Town Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening. I would like to call to order our September monthly town council meeting and thank all that are joining us in council chambers tonight as well as those watching us on our YouTube channel this evening. We will just move right into our agenda. And first up, is there a motion on the floor to adopt the agenda this evening as presented? Motion to adopt. Thank you, Mike. Is there a second? Second. All in favor? Motion is carried. Thank you. At this time, Councilman Debbanon will lead us in our invocation this evening.

Thank you, Mayor. Let's pray together. Father, we thank you uh as usual for a beautiful day. Uh Lord, we thank you for the cool crispness of the day and uh God, just thank you that you pour out your blessings over us. God, just ask you to continue to do that in our community. Uh Lord, we thank you for uh the opportunity to live in such a great town uh with so many great people. And so God, just ask that you bless this meeting tonight. God, that you would be with us as we make decisions uh that would be best for our community. Uh so God, we thank you and give you all praise, glory, and honor in Jesus name. Amen. Amen.

If everyone would please rise for the pledge of allegiance. I pledge algiance 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 have two special presentations this evening. And first up, we will have a presentation on the results from pavement management study in a three-year implementation plan. And we've got Jonathan Young with us tonight. Good evening, mayor and council. U very excited to be here. Um and we are going to uh get to see some pretty exciting stuff. I hope well exciting for us engineers maybe. Uh so maybe not some other folks. Uh but it is results of our payment management study. Uh if you remember back during the budget process, we did have all the departments were challenged with uh an initiatives, innovations and efficiencies. And this was one of the ones that I had presented during our budget process. we actually were able to implement the money for it from last year's budget. So, uh we wrapped up the project and now we'll be in the implementation mode. Uh just a really quick history on how the town has managed and done a great job I will say uh over the last few years uh our pavement and uh you can kind of see the spreadsheet on your right hand side. has really been tracked through a spreadsheet and there's it tells you the last time it was surfaced or if there was some other thing that was done to that particular pavement. towns utilize a couple of different treatment methods also uh including mill and fill which is essentially your when you're grinding up asphalt and replacing with new asphalt crack sealing liquid road rejuvenation objectives of this project uh you can see there on your left hand side uh develop an accurate payment network inventory capture HD videos which is a little bit unique for this particular um contractor process ASM dur distresses those are just your standard um standards from United States all everybody body would use calculate pavement condition index. I'm going to talk a lot about PCI so that's what that is and then qualify roadways for optimized treatments establish your working plan and then provide condition and analytics through road insights road insights is actually a GIS dashboard and I'll show you a picture of it here in a few minutes and something we may be able

to take advantage of and then that continued support uh through consulting and support. So, uh, the HD inventory, what they did do when they came out, our consultant, uh, they obviously grabbed inventory of all of the roads here in Harrisburg, which is roughly about 87 roads, 87 miles of road. And, um, they've got the from, to length, width, area, surface. We were able to take all that information actually on the dashboard. You can click on any road section here in town and it'll show you an HD video of the day they took it. uh and you can ride through and look at that that road section. That information is obviously taken back into their dashboard and processed. And we'll again go over that a little bit. Just some common pavement distresses we see throughout the United States. Maybe not necessarily here in Harrisburg, but I know there are some of these. Uh alligator cracking starting from your left going to your right. U again start start to see that pretty much everywhere in North Carolina. That's when you start to see those failures in your pavement. Block cracking. Uh reflected cracking is when you've got something wrong underneath typically and that's why it's in a straight line like that. And then rivaling which is just basically you're losing that that asphalt layer totally. Uh tend to see that in your high moisture content areas or maybe snow. Uh rudding. You've probably all ridden on something that's been rudding before where you've got u basically you've got bad soil underneath there. something's going on that you probably need to go down and do some work on. Patching can be a lot of things that are happening from patching, whether it's utility cut or, you know, just repairing uh something along the roadway. And then, of course, bleeding and ride quality is is something that's really kind of uh, you know, up to the person that's on there. Depends on the place where you are, what ride quality is. Uh again like I said they took all that information uh the consultant we were

working with they did process process it through their system um came back that they have a quality control so they basically review that and then there is a standard for it as I said you can see it there on your screen um and then it develops into a PCI calculation for here in Harrisburg um the five CA categories are excellent good fair poor failed and I'll go over each one of those in a little more detail at the end of the slides Uh this is our dashboard. Well, this is actually one snippet of the dashboard. There's actually multiple layers of it. Um you can kind of see up in the upper leftand corner up in righthand corner there. That's our here in Harrisburg. That is the PCI number right now, which is actually really good. Um so done a great job over the years here with the spreadsheet and where we are. 78 is high. Uh you don't see anything much more than an 80 anywhere in North Carolina. It's just hard to achieve those numbers. The middle screen you see there is all the roads in Harrisburg with a uh that's actually the the ranking based on um the year uh right now. You can change it around to put what the rehabilitation is or whatever it happens to be. Um so they did complete the three-year review of the streets. We're actually have our first paving out right now. It's that bid is due this week. Uh so that'll be from this from this report. Uh, as I said, the professional collected the video. We did get our PCI index back, which is 78. Um, and then there, this this management plan does include several different treatment methods. Tonight, we're going to be really focusing in on our structural, which is Milanfield, but we do have plans to implement all these over these three years. And then, of course, the deliverable was that GIS dashboard that you can see right there. This is something we also one of the things I did want to point out. Um we are looking at whether we want to put this on make this available to the public. It's a pretty intuitive pretty easy dashboard. Um but you know it's

just uh something we'll we'll be making a decision on. Uh I this was actually something I brought up to you in our uh budget processes that deterioration curve for asphalts. you can kind of see in that 10 to 20 year time frame that you really get a lot of loss uh in asphalt quality. Uh and so what we're shooting for is that that green line at the top. That's where you that's where you're putting in your pavement management, your uh your preservation, your structurals, your rejuvenation. You're really trying to extend the life of that. Um and again, you know, I don't want you to think that it goes on forever. Uh you know, the life of pavement is just not. It's only going to be so long. So you're looking trying to extend in that 5 to 10 year range which again you you'll be able to recoup that in dollars as well. So just a really quick overview of what some of that would look like. Um again this was a a test case that was done uh in the in the middle there. You can see an October 2018 photo. Um this is under test conditions. Uh so the the original treatment was done mill and fill on or mill and overlay on this whole asphalt here in 2004. You can see on the left hand side of your screen or the picture that nothing that's with no additional treatment. You've got a lot of cracking. Um you've actually got some potholeing there. Needs some maintenance. Again, nothing was done here. And then on the right hand side there was some crack sealing conventional micro which is one of the surfaces that we'll talk about tonight. But you can kind of see the difference in those road sections. Again, all that is it is based on a lot of different things. Could be the amount of traffic, whatever it happens to be, underlay, you know, the base, all that stuff would determine what that road's going to look like. And just some general pictures of what each one of these um each one of these recommendations would look like as well. Uh last thing here, we'll go over our treatment qualification. As I said, we

do have PCI uh here in in Harrisburg of 78. What those PCIs look like from 90 to 100 is an excellent range. Uh that's typically what you'd be looking at from a um where you would go in there and do some kind of treatment is what they call recommite or fog seals. Some of you may have seen some of this. Uh it's actually pink. A lot of it is when it goes down on the ground. Kind of looks a little weird. Um, but it actually dries pretty quickly and basically you're just trying to reinvigorate those that asphalt, you know, was a liquid in there and it just goes away as the sun hits it. The things uh as other treatments and rain and all that stuff hits it, it just eventually deteriorates and so you're just trying to rebuild that. Um, and again, this is not a comprehensive life extension. So, you can't take all these and collectively put them together. You're only going to have a certain amount of time. U maintenance. We've got uh that PCI range 70 to 90 and that's a good affair. And again, what we're looking at here is a lot of crack seal. You're going to notice crack seal a lot in here. Um crack seal is not aesthetically pleasing. I will say that in most scenarios. So it typically is combined with other things like a liquid road or something like that to really cover it up. But what crack seal gives you uh is keeping that moisture out from underneath the pavement. If you can keep it out from underneath the pavement, you can really get away from a lot of things like your potholes, a lot of your cracking and things like that. That's really what you're trying to do. It's a very effective method. Um, go to preservation. This is where we're starting to actually apply something to the road. Again, this is a lot of times connected with crack sealing, but there's a lot of different examples of this. As I said, you guys have used we've used liquid road here in the past. And then we've got microsurfacing, slurry seal, cape seal. You're looking at a good defair in seven to 10 years life extension structural, which is what we're going to focus on in our current paving for this year. Um there's a couple of different reasons why that is. One of them is we

