Board of Commissioners - Regular Meeting

Good evening and welcome to the August 11th, 2026 work session of the Gaston County Board of Commissioners. My name is Chad Brown, I serve as Chairman of the Board as well as the Commissioner of the Riverbend Township. I would like to welcome our viewers and thank Spectrum Cable and AT&T for making it possible for our citizens. For our television audience and live streaming audience, I would like to present our Gaston County Commissioners, beginning on my far right.

Alan Fraley, Charitable Township. Good evening, South Sheehan, Gastonia Township. Jim Bailey, South Point Township.

Good evening, Kathy Cloninger, Dallas Township.

Bob Hovis, Crowder's Mountain Township. Good evening, Tom Kiger.

At this time, I will open the agenda for proclamations, commendations, awards, and certificate. I now call on Commissioner Fraley for the proclamation to recognize and celebrate the 250th anniversary of the funding of the United States of America.

They stand out just a little bit. Before I get started with the proclamation, I would just please I'd like the minutes to reflect that I'm requesting that this proclamation be entered into our records in memory of Robbie Buff, Donna's late husband, who was a longtime member of the Catawba Valley chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution, an admired enthusiast, and his memory will long live in the hearts and minds of all his compatriots. I'm sure the board's good with that. Okay, this is recognized to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States of America. And Donna, you removed that word that I was going to have a hard time saying, so I appreciate that. Catawba Valley chapter, we got here tonight. If I leave anybody out, please let me know. We got Roy Lightfoot, president. We got Rick Hubbard, Jody Avery, Dan Veal, Bob Clark. Eddie Miller, and with the DAR, Lisa Pupowitz. Hopefully that's close. Okay. I'll go with that. And we got Cal Hartman, Major General Benjamin from the Lincolnton Society, the CAR, and now the proclamation. Whereas on July the 4th, 2026, our County celebrated the 250th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence by the Second Continental Congress, marking the birth of the United States of America and affirming the enduring principles of liberty, equality, self-governance, and the unalienable rights of all people. And whereas, while the year 2026 marks the anniversary of our nation's founding, it also recognizes that the struggle to secure American independence continued beyond 1776 through years of courage and sacrifice, culminating at the Treaty of Paris in 1783. And whereas North Carolina citizens made lasting contributions to America's fight for independence through pivotal Revolutionary War engagements that shaped the Southern campaigned and helped pave the way for the British to surrender at Yorktown, Virginia on October 19, 1781. Whereas the Carolina backcountry played a significant role in the American Revolution cause and the citizens of historic Trine County for which Gaston, Lincoln, Cleveland, Polk, and Rutherford counties would later be formed, declared their commitment to resist British oppression and tyranny through the trying resolves of August 14, 1775. Whereas the patriot militiamen of the South Fork settlements along the Catawba River later known as the South Fork Boys, and other citizens of present-day Gaston County, served as members of the Lincoln County Regiment helping to secure the Patriot victory in the battle at Ramsour's Mill on June the 20th, 1780, before joining fellow Patriots less than four months later in the decisive victory at the Battle of Kings Mountain. And on October 7th, 1780, victories that helped turn the tide of the Southern campaign and whereas This historic anniversary serves as a reminder of the sacrifices made by citizens of North Carolina across the nation to secure the blessings of freedoms for future generations. Now, therefore, be it resolved that Gaston County Board of Commissioners hereby celebrates the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States of America. and further encourages all citizens to honor those who encourage and sacrifice to secure our freedoms by recognizing significant milestones of 1776 to 1783, which shaped the course of American history and continue to serve as lasting inspiration for people all around the world. May we commit ourselves to the timeless principles of liberty, equality, and government by the consent of the governed to be adopted the 25th day of August, 2026. And I will turn it over to Roy. You would like to say a few words?

A few.

A few, whatever. Hey, listen, the floor is yours. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, Alan. I appreciate it greatly. Yes, sir.

Thank you.

And thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for having us here today. I like to remind people in Gaston County on a regular basis that y'all were part of Lincoln County before. As a matter of fact, at this time, the South Fork boys actually came from the area of Belmont. that wound up at Kings Mountain. I try not to get too far in the weeds with history lessons because I haven't got time for that, and I've got to eat supper. But we're very grateful, and we echo as a group this proclamation to honor our – Our friend and our compatriot, Robert Sloan Buff III. Robbie was a wonderful human being. I don't have to tell most people that because you probably already know. He was a big force with us, and he did a lot. He did a lot, and I miss him greatly. We all miss him greatly. But we did honor him this year at our National Congress. I've already presented Donna with the... the program from that event at the memorial service. His name is listed in the program there, among him and another 520 other men who have passed on. But we want to invite you all to come to the, he mentioned the try-on resolves. I don't know if anybody caught that date or not. I guess not. August 14th, 1775, prior to the Declaration of Independence. We had about six events that happened here in North Carolina prior to the Declaration of Independence. So we've got a lot to be proud of. I won't go over the whole list, all of them, but yeah, we had about that many happen prior to that. Telling England we were sick and tired of them. But I do want to take a moment and present something to Alan, a certificate of appreciation from the chapter. Look that way. Thank you. And also, Mr. Chairman, to the whole board as well, good to see you, sir. Thank you, sir. Sorry I couldn't bring a firelock this time either. It's all right.

We're going to have a picture made for all you guys.

Oh, OK. Good deal. Thank you. Good deal. And without her, we wouldn't be here. Ms. Bonnebaugh, for that. And I'd hug you. I'd hug you.

But I want to thank all y'all for being here.

And thank y'all for coming out and honoring our heroes. Thank you.

You just come out front. We'll have a picture with everybody.

Many of us seated here tonight had the opportunity last year to attend your reenactment at the Trine site. And if I'm not mistaken, was that not the first official action that took place to form this more perfect union? The Trine, of course, I think...

There's an argument there, I understand. But it's one of the first. Yes, sir. I'm sorry. I was. Now, you do a great job. We appreciate it. You didn't have to he was there

The next proclamation is to proclaim the month of August 2026 as Child Support Awareness Month in Gaston County. Commissioner Kueger. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen.

Good to see you all.

I guess I'm reading this by virtue of being the member of the Health and Human Service Board. And whereas children are the best part of ourselves, the sum of our past and the promise of our future, the guarantee that our lives, values, and dreams will flourish long after we are gone, and whereas children are entitled to financial support from their parents and Gaston County continues to improve its efforts, at child support collections, and whereas in fiscal year 25-26, over $14 million in child support was collected from parents of Gaston County children, and whereas there are 6,247 child support orders in place to ensure that almost 7,000 children receive financial support from their parents, and whereas many concerned and dedicated child support professionals Judges, attorneys, clerks of courts, and sheriff's personnel work to establish and enforce child support orders for Gaston County children. And whereas increasing public awareness of the importance of child support through education, outreach, and parental involvement will reinforce the position that all parents are responsible for the financial, emotional, and physical support of their own children. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Gaston County Board of Commissioners hereby proclaim the month of August, 2026, as Child Support Awareness Month. And we will adopt that on the 25th of August at our regular voting meeting. And I don't know who's going to take it. All right. The microphone is yours. Thank you.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. I just want to thank the board for joining Child Support Enforcement at DSS in promoting Child Support Awareness Month and what an important service that we offer to the community. The $14 million that we collected this year, 97% of it goes back into the pockets of citizens here. The other 3% offset some public funds. It's truly a team effort. My staff and my team work very hard for the citizens of this county to ensure that our children get at least their financial needs met by parents who are no longer a joint household.

