic. Is there a motion?

Just a clarification. I think the motion is to hold a public hearing. Is that correct, Ms. Jones?

You are holding the public hearing tonight. And I believe he said no one had signed up.

I was just looking at the agenda. It says proposed action, hold public hearing. Okay.

Yeah, let's make sure we're doing the right thing.

You are holding the public hearing tonight and then with the potential of adopting the ordinance for the first time.

All right, thank you.

Yes, thank you. Yeah, we've closed the public hearing, Mr. Stallings, an observation.

Yes, I have a question. so i see in here in section 10 134 um the regulations around e-bikes and i know we had conversations before about enforcement by the police department did we fix any of those issues because i still see that we're classifying class ones as 20 class twos is 20 and class threes is 28 and if If I'm not mistaken, you can't really delineate a class three from a class two if the police were riding down the street looking at somebody driving an e-bike. Did we work through that problem at all?

Gonna have to defer to the police department on that issue.

So from what I recall, we were discussing that and the issue came down to the fact that speed can be determined. They can't necessarily determine the class of bike from their visual perspective, but they can determine what the speed is. And they do have the ability to determine what the bike is if they find that the person is not acting consistent with the behaviors that we have listed. in the ordinance because there was also a question about certain conduct in terms of in their proximity to other pedestrians on these areas. And so that is in there to address the behavior. There is no surefire way to make sure that they can determine it, that is in alignment with the state. That is how the state defines them. And so we can't really tweak that per se further than that. And so the way that we've addressed that is including those behaviors. We also discussed the speed limit posting. And so I did go in and add a speed limit of 10 miles per hour. on any pedestrian right-of-ways, greenways, or anything where pedestrians are generally going to be. And so regardless of whether or not the police would be able to, you know, look and determine immediately, they can assess that someone has violated our ordinance via that speed limit. And then per further information gathering during their investigation, they would have the ability to determine that.

So if I'm understanding correctly, if you're on a pedestrian greenway, it will be a 10 mile per hour speed limit regardless.

Yes, sir.

That's correct. Thank you.

Yeah, good questions, important questions. Just because your e-bike might go 28, 10 miles an hour on a greenway, please. Right. Thank you. Thank you. Other questions? Mr. Singleton?

Yes, sir.

Matthew? Yeah, a lot of work has gone into this, too. So I think we have closed the public hearing, and we're looking for... a motion to adopt Ordinance 2365397, amended Chapter 10. And then we can have some more discussion if we have a motion and a second.

So moved. Second.

Motion by Mr. Vance, second by Mr. Stallings. Is there any other discussion we want to have about this particular item? Any other questions, comments? It is complicated. Thank you and your team for working on this. Thanks to the police department who gave us an orientation in this recently as well. And while we may not be able to identify class one versus class two e-bike at a distance, if we're forced to pull over and look at some particular behavior, it gives us a lens to look through to see what the state statutes are. And we will learn more and more about enforcing this as we go along. And as these vehicles proliferate, I have one and I love it, but I'm only a class two. I'm going to stay off the greenways, go slow. Thank you. Any other observations or questions here? That being said, we've got the motion and the second on that already. All in favor of passing this ordinance, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed by nay? Hearing none, the motion carries unanimously. Thank you. Thank you for all your hard work.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. If I could just take another moment of Council's time. So both Chapter 4 and Chapter 10 will come back on your consent agenda, similar to how Chapter 11 and Chapter 18 were on tonight's consent agenda. I do want to give tremendous thanks to Alex Bone, who not only mapped all of this, but checked each and every stop sign and ordinance in that were in our code of ordinances and found some places where we may have stop signs that we can't locate the ordinance. And as you saw from the map, once you click onto a different traffic control device, it will give you information about the ordinance. And then we hope with the clerk's office at some point that we'll actually have all the ordinances on the webpage as well so people can find that backup documentation as to when council actually adopted these. Again, I appreciate all the work that was done and also with engineering as well as the planning department and the police department and looking at this chapter 10, motor vehicles and traffic, and especially the work Assistant Town Attorney Diamond Spain did on researching all kinds of e-bike ordinances to find the best fit for the town of Garner. Thank you.

