City Council - Special Meeting

Right. Sounds good. Welcome, everybody. I would like to welcome you to the May 20th, 2026 City Council special meeting called Order. Thank you for being here in person. And thanks for all of you on YouTube. To kick it off, we would love to invite Kim Willard to give a presentation. Is it on?

You're tilting it down.

I don't know if it is.

okay i'm usually pretty loud it's it's not for us it's for youtube okay but thank you for obliging hey um my name is kim willard and i am here on behalf of alamance arts we are the arts council that has been serving all of alamance county since 1956. And I'm here today, I wanna talk about us turning 70 years old this year. That's quite an accomplishment. We are the third oldest arts council in all of North Carolina, and there's about 100 arts councils. We're followed only by the Winston-Salem Forsyth Arts Council and the Durham Arts Council. Our journey started 70 years ago in Burlington. And after we resided in Burlington for 10 years, we moved to Graham into the former fire hall. Then in 1998, after extensive renovations, we moved right next door into the beautiful yellow historic Captain James and Emma Holt White House. And it's been our home since 1998. For those of you who may not know, and I know all of y'all sitting up here know, but maybe not those watching on YouTube, that the city of Graham owns that beautiful Captain White House that's right next door. And Alamance Arts is so very grateful and thankful for the city to allow us the use of that beautiful space. I want you to know that I'm not here with a fancy proposal or a huge ask, but I'm here instead to share some of the many impacts our organization has had on the community over the past seven decades and ways that not only the city can help to continue to advance the arts in Alamance County, but ways that everyone in this room and in this community can make a difference. But before I share our impact, I do think it's important to understand how our organization is funded. Nearly 30% of our funds come from grants and county and municipal support, with the other 70% coming from donors and community support. We truly do rely on the community to help sustain and support us. We have brought a lot to Graham over the decades. We played a pivotal role in launching the original Arts Around the Square many years ago in partnership with the city. We helped establish musical chairs, which continues to be well received with residents in the community. We've been a part of community celebrations, including Slice of Summer, Pumpkin Bash, and I don't know if you've ever seen our famous dancing witches, but they're pretty YouTube famous. And we've been a part of the Graham Tree Lighting. Our mascot, Artie the Mouse, resides in several locations throughout Graham. We have a scavenger hunt that was created that brings adults and kids alike throughout downtown Graham to try to find Artie the Mouse. And we've hosted nationally recognized exhibits, including Art of the Brick, which was Lego based, Chihuly, the Life and Art of Charles Schultz, Snoopy, of course, and Seward Johnson, the big statue that was out on the lawn. They have all brought thousands of visitors to the area. Those visitors did not only visit Alamance Arts, they also visited other area businesses and restaurants, resulting in thousands and thousands of dollars going back into the local economy. I am here on behalf of Alamance Arts to ask that you continue to support the arts in our community, to ensure that our legacy remains for at least another seven decades. In honor of our anniversary and impact on the community, we are asking for gifts of $7, $70, $700, $7,000, and if you're really, really generous, $70,000 would be great. No amount though is too small to make a difference. We encourage you to take a class, come to an exhibit, buy a gift from our artists and gift shop, support local artists and small businesses, rent our space, take a trip with us, follow us on social media, share our post, subscribe to our newsletter, and volunteer. We currently have an online art market auction that's live on the homepage of our website, which is alamancearts.org. 100% of the proceeds from that art auction will benefit our organization. All of the items were donated. Go online, take a look, and bid. We have an Art After Hours event on June 11th at Red Oak Brewery, and we invite you to attend. Tickets are available on our website and here you'll have an opportunity to meet our new executive director, press release going out later today, while being immersed in an artful atmosphere. And last but not least, we'll finish out the year strong with the 70th anniversary celebration on Friday, November 6th here in Graham at the Graham Meal. We ask that you mark your calendars and be on the lookout for more details coming soon. We thank you for all of your support and your time. And as I leave, I ask that you never take for granted the impact that art plays in our lives and in our communities. Thank you. Yeah.

Guys, did y'all have any questions for Kim?

No, thank you very much. Thank you.

At this time, I would like to invite President Sharia Burnett to give a presentation for United Way.