I have with me tonight...

Tawana Littlejohn, who is our program administrator, and a couple of the supervisors, Houston Simmons and Brad Whitlock. And I did introduce myself. I'm Danielle Williams. I'm the program coordinator. And again, I just want to thank you guys for supporting us and making child support awareness a big part of Gaston County in August. Thank you.

It is with great pleasure the Gasson County Board of Commissioners to honor the citizens who have unselfishly given their time, talent, skills, and energies in service as an appointee to one of our many boards or commissions. This type of service is the foundation of citizen involvement in our county government and is helping shape the future of our community. We gratefully acknowledge the following who in the certificate of appreciation has been forwarded to them. Chanel Woodruff, Adult Care Community Advisory Committee, Destiny Elam, Animal Care Enforcement, Stephanie Franks, Economic Development, Brian Wineth, Gasson County Fire Commission, Stephanie Franks, Gasson County Planning and Zoning, Cheryl Loggins, Health and Human Services Board, Bill Melton, JCPC, and Veneta Ortiz, Tourism and Advisory Development. The next item on the agenda is citizens' recognitions. A portion of the board's agenda is set aside for allowing citizens the opportunity to offer comments and suggestions, a comment period. is not intended to require the commission or staff to answer any questions or provide a response. Questions requiring a response shall be answered as soon as possible through the county manager's office. Citizens' recognition tonight will be limited to three minutes as I call your name. Please step to the podium, state your name. And the first citizen to sign up to speak tonight is Teresa Wineth.

Good evening, commissioners. I'm here on behalf of my husband of 21 years, Brian Wineth. He took a pledge a long time ago to be a community servant. He's been serving in Gaston County since 2010. He spent two years on the planning board, three years on the Mountain Island Lake Marine Commission as treasurer and finance officer, 11 years on the fire advisory board six years on the equalization and review board with the last three as its chairman and three years on the fire commission with the last six months as that body's chairman he currently serves as secretary of the industrial facilities and pollution control financing authority and is in his eighth year of service he's also a firefighter and the recruiting officer at lucia river bend fire department in river bend township My husband has taught me and others that community service is important. It's not about titles, certificates hanging on the walls, or even mentions in public forums like this. It's about doing what is right for your fellow man and woman. It's about taking a stand and saying, if not me, then who will step up? Who will carry that banner? Who will choose the sacrifice of time and talent for others? I've heard him say over and over again why service like this is important and shouldn't be taken lightly. This kind of service doesn't move with political wins, political party wins of change. It's never personal, but it's about doing what is right, right now. So when I tell you I was surprised to read a letter from Mr. Brown to my husband, dated June 25th, that extols his service on the fire commission, and I'm quoting here, to extend his sincere appreciation for dedicated service and the time, leadership, and commitment you made as chairman in supporting the fire service community in Gaston County. I couldn't understand why he wasn't reappointed to continue this good work and move the needle in a positive direction for all the contracted fire departments and firefighters. If someone is doing a good job in a volunteer role, why would we want to throw cold water on them? But it could be serendipitous that the timing of this has now freed him up to pursue a greater challenge for a greater number of people. You see, he is campaign manager and advisor to a young cattle farmer who wants to be the next commissioner from Riverbend Township. He's pouring his honed and developed leadership skills, his time and commitment, as Mr. Brown pointed out, toward future leaders. He's pouring into Charlie Killian, and tonight both of them are attending an important meeting in Lowell. Otherwise, he would have been here. I believe that this is what this county needs, new leadership, and I'm proud of my husband for doing just that. Thank you.

Mr. Sean Bates?

Good evening. Now, I just need a point of clarity real quick. Did I hear that you did not ask for addresses tonight? I did not, sir.

Okay.

Okay.

So we can progress. I am Sean Bates, President of Gastonia NAACP Branch 5394B. As always, our mission is to achieve equity, political rights, and social inclusion by advancing policies and practices that extend human and civil rights, eliminate discrimination, and accelerate the well-being, education, and economic security of black people and all persons of color. So I'm here this evening. First, I want to point out that it was a nice proclamation for the Revolutionary War people. They fought for, in the words of Mr. Hovis, a more perfect union. So when you actually celebrate the Confederacy, you're actually still splitting that union. Just a little notice. But the main thing here is... We have two schools tomorrow, two high schools tomorrow that aren't gonna have Chromebooks. And unfortunately, it seems to be that these two high schools that were chosen, I don't know if you guys had any push with it or if you can, but these two high schools were Hunter Huss and Ashbrook, which are predominantly black schools. So for me personally, it seems that don't know maybe you're just overlooking our schools or maybe maybe this is intentional to create a backlog on where our students start off at now we also notice that everybody's got their campaigns on their cars now and and signs up everywhere I need you to still remember you are choosing to represent everybody And there's no more excuses for why we, this isn't, this isn't about us. This is somebody else's responsibility. No, because you have chosen to be an elected official for every citizen in this County. So this means that you can speak up and you can make sure that things are being done in a decent way. We can, we can again, push money into establishing our friends' restaurants, but we can overlook that there's no grocery stores in Ward 4. This is a bigger human issue. We have a houseless problem we're not doing anything about. You guys have to step up, and you have to quit being complacent and allowing just anything to happen. You were voted here for a reason, and we expect you to live up to that reason. Thank you.

The next item on the agenda is Presentations, the Comprehensive Land Use Plan Project Update, Mr. Jonathan Whitehurst and Kimalee Horn.