Thank you very much. And don't go far, by the way, unless you need to go get your paper, because you're up next, I think. And that takes us to item G, you and old business. Item number one is delegation of authority. And again, this is one that our town attorney and her staff have been working on for some time, several months. We've been through several adjustments. We've had some good input. Just trying to get consolidated, like a lot of the things we've seen earlier today. Today, getting in line with state statutes, clarifying things. There will be other adjustments to be made on all of these things as time goes on, but it gives us a good starting point. With that, Ms. Jones, I will turn it over to you to give us a little overview about delegation of authority.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So I've been before you several times on this issue. This is basically a best practice for any municipality to clearly know what staff is authorized, what actions they're authorized to do on behalf of the town. Normally the town can only operate through the governing body, which is the town council. So it's not only actions that can be taken, but different documents that can be signed. You'll see before you there's three Resolutions, one would authorize the town attorney, a separate one to authorize the manager, and then other staff of town, and then a third to authorize the mayor, and we do have an alternative proposed by Councilman Stallings, and then an alternative proposed by Mayor Gupton on particularly the delegation of authority to the mayor. So I'm happy to answer any questions about any of the specific provisions.

Well, thank you. I might want to just add that after seeing Mr. Stallings' amendment, I withdrew mine. His does all the things I wanted to do. So at this point, there's only one amendment in the batch of three here. I'd be glad to have more discussion on all of these together. We probably, for sake of clarity, come back and approve one resolution about the town attorney, then the resolution about authorizing the town manager, and then the authorized delegation of authority to the mayor. We'll probably take them one, two, three to vote on, but we can discuss all of these at the same time while we're here, if that's okay, and if that's okay with you. And given that and the number of times that we've looked at this and studied this, We'll still go along and start with Mr. Matthews. If there's any questions or comments you want to make on the delegation of authority update.

I have no questions. I think it's time to do this. We've got so much going on and all of these are qualified positions and we've got strong accountability and I'm ready to move forward with it.

Okay. Mr. Singleton.

Yes, a few comments. I've talked to Attorney Jones more than once about some of my concerns, and we continue this from December. But since then, we've had some of our sister towns and cities in North Carolina who've had some serious issues, and some of those issues can be related directly to delegating authority, particularly in Cary when the manager couldn't do anything, which was not the way to manage things. So that's... Some concern I had, and I'm glad we fleshed through all this. Also, the number of procurement cards that are issued in different towns is pretty amazing to read. But I understand we have a policy on that, and we do have a specific policy related to that, which is good. So I've taken some time, taken some concern, reading information, what has happened in other towns. I appreciate the time, and we continued and continued and continued it, but we kept learning from some of the issues with some other towns. I think all of them have made specific changes to delegating authority now, and so I appreciate that we've gone through the process.

Thank you. Mr. Stanley, comments, questions?

No questions. It's been a long time coming. Glad we're here.

Thank you. Mr. Dellinger?

Yeah, just say this is a good continuation of the work by the legal department, town manager to go through a lot of these processes and whether it's contracts and program partners to codify a lot of practices and make clarifications where there's ambiguity. Like Mr. Singleton said, it's timely with other things that are going on around us um to kind of lead the way and how to put this stuff in writing i'm so glad we're here and it's been worth the time we've taken to invest in in these documents

Thank you, Mr. Vance. No questions. Okay. Good discussion there. An important topic. It's been given a lot of scrutiny. We appreciate all the council members, all of your staff working through this. If there's no further questions there, I'm going to ask for a motion one by one of the three different parts of this. And I'd like to start with Resolution 2026-2708, authorizing the town attorney the delegation of authority there, the one that we've looked at. Is there a motion to adopt that one?

So moved. Second.

A motion by Mr. Stallings and a second by Mr. Vance. Any other discussion on this particular piece of the resolution? Hearing none, I'll call for a voice vote on this. All in favor of adopting that resolution, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed by nay? Hearing none, that passes unanimously. That brings us to item number two, resolution 20262707, which is authorizing the town manager and others under the delegation of authority documents that we've just reviewed and been presented by Ms. Jones. Is there a motion and a second to adopt that resolution? So moved.

Second.

Motion by Mr. Matthews and second by Mr. Stallings. If there's no other questions or comments on that one, I will ask for a voice vote. All those in favor of adopting this resolution about the town manager's delegation of authority, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed by nay? Hearing none, passage unanimously. The third one, of course, is my favor. It has to do with the delegation of authority authorizing the mayor to do certain things and to not do certain things. And that is item 2026, 2706, regarding the mayor's delegation of authority. As I mentioned, there had been one amendment suggested by Mr. Stallings. I think a number of us have reviewed it and found that to be appropriate and moving in the right direction to clarify things that this mayor or the next mayor or the mayor 10 years from now can and cannot do. And I'm in full agreement with the amended version that's there. Are there other comments or questions? We'll start with Mr. Vance.

No comments or questions?

Mr. Dellinger?

No, sir.

Mr. Stallings?

No comments.

Mr. Singleton? No, sir. Okay. Well, and can we get a motion and a second on that?

So moved.

Can we just, sorry, to clarify that... The resolution 2026-2706 delegating authority to the town mayor is the version as on page 148 in your packet.