Well, good afternoon, everyone. Good afternoon. I have been charged with keeping you all alert and awake and excited, Councilwoman Whitaker. And an audience member also requested that of me as well. So I'm going to do my best with bright colors and lots of information, OK? All right. So as was said, my name is Sharia Burnett. i am the relatively new president of united way of alamance county and i happen to be from graham north carolina so it is my great honor that you are the first city council that i am presenting before um and i'm hoping that this will prove to be a great partnership going forward next slide So I'm here on behalf of United Way of Alamance County. I have with me Tara Nogger, who is our community partnerships manager. And part of the work that we do is focused on the wicked problem that is poverty. Poverty is considered a wicked problem because it involves a lot of different moving pieces. It also involves a lot of different people. So there's not just nonprofits. There's not just government. There's not just faith-based organizations. A lot of people have to work together to address the issue of poverty. And with United Way, there are multiple ways in which we are addressing poverty. So when you look to United Way Worldwide, which is the part of the international organization that we're a part of, you have four pillars and those pillars are youth opportunity, financial security, healthy community and community resiliency. And so when we think about those things, they all play different factors in poverty. You'll notice that there's an asterisk beside financial security because that's what we're going to talk about today. At United Way of Alamance County, we've done a lot of work to align not only with those four pillars, but to really look at our community as a whole and figure out where the needs and gaps are. And we've created three priority areas. Those areas are supporting alamance, feeding alamance, and housing alamance. Next slide. So how are we looking at these priority areas? What do these priority areas mean to us? Well, when we're talking about feeding Alamance County, you all might have heard that we helped pay off the school lunch debt for Alamance Burlington school system earlier this year. But what we know is the day that we paid it off, it started accruing again. So we had to have conversations about what the issue was. If you're not able to afford lunch for your children, that implies that there should probably be programs that you're eligible for that maybe you're not taking a part of. So we have worked to educate families around the school lunch programs that exist, how they can qualify for free breakfast and lunch. so that that debt is not accruing and is not becoming the responsibility of our schools and the school system. We've worked to raise funds, as I said, to clear that lunch debt, but also to continue to raise funds, to continue to clear it on an ongoing basis. And we've created a program called Alamance CAN that you're the first to hear about. And that program, the CAN, stands for Community Alleviating Needs. We've already received $10,000 in donations from various businesses and partners. And what that money is being used for currently is for our food provider nonprofits. So if they are running into barriers with accessing the food that they need to serve their populations, they're able to reach out to us and we're able to either go purchase the food for them, give them gift cards to purchase that food, or make other arrangements to make sure that their shelves remain stocked. Just recently, we had the honor of giving $1,000 to a local food pantry that will remain nameless for the time being. But I was honored to be able to sow into that food pantry in particular because the person operating it right now is a former teacher from Graham High School. So Graham coming full circle. She's serving her community along her community partners. They're not getting paid. And they have families coming to them now twice or more a week. And she said, Sharia, we just cannot keep up. Is there anything that you can do? And so because of the generous donations that we've received from realtors, from McKay's and Mebane, from local community agencies, just different people sewing into this Alamance Can idea, we were able to provide a thousand dollars so that they can go purchase items another thing that we've done is assist with stamp out hunger which just happened on may 9th so we helped the postal service we made the flyers we did the marketing but we also helped them get volunteers and we worked with hillcrest elementary school to provide over eighteen hundred dollars so we gave six of the food pantries that were receiving stamp out hunger we gave them gift cards each of them got 280 dollars And then we spent $150 purchasing food that was then taken to the Burlington post office because that post office in particular had to divide its contributions amongst several different food pantries. And so we wanted to try to supplement that. Then we moved to Housing Alamance. If you're following us on social media, you probably get tired of me talking about housing, but that is one of the things that excites me. I enjoy it. I come from a background of working in homeless services. I actually started that career right here in Alamance County, working in child welfare and then working at Family Abuse Services and I was over the domestic violence shelter and the rapid rehousing program. So seeing this firsthand makes housing a very, very important topic to me. And recognizing how much people don't understand about housing is something else that is very important to me. So we've done a lot to educate ourselves and to educate the community. We're conducting eviction-based research because there had been no research tracking evictions in Alamance County since June of 2023. So we're working to catch that up. We're in the first quarter that we've gotten of 2025 to try to get a better look at the numbers. Part of what drives this is the fact that we have so many people that want to help, but when they come to us, they say, well, how much money? If we give $500 a person, will that stop an eviction? We don't know if we don't have the data of what's happening in court. So what we know is it's going to take just over $1,100 per person, and that's only if they're one month behind. So imagine if it's more than that. Most landlords will not accept a partial payment. So if you are part of an agency or part of a body that's only going to give $500, that will not stop that eviction. And the landlord can refuse that money. So we want to make sure that we're educating the partners that want to help, but also educating the people having this experience, right? So we've hosted educational programming for our community members to help them understand how to prevent an eviction. So we brought in legal aid, and they talked about what you can do to prevent it even getting that far. But we've also had sessions just yesterday with landlords and property managers where we brought in 15 of our local resources to talk to them about what's available for them to possibly refer their tenants to before they go the route of eviction. So if you see this client is headed this way or this tenant is headed this way, maybe refer them to a food pantry because we know that we have food pantries like SAFE that are way more than just a food pantry. but if we can get them in the door, maybe we can get them assistance and maybe that will prevent an eviction. It was not only useful for the landlords that were there, but also we had Loebsack and Brownlee represented there. If you don't know them, they are the law firm that represent most of the landlords in this community. So they got to hear about different resources that were available so that they can then talk to their clients and say, hey, have you referred your tenant to this before we go the route of eviction? We also, of course, had the other agencies in there hearing from one another about what they do so that you're making good referrals and you're not trying to do it all because we can't end poverty in a silo. So this way you know who's doing what, what's still left to be done, right? And then lastly, we're working on engaging partner agencies in various ways. So we had so many partner agencies coming to us saying people are showing up asking us for help with evictions and we don't know what to do. So we created navigating housing program. So we said we're going to host this first workshop and we're going to do it in Burlington and we might do another one in the fall. It's all the tickets sold out in two and a half days. So I said, oh, well, I guess we're not waiting for the fall. So we did the first one in Burlington. We did the second one in Graham at the Civic Center. Special shout out to Robbie Burnett for helping us out with that. But we did it in Graham because the second highest number of evictions in Alamance County are in the 27253 zip code. So the third one will happen in the fall and it will be in Mebane because they have the third highest. So we're trying to follow what we're seeing with these eviction trends and we're hosting these events accordingly to educate where there seems to be the greatest need. In addition to engaging the community partners around this topic of navigating housing in the event that somebody's housing is unstable, we also started a housing mediation training that we have completed with our first cohort of about 13 community members who came together to learn how they could potentially talk to landlords and tenants at the same time to work toward a resolution that is not an eviction. um and so we brought in the north carolina center for mediation with some great grant funding from cone health foundation or i'm sorry from cone health and we were able to have a one day eight hour saturday of training and then three virtual workshops that helped us do one-on-one practice learning how to mediate and so this way people can reach out to us they can reach out to those at our partner agencies that have been trained and say hey i just need help talking to my landlord to see if we can resolve this and maybe we can get it handled before it ever has to go to the clerk's office right And so then we have supporting Alamance, which is where this tax time program falls in. And that's also Tara's area of expertise. So under supporting Alamance, I'm actually going to go in reverse order. So we support nonprofits. We support nonprofits. We recently hosted the first ever nonprofit summit in Alamance County with Impact Alamance. And what we heard from all of our nonprofits where we need more events like this, We need more information. We had workshops there about financial clarity for nonprofits, about fundraising for nonprofits. We left with a list of 30 more topics that they wanted to hear about, everything ranging from how to increase their funding to how to improve their board development, right? So all types of things that they're very interested and engaged in. We also have EFSP, which we just were notified this morning is coming back, which is the emergency food and shelter program that exists at the worldwide level for or at the federal level for United Way and is funded by the federal government. So we're waiting to see how much money Alamance County will receive. Those funds will be will be routed through United Way of Alamance County. We also have community investment grants where we actually give grant funding to nonprofits. Recently, we funded $120,000 across 16 nonprofits in Alamance County, and that's for the duration of this calendar year to help them do their work. That work for this year is specifically focused on housing, eviction, affordable housing in particular, and a few other areas. Next year, we will do similar funding, and it will be focused on programs that are for youth opportunity and financial security. Next, we have volunteerism. So another part of supporting Alamance is making sure that you're volunteering in Alamance. You can give your time, but you can give your money and you can also give your energy in different ways. Right. And so we want to make sure that people are showing up in ways that have value and impact. So we have quarterly service projects and they align with our four pillars. So our first quarterly service project was in March. We helped collect books for the They Look Like Me Book Fair, which was held at North Park. Our next quarterly service project will be in June. It is called Unlocking Opportunities. We are doing that in partnership with Benevolence Farm. I told you I'm a Graham girl. We're keeping it close to home. And so what we're doing is we're having an event where their four residents will be able to work with people one-on-one with their resumes, with attire, with interviewing. because you have to explain this lapse of time that you were not in society, right? And how do you do that well? But the other thing that we're doing is we've asked the community to donate business casual attire. So we've gotten their sizes. Tara will tell you that I just unloaded my whole back seat and part of my trunk into the United Way office yesterday because the great folks at Children's Shaffle United Church of Christ decided to bless me with some business casual attire to donate to our community members that have recently been incarcerated. That's the way that the community can get involved. The people actually doing the workshops with them are members of the business community throughout Alamance County. So we have some great folks showing up from all over to help us carry this out. And then a step further, we asked people to sponsor this event. And I'm happy to say that prime personnel, Randy Perkins, stepped up and sponsored this event for us so that there will be lunch and those attending can learn how to network over a meal because we recognize that not everything's going to be a formal interview and you need to be able to present yourself in different ways. So we're very excited about that project. In the fall, in September, our quarterly service project will align with healthy community. It will be a food drive. And in December, we're hoping to do a community resilience focused food drive, or I'm sorry, community resilience focus expo where we will actually be educating people about how to prepare for disaster we recently worked with the city of Burlington on their disaster preparedness kits and the number of people that just don't know what they should have or that say things like well I'll just use my cell phone sweetheart if the power is out for more than 24 hours cell phones not really gonna help you so we're trying to make sure that people have what they need and what we saw with the disaster kids in Burlington we set up at the Dream Center this past Saturday from 10 to 2 all 150 kids were gone before two o'clock when people realized what was in these skids they were calling people and saying like hey you need to come get this it was can openers it was you know crank radios it was all the things that you might not think of but the power is out now you have a need right so we want to make sure that we're carrying that all throughout the county and of course i can't stop through the county and not come through graham so our hope is to do some efforts specifically specifically with alamance county but also with our municipalities to spread information and get that information out to everyone and then we have community council which some of you may be familiar with community council is a monthly meeting that we have we bring in guest speakers that talk about our different pillars but then they're talking about what their agency is doing to address those pillars locally we have community council announcements which go out two to three times a week and it's a lot about all the different events happening across the county, things that people can support, how they can donate, opportunities for them to serve on boards, all types of things. And then we also do a community resource guide, which is shared broadly. We update that twice a year, typically. This year we've updated it twice in two months, and so we're about to get that printed. But we wanted to make sure that we had the most accurate information and that we had it organized in a way that people could easily find what they were looking for. And so then lastly, we have the VITA tax time program, which also falls under supporting alimants. And along with that tax time program, we have a community shred event. And it's important to have a free shred event because I personally was standing at Office Depot the other day and a man came in with a cart of things that he needed to shred and he was charged over $30. They waited and then they charged him. So this is a free event. You drive up, you give us the items, we shred them for you. And we see that along with financial security, it's making sure that people are keeping track of their documents and that when it's time to dispose of their documents, they're doing so in a responsible way. And so this gives them the opportunity to do that. And we actually do that in partnership with some of our local realtors. We're able to use their parking lot and they go in half with us on all the costs. So we don't have to handle all of it. They work with us to make sure that it remains a free event to the public. So when we're looking at our data, I feel like it's always important to explain where we're getting our information from and why we've decided that these are our priorities and our initiatives. So 211 is a number that people can call in the event that they need resources in any county in the state of North Carolina. The important thing for 211 is not only that they have the information available from the agencies to say what they're able to do, but that people are actually calling them to receive that information. They then take those phone calls and their communications with the agencies and they create monthly reports. Chelsea or Mary Dickey has probably seen my post on social media. Anytime I get that monthly report, it's posted on Facebook. And I'm having a conversation about why we have these needs, what agencies can fulfill these needs, what do they need to fulfill these needs, because we have unmet needs in our community, right? And I don't like when the number is high. The 211 people know that I don't like when the number is high. When they send me high numbers, I want a list. I want to know how many people called about this need that we couldn't fulfill, because I just don't like that reflecting on Alamance County when we're such a great community that does so much for our citizens. So I will tell you that over the last few months we've noticed a trend which is that most of the requests are about financial assistance that's not shocking rent utility and general financial assistance but what i will tell you is that for the whole year of 2025 we saw three areas where the greatest needs were and that was rent payment assistance electric service payment assistance and food pantry access and i know what you're thinking sharia what does this have to do with taxes everything because when people get their tax refunds it goes right back into the community and it prevents these three needs. If they have the money from their taxes and they're not having to pay a lot to get their taxes done, that is more money that's available for them to address these different needs and less that the government has to take on or that nonprofits have to take on to assist them. Next slide. So with United Way's VITA tax time program, we have certain eligibility requirements. So you must live in and around Alamance County, and we're going to talk about that more in the next slide. But you're also required to be within a certain income level. So if you're an individual, your income has to be $55,000 or less. If you're married filing jointly, it has to be $75,000 or less. And if your household income is within 5,000 of that, we reserve the right to be able to still serve you. We see this sometimes with people who maybe their spouse has passed away mid-year. And so there's some fluctuation there and they're not quite sure what to do. We'll still serve them. Why is this relevant? Because we're doing their taxes for free. They're coming to United Way. They're sitting in our office in Burlington. They're doing an intake with a trained person. We are all trained by the IRS through various protocols to be able to do certain levels of this operation. We sit with them. We do an intake. Once their intake is done, then their taxes are turned over to a volunteer tax preparer who has a background in doing taxes and has been certified by the IRS. That person then does their taxes, and within a week, they can come back and pick their taxes up, and they know what they owe. or whether they're going to receive a refund, right? Especially with things happening at the federal level, there have been a lot of changes. So there were a lot of tax credits that people were not aware that they were eligible for. All of our folks are trained on that and able to talk them through that and explain what we need in order to make sure that they qualify for the necessary tax credits. What I will point out that is very important about this, next slide, is that if we were to send folks just out into the different agencies that do taxes as a professional, as a business, they would spend $200 and $300 just to get their taxes done. And so for the ones that are getting a refund, if the bulk of their refund goes back to paying for getting their taxes done, It's like there's nothing there. So important programs like the Vita Tax Time program are very important for that reason. I can tell you that just this past spring, so from January to April, and actually we had to start in February because of the snow, and we ended the week before or two weeks before tax time was actually up. So just the first week of April, we did over 600 tax returns. But we met with over 630 people. Some of those people were deaf and they came to us because no other agency could serve them and we were using a system called Genie where we could set up a laptop and a person could sign to them and translate to them. Some of them were Spanish speakers. We also used Genies to communicate with them to make sure that they understood what we were asking them and that we were also explaining their returns to them in a language that they could understand. So there are lots of elements that go into this program. There's a lot that happens with this program. And what I know and what I've learned is that in the last few years, this program being in Burlington has become a barrier to people in snow camp. and possibly some of the folks in the outskirts of Mebane. We were approached by a non-profit in Graham, in Southern Alamance County specifically, that said they would be willing to be a site for us. The problem is we don't have the staff or the capacity to have somebody go out and travel to the different sites because that person has to be there to do the intake, then they have to bring their documents to our office because we're the ones that are certified by the IRS. It gets completed there and then they would have to go back the next week to Graham for that person to pick it up. So there have been efforts in the past to fix this where the United Way would go and do the intake one week, but then the person would still have to come to Burlington to pick up. And I said, I just feel like that kind of defeats the purpose. So if we're going to expand and we're going to take in Graham, I would like to see us be there for the intakes and there for the pickups so that people are able to get to an easily accessible location and get what they need. Just this year, we secured $581,677 in refunds for those that came through our program. so that money goes back into rent that's owed right food that's needed utilities that may need to be caught up right so that's fewer people lining up at dss for assistance that's fewer people that are going without and that's fewer people that we're seeing on our streets or in our shelters okay so today i do stand before you with a request sorry kim So my request is for $12,000, and that is to help us hire staff that would facilitate the process within IRS guidance and compliance to make sure that we're able to get documents to a location in Graham for community members to come get their taxes done, take those back to Burlington, and then bring them back to Graham to deliver to those community members that are in need of assistance. I told you that we would talk about that line about in or around Alamance County and that time has come. So I also plan to limit our program to only being for those in Alamance County. We've seen people come kind of from the outskirts of Guilford where they might live closer to us. But what I know is only Alamance County municipalities are paying into this program. And so we need to make sure that Alamance County folks are being served first. I think being knowledgeable about what other agencies exist doing this work in other communities will help us route those people to the appropriate places. But just because they call if they're not from Alamance County does not mean they have to be served by us. We also, as I mentioned, would be adding a full-time seasonal site coordinator who would be the person that's kind of ushering those documents around, ensuring that they're locked and in the confidential space as they are traveling. And then lastly, we do have a plan to, as I mentioned, we have a nonprofit that has volunteered in Graham. but we also have um efforts that we need to make to ensure that their space is appropriate for us to carry out the activities required of us by the irs in their space um and so if there's anything that we need to purchase to take with us to make that space more more efficient and more confidential we would need to purchase those things as well um and so that's all i have last slide please thank you sir so do you have any questions everybody's still awake so i i Councilwoman Whitaker, I did my job. You did your job.