Might need some help with this. Okay. Good evening. Thank you for having me. Jonathan Whitehurst with Kimley Horn. What I'd like to do today is to just give you a brief overview of the comprehensive plan that we have been working on for the better part of 14 or 15 months. We are about to start the public review process for that plan and just wanted to give you an orientation to that for the overall document as well as some of the engagement and key pieces of the report. The plan is to be in front of planning board on August 31st and back before you all on September 22nd. The plan itself occurred, as you can see here, in three different phases beginning back in April. We've had an advisory committee that has met five times in significant community input. And so as we enter the last stages of this, again, I just wanted to bring to your attention how this document is organized. The plan itself is, we tried to be as concise as possible in the document. There was a lot of information, a lot of data, a lot of community input that went into it, but we wanted to make the document as accessible as possible. So the report that will be posted online tomorrow is organized around these six Chapters beginning with an introduction that provides an overview of the overall plan. The county snapshot is a look at existing and projected conditions. We talk about the vision and planning themes and how those are kind of organizing pieces for the overall plan. The land use strategy is where we talk about the future land use map and then the policy framework and implementation are the policies and strategies that we have wrapped around that future land use map to provide staff and elected officials additional guidance. This has been a community-driven process, and so throughout this, by way of meetings and surveys and community workshops, we've had over 500 touchpoints that have generated, as you can see, 6,500 data points. and nearly 2,000 written comments. I call your attention to that other point on this slide that more than 590 community hours have been invested in this process. And while we can step back and say that we want more input and we wish we had more, I think that's true for every one of the plans of this type that I've worked on. We are proud of the input that we have received from the people that have engaged in this process. A lot of that input, as you might assume, is coming from the project website. And so we've had almost 2,500 visits to our project website from nearly 2,000 visitors. The key piece of the overall comprehensive plan is your future land use map. So that's telling you kind of where and how growth should occur and in some cases should not occur. So it's also talking about Um, areas that should be preserved. The path that we took to arrive at that future land use map takes into consideration the county characteristics. So that understanding of existing and projected conditions, um, division and planning themes is reflective of the early phases of community input. Uh, we did a scenario planning process where we actually tested different ways. Um, growth and preservation could occur throughout the community or throughout the county. The conceptual growth strategy is just kind of the 40,000 foot level of the direction that we wanted to take, and then ultimately we arrived at the future land use map. I'll show you that in just a second. So the county characteristics are organized around these topics. So we talk about the people, the demographics. We provide a snapshot of the housing situation, the economy, the built environment, and the natural resources. We were very clear from the beginning of this process that this plan is for the unincorporated areas of the county. And so you can see that in the study area map there. So we weren't really looking at the municipalities or their ETJs. But we also recognize that the municipalities themselves have a lot of influence on areas that are at the edges of the municipalities. And so we took that into consideration. Instead of providing a new vision for this plan or for the county, we referred back to the vision statement that was adopted in the 26-28 strategic plan. And so that was kind of our North Star. So as we were trying to develop the future land use map and all those strategies, we were making sure that we were reflecting the vision statement that county commission had already adopted. To provide a little bit more structure to that, we came up with four planning themes. Again, these are based on a lot of the input that we received early in the process. and so those planning themes as you can see here responsible growth economic prosperity gaston heritage and community well-being and so as you will see in a few slides what what we did was we used those as kind of the organizing structure for the overall plan again as we're we're making recommendations we want to make sure that those recommendations are addressing one or more of these planning themes The future land use map is organized around nine land use classifications, starting with growth areas. We have small town community that's That's there, and we have a few residential classifications as well as industrial and conservation. The way that those are organized in the plan is we provide a brief overview of each of those areas. We describe in a few bullets what the intent of those are, and then we provide appropriate land uses and desired characteristics. And so I think it's important to note that the future land use map is non-regulatory, but it is intended to be a document that staff can use as development and growth decisions are evaluated. The policy framework is the plans, policies, projects, all the strategies that we wrap around that future land use map. In this case, they're organized around the four planning themes. What you'll find in the report that there's 13 objectives and 42 individual strategies. The intent there is to provide a more actionable plan for use going forward. As I mentioned, the intent is to make this draft document available on our website tomorrow, and we'll be collecting comments from the public that way. Happy to answer any questions that you might have.

Any questions from the board at this time? Seeing none, thank you for tonight's presentation.

Well, can I ask one quick question? Yes, sure, please. Just going back to the beginning, you said you were presenting to the planning board? Yes. How different will that presentation be than this one?

So we'll spend a little bit more time with them. I think one of the big differences is the planning board is going to have access to the full document before that meeting, just like we'll make sure that you all have time to invest time into the document before.

What I was getting at, if it was different, I'd sure like to see a copy of that, the slides or whatever, the presentation.

Yes, certainly. We can make that available. Great.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you.

Mr. Sheehan.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. One quick question on the future land use map slide, if you could go back to that. On the conservation side, do we have any approximations of how much acreage we're talking about in this plan for conservation?

We do. So we actually provide those statistics for... for all of the land use classification. So for conservation, it's approximately 17,000 acres. And that's 12% of the overall kind of study area, which is the unincorporated area of the county. Thank you, sir.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Any other questions? Seeing none, thank you again, sir. Thank you. The next presentation is Gastonia Reimagined Revitalization Plan. Mr. Patrick Mumford, president and CEO of the Gas and Business Association, will now do the presentation. Mr. Mumford.

Good evening, everybody. Let's see. Control L. That didn't work. I need a little help.

We need the cavalry.

