Town Council - Regular Meeting

Thank you.

Here we go.

You're good.

Yep. Hey Rich, this is James wondering if you can confirm that you're here.

Hey James, can you hear me?

James.

Can you hear me? James. Can you hear me?

Rich, can you try that again, please?

Does the house go good? You got the bus thing? Here, Simon? Hey, Wally, how are you? Oh, okay. Okay.

Okay. Thank you How are you doing? All right, thank you. Okay, thank you. It doesn't look like anybody signed it. Right. Okay, perfect. Okay, perfect, perfect.

Okay, I'm gonna call the meeting.

Thank you. How does that work? I mean, we've had them before.

We would have to address anything that if we did something illegal, they would go back to the table. For a while, his daughter was...

She's taking over. I just want to make sure that I'm like me. Yes, I can hear you. Everybody ready?

So he's online? He's online, yeah. I saw I was checking.

I was like, wait a minute, I'm seeing somebody. Good evening. We'd like to welcome everyone in council chambers with us tonight for our August council meeting, as well as those joining us on YouTube this evening. We will move right into our agenda. And first up is our agenda adoption. Is there a motion on the floor to approve the agenda this evening?

Motion.

Is there a second?

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Motion is carried. Thank you. At this time, Councilman Devenin will lead us in our invocation this evening.

Good catch.

Let's pray together. Father, we thank you for yet another great day in the town of Harrisburg. God, we just ask that, God, you continue to pour out your blessings over this community. God, thank you that we can come together and civilly discuss the town management tonight. And God, just ask you to give us grace and give us mercy in how we deal with one another. So we just thank you and give you all praise in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.

But everyone, please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. We do not have any special presentations this evening, so we will move into the public comment portion. We do have several that are signed up to speak, so just be reminded that you have three minutes. You cannot transfer your time to other individuals. And if you are unable to complete your comments in three minutes, we ask that you send it to us in writing at council at harrisburgnc.gov. And we'll be happy to respond back to you there. Let's see. We will start with Wally Wallace. And just make sure you state your name and address for the record.

I know you miss me okay I'm Wiley Wallace I live at 3093 Spring Forest Road Harrisburg Arkansas 28075 I have a special presentation tonight I don't know about y'all but I enjoyed the 4th of July celebration and there's a lot of people involved but we've got one guy here tonight I want to recognize special Jim oh if there's only one Jim in the room How many of y'all went to the 4th of July celebration at the park? Well, who were the rest of you? Well, that was a fantastic time. And Jim, I don't care what anybody says about getting there and coming to the last minute, maybe they wouldn't wait too long. Y'all asked me to help with AUSA, Association of the United States Army. Myself and Vinnie Anderson, who is also a member of AUSA as well as VFW. But the five-star general for AUSA, General Brown, has sent this special presentation to you, Black Appreciation, for helping Help me do it. You know what, I got picked up at the wrong moment. It's not your neighborhood, but it's still. You know what, you're not the same.

I'm very interested. We can get far away where you don't see that part.

okay and just to make sure that you don't miss anything i've had something else for you it's called our pen like i have here and so you can wear it anytime you want thank you thank you thank you for your help with a whole different uh program how did it work thank you let's see

Thank you, Ollie. That was a good way to start us off.

Next up we have, I believe it's Benson David.

You could just state your name and address for the record when you get to the podium. Thank you, sir.

My name is David Benson. I live at 10548 Sweethaven Lane in the Harrisburg HOA. And everybody knows that we are getting flanked on two sides by new developments. And one development is going to connect through our HOA in The other development is not gonna be directly connected, but we all love a shortcut when we're going to work or coming home from work. And Harrisburg's Hawthorne HOA is going to be a shortcut, whether we want it or not. But I would like to propose to this council that somebody plan some speed bumps in on the surface roads of the HOA for Hawthorne. And that will slow down and protect the children in the development. That's all I have. Thank you.

Thank you, sir. Rosa Sims.

Hi, how are you? Rosa Culverson, 9445 Layton Drive. And Wally, thank you so much for the acknowledgement of the wonderful time we had at the park. But I also heard that at that very same, during the festival, we had some disturbances during our Fourth of July. There was an incident between two girls, I guess, were fighting or something of that matter. And I've not heard anything from this body about that and what we're doing to prevent those kinds of incidents. And also, I also recently heard that there was a young man that was found hanging in our park. I expect that when those types of things happen, that there will be something coming from this body to the public as to what's going on and how we're dealing with those matters. And I've heard nothing as of yet. There's nothing on the website. There's been nothing sent out. I don't know if you should put it in the water bill. I don't know. But there needs to be some type of communication to the community about those incidents. uh and then lastly um we all know that on november election we're going to be faced with the whole levy situation around the property taxes i've heard you sort of talk about it but i have not heard that this body has taken a stand on it i have not heard anything about how this body intends to educate the public. We all know that that will be the death nail for us and every other municipality if that thing passes. So you need to get in front of it and be communicating with the residents of Harrisburg as to what it is we need to be looking for and how we can be prepared when we go to the polls. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Sims. Jay Boyer.

Thank you for the invite, folks. Jay Boyer, I'm in 0110, which is right around the corner from here, working distance, 6328 Professional Boulevard, Harrisburg, North Carolina, 28075. Going back a little ways, when the results of the 2025 municipal election were announced, Dr. Banks received the highest number of votes. And Harris residents had every expectation that this council would follow precedent and vote for the position and get the nameplate for Mayor Pro Tem for Dr. Aaron Banks. And at the December council meeting, the then Mayor Pro Tem Glover brought the issue up and explained that she was receiving phone calls from residents asking what happened. But instead of addressing the substance of this issue, the conversation shifted to other questions, whether the individual council members had personally received any phone calls. I haven't heard anything back on that. And the question remains simple. Also going back, in January, you guys had discussed this and said that going forward, that would be taken care of. And I believe it was either Lex Thomas or Chris Fall had made the suggestion that this be addressed at the next year after the next election of council members. And everybody agreed that was a great idea. And I haven't heard anything. I don't know what happened with that. Maybe you guys can address that and let me know what's going on with it. Thanks.

Thank you. Michelle Piggott.

Good evening. I'm Michelle Piggott. I'm at 8942 Happiness Road in Harrisburg. The council then engaged in a lengthy discussion about the role of Mayor Pro Tem. We were told that the role was primarily to facilitate council meetings. We were told that the selection was a decision of the council. We were reminded that a future council could choose to operate differently. And then after all that discussion, which appeared to be aimed at putting the community on notice, this council voted unanimously to elect Dr. Banks as pro or motem. We reasonably believe that that vote meant what it said. We believe that electing Dr. Banks mayor pro tem meant that she would receive the same recognition afforded to the people who previously held the position, including the mayor pro tem designation on the dais, the appropriate name plate, and recognition on the town's website. But that is not what happened. Instead, the position initially existed only in the minutes of the council meeting. That distinction matters because there is a difference between being elected to a position and being fully recognized as holding that position. And for many African Americans, this experience is painfully familiar. Our history teaches us that when African Americans organize and demand their full rights, recognition has to often come in pieces. We are given something, but not everything. We are told that progress has been made and then expected to accept less, what was actually demanded. That history is why we continue to organize. Thank you.

Thank you. Wendy McConnell.

Good evening, Mayor, council members. Good to see you, Mike. My name is Wendy McConnell. I live at 1113 Hanover Drive. In regards to Dr. Banks, full recognition of her position as mayor pro tem, we ask that you put her name and her role on the placard. We go back in history. The Three-Fifths Clause of the United States Constitution of 1787 is one of the most shameful examples of this nation's history. in terms of how African Americans were devalued. African Americans were not demanding that they be counted only partially. They wanted their full recognition, full recognition. That provision represented a fundamental denial of their humanity. The Civil Rights Act of 1957 provides another example. What was proposed as a meaningful federal intervention to protect the voting rights and challenge Jim Crow laws, but was weakened through political compromise and ultimately stripped of the stronger enforcements of that law. not recognizing their humanity, not recognizing their rights to be able to fully be voting. So less than what was requested, less than what was needed, less than what was deserved for the rights to be fully recognized for their position in society, to be fully recognized. That history is not ancient. It rhymes today. We hear it. We see it. We experience it. So we continue to organize and insist that Dr. Banks get her due recognition. We are lucky in this county because she sits on this dais. We are strengthened by it. She does not fully belong without that recognition. Give her the recognition. In March, the issue was raised again at the point Mayor Teague attempted to put the matter to rest by stating that it had been resolved in January and that she and Mayor Pro Tem, Dr. Banks, had spoken and agreed to disagree. But agreeing to disagree does not resolve a public concern. It does not explain why a precedence was followed in previous years, but not followed in this instance. And certainly does not explain why the community has been given different reasons for why the precedent should not apply. History, a legacy, is at play. How are we going to behave knowing that history? What are we willing to risk? to do the right thing, to make sure that the people that have not belonged in the past, have not have been excluded in the past, belong today and are not excluded and are given their full recognition, full recognition, full, full recognition.

Thank you. Thank you. Joanna Baco.

We got our order mixed up a little.

I'm Cheryl Johnson. Good evening. I live at 4913 Pepper Drive in Harrisburg. We have been told that all council members are equal. Of course they are. We have been told that identifying Dr. Banks as Mayor Pro Tem on the dais would create a hierarchy. But where was that concern when previous council person's nameplate identified them as Mayor Pro Tem? we have been told that the designation might confuse the community but we have reviewed the recordings of council council meetings from 2025 and earlier and in all cases the mayor pro tem's name plate on the dais identified them as such There is no evidence that the community was mistaken, there was no apparent disruption, and the designation did not create an order among council members. The only hierarchy that was clearly established was the one associated with the Office of Mayor. So we have to ask, why is the precedent acceptable when one person holds the position, but suddenly problematic when another person does? And more specifically, why is the precedent questioned when an African American woman receives the highest number of votes? Early in this process, Councilperson Smith suggested that this was not a matter of race. Perhaps it is not racism. perhaps it is sexism, but if neither race nor gender has anything to do with this decision, then the council should be able to provide a clear, consistent, and convincing explanation for why the precedent was followed before but abandoned now. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Johnson. Joanna Bocco.

Joanna Baco, down Roberta Road in Concord, and in support of Dr. Bains because that explanation has not been provided to us. Instead, we receive platitudes and what you've heard the other speakers say that we've been told that everyone's equal, Designation creates hierarchy to puzzle the community, but we all know better. We all know better. Those explanations do not withstand the comparison with what has actually happened in the past. And then, after approximately six months, the town finally added Mayor Pro Tem to Dr. Banks' listing on the website. But even then, it was initially placed on the second page instead of the primary page where the mayor and council members are featured. Residents pointed that out. Staff corrected the website. But the name plate on the dais remains unchanged. And nine months later, we are still here because we remain committed to being organized in support of Dr. Banks. Nine months later, this is no longer about a technical oversight. It's no longer about whether someone remembered to update a website. And it is no longer simply about a nameplate. It is about consistency. It's about transparency. And it's about equal treatment. And it is about whether the precedent that has been established by this body is applied consistently and fairly. And that is what we are asking for you and appreciate your time and attention while I speak. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Spock. Jamin Heron.

loving beach mary t they approach him dr bank harrisburg council and harrisburg community it said that you all have not recognized dr eric bank as mayor pro tem so we have to uh when this council unanimously elected dr banks we approached him that decision should have been fully honored the community should not have to return month after month to ask the same basic recognition We should not have had to point out the error on the website. We should not have had to point out the missing nameplate. We should not have to review meeting records to point out what the president actually would. Again, we should not have to stand here nine months later asking this council recognize the position that this council itself voted unanimously for. As previously stated, we have heard concerns expressed by Mayor Teague that displaying the title Mayor Pro Tem could somehow confuse the public about the hierarchy of this government. This assumption lacks evidence, and you know what they say about assumptions. So let us set the record straight tonight. As it's been clear, the hierarchy of the decision for Dr. Erin Banks to be recognized as Mayor Pro Tem on her nameplate Her name plate currently rests with the mayor and it's Mayor T who has denied and rather blocked this recognition. We are not confused. The people understand the difference between the mayor and the mayor pro temp. For example, when it comes to one of the mayor's more decorative roles to show face at community celebrations, such as at Tavares County's Martin Luther King event and Harrisburg Juneteenth celebration, the mayor was not present. The community did not suddenly become confused about who, where the mayor was simply because another, other elected officials were representing Harrisburg. So today, our request is straightforward. We are asking you to honor your own vote. We are asking you to follow the president that was followed before. We are asking you to provide the same recognition that was provided to the previous mayor pro tem. And we are asking you to do so without further delay. Add Mayor Pro Temp to Dr. Banks' nameplate on the council diets. Stop the petty politics. Fully recognize the position that this council unanimously voted for to give her, because after nine months, this should not be a controversial conversation. It should not require another explanation. It should not require another public comment. And it should not require another meeting or another vote. But if it must, so be it. If you can't spend a little time to do right, I will spend my time here every month assuring that black women are fully recognized. Honor the vote. Follow the president. Fully recognize Dr. Banks as Mayor Coatant. This is the ethical and right thing to do, and it's long past time to do it. Thank you, God bless you.