So I move that we approve on page 148 resolution 2706.

Yes, as amended. Thank you for that clarification. That is exactly the one we're trying to adopt here. So the motion, I think, was made by Mr. Stallings. It was seconded by Mr. Dellinger. Okay. So the motion is made and seconded. Is there any other discussion or clarification on this particular resolution? Hearing none, I'll ask for a voice vote. All those in favor of adopting the resolution, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed by nay? Hearing none, it passes unanimously. Good work all around. A lot of thought went into this, a lot of review, and I think we're on the right track. As Mr. Singleton pointed out, you can't be careful enough with clarifying these things these days. We don't have to look far at other towns who fail to do this. And I just got deeper and deeper in the hole. So we're glad for all the work that's been done. Thank you very much.

And going forward, similar to how we started at your organizational meeting in December, anytime there's a change in council, we would review the delegation of authority, your meeting rules of procedure, and your code of conduct and ethics so that it reflects the governing body that's been elected at that time.

Thank you. Thank you very much. And that brings us to item number two. NOMINATIONS COMMITTEE RECOMMENDATIONS, AND OUR SPONSOR IS REBECCA MURRAY, OUR DEPUTY TOWN CLERK. ARE YOU GOING TO MAKE A LITTLE PRESENTATION?

SHE'S NOT GOING TO MAKE A PRESENTATION THIS EVENING. THE COMMITTEE WILL DO IT. THE COUNCIL AND TO THE PUBLIC, I'D LIKE TO SAY THAT WE HAVE BEEN MEETING OVER A QUARTER We extend a period of time to interview a group, a great group of individuals. We've now come before you with recommendations for consideration of approval for the following individuals for the Housing Advisory Committee, with the first term being from September 1, 2026 through 6-3-0-27, Mr. Jeff Swain and Ms. Katie Cardenas. Next for the term of September 1, 2026 to June 30, 2028, Anita Powell and Brandi Melcher from the term of September 1, 2026 to June 30, 2029. Following individuals, Ms. Barbara Barrett, Ms. Jasmine Johnson, and Ms. Gwen Burston. Those are the recommendations to fulfill the positions on the advisory committee going forward.

Good work. Thank you for that report. We have the co-chair of the nominating committee here as well. Mr. Dellinger, any observations, comments?

uh just want to thank uh clark's office for helping us with the process throughout um with the interviews and and that selection part of the process i would think maury howe and louis heard who participated as sort of observers in the process too since they'll be the primary interface for that committee so i want to thank them and also thank uh all of our applicants we had a lot of really good applicants it was a very difficult decision in different ways, trying to get the right balance of skill sets, but we appreciate everyone who applied and hope they will stay in contact with us and participate in this journey. And thank you to Mr. Vance for being my partner in all this. A while. Seven years now. A while. Yes, that's all.

Well, there's a lot of work. And as I looked over the resumes and the background of the people that you selected, wow, what an impressive bunch. We really have a great citizenry here willing to step up and had relevant background. And you guys picked the best of the best. I'm very satisfied with the work you've done. Other observations or questions?

No comment. sorry yeah and just one more comment on the uh the staggering of the terms and our rationale for that so is it a new committee we want to make sure that we were rotating folks on and off the folks will be eligible to be reappointed um jeff swain and katie cardenas they ended up getting sort of a short straw on the front end um because they've been a part of our previous task force jeff was a part of two of our housing task force and katie as one so we thought those folks with uh the experience would kind of be the first cut in the short straw of the short term. So the rest of them were assigned randomly by the clerk's office. So just want to give people insight into the process on the term set up that we came up with.

Are they eligible for reappointment at the end of their term? Yes, sir. Yep. Good. So they'll make it up in the long run, right? Yes. Good, good. Thank you. Other observations, questions? Mr. Singleton?

Yes, sir.

Well, I'll also give a shout out to our deputy town clerk, Rebecca Murray, who helped us figure out the math on this. There was a lot of math involved in making sure that this was done regularly and not everybody leaving at once. So a lot of teamwork went into this. So you've heard the proposed action is to recommend members to the Housing Advisory Committee, and I'll ask council members for a motion to do so. Is there a motion?

So moved. Second.

A motion by Mr. Dellinger, second by Mr. Vance. Is there any further discussion or comments from council?

Just thanks for the work y'all put in.

Okay, that being said, I'll ask for a voice vote on this one. All those in favor of passing these recommendations, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed by nay? Hearing none, an unanimous decision. Accept these people. I'm glad to have them. Glad to have them working on our Citizens Advisory Council. Great work. Great work, the two co-chairs as well. brings us to item H, updates to council. We have committee reports, and we'll recognize council members to make a report about any committee they might be on, and we'll start with Mr. Matthews down here.