Unless that brings it up. Oh, hold on a second. Maybe I figured it out. I did. All right. Mr. Chairman and commissioners, thank you for allowing me the time this evening. I am Patrick Mumford with the Gaston Business Association. And this is really an update. Most of you saw that we're on the board about 18 months ago, this final document. What we wanted to do is allow this to live and breathe. Like Mr. Whitehurst said, His plan wants to be actionable, and that was the idea for this plan. This is also not as prescriptive as a land use plan to dictate how parcels will be used, but it's more of an overarching thematic approach to downtown Gastonia and its redevelopment. I have with me Jim Marasso tonight. Jim is our board chair, but also, as you all know very well, actively engaged in downtown redevelopment here in Gastonia. So we started this process, people said, we got to do something with downtown. You need to go look at Hickory or Concord, Kannapolis, Rock Hill, Mooresville. And that was really frustrating because we're one of the largest downtowns in a county seat in the surrounding Charlotte area. And we should be the most vibrant downtown in the region. People should be saying, go to Gastonia and see how it really works well. And so we embarked on this effort almost a little over two years ago. We hired a gentleman by the name of Terry Shook. And Terry is from Gastonia. Terry is an architect, developer. He has spent five decades in that industry. He is one of the godfathers of Charlotte's South End community. Helped really get that running from the industrial sort of dilapidated area of Charlotte that it was 30 years ago to what it is today. And he has done this work. across the country and actually also internationally. And he was thrilled to come back home and help establish some guidelines for how we might influence development in downtown Gastonia. So the way we did that, there are three phases here. The first was process. And what we didn't go through was what Mr. Whitehurst did, which was have a bunch of people in the room and put their sticky notes on what they wanted to see. Because that was done in 1999 with a comprehensive plan for downtown Gastonia. And I'll have a slide here in a second that shows a lot of the work that was identified there was completed already, which is great news. lot hasn't been completed but the community input was gathered at that time and unfortunately in 25 years not much has changed but we did take a look at that as well as about three or four other planning documents about downtown Gastonia so this is all about the downtown area so really sort of the MSD area of downtown Gastonia predominantly it's going to be Broad Street sort of down to the baseball stadium, Airline to maybe 2nd Avenue with a real focus on Main Avenue and at the main intersection there was South Street. So here's just a quick list of the items identified in that 99 plan that have been completed. So the county was involved in some of this. The city's certainly involved in this. And it really speaks to the four areas that Mr. Whitehurst identified very similarly. So there was historic preservation. There was economic development. There was a look at just the feel of downtown. So then we took a look at what's the land use today downtown? Because we hear often, oh my gosh, downtown Gastonia, parking is such a problem. And we realize it's really not so much parking that's the problem, it's people's desire to park right in front of where they want to go and not want to walk that is probably the issue. And that's natural. So we said, look at all this space. If you see the salmon colored space, the green, green is public between city and county. Salmon is either undeveloped or parking space. And so it's predominant. The acreage in downtown is not developed, which is unfortunate because we don't have all of the buildings that used to be there, but it is huge for an opportunity. So we looked at how might we determine what these opportunities are. So we asked developers, national developers, local developers, people in this industry, What were their thoughts about downtown Gastonia? The good news is they do see strengths. And what we learn is oftentimes whenever you're from a place, you remember it from whenever you, whether you're born there, grew up there. And oftentimes we just kind of think about the negatives. Whereas outside people see the reality of the current day and opportunity. And I don't just mean economic opportunity from developers. I mean the ability to really partner helping downtown Gastonia be a vibrant community for the region opportunities where's what I've discussed there's opportunity for these parcels of land to be redeveloped in a thoughtful way and there are some some weaknesses so there's preconceived notions as I said sometimes we get stuck in in history and don't really see what's in front of us and also there there's this real challenge for downtown growth of residents that create the energy that create the demand for services and then the demand and service side needs residents because they need to be able to support their businesses so it's pretty it's slow going in the early stages Thankfully, people like Jim have invested in downtown without waiting to see the residential numbers grow, but that's starting to grow. And even in downtown Charlotte, if you remember downtown Charlotte 30 years ago, there was nothing going on. And then residents came in, and it changed the dynamics. And then we still have physical barriers. We have the ditch. The city's undertaking an effort to take a look at how that might be covered in some manner. And then we have Franklin Boulevard, and that's a real challenge to walk across that. I know because our office is on the other side, and I walk up here for most meetings that I have. But the ability to cross those two physical barriers is critically important because there are great neighborhoods on either side. So this plan really takes into consideration how do the neighborhoods get connected and then help with the vibrancy of downtown. So then the vision, and this isn't really a vision of exactly how it should look architecturally, but what are the key components of downtown? So I've said it before, but a different way, is this should be the regional hub for the Charlotte region, outside of Charlotte, Mecklenburg, but all the other towns. We want to see the ability to have gathering spaces if you think about us in 2026 spent a lot of time on our electronic devices people tend to have relationships electronically and they're yearning to have a place to come and come together whether that's for a concert or just a park or just to walk the children with their children go see a museum that's a critically important element and then the design and the feel many of us have been in various communities whether it's in the United States maybe traveled abroad And you leave and you say, I really like that city. And I would argue a lot of that is because of what you felt, which you felt not even consciously. And that was done intentionally by the design of the storefronts, by the design of the sidewalks, by the ability to to engage in that space. And it has nothing really to do, unless you step back, with four or five stories up. And so that needs to be an intentional approach by building owners to engage with the sidewalk, to engage with their neighbors. So in 20 or 30 years, you see this comprehensively developing in a way where people will say, that really feels good. It feels safe. I enjoy being in downtown Gastonia. So here is just a notion of what uses could go into these areas. This is not a land use plan. It is not a master plan. But what this shows is an opportunity to engage people through open space, through public facilities, through commercial buildings, and it just lays out ideas of what that could look like. Downtown is ripe for this, and I hope that you all will utilize this document. You all helped fund it two years ago, and I'll be asking, hopefully I can get on the 25th agenda for you to formally adopt this and accept it. Not looking for money. It's not statutory. but it's just another tool you will have to gauge projects that come forward. The City Council of Gastonia adopted the plan two weeks ago at one of their meetings. Not sure if that's a good sign or a bad sign with what I'm saying. So organizing principles. This is, again, very similar to Mr. Whitehurst's plan. If you take a look at the past, Gastonia is rich with history. Now, not all history is good and bad upon reflection, but certainly physically the buildings were great, and we've saved a lot of those buildings, and that's fantastic. You don't have to build that. This doesn't have to be what might be called a new urbanist approach. So how do we engage with that? The bank building is an example of what Jim's done, or the web theater. It doesn't have to remain a theater, but you still... A proposed locational park happens to be the county property where the Board of Elections is and county police. So it's looking from Main Street toward the cemetery through that arch of the building. That building is not an architectural rendering. It's just a placeholder for something could go there to give an edge to the park. But if you've all been in downtown Charlotte, there's a park on South Tryon Street called The Green. I had the pleasure of serving with First Union in Wachovia for a couple decades in corporate real estate and got to help design and build that park. And really what it did is it established a presence on South Tryon Street that all the development around it responded to. And our real core strategy for this plan is to utilize public spaces in a way that can enhance the private sector development around that. So this park would drive people to come downtown and therefore spend their money and retail around it. You could have residences around it. That could be a public building. That could be a museum. That could be something for the arts. Again, I'm not trying to be prescriptive with it, just to say great cities have a richness in public spaces. So I mentioned the strategy is to really take a look at these public spaces. I mentioned this to you about 18 months ago when I came in front of you, to look at the value of the land that you all have. And yes, you can sell it fee simple and get those dollars today, put it in the general fund, and put it to use. That's an option. can also put that into a public-private partnership, drive quality of the development, therefore influence development around that property, drive up tax values exponentially, and see the return on the investment in a different way. So same conversation I've had with the city council. It's not to say you all have to give up value. It's to say let's rethink what that value is in the timeframe of what that can bring to the county. Today, there's nothing on that county property that anybody's proposing, but it would be a phenomenal opportunity to bring a unique and successful public-private venture to downtown. today was just to go through and tell you people are using this plan there's a guiding the development and you all see it with some of the storefronts being redone in downtown you see with some of the restaurants going in history's being saved people are engaging the sidewalk so this this is not a mandate it's a suggestion to follow these overarching guidelines and We fully support it and hope that when we can get it on the agenda, you all will consider adopting this like the Charlotte City Council, or sorry, the Gastonia City Council did. Thank you. That's all.

Any questions for Mr. Mumford? Seeing none, thank you so much for coming to your presentation. I will tell you we're on a backup generator right now just in case anybody, something happens, we will just be sitting here.

And the AC is off.

Yes. So it's going to be quite a long time. The next presentation is the Pharmacy Benefits Manager Process Update. Mr. Kyle Sutherland, Gasson County Finance Director. Mr. Sutherland.