Thank you, Mr. Heron. Keisha Sandage.

And I'm guessing they only cost like $50 less than we need for all the money we need, because I could definitely help you. So several weeks ago, or more importantly this week, I've gotten several inquiries about a person found hanging in the park here in Harrisburg. And I sent a message to all of you today, and I've since seen the sheriff and Shaw. I got a message back later in the day, so I wasn't able to fully respond to that message saying that this is under investigation. I do understand what the process of going through the office of the chief medical examiner and that it takes about six months to get a death certificate back. However, we are allowing people in our community to write the narrative for us. And that is never good. I am one that says we cannot solve problems over social media without telling people trying to solve those problems on social media. And it is very sticky for people in our communities. what i am asking of this council is to have an understanding of what has occurred in your community which is your responsibility and to do something about it this community needs answers But I don't know that everybody understands that somebody was found hanging here. If that's even the case, I don't know if we know that that's the case. But that is definitely what's been going around. My phone, my email, and my social media have all gone off this week about this situation. And I wouldn't come forward, but I'm right next door to y'all. So again, what I'm asking is that we understand what's happening. We assure this community that it is safe. And I also understand this to be a Commonwealth East individual. I'm not sure how we got here. I'm not sure what conversations are happening with the families or what I do know for a fact that this community has questions. And y'all responsibility in tandem with the sheriff is to answer those questions. Lastly, I want to point out, I sent you all an email, as you probably already know, youth violence in our county has increased. I sent you all an email about internships, possibly unpaid and paid internships, specific to every single body across this county because youth violence is on the rise. If you don't believe me, ask our VA. She has a whole presentation about it. I do appreciate Mayor Teague responding back to me and Ron Smith responding back to me. I do want this not to lose any air. You guys should be talking about it. I've heard responses back from our commission. I've heard that from Commissioner Wharton and Laura Blackwell. And they have programs in Cabarrus County. I don't know all the details around it. But again, you guys should be talking to one another about violence. in our community and developing ways to address them. And this should be you guys' work as well. This is possible.

We can do things and put things in place to address this.

And if you have the opportunity, you absolutely should. There is a great, incredible resource i understand the pa uh phd has an internship program as well as she offers with the va i don't know if y'all are aware of that again our kids need something in this county they have very little i know y'all know that um so let's get together work as a body or work is intangible with another and let's get some support for our kiddos and also let's get some

Thank you, Ms. Sandage. That concludes public comment this evening. We will move into consent agenda. Is there a motion on the floor to approve the consent agenda as presented?

So moved. Second?

Second. All in favor? Aye. Motion is carried. All right, Rob, you are up with our town manager report for the month.

Thank you, Mayor, Council. Do I have the clicker there?

Clicker.

i will say before i hop into my report we also have public safety reports later for any of the questions that came up here i know i've talked to council about at least two of those incidents that that we spoke about as keisha also mentioned you know van shaw sheriff shaw did respond to to her email i think you know we'll let that email Speak for itself, but also the sheriff deputies are here for their presentation so they can speak to that if there are any additional questions And I'm again, I'm always happy to speak to people offline Some events are a little bit more sensitive in nature But as always if there was ever a danger to the public we would put that out there loud and loud and clear but some things have a little bit more personal nature that should be spoken about more off the record and um with that being said i you know welcome those conversations with anybody if they need to get a hold of me for one-on-one conversations or the town council tonight i'm going to use the town manager's report section of the agenda to unveil our annual report so everybody should have a A nice bound copy here. So thank Ellie for getting that hot off the presses today. We also have copies of those here in the office. But for everyone at home and everyone in the audience, you can go to our town website right now. It is on there. one of the six buttons at the top of the home page. So you can click on there and see our annual report. This is something that I think is unique for an organization of our size and something that I'm extremely proud to unveil. It's never been produced before in the town of Harrisburg. So this is our first annual and first ever annual report. the you know for the past year we've reported all of this information out quarterly and through that process we've been able to to bring everything really into one place every department every goal every dollar the theme of the report is connection and we really chose that not kind of as a marketing theme but as we've been able to build this for the last several years What this really has resulted from is us being able to connect those dots from council priorities to what the community has asked us for with the staff implementation in between. So we get our marching orders also, obviously, from this board. We're then able to go come up with plans, come up with strategies, come up with goals, set those at the beginning of the year, and then ultimately measure that when it gets out to the community. So this is a 44-page report. And it is yours and the public's to consume over the next 10 minutes. And if you have any questions, feel free to interrupt, ask along the way. Why do an annual report? Well, transparency, accountability, and progress our residents shouldn't have to come to every meeting I know that is very common for us to say hey you know get involved but really people shouldn't have to be here every single minute of every single meeting to understand what's going on and they shouldn't have to be it shouldn't be necessary to compile each quarter and try to find trends so this document really holds us accountable to the goals that we set at the start of every year We publish the results, whether we hit them or not. If a bad number shows up, bad number shows up, and we adjust accordingly. I also want to give credit where credit's due here. Our staff members spend an extraordinary amount of time, not only to build the document. The document building is certainly difficult. But to make sure that everything in here accurate, that it's on track, that we're making adjustments. That takes, you know, hard work, commitment, and then really just a reporting discipline every quarter that isn't really seen in local government. Maybe in publicly traded companies this is something that's common, but our department heads and their staff do a tremendous job, and so I want to recommend, or I want to recognize them here right off the bat. The next page we have here is just a quick snapshot of where we're at today. So I've repeated this in many of the presentations and documents that we have out here, but we're now just over 25,000 residents. We continue to be one of the fastest growing communities in the entire state. new parks, new neighborhoods, new restaurants, businesses. And with the arrival of new companies, this all really just shows Harrisburg's becoming a local hub for activity, both economically and as a place to live. But I think really, as you see us go through this and what you see on this slide here is what defines us is that community spirit and community pride. Things like Rock in the Burg, Multicultural Festival, all of our events, the Fourth of July, which was brought up earlier here. Those are all continue to be events that gain traction, that continue to have increased attendance. That, coupled with our schools and athletics, you can just really see what makes Harrisburg tick, and it's that community pride and community belonging. Everything in this report is in service of balancing that. The growth that we have on being one of the most attractive communities in the entire state with the small town character that people moved here for in the first place and making sure that we maintain that. Strong, transparent financial position underpins everything that we do. The financial story of 26 is pretty simple. Our revenues came in above target. We're collecting above our targets. And our spending came in under budget. We're spending less and accomplishing the same things that we set out for because we're not missing any of our goals. The utility counts also remain strong, and our operating expenditures are right at about 90% of what council appropriated for the year. The two milestones I'm most proud of in this past year is our first ever GFOA certificate of achievement for excellence in financial reporting. That's a national standard. That's not just something that we get here locally. That's pretty hard to get, and this is the first year we were able to achieve that. The second is the reduced spending for this year that we're in now with no cost to services. To be able to accomplish above average collections and still reduce spending with all the pressures that growth and expectation put on us is something really to behold. Brian Lee and the finance team also strengthened our purchasing controls. And so now more town spending is routed through our documented process than ever before. So we're doing more with less at a higher standard. That's pretty tough for anybody to say. And again, I think it speaks to how supportive our community is, how supportive our council is, and how competent our staff is. On the capital side, as you go through the report, you'll see lots of information in here. Council approved an ambitious capital program for 26 and staff delivered. Almost 90% of the single-year projects were completed. Two-thirds overall of our projects that are multi-year projects, which by design take several years. You'll have engineering, planning, construction, etc. We're two-thirds the way through all of those. You can see the two headlines here. The aerial of the new synthetic turf fields at Harrisburg Park. and the Veterans Park reconstruction and dedication ceremony. The complete list also includes greenway segments, annual sewer, ADA sidewalks, splash pad updates, new gateway signs, multi-year projects like Hickory Ridge sidewalk, Highway 49 improvements, roberta road roundabout all those are on track and our residents can follow each and every one of them on our newly released cip story map we created a story map for our development which is the private development you can get on a interactive map right on our website to follow every private development near your home now you can also view every town project on the similar format GIS based you can just kind of click zoom look on projects look at the plans see where we're at so accountability and accomplishment are really our big themes for this year strategic goals when we talk about accomplishments we've accomplished over 87% of our overall strategic goals that we set out just three years ago on a five-year plan We'll deliver all of those ahead of schedule, and we're looking at this year revamping those and coming up with additional strategic goals because our staff was able to accomplish those ahead of time. Anywhere where we see something that isn't on track, we identify it in the report too. It's not like we just put everything on green and say we're working on it. It's either complete, mostly complete, on track, or it is delayed, and you'll see that throughout the report as you go through it. All of this is really made possible through the aspect of connecting to our residents. And you'll see some numbers here. 97% of quick fix requests. Another platform that we rolled out this year where residents can just use an app on their phone. And if you're out there in the community and you see a crack in the sidewalk, you just take a picture. It's geolocated and it's shipped off to us to fix. 97% of those have been fixed. only takes about a day and a half to acknowledge request, and our town website this year saw 262,000 active users on our website. We're driving traffic, we're empowering people where they're at, and we're doing it in ways that people expect. Social media, apps, phone applications so that when you're out there, you don't have to go and call customer service and put in a work order and remember where you're at and find time to do it. You can do these things real time. Again, I don't want to miss the point that in the past year, we rolled out multiple platforms to be able to do this. Quick Fix, which is the app platform. We also have Accela online permitting. Only the third municipality in the county to go fully online permitting. Our capital improvement map, our development map. We put out over 23 press releases, 25 newsletters, 81,807 e-newsletter sends. in addition to the quarterly reports that go out every three months documenting all of this and that is all now captured again in one annual report at the top of our website available for everybody that's interested when it comes to public safety seconds obviously count public safety had a remarkable year the fire department increased property values saved by tenfold You know, that's kind of opportunistic. We had some big events that allowed for that. But in any case, that is quite a bit of property saved. While handling also 26% more fires during the year during the drought conditions, they also CPRs administered more than doubled. Four patients received spontaneous circulation. That's really the community CPR training that you see, you know, pictured right here. Our Sheriff's Office answered 26% more calls for service and still improved average response time from 5 minutes and 14 seconds down to 4 minutes and 45 seconds. That's the story on both sides of the slide that we see here. Demand went up. Performance went up with it. We didn't see performance slide. And also remember I said earlier we did that at a lower cost than ever and we're continuing to continue that trend. When we talk about our parks, places, community life, parks delivered the most visible quality of life winds of the year. And really, when you look at these pictures, it does all the talking. $2.5 million turf conversion. That gives us the largest contiguous turf complex playing surface in the county, 190,000 square feet of contiguous turf. And it is at the highest quality in the area as well. Run the Berg event set a record this year. Art Walk drew over 80 vendors and 1,000 of attendees. One deliberate shift after fee adjustment to prioritize our Harrisburg residents over out-of-town residents by adjusting those fees, we actually saw that resident share go up and go up to a majority of participants for the first time in my career here in Harrisburg. On the growth and economic development side, this is something that is new. So you guys get quarterly reports on this independently. So some of this will be information that the council and the people that come to these meetings have already heard before. But those of you that haven't, please check out the annual report because the fundamentals are strong. Commercial vacancies are under 5% for the town of Ferrisburg. our team spent the year meeting with businesses where they're at you can see that in the numbers 101 retention and expansion visits that's with harrisburg businesses this year 63 meeting with small business owners our goal was 25. so our staff could have gotten to 26 and and stopped but they didn't right they more than doubled our goal And that really tells you the passion that our folks have for it. Headline wins like Wheelhouse Racing School, formerly Ford Performance Racing School, being moved into Harrisburg. Dario, if anybody has not been out to Dario, Send our fire marshal out because I'm not sure their their capacity limit is being Obeyed because that place is just constantly busy since it opened its doors Atrium Hospital announcing their expansion and being at the neighborhood meeting stage in our facade grant program that really delivering visible results now after years of kind of sitting there with the example of Morehead Plaza Here, I didn't have a before picture to add in here, but this is really, those of you that had seen that sign, that's the transformation that we're seeing all over town. And finally, our downtown opportunity. The market's already here. So this is the slide that I'd ask council to kind of look at and sit with. Over the past year, 1.1 million long distance trips came through Harrisburg. Visitors spending grew 5%, so $13.2 million. But the retail really captured just 6.3% of that activity. so six point three percent of activity on that thirteen point two million we've got a long way that we can capture there and that's really because we just lack the centralized dining and shopping destination it's not just visitors passing through our own residents spend 31,000 leisure nights and Concord and 16,000 in Charlotte over the year in exactly the kinds of kind of walkable downtowns that we talk about wanting right here in the one Harrisburg survey So if we want that here, we're gonna have to build a community here that looks like that And that is in our plans. That's something I've heard from the board I think you'll see it in our goals in our community. You'll see that in the one Harrisburg Comprehensive plan drafting that we'll see here and hopefully adopted this fall the This connects directly to our kind of delayed town center objective as well. So really making that case for a centerpiece downtown as the kind of crown jewel of that one Harrisburg comprehensive plan. So where do we go from here? The FY budget was adopted unanimously in June. That already funds our next chapter. We spoke about the comprehensive plan that moves us into a strategy for drafting this fall. The residents working through future land use options, like you see here in the photos, an important part of that. In the full annual report that you guys have here, as I mentioned, that's on our website, harrisburgnc.gov. It'll be right on the top of the page. The quarterly reporting will continue to come out every quarter through FY27. This really becomes an annual tradition. This isn't something we're doing as a one-off to lay out a premium product and then never do it again. This is something that's sustainable, that our community should be able to expect, and that the board should be able to look at as a barometer of how things are going, and that our staff will use on a weekly and monthly basis to make adjustments as we see trends going in a way that that we don't want them to go we ask those questions internally why is that happening is that an anomaly is there a change is there something that we can do this helps us really set clear priorities to our department heads and every employee has numbers behind action this is harrisburg's report i'm happy to take any questions if you have them but i'll just reiterate that this is something that you know i'm extremely proud of it's something that you know three and a half years ago i think i sat with lee connor and said i want an annual report we need to be able to tell the story simplistically to our residents in numbers not with a lot of fluff i think if you look at a lot of towns you'll see those that do an annual report, which is a small minority. Most of the annual reports will say things like we're making progress towards good stuff. And they don't put a lot of numbers behind it. This makes us very vulnerable as a staff. And our staff has certainly been hesitant along the way of, what do these numbers mean? What do they do? But now that we're here, I find it energizing because we have a roadmap and we're able to adjust. And every bad number doesn't tell a bad story. It gives you an opportunity to adjust. and turn it into a good number. And that's what we're committed to. So kudos to our staff. Kudos to everybody that on the front lines that are working on these numbers because they really do paint an excellent picture of an excellent town that's supported well by the community and represented by an incredible leadership team and i do say that slightly self-serving because obviously i work for the board so take that with a grain of salt but i i do think that our board our community and our staff are second to none and couldn't be more proud mayor any questions for rob on the annual report