Nothing this time.

Mr. Singleton?

No committee meetings.

Mr. Stallings?

No report.

Mr. Dellinger?

No report.

Mr. Vance?

No report.

Well, I'll add, I had no report from the art committee either then. Stuff's been going on, but we'll talk about it next time. And that brings us to manager reports, and I bet she has some news for us.

No reports this evening.

Oh, you're kidding me. Come on, come on.

God.

Attorney reports?

Just to report out, council met in a special meeting earlier this afternoon at 4 p.m. and immediately went into a closed session under 143-318, sorry, 311, 318-11, A1 and A3. No votes were taken, no official action was taken during that meeting.

Thank you. We may come back to talk about that again in just a moment in another regard. But that takes us to council reports on things other than committee report. I'll start with Mr. Vance. Any other reports or items you want to bring up?

I just want to say that the barbershop wrap session that was held on this past Saturday at Heavily Cuts was well attended and it was a good event for just to mingle and talk with the citizens there and just to hear them and just to let them know that we're in the community and we want to know about them and let them know that we're here to assist them and that we work for them.

Mr. Dowager.

I'm going to hold my report to the next meeting, but no report tonight.

Give us something to look forward to. Mr. Stallings? No report. Mr. Singleton?

Report, I do have a question for staff. I've turned in the last week a couple of the go-rally stops where the trash cans were overflowing, and Public Works does a good job of cleaning it up. Is there a way to get a bigger can or Another can, specifically the one on Vandor in front of the bank, and then the one beside the entrance to the G-Pack. The one on the G-Pack, I know we had the property behind it, so I thought that might be simple to put an extra can there, if possible. But I'm just, you know, I go by, that one gets a lot of traffic from the store. People walk in, and they use that trash can. The one up here, they're coming from the shopping center, and they use that, and the trash can is overflowing. So I'm just wondering, is there a way to get another can, bigger can, and get Public Works responds? Well, but I'm just curious. That's two I know that get full on a regular basis because of where they're located. And whether they're bus people who ride the bus or not, people are using the trash can.

Yes, sir. So we'll follow up on that. I know there were plans to enhance the bus stop on Vandora. And typically when those enhancements happen, it comes with a larger can. So we'll check on the status of doing that. And then also we'll talk internally about whether or not there's any option for adding our own can since we own the property near the other stop in addition to the one with the bus stop.

Okay, and the one at Van Door there, talking about the enhancement with the enclosed? Yes, sir. You're not talking about that?

That would be a shelter, and with the shelter comes the larger can because there's a place to mount it to.

So they're working on that?

Yes, sir, and I'll get a status update for that. All right. All right. Thank you.

And thank you, Mr. Singleton, for bringing it up. It just points out again, it takes many sets of eyes to see the things that we need to do, things that many of us drive by every single day, but we're looking in another direction, thinking about something else. Thank all of you, particularly Mr. Singleton, who continues to do this. Every citizen who points out a way we can improve is helping us to improve. And let me put in that plug for the Garner Info app again. If you see an issue like this, or grass growing, or junk cars, are dead animals in the roadway corner info gets good response unless you're on the council then you just blurt it out and have to take care of it either way it's good which it takes everybody it takes everybody to do this thanks for your efforts that concludes the council reports i think i'm sorry we did

Matthews. I don't have anything.

I thought I saw him give me the sign, but I'd always rather double check than to miss somebody. Thank you. Every eye counts. Every ear counts. So that concludes the items on our agenda so far this evening. I think based on our closed session earlier today, we may need to have another closed session this evening to talk about some of the things we saw there. Was that kind of what we had in mind, having another closed session this evening? And I'll ask our town attorney to give us the proper citation to make a motion to move to a closed session.

That would be pursuant to North Carolina General Statute section 143-318.11a3 to consult with the town attorney regarding litigation or settlement of a claim.

So moved. Second. There's a motion from Mr. Singleton and a second from Mr. Stallings. If there's no further discussion on this for a voice vote to move to a closed session, all in favor please signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed by nay? Hearing none, we'll move to a closed session. See you soon. Stick around. Take a break. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

And we return to an open session here from our closed session. I'm going to ask our town attorney, Ms. Jones, to give us a recap of what we did.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Council gave direction to the town attorney and town staff on terms to a settlement agreement. And we will come back if a settlement agreement is entered into to report that out in open session.

Thank you. Are there any other business items we need to address or anything else on the agenda? Hearing none, I will accept a motion to adjourn.

So moved. Second.

Motion by Mr. Matthews, second by Mr. Stallings to adjourn. All in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed by nay? Hearing none, meeting adjourned.