Good evening, Mr. Chairman and Board. Tonight's presentation is intended to just give you an overview of a recent request for proposal that we conducted with pharmacy benefit manager process. Before we get into the actual process, I wanted to give you a little bit of a historical perspective on where we are from a pharmacy claims perspective and where we're going. So I wanted to start with what is a pharmacy benefit manager for anyone that wasn't aware. So they're a third party company. They act as a middleman for our broker, for our insurance plan, and for the county. They have four primary duties. Formulary creation, that means what goes in and out. What drugs can we use are included, generics versus name brand. Rebate negotiation, they're the ones that come to the table and talk to the drug manufacturers and negotiate better prices for us. Network setup, that is looking at do we use mail order pharmacies, do we use retail pharmacies, which one gives us the better avenue for cost savings. And then on the claims processing, it is what it is. It's the back end processing, helping with the payments and those kinds of things. So that is in essence, and I've got five of the larger PBMs listed, CVS, Caremark, Prime, Express Scripts, Leviniti, and OptumRx. Those are the five primaries in the space. From a historical perspective, I wanted to show this from fiscal year 21 and on, just so you could see the increase. Now, I want to note that this is the net cost. So what that means is our claims minus our rebates. That's the number you see there on the screen. Just for reference, fiscal year 26, our claims were around $14 million. Our rebate was around $5.7. So that's how we come up with the $8.7. And I also wanted to note, and I have it here on the slide, that Planned membership has remained relatively steady in this time period, so it's not an influx of members. It's been relatively steady. So what is driving that cost increase? So one item I wanted to note was in fiscal, I believe it was January 1st of 24, we switched from Contegra to Atrium. Part of that was the employee experience, the customer service, and with that did come a cost increase. I wouldn't say that was a driving force, but it did have an impact on that. The main rising cost, the main issues, high claimants. One or two high claimants in our population can shoot our cost up extreme. I mean, you're talking could be a million dollars a person, an individual in a year. That's not the focus. That's not our main issue right now. Our main issue are specialty drugs and GLP drug utilization. And that's what we're going to focus on here. So specialty drugs, drug cost is the primary driver. So less than 1% of all of our prescriptions are in the specialty drug category, but it represents 33% of our costs. So one prescription could be $20,000. Let's say that. And about 2.5% of our plant population had a prescription in this category in the most recent year. On the traditional side, that's where you're getting into weight management, diabetes, any of your just traditional medications, prescriptions that you would have. That's where the majority of our prescriptions are, almost 99%, a little over, but only 67% of the cost. So the driver isn't necessarily cost in that instance, it's the volume, the number of prescriptions that we are actually having prescribed to our population. To put this in a little bit of a different perspective, I'm focusing on the GLP-1s because that is where the cost is just, that's what's driving our cost. If you look on the left, you'll see the review period. So February 24 to January 25, our total claims paid for GLP-1 was around 2.8 million. The same timeframe a year later, we were up to $5.4 million, $2.6 million increase just on GLP-1 drugs. When you look on the right side, you see the utilization. Those are unique members in our population that are utilizing GLP-1. This also does include the folks that are in our weight management program. But you can see, in a one year period, we increased by 139 unique participants that are taking advantage of GLP-1s. So now that you have some of that context, I wanted to move into the RFP process, why we did it, and the results of that. So this RFP, since we have a broker, it's not managed by the county. Our broker manages that process, who is Mark III. They issued the RFP on January 5th of this year. Responses were due on January 28th. And in the terms of the RFP, the contract was for a three-year guarantee with two options for two one-year renewals. So five years total. We could stop at three. We can stop at any time. But three-year guarantee was what we were looking for. I also wanted to note that our previous RFP was in 2020. I don't know that we had had one before that. I went back and could not find any information. The best practice is three to five years on an RFP. So from the evaluation standpoint, the county established a team to evaluate proposals. We had representatives from the county manager's office, HR, finance, budget, and public health. The first evaluation meeting, which was led by Mark 3, was on March 13. That was to go over the proposals that were submitted. They could make a determination of whether to exclude someone from moving forward. They chose to let everyone come in for a final presentation, which were held over March 31 to April 1 of this year. On the screen, this is, for all intents and purposes, the bid tab sheet. The proposals summarized by each vendor. I wanted to make a few notes here. Prime Therapeutics is our current provider and have been for, with the exception of, I believe, one or two years for the past 30 years. They are a part of Blue Cross Blue Shield and an arm of them. Express Scripts, CVS Caremark, you're probably very aware of those names. Levinity actually gave two proposals, which was a little unique, but they did it for a reason to show different strategies on how we could save money. The first one did not include any international sourcing. I would consider that more of the traditional plan that you see from the others. The one on the far right, which includes RX Compass, that included international sourcing. It's being used in the space now. I can't speak to how prevalent it is out there, but it is a strategy. It's a strategy that's working, and you're sourcing your medications overseas. For all intents and purposes, that's what it means. The other thing I wanted to note on this page is when you look at the bottom line, if you look where the predicted net RX spend is, you may see LaVinity on the far right was the lowest cost. But you have to factor in the rebate that we could lose if we terminated our contract with Blue Cross Blue Shield. And that's an actuarial estimate, about 2.7 million. So when you factor that in, that's where you got the original proposal of 11.1 for Levinity, 12.9 for the traditional Levinity, 12.1, 12.7, and then 9.4, which was the prime therapeutics. So the recommendation after evaluating and listening to the presentations of the evaluation team was to stay with the current PBM prime through this year and potentially reassess after the plan year began. And there were multiple reasons for that, and I want to talk through those a little bit. one prime was the lowest cost now as you all know with the service cost is not the main factor it is a factor though but you want to think about disruption to your employees retirees anybody in the in the membership the established relationship like i said with with the exception i believe one or two years we've been with them for 30 years so we knew what we were getting The time that we went through this process, we were still in the middle of budget. We weren't sure which way we were going to go with our self-insurance plan, were there going to be any plan changes. So there was a little bit of uncertainty there, a little bit of hesitancy to move forward, not knowing where we were going to land on the self-insurance side. And then at the same time, we were going through a broker request for a proposal. It's unusual that that happens, but that's what we did. And our brokers, since they managed the PBM process, that was a concern of the group. So that's why they recommended let's stand firm now. And I did also want to mention that after that, Mark III did reach out to the vendors that sent in proposals and let them know that was our current path. We were going to hold firm for this year. So after that, Levinity did reach out to Mark III in late April of this year with a revised proposal. Blue Cross had agreed to an integration concession. So what do I mean by that? Levinity and Blue Cross Blue Shield aren't integrated right now. The others, Optum, Express Scripts, Prime, they all are already integrated. So if one of them had been the lowest cost, it would have been more of a seamless transition. It could have happened. in whatever timeframe we needed. Blue Cross Blue Shield had to attain special approval for that concession, the reason being we were five months out from our plan year beginning, which is October 1st. Best practice for them, and I did reach out to get confirmation, eight months is usually what they look at for that's their optimal integration time frame. They mentioned with an engaged vendor, they could possibly push it to six, but that's pushing it. And they also needed a decision by April 30th. In addition to that, LaVinity did improve their financial terms to offset any fee increases which were coming. Blue Cross increased our administration fees because they were going to lose the pharmacy plan. LaVinity funded the integration cost, and Blue Cross and Blue Shield decided to waive a contractual rebate loss. So remember the $2.7 million that we were talking about earlier? Blue Cross agreed to waive that cost. if you will, claw back. But we would not receive those rebates. So this is a rework that Mark III did for us. This is the revised bid proposal. The three in the middle did not change, except we removed the rebate credit loss across the board. With LaVinity on the far right, that's the one we're focused on in the yellow, and then Prime, which is on the far left. With the changes, the loss of the rebate credit, or the removal of that loss that we had, and then they adjusted their total claims cost by about half a million dollars, that's where they ended up with the 7.9. So they did come in as a low cost. What are the challenges with that? And I mentioned it earlier about the timeline. Blue Cross did confirm to me that eight months is what they would need to make this integration happen with the least amount of disruption to our members, which are all of our employees, our retirees, anyone that's on our plan. What do we mean by the disruption? If we change in a mid-year, different ID cards, different prescription cards. The drug that you use now, if it wasn't in the formulary, and I can't speak to the formulary side of things, if you went to your local pharmacy to fill your prescription, would that now be a mail order? Again, Is that a big issue? Maybe not, but there could be a timing aspect to that. The other piece of it was on a mid-year transition would be if you have your accumulators from an HSA plan. So you're building up your deductible, your out-of-pocket max. There could be some lag or some transition where you may be paying for something that you know you've met your out-of-pocket, but you might have to pay for it, and then you have to wait on a refund. So those were some of the challenges that we're seeing. The other one that I wanted to note was All of the previous proposals included all of the GLP-1s in the formulary. And as you all know, with the budget adoption, we removed all but 200 individuals that are in the weight management program from the county funding the GLP-1s. So that's a little over half of the unique utilizers. You saw 437, I believe, was the number. So there are 237 individuals, and the prescriptions would have been pulled out of our plan. It wasn't an apples-to-apples comparison at that time. And that's what I have for you. If you have any questions, I'm happy to answer. If you have any technical questions, I do have our broker, Mark Browder, here from Mark III. He can answer any of those, but happy to answer anything you may have. Commissioner Keger.