I just applaud the discipline. I know it's three years in the making, but every taxpayer in Harrisburg is a stockholder, and every stock has an annual report, good, bad, and different, what it is. So it's nice to see this all laid out in writing. It's some wonderful accomplishments in here.

Thanks, sir.

I want to say, great job on the report. It's really good to see all the numbers and everything that's done. just want the people to realize how small each of the departments are like the parks and recs are doing so much but it's just a few of them like engineering is small like each of the departments you know two three four five people but they do so much and it's just I'm so extremely proud of everyone their communications departments two people I feel that people of Harrisburg really need to know how fortunate they are that they've got such a great group of, you know, small but really mighty group of people working for them.

Agreed. Thank you, ma'am.

Rob, you know, in your communication year in review, I find humor. And I say that because amazing statistics. You know, you're talking about 262,000 website users, 511 new users, 23 press releases, 12 employee newsletters. I mean, you've got it all listed there. But yet we're reminded we don't communicate enough. Right? I mean, I don't know how we get better. We heard it tonight. We're not saying what needs to be said. And it's crazy to think we put all this information out, and the public still feels that there's more that needs to be there. Kudos to the team for getting this stuff out. My head spins when I look at all this kind of information. And I'm like, maybe people need to see this black and white and realize we are putting stuff out. We are educating everybody. I mean, I don't know of another town right now that has all the resources that we have to educate folks and that's been you know since i've gotten up here in 2015 is to point people where that information is because it's not easy to find by no means you know it's gotten better since then you know 2015 we were on abacus and stone tablets right but now we you know we have our app and we have uh our website and everything else and it's it's much easier to navigate but i think we'll always have our critiques throughout this but job well done thank you

appreciate it I find in the communication realm we've talked about this internally at nauseam and I've talked to some of the board members about this is that you know how people are communicated to now is so much different and and changing rapidly that it's hard to break through the noise I don't think there's a lack of information like information exists And it's not necessarily the person that we need to communicate it to's fault that they're not getting it. And it's not the fault that we're not putting it out. It's that there's 200,000 ads jammed in to their feed constantly. between how do you break through algorithms with multi-billion dollar corporations and political advertising and sensationalism and all of those types of things. What we do here is pretty interesting. but it's not as interesting as your TikTok feed. It's just not, right? We're not doing stuff like that. So, you know, how do we continue to put out all of this information? It's really important to people's lives and is a good story, but good stories don't sell. So, you know, that is a challenge that I think all governments are um continuing continuing to try to to push is you know how do we get through like how do we break through that that wall and be one of the top three four things that you're seeing for for the day if you don't constantly interact with it with which most people don't constantly interact with government If you do, you either work in government, you're elected, or you're in trouble. And generally everybody else is kind of living their life and things are going well and they don't really think about the government. It's just running behind the scenes. So just the world we live in. It's tougher, but we're going to continue to push out the things that tell the story for those that want the story. And I'll keep challenging Casey and her giant team of communicators that we have here. to figure out how do we get through. But 261,000 people did go to our website. That's a big number for a town our size. And so we're getting decent pool.

And kudos to Ryan for not walking up here yet. And I reflect on my past to say rooftops drive retail. We had that drilled in our head for year after year after year. And, Ryan, thank you for not running up here and telling us that. Well, we've heard that many times. I think there's other things that can drive retail as well.

It's a different economic development sheriff in town, and Ryan is certainly committed to diversifying the tax base and helping us with industrial and commercial development.

Great. Thank you, Rob. All right, Brian. It's a tough act to follow. Welcome Brian Lee for our finance report.

Good evening, Mayor and Council.

I have your finance report as of July 31st, so one month into the fiscal year. Here's our revenue and expense dashboard for the year. You can see tax collections only at 1% and the general fund revenues at 4% collected. That's totally within our expectation given the timing of property tax collections, so no concerns there. Water and sewer fund and stormwater fund are at 9% and 8% respectively, so those are off to a great start this fiscal year. departmental expenditures over operations are shown in the bottom half of the screen you see a lot of departments right around 11% that's a little unusual for the start of our year but I'll speak to that on the next slide and departments like Council and Human Resources tend to have annual dues or annual subscriptions software subscriptions that we pay upfront and so those that's also within our expectation and not a concern at this point in the year those will smooth out as we pass by a couple more months So jumping down to the bottom, salaries town-wide at 11%. We did have three payrolls that happened to hit in July, and so that represents about 11% of the annual payroll, and that will smooth out throughout the year, and that's affecting our personnel-heavy departments. So if you see the fire department, parks and rec, back on the previous screen, HR, finance, some of those personnel-heavy departments are right in line with that 11% salary number. All the remaining departments are in great shape, and so no concerns as we started off this fiscal year. Now we'll move on to our project dashboard. Here's a look at the single year projects for this year. So I'll give everybody a chance to see some of the new ones there. We've rolled over any of the prior year projects that weren't quite finished out, and then added the fiscal year 2027 projects to the list. The first one I'll draw your attention to is the warning light at Station 3. These easement documents were approved at the last meeting, and actually today they were signed by the property owner, and so we will execute those here on our side, and construction will actually start pretty soon on that, and that's been a long time coming. The next is the fire and deputy storage building. That's about 14% complete. This is a project where Public Works is going to work on the grading prior to the concrete going down. But every component of this project is under contract and ready to go. But Public Works has taken the first bit of this project on. Here's a look at our multi-year projects in design. We actually had a pretty good amount of movement on these projects, no milestones really to report, but a lot of our consultants put in some good work and moved those projects along during the month of July. And our multi-year projects in the construction phase, we have a couple to comment on here. The first is Cambridge Drive and Davis Creek Greenway. This project is almost there. It's about 99% complete. The update to the picture this month is the fence that's been installed on both sides of the road at the culvert crossing. So that essentially finishes the project. There's a little bit of reforestation and landscaping that will take place. That's best done in the fall when those plants will actually take and grow well. So this one is nearly at the finish line, but just a little bit left that we'll take a pause for a couple months and come back and finish that project off. The next is the pedestrian facility for Oakley Drive. This construction contract was approved at last month's meeting as well, and construction should start by the end of this month. Next is parking lot expansion at Stallings Park. We paused this for a little while, and now Public Works is working to finish this off. The bulldozer was actually delivered today, and I drove by at about 445, and they had already graded the whole site and laid down the fabric. So this will take about a week, and they'll be wrapped up out there, and we'll have our expanded parking lot ready to go. And then the next is the restroom facility at Holcomb Woods. Grading has started on this project as well, and this is another one that Public Works is helping us on. So they'll install the water and sewer infrastructure, and then the contractor can step back in and do the foundation, and then we'll start to see vertical construction after that. Here's a look at our equipment projects for the year. We have a couple that were added. And targeting, finishing off these projects pretty early in the year, as we got the ball rolling on a lot of these purchases as the budget was getting passed. So the fire department has ordered their utility vehicle. That should be in pretty soon, as it's not something that needs to be manufactured. And so that should be placed in service by the end of the calendar year. And the mobile lift columns for public works have been ordered and received in the month of July. So those will be placed in service this month. Here's a look at our vehicle projects. It's a short list this year. We have three where the specs have been turned over to vendors to collect quotes on those. And so you should see these contracts presented to you in the coming month. And our professional services projects, the fiscal year 2026 financial audit is moving along. We've essentially closed down the books for the year. And we're drafting the financial statements this month. And then the audit field work is taking place in late September, early October. Are there any questions?

Right. First, I'm grateful to see the pace of things starting to pick up with our projects. That was something that Councilman Vonn and I talk about a lot, like the velocity, which nothing happens.

Right.

So I'm grateful to see that. I do have a question. In one of our projects, where are we with Food Decree?

um food creek so i know that john and a consultant walked that walked that property so that they could scope out the project and propose on doing that design work and i think the consultant hasn't quite turned that around uh for john yet but that should be coming fairly soon i'm looking for john back there i think Yeah. Yeah. So it's imminent to get a scope on that.

OK.