do feel like that's going to give us the best bet this year and be able to raise that score, which is what we're trying to do. We're trying to fine-tune it, get better roads. Uh but that's in that 30 to 49 range. That is a poor condition. 10 to 15 years of life expectancy. And of course, that's your typical mill and field where you can see there you're taking out a piece of asphalt and putting asphalt back in. And I've got examples on each one of these from here in the town of Harrisburg. And then the last one, um, this is where we want to stay away from actually because this is your most expensive. That's kind of what you saw in this uh treatment life cycle was least expensive down to most expensive. Here you've got rehabilitation, which is essentially uh you're tearing up the road, tearing up the subgrade, rebuilding all of it. Um you don't want to do that. Uh the good thing here in Harrisburg, there's only one that actually was in that PCI range of 029, which is actually a Harrisburg industrial park drive where the public works facility is. We do not believe it is in that. Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of odd, but uh we do not believe that that's actually uh we need to go in there and do that subgrade. It's, you can see the PCI is at 25. So, it's in that realm of we do believe it still would be a good structural candidate. So, that's actually on our list this year to redo. Uh, just a little bit of benchmarking. As I said, great job uh has been done here in Harrisburg. Current overall PCI is 78. If you get up in that 80s range, you really have done, you know, that's just like some of your top-notch communities have really focused on it for years and years. It's just hard to get above that. Miles of, you know, your miles of uh streets maintained are roughly about 83. We add to those every year as you know as well. And then I just gave you a couple of local area benchmarkings. Morrisville was um is 74 and then Concord just got theirs done as well and they're at 75. So again, what we want to do, the goal of this is is to get that number up. We really want to hit that 80 to 82 so we can be in those

top tiers uh in our community. So with that, I'll take questions. There any questions for Jonathan? Um, just a comment. I would like it to be above that 8082. And I think it's self-fulfilling. I understand one of the craft cabin there, if you take better care of it, it's actually less dollars. Run the numbers to say if we got to 80, it actually be cheaper in the long run.

It would. So the goal is that obviously what you're trying to do is you're trying to spend the dollars on the front side of it to get to those higher numbers like your cheaper dollars. So for example, last year I think we accepted, I don't know, three miles of streets here uh in in Harrisburg, whatever the number will happen to be, those are your streets that you'd be looking at. I know it sounds crazy, but you might want to go in there and start putting some of that the stuff I showed you on there that was the the pink. um you might want to keep those that stuff rejuvenated and make sure it's good for that next five years. So you're and that cost you let's say that's a dollar per square foot as opposed to millingfield that might be $10 per square foot. Yeah. So that's what you really your goal is here and that's why in this particular instance we're going to be doing a lot of the structural but we also we know we've g we we actually put some additional money in our street maint budget last year if you remember. I think it's about $100,000. we can go in and actually do some of those other initiatives which has happened already here.

So when's the next survey we're going to get? So we'll see that we move from 78 to 82 or whatever it is. It's a great question. We plan on doing that every three years. Used to be a most municipalities would do it on a 5year cycle. What what got uh what started these municipalities started seeing was that five years you would have streets that may you didn't even look at the year you know you started it and all of a sudden you've changed the traffic dynamic on it or something's happened and it just wasn't effective. So really the three-year is the sweet spot on all of it now. So we're looking at a three-year. And how much does that survey cost? $31,000. Okay.

And that's in dashboard and everything. That's all the stuff. Any other questions for Jonathan? Thank you, sir. Appreciate that. Our second special presentation tonight is the update on historical farm mill project. And we've got Jim Spina and then a representative from McGill and Associates with us tonight.

Good evening, Mayor Council. It's my pleasure to be here again this month talking about a uh another potential park uh upgrade or renovation depending on how you want to look at it. And this one is about our historic farm mill uh property located on the corner of Shamrock and Farm Mill. And just a quick pro uh project review where where we at where we started and where we're at. In June of 21, uh the mill itself was deconstructed with uh many uh artifacts and millstones and some lumber uh able to be uh saved for potential future use in uh in in future parks. In September that year, we did appoint a committee uh consisting of staff, council, Hatch, our Hatch Committee, our parks and recreation advisory board, and uh a few people from the community as repres as representatives. And then May of 24, uh the town did contract with uh McGill and Associates to begin work on a farm farm mill historic master plan. In June of 24, that committee reconvened uh the committee I mentioned earlier recommen convened and met with McGill to discuss uh vision. What kind of things would be important? How would we maintain the historical nature of that property and uh that was shared with McGill and they went off and got to work uh to start coming up with a couple of renderings and some ideas as to how we could best use that property. And so between uh that June and that September uh September of 24 uh they developed a couple of renderings and uh they had a community drop in here in this uh room on a very rainy night and uh we wanted to hold it at Farmill Park but it was uh incredibly wet. So we had it right here in council chambers. had a good showing. A large uh group of uh

staff committee uh committee members, but also quite a few community residents as well as some council members were in attendance there to take a look at a couple of the early renderings as to what was possible out at the Farmill Historic Park. So then uh based on that uh information they received that night, they went back to work, McGill did, and started uh developing uh a a third rendering with like a big approach. you know, what are the different things we could do there bigger than just what they had brought for their first two renderings. And they uh in February, they did meet uh with uh myself and our staff uh uh Rob and Lee, we met to kind of kind of get a little better idea of which way we're they were headed and they went back to work and did a few more things. And then uh in July of 25 uh we met one more time. We met in person here at town hall. Lee, myself, and Rob met with Jim and Mike, Jim Ford and Mike Norris from McGill and uh kind of gave them some ideas, a couple of tweaks to the uh rendering itself and they went off again in the month of August and kind of did some more work and then that's why we ended up here tonight in September 25 uh as McGill is here uh to present the latest rendering. So, I'm going to turn the uh podium over to Jim Ford from McGillan Associates and he'll take you through the next few slides.

Thank you, Jim. Jim Ford from McGill. Great introduction. Uh most of what I'm going to cover is in this timeline somewhere. There may be a little bit of repeat, but mayor, council members, I really do appreciate the opportunity to explore some of what the concepts ended up looking like. With that, we'll move on. Uh we'll go over some site analysis. We'll get in a little more detail on that community input. We'll look at those concepts. Ultimately, you know, costs matter. So, we're going to talk about that just a little bit and next steps. So, under the site analysis, you know, you may know this site. It's largely wooded. It's on the Rocky River. It's actually really beautiful if you've never been out there. Some of my community members showed up and said they go tubing down the Rocky. That was really cool. Uh, but largely it's wooded. It is a site of historic mill. But think about what that means. We're Harrisburg. I heard somebody else say, "Hey, we're a young community." Well, what's the history? What's our quality of life if we don't know where we came from? And Harrisburg has an opportunity here to highlight some of that history which I think is really interesting. Overall, uh we'll get into what this means as a site as far as limitations. Yeah, it is next to the Rocky River and rivers tend to flood every now and then. This one doesn't do it all the time, but it does have a significant portion there in pink in the flood way. We had to consider that when laying objects out just because it's more expensive to deal with things in the floodway, if it's even possible. But in this case, we tried to explore all the different options. Uh we talked about that history a little bit. There's a great website that goes over this if you guys want more information on this particular facility uh this site, but you can see the building before it was knocked down. As Jim had mentioned, there were artifacts. There were millstones. There were some really cool things that can be recycled and repurposed. And I think you've got those stored overall. That's what the building looked like there on the right. We'll get into what that means later. For those of you that haven't been out there, it's a little bit hard to see, but it's a wooded site, right? There's a few low areas. It's a little marshy next to the water, but there's some huge rocks, a lot of rocks down by the water, and it's really beautiful. I can imagine

uh you know, folks wanting to go down there and see what I saw, of course, with less uh briars to walk through. Right. The community input, we did hold that. We had 30 participants show up. That was last September. I was really touched because I had folks that said, "Hey, I'm a neighbor." It's it's great to see something happening over here. I didn't hear a lot of negatives. I heard a lot of ideas. It was interesting because we had just come off the comp plan, the comprehensive recreation plan. I'd already learned a lot about the community and the kind of things that they liked, right? And then thinking about this site, it's a little bit different, right? You're not going to have stick and ball out here necessarily, but it's still recreation, right? But the folks came out, they looked at the concepts we'll look at here in a moment, and responded. And with those responses and with the staff input, we did end up with that third concept. We'll get to that, but largely it was, "Hey, we like what you got, but can you go bigger?" And so, we'll look at what those different designs came out to be. But in that meeting, while we did give people the opportunity to write things down and speak to us, we did show precedent images. That's important because not everybody knows, you know, when you say a boardwalk, what do you mean a boardwalk? What do you mean a waterhe exhibit? What are you talking about? So, I did try to find photographs that pretty closely looked like the things that I'd heard from the public. Not that it's super important. These things aren't ready yet, but I think this represented some of the ideas also out of the comp plan, which is interesting. That's going to be really hard for the folks out here to see, but you remember we looked at that site. We noticed it was a big area of the floodway. You'll see that there are not structures in that northern portion for that reason. This is sort of a light uh option. It has a small parking area. It has a picnic shelter. It has a playground. It has a water area. Where is that? You're kidding me. Well, that's something else. Okay, there's that playground. There's that shelter. That's that water play area. Water play. We looked at it in an image if you've seen the upper lefthand corner, but if you've ever been to a park that has water, you can turn on and people can

watch how the hydraology works, how it starts, how it flows, and how it ends up somewhere and has to be dealt with. neat lesson that you could learn here at this park in the future. Largely paved trails for ADA reasons, right? Makes it easier for folks with strollers or in wheelchairs or having dis disabilities to use your trail. There's a few opportunities because of the low areas in here to have a few bridges which adds interest and keeps your feet dry too. Uh but gardens, people wanted to see community gardens. They wanted to see places where those exhibits of where what's a millstone? What's that big piece of metal that's in here? a sign that says, "Hey, this used to be a mill. These are some of the things you would have found out here." So, it's an education for your students, for your residents that are unfamiliar, etc. But this was kind of the the lowest of the three. Moving on. Should have bl the first time. Is that a little bit easier for you to see? That's that water play area, right? Okay. Now, it's not working, Joe. That's okay. Top. That's that area right there. Now, moving down and I'll finalize concept one with this area right now. go that area with the big boulders. That's where that is. The two or three people I've been with to this site all seem to gravitate to that spot. Coincidentally, that's where the race is, where the old mill used to be, where the big rocks are. Kind of an interesting spot if you know the history of how the mill used to work, but it's highlighted down at the bottom. Largely, it's being used for fishing, wildlife observation. Perhaps those tubers that I met at the community meeting have a cleaner place to get into the river there when possible. Concept number two, it's kind of the same thing but reimagined, right? This one offers a big difference in that green area. Okay, that's your event lawn. That could be an area where, hey, I need a space to host an awards ceremony. Hey, let's have a craft fair. Let's do something to honor the history and bring people out. While the parking lot's been increased slightly from one to be able to accommodate those activities, now you have an area to be

able to do those cultural activities. So, you're not only hosting young people. You're not only hosting people that want to get an education about history and those walkers, but also some small events throughout the year. That kind of got people thinking after the community meeting. Well, you've got these structures. You got a picnic shelter with restrooms, couple places here. What if it was a bigger building? Can you do this a little bigger? So, that's what we did in concept three. Move ahead. Now, there's a few more slides for this one because this is the more grand visions. This does reflect not only things we heard way back in the comp plan, but the need for trails and walking areas and picnic areas, etc., but it also does incorporate that history. I've taken liberty to find some images that represent these elements. We'll go over those pretty quickly. So, that's the educational classroom. That's a space that could be leased. You could rent that for an event. Certainly, staff can use that for internal meetings as well, but you have another area in that scribe circle there. Now, the entire site, let's just come from the beginning. You pull in, you park, the first thing you're going to see is that building and a water wheel. Why? Because that's cool. There used to be a water wheel there, and I think that adds to the theme, right? Who doesn't like to walk up to a water wheel? What is this thing? Hey, there used to be one of these here. So, that's why that's there. That serves as a big sign. History, the mill, what this site used to be about to accommodate the folks that would come. The parking lot's been made bigger, right? We've got to accommodate as big a parking lot as we can get in there if we want to attract that many people in a large paver area. There's picnic tables. There's also an area here we'll get into that's a gathering space, a play area. The trail connects you to that same area where folks were getting in the water, but this time you've got a wooden platform as well as a way to walk around the edges with those tubes and get in that water if and when that's still allowed. The area at the top we'll get into as well. That's a boardwalk with an overlook. We saw some great images and heard from some folks that said that they had seen these elsewhere. Would love to see what that would look like out here to take advantage of the aesthetics of this beautiful area.

There's that water play element I mentioned before there in the bottom. I don't know if you've ever seen one of those. I have three kids. Those things are always popular. Uh but they're also very educational. The building that you see here is just my idea of what does the history look like? What the old mill building look like? How can we build something more robust that looks more contemporary and respects that history of Harrisburg, bringing in that waterhe element? Doesn't have to look like that. That was just one of the ideas that uh looked like what staff was mentioning to me. Moving on to the picnic shelter. You'll notice that area number three has a rectangle within a rectangle, right? That's because the idea of this picnic shelter, and you've probably been to those that have picnic tables and restrooms underneath that kind of half and half. Now imagine that that interior space is the center and that the porch like area around the perimeter becomes your gathering space for rocking chairs, meeting places, etc. You could even have art on those exterior walls, but it adds a layer of interest. It's something a bit more contemporary and certainly useful for folks here. There's the picnic area I mentioned before, and we're getting a little bit closer. There's that really cool water feature. Why a water feature? Well, because I did the comprehensive plan. How many times did I hear we want water? We want places to splash and play. That doesn't necessarily mean swimming pools, but if you've been to any of the local parks around, you'll notice the ones that have these water spray areas where somebody can walk up, hit a button, and watch the water come out of some feature. In this case, the boulders to emulate what's down at the river. You'll see that seasonally, when it's warm, it's a cooling area. It provides an extra sound. So, when you gather there, it's kind of an enclosed space with that soundsscape. It's certainly aesthetically pleasing, I think. So it has the vernacular we spoke of the Rocky River but more than that seasonally when it's turned off it becomes a plaza to meet and gather. Just an interesting spot. Moving ahead that big yellow triangle. What is that? Well you've got some of these now you some shade structures. Why? Because it was suggested by our community members and certainly after

you read the comp plan that there's more room for play in Harrisburg. Why? Because you are a growing community and because there are more families than usual. You are not necessarily the oldest community, but one that still is very broad with children and families. What I'm showing you though is if you were to do a play area, don't just do a regular play area. Think about the vernacular. Think about that river. What does that look like in let's say a poor place? What kind of play equipment could you be in there? Well, hey, it's 2025. You don't have to have the old basic slide anymore. There's companies that sell things like that otter. Why? Because there's otter in the Rocky River, right? Why not? It's cool. It brings the education, the history, and it has that local vernacular and certainly the geography of the area. There is that little otter thing there. Moving ahead, the history. This is the part that really means the most to me. It's because I researched it and I was really touched. There's so much that went on here. There's a number of different ways to honor that.

This is just one of the ways, right? This is the way that seemed to reflect most of what I heard from the community input and after reactions from staff, the most appropriate way. It doesn't mean the only way. If you notice, this area has what looks like some kind of foundation and an area to sit and view. What does that look like? Here's a precedent. You could rebuild the old foundation of what used to be there. It doesn't mean you have to rebuild the whole structure. Why would it be challenging to build that whole structure? Remember that floodway? It's really hard to build buildings where you're in a floodway. Not only expensive, uh, but it could be timeconuming and who knows how long it'll last. Regardless, it can still be done. But in this case, you're honoring the foundation. And then you've got these educational signs. That's a clear window. And what you can't tell from your seats is there's an acid etched image of a structure which is talked about in the sign below. Now there's your structure. There's the old mill. Imagine that on that. Now I'm standing in a certain spot and I read about the history. I can look through that window. I literally see a ghost of what used to be there and learn, hey, you know what? They didn't rebuild it, but I can sort of imagine it. You can see it clearly in an exhibit such as this along with your educational spots around the trail where those artifacts are displayed. This would be sort of a premier spot to say, "Hey, this is where it was and that's what it looked like." Moving forward again, we're getting to that water. You know, something that really weighed heavy on folks back in the comp plan was we want more water access. Get us to the water. And here's an opportunity to do that. Now, I know it's not the deepest water. You're not getting big boats in there, but it's a fun place to view obser, you know, observe wildlife, play in the water, perhaps fish if there's fish in there, and I heard otherwise, but tubing certainly seemed to be a favorite with some folks that came out to talk to us. Uh, what would that look like? Something can levered over so that you could view along with a very broad portion of the boardwalk such that it's a gathering area. It's an area to go out there with classes.

go out there and just feel like, "Wow, I live in Harrisburg and this is cool." So, moving on. These things cost money, right? And everything gets more expensive it seems day by day. There's no way to know Crystal Ball. And this is such high level planning. There's not been construction documents created yet. So, I can't really bid this out to find out. But have the honor of building parks regularly based on these designs for other communities in the area. And based on the bids and the things I'm seeing if you were to build out that last image, it's going to be around $3.1 million. That could be phased over time, there's certainly funding sources like the parks and recreation trust fund grant you could look into because it does meet that as well. They require things like having at least a quarter mile of walking path, having at least three elements to score competitive grant. This design kept that in mind so that you would be eligible for that if indeed you decided to go that direction. And with that, that's a lot of information in a small package, but I'll entertain any questions.

So, Rob, you see how he um speaks quickly and gets through it. I took notes. Okay. I can go over anything again if you need me. No, no, no. I'm saying I like that. Okay. That was a compliment to you and something other otherwise to me. Um, yeah, I appreciate all the effort and going through all the options and going back and forth and everything. Um, I don't know what what did we budget? There's there's about there's hundreds of thousands of dollars. Not we're not in the millions at all.

Not in the millions. Um, and I you weren't here last week, but last week we're talking about adding um like shade structures and uh more play equipment in the park. That's half mile down the road. Yeah. At the at the, you know, boardwalk park.

Um, so I guess just my initial thoughts are like I love it. Um, but I think I see this place as less of like a recreational park and more of like a place to go visit because the the start of this project was let's save the mill and people dragged their feet and we had to tear down the mill because it was rotting. And so it it literally is our last kind of historic remnant in town. We saved the post office. There's some old homes, but that's kind of like about it, right? So I it'd be nice to see the the mill more of a focal point as well. I'm not sure the playground structures like fit that that park. Maybe they belong where we're talking about putting new ones up there. And this is more of a a relaxing park, a place for walking trails, a place to reflect on the history, and less of a, oh my god, there's 500 kids here, and they're all screaming, right? And um I'm not against kind of the water structures and that, but it's like, hey, you know, we've got water here. Let's go send them down to the water. Let them let them scream there as opposed to the to the shade structures. Um engage the I love the mill idea. Maybe there's a educational piece, you know, every Saturday at 10:00 am come grist some mill, right? And take it home and bake some bread or something like I don't know the, you know, the attorneys can figure that stuff out on on safety. Um, but you know, if if that's sort of a possibility and um I tell you what I really do like is the sort of meeting space. We're we're just lacking that in town completely. Um, and maybe that gets incorporated a little more. Um, I have a lot of comments. We can talk later. Um, it's this has kind of been my baby for a while and I've just, you know, I really want to preserve the mill and what that is. So, as much engagement that we can get with that historic piece, you know, the

better. But, you know, without forgetting the feedback that we did get, but that's just kind of my general thoughts on the project. And, you know, we can't afford it. But, you know, we'll talk about that later. I don't know if anybody else has anything, but I passed out a concept for that I rushed through this weekend just anticipating some of the the comments and conversations of this because obviously um 3.2 million is is a lot. And if we think of how we kind of went through this this project, we started with a couple of concepts both independent of each other. Um we then had our our public meetings. We we put all of those concepts because just the the kind of way we operate here is we never really want to let go of anything. We just want to do everything. And so we've got this little site and it starts off as a historic mill site and we see all these cool things on a concept. So then we overlay both of them. Then on top of that there's two or three things that I really wanted to see out here um based on our parks and rec master plan and this particular site. So then we had a boardwalk in and we had that community space which I heard um Mayor Prom Glover talk about earlier about we just don't have this community space and I've heard several other council members and our county partners and everybody we we really need another space that isn't this council chambers to to have stuff at. And in addition to that, this is a historic site which really needs some indoor space to preserve some of these things that we have down there in storage containers now. So we we're going to have to display these things and and be able to show folks the the history. So um keeping the the budget in mind and some of the other things that we've worked on as we've worked on this simultaneously with additional play structures and and other things right down the road at Farm Mill. This is a

minimalist look that kind of preserves those major things in the site. Some walking paths, nature walking paths, access to the river via kayak launches, boardwalk, stuff like that. And then you'll see on on your sheet number three and number one are that historic uh foundation and looking glass structure and whatever we could do um in there as far as just um signage and storytelling separated with a plaza that abuts a working water wheel and a history museum that could double as a community space. with the thought being we could pump water from from the river and actually have a working wheel there that we could show and operate via again if we contract with withan or this is something that we want to do inhouse but to really be able to do some of the things Councilman Patrick mentioned where you can you know go down and and gristill or or uh um maybe you can't go home and bake bread with it via the attorneys but at least you could uh take it home and throw it at your brother or sister or something like that. Um, but really preserving just that that space and moving it all down close to the water as close as we can, knowing that, you know, we've got some flood plane and floodway issues that we'd have to do some grading and things in there, but getting folks down to do those three main things that that came up in the history narrative, which is what are the three main things here? It was a gathering place, it was a working mill, um, and it was access to water. So, those were the three things that I tried to capture after taking all the feedback. after looking um at our butt. I would love to do everything here, but uh all of these things kind of compete with the other parks that we have going and with the financial resources that we have. So, if I had to narrow it down, that's what that's what I've passed out is, you know, if we're going to go to the next step and focus on something more concise,

I think this is this is the way to go about it. Thank our staff and McGill for doing all of this uh on the weekend and this morning to get to get this to us. Jim Ford. Yes. So great presentation question though. Is there an opportunity like recognizing our financial constraint is there like a simulation for us to like play with and see what falls within our budget? Sure. Like require a little bit of a phasing exercise. I can certainly Wait, does that cost us more? I'm so serious. Is it long? It won't take too long to get that wish list to figure out what goes in. Just an idea.

Well, I think you can kind of do it like I did

and and you have a cost estimate in this presentation and each item is costed out. Now, there's some overlap uh to those things like grading would go massively down with a with a smaller grading scope, but you can look at there and see, you know, what does the play structure cost? It's it's $500,000. Do you put $500,000 in a play structure that you're going to put right down the street or do you save that 500 on a project like this and say we can we can deal with a very nice meeting space, museum, and uh preserved mill area with access to the water and still have everything except for that. or again if you if you blow it out, you know, we're probably closer to 3 and a half 4 million when when all said and done.

I think I'm with Ian on this. Like if it if we didn't have the playground area just down the street that we're actually expanding, going to make even better and greater. Um, I don't see this as needing to have the playground, but should, you know, 15, 20 years from now, there's going to be a greater need, there's all that space and we kind of have these renderings that we can start leveraging.

But I think it's easy to look at the cost of of that building, the cost of the mill renovation, the cost of the boardwalk, and then you can kind of add some parts and pieces to that. cut the parking lot in half. Um but like those interactive water features that that were up, you know, higher on this um plan or I guess uh to the bottom of the page if you're looking at most of the the concepts. Um those can certainly go in a plaza area, you know, budget um if we have enough budget in there to accommodate for that. But it just really it just really comes down to what do you want the site to be. It can be the concept that we all came up with, which I I think is a good concept. It's just a lot to it. And it does kind of I think just knowing who we are as a town, it will transform the site from primarily a historic site to primarily a park. Uh if we have a nice playground there, a lot of people won't even know the mill is there.

Um if we put the water features up near the parking lot, kids aren't going to be allowed to go down by the creek. So I I think it's a matter of um just understanding community that you have and putting the things deliberately in the right spots. Well, and I also want to say, you know, programmatically that building is so badly needed. Yes. You know, we used to have art classes here, but you know, since we've expanded here, we've lost some space.

We can't do the art, the Lego summer camps. Those things are really difficult. We don't have that space. And further, we get I don't know how many calls Kathleen gets at the office a week asking for lease space. You know, they want to have a small shower or a birthday party. We, you know, we just don't have those opportunities. So, um, you know, when we met in July and kind of came up with that idea that building, Rob really kind of pushed that, I thought that was great because we we don't that's something we don't have and it's something I think will be really important. So,

I don't know. Thematically, seems a little wild while you're looking back at history. You have some kid falling off the monkey bars in the background trying to learn your town's history. Um, and then I'm curious about funding. You know, we don't want to put bumper stickers all over it, but is there a chance for underwriting from one of our great partners in town? uh you know, if they can get their name discreetly at the bottom of the entry door to the museum or something that they you know plow in $50,000 to help us out. But yeah, this just seems a lot cleaner. Like what am I going for? Am I going with my bathing suit and flip-flops or am I going in here to read a book or go to a wedding shower or But this seems cleaner and I like the idea. I think if I get this conceptually that building number three would also have artifacts or display or a picture on the wall or uh furniture in keeping with the time or lighting that looks like you know what they would have at that time. There's a chance to really do that structure one four and three right and plow the money into that. I don't think anybody's going to scream if we don't have one more sliding board. I mean, if we put it up, you you're right. They'll come and they'll be out there with a sack lunch and five kids and the antill, you know,

hill. But, um, you know, like you said, in the future, 12 years from now, if they want to go put all that in, there's plenty of land. Well, we should to that point. We could do it later, but like, let's set the tone for what it is. That's right. Right. Now, like this is about the mill and the water, right? And the meeting space and gathering space. The piece of property lends itself to be just more calming, right? It's in the woods. Really great out there. The list, the flow of the, you know, it's very sensory out there. And we, you know, we talked about in the comp plan earlier, the um,

you know, you want people to have diversity of options, too. And we have the ball fields and the play structures and the we have all that, but we don't have like, okay, I'm going to go take take a book and a cup of coffee that I picked up on the way and just go sit in nature by the water and read, right? I mean, we just don't offer that anywhere here. And we have the opportunity. I think we should take it. Yeah. And that's why I like that on this simplified plan, you've preserved the boardwalk to allow people to really enjoy taking the views, the water, and you know, maybe we could have some benches there and so forth.

But we also know that in our parks and rec master plan, the top three things that people wanted was outdoor space, right? Walking, trails, that was there were one, right? Water access. Water access. Yeah. So this fits obviously fits within that plan. Is there Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead. I was just going to say, is there a way to connect in the future to the existing park or is there some properties in between that we can

Well, interesting question. So, um, so you know, I think the first the most important thing about the site is the mill. The second most important thing is the water access. I would put the meeting space third. And that's because this water, you know, as you're looking at it here, flows left to right and goes to Farmill Park. So, if this were to be built and we basically cleared out a receiving area at current Farmill Park, we could operate the second um blueway in the county. There is one out in Mount Pleasant where you could launch a kayak from here and um

and in Farmill Park and and they actually kind of horseshoe around so they're not that far from each other. Roadway access is tough out here. People tend to go about 300 miles an hour on Farmill Road, but um but they're not driving through the river yet. And so I think that that that is something that I think is really special about this this design and this location. Yep. left-hand gym since we have two gyms up there. Um, you said you may be able to do a cost analysis with a a little bit of time, but this is very specific. So, I'm hoping it wouldn't take you too long to say, "Well, if you did this plan, then this." Okay.

If I can get a a list of your priority items like you just mentioned, just confirm that we can start there. Yeah. Yeah. And then along this path, if there were monuments or benches or, you know, natural shade, we don't have to build shade there. I don't know if there's trees out there for people just to sit out there and read a book. You know, parking lot seems right uh to accommodate that building. And I don't know what the revenue stream would be on the Jones family reunion. Do we charge for that or Yes. Just like we do with the outdoor shelters, the minimus or is there any kind of revenue associated with that? Well, that and and because that's indoors and that would probably draw a little

we set our own rate on that and and honestly you'd have to set a rate that is appropriate otherwise the thing's going to be booked up three years in advance. Well, that's how the barn is at Frank List and thanks Jim because he helped we were trying to find a location for something in the community and I think during the week at Franklist it was $400 for the whole day for the whole barn. Um, and they are literally booked two and a half years out. It was actually kind of a miracle that we got it for that Thursday for an event. Um, but it is constantly constantly booked out. So, I don't think we would have much trouble no that filling that time as well. 350 days a year it'll be booked.

So, if we did a performer that said, you know, you're going to sink this cost in and in two and a half years you're recouping tax. I assume this needs HBAC and all those things too. So yeah.

Yeah. I So I think our our next steps would be to go back. Um I I don't think there's anybody that thinks we should go smaller or less than than the the handout that that I did. I think that's kind of we're at and and do some um cost analysis on this and have some one-on- ones with with y'all on are there are there elements that were really important to you that you want us to cost out and and put in here. But I think there's there's some details in this that are the next phase, right? And we bring back more of a detailed engineering um process before you of you know where the benches go, what type of material are on these paths, what does this boardwalk look like? Is it wood? Is it tracks? Is it concrete foundations? How much grading do you have? There's a lot of very detailed things including the building design, interior design, um artifact display, you know, size of that building. It's currently specked at the same size as the uh building we've done our retreat in several times. So that's the footprint to to have the a similar building like that. Um but how how big is that plaza? How far is that distance away? Those are all things that are just really conceptual. out.

I uh I pulled up the because a resident sent us an email this morning clipping the uh the priorities from the parks. And the top three were paved connectivity trails for bikes and pedestrians, neighborhood parks, and natural conservation areas. And I think this fits that bill. Absolutely. Fits all of them. Yeah. What does it look like in that flood floodway area?

Pretty much all those pictures that I was showing you showed where you have some undulated land where you want to go back and look at that. Um, it's rocks. It's a lot of rocks. It's down trees. It's things that have floated from the water up and it's things that have been exposed through erosion over the years. So, it's rocky. Now, moving in closer to uh There you go. See all the rocks? I mean, some of that's old foundation, I imagine, from the mill. Some of that is apparently been chiseled on, and some of it's concrete. Very little of that. It's mostly natural boulders. The sand bars move from last September to this se September. I've seen those sand bars move around quite a bit, uh, too. So, that changes every time.

I'm just wondering about putting structures down there in that floodway. Well, you can't you can't really You really can't. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean our our our boardwalk and stuff can can be down there, but when we talk about the the buildings and things like that, it it takes some grading. We're going to have to make sure that those are not in a floodway. Yeah, because it looks like all three of those one, four, and three, it looks like all that is located in floodway on that. Yeah, they're up. They're shown in a typical floodway and and flood plane, but that would all have to be part of it. But you can de you can develop in a flood plane. You just need a permit for it.

And we can, you know, we can be, you know, it's called Rocky River for a reason. Just leave the rocks. People will sit on those. Kids will play on. Just leave them. Yeah, they're just fine.

Building number three. I'm sorry. Go ahead. One last structural question. Structural guy. Would building number three be a candidate to build up on stilts in that flood plane and maybe even get a little character to get it up a little higher? We potentially um more than likely there would be like a a grading with like a like a stone retaining wall um in an area like that to kind of fit into and be ADA compliant and you'd have a nice overlook on ramp. Yeah.

Yeah. So, so with that, as we've been basically talking, um, well, we do need direction from you folks as to to, you know, how you want to proceed. Rob mentioned already to we've gained some of that tonight, but uh you know get with I guess Rob you're going to meet with whatever gather it and

yeah I think our followup will be start with this uh the minimalist plan and then cost that out meet individually with each each person here on uh we'll give you guys a copy of the presentation if you don't have it already and therefore you'll have that cost estimate and be able to see those things and say Hey, I like this. This is important to me. What what what does this cost? Um or you might weed that out yourself and then we can build up from there.

Yep. The idea would be if we you know, if we can get this thing going, we get it back here in November so we can uh get a formal design opportunity into Miguel's hands and we can get rolling. So, just kind of up to you folks. Let us know what which direction we need to go. Do we need anything formal? Sound sounded good to me. No, I don't think we need anything formal. Um I'm I'm assuming um the council wants us to move with pace on this. So, we're going to we're going to do that unless you guys want to kick this to the budget process um in spring. Not again. Not again. That's what I thought. So, that's we're all on the same page. Good.

Thank you, Jim Square, for the presentation. We appreciate it. And now has come the time for public comment. We do have about nine folks signed up to speak tonight and we have a um pretty lengthy discussion under new business later. So, um I will call you up individually. If speakers could limit their conversation to three minutes, um I am going to go a little out of order here because a majority of the folks are here to talk about the greenway. Um, Brett Crosby, is it okay if I have you come up first because I think you're going to give a Y update and I know you've got to head back upstairs. So, just be sure to state your name and address for the record.

Thank you, mayor. Um, Brett Crosby, 4100 Main Street, Sweet 200 upstairs. Um, I'll start off with some sad news first. This is your last council meeting with the screen shaking and the sound like thunder in the background. So, um, we are really close to getting our new YMCA open. Uh, as of right now, we're planning to send out our dates on Wednesday for our moving moving out and moving in plans. So, keep an eye on social media for Wednesday and we'll get that out bargain any last second curve balls. So, uh, we're super excited to bring the new YMCA to Harrisburg. It's been a long time coming, as you all know. Um, you know, we'll roll right into basketball season as we get going. So, we'll have the town basketball rolling in. Um, high school swim teams will be coming right right after that around the same time as well. So, we're super excited. I think we're going to roll busy. Um, and don't forget, if you haven't signed up for the Y already, uh, we're doing no join fee right now. Town of Harrisburg residents get a 15% discount. And we can't wait to see you in the new Y in a very short few weeks. So, we'll keep an eye out for Wednesday. Thank you.

Thanks, Brett, for the update. Okay, finally. Finally. Finally. All right. We'll go back up to the top. So, we have Jim Escu.

I'm the next Jim speaker for tonight. It's popular name tonight. Hopefully, I can match the enthusiasm of the other two. Oh, looks like it's big. It's beautiful.

All right. So, uh yeah, Jim SQ810 Wcomi Court. Uh on behalf of Friends of Harrisburg Greenways. If you haven't um heard about us yet, uh we are a 501c3. We have over 150 followers on Facebook and our mission is just to support and promote uh greenways in Harrisburg. Uh so, why do we exist? It's already come up a couple times tonight. Uh but you can see here um that this is taken directly from the parks and wreck master plan. Um the top item here uh that people asked for um paved connectivity trails for for bikes and pedestrians. Um number one requested item. Um it was chosen as one of the top four requested items um more frequently uh than than anything on the list. Um, so another way to look at this data here and and I tried to blow this up, but it's still an eye chart, right? And I I did send this emailed it to you earlier. Um, if if you're not familiar with the PIR score, I wasn't either, but basically that is um a combination of how many people requested an item and how important it was to them. So again, you see um well, you know, here's all the items medium prior. So blue is medium priority. Here you'll see um items like pickle ball. Um I I love pickle ball. Everyone I know who's played loves pickle ball. But what people love even more are again paved uh connectivity um and walking paths. So and this isn't this isn't my data. This is the the town's data. Um, this was adopted by council in September last year. Um, and uh, you know, this isn't

generic like any town USA. This is Harrisburgs. Um, this is what Harrisburg people wanted. Um, and, uh, uh, it's what your constituents have asked for. So, um, we need your help to align, uh, investment, uh, with these priorities. Um, so, uh, and you'll have the opportunity to do that, uh, tonight. Um, what else? So, Saturday, we had our fundraiser at Chill Dogs. Um, we appreciate everybody who braved the rain uh to come out for that. Uh, they've been a great partner. Um, on Friday, October 10th, we have a fundraiser at um, Cookie Co. uh, over there by the Publix. Um, so uh, buy grab a cookie, buy by Whole Box. um uh and support a local business and support us. We have a story walk coming up here um uh with in partnership with the friends of the library. Um if you're not familiar with what a story walk is, it's an outdoor activity. Um you can walk along the greenway um and you know children with their parents can read um a story book a page at a time as they journey um along the path. So, that will be on the Food Futa Creek Greenway in Churchill Farms uh September 15th through uh 30th. We're really excited about that. And then Miss Amanda uh the children's librarian at uh Harrisburg Library will be doing a guided walk on Tuesday, September 16th um at 10:30 a.m. So, mark your calendar for that. We'll put out some social media um so uh you can put on a calendar. Um, and finally, we're uh putting together some information about grants that we think the town might be eligible for. Um, so we're working hard on that and we'll deliver that to the appropriate town staff. Um, so we can be sure not to miss out on any funding that could come our way. So, um, I think that's all I have time for, so I'll let I'll let others speak, but um, we have

stickers, we have magnets, um, available to you, and um, thank you for your time. Thank you, Jim. Next up, we have Brett Simone. The pen traailed off at the end, so I apologize if I have butchered your last name. Just state your name and address for the record.

My name is Brett Simino, 8471 Plantation Way. I've been a resident there for almost 33 years and love the town of Harrisburg, love the park and all that, but I'm here to represent the uh friends of uh Greenway, Harrisburg Greenways, and uh thank you for your time tonight and appreciate the prayer. Uh one of the things that was stated we're talking about the farm mill area there was the uh quality of life and I want to speak a little bit about the quality of life for greenways. Uh in 2020 when we all had to deal with co uh I was told to go work from home and my wife was as well and so we started walking. I lost um 47 pounds but even more so I um got off most of my medications for being a type two diabetic.

Wow. Okay. Uh, unfortunately I had to go back into the office. Um, my profession was director of engineering at a, uh, global comp company. But anyway, the, uh, deal was that stress levels, work levels, uh, getting home, just didn't have time to walk anymore. I'm glad to announce that April 1st I retired and I'm back on track for walking again. My wife and I walked over five miles today on a Concord greenway, but until I uh met Jim and got involved in this group, I really didn't know about the Harrisburg Greenways. But now I've walked on all of them. I love walking at Farm Mill as well for a quick walk. Uh and so I appreciate what the community is doing for my health, but the quality of life of everyone. And so I hope that you'll keep it up and understand that our group is here to help, not complain, not gripe, but help as much as we can to improve the quality of life of all the individuals of Harrisburg. That's all I have. Any questions or comments?

Thank you, Brad. I appreciate it. Thank you.

Next up, we have Mr. Leak. Madam Mayor, members of council, city or town employees, excuse me, get city and town mixed up. All right. Bill leak 7238 Sand Down Court. I want to express my concerns about the possibility of pickle ball at Farmill Park. It is a passive park and my concern is if we open that door and we start allowing stick and ball activities in the park and they are popular and there's a lot of demand for it, will we have pressure for more pickle ball courts and then next thing we're cutting down trees and we're moving that parking lot up to Farm Mill Road. So, you know, we kind of lose the ambiance of Farmill Park. Now, I know we need these things. I was looking at some satellite imagery. Looks like at Stallings Park to the right of the if you're looking at the park, the ball field on the right, there's a little bit of space between there and the storm water measure there that you can pop a couple pickle ball courts in there possibly. So, I want to entertain maybe we look at putting pickle ball on our sports facility parks that you know are already clear. Try to limit how much trees we remove on our passive parks. And I had some other ideas, but then I saw the presentation about Farm Mill grist mill. What if we tied the two parks together? If you can't get everything down there at the creek, what if Jim's big building or something said at the park instead of a pickle ball court? You tied it in. Your kids come to school, one bus goes down there, one bus goes to this park. 30, 40 minutes, boom, the buses change. You got your boats. Now you can ride your boats from park to park. and they can go on down their boats and go on to the Concord Parkway down the greenway down there. Possibility keeping them both passive but tied together. Looking at our active stick and ball type things in facilities that are built for that. Maybe the Hulkcom Woods probably down there. I

don't know. I don't know a lot about ball. I know the kids that I don't go to the I know all the fields are probably overblown and we ain't got enough room for them too. But I just wanted to mention that was all I had. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Bill. Ellen Ivers.

Hi, Mayor Council. My name is Ellen Ivers. I live at 7712 Orchard Park Circle. Um, I've lived in neighborhoods off of Tom Query for about 15 years. And tonight, just wanted to express my support for the rail trail item that is going to be coming up tonight. Um, you know, since we've lived in that area, we've always said it'd be so great if there was a trail behind the neighborhoods that would connect everything on Tom Query to the park. And now with the Y opening and the library, just the opportunity for kids, you could ride your bike to soccer, ride your bike to the library. Um, my family personally never goes to the Fourth of July celebration because we are so close to the park, yet we have to park at the raceway and bus in. we can see the fireworks kind of through the trees. Um we could walk to that um with those options all those families um Huntwick Camelot um Windsor Forest. So I just wanted to voice you know just like Jim said connectivity um being able to access the facilities that we have easily and allowing like our kids to grow up in a community where they can get to things themselves and we can support their independence and allow them to exercise and get to their activities. So that's all just wanted to

Thank you, Miss Ivers. Thank you. Wally Wallace.

Oh, I only got one page. Don't forget to state your name and address for the record. We should all We have it memorized, but

Wally Wallace, 30193 Spring Forest Road, Harrisburg, North Carolina 28075. Well, I'm not like some of these people, you know. I guess I'm the newbie on the block because I had lived here 15 years or 33 years. I've only lived here four years. Okay. But what I want to talk about tonight was economic development. Kind of goes along with the presentation you had earlier tonight. One of the things I want I felt like that needed to be emphasized is the engagement plan they referred to. Uh it needs to be detailed, okay? specific, not just saying we're going to talk to the community. All right. In the economic development group, you know, that was one of the things I emphasized and getting it out to where it needed to be talking about the town and identity of the town. Do we have a motto? Do we have a slogan? You know, I come from a little town called Hot Springs, Arkansas. And there we bathe the world.

Love it. Hot Springs. hot pass. Okay. So, what do we have? H we have Rob Dorn. Okay. That would be a great slogan, wouldn't it? All right. No, I'm just joking, Rob. Okay. But what do we have? We talk about identity of the community and they think about it. What do we have? Okay. And so, as a result, those are just my thoughts. Not even three minutes worth. Thank you, Wally. I got to had to go get one of them baths. It must be quite the place.

Kimberly. Oh, Kimberly, I'm not going to be able to say that last name. Knifer.

Hi, I'm Kimberly Knifer. I said usually it's guesses to neifer neer it is. Um at 8483 Plantation Way in Harrisburg. Um I'm here representing or with the friends of the greenways as well. I thought you've already heard the statistics. They're your statistics. You already know them. What you may not have heard is my experience specifically with the greenways. I know that when I go to Pharmmo, it is so peaceful. And it's not even that it's not crowded. I'm so happy that everybody uses it. And it's the nice people that I pass that always say, "Good morning. It's nice to see you." Even the dogs are nice to me. Which is somewhat a surprising thing. But on top of that, as a mother, my children are in one of the Cub Scout groups here in the community. Tonight, actually, they are over on the Mills Greenway hiking. And I can tell you that the favorite activity from last year was a bike rally they did at Farmill along the Greenway Trail. I've never seen those kids so excited. And I've also never seen that many fancy bikes for little kids, but it was amazing. And it's the type of thing that I am so excited that you're discussing tonight about expanding on because Harrisburg has these beautiful spaces. We have Harrisburg Park where a lot of money has been spent to make that a gathering place, a celebration place, a place to have fun for families, for individuals, for seniors, for everybody. And I love seeing that you're expanding on it to make it possible for more people to get there. For the kids that maybe their parents are still working in the office, unfortunately, and they want to go to the park in the afternoon, but they just can't get there, that rail trail is going to make a difference in

their lives. That's going to be the memory they have going over, going under the railway either way to get to an amazing park that's available to them. So, thank you so much for your consideration. I hope that you will be in support of it like we are. And thank you. Thank you, Kimberly. Thank you, Mera FR. And if I said that wrong, I'm so sorry.

You said it right. I'm Mera FR at 5308 Harvest Hill Drive in the Orchard Park neighborhood. And I'm here also to speak in support of anything you can do to expand our greenways and in particular that rail connector that you're talking about. Um I'm a mom of three kids here in Harrisburg and my husband and I love to take our children for bike rides. That's probably our favorite pastime. Um, my husband and I were expecting our first child back in 2012. We originally moved to the Charlotte area back in 2007 to teach as professors at UNC Charlotte. So, we've been in Charlotte for a while, but when we were expecting our first child, we were looking for some place to settle down. And the only reason why we hesitated to buy our house and settle down in Harrisburg was because Harrisburg didn't have those connected greenways like Charlotte and like some of the other communities had. And we really had to think twice about whether we we could live here without that. And of course we we ended up here. Um but the one thing that we have really uh regretted not having since coming here was a a greenway that connects one park to another and that makes it safe for our family to leave our house on a bike and go as far as we want to go and and get a lot of exercise. So, we're so happy that you're considering this and we just wanted you to know I don't know a family in Harrisburg who wouldn't be so thankful to have more greenway and especially this safety issue over the rail. I heard that there are some children um unfortunately going over the rail right now on their bikes or as pedestrians and I just hope we can act before there's some horrible tragedy that we all regret. Thank you.

Thank you, Mea. And last we have Jim Fairchild.

Hi, I'm Jim Fairchild. I've lived in Harrisburg for 33 years. Seems to be the common thing here. U my address has been 9541 Milan Drive and that will not be my address in January or February as I'll be moving to Stillhouse Lane in Harrisburg. We're moving about two miles. Um, and one of the reasons that we're picking that place is because of the connectivity that appears to be in the plans on that with the greenways and things. Uh, I've always been a fan of the rails to trails conservancy been involved supporting them as well. the Forest City Spindale Thermal Belt Trail that has really increased um local businesses and if you go on that trail, you just see people smiling and you know roller skates and everything. It's just it's really a neat thing. So, anything that we can do to connect uh communities or parks and things I think is a a great thing. Now, I love the Blueway uh comment that was made earlier about the kayaks because that's my other my other um vice, I guess. Bicycles and kayaks. But anyway, anything we can do, uh count me in and um hopefully we'll be able to utilize me somehow in in making these things and expediting them. So, thank you for your time.

Thank you, Jim. Appreciate everyone coming out to speak tonight. We will move into where are we now? Consent agenda. Is there a motion on the floor to approve the consent agenda as presented? So move. Is there a second? Second. All in favor? I.

Motion is carried. Thank you so much. We will start with our town manager communication updates. Rob. Thank you, Mayor and Council. Um, I've been very patient for an hour and 20 minutes waiting to get to to my part. So, I'll wrap it up in a roughly an hour. I'll cut it down and uh but I have a lot a lot to say tonight and I have a captive audience so nobody's allowed to leave. Lock the doors. I've got everybody here.

Three minutes, Rob. Um reminder that uh this Thursday evening we have a uh UDO webinar. Um check our website and and socials for that. But I would encourage um the folks in the room here this evening. Anybody at home um anybody at all that cares about development in Harrisburg, we are updating our unified development ordinance and uh this is your opportunity to have input on that governing ordinance as it relates to development. So, if a new development goes in, we do currently have greenway um regulations in there and open space regulations. If you'd like to see what those are or would like to impact those, um plug in and and have your say. So, um quick uh shameless plug there. Also, um I wanted to go back to the uh the comp plan um presentation that we had earlier and remind everybody to engage in that. So, from a from a community standpoint, there's going to be plenty of opportunity for engagement. We'll be out in your neighborhoods physically um coming out to to HOAs and meeting halls and Lions Clubs all over the place. Um we'll also have social media activity. We'll have survey activity. We'll have webinars. And then we'll have uh public meetings here. So, there really should be no scenario where you're not able to engage. We'll even have popups at our events. So at at Rockin the Berg and at at at different events throughout the community u we'll be there but you really do have to engage to to be heard on this. So tell everybody that you know um we will be uh it will be crucial that you get involved and that through that process we'll be able to kind of plan our future uh intentionally and we'll be able to do that together through all the different um groups that we have. Um, greenways are a great example of that.