Sure did. So I was kind of wondering, do you guys ever do any, have you looked into any partnering with our libraries, our local libraries? Do you ever use their facilities, excuse me, or their sites?

So we have not used them for tax purposes, but we do partner with them in other ways. So for instance, all the excess donations that we're getting from the clothing drive will go to their community closet. We're having a housing summit in June. And part of what we've done is work with the, we work with the public libraries to promote their, their poetry stroll. And we were the reason that the theme was home, because we wanted to talk about the issue of housing. And so they're letting us use those poems as part of the displays at the housing summit in June. So we've worked with them in various capacities. Members of their staff have been part of our community investment grants decision making teams as well.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Any questions? You guys have questions?

Do you know off the top of your head how many Graham residents were served in the tax program this past spring?

I do not, but I can tell you that we had to turn away a lot of them because when they called, the question was, are you only on Front Street? And between the construction, the travel, and them not having something like Link Transit, that was a barrier, and so they had to find somewhere else to go.

Okay. Awesome. Thank you so much for your time, Sheree. I really appreciate it. Thank you for what you do. Thank you. Okay, well, let's go ahead and turn our attention to our Zoom.

Hey, John, can you hear me?

Yes, I can. Can you hear me okay?

Yeah, I hear you. Okay, say something else.

I hear you.

All right, can you hear? Yes. All right, you ready?

All right. Good afternoon, everybody. My name is John Ando. I'm the transit manager for the city of Burlington, and I oversee Link Transit. And I'm here today to present about a possible funding request for the Link Transit services that we're planning on providing through the city of Graham as part of our new transit development plan. Just wanted to see, can everybody see my presentation? Okay.

Yes.

Okay. So Scott, give me a brief update of where we stand today. Link transit has been in operation for 10 years. We've carried over 1 million passenger trips since 2016. Presently, we have five stops at Graham, at the courthouse, Alamance Community College, Jimmy Kerr at I-40, mainly people get off the bus there to go to the truck stops to work, and the park park and ride. And in 2026, for the last three months, we've carried 1,887 passenger trips from Graham, 2025, 7,724 passenger trips, in 2024, 8,983. 2023, 7,548 passenger trips. Since 2016, we've extended our services in the urban area to Elon, Mebane, Haw River, and Green Level. We have received local match contributions from those jurisdictions since 2023. Gibsonville, Alamance County, and Alamance Community College students, employees, and faculty can ride Link Transit for free and they're paid for by those colleges. We've recently replaced our entire fleet with low floor vehicles to make it easier for seniors and persons with disabilities to board transit buses. And four of our vehicles are powered by electric. We've made it easier for people to use our door-to-door paratransit service for seniors and persons with disabilities where people can schedule trips using our app. We now allow seniors to ride our paratransit program, and we also allow save-day reservations on Link Paratransit. This is a picture of the current bus fleet that we now have in place. We have 12 buses in the Link Transit fleet, 29-foot buses run on the bus routes, and then 20-foot vans run on our paratransit program. We've also been constructing benches throughout the service area. At the stop at the courthouse, we have a little bench that's attached to the pole to make it easier for people who are waiting for the bus there. Those benches attached to poles are basically perfect for areas where there's little right-of-way room to install a full-fledged bus shelter. This is the currently transit network. As of today, the routes presently run every 90 minutes. However, we are going to be enhancing that to every 60 minutes so that, in essence, a bus would come by each of those routes every hour. Particularly, Graham is served presently by the orange route. So in summary, what we're asking for uh we are requesting uh 20 to 22 000 to provide local match for the federal funds that we receive in the urbanized area we presently run from 5 30 in the morning until 9 30 p.m monday through friday 9 30 a.m to 6 30 p.m on saturdays excluding holidays our fares are a dollar for general riders 50 cents for seniors veterans persons with disabilities and students and then a dollar for the paratransit We do have 10 rides, one day and 31 day passes available. We primarily provide the fixed route system. So basically bus is coming by on a reliable schedule, serving the bus stops. And we're going to be enhancing that to every 60 minutes in late 2026. As part of our transit development plan, if the city of Bram is interested, we would add additional bus stops along Elm Street, Washington Street, The new routes, the orange route, as well as a yellow route, would provide connections to Mebane. We're in discussions about serving Amazon, continue to serve ACC, continue to serve Burlington, a direct connection to Walmart, Food Line, and Alamanza Langdon's. Our door-to-door parent transit for seniors and persons with disabilities operate within a three-quarter mile radius of the Link Transit routes, which is required under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Reservations to be made the same day to 14 days in advance via phone or app. The city would be able to make an appointment to our Link Transit Public Transit Advisory Commission, which provides advisory recommendations on Link Transit service to the Burlington City Council. services are performing um so mentioned that we did adopt a five-year transit development plan and we're going to make these improvements to the link transit system starting in late 2026. all routes would be operating on a 60-minute frequency we're in the process of purchasing another 29-foot bus to be able to make that happen we're also going to be doing a pilot Microtransit service in a portion of the city of Burlington where fixed route service was not working very well. And that service will be called Link Plus. Should that service be successful, we may consider putting that in other areas of the Link Transit service area. Goal is to simplify the route.

Yeah, that was good for him.

This concludes the presentation. How many slides did we have left? Oh. Do y'all have any questions that Aaron can text or email?

I would like to bring up that I sit on the County Regional Transportation Authority.

Yeah, I hear you, Ricky. Oh, I'm sorry.

Yeah. I will say that I sat on the active group and according to what we know now, all River and Green level has pulled out of, um, um, link transit.

Did they say why they pulled out or just, you hear me?

Okay. Just back. Yep. I just did a quick meeting. Um, yeah, your, your time had, uh, Cut off at the very end, but you're back on right now. Sorry about it.

Aaron, do you hear me okay?

Yes, go ahead.

It looks like the system cut off. It ran out of time. Could you enable the sharing again?

Should be good.

Okay.

because I heard they've done a meeting for it.

OK. Apologize on that. We are proposing, and everyone can still see my screen, such as the development plan.

Yes.

Okay, so the city did adopt a transit development plan. We're going to start incremental link transit service improvements starting in late 2,026. All routes will be operating every 60 min. We're in the process of purchasing another bus to make that happen. We are going to plan a link plus service in areas where there's low ridership. pilot in the city of Burlington. And the goal is to make the system faster so people can get across the urban area in a much more seamless manner versus the present 90 minute frequency that we've been running for the past 10 years. And This is what the proposed link transit system would look like, in essence, to get to that 60-minute headway. We'll be placing two buses on the Orange route due to its length going all the way to Mebane. And we would have hubs in downtown Burlington at the Burlington Garden Road Walmart store, as well as at the Burlington Walmart store on Grand Hopedale Road and Mebane Street. So that concludes my presentation and happy to answer any questions about link transit and our request.

Ricky, did you want to ask that or confirm that with him or you guys have any questions?

No, no.

Thank you, Tim.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

All right. Mayor just pulled everyone and, uh, doesn't look, we have any questions.

Thank you, John.

Thank you for having me today.

All right. Thanks.

Talk to you later.

All right. Do you have anything else that you want to add now that he's not online about you said that green level and all river pulled out of the link transit system? Okay. As far as supporting.

Right.

Okay. my we funded acta and we know that the they have a high impact on our community i would like if we funded link to also see how they work together um and it seems like they work in very siloed systems right now y'all have any thoughts on the link we'll work in we're working backwards on the funding request since we dove in with this

uh by funding acta we give our residents door-to-door service not having to go and set it some um outdoor um bench somewhere waiting on the bus to come aaron we've never funded link is that correct or mega we've never funded link

i don't believe so okay um and if we don't fund them again they're going to continue to keep the routes that we currently have but just not add the new ones that that's how i understand it okay that's what i understood the only reason they fund you're talking to your mic please ricky the only reason they fund anything coming through graham is because of alamance county paying for ridership um

for people coming from Burlington and Mebane.

And the ACC students.

Well, from students, but it all revolves around the courthouse.

Okay. Jim, do you have any thoughts on link transit funding?

I don't.

Okay.

Bobby? Nope. Bonnie? No, I think we continue to fund ACTA. That's what I would say.

Yeah. I think I need more information as far as the link impact and if they are working with ACTA before we move forward with any funding requests. So are we good to move on from that one? Okay. Let's move on to United Way. and silence phones um bonnie you want to start kick us off with you right away oh i'll wait for you okay um the 581 000 back into the community is that number correct um is a significant number um for me that is money that we're not spending on keeping people safe or having our police department doing mitigative services um so i think it is a very significant program um and i think it is a very worthy cause um i think my question to council is if we're interested in in funding the full 12. ricky do you have thoughts

I'm really torn between because our employees already give to to.

Yeah, way you know what.

I'll wait for everybody else to make a decision.

I would propose that we wait till we get into the new fiscal year to see how our revenue stream is. so i think you know we're looking at our budget right now and i think it better we wait till we get into the first quarter of the fiscal year to make adjustments so you're suggesting we come back with an amendment of some sort later on if we decide to do that if we decide to do that

Yeah, I mean, I don't know if we can do the whole 12, but I would like to support them. But I kind of agree with Bobby, too, that maybe we should wait and see where we are, you know, after the first quarter. We can always come back and amend. So, just a thought. Jim?

Yeah, I kind of agree with Bobby. I thought we were here for... information this yes budget you know this is great information to have and I appreciate you coming yeah um this was put on the agenda at the regular meeting last time on a regular meeting um but uh I just I think it is something that you know like Bobby said we just wait um because I feel like Bonnie as well you know um I think we should give them something but um i'm not ready right now to make a decision on what that that should be ricky do you have further thoughts uh i agree with the rest of them okay

may i add something mayor and council we can certainly come back at any point in time that city council desires us to after the first quarter as far as our large revenue streams sales tax is going to be the only one that we've got sort of a strong handle on even the quarterly disbursements we won't know until at least a month and a half after the first quarter So, you may just want to consider maybe closer to the January timeframe. Taxes will be due early January, and that is single-handedly our largest revenue stream. I know that's cutting it close to the tax program and the tax time that this is ultimately hoping to fund, but it's our largest single revenue stream.