Thank you. Any questions for Brian?

Thank you very much.

Thank you, sir. Next up, we have our law enforcement update. I was going to say Lieutenant Helms, but is it now Captain Helms? September 1st. September 1st. All right. So a couple more weeks.

Welcome. yeah thank you so this is our July update our law enforcement related activities for the month of July three thousand five hundred sixty two including our self initiated activities as well as calls for service Security checks, 2,195 with the yearly average of 2,150. So those are remaining steadily high. Traffic stops, again, just a little bit lower this month at 786. Still averaging about 1,000 a year, but I'm proud to... report that today our extra traffic guy finally got released back to full duty from his injury so those numbers will definitely be increasing he's a he's a very proactive so yeah be careful out there non-emergency response times are at six minutes and thirty seconds so we're still doing very well with those at our yearly average of six minutes and forty six seconds and our current trends they're also staying pretty steady with crimes against persons being down that's always good property crime remaining steady white collar crime kind of goes with the ebbs and flows and vice crime steady as well as crimes against society up just a touch and non-reportable offenses So where we're at calendar year to date, staying steady again with our 26% of the crimes against property, including the burglaries, larceny, motor vehicle theft, property damage, and those types of crimes. You can see the numbers to the right of that in total for this year. followed by crimes against society in the next category and vice crimes and white collar crime but nonreportable taking a big chunk of that at twenty percent but crimes against persons relatively low considering all the calls that we we do throughout the year at eleven percent so overall things are looking pretty steady and I don't have any concerns With that, I'll be happy to answer any questions if anyone has any. And I have one more announcement after this pending any questions. I have 2 quick questions for you yes sir one of the flock system that got Morrisville all heated up you guys use that for tracking vehicles are we in the county has a lot of any in town the county has a couple of flock cameras spread throughout but we have some very good policies in place I understand it's a big topic kind of nationwide about

those cameras and stuff but uh we have very good policies in place to uh limit their use okay i mean i think a lot of people like what you know when that came out they can see me they can yeah yeah yeah so as much transparency as we can get on that that's great yes there's there's several throughout the county um but we've had very good success with uh

some locating missing persons as well as solving some property crimes with them. Wonderful tool. Yeah, they're definitely a good tool. They do have to be used responsibly, but we have very good policies in place to prevent misuse for that.

And the other thing, I've got white car syndrome. Everywhere I look now I see these e-bikes after we started talking, and I know the North Carolina legislators gave us some command and control over what we could do, whether they could be allowed on sidewalks or helmets or miles per hour or any of that. clarified or codified that policy. You know, the main thing, I don't want to harass kids, but I see a lot of kids out there like, oof, should he be on the sidewalk or in the road? And, you know, is he safe? It's scary both ways, isn't it?

Yeah, it is. We definitely want them to be safe, but also not to be a hindrance to pedestrian traffic as well. you know even limited at 20 miles an hour that's pretty fast to get knocked into by an electric scooter so i think we'll have to kind of take see where that goes and see but the goal would be to educate and not be punitive per se so hopefully we can get everybody just to understand but i think that's right educate yes yeah okay thanks for that

And so I'll jump in here. I have a couple of things. So you've been with us enough to know that we value safety in Harrisburg. And as I shared with my email and my email to Sheriff Shaw after our last meeting, and I'm glad to hear that there was going to be another meeting and they'll follow up with me. To be very transparent, we're having issues with my email. So Sheriff Shaw may have responded to my email about a follow-up meeting to debrief about July 4th. I just haven't gotten it yet. But James and I are going to. partner on that to make sure I'm getting my emails. But that said, I do look forward to a resolution and game planning for next July 4th. The other side to that is, and this is in part with our town manager, Rob, and I appreciate how transparent you always are with us when we've had a significant incident in our community. So we were made aware soon after the individual passed away in the park, and I do want to be very sensitive in nature about how we discuss this. The other side to that is there was a TikTok that was created shortly after that, and I anticipated a significant response based off of the directive given in that TikTok. Well, I did receive two inquiries about it to which via communication through our town manager. He shared what was generally public information at that time. However, over the past two and a half weeks or so, I've received no less than 40 contacts about this individual's passing in our community. The most concerning part to me, though, is that we've gotten no formal communication. I talked to our manager about that, the concern around that. As a speaker said earlier, it is important for us to put the information out there and for it to be obviously respectful of the family and the individual, but to make sure that we are clear in what is happening in our community. With our very high standards as it relates to safety, I think it's clear that we have to make sure that we know. The group of people who found this person And they talked about it online. There has been several conversations in various platforms that have been shared with me since the time at which the incident took place, even right before we came into this meeting. So I do think that we have an obligation to share information with our community, not with the conditional statements like what we saw with the statement of July 4th. And I know that you don't actually put out that statement. But it is something to carry back, and I did share that in my email with Sheriff Shaw, and I'll address that when we get to meet again. But it is very important for us to get it swiftly. Even if it says the general, you know, there's no threat to safety in the community, that there is an investigation taking place.

Right.

Because people have asked questions, and we've not been given. And I can't speak to any other council members.

I don't know what to say. But there is no suspicious or foul play suspected of that. It is actively under investigation. It's a death investigation, not a homicide investigation. There's no reason for the public to be concerned about anything. And a lot of that were waiting for the autopsy report from the medical examiner in Charlotte. And given the circumstances of it, it's kind of a sensitive thing. But our investigators have been in contact with the family the entire time. And obviously they're taking it very seriously. They're very agreed over this process, especially the way it was committed. So, yes, there is, I understand your point 100%. I guess right now it's just we're waiting for the full picture because we don't want to release anything pending anything different than what we believe what happened from the full autopsy report, but also right now in the interest of the family and their privacy, just trying to keep that. As it is, if that makes sense.

But I want to be clear. The concern of saying nothing is you allow the narrative to write itself. Sure. And especially with this coming on the heels of what happened in Mecklenburg County and there being questions about the fidelity of that investigation, and these incidents happening within days of each other, those are the concerns that I'm receiving that are valid in nature.

Mm-hmm.

So we have to make sure that we are proactive in addressing that. Like we have statements that are prepared if there's a natural disaster, if we have something happen at the railroad track, like we have all those things. So I think that we need to be ready to roll, like, immediately after something happens.

I'll bring that up to the sheriff and see if we can come up with something for future things. But I just want everybody to know that this is not a –

that particular case is not a community concern there's nobody at danger or anything like that and it is still actively being investigated so i mean i do the question when is enough information enough because what you're saying is to respond to this person who put out this reel who put out this reel who did this at what point do you go oh I mean, it was like the July 4th, someone said there was a gun, and it was all over the social media, and everybody's like, why isn't the town making a statement? The town couldn't make a statement about something that didn't exist. So I think it's a catch-22, what you say versus what you can't say versus respect for the family. And, you know, you had said, you guys are quick to let us know if there's a danger to the community. First and foremost, that's what we need to share. There's no danger. Let the process take care of itself. Everybody has this capacity to self-publish today, whether it be your kid or whether it be your neighbor, whoever. And everybody's an expert. And I'll leave it at that.

Let me just comment real quick. So I guess the issue is that I don't remember anything going out. So I mean, I know that our town manager told us, communicated with us as a council, as he does all the time. Thank you for that, heads up. But I don't remember anything. So I think the problem is this lack of a response, right? And so then you have people just making up stuff. And so I'm thinking to get ahead of that so that you can stop it when it happens. And you don't have to give a lot of information, but just to address that this is an issue, it's no threat to the community. Because when the community is left with making it up on their own, it becomes a threat. or the potential of a threat, or their perception of a threat, right? Because people's perception is their reality. So I think just maybe getting ahead of it and saying, hey, there's no threat, and then that's it. So that we at least don't have to answer those questions, because I too received a handful of calls. I spoke to Rob about it a couple weeks ago, because I didn't know that this was continuing to be in social media. So I think that sometimes a delayed response becomes a non-response. So I think maybe we should get ahead of it and maybe say something. And of course, we'll limit what we say to the privacy of the victim and their family, but I think that we need to say something.

I understand.

Well, it's just a really sad situation, and if the family's asking for privacy, and then somebody's creating TikTok out there a couple of weeks ago trying to get some likes where this thing happened. We got our notification June 6th. It's been over two months, and they're working with the family. They've been informing the family. I feel like we need to be respectful of the family's wishes. If they wanted to come forward and request, I'm sure the minute they would have... Or if there was a threat to public safety. Yeah, or if there was that, yes. But we need to be really thoughtful about pushing for... you know, more information when the family is being, you know, requesting privacy.

But I wasn't pushing for more information. I was just pushing for information to say that there's not a threat. That's not providing more information.

Well, they can put a statement like that. I'm sure they did the investigation and they could see clearly.

That's exactly what I was asking. But they're still doing the investigation. But if...

And they're saying the investigation is active, and they did the investigation.

They determined it was a death investigation. So, again, my request was that there be a statement after there's been a significant event in our community just to provide, just to level set with the community about what has happened. I have been very critical of the situation with July 4th. Waiting until Monday to put out a statement was just not wise. It was not responsible, in my opinion. And that's the hill I will die on. Because we should have been ready to put a statement on Sunday morning. It doesn't matter what the world thought was happening at Harrisburg Park. We didn't tell them any different. And we have an obligation. We preach transparency. I'm very firm in my beliefs about being transparent and being held accountable for what we as a body have control of, for what the agencies we contract with, like what they share out. we if we're going to work in partnership we have to be able to hold each other accountable and i don't think that this is an egregious request i think it's a responsible request so that we are clear in our communication to our community so that they're clear that there is not a threat in our community or if there is that they're taking necessary steps to ensure the rest of our community is safe but i think don't don't

Aren't we responsible enough to speak the truth? And if there wasn't an investigation and it had gone on, why would we put out an information on that Sunday when the event happened on Saturday? If there's an investigation going on, you don't want to just throw something out there on a Sunday and expect people. People are going to hear what they want to hear. And I would agree with that.

And I mean, I think that's... No, and I don't... But the other... Again, there's two sides to this. The other side to that is to say there is an ongoing investigation. Sure. We said nothing. That's my concern. The response was too delayed in both situations. And I want to be very clear. Yes, this individual passed away on June 6th. I got my first contact about it on June 12th. So the rest of the world might, but the first inquiry I got was June 12th. But we got notified June 6th. Right, again. yeah but you just said well this two months later but the initial inquiry came to me on June 12th it doesn't matter if we get one inquiry we get 45 or 100 if there's somebody concerned we have an obligation to address that

I understand.

I mean, some of that could be deferred to the sheriff's office because we might be able to explain a little bit more why things are the way they are. Like in this particular instance, the investigation is not over yet. I understand what you're saying, though. I will address that with command staff and see if we can come up with something for future issues.

I appreciate that. Thank you.

Any further questions? With that, I would like to announce Jason Gilmore. He's currently a lieutenant. He is going to be the captain in the Harrisburg Division. As the mayor referenced, I got promoted and Jason did as well. I will be going back downtown and Jason is going to be the lieutenant out here in Harrisburg. He is very capable and I think everybody would agree that we're leaving the town in good hands and obviously we're going to help him along the way with the procedural stuff and all that. So I just wanted to introduce him to you guys and that'll be effective September 1st. So just here in a few weeks.

Welcome, Captain.

Hi, thank you. Soon to be Captain.

Close enough.

Questions, concerns, comments?

I've met several of you. Others I have not met. I hope to in the future, but like I say, I'm here, and I will be your face for Harrisburg to the Sheriff's Office.

Just tell us about your future communication skills. Future captain.

He's like, I got a few more weeks. Hang on. Perfect. Well, welcome.

Glad to have you. I look forward to working with each of you. Absolutely. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Next up, we have our fire department update with Chief Dunn.