Thank you. What Just a ballpark, how much does the county spend on an employee's health coverage annually?

That's hard to say. We budget around 15,000. That much? Yeah.

Okay. How many employees do we have that are 65 and older? Probably have no idea, but there's got to be a number of them.

Active retirees, we have around 200. Active? Active. I'm unsure. It's a small number.

I know a little bit about Medicare. And most of the Medicare Advantage plans have a maximum out-of-pocket of between $4,000 and $8,000 or $9,000. I'll quote Aetna off the top of my head. It's like $4,900. If that policyholder spends that much out of pocket, there's nothing the rest of the year. If we're spending $14,000, wouldn't it make sense that maybe if we could corral those employees that are 65 and older, have them get on Medicare, reimburse them for their Part B, which is probably going to be about $180 a month, And whatever that maximum is, if it comes out to $5,000 or $6,000 or $7,000, we're saving 100% of what we're spending.

Yeah, I do. I can't speak to that. That's not my lane.

And it's nothing we need to get into the weeds about now, but it's just something I want y'all to think about. We can take that back. We can't get into it now. We don't know numbers.

Just real quickly, though, Medicare does not allow the employer to push off active employees. Oh, sorry.

Medicare does not allow employers to push off active employees onto a Medicare Advantage or a MedSupp plan. You do have a post-65 population that is on MedSupp, but the bulk of your retired employees are less than 65. The active employees that are over 65 is going to be a small portion of the population, but it's not an opportunity to offload Those cost onto Medicare.

But can't businesses partner with Medicare for the employee? Like if there's 20 or less employees, I think Medicare pays first. And if there's more than 20, the company pays first.

Not for active employees. So you've got about 3,000 active employees and retirees. You're not eligible to push them off onto Medicare for active employees that are over age 65. Right.

All right, thank you. Any other questions? Seeing none, thank you. Thank you. Next item, other matters, discussion of ad hoc board procedures committee report. I will now call on Mr. Brian Steeve, a deputy county manager, to give a report on the ad hoc findings.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Commissioners, I know it's been a long night, so I'll make this quick. As you all probably recall, several months back, this board formed a committee of myself, Ms. Buff, Mr. Goldberg, and Mr. three of the commissioners, Commissioner Hovis, Commissioner Fraley, and Commissioner Sheehan, to go through and look through some board procedures, partly to make corrections where we thought some things needed to be looked at, but also to add on some things that may have come up here lately. And so tonight I'm here to walk through what some of that committee came up with, and Mr. Goldberg is going to go through some of those rules Nothing has been decided at this point. This is just the committee bringing these back to the full board to go through these and for y'all to have discussions and decide whether you like how they are or how you want to move forward with them. To kind of give some background, we looked at everything from... how the board was communicating with staff, how we were looking, how information was getting gathered and distributed out. We looked at how Capital improvement projects were displayed on the agenda. We also looked at decorum rules and code of ethics rules. To give some background, your ethics policies and your board rules date all the way back to 1979. There was a comprehensive review that was done on them. In 2023, I believe Mr. Stetzer had gone through with the board and made some changes. But at this point, there was also some parts that y'all didn't go through that we thought needed to be added. Things like Commissioner Cloninger had brought up that she wanted... capital projects pulled to a specialized agenda to where they stood out and y'all could make some better decisions on those. So we looked at that, and Mr. Goldberg has formulated a new policy that will come up with a report that we're going to start. If this is approved, it would be a report that OCI would start bringing forward to you as part of this new rule. There would be an agenda item that would be created to where these capital projects would stand out and be easier for you to see on your agenda. We went through and looked at our ethics and how board is communicating with the manager's office and things that they are asking for. And as this discussion kind of went on, We tried our best to not create rules just for the sake of having rules. We didn't think that, and I will let some of the commissioners that were on here chime in wherever they feel necessary, but we didn't want to create rules for the sake of having rules. We wanted to make it to where staff and the board could still communicate and felt like that that was something that was okay. We wanted to put some rules in place, though, to where if there was information that was warranted to be shared with the whole board that it was something that could freely be shared with the whole board. That there wasn't information that was just getting funneled to one just because Commissioner Fraley may call me up and ask me something that I didn't just return that information to him if it was something that I felt like needed to go to the whole board. So rules were kind of written to where that is appropriate. going to be left up to the manager to kind of make that discretionary decision. Because we talked about it, and times change. Something may be important now that's not important later. Something that your manager can make that decision and hopefully get that information out as it's needed. Additionally, there were things. One of them really has already been changed, as you heard kind of mentioned tonight. Commissioner Conagher had brought up that she wanted the decorum rules changed to where you weren't asking for addresses anymore, and y'all voted kind of the last meeting for that to take place. Well, that was not part of our discussion as this had gone on, but because it was brought up during this time, Mr. Goldberg has added that to his list and is here tonight to kind of go through that. So at this point, so I don't belabor this any longer, I will turn it over to Mr. Goldberg, and he can walk you through some of these rules, and then y'all can discuss this as needed.