What is the sales tax this year, year to date, compared to what was projected?

I don't have that number for you off the top of my head.

Can you pull it for me please? I can try. Okay. Thank you. Because while it is a significant donation to a nonprofit and I understand that it is only 12,000 and we're going through some bigger numbers in here too. And so if our sales tax is even looking healthy now or if it is looking healthy at the end of Q1, Um, for our fiscal year, I think we, we should revisit sooner than January is my opinion, because in order to set them up for success, if we truly do want to give to their efforts, I don't want to cripple the efforts because of our timing. Yeah.

i mean i think we all we have a consensus we'll revisit it so we can take a look after the first quarter and if we need more time as as megan suggested then we we give it more time you know we can always uh continually revisit we don't have to just revisit once all right united way

We will revisit after Q1. Thank you so much for being here, and we'll be in touch. We'll let you know when it's on the agenda again. Is the fall still a viable? Okay. Okay. Great. Alamance Arts.

Same thing. um i mean we already provide them with the building and the building maintenance and everything else so i mean that's that's quite a bit so i think mebben was given 10 000 and what was the other one that i saw in there burlington i think we give way more than that just with you know renting them the building for basically nothing and doing all the maintenance so that's just my yeah thing As far as monetary stuff goes.

Sure. I will add that I think we probably reap more of the tourism benefits because they're right here. That their visitors do visit our local businesses probably a little bit more than Mebane and Burlington are getting. But I agree. I think it's awesome that we have them here and have the building under the city of Graham. Did you have something to say, Bobby? No. Okay. Ricky.

Okay.

Revisit Q1. Okay. Okay.

I would like to ask you a question. I just realized it. Are there any plans to bring, um, the Leonard Nimoy photography thing back?

Not that I am aware of, but I'll tell you, you know, we have been in a period of transition. And so, as I mentioned earlier, you know, we've got a new executive director that will be starting June 1. And I'm sure, you know, we are now. going to be moving forward with all kinds of new plans and are always open and want to hear what the community would be interested in us bringing back.

I missed it.

Yeah, definitely send us what you want and as part of our 70th anniversary, we're reaching out to people in the community and asking them to share their stories. of how art has impacted their lives in this community over the past 70 years. And definitely reach out to us and let us know who you'd like to hear from and what exhibits you want to see. And we're looking forward to working with the community and people here to help further grow the arts.

Thank you.

All right. Thanks.

I have a question. Why are we revisiting this one? I mean, nothing's going to change between now and, I mean, as far as Alamance Arts.

That was just what they had said, that they were interested in revisiting.

Yeah.

With Alamance Arts?

You don't know what the future may hold.

I know what we're already contributing, so, I mean. Congrats on the executive director. So how many of us want to revisit then? Did we get a consensus of that? No, it was just a question. Okay. Live long and prosper. Okay. I feel like we're giving enough as it is. So what was the consensus?

He was just asking the question.

No, I'm saying, are we going to revisit Alamance Arts in a month? Next year, just like we did. Yeah.

And that's okay. We can voice the very same opinions then, but it will be brought up at QM. I just never heard a consensus. I would like to propose just a five-minute reset before we dive into all of this. Is everybody cool with a? Yeah. All right. Sorry? Oh, thank you. all right council will consider not yet no recess yet sorry about that city council will consider closing west elm street on may 25th 2026 from 10 to 1 for alamance county war memorial aaron holland thank you mayor um and i promise i'll be super quick because this is something they've done for the last 30 plus years um typically this is on our consent agenda but the application wasn't sent me until right before the

The last council meeting. So we had to add on to this meeting here, uh, basically to what you just said, they're looking to replace the clothes, the West am street area between, um, West am two 12 to where the, uh, criminal courthouse building is. Um, I think the time is from eight to one, but the actual event won't be until from like 10, 10 30 to 12. Uh, all the departments have looked at it, made their comments and. applicant has provided all that we need.

And are we footing the bill for the police closures or are they paying the...

It's no charge on our end. Okay. Madam Mayor, make a motion that we approve this closure.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. All opposed? Passed unanimously. Thank you, Aaron. Okay, now can we do a five-minute recess? Yes, ma'am. All right. 2 p.m., we'll start back. Thank you, guys.

Thank you for being here, sir. Thanks, Brian.

How are you doing?

Good. How are you? I'm terribly disappointed there are no donuts.

I'm not. Sorry about that.

Yeah, but.

Watch the slackers. Yeah, no.

Here's.

Mm. Live long and prosper. Right here.

L-E-O-N-G-I-M-O-Y, Nimoy. You're not a Trekkie, are you?

Yeah. Live long and prosper. Yeah.

Not this one. This one's Nanu Nanu. Live long and prosper.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I never heard an explicit request for funding.

She didn't.

It was kind of an open-ended.

Yes.

But that was a specific number.

But every year we talk about this.

Every year we say we've already put them in the building for a dollar. We've already maintained the building to them.

We have the ground and all the equipment. So that's what.

What?

2 o'clock right now. That's time.

So are y'all going to go through all of it? No idea what people have. What? No idea what people.

I picked up on some of what Bonnie and Bobby were talking about coming in. They were talking about the boats that met Graham Mebane. They were like, the seas need to be created.

All right, it's two.

Tell them.

City owns the boats at Grand Mezzanine Lake.

Chelsea, did you watch the meeting list?

I watched some of it. I need to go back and watch all of the... I voted that down. Yeah, that's all.

4-0.

It's coming to us.

Yeah. Thank you.

Megan, can you grab them? Silly. It's been six, seven minutes now.

One pontoon boat is what you got out there? What about any canoes? Thanks for being there. All right. All right. Take care of this budget. All right.

We're missing Renee.

Let's continue with the budget.

All right, we're all here. Let's do it. Now we'll kick off our review for the proposed 2026-2027 budget. Megan, can I recognize you?

Absolutely. In years past, we have gone through departments and just sort of gone over significant changes. If that's what city council would like to do again, that's where I can start. If there's somewhere else that you want me to jump into first, y'all just let me know. Otherwise, I'll start with tourism and just kind of work our way through.

I'm okay with departments. You guys okay with departments? All right, let's do it.

Alright, so on the expenditure side and these are just listed sequentially. But starting on the general fund starting that account 4000, which is tourism and then sort of working from there. Our tourism budget proposed for the next fiscal year is funded largely by occupancy tax dollars. It's 3% levied on hotels within the city of Graham. The significant jump in this department is the banner project and a brand kit.

Did the banner quote come back at 15,000? Like we have a hard number for 15 or why did it get pulled down from 20 to 15? Hmm.

So we don't have a number. 20 was a number that we were putting out there because we knew they were going to have certain hogwares that were needing to be replaced. 15 was a little higher than probably where we need to get big because we don't know if we're going to get as many banners as we did before. We got like 104 the last time. We're thinking probably more like 80-ish this time. So there's sort of an offset there. But the initial quote that we received, I think we're going to be within that range.

Including the hardware and the brand kit?

Yeah.

Okay. Are we getting the brand kit from ADAN? We haven't.

Well, because we haven't priced anything yet, we haven't gone out for that.

Okay. And then what's the year-to-date revenue for the tourism dollars, Megan, that we've gotten in this past year?

Aaron, does the numbers here, does that include any service fees that we have to pay to Duke Energy to hang these banners?

No. So right now we're sort of, quote-unquote, grandfathered in if we were ever in a situation where we were going to have new posts put up that we were going to put new stuff on it then we would be subject having to pay those those fees right now we're one of the fortunate ones in the state where as long as we don't rock the boat we're kind of okay to continue to do as we've been doing

now the graham area business association have they not contributed toward the banners in previous years one time one the so the banners that are up now as i understand it was a partnership between the city and gaba so in one of those efforts yes before that i believe it was a completely led city initiative and that one's obviously got some more age on it

But we're still open if they're.

And you talking to your mic, Bobby?

What's that?

You were just turning this way.

Anyway, if they are interested in contributing to the banners, then we're receptive to their contribution. Always.

Yeah, it would have to come before city council for a budget amendment. It looks like the year collected is $86,663.40. I'm sorry. I was looking at another number. Can you say it one more time? $86,663.4. Okay. One quarter of that is likely fiscal year 25. So it would be essentially counted towards prior fiscal year.

Okay. Okay. So those tourism dollars are going to make up roughly 80%-ish of this tourism budget. Correct. Okay, great. this is my first budget i'm going to ask a lot of questions um it says requested just in like the retirement expense and then you've got admin recommendation slightly lower can you explain that you'll see that throughout the entire budget in different areas as proposed cost of living changes as certifications educations merits all of those change what's in the admin recommended

matches what is in the proposed budget to fund whatever endeavors are listed.

Right. I guess my question is, you and Erin are over this department, right? So y'all have requested it and then you've amended it.

Correct.

Okay. All right. Other questions for tourism? Jim, Ricky?

Bonnie? Nope.

Nope.

Jim, can you pull your mic down? You're okay.

So we don't have an exact banner price. Not yet. We did send some images to the, I think it's Mosca, the company that worked on the banners prior. They sent some markups, some initial ones. Once we get an idea of how many that we're going to need, and it's based on the number of images you use, the total number of banners. So once we get all that, we'll be able to have a firmer number. Obviously, there's the question of how much will that cost end up being if we split that with GABA, then obviously that cost will be half than the total numbers. Is that a local company that's doing them? Moscow sorry they're out of um right outside of Raleigh in a triangle somewhere there yeah it's Youngsville's their address um we tried local um I'm not sure if we reached out to anyone outside of them because I know they were the ones who worked on the past ones so we had we had some sort of past connection with them and they they did provide us with a pretty good price then so okay obviously if there are any suggestions that you may have we definitely looking at anyone else but they were the ones that uh helped us out with a pretty good price last time around okay just curious thank you okay we're good to move on the city council okay

City Council, your major jump in this department is professional services accounting for potential legal fees in the upcoming fiscal year. Are these specifically around Mebane?

Correct. Okay. Okay. Answers my question. What has our travel been in past years?

I believe it's been 7,000 for a number of years. In the upcoming proposal before you, it jumps to 9,000.

Do you know why? Or why are we accounting for a jump for that one?

Because y'all have been traveling.

Not me.

Members of the city council have been traveling.

The increase in mileage that the federal government requires.

That typically adjusts in January of every year. I haven't seen it go down in a while. It could. Wouldn't surprise me, but it's possible.

i like the uh the record to reflect that i paid for that 46 pizza from city vision yesterday duly noted yes duly noted jim thank you for that um and and also we need to note that we are not seeking any kind of uh pay raises either so i just want to say that for the for the record okay thank you raises

um i would like to revisit the travel is there any kind of outline that we have on i know other boards that i've talked to through the north carolina mayor's association has like you can travel to two conferences and after that you have to borrow from other people's travel allocations do we have anything like that in place no okay would city council be interested in putting something in place to just hold us accountable to pick our top two events to make sure that we're making those worthwhile?