All right. Good evening, Mayor and Council. Fire Department report for the month of July. Start off with our fire marshal activities, some fire prevention events. We hosted Battle of the Badges at our admin building. Certainly appreciate HR and communications for pushing that out. That was a very successful event. As Rob pointed out earlier, we held another community CPR class in our training room. And then we did our annual Hickory Ridge High School marching band spray downs. I don't know if anybody's ever had kids in that, but they always seemed to enjoy that. As far as inspections for the month of July, 43 were completed. And then to the right, you can see some of the violations that we're finding out in our community. As far as fire statistics, we responded to 297 incidents in the month of July, with a 90th percentile of a little over 7 minutes and 30 seconds. I attribute that increase to all the road construction that we have in our area at the moment. And then you can see some of the fires that we did have in the month of July. Ten of those, some involve structural involvement, which is a house or a business, trash, utility infrastructure, cooking fires, outside fires, and then room and content fires. Excuse me. And with that, real quick, but that was a synopsis.

Who won the Battle of the Badges?

EMS. They sponsored it, so. You said it was rigged? They do a very well promotion of the event. I think 250 or so points were donated, so very good event. And our room was crowded as well, so community stepped up.

Very good. Thank you, Chief Dunn. Appreciate it. Just a couple of Mayor's comments tonight. We had the Sheriff's National Night Out. It was a great success last week at the arena. It was great to see our Harrisburg Fire Department represented there, as well as many of our communities supporting our local law enforcement. We had a great crowd Saturday night at Rockin' the Burg. Thanks to Jim and his staff on working through some of the challenges, and other than a few sprinkles, we were able to continue the show. In fact, I think it was so busy, our Sheriff's Department actually had to move three patrol cars out into the parking coming in area because it was quite busy. You would have thought the dark clouds might have cut people away. It did not. They showed up in droves, and it was a wonderful concert. Let's see here. We've got our next Rock in the Burg is September 12th. that is featuring department departure which is a journey tribute band later this month i think brian had a couple pictures up there on the 24th is the cambridge drive extension ribbon cutting followed by a council work session that we will have here we've got several events coming up in october and all of this is online but i just wanted to mention that october 3rd is bags in the berg and that will be located here in town center Rock in the Burg is October 10th, and October 30th is our Trick or Treat on Main. We're making a change this year from the Harrisburg Park to Town Center. So looking forward to hosting that community event. And then I wanted to make sure that we wish all of our educators, those on the front line and behind the scenes, a great start to the year this week. I think the teachers went back today. Some probably went back earlier than that. And our students start back on Wednesday. Please be patient in the car rider lines and the roads all around the schools because it will be troublesome for the first couple weeks as everybody gets adjusted to that, but we are praying for a safe and successful year for all. So with that, we'll move into council comments.

I think we need to make sure they gave us a nice warning that we have a sheriff's coming back from patrol, so we really need to pay attention. Evidently, he's aggressive, so in a good way. I do want to highlight our comms and economic development. You all are doing a wonderful job with our business spotlight for Harrisburg. I've gotten several inquiries about the businesses that are here, so great job with that. We did have a ribbon cutting for the Stephen and Morris Behavioral Health Center that is not open yet, but there are limited tours that are available. So that's a behavioral health hospital. They have an urgent care boat for the... for children as well as for adults, and there is a partial residential treatment facility that will be there for individual, for minors who need care for a substantial period of time. We did attend the educational summit that was at West Cabarrus. It was Ryan, Stephanie, myself, Rob, and Councilman Fault, Dr. Bates, we were all there. That was a really good time just to learn about the, evidently there's another database out there that holds the information that our students are learning in their CTE courses that are great transferable skills that go right into the workforce for students that are not seeking post-secondary education. that also align with some programs that are being offered at Rowan-Cabarrus. So that was really good to hear. There was another ribbon-cutting in Cabarrus County that same day, and I told Rob we have to step our game up because there's some adaptive equipment in a neighboring park that is really... You can tell that park was built with intention of own inclusion, so that's really nice to have. And we... attended the North Carolina BMO conference at the end of July, and that was held in Wilmington this year with a significant focus on economic development. Of course, with that being something that we've spent a lot of time focusing on here in Harrisburg, I was pretty excited to hear about that. And they had several speakers that talked to us just about being intentional in the businesses that we're attracting to come, that they're reflective of your community because we don't want a business to come and die. It seems pretty common sense, but the stats that they gave on communities that are not doing that well were it was it was astonishing that you know the communities have spent so much money bringing in the businesses and there wasn't even the foot traffic to be able to keep the businesses in a successful way and I think then they also did talk about like the importance of driving economic development especially as we have concerns of what may or may not happen with a potential property tax levy on this year's ballot And to the mayor's comments about rocking the berg, I did receive some feedback from community members because it was packed. Parking went all the way down to the Presbyterian Church. And I was really excited, and then I got feedback about people being really upset about folks being on their grass. That makes perfect sense to me, so I would just encourage us in the abundance of caution to put the tape up like we do for July 4th. But it was a great crowd, it was a great band, and that was the only feedback that I received that was a little bit concerning. As a final, I know that we all received email, at least one email everybody received, but I did receive several. with concerns about buses in cabarrus county i did share like you know that is not something that's within our purview but i'm happy to advocate for our community for my kids our kids um and the long walks that they're having for the bus the feedback i received on that was well, drivers have to drive multiple routes and they're trying to decrease the amount of missed instructional time due to the duplicate routes that their drivers are having to drive because of the shortage. I've reiterated to everybody that's reached out that that's not something that we can directly support, but that those concerns would be carried forward to the other elected bodies in our community.

You okay, Wally? Okay.

And that's all I had.

I'll go real quick. Just to continue, I also attended the National the North Carolina BMO, which is the Black Elected Municipal Officials. That's the official name for that organization. And they did talk about economic development and how do we use AI to track a lot of things. So I thought it was very good. And during that meeting, I was appointed to the board of directors. So I'll be in that role for the next two years. One of the other things I know, similar to what Councilwoman Glover said, that the bus stop issue is not under our purview. But if anyone has any concerns, you feel free to reach out to us. And some folks have. And I've reached out to the district, and they're working on it, because I, too, am a parent. But I'm also a community member. So in any ways that I can advocate for my community, that's what I'm going to do. And I'm clear what my purview is, but I'm always going to advocate so you can feel free to reach out. The other thing is that I have had some confusion with my email, so I probably have missed some emails. We resolved that today. So if anyone emailed me and I didn't get it, it's not because I didn't want to respond. I probably didn't get it, so keep emailing me, and I'll be sure to respond. The other thing is I did go to Rock in the Burg. It was a huge event. It was great. The rain literally rained on our parade. However, I think that maybe using AI, knowing that the crowd is huge for that event, maybe we should talk as a council or as a park and rec and how we can do more of that. and bring similar kind of artists because it brought out a lot of people and it was well attended. The other thing I'll mention is, Rob, you and I talked about the water bills. I'm still getting feedback on the website, so if you can maybe look at that again. Because I don't know about many folks, but some folks probably don't want to use ACH. But, I mean, if they do, fine. But if they don't, that's fine, too. But I think we should work on that. making it user friendly, that website for our water bill. And then lastly, two more things. Hatch, we have two vacancies. So those who are interested in our Hatch, which is our heritage arts, Harrisburg Arts, Culture and Heritage Committee, Please feel free to check out the website for that. And then, of course, I will be remiss to talk about the mayoral pro temp issue because it's still an issue. And so I'm hoping that it is resolved because it is not. Contrary to what emails have said and what has been said on the dais, it's not resolved. So hopefully we can get that resolved. And that's it. Thanks.

I did have one quick question. I got an email from a resident earlier this week concerned about our parks and rec staffing. I noticed that several folks have supposedly gone over to Public Works. And with all the parks that we're proposing and things that we're doing, are we having staffing issues in parks and rec, or are we good with that?

I can check the numbers, but I think it's no more than usual. We typically have a few guys in the parks and rec maintenance that will transfer to public works. We've also had vice versa. We've had guys go from public works to fire. So that tends to be something that we encourage here is internal transfers if folks think they have a career progression somewhere else. But I don't think we're overly short, as Mike is really featured back here. So I apologize. It's distracting me. But I can look into the actual number and get back with you. But I think we have one vacancy right now.

Yeah, it was just a concern. And the residents are probably listening tonight. So I wanted to make sure that her question was addressed, or their question was addressed.

I will get back with them and you tomorrow.

I did have one more for the vice chairman of the board for Wasak. That was in our annual report, which I read. One of the things that's kept me awake the last month, I saw Anson County had a water main break, and that whole town was on shutdown. I don't know if you guys went through there, but the McDonald's and the Burger King not open. That is just disaster. Puerto Rico on a water shortage. Wisconsin's water system hacked. i just want to be able to sleep at night knowing wassack you got this covered you got a backup plan if the water main breaks what do we have what do we do and that there's a contingency plan for that that's one of the service i mean if we are two days late on garbage service no harm no foul if the water doesn't come on tonight there's going to be a problem

Yeah, that's a great question, and I get to answer it with two different hats, as you said, sitting on the Water and Sewer Authority of Cabarrus County, WSAC, for those that don't know that, being the vice chair of that, I've spent six years now over there, and most recently as vice chair On the sewer side of everything, nothing to worry about. I mean, you flush your toilets, it goes down gravity. We're going to be just fine. We run our own water system in the town, from the town of Harrisburg, so from a public works position, which As you guys know, that's my side of the house. I came through engineering and public work, so I feel comfortable speaking directly on that. We have redundant systems in place, and we actually are very fortunate to have two major water feeds other than our own feed. we do produce some water in town we do have some wells and we produce you know several hundred thousand gallons per month of our own um i'm sorry per day of our own water but we also have concord and charlotte on redundant feeds that if something either one of those were to shut down we could operate and and move water around in our system Pressures would get a little fluctuated. And also on the hacking, which has been in the news lately, right? That's a big issue. That's actually something old that's new again, right? Everybody remember when their gas went through the roof because the cross country pipeline was hacked and held ransom so we couldn't move? across the country. I was public works director at that point. And James actually took our entire system off of line of being able to log in. Basically what had happened on these recent water systems is they have these SCADA systems, and I'll nerd out a little bit for you here, but they have these automated systems where our folks can adjust chlorine levels and check levels, check pressures, do all these things via computer instead of getting out and turning valves like we did in the old days. And the folks that were hacked had online logins where you could get in and do that basically via the web. And they just didn't set passwords. And so bad actors got in and they went in and they just set a password. and locked out the users, so there was no way for these water systems to get in and control their own systems. And that happened all over the country, and it became kind of a story. We have not had a system like that for five years. Our system runs completely different and is a secure system, and that was something we were concerned about when we saw the first act of this, which was the natural gas pipeline get hacked.

no concern here on either side of the water system yep you can sleep and there'll be water tomorrow okay I wanted to provide an update in July I participated in a quarterly Cabarrus summit and where we heard a presentation from WASAC on the expansion of sewer capacity and I'm pleased to share that the project is moving according to plan Also, as the new school year begins, I've also been hearing a lot from the residents that many school bus stops have been consolidated. And with so many students now taking, walking longer distances to their bus stops, I encourage everyone to be extra vigilant and mindful of children walking along the roads and neighborhoods. Some of the neighborhoods lost the inner bus stops, so the buses are gonna be stopping on the main street, like on Tom Query and Hickory Road and so forth. and as was mentioned before this even though it's not our responsibility but from what we understand it's a big part of it is a shortage of school bus drivers so that's definitely where we need to make sure that more people apply for these positions so that and also the county the school board needs to hear about these issues as well so the more of us speak up the better and quicker I believe the concerns will be addressed but I have definitely been hearing quite from quite a few parents that they're very concerned with that so But in the meantime, we need to do our part and be extra careful on the roads as we drive because there's a lot of little kids out there, elementary school kids, some on the spectrum and so forth, and they're having to walk a lot longer to their school bus stops.