Thank you, Mr. Skiba. Members of the board, as Mr. Skiba said, I was instructed to work with this ad hoc committee to capture the committee's intent and suggest changes to the rules of procedure to capture that intent and capture how the board wants to govern itself. And in those discussions, I have a number of proposals. The first proposal, you'll see it's in color, titled Resolution Updating the Board's Procedures on Working with Professional Staff. Under your current rules, in essence, if the instruction was if a written material is requested by an individual commissioner, then they are provided that written material, but then the commission, but then the county manager is prohibited and staff are prohibited from disclosing that written information to other commissioners except with the express permission of the commissioner requesting it. And there's no right solution on this. There are give and takes. after discussions with the board or the ad hoc committee, that was reframed as directing the commissioners to direct all questions, requests, all inquiries to the department head or a higher official, so your assistant county managers, your deputy county managers, and ultimately the county managers. So not trying to keep it that higher level rather than going to the lower down into the organizational chart. And the idea would be that whoever has that conversation, most of them are very routine and easy. Hey, what's going on with that pothole? Hey, can you check on this for me? But the idea was that the department heads would communicate that upwards towards management. And the idea being the county manager ultimately being responsible for ensuring consistency and transparency among the board. It makes clear that, and this is a major departure, is that the county manager may disclose any information that is provided from one member to all the members as they see fit. And the manager has discretion on that. There essentially is no expectation of confidentiality. When a member would talk to staff and ultimately the county manager, the manager, you're giving him clear authority to disclose that more widely if he sees it appropriate. The Ad Hoc Committee also requested language creating situations where the county manager must share this information. So taking away that discretion from the county manager and requiring that it be disclosed. I suggested the verbiage of a matter of substantial public interest, a required substantial resources to prepare, so it took a long time to collect that information, or would otherwise substantially benefit the board. And there, if the county manager, you know, if the county manager determined that those were the case, he would be required. You were telling him, you were expecting him to disclose that more widely to the board. So you can see there is a sharp contrast from the previous version of this. But I think it does sound like it captures the intent of the ad hoc committee. I'll also add that this does align with my professional obligations to the board. I think there's consistency there. I've had that discussion previously with each of you as an attorney under Rule 1.13 of the North Carolina Rules of Professional Conduct. My duty is to the board, the county as a whole, not individual members. And so I have a confidentiality dedication to the county as a whole, but each one of you have the ability, I cannot withhold information or keep confidentiality to each of you individually. And that's in line with my professional responsibility. So I do see consistency there, and I appreciate that. The other change, if you look at subsection B on rule 49, is an addition. where it states the county manager is, quote, responsible to the board of commissioners for the administration of all departments of county government under the board's general control. In particular, the county manager must direct and supervise the administration of all county offices, departments, boards, commissions, and agencies under the general control of the board of commissioners subject to the general direction and control of the board. As such, no single commissioner may direct the conduct or activities of any county employee directly or indirectly except through the county manager. Here we're just restating the existing statutory framework of the county manager relationship. You appoint a county manager, and essentially other than the clerk and myself, all county employees report to Mr. Road in the county manager's position. And this further solidifies that in your board rules. That's the first proposal. I'm happy to answer any questions, comments, concerns.

I have a question. Where on that does it say that in this paper?

I'm sorry. So on Rule 41, subsection A, that's where I spoke about first on the communication with the manager. And then also, this is, again, the resolution updating the board's procedures on working with professional staff. On the next page, it talks about the county manager and the underline.

Are we going to have opportunity to look at these?

You have it now. It's not up for vote now. It will be placed on your agenda at the board's discretion.

Okay. Thank you.

Any other questions?

I think, look, Mr. Hovis, just a statement in our lengthy conversation in reference to this portion of the rules. This is in total keeping with, I think, myself, Mr. Fraley, and Commissioner Sheehan. I think we're all in total agreement with this. This clarifies some gray areas and also reemphasizes the direction of staff under the direction of the county manager. Correct? From a committee standpoint, I'm kind of making a committee report. If you guys disagree, you're welcome to speak up. I think that's good. Thank you.

I guess my question is, obviously I don't think we've ever changed it to where anybody couldn't have any information that was sought after. So I don't think that's a change. But the one thing I get is if somebody calls me today and asks me for tax information and I can get them to Chelsea or somebody with that, I don't care if it's shared throughout, but we should still be able to have that autonomy because basically all you're doing is taking the power away from the commission to be able to inform a constituent or someone who's a citizen to get information. Mr.

Chair, just if I may, this particular article doesn't change any board member's ability to direct a citizen to a particular department in reference to a direct question. Those people have the knowledge and have the ability to answer that without having Mr. Roden or any of the deputy managers guide them in the answer. They have that information and they still do that. This is in reference to information shared with one board member, it's shared with all. And that's what it's trying to speak to, I believe. If that helps you.

Is that correct? Because some of the things I'm reading here, we have to go through either one of the three in order because obviously I don't care if, you know, Mr. Attaway calls me about something, we usually just talk to someone at any point. It's not privy information is trying to help them through their situation but for me to have to go through the manager or one of them to be able to get a citizen's question answered I think it really pits to where it just takes away some of the autonomy that we have in order to see this so I'd like to see I don't care what information is shared it should be able to be anything we do should be shared between all seven of us at any time but the problem I have is if we're talking to someone whether it be about you know, zoning or anything else, we're not experts in that. The citizens are calling us to try to get the expert knowledge of what's happening. So I want to see that there is some autonomy that's not just put through the county manager and the other two. If we want to call somebody to get some information, I don't care if that director calls the county manager. Maybe that's what we should say. That person will call the county manager and say, hey, I spoke to Commissioner Brown about ABC. If that needs to be shared with what was happening through the board, then that's a different story. I just want to make sure that we're not losing sight of what's happening here to be able to get citizens in the right place, because that's one of the things that we're the conduit to help them get through that situation. But the other part about sharing the information, I don't think we've ever had a problem with that anyway. So I just want to make sure that that's there. You have a question?

I was said we we talked about this at length during our during our committee that this was not intended to take away that ability for you all to be able to contact. Department heads and have those conversations because you all have relationships throughout the county with those people and you know who to get in contact with to get that information to the constituents. And there's going to be day-to-day mundane questions that get asked to us that don't need to get regurgitated to the entire board.

Absolutely.

Right? Y'all don't want to hear the things that every one of you asked me.

Yeah, if Mr. Brown gets a call and he needs to call Animal Control, I don't want to get an email about it.

Exactly. And we had those specific conversations because we would inundate you all with information that you don't need. This was... If there is substantial information, I think there's some verbiage in there that kind of points to that. Maybe David can point that out.

Further, the county manager must share any answer or information provided to one commissioner with the entire board if the county manager determines that the information involves a matter of substantial public interest It requires substantial resources to prepare or to otherwise substantially benefit the entire board.

So those are- The substantial piece in there is supposed to be pointing towards if it is something that is going to affect us all but the rest of it we can kind of make a determination on and it's not gonna hinder y'all from being able to make these phone calls because we had those conversations as well that there's good relationships right now with all the commissioners and staff that needs to remain in place that we can get these questions answered and we can get this and this was not the intention of this to hinder that in any in any way whatsoever So we also don't want to put rules in place for hand smacking. And I hate to say that. I don't know any other way to say it. But that is not what the intention of that is, is to put rules in place that are going, uh-uh, you weren't supposed to do that. That's not what y'all's rules are in place for.

It's not a gotcha moment.

I don't think it's also said that we're not, we should be able to share anything with us anyway. That's correct. That shouldn't be the issue.