I came in prepared to pay for everything.

So are you okay with pulling this back down to 7,000 and just curtailing some of our travel? Travel?

Eliminate it. Take it up next year.

i mean yeah put it back in there next year if we can well the thing is i recall we usually only go on two there's yeah professional you know the league and chamber in the chamber that's it and those i don't know of any else are there the city state dinner y'all went to

I'm trying to think of other. I didn't go. Let the record show. Let the record show. Okay.

I would love to. We did not submit a travel voucher for it.

For?

For driving to Raleigh or where it was.

The city paid for the tickets is all I was saying. For the dinners. Okay. Okay, I would love to revisit this travel. If it's not now, we can come back to it. That's totally fine.

I mean, what is it you want to do? You just want to keep it the same as it was last year? Is that what you're saying?

Yeah, I don't think that we need to keep growing that expense. I mean, I'm fine with that.

It's fine with me. But it's one of those things. Because it's there doesn't mean you're going to spend up to it. And right now with gas, with everything else...

i would like to to pull it back to where it was um we're the one earlier in the year that was trying to add something to it so i don't know you might want to leave that little cushion there because we have funding remember we also had money for it and i still wasn't able to go um so i don't think that that that is the the solving of the problem why couldn't that that amount be eliminated and then just um i think it was bobby that suggested like you just

as needed and then reimbursement.

Well, the problem is it again. It's a now we're earmarking money, but it doesn't mean. That we got to spend it. Yeah, I just have zero it out, but it will have to go through a budget amendment.

We have to be prepared to take some hits ourselves because, you know, everybody else is taking hits.

um yeah i don't have any problem with it at all i'm happy at seven thousand i'm happy at that or i'm happy at nothing i don't care if it makes everybody happy put it at seven thou i will just point out if you do seven thousand which is fine and everyone on the council goes to city vision and the chamber conference you will unlikely have enough to attend both for if if everybody goes understanding that that's not always the case and it would eliminate any other conferences work sessions so i know some of y'all had signed up for some of the economic development summits the chamber was doing the town and state dinner i mean thankfully we were able to get your registration back when your plans had changed but you would unlikely be able to attend anything else we'll do what you want but just know that you probably would not be able to do both

I think it causes us to prioritize, and I think that that's helpful for us. And if something comes up and it is a thing that we absolutely need to, we can look at a budget amendment. But I think it holds us accountable to stay at the same rate.

I think about a week before whatever event, we rock, paper, scissor it.

Lizard spot.

And now we have a policy. And do note that oftentimes the early bird registration, sometimes the discount is significant. So if we don't have funding there, we can't register you and it may end up costing more. Is that reimbursement taken care of? Your reimbursement, was that taken care of? We still have to chat about it.

Travel? I'm not worried about it.

No, I'm talking to the mayor.

Do you get to direct Megan to keep it at 7,000? Yeah.

Okay. I don't care either way. It's fine.

Okay. Megan, can you talk about the 3,000 telephone and postage for city council?

What specifically are you asking?

How we spend 3,000 on telephone and postage.

It used to be your surfaces when they had service. Obviously, I asked you in recent months if you wanted those disconnected.

Don't have it. I don't want that connected.

Yeah, we had already said that. Right, that's already been taken care of. I'm telling you that was based off the number for the current fiscal year.

Okay. Does that change that number then, you think? we still had charges up through april so without going through and looking at exactly what these are your city cell phone is the one that comes through there don't need it i was just hoping that that's not a three thousand dollar a year expense it's not no yeah none of us really need a city phone so i don't have one me neither

So never have. I don't think anybody needs one. I don't have cell phones.

at that and i do want to have a point of clarification jumping back to the comment about not asking for a pay increase that is correct i'm not aware of any pay increase i will point out that y'all are on our pay plan so anytime there's a cost of living your stipend adjusts with the cost of living if city council wants to do something different please let us know but that has been the case And, again, I agree that you have not asked for any sort of pay increases, but I didn't want that to, you know, look like it was going unaddressed.

Thank you. Are you all okay to keep moving on, or did you have any other questions for City Council?

What did we decide about the telephone and postage?

Are we going to cut to cell phone?

I mean, you don't really need one.

Is that something that city council is telling me to really? Just asking you, you know, um, I do use it for city purposes. Um, I get a lot of, um, public records requests and this is something that I can give to Jeff and he can get. But I don't have a city phone, so I don't think any of us need a city phone. Is this something that's city council being directed towards me or just a question? Question towards you. I'm asking you. If it's a question, I would like to keep the phone.

Okay.

Because so be it.

Because you need one more than anybody else or what? What do you use it for? I mean, I use this one and it's mine.

Is the rest of council eligible to get a city phone? I don't want one. I don't need one. And I've requested one because it is helpful. I've got...

I don't think you need it. That's just something we don't need to pay for.

Megan, if you could get the updated telephone and postage numbers, I'll write it down, but we'll revisit those. And then I'm okay to go to administration. Are you guys good to move on? Bonnie, if you're not ready to move on, I'm totally fine.

You started the telephone and postage thing, and now you want to move on because we made a suggestion to cut it.

No, I'm saying if City Council is telling me that we are cutting it, then that is okay. But you asked if I use this phone, and I do. Well, I use my own, so, you know. Would you like to get consensus from City Council to cancel my phone?

Sure, if they don't... They want to do it. Is that what y'all want?

Well, the reason she gave for using it is, I mean, pretty much all of us.

I know, it's all of us. That's what I'm saying.

It doesn't matter to me. I'm sure Chelsea probably fields a lot more calls than the rest of us because she's mayor. So I don't have an issue with it. I mean, as many phones as Graham probably provides their employees, it's probably not very much expense-wise and not enough to really count. You know, it makes no difference to me, but we could get on down to administration. Yeah.

All right. Okay, great. Moving on to administration. Majority of the increases here are just regular personnel related expenses. Obviously the, um, individuals in this category are myself and Aaron. So the percentage adjustments have more of an impact on salary and related items, um, in this department than in others.

no capital nothing the the travel and the telephone here are these are conferences that you guys attend you you and aaron only no hr okay and if the city clerk attended anything as well okay

um and then it's all of your phones all of your surfaces and our surfaces my surface doesn't have cell phone service i just use the hotspot on my phone yeah aaron does the same thing um the other employees probably get a stipend reimbursement for their cell phones um these supplies and materials are all the office supplies is that correct for like city hall more or less no a lot of office supplies for city hall will funnel through finance which is 10 4 400 okay supplies and materials for this just thinking back to my last p card um employee events um things for the city council um the city county association um those sorts of things they could be charged to 4200 if it's something that we think that we can get some more life out of we'll charge it to 4200 which is admin rather than 4100 which is city council and then can you talk about the wellness fifteen thousand Yeah, every October we have a health fair for our employees. They're able to come and get their flu shots at no cost to them. And their biometric screening, which used to be a condition of our health insurance to keep the rates down, to have that annual wellness exam. They do the blood work, the BMI, all that, you know, really fun stuff. We love to hear in October of every year.

Thank you. And the full 15,000 goes towards that?

most likely if it's not the full 15 000 it's the overwhelming majority of it okay uh wellness committee meetings would be charged to that we have a wellness committee where members of most departments are on there they get to go they do different activities they sponsor lunch and learn sessions you've probably seen where they've done social media posts those would likely be charged to wellness as well okay

um and then the 20 000 dues and subscriptions can you talk about what's under there is that like our north carolina league of municipalities and i'm not sure if that one's 4 100 or 4 200.

It could be the league. It would be mine and Erin's memberships in both the ICMA and the North Carolina City County Managers Association. You would have any HR dues there in ACRA, Alamance County Human Resources Association, SHRM, State Human Resource Management. Don't quote me on that one. But any of those sorts of, Piedmont Triad comes out of there. The School of Government dues come out of there. chamber okay the chambers the chamber uh not the 20 000 that's just their member this is their um promotion they do a separate um invoice for promotion designated specifically to the city that one's charged from here megan have um going back to the wellness do you know of any

previous wellness fairs where they've caught anything you know and it's actually helped sort of you know not you know what i'm you know what i'm talking about yeah yeah sort of um obviously when employees go to that we don't get

A report, you know, of like, hey, Megan, Megan's blood pressure was up today or, you know, stuff like that. But yes, I do think there have been instances where things were captured because employees went to do that. Obviously, it's their choice, you know, if they share that sort of information or not. but yeah i do think it has benefit i think it oftentimes encourages employees who are probably more on the entry level of our pay plan to go have that exam because they don't have a copay they're going to have to pay they know they're not going to be billed you know, up to their deductible or anything like that. So I think it encourages them to have that annual wellness visit that they may not make an appointment and go for otherwise. In the grand scheme of things, and this is one of those things where it's really hard to turn the ship, Is the healthier we are as a workforce, the lower our insurance premiums are going to be, which saves everything across the board. It saves cold, hard dollars going towards those premiums. It saves employees being out of time for for sicknesses. So anything that we can do as an organization that's reasonable to improve. the health quality of our employees is going to help the organization as a whole which is why you know it's it's a tough balance sometimes to to find these things to encourage people obviously people get things that are beyond their control but for those that are within their span of control you know we have sessions you know geared towards um diabetes management um and and certain things like that i know i get I don't know if I'm being targeted or what, but I get emails at certain times of the year from the Blue Cross Blue Shield with weight loss management. The city is, you know, a member of this. Because we're a member of that, they're waiving the fees for people to join and go through, you know, weekly or biweekly kind of checkpoints. So it's tough.

yeah that um the reason i asked because i mean when you first look at you like man really you know we can you know but you know as it once you humanize it it makes sense yeah thank you i do think it it helps employees get that exam that a lot of them may not otherwise go and get

And even with our health insurance, we've got a lot of really good programs that, you know, you can kind of partner. You'll kind of get us, I call it, you get assigned a handler, but you might get assigned a handler who is, you know, an expert in diabetes management and making sure you're, you know, checking things at certain points. They've got all sorts of different resources and they'll assign a person to help them navigate, you know, whatever issue they might be facing at the time. Mm-hmm. thank you can you tell me the um total for the last two years for the admin account so as adopted for 25 26 is on page 10 and it was 863 740. it's on page 10 of your budget book and then do you have the previous year perhaps so as originally recommended in 25 it was 798 270 that i don't have the signed budget ordinance in front of me so that may not be the final total

Jessica Keever- Asking the last two years of the total for the admin line item Bobby so I can get some context as as to how it's growing. Jessica Keever- Okay, any other questions with admin. Jessica Keever- Right.