And I'll round it out. I was absent last month due to a death in the family, but got a lot, so hang with me for a minute. CRMPO Road Commission, we are always off in July due to vacations. We never meet, so we'll be back in full force starting at the end of this month. Being that I was out last month, I didn't get a chance to express my appreciation publicly. I did send an email internally to all the directors and leaders of the town to let them know how much I did appreciate all their effort, all the work they put in over the last year to make the July 4th a success. I think when we look at it, we as council did not understand the level of detail with regards to the security that was being added this year until somewhere around March and April. And I was very cautious, to say the least, that this was in plan. We had not heard about it. Jim, you and your staff got together really quick, gave us a good presentation. First time event with this type of security. I don't think you could ask for better. I mean, there's always going to be hiccups. I get it. Hindsight's 20-20. We'll figure that out. We'll do a post-mortem. We'll get at it again. So I'm not here to critique it one way or the other. I know that's a bigger discussion that probably doesn't involve me. i'd love to hear what the results were with that just thank you all for for all the work that you put in from public works to accounting to parks and rec staff to hr you know all the folks that don't get recognized on some of these things it takes them as well i also got a chance to catch up with jonathan allman and grant campbell One of the concerns, I spoke to both of them at great lengths with all these house bills that continue to pop up regarding the builder's lobby. And I'm like, how do we get you guys to stop loving those guys? Because it seems like every time we turn around, there's a new variation of last year's bill that initially last year was to almost pretty much disassemble the whole municipality as we know it today. And then there was like, oh, had a piece of it over here and a piece of it here. And Jonathan and Grant both said, we rely on you guys to share that back with us. We see so much coming back and forth that we appreciate your advocacy from your level. I know we have the the service that we've signed up for there in Raleigh to represent us. But he said, you know, it also comes from us as leaders in the community to share that, our advocacy, letting our residents know, hey, this is on the books. You know, your property may not be the same anymore if this continues to happen. So continue to share those things with the community. While I was gone, I also got a phone call. And Jonathan, your team, Absolutely knocked it out of the park several years ago the council the town we all agreed to put a feature in place that if the residents had a Ditch in their front yard that they wish to cover up if they would buy the supplies the town would come in and install those pieces of equipment and cover over it and one of our past council members Christopher Barfield and reached out to me to express that he took us up on that offer and he says boy he says I could not tell you how well that went he said people on my street were very hesitant he said I was kind of like the guinea pig to start off and he said Corey showed up Ashley showed up Jimmy showed up Alex showed up and TJ showed up and he goes and during this week he said it was over 100 degrees and He said, we had the supplies ready. They showed up, got it all put in. And before you know it, his neighbor next door signed up. His neighbor after that signed up. The guy across the street. So it was like popcorn. It was just starting to pop over there. So kudos, Jonathan, to your staff. They were amazing. I think Christopher even mentioned that he set up a special air conditioner in his garage one day for him and had pizza. So he just wanted to know that. they were really taken care of. And then lastly, Brian Lee and Jim Spina, thank you for answering my text. I know sometimes those things, when we get the messages, Brian, you've been doing some special research for me for a resident that has concerns about some of our vehicles. So thank you for all the detail on that. That's always nice to be able to push that back and go, here, here's your information. And Jim, thank you for the constant support of when we get those messages about the park or this or that or the other. I hate to reach you on the weekends, but I appreciate the response. So thank you.

Thank you. Any other council comments?

I do have one final. I think that it's important for us to revisit the dogs in the park. We can talk about it at the workshop whenever you want to discuss it, but I think it is important for us to revisit that. There's an incident of some sort in the park on Saturday. But again, dogs are unpredictable, as are people sometimes. But I think that we need to figure out how we're going to navigate that in a way that keeps everybody in our community safe.

All right, thank you all. We will move into the public hearing portion of tonight. We're going to have Monterey up with us for a hot minute. The first one is a continuation request for the public hearing of the Peach Orchard Road. Monterey.

Yes, good evening, mayor and council. The mayor is correct. I will be up here for quite a few of these. So the request this evening is to consider an annexation petition, a zoning map amendment petition, and a development agreement for two properties on Peach Orchard Road. The purpose is to establish a conditional zoning district authorizing the development of 149 lot single family residential community. The applicant's request tonight is to continue the hearing until October 12, 2026, town council meeting to allow additional time to analyze grade separation options. As you recall back in May when this original continuation request came before all of you, we had discussed that the at-grade was where they were. We heard the recommendation to address a roundabout. So their engineering team made a roundabout on their plans. Staff looked at it. We provided some feedback in a meeting. Ultimately, we got a new plan back from them to which staff met again last week to provide more analysis. So we're definitely making movements in the right direction. We're just not at a place where both sides are ready to bring this back before you. So the staff recommendation this evening is to continue the hearing to the October 12th, 2026 town council meeting. And so staff's direct recommendation is for H-2026-01-ANX Peach Orchard Annexation Petition. The same for the Peach Orchard Map Amendment Petition and the Peach Orchard Development Agreement. Those would continue each public hearing for each action item to the October 12, 2026 Town Council meeting. And that concludes my presentation.

And Council, we did have the public hearing sheet out there that discussed this. We did have one resident sign up. It was one we got an email from today. And I did speak with them to let them know that we would be continuing this and that we would have someone from town staff follow up with them about the email that they sent. So with that, is there a motion to continue? Was the email sent to everybody? Yes. Oh, OK. I didn't get it.

I thought you were on it.

Yeah. And y'all had to send it. They sent it twice because it it kicked back for them. I got it both times. So James is investigating. Yeah. We have two or three. That one.

I was like, yeah, yeah. But again, just because we're on it doesn't mean we received it.

So that's really my question. We really only inconvenience one person that we know of so far by this. Somebody was prepared to be here tonight.

Correct. And it's the same person that sent us the email with it detailed out. So I did speak with them before the beginning of the meeting and let them know that they were requesting that this be made.

And it's the same gentleman that spoke at the original in this about, hey, you need to check for very, you know, very stuff out there. And so that's over to the planning department. It's to the prospective applicant. here on any remediation. I would advise they look at that.

So with that, is there a motion to continue the public hearings as stated to October 12th? Motion. Second? Second. All in favor? Aye. Janet, did you get that? Motion is carried. Thank you so much. Next up we have the public hearing for the consideration of the non contiguous voluntary annexation and zoning map amendment for Paul linker place. back to your nice conversation she's gonna go through the other two to ask those to be continued it was it was listed as all three Lee just told me we need to do the other two is that correct or is that incorrect yes apologies for the confusion we did bring out the motions individually okay sorry about that mayor that's fine pause Janet so we're gonna redo this one so the first motion is to For the voluntary annexation, continue the public hearing for October 12th. Is there a motion as presented? So moved. Second? Second. All in favor? Aye. Motion is carried. Who was second? I was second. Aaron. And then is there a motion to continue the public hearing for the conditional zoning map amendment to the October 12th, 2026 meeting? So moved. Second? I'll second. All in favor? Aye. Motion is carried. And lastly, a motion to continue the public hearing for the development agreement to the October 12, 2026 council meeting as stated. Motion to approve? Motion. Second? Second. All in favor? No. Motion is carried. Thank you, Lee.

Thank you all. So for the next public hearing, it's for H-2026-05ANX, as well as H-2026-05R7340, Paul Inker, please. So the applicant is looking to annex and rezone a property from a Cabarrus County zoning classification LDR to a town of Harrisburg zoning classification associated with the annexation request. The subject property is vacant and approximately 5.504 acres in size, located at the end of Paul Inker Place. The request is to establish a Harrisburg rural estate RE zoning classification on the subject property. This is a conventional zoning request, so therefore you will not see a site plan along with it, nor specific conditions. Here is the specific site location. It is the red bubble. You can also see behind it right here, this dirt path. We will discuss it, but that is the Wasack trunk line. Here is the existing zoning map, and as you'll see, Harrisburg is around the property. So the rural estate zoning classification provides the opportunity for single family detached residential lots that are a minimum of 43,560 square feet, otherwise known as an acre, per the UDO. The use is consistent with the existing zoning on the surrounding parcels. Dimensional standards are also consistent with the existing lots in the vicinity. The subject property, as you can notice, is a flag lot with no direct access to any public right of way because it is on a private drive. And so the exception to the code is parcels that front on a private road shall not be required to have street frontage as long as an easement providing access is recorded. Even though this is a conventional, I will present to you what the applicant is proposing this evening. They are looking to purchase this approximately 5.504 acre lot to build a private residence on the property. The property owner is currently working with Cabarrus County to extend Paulinker Place approximately 630 feet to provide access to the subject site via a private road, i.e. via access easement to Farmo Road. The applicant does plan to drill for a new well for water service on site and to connect to the Wasak sewer line in the rear of the property that was shown in the previous slide. All costs associated with the water and sewer access and approval from Cabarrus County are at the owner's responsibility. This conventional rezoning was presented to the Planning and Zoning Board at their July 21st, 2026 meeting. Their only discussion resolved around what could be done by right if the applicant developed based on the proposed zoning district versus their plan. And that essentially would indicate that they could get more lots out of the parcel. However, acknowledging that it is a singular lot and It was being asked as a conventional rezoning. The Planning and Zoning Board approved a motion unanimously to recommend approval of the rezoning application to Town Council. So staff's recommendation tonight is to recommend approval of the annexation petition H-2026-05-ANX and the zoning map amendment H-2026-05R to apply the town of Harrisburg Rural Estate RE Zoning District to the approximately 5.504 acres at 7340 Paul Linker Place. And that concludes staff's presentations. Any questions this evening?

I have two questions.

Sure.

What can they do now? versus what they can do if we approve this?

Sure. So right now they're zoned LDR, which is low density residential. So they can do in the county one unit per acre. They'd have to connect to well and septic if they're going to be in the county. If they annex and rezone through a conventional process, since it is five acres, the zoning district would allow them a max of five homes. However, by the time you add roads, et cetera, you're definitely looking at less. By guesstimation, probably two to three, but more than the singular home that they're proposing.

Okay, so before and after?

Before one, after between two and five, essentially.

But don't they get access to public to water and sewer by being? From us?

Yeah. So there is not water, public water out there. So they would be able to tap onto the public sewer at the back of the property. They would still have to draw from a well. But yes, part of annexing is for them to actually be able to get public utilities.

And trash pickup. And a trash can.

Trash can?

Yes.

We'll pick up your sticks, your grass clippings.

Snow removal? Mm-hmm.

Discounts on youth athletics, free wristbands for the 4th of July. I could keep going.

But before staff recommended to them that they go the conventional route, we did take them through a pre-app. We did analyze this with other internal departments so we understand at least if it's buildable or not before we brought it before you this evening.

Any other questions?

Any other questions before we move to public hearing?

OK. With that, we will open the public hearing. Speakers have three minutes. We did not have anyone sign up to speak this evening. Is there anyone that wanted to speak on this project? If not, we will close public hearing, go back to council, and read the first motion.

Yes. And so while we are recommending a one-step decision, you are more than welcome to do it through the two-month. However, we will have three motions again this evening for the process. So the annexation motion to approve the annexation petition H-2026-05-annex and adopt the ordinance annexing approximately 5.504 acres at 7340 Paulinker Place into the town of Harrisburg.

Sarah, motion to approve as presented on the annexation.

Motion.

Second. Second. All in favor? Aye. Motion is carried. Thank you.

Thank you. Motion number two, the zoning map amendment. Motion to approve the zoning map amendment H-2026-05-R and adopt the ordinance amending the official zoning map to apply the town of Harrisburg Rural Estate RE Zoning District to approximately 5.504 acres at 7340 Paul Linker Place, subject to the approval of the related annexation petition.

Motion to approve the zoning map amendment as presented. So second.

Second.

All in favor. All right. Motion is carried. And last, the consistency and reasonableness statement. Motion to approve the consistency and reasonableness for the zoning map amendment H-2026-05-R. Finding the amendment is consistent with the Harrisburg land use plan, reasonable, and in the public interest because the proposed rural estate zoning is compatible with the surrounding low density residential character and appropriate for the size and configuration of the property.

Motion to approve the consistency and reasonableness statement as presented. Motion. Second? Second. All in favor? Aye. Motion is carried. Thank you.