And that was discussed at length during this process.

Any other questions about this matter at this time?

Mr. Goldberg? The next proposal, and this is the black and white one, a resolution amending the procedures for the Gadsden County Board of Commissioners regarding the consideration of items related to capital projects. I apologize for the wordiness there. In there you see some modifications based on Commissioner Cloninger's suggestions regarding how you handle the agenda. regarding capital projects, which represent a complicated, multi-phase, very impactful decisions on the county. And so when you go to the next page, you'll see a number of underlying, suggested new things. And so at the direction of the committee, the board procedures would be amended to include, require the inclusion of what's called a capital improvement tracker. And this would be part of each meeting agenda on an ongoing basis. So there are other materials that are always in your packet, this would be one of them. And it provides the idea that it'd be an ongoing status of all capital improvement projects from really their initial conception all the way to their completion. It's just a number of data points that would be included in that report. And the idea being that we kind of see how a project starts. It has a project number, a project title. So you get consistency on how we talk about these projects. And you would see how the kind of the initial estimates and timelines and costs. and how those estimates have changed, and the actual expenditures. So an ongoing public transparency towards these larger ticket items. The next revision would be in Subsection B where it amends Rule 16c regarding the consent agenda. So right now under your procedures, essentially leading up to your voting meeting every month, there's an agenda process where I see the county manager, the board chair working with the entire board has the ability to decide. Most things end up on consent agenda, but each one of you maintain the right to pull it off a consent agenda and have a separate discussion. This would make it very clear that capital project items involving a project of at least $300,000 or more, and that includes all the accepting bids, contracting actions, anything related to a project of $300,000 or more in value at the time, may not be placed on the agenda. It must go in what's referred to as a separate subcategory of non-consent agenda. In the next page, you see a new subcategory, capital projects of the non-consent agenda. So if it's $300,000 or more over the total project, anything related, if it's approving an architect, if it's accepting bids, if it's making awards, grants, anything related to that, that is going to automatically go on your non-consent subject to an individual vote.

Can we also add grants to that as well? Supervision of grants up front so we don't get them behind the scenes afterwards? Okay.

I don't know how they add. Do you mind if we don't add it to this one and we write you something separate for that? That way it doesn't get.

Along the lines, while we have it as a fresh ticket here, we can sort of look at ways to put that in place. It doesn't have to be on an agenda item. I'm just saying, but we need more information on the grants that are being processed rather than getting it after the fact from the Gazette.

I think, not to put words in anyone's mouth, but I think Scott Attaway and Kyle and the group in finance are already in the process of working on something for that that may be coming. So instead of adding it here, let's keep this one whole as it is just for what it is, and then we'll bring you something separate for that that you can look, that the board can look at for that. If you don't mind.

Any more, David?

If there's any questions or comments on that.

Any questions, sir?

Commissioners, the next proposed resolution, and this is, you see the first one is the color copy, Resolution Updating the Board's Code of Ethics and Procedures. So right now, your main kind of code of ethics is in Resolution 1995-16. This is a very broad description of what your expectations are, not only of the board's ethics, but also of all county officials. They're aspirational. They're very good. They're aspirational. They are worthy. But they do lack a level of particulars. It hasn't been updated since 1995. Based on the discussions with the ad hoc committee, there was a proposed code of ethics that would be adopted in supplement to that 1995 resolution. A copy of it is in your packet and it's unchanged since you last saw it. This is adopted from the UNC School of Government's draft and model code of ethics that essentially all elected boards in North Carolina, most at least, have adopted over the years. It captures those large those aspirational feelings, what it means to be an ethical elected official. But it tends to go into a bit more particulars on what that means in practice, talking about specific statutes that you must follow regarding procurement, financial benefits, things like that. It talks about who's responsible for implementing these. The most critical, something that it does a really good job on is talking about policy disagreements. making it clear that you are supposed to disagree, but that is not in itself an ethical violation and that you should be publicly minded in that. From an enforcement standpoint, the current Board of Code of Ethics does not talk about how you keep each other accountable for this, what procedures you use. The school government suggests the adoption of a fairly broad process for investigating ethical violations, and if necessary, imposing censure, which is your main way of handling it. But that code of ethics is broadly adopted and should be more workable if it is so indisposed for the board.

Since this comes from another body, What is the best way for this body to, that by email back to you, if there's any revisions or additions or anything people wishes to see, or how would that be the best way to get that, since it did come from a different body of people?

I think these are your rules, and I very much encourage you as the board. These rules are not effective if they do not reflect what you understand your role as a public official are. And so I'd encourage you to talk amongst yourselves. I'd encourage Commissioner, work with Commissioner Fraley, Sheehan, and Hovis, who put time in. Mr. Skiba has been there along the way, and I am happy to draft anything as directed by the board. But I want you all to own it, because this is what you you have to believe that this is the way you want to hold each other accountable.

And this is up for adoption in two weeks, correct?

It is at the adoption of whatever you all want.

So we would put next Tuesday for any revisions or changes. Is that okay with the board?

Just for clarification, it's not on any agenda to be up for adoption at any. There's no time frame on this. You can take what time you need.

I will work at your direction.

We'll look at next Tuesday just for anything, and then if there's any discussion needs, you can send that out, and then we could share that amongst the board of us seven from you.

I will put a placeholder on the agenda, and we'll develop that through the agenda process. The last one, very quickly, this was outside the ad hoc committee, but since I think it is relevant, the board had directed me to draft a short change to the rules of decorum governing the public comment period. This is in recognition. And based on that feedback, due to suggested change, speakers shall provide their name. Currently, it requires also their address to be stated. At the direction of the board, it would now be state whether or not they reside in Gaston County. That's very much in keeping with our peers and legally appropriate. And I'm happy to place that on the agenda for the next voting meeting if directed.

If you could send that change to Adam and Emma as well to have that updated on the sign-in register. That way it would make it visible. We'll make sure that's implemented.

Any other? Mr. Hovis. One question. The document we have in our packet that says Code of Professional Responsibility, which one of these four items was it supposed to be speaking in reference to?

My apologies, that was related to my comment regarding the rules of professional conduct and my obligations as an attorney. This is an opinion that's provided by the State Bar.

I'm just trying to figure out, I was trying to figure out where it went, and I couldn't find a place for it, so you answered my question.

That was your disclosure. Seeing none. Other matters come before this board. I have one. Mr. Keiger. On behalf of the Board of County Commissioners, we would like to congratulate you on your latest award for the Order of the Longleaf Pine and the state's highest honor. Welcome to the club. I think. Commissioner Cloninger, share us that with you. I don't know of anybody else other than in this room, but welcome to the club.

Thank you. Motion to close.

Yeah, okay. We'll keep moving. All right. It's hot. This concludes our work session for tonight. Our next regular meeting is Tuesday, August 25th, 2026, here in the Harleby-Gasson Junior Public Forum Courthouse. Thank you for watching. If you have any questions, please remit those to Donna S. Buff, 704-866- 3196. Good night, 250. Good night.