But we also have folks that care only for youth athletics. We have some people that care only about jobs and and the economy. We have some that just care about schools. That's okay. If you care about one thing, come and talk about that one thing and and and leave the rest to everybody else. U we'll cover public safety, development, transportation, growth, uh, jobs, education, you name it. Um, it's going to be discussed as part of that plan and it's going to be a year, year and a half long of just getting this conversation going and getting everything put together, updating all of our plans. We we currently have a greenway plan that's going to need updated, right? We've got lots of neighborhoods that that have come in. We have a transportation plan that's a little closer to being up to date. Um, but I think you even saw as part of the presentation we had earlier on on the comp plan, we've updated our goals several times along these different plans and and getting the right things together. So, just a reminder to to anybody and everybody out there that wants to impact their community. This is the the most um impactful I guess this will be the biggest chance to be the most impactful in a short period of time that any of our residents will will ever get. So, so don't uh don't miss out on that. On our um another update on our economic development side of things, I just wanted to um give as quick an update as I can, but as as we've kind of moved through the last few years, we've taken this renewed focus on on economic development. Um and we've also take taken a a renewed focus on uh reducing the number of housing developments that we have. So, we have been able to slow the pace of housing. Um, but we've also been able to increase that pace of commercial and industrial throughout the town to kind of keep the the economic pace about the same. Um, a couple of updates on that front. We we are in a

pre-application phase with Atrium Health at Rocky River for a three-story hospital tower out there. So, you'll see that on our uh development map popping up if it's uh if the plans aren't already on there. They will be added there soon. We were also in discussions with Puit Health out here on on Rocky River also pre-application phase there. So really seeing the healthc care community lean in to Harrisburg from an economic development standpoint. We also have some items on the agenda tonight um and have put some things on the agenda over the past year for the Morehead West area. So that's everything from Morehead West, very innovative name there, but Morehead Road west to the county line. Um we that's an area that is not sewered. We don't have water connection. We don't have roadway connection, but is a huge opportunity for us from an economic development standpoint. So we're continuing to look at those sewer and roadway investments. The the sewer is on for this evening to get that plan or get the engineering plans updated so that we can move into that phase. And I won't steal all the thunder from that early on in the in the meeting here. Um, but we've also, um, approved and gotten grants for the Caldwell Road extension to add the transportation access that we need in there. As part of that, we've been discussing internally, internally, um, what else do we need in that area as far as utilities? Do we add the the water and the the storm sewers and the things like that as we as we move into there? And then ultimately we're also looking at a site readiness program that Ryan has been able to set up um so that that site is ready for any big development that comes through the state EDC and and is looking into Harrisburg so that we are really um prepped and practiced and know how to land a a nice investment in

that area. We've already seen the 1010 Motor Club out there, move into to that area where we were all able to to go to the Cabaris Summit and and experience that facility, which is just uh first rate. Hendrickx Motorsports has also invested into this area coming down Morehead as they've kind of filled out their space north of 29. All of their future investment is really looking in the Harrisburg and the Morehead West area. and we expect the rest of that to fill up with research and development type businesses. Um we've discussed some folks that that um uh provide services but also would bring significant tourism into Harrisburg and then ultimately the rest of it with employment and um diversification of tax base in that area. So, that's an area that um I'd say keep your eyes on, but we're already starting to see um small investment in there and we expect that to grow exponentially over the next year or so. The second largest area that we have is the Rocky River corridor area, specifically the Farmington 485 interchange area. We continue to see strong interest in development out there as well as redevelopment along um especially near the interchange. um keep your eye on the development map there for things that come along that are in the pre-application phase. Um but it is typical redevelopment and then we've seen the development um interest out there really the quality kind of raise as of late. So, we anticipate that to continue as well as um we've had some questions all along that corridor this month that I that I kind of had to feel with some miscommunication on what is planned out there and what are the land uses. So, um again, this is this is something that's easy to look up. Just get on our website. Whatever the current land use plan is is the land use plan. Um

it's really as simple as that. we don't have to have lots of um conversations about it or speculation. Everything that that is planned is on paper and is on the website. So, feel free to pull that up now as we go through our long-term comprehensive plan. That land use plan at that point will be subject to input from the residents. It's been a while since we've really looked at a a comprehensive look at all of our land use and we will do that as part of the comp plan. But as of now, we have the same commercial um plans out there that we've had for uh the entirety of the Harrisburg area land use plan. Last but not least, I I wanted to give um a shout out to my buddy Wall-E o over here who uh who asked me while I was working on something via email today about some grants and and things that we were working on. So, I uh I I put our grant summary together and I I won't read each and every one of these out loud, but some of the significant grants I I've given updates on this usually every year and and you guys have seen this and we've had some um new developments over the last year or so that that really haven't hit the list. Um, but I'd say, you know, some of our significant grants that I I want to draw some attention to and and really adds up in a in a big way. Hickory Ridge Road Pedestrian Greenway where we have the open house um going on with that. And, you know, that's a 1.6 almost $ 1.7 million grant that staff received on that project. That was uh state and federal funds that we're able to acquire the uh NC49 congestion access management. That's a $7.4 million grant. We also have matching funds associated with that. Both sides of the road there,

again, we're we're adding 10 foot wide multi-use paths that connect our communities throughout the town. The Caldwell Road extension, which we talked about earlier, the Roberto Road roundabout. These are all projects that connect our community and that otherwise we'd have to pay for w with tax dollars. Um some some interesting ones like YMCA that that was here this evening. Um we went and lobbied for the YMCA and we also have local funding in that because of the two gymnasiums that that we have attached to that that we will program. Um, we went and lobbied and got state uh direct allocation, $8 million for the YMCA. If not for um, you know, the mayor going to to Raleigh and and getting that funds, those are $8 million that our residents would have to come up with, the Y would have to come up with or the the town, you know, tax dollars would have to come up with in order to make that that project a reality. It's a $25 million investment going into the middle of our signature park that our entire community um will be able to experience. And that's not a grant directly to the town, but it's a grant the town got for one of our partners. Another grant that we got um a portion of the sewer issues that we have, the sewer plant uh expansion, that's a $70 million plant expansion. We were a co-signer on that um lobbying effort to go to Raleigh to get that 70 million. We're about 11% of that plant. So, our direct allocation to the town is about $7.7 million in in grants for our sewer expansion. If we weren't successful in that, that goes to the rateayers. The in order to have that that same expansion, we would just need to see water rates and sewer rates go up in order to cover that. So again, not sent directly to the town. It's sent to a partner organization that that we're a part of. But our part of

that is 7.7 million. Um and then the the NC railou that we had signed in 2022 2023 um secured the original commitment of $6 million that they were dedicating to that project. And again, that's a long-term or a longhaul passenger rail to get us and connect us with Atlanta, connect us with Raleigh, and provide um that access throughout the state, provide economic development opportunities, as well as just transportation opportunities for our community. All told, all of the grants that we've gotten over the last four years amounted to $39,250,000 in either direct grants to us or or the benefit received by those lobbying efforts with a local match of around $4 million. So, we're getting almost a 90% uh share paid for. And what does that what does that mean for the for the taxpayer in Harrisburg or for the resident? Well, if we look at over that same four-year period, that equates out to about a 20 cent tax rate each and every year that we've gotten in funds that are not directly allocated to property tax rates. We have a tax rate of 41 cents. We would need to go up to 61 cents to continue to do the same things that we're doing now if not for our staff's effort in acquiring these grants. And each one of these, you know, takes some time, right? the the money is certainly worth it when you're this successful. And our staff getting nearly $40 million in financial assistance for all of our projects is is really amazing, but you know, it does take away from some of the projects and some of the services and some of the things that we do. So, um I would just ask for, you know, some patience for our staff as as we kind of go through these. And I I pulled them off of things um constantly. I know Devin was here maybe a few weeks before I pulled him off of everything that he was working on and asked him to put a train station grant for $9 million

that is still pending and we're waiting for the feds to to give us some idea on that. But we we have the train station at 9 million turf filled to 2 and a.5 million and another million that we'd asked for the YMCA all pending as well as several other small grants. So, I wanted to to to mention that because I think sometimes we we just cram through these projects and we we we look at each and every one of them and um we just get lost in doing the day-to-day and we don't really take a look back and say, you know, how successful have we have we been? The the amounts that we had before this real initiative to bring in grants were, you know, tens of thousands of dollars, right? Um 40 from tens of thousands to 40 million is just um blown me away. and that has surpassed any type of um expectation that we put on our staff for that. So, great job with staff and um great job with community supporting us to get the lo local matching funds that we needed in order to get those grants. I said last uh but I was wrong, Ian. So, you got you got one more second, one one final thought. Um, and Friends of the Greenway um, really needs to be a stakeholder with our comp plan. So, I would I would really suggest you guys reach out to us on on how how to get involved with that comp plan and make sure that your voices are being heard. Um, the comp plan will update our greenway plan. And you know, I heard several of our council members mention tonight, how do we how do we stay with that small town feel where everybody knows each other, where we still feel connected, where we still have a high quality of life, where we're we're

continuing that progress, you know, we're not going to to tumble weed. And it's really connecting with each other. And there's lots of ways to do that. One of the ways is greenways connect us physically. They they connect us in our neighborhoods without having to take a specific let's get in the car, let's drive somewhere, let's make this big event, right? You're you're all of a sudden just connected with each other physically. The kids can go to other neighborhoods, you