Thank you all, and this is my last one for a few minutes. The public hearing before you is H-2026-02-ANX, and the rezoning is H-2026-07-R9274, Naren Lane. The applicant is looking to annex and rezone a property from a Cabarrus County Zoning Classification LDR to a town of Harrisburg zoning classification associated with the annexation request. The subject property is vacant and approximately 0.47 of an acre in size located along Naren Lane within the Bradford Park neighborhood. The request is to establish a Harrisburg residential medium RM zoning classification on the subject property and is another conventional rezoning. Here you will see the red dot is the specific site location, almost directly across from Beth Lane. Here is the existing zoning map. Residential medium zoning classification provides the opportunity for single family detached residential lots that are a minimum of 15,000 square foot, gross density of two to three units per acre per the section of the UDO. The use is consistent with the existing zoning and the surrounding parcels. Dimensional standards are also consistent with the existing lots in Bradford Park. And the subject property does have access to public water and sewer inside of Naren Lane. This is a specific applicant's proposal. The applicant's objective is to construct one private resident on this vacant lot. The property owner has agreed to build a residence that will conform to the existing residential design in the neighborhood, and the HOA has communicated that they have heard from the applicant, and they are all on the same page about the steps to move forward. Construction will not be allowed in the 55-foot stream buffer located at the rear of the property. It is shown on the survey, but is also right here. This was brought before Planning and Zoning Board at its July 21st, 2026 public meeting. The discussion, just like the last one, was what could be done by right if the applicant developed the parcel based on the proposed zoning district. And in this one, it's simply one home. So the board approved a motion six to zero to recommend approval of the rezoning application to town council. So staff's recommendation tonight is to recommend approval of the annexation petition H-2026-02-ANX zoning map amendment H-2026-07-R to apply the town of Harrisburg residential medium RM zoning district to approximately 0.47 acres at 9274 Naren Lane. And that concludes staff's presentations. Any questions?

Bradford Park is ETJ.

Yes.

So how does that work? Sure. Anybody, I guess anybody can be zoned in, but all their neighbors are ETJ. We're not going to send a garbage truck for one house, right?

I asked this question.

We're not, but Waste Pro will. It costs the same regardless.

It is the town's policy that if they're going to obtain public water and sewer that they annex into the town.

And Waste Pro is already doing the whole neighborhood. It's just the garbage trucks.

Yeah, they're driving past the neighborhood. They'll drive into it, pick that one up, and go. And we'll do the same with our other routes. And I think a lot of times when you get into neighborhoods like this, this happened in Abington as well, where some of these lots were unbuildable until housing prices get high enough. then they become buildable and so a lot like this you it's not buildable without utilities they're going to need a public utility to have a public utility you need to be in the town that's our policy and so you end up with kind of these lots or some installings Glenn this that did this over the years as well we just did one with you know Paul Linker some of the some of the individual lots that are in the town of Paulinker, but not all of them are. So you end up with kind of, it just fills in over time. I think if that, in my time here, that entire neighborhood has approached us several times about taking over their water system. The state has gotten involved. At some point, private water systems fail. They become public water systems, and in order for that to be supported by a public system, they're going to be part of that public entity.

so he would or they rather sorry so they would have town water as opposed so if the system failed they would be the only home in the neighborhood that was had water and sewer if we took over that system they'd be the only one that gets it at the town rate everybody else would say 50 percent more i'm saying because we're annexing this one parcel and they're subscribing to town water and sewer if the system were to fail that's there, the private system, they would be the only one working there. I guess I'm confused why we just don't leave them as ETJ.

Because then anybody that wanted to annex into the town, including 600 home subdivisions, would be entitled to our utilities. You can't have a disparate policy. You can't say, you get water and sewer, but you're not in the town. But you don't get water and sewer. You have to have one policy, and you have to treat everybody equally. So if somebody wants to tap onto our sewer system, in this case, you can do that if you annex into the town, or you can put in a septic. Those are your two choices. But you can't use our utilities and not annex in, and then we tell somebody else, well, you can't come in.

So, additionally the neighbors around him could choose to annex?

At any point. Taking applications in the planning department as soon as they'd like to show up.

Same with Stallings Glen. Are there any, are there trends around this? Are they the trendsetters? What does this look like? I'm just curious. Is who the trendsetter? What we should anticipate with them wanting to annex into the town. Within their community that is otherwise ETJ.

Yeah, in that community, we haven't seen a bunch because there wouldn't be a precipice, but we're seeing this escalate more and more, especially in areas that have like septic systems that fail. It's much cheaper to hook into a town sewer than to design some of the septic systems that are needed in our clays. So there they look at and they go, well, 40,000 or 4,000? then they make the financial decision that it's better to go that route so you're seeing it escalate in areas like that you're also seeing vacant lot this is becoming more and more popular I don't see a huge trend of folks just choosing to pay more taxes to move into a town when they're already getting all of those services because we have to so for instance this neighborhood those sheriffs that were up here, they're showing up. If you call, if there's something that happens, they're showing up. Those folks aren't paying a tax for that, all of our residents are, and it's into the tune of four and a half million dollars a year that we pay in that service, but we're not gonna tell the sheriff, hey, don't go to that neighborhood, they don't pay, right? The same with our parks. We don't have a sign out front that says, show your residency before you walk into this park. So, you know, we're paying $6 million a year for parks and recreation and everybody that's close gets to use it. So most people aren't gonna just voluntarily give you a couple thousand a year when they already get those services of fire, police, parks, drive on the roads that we spend a lot on. You're not going to see that, but when they need something, that's when they come in, and that's when they also get to participate in all of the costs that everybody else in the town shares to their benefit.

Thank you for that clarity. I'm not necessarily opposed to it. It just seems like it's a very nuanced.

That was my soapbox for everybody else. I've already talked to everybody here over and over about this year after year. You know, it's tough the way we do annexations in North Carolina because it's just all voluntary. And so you get lots of these little donut hole spot annexations all over. And it makes it really expensive for communities to serve those folks. But also that's the business we're in. We're in the service business. So when the public need is there, in this case, you have somebody's property. They can't get the highest, best use out of it. The only thing that will allow that highest, best use is this utility connection and being part of the town. it's not as cheap to serve from a tax standpoint as it would be if it was in the middle of you know Holcomb or Grantham or one of those neighborhoods but you know that's what government does if it was easy the private sector would do it we only get the things that don't make sense there any other questions before we open it for public hearing

OK, with that, we will open this for public hearing. Again, we did not have anyone sign up to speak on this property. So with that, we will close public hearing.

And this is broken out just the same in three motions. So the annexation motion to approve the annexation petition H-2026-02-ANX and adopt the ordinance annexing approximately 0.47 acres at 9274 Neron Lane into the town of Harrisburg.

Is there a motion to approve the annexation as stated? So moved. Second? Second. All in favor? Aye. Motion is carried.

Thank you. Thank you. Motion number two is a zoning map amendment. Motion to approve the zoning map amendment H-2026-07-R and adopt the ordinance amending the official zoning map to apply the town of Harrisburg residential medium RM zoning district to approximately 0.47 acres at 9274 Neron Lane, subject to the approval of the related annexation petition.

Motion to approve the zoning map amendment as stated.

So moved. Second.

Second. second all in favor motion is carried

And last but not least, the consistency and reasonableness statement. Motion to approve the consistency and reasonableness for the zoning map amendment H-2026-07-R, finding that the amendment is consistent with the Harrisburg land use plan, reasonable, and in the public interest because the proposed residential medium zoning is compatible with the surrounding low density residential character and appropriate for the size and configuration of the property in the existing neighborhood.

Motion to approve the consistency statement as presented. So moved. Second. All in favor. Aye. Motion is carried. Thank you. Thank you. And with that, that concludes public hearings for this evening. Next step, we have old business, the temporary municipal dog park project update. I think we've got a tag team. We've got Lee starting us off and then Jim will fill in for that.

Jim's the authority. So if you have any questions, you can just ask me. Thank you and good evening, Mayor and Council. Tonight I'm going to just quickly go through an update of the Municipal Dog Park project from last month as well as the main reason we're here tonight is to go over the budget ordinance amendments and have you all consider those for approval. So this started last month in the July council meeting. At that meeting we presented some conceptual renderings and some other information about the temporary municipal dog park. At that meeting council authorized the project and authorized us to move forward with it and established $125,000 project budget not to exceed. From that standpoint, we were directed to come back with you this month for the appropriate and necessary budget action to formally implement the project. From that meeting in July, there were a few items that were brought up from council that we considered and made some adjustments into the design. Expanded seating. We added seating for up to about 40 visitors. We added some additional parking lot some fencing to me to block the parking lot sidewalk from the road. So make sure that it was safe for vehicular traffic and make sure we didn't have the dogs interacting with that. I'll show you an example of what we did to help with that as well. upgraded landscaping and signage packages. All of those were brought up last month and we did update those accordingly. As we were going through our design refinements, we also in-house decided it was appropriate to add in ADA accessible parking spaces, two of those, and accessible shaded picnic tables that will be located up towards the front of the park. So as mentioned, I think last month in the rendering that we showed everyone, it gave the illusion that the park was going to be right on the road. Wanted to show this from an aerial standpoint, from going from the shade area in the back of the property forward, It is about 30 to 40 feet off of the road. Did mention that last month, but I felt it was good to actually see it to have a little better understanding. And that also, as we discussed last month for the parking at July 4th, that would allow us to use these sections there. And as we talked about, if there was ever a point where we decided that it was appropriate to keep this for a longer term and demand was such that we wanted to expand it, there is room to expand both to left and further towards the front of the property. So again, we've been very busy from a staff standpoint since the July meeting, focusing on design and procurement, trying to make sure that we get all of the quotes in place to ensure that we're staying within the $125,000 budget, site engineering and prep, permitting and approvals, and then budget and finance, working on our budget amendments for the capital reserve fund to have those appropriations in place. Again our budget fiscal impact is a 125,000 not to exceed project budget of that is plan to come out of our capital reserve fund with general fund. That balance is such that we feel is sufficient to support the appropriation without affecting any plan future capital commitments. So that will have any impact on to those projects. So our staff recommendation is to approve the related fiscal 2027 budget ordinance amendments necessary to fund and implement the temporary municipal dog park project previously authorized by Council on July 13th. I'm happy to answer any questions or Jim is happy to answer any questions.

Lee, can you go back just a couple of slides on the design portion? This will be our first dog park. Are we doing this design internally? Are we going outside for consultation?

Everything that we're doing is internal.

Internal staffing. Internal staffing, okay. But again, I don't know if we have a dog expert. The question is, do we put the big dogs and little dogs or the trapeze thing or, you know, the bench here or there? I mean, are we... Saving money by trying to do this ourselves that we're going to waste money.

We got an expert in here We would have built it right the first time Now we feel comfortable in the grand scheme of things what we're doing is enclosing an area that is Already site ready with the fence and a parking lot the all the other pieces is just the The benches, the seating areas, the picnic area, and then there really is minimal play equipment there. So we have talked with some other experts in the area of dog parks that have offered to help us with the specific design packages as well as talking through with the procurement process with some area vendors that are particular to the dog park.

Yeah, the equipment itself, All of the interior equipment, benches, chain structures, the dog play amenities, all are part of a package from a group amenities. Just give them more room. When it comes to the fencing, the fencing company we procured the quote from also has done a bunch of dog parks and gave us a couple of really strong recommendations that really, I think, helped us.

I just want to make sure we get those recommendations. Oh, we should have built the big park bigger or the small park smaller.

We've been at this for six months, give or take, talking about trying to get some information from where we could. I've been to a few myself. So I think when we look at the whole big picture of how we planned this thing out, we took our time, looked around, talked to good people. So we felt... could experience people. I think as we went through, we felt very strongly that we had what we needed. And we have a lot of things here that staff people can really help us with. Public Works is great. They're going to help out. My staff, they know what they're doing. They know we'll be able to get in there. We're counting on the fence vendor to do their job well, which they will. They've done these before. And of course, if you're dealing directly with a company that provides dog park amenities, they've been down the road a time or two. I think we feel so. I know I do, and I sure do.

And the maintenance, in the event that people don't curb their dog, are we going to be out there every day? Yes.