Megan you're good for info technology information technology going down for the upcoming fiscal year largely because we zeroed their capital due to funding increases price increases that we knew were going to be proposed in the upcoming year and y'all approved the budget amendment to get those on this side of the budget which is why they went down great so that's the small equipment purchases the 54.5 to 14.5 yeah the computer replacements went from 50 to 10 basically for the upcoming fiscal year and then their capital items were zeroed okay um

their contract services it shows that they requested 34 000 and you recommend 3 000 can you say a little bit of context there you know it could be a fat finger error or i could have just not been feeling super generous hey you've got their contracted service they haven't cried foul okay and all of these are entered in edmond so we're going to chalk it up to live with it okay um okay three thousand um maintenance and repair got caught 14 to 9 is that yeah that was primarily because of the ac heat unit in an i.t office got nixed or got done early next next okay fans work great okay um all right other questions for it and this is with the proposed uh person person additional

Yeah, for this fiscal year that we sit today, not the one that we're looking at, but the fiscal year we sit today is when we stopped the split between 10 and 31 for the IT department. They used to charge basically 50% of IT to fund 31. I didn't think they really took 50% of the allocation and it was almost more, but maybe was more work to split it between those two departments because they were all manual entries. So for fiscal year 26, IT absorbed 100% of the salaries. Moving forward, that will be the case unless something changes.

Have we finished all the upgrades to the admin system?

I'm going to say yes. Do we still have areas of improvement and things that we're working on, on the fixed asset side? Yes. But we've implemented four or five different modules over the last three, four years.

Any other questions for IT? Moving on to finance.

Your finance changes are largely just personnel related. Anything that goes obviously with the cost of living affects your other expenses. You do have in contracted services, what I'm going to say is the internal auditor, Cobb, Ezekiel, and Loy have been serving in that role. And the 10 general fund side of Davenport financial advisors are charged there within finance also.

How much do we pay Davenport, Megan? They bill us hourly. So what was the total for this year?

I don't know. Can you pull it for me? Yeah, I won't be able to get it today, but I can send it. And it's split between 10 and 31. Okay. finance travel is for their conferences correct and any memberships like the finance officers association or any of those purchasing alliances

The 45,000 for contracted services, I'm assuming some of that is Davenport.

Yeah.

But are there other things in there?

I'm sure they have other contracted services that come up throughout the year. Okay. Can you talk about those? We don't have them memorized.

Can you send them and we can do another meeting?

The auditors were coming out of that one, weren't they?

Yeah, sometimes they're split between audit on here and contracted services. It really depends on what they're working on. So if they're working on a sales tax reimbursement, they're not charged to the audit line. They're charged to the contracted services line.

Okay.

You've got Pitney Bowes, which is our mail machine. Any background checks that we do on people come from those. In contracted services? Correct. Okay. um tax printing tax notices come from there and then can you give me the 24 25 total for finance no if that's something that you're going to ask for for every department i'll have to do a separate spreadsheet and send it out that would be really helpful thank you And I will note that on those, it's going to be as originally adopted, not as amended throughout the year.

Yeah.

That would be great.

Okay. Anything else for finance? All right. Public building and grounds.

this department used to take care of building maintenance for the fiscal year we are currently living we restructured that agreement that arrangement so that departments including this which would handle pretty much all of city hall campus except for the police department building maintenance was zeroed and consolidated into 6450 which is our property maintenance account So this line, this department pays for utilities at City Hall, the library. It pays for things at Captain White House. It pays for contracted services such as cleaning here at these facilities.

Are all our cleanings contracted or do we have anybody in-house for that?

We do not have anyone in-house.

What's the year to date that we've spent on utilities in this for this year?

50,000. Cool.

Right on them. All right. Questions?

You're ready for police. I'll go ahead and jump on there. Appreciate it. You can imagine, as I mentioned in the budget message, they are the biggest department, both in overall dollars and number of employees allocated to the department. So any personnel related expenses hits their salaries and wages and every fringe benefit that goes along with that. the upcoming year i mean you can see the detail of what they've requested versus what was funded for capital items you've got some phasing of a taser a partnership with burlington for the real crime real-time crime center body armor, firearms, parking enforcement software. I know that was one of the questions. Right now he handwrites every ticket. We kick it old school with paper. It's not entered into anything basically until such time that it's paid and then it only enters our financial system. So there's really not an easy way to encourage people to pay. You can't scan a QR code. You can't do it online. You've got to come somewhere. and pay it. I assume cash or check. They may take cards, but I'd be surprised.

Will the new software allow for a QR code and you can scan it and pay it?

I think the QR code is a yes, but I do believe it allows for online payments, which obviously the easier it is for people to pay, the more likely it is that you're going to get your $20 in a parking ticket.

No reason for them to be late.

I wouldn't say no reason, but less reason for people not to pay.

The training funds got brought down $16,000. I just want to make sure we're good and still covering everything that we need to attend. Do you remember what was cut out of that?

It wasn't specific training. It was you're given this amount, and you need to allocate those funds wisely. Okay.

Can you remember what crime prevention was in the last or this current budget? 5,000. um so the police uh for the north carolina local government retirement system their minimum was brought up to 17.1 what would it look like to bring everybody up to 17.1 so that we have a even playing field for all of our employees i have to get back to you on that number okay um additionally um the bpa um has brought to my attention just the situation that we have with how much our fire no our police and our fire um but all of our city employees if they want to put their family on our health insurance it's $1,500 a month out of their paychecks. We've got their pay schedules right here. Sometimes that's half of their paycheck, just making sure that their family is insured. I would be really interested to see what it would look like, how we could work with them to, I don't know if that would be paying for it some down or giving some kind of stipend. Megan, can you speak to that? How creatively we could

solve that problem ease that burden so we've worked on that even going up the proposed fiscal year and there's there's not an answer for it right now that has any sort of funding source tied to it i agree that the cost to add a family the children are are more reasonable but obviously with health insurance the the rule is the older you are the more expensive you are so adding spouse coverage or family coverage as opposed to just dependent coverage, there is a significant jump there. With plans being what they are, we are extraordinarily fortunate to be limited to the low premium increase. If we were not in NSHIP, based on our claim data, we would probably be in the 20 to 30 percent range for renewals. The upcoming year will be our fifth in NSHIP and that stands for the North Carolina Health Insurance Pool. What's good about that is we're essentially self-insured without having to build a self-insured fund while we were still fully insured. It allowed us to make that transition because we're part of a bigger pool. with north carolina local government jurisdiction so it's cities and counties we cut the glp-1s for weight loss in the current fiscal year so if someone has diabetes or whatever the legitimate the mainstream initial use for those drugs are they can still get them by going to their provider but anyone who was using those for weight loss was already gone. The plans who still have those have 12% rate increases proposed for the upcoming fiscal year. We're down at 6%. Creatively, we told them we were only going to pay 5% for the upcoming fiscal year and make that one-time 1% payment separately so it doesn't compound in future years, and we're still kind of kicking it at that 5% cap. we went down the route of how to make dependent or family coverage more affordable and there's really unless the taxpayers you know via some funding mechanism approved by city council are willing to approve that there's really not a good way to make a dent in that unless we significantly change the plan. So we jack deductibles a lot higher than they are out of pockets a lot higher than they are. But we spent a lot of time going through because we can structure the plan how we want it until we get to that first step, which we're still working really hard on and improving the overall health of our workforce. Our claim data is probably unlikely to be at a point where it's ever realistically affordable.

Is there any kind of stipend or anything that we can look at creatively?

you have a funding mechanism for it or something in here that would be cut um you know and then you're always going to have employees who say well that only benefits a certain segment of the population because you know i don't i don't have family coverage or i don't need family coverage or my kids have aged out so then you know these employees are essentially getting a pay increase that i'm not entitled to and it's makes it a little more challenging.

Do you know of other municipalities that have gone through this and provided additional support?

I will say probably not successfully in that it wasn't directly taxpayer-funded. And that's sort of the challenge that we're up against.

How was it funded if it wasn't taxpayer funded?

I'm saying it would have to be taxpayer funded.

No, the other municipalities.

It was taxpayer funded.

Oh, and it didn't work because of that.

Okay. Yeah. I mean, it's a tough sell. And it's a significant dollar contribution.

Right. Do we have, I know you said we would have to restructure our plans, but do you have any of that information?

no we are locked in on our plan basically in february of each year for the upcoming so this time last year all the way up to february we were working with nchip to try to figure out something that would bring those premiums down and unless the city is willing to fund it it's what kind of dollar figure are we looking at a lot um i would be reckless to even throw out a number of that because i think people who are on the plan now aren't representative of who would be on the plan if there were some sort of stipend or if it was paid for your our numbers are going to skyrocket um all right back to police i'll do some research and reach out to the mayor's league um on that topic

Y'all got police questions?

Just one on the capital outlay improvements, line 7300, or excuse me, 4000. I notice it says two patrol vehicles with upfit, two admin vehicles with upfit. They had originally asked for 282,926, and you cut it to 121,410. So which ones are they getting out of that?

the two patrol vehicles the two patrol vehicles correct they requested four and they were funded for two okay right thank you megan i don't know if you can if you'll be able to answer this but you know what kind of suppressors they're using we can look at the c then we might have a cip sheet on that one aaron do you mind looking

Also, would you happen to know the age of the suppressors that they have now? Or do they keep a round count on the suppressors? Because that's normally what wears a suppressor out. And if they're not firing constantly all the time, I know they need to practice and train.

you pull our um the revenues from the drug um money that we get year to date i'll have to send those because there's two different funds there's 20 which is the federal and 21 which is the state okay those are not funded at the beginning of any fiscal year and they're only approved by city council and all of their um cip request would be able to be funded with drug money if If it's in our coffers. Is that correct?

No, I would not say that's correct. You cannot use drug forfeiture fund to supplant the operating budget. So if we've typically been funding two vehicles a year, which I think is kind of the standard, you can't cut them to zero and move the drug funds over. And each drug fund has a very specific range of criteria that can be used for either the federal or the state funds. Okay.

Roll that up a little bit. Thank you.

Would the other items, not the vehicles on their CIP request, be able to be funded if we don't put it in the operating budget?

i would say the answer to that is perhaps i think we could if it was in the recommended for recommended budget and it was cut to be used for drug forfeiture funds then we're probably getting into an area where we could be accused of supplanting the budget with those because we zeroed these and just said hey move the drug forfeiture funds over

how many 33 they have nine and they're requesting to add 33 like to know when they got the quote on those because pressers have dropped quite a bit I don't have any reason to think that The ones that they're using are any different than the ones that I've got on my rifles. I was just curious. I mean, I know it's not a whole lot, but every little bit helps.

What's the part-time position being added? I know I saw it somewhere, but for the police, they're adding half. CALEA accreditation. The uniform expense, is that just, that's like the entire, not just like the clothes, that's like the whole getup?