It will be part of the loop that we go through. Whatever game is taking care of Harris Depot on a daily basis, just scoot up Harris Depot, take a look at the dog park, make sure it has what it needs every morning, and get out of the way.

Any other questions for Jim or Lee?

I'll just say y'all made it awfully complicated last month. I was listening. Oh, my God. Chihuahuas to the left. Yeah, I was sitting in my truck. I was listening outside my mom's house, and I'm like, oh, my God, just stop.

But to be fair, that was the first time they brought it to us. And some of us aren't dog owners, don't know. We would have normally assessed this in a retreat or another meeting. But I'm proud of us. We did it. I was yelling at my radio.

It took us a hot minute, though. You know, great job. Great job, Steph, listening to all our talk and deciphering what exactly we wanted. Because this is great. This is absolutely amazing.

I appreciate the visual to see the whole thing because I was kind of confused but I appreciate that so thanks for sharing that.

It was all my idea. I believe you Jim.

All right, if there's no other questions, is there a motion to approve the related fiscal year 2027 budget ordinance amendments appropriating $125,000 for the temporary municipal dog park project consistent with Council's July 13, 2026 authorization of the project and establish not to exceed project budget? So moved. Is there a second? Second. All in favor? Aye. Motion is carried. Thank you both very much.

That concludes old business we have two items for new business and Monterey is back with us for the first one Trying to make this a habit every month good evening, so please consider the appointment of Kevin Johnson to the Planning and Zoning Board as well as Board of Adjustment Quick background on P&Z board structure. It's a seven-member board, includes one ETJ member and one ex-officio member. Terms are for two years. And as far, our ETJ member served one term, did not seek reappointment, therefore creating a vacancy effective June 30th, 2026. Applications were accepted during April. The applicant interviews were conducted during May. The town did receive one application for the ETJ seat from Kevin Johnson, a Cabarrus County resident residing within the Harrisburg planning area. The town's interview committee made up of myself as well as two council liaisons interviewed Mr. Johnson in May and recommended his appointment to both boards. I won't read all of this, but section one of the planning and zoning board rules of procedure and the general statutes. So the town notified the Cabarrus County Board of Commissioners of the vacancy by letter dated on June 12th of this year and requested that the county waive its right of appointment. On July 21st at their meeting, the Cabarrus County Board of Commissioners approved a vote waiving its right of appointment and authorizing the town to appoint a qualified resident of the Harrisburg planning area to the seat. Section 3 of the Board of Adjustment Rules of Procedure provides that one regular Board of Adjustment member shall be the Planning and Zoning Board ETJ representative. So this further states that the incoming ETJ representative will serve as the remainder of the existing Board of Adjustment ETJ term. Mr. Johnson would therefore be appointed to the Board of Adjustment effective August 10th, 2026 through June 30th, 2027, rather than receiving a new three-year term, since their terms are two years versus three years for the Board of Adjustment. Recommended tonight, Kevin Johnson. He is the owner of Realtor Homes of the South, Inc. He has been involved in planning his entire career. He has worked in the residential real estate since 1988 in the Charlotte Metro and understands how important zoning and planning decisions are in a fast-growing region. He has lived in Harrisburg for 20 years, as he puts it, and he has also participated in the Citizens Academy. So here is the proposed Planning and Zoning Board roster if Kevin is appointed, filling the last position, as well as the proposed Board of Adjustment roster. And that concludes my presentation. Any questions?

Just one question. Him being a realtor, are there any times he'd have to recuse himself or be involved in a deal? And do we have a procedure for that?

We do have a procedure for that, and only if he's going to get direct financial, or his family will get direct financial impact.

Okay, and he's aware of that? Yes. Okay.

Can you just review that application process, please? Sure. In a similar situation to Mike earlier, somebody asked me, like, was this advertised separately, like beyond the... application period for P&Z, and I couldn't speak to that. I don't think you hit that in here. No, so this was absolutely. Let's just make sure. Sure.

So this definitely was included in the April applications. So whenever we got everyone's application together and realized that Eswar did not submit his reappointment, at that point it's trying to figure out who is even eligible to do that. So we noticed that Mr. Johnson, the only one that he could fill is the ETJ seat. But it's a normal application process.

It used to go through the county to us, and then the county turned it back over to us and said, you do better or something.

But they have to approve it.

Right.

And I saw that. I was actually at that meeting when all that. And I watched that work session, but I just wanted to make sure because, again, I got the question, and I was like, it is more convoluted than what our normal process was.

I would agree with that. It's definitely added a couple extra layers that are not normal.

Yeah. And Mike and I, and I as a liaison for the Board of Adjustments, and Mike was the second interviewee, we interviewed everyone Was it about May, June? I want to say May over a course of two weeks. And we had made the decision on everyone, but the reason that he was not included in July's presentation to you all for approval is because they had to go through the process with the county to make sure that county was okay with that nomination, that they didn't want to nominate someone else. So we had that ready to go. It's just they had to do this additional layer.

Correct. And by the time we took this before all of you and then received the letter that we submitted along with his application, we missed the deadline just due to semantics of procedure for July. So it went. It went. It went in July.

Yeah.

Yeah. Words, there we go.

But yes. Is the motion up there? Yes, ma'am. Thank you. With that, is there a motion to appoint Kevin Johnson as the extraterritorial jurisdiction representative on the Harrisburg Planning and Zoning Board for a two-year term beginning August 10, 2026 to fill the term that began July 1, 2026 and ends June 30, 2028? And to appoint Kevin Johnson to the Board of Adjustment for the remainder of the unexpired ETJ term beginning August 10, 2026 and ending June 30, 2027 in accordance with Section 3A of the Harrisburg Board of Adjustment Rules of Procedure.

So moved.

Is there a second?

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Motion is carried. Thank you. Thank you all. Our last item under new business is consideration of a contract with Atlantic Pipe Services for culvert rehabilitation on Leatherwood Lane, Patricia Avenue and Williams Road.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. Good evening. I'm here to present the contract for the culvert rehabilitation, Leatherwood Lane, Patricia Avenue, and Williams Road. This project is expected to utilize similar methods that were successful in the Piccadilly project last fiscal year. If you recall, we had that large culvert that was rehabbed in place with successful results. For this, the work is going to begin with cleaning out, removing the debris, leaves, other trash, sticks that are clogging some of these pipes and running some closed circuit television in there to get some good footage of it and know what exactly we're dealing with. Over at Leatherwood and Patricia, we expect to use a cured-in-place pipelining, and on Williams, more of a spin casting, which is similar to what was used at Piccadilly. Two different processes, but ultimately result in extending the life of the culvert, adding some new life to it. Not all circumstances or conditions are favorable to rehabilitation, depending upon the pipe condition and other factors, but this rehabilitation does provide a similar longevity to a new pipe being put back in place. This will be funded by the fiscal year 27 storm drain spot improvement capital project. And savings using this method versus actual replacement, anywhere about one-fourth to one-third of the cost of replacement, depending upon the circumstances. So you could see some substantial savings. This project fell below the threshold for formal bids, so we had informal bids. We requested quotes from three different vendors. All three provided their responses, and after review, staff determined that Atlantic Pipe Services LLC would be the lowest responsive and responsible provider. so timeline looks like this council approval hopefully tonight and after that we will look to start construction October 1st and wrap up construction by the end of the month around the 30th to have all three projects completed Here are some photos of what's going on over at Leatherwood Lane. So there's three 42-inch culverts crossing under the road, approximately 60 foot long. You can see here, you can see where previously some work was done to try to uh extend the life and you're just getting corrosion bottoms rusted out and it's allowing water to infiltrate and cause some damage over in the bottom left this is the outlet side of the pipes where the water is flowing downstream and here we have the three barrels of the culvert on the inlet side you can see where there's been some collapsing and some other factors that limit the ability of the water to flow River Patricia, this is a 36-inch culvert, approximately 70 feet long, and I don't have a picture of it, but it includes what we suspect is a blind junction box where the pipe crosses the road and then takes a turn to where its outlet on the right picture there. Again, do some cleaning video and then attack it with the method that is best for that one. And then finally over on Williams is a 48-inch pipe crossing under the road. Pictures there of inlet side, outlet side. It's got a pretty big spot here where the water comes out of the pipe and it's just tough to get equipment in there for a traditional replacement. But those are the three different areas. I just wanted to show you what we're working at there. The contract with Atlantic Pipe Services on a not-to-exceed basis would be for $199,485.53. As mentioned before, this will be funded through the fiscal year 27 storm drain spot improvement capital project. The available funding in this budget is $600,000, and if approved, this would reduce the fund to approximately $400,000 for the remainder of this authorization period, which spans from fiscal year 27 to fiscal year 29, expiring on June 30, 2020. And this supports the town's goal of a safe, well-maintained, and dependable public facilities and services. I'll open up to any questions that council may have.

That price, it covers the piping. Is it also including the pavement that's going to be required?

So this is not digging the pipe out and putting a new one in. Oh, okay. The pavement will not be impacted. This will be going into the pipe and applying a liner to the interior of the pipe, too. Extend the length of the pipe. So there will be no impact to the road, which is important on Leatherwood because Leatherwood is the only road in and out for those homes at the end of the street. So we'll have any lane closures, nothing like that.

Okay. Thank you.

You mentioned that you suspect that there's a pipe that cuts through one of the properties?

seat there. And again, I don't have it on the photograph, but just on the other side of the road here is what's called a blind junction box where two pipes come together. And normally you'd have like a manhole or a catch basin there. This situation is just a buried box. So there's nothing on the surface to show you where it is. But looking at the alignment of the two pipes, it's clearly there's a bend or something going on so but the treatment for this rehabilitation would address both pipes going into and out of that box okay you're not to exceed cost means we get our deliverable no matter what

If it rains or they find a dead body or whatever in there, that's on them, right? That's correct.

Okay. Leave it to Chris. Depends on who it finds. We've had a rough meeting already. That's a squirrel.

I noticed this Leatherwood, and I don't know where this is going to be exactly, but it sort of abuts the future Caldwell Road extension. Is that going to kind of take into account potentially additional storm waters and so forth from all those projects?

the short answer is no any new development would would do their own storm water so the anything that goes into that Caldwell Road extension or the Moorhead West area that increases impervious would have to capture their impervious all right thank you

right with that is there a motion to authorize the town manager to follow finalize negotiation and execution of the culvert rehabilitation contract contract for Leatherwood Lane Patricia Avenue and Williams right with Atlantic Pike services in the amount not to exceed one hundred ninety nine thousand four hundred eighty five dollars and fifty three cents so moved their second all in favor motion is carried thank you sir thank you

Rob action items I did make note of the public comment about the Hawthorne neighborhood cut through I think maybe just get a little more information yeah we'll see if we have that that gentleman's information but that was actually discussed at nauseam when the I Lee subdivision was connecting into there and there were raised pedestrian crossings and a stop there so that's already been addressed but we can we can share that speed bumps are a whole nother issue about effectiveness and if we're afraid there is some other cut through which I'm not I'm not sure there isn't a travel time cut through that that would work it would be something interior that you may be concerned about we can look at those areas and see if there's other traffic calming things we can do but we'll need that person's contact okay and then dogs in the park add that on to a future agenda what else did you have um i had a discussion for levy cap i know that's already been on our agenda but i have that marked down for future workshopping i'm going to follow back up i did relay the water bill website payment processing thing and I think Brian looked into that and that may have resurfaced so we'll check into that again and report back on that and those are the only two other ones I had that not as an action item but just as a big bold circle on my page that I've already sent out but it we've had some email issues that today really came so found out about yours over the weekend but then Mayor Teague had mentioned having an issue this afternoon and I know Councilwoman Glover's had issue for weeks but I thought those were kind of different really all three of them being there if anybody else is having email issues let me know but James Lee and I'll see what's going on and get that figured out ASAP.

All right. I think James looks defeated because he's got to work hard for him.

With that, we do have a need for closed session this evening for legal and personnel matters. So with that, is there a motion to leave open session and move into closed session?

So moved.

Second?

Second.

All in favor? Motion is carried. And for those in the audience, we do not have any additional business. When we return back into open session, we will just be adjourning.