Yes, it would be boots. It would be new employees onboarding, that sort of thing.

Any other questions on police?

Nope.

Okay. Moving on. Fire Department.

Largest increase in fire would be the addition of the new employees. As with police and fire, it's worth mentioning that the communication fees we contract with the City of Burlington, there is an increase there. Their capital was zeroed for the fire capital was zeroed for the upcoming fiscal year. It was part of that budget amendment city council approved at the May meeting. You have debt service for their ladder truck. It's an annual debt service payment. That's for, I believe 10 years, but it's over $200,000 a year. I think this will be our third or fourth year paying that.

And we looked at going back to breaking our contract with Burlington over the communication, going back to Seacon.

No.

I don't know if that's the wisest, according to our police department. They say that it's very efficient to stay with Burlington and it's safer for our community. I know it's a little pricier.

I will not price here. $229,000 this year.

Yeah. And I have heard from our emergency services that that is a price that the streamline of how that communication. And Renee, can you speak to that?

more about the burlington versus the county no okay okay yeah because i used to work for seagull and i was here when um the powers to be at the time made the motion to go with them i've never really seen i've never really seen the the need to go with burlington but you know that's just me

I'd be interested in talking with the fire chief and the police chief before we have this conversation.

I do think from an internal staff perspective, for the folks who were here when we were with CCOM versus Burlington, I believe the overwhelming recommendation would be to maintain the relationship with Burlington Communication versus going back. I think that from a service level, it would be, if not unanimous, close to remain with Burlington.

Can you talk about the age of the uniforms? I know that we've got to purchase uniforms for our additional staff people, but are we replacing any uniforms in this 72,000 for the fire?

Yeah, you can see on there your annual gear replacement is 10 a year, and that's the fire gear. Your PPE is sort of the stuff that goes along with it. You got your paid staff and part time who get a certain amount for uniforms as well as the boot allowance, volunteer uniforms, and then your class A's there. A lot of that gear is on a routine cycle for turnout gear. I think it's around 10 years before it's not considered effective anymore. So you've got a batch and we try to have it structured to where it's not all expiring so to speak at the same time because that's going to be a much bigger bite of the apple rotation is right but we do use the full 10 years oh yeah okay probably in a little bit more maybe maybe a smidge might be slightly more extended which is not good but um and then once we approve the budget this six million and one million will be moved over or no okay no so the six million and one million the six million for the capital outlay land and buildings was requested but not recommended and the one million for the capital outlay equipment same thing requested but not recommended If City Council approves the proposed tax increase that you had the consensus for and the budget in 10-6600, whatever the last line is, transfer to capital of 3.1, that is the beginning of the PAYGO fund that City Council said that you wanted to structure. Obviously, 3.1 million is not going to build you a fire station, buy you a million-dollar truck. And pay for a phase at Graham regional it will likely pay for design of a station and a portion of the construction and it could pay for the apparatus. or the debt service when it comes online okay to it, none of those will move, they will stay separate ordinance project ordinance. Yeah, we can't bring a project ordinance to you until the budget ordinance passes. So if you would do that, you'll see us twice, June and July.

as far as positions so i see we are adding three new entry-level firefighters one per shift correct okay well i know we need those um what about the three promotable lieutenant positions that are proposed do we i mean how many lieutenants do we have now zero we have zero lieutenants

yeah it's in our pay plan it's been on our pay plan for a number of years but on the i will say on the paid staff now there may have been volunteer lieutenants over the years i don't want to mislead you but it wasn't a part of the pay plan it wasn't on the it's been in the pay plan they've just never been funded okay yeah so on the pay plan they're not new so we're looking to fund them this year for the upcoming year it's proposed yes okay And it's not a career ladder like we've got built in a lot of departments, you know, career ladders you can move into once you hit certain milestones. A lieutenant would be a promotable opportunity. So you would only have one per shift.

Thank you.

Any other fire questions?

Looks like there's a fire in here.

That's perfect. Taken. I'm really quite comfortable at this cool 72 over here, but.

I'm sure you are. Moving on to inspections.

70. Okay.

Inspections.

You have a vehicle, a capital outlay vehicle that accounts for the majority of the increase here that's proposed at 53,000.

I didn't see in your email where you listed the miles of the current. I didn't either. I was going to ask Mark that.

Yeah, I don't have the miles for that. We wouldn't be surplusing the inspections vehicle.

Not the one that was used. It was bought secondhand anyway. It was used when we got it.

And is it even a 4x4? I know they're requesting a 4x4.

And they should have. So we went through a phase where we were getting anything that we could afford, whether it was a four by four or not. Right. I want to say that that would may have been one of the first four by fours. The one prior wasn't, but we've had that one probably 10 years now.

Yeah. It doesn't list mileage or the year of the vehicle. I thought that was kind of weird, but for, for the current one, for the current one. Yeah. Yeah.

Generally speaking, we keep those cars pretty long. So we try to get them as close to new as we can, maybe a year or two old. But generally speaking, just like that one, we tend to drive them until we're able to pass them to maybe more reasonably driving people can use it where they're not having to drive it as much as around the city.

all day every day he's saying in a nice way that the rest of us at city hall get the hand-me-down so those of us who don't have uh our primary function is not to drive throughout the city then we as a city and get those vehicles and those who do drive the majority of the city for the majority of their day have the new vehicle there there are some that i would advise not to take on the interstate but that one we're out of town oh for sure so it qualifies for antique auto tags I mean, we might be getting close. Probably not quite there yet. But that's the majority of the increase is that one vehicle proposed. Yeah.

You did say in your email, though, that it was unlikely to be a significant impact. So we don't know the miles.

He's going to get those. Okay. I would guess it's at least 10 years old. And while they're not probably as hard of miles as, let's say, perhaps PD, they are.

It's a Ford, isn't it?

correct that's all you need to know well you could also they're going on he's going to property that's undeveloped until it's developed so you know the four by four for that reason is why so he doesn't get stuck that's probably from experience that we go with four by four is more so than your standards are there any other questions for inspections other than vehicle related

And inspections also has planning. All right. Traffic engineering is paying for utilities and maintenance for basically traffic signals throughout town.

Can you talk about the contract services?

Mm hmm.

We contract with Burlington for that service.

Yes, $6,000 quarterly bill that we paid for maintenance and upkeep of the signals.

Yeah.

Thank you, Aaron.

Any other questions for traffic engineering?

Nope.

all right we can keep going streets and highways proposed to go down largely because we have zeroed their capital only minimally increased the street resurfacing proposal for the upcoming fiscal year and a motor grader is proposed to be financed as a rather than paid outright in cash

any questions team uh you had a question about the snow shed did that get answered in the email jim yeah yeah megan answered pretty much all my questions okay oh um it might not be in this but what about the um the signal uh instead of the crosswalks we went with the flashing

Yeah, those are rapid flashing beacons, I'll get there, are in a project fund, so they're not in your proposed budget. They've already been earmarked. I think it was maybe in the $70,000 to $80,000 range that was allocated for those.

Okay, thank you.

What's the current year's sidewalk repair fund allocated?

25,000 was, it looks like it was budgeted for 25,000 at the beginning of this fiscal year.

Okay. Do you know if we've spent that down yet?

It would appear. Okay.

I know. And it's just the 30,000 that's requested is staring me in the face. Cause that's something that we want. We want walkability. Um, Can you talk in your mic?

That's more for your repair.

Yeah.

I think the segments that you're talking about.

Repair or new. We just want walkability. Yeah. Okay. Any other questions for streets and highways?

Right. Street lights, pretty self-explanatory. Stayed the same. for the upcoming fiscal year.

Questions? We good with that? Yep. Very straightforward. City Garage.

City Garage, largely the same for the upcoming fiscal year. They do have one capital item, heavy duty truck equipment scan tool. The largest expenditures here are the inventory parts and the inventory fuel purchases. Most of that is offset by revenue. Could be from other departments because we send a monthly statement out to all the departments on their maintenance and repairs for the month. But there are some agencies outside agencies who bring their vehicles, their equipment to our shop and their build. Great.

Any questions? All right. Sanitation.

Sanitation went down. They had a request. I had two requests, 445,000 for an automated truck. We have zeroed that and added it to the proposed debt service schedule. And then the 285 for the rear loader that would be earmarked to service downtown is unfunded.

You're going to keep that nasty truck.

We are going to keep that nasty truck unless we find money to buy a new non-nasty truck.

Yeah, because it is nasty. Leaks everywhere. Nasty.

So the $285,000 has been unfunded at this point.

Correct.

Was that the cost of the new truck or?

Yeah, for the downtown area, the rear loader.

I didn't see it in these fees, but are there any kind of conversation is going internally about having additional passing on the fees for additional pickup for our downtown businesses on to them.

we discussed this with city council last year i think it was march we may have been at the children's museum in my brain that's where we were we talked about potentially restructuring and having a separate fee schedule i think council member chen was the one who had initially brought it up for the downtown area they do get pick up twice a week where other other residents i'll say and businesses right in some businesses if you're not in the downtown get pick up once a week the downtown can generally weighs about twice of your residential can so they pay the same fee essentially get double the amount of pickups and their cans are generally heavy than what they would come to raspberry run and get so that

So it was a conversation, but nothing went past?

We were directed to leave the fee structure as it is. So if city council wants us to revisit that, a separate fee structure for maybe the B1 or a certain area that falls within that, it's possible that that revenue could be used to fund the 285, even if not in its entirety, but um the debt service for it and equate for some of the additional tip-in fees that you know can be attributed to that area so let's revisit that okay yep we have those numbers they're a year old but we can knock the dust off of them and bring them back

And that was just for, those fees were only addressing the trash pickup, right? Right. Last time. Sanitation. Yeah.

Correct.

Okay. Yeah, I would be very interested in looking at those. Any other questions for sanitation?

If those numbers look like they're such that they would support the debt service, is that something that City Council wants us to modify? for when we discuss and for the for the two new members typically after these meetings we send that we go through and make whatever consensus changes that city council had and we produce a separate document that just a summary of changes and it highlights it by department so it's really easy to tell where we started where this work session and others got us so we'll have all that is the is the consensus to double the

downtown prices is it 10 higher you know do you have a i think well if they're if they're getting twice the service then doubling it would would make sense that's a start do you remember what you had last time i would be interested in looking at other because i mean our downtown businesses are awesome and they do a lot and they we close their roads and like they they put up with a lot so i'm okay if it's not double doubled um but an increased fee um but i would defer to you and see what other downtowns have done well if their weight and volume is doubled what are you going to do about businesses that have multiple trash cans i know suddenly they have like three um

And they pay per can. So whatever the rate increase city council lands on would affect each can.

The press, they have three cans. You're basically going to triple some of them. You're basically going to triple some of them.

Could we get the numbers and then take a look at it? Yeah.

i know there have been some businesses too that have complained to me that other people are using their dumpsters in their trash cans as well so that's another thing to kind of consider there that sometimes they might have two or three and they're paying for those cans and somebody else is throwing their stuff in there so just something to consider too so i i think if we're going to look at it we need to look at the whole business district not just the downtown

Is it all of B1?

I think it's just B1, right? Yeah.

So all of B1 gets picked up twice a week.

Okay.

Yeah, I would definitely look at the whole district. All B1.

Yeah. All B1 and B2.

I think B2 doesn't do it. Yeah. Okay. It's just B1.

I'm sorry. Only downtown.

Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. The contracted service is under sanitation.

If not all of it, most of it is for public recycling. I was about to say GFL, but that's incorrect.

Is it a six-year? It's over six years.

Our last year. So at the end of this calendar year, we'll be sending out proposals for the upcoming, for the 28th fiscal year.

Good.

Okay. That's good. Just like in years past, that contract will come back before City Council.

Has anybody thought about calling GFL and treat them like the cable company? Say, yeah, we're thinking about changing over to the big yellow guys.

I can tell you that happened at a city council meeting. I believe that is out on YouTube for the world to see.

I would say yes. Yes. That conversation took place in the public.

Correct. The last time. Yes, it did.

I would prefer that we have an American company do it and not a Canadian company. Is Republic Canadian? GFL is.

We have Republic now.

Sorry, Republic. Sorry. I'll take that back.

In the public eye.

We did have GFL.

Do we have other sanitation questions? Okay.

Can we move on? I do. That was the answer on the parts my tablet crapped out on me.

Yeah. So the majority of those carts go to new homes and they're paid for at the time that the building permit is pulled.

Okay.

Yeah. Correct. At cost.

Okay. Thank you.

Recreation, I will say the majority of the increase here was the addition of the afterschool program that city council approved in August of 2025. There's one full-time staff member, one part-time staff member, and then obviously a lot more drive time on the bus, the mini bus, the van, other vehicles they have over there. They do have one capital item of Marshall Street playground equipment for $60,000, and they are proposing a new software, registration software that is $18,000.

They mentioned in the CIP that we could also do a community study. I would be very interested in that to see if we need to replace the playground there. Did I make that up?

I don't remember it, but that doesn't mean it's not there.

You looked at me like I had three heads. No. Hold on. Where did I find that?

I only see one. One head.

You're talking right there. The park right there. Is that where the church is at?

Marshal Street has been proposed before. This might be the third year they've requested it.

It's been poo-pooed several times already.

I don't like that it's getting unsafe. But I would be interested in just knowing if the community wants a playground there. At all. Yeah.

um yep i go through the area quite a bit to see my grandmother and i've never seen anybody out there playing well that's what yeah we discussed that last time i think that it wasn't being used and i think that was the reason that council didn't fund it last time so it said the impact of sorry but if it's unsafe like you say then maybe we need to look at removing it we don't want anybody getting hurt they do go out there roll of us safety tapes like five bucks

An alternative is to do a neighborhood study of the population to see if a playground replacement is necessary or if we could redesign the area to better accommodate the current residents.

You'll get the census track for that area pretty easily and determine median age, but then you may have

grandparents raising grandchildren or you know grandchildren who go there every day after school or and it's even if it's an informal neighborhood study that our staff if michelle or brandy or somebody does it um just with surveys in the neighborhood just to give us an idea of well it's for the parks and rec couldn't the parks and rec do a survey

I don't know all these people yet.

Yeah.

Is it just like the slide and something else is?

A lot of swing set. Swing set, yeah.

They probably have a pretty picture. Yeah, the pretty picture is on back here.

It's under athletic facilities, though. I couldn't find it initially.

It doesn't have page numbers. It's up on the screen. Thanks to Aaron.

There you go.

That's what they're going to replace it with.

That's what's proposed.

I mean, couldn't you send a couple of good old boys out there with a welder and fix what's there?

Are you volunteering?

Sure. I have a welder.

All right.

What you want? TIG, MIG?

It's hard to believe that.

Elon's got one that they're replacing and it's $100,000 at Beshmet Park. And they said that once they age out, they just stop making parts and so you really do have to buy a whole new set. Yep.

Back in the day, the old school 10-foot monkey bars. That was that was living. Yep. Yeah. Natural selection.

So now stick each other in the head home.

They own the park on our city park where we were at. It's still standing thing. Everything. Crazy.

Did you have other questions on recreation?

Is the consensus to leave it, take it community survey? What do you want to do?

Be interested in a community survey.

fine with that it's like i said we've been looking at this every year and kicking that can down the road so there's zero it until such time that the survey indicates that it's warranted is that where we're going i would say yeah i'm okay with a mid-year budget amendment but let's make sure it's needed there are some um things in the other programs that uh i mean

$7,000 for the tree lighting. You know, it seems like there could be a few things that could be trimmed back. And there are other programs.

What's the biggest expense for the tree lighting?

I'm not sure right off, but we can get an answer.

Do we pay

our own pd like does wrecks and wreck and park pay the pd for like when they're there helping with events or does that how's that go well i i laugh because um pd and and fire sing at that event but we're not paying them for entertainment let's let's put that out there yeah be clear on that they are very graciously volunteering their time and talent for that part So REC sometimes, yes, pays through EDS for police services. EDS is Extra Duty Solutions. They do not pay for EDS for them for Arts Around the Square because City Council said that was going to be a city event and city paid. But there are city functions where REC has to go through EDS to get officers at the event.

Yep. we make those and we make those events city sanctioned events and not have to pay

you can there is the possibility of having an impact there right now those officers get paid i'll say 35 an hour that's probably not the exact total through eds to do that if they do it through the city then they're going to be earning comp time for it so there is a potential monetary loss if they do it that way versus going through eds and i don't know which the officers would prefer i would assume cash but i can't tell you that for certain wouldn't we see the same or almost the same dollar figure just pop onto the police line item that's going to hit all their benefits it's going to affect so we might be paying more if we do it that way you would absolutely be paying more so this 8 000 just makes okay Yeah, I'm not saying the $8,000 is for EDS.

It says $8,000 EDS, right?

Okay, well, then there you go. Okay. I thought you meant for the tree lighting.

No, no, no, no, no.

I'm paying them $8,000 to guard the tree. We're going to have to reevaluate that.

Contracted services, it says $8,000 for EDS. It would cost more than $8,000. To put it on a different. Correct, yes. But the recreation would look better on the budget. Yeah. Okay. Jim, I'll go back to you because we, you were talking about lighting of the greens.

Yeah, I was just wondering what, you know, some of the stuff, I mean, you know, you don't want to cut anything. You want to give everybody what they want. But, you know, everybody's, this isn't a perfect world. And right now, you know, it's, Everybody's going to get stung. But I just, I can't, I mean, it's only seven grand, but for tree lighting.

Fireworks is going to be a, that just hit me. That's a good portion of it. I would say off the top of my head, 3,000 is fireworks. That's one that I can think of.

And the $1,650, that's the camp, was the camp self-supporting?

Yes, summer day camp is, so that would be offset by our revenue. Okay.

What's the plus $500, $2,500 for Juneteenth and then plus $500?

My guess is that is a proposed increase to whatever cost go along with the program.

Under the contracted personnel, the Hall River Trail Coordinator, what is that?

I'm not a hiker or a trailer.

I don't know a ton about the details of it, Erin, do you know?

I know we've worked with them on projects. I want to say it's through the county.

It's through the county, but he came on our walk around.

Do you remember? Yeah. I can't remember his name, but no disrespect.

I'm just asking because that's $20,656. I just wonder.

It's my understanding. I'm familiar with it. Yeah.

It's my understanding that they're like the countywide parks coordinator that helps connect all of the, the park systems, but part of the trail runs through Graham and our portion, our cut of that amount pays our portion of what he takes care of through here.

Huh? I was wondering why they don't take care of that. We take care of our section, right? I'm just curious.

I think he takes care of our section, right?

He's taking care of Graham's section or he's taking care of Hall River's?

He's taking care of everybody's section, but we're paying him for Graham's section. Yeah, Hall River, that's the... Hall River Trail, the river. Yeah.

Okay.

Any other questions, Recreation? On to Graham Mebane.

Your lake budget here is a little higher. They have 10,500 budgeted for the replacement of four john boats. The passive recreation amenities, which was not going to be a playground, is unfunded. You can see they do have some events, the youth fishing day, the pontoon boats, kayak programs. do have 1500 to wrap do an exterior wrap on the pontoon boat we have been making improvements to that over the years i'm working to make it ada accessible if you haven't been on the pontoon boat tour i would recommend it really nice

So the John Boats, I know they're very popular. Are we still renting those for like $15? They can be rented for the whole day?

They are in our fee schedule to be rented. It looks like Aaron's looking up the dollar amount for you.

i guess the reason i'm asking that is you know they're really popular and i know that you know rec department has said a lot of times we don't have enough we don't have enough because that that's what people want but why are we renting them out for such a long period of time for only 15 bucks if they're that popular because we're constantly having to buy more of them you know is it still fifteen dollars why are we not why are we not charging more for a whole day than 15 i agree with bonnie well for for a john boat yeah i'm just asking i just think there's more money to be made there than you know what can we do like 15 for it for like four hours and you know 30 28 or 30 28 for the whole day 30 for the whole day it seems like it's not much for the most popular activity out there

so we can also look at what neighboring jurisdictions are doing for their fees and see if we're in line or if we're not in line okay that would be great uh is um mevin is this something mevin settles up with at the with us at the end of the year yeah the lake is a 50 50 endeavor okay so i guess they would get half of that too

The new funds.

It's all calculated into the, you know, who pays. Wouldn't be fair for us to keep 100% of the revenue and charge them 50. Yeah. Or, I don't know, maybe it would.

Any other questions on Graham Lake? All right. Athletic facilities?

Athletics facilities for the current fiscal year, so the fiscal year that we're in, was moved from recreation under public works. It is proposed to maintain that arrangement for the upcoming fiscal year. They have one capital item, which is $7,000 to put a curb in at Graham Regional. Apparently, people are pretty good at getting where they don't need to be and hitting rocks and filing, when I say rocks, I mean large rocks, not like pebbles, and filing perhaps some insurance claims from that. So they had two other capital requests that were unfunded.

What were the two other unfunded?

A vehicle F-250 for $67,000 and a Ventrac for $45,000.

It's a universal, universal, um, mowing system. It can come almost straight up here.

How much was the Ventrac?

$45,000.

um picture of it on the screen i have a question this seven thousand dollar curb when we do the graham regional plan do we have to tear this curb up or does this curve get to stay it's most likely going to stay i mean depending on when yeah we're that's what i call i will say we're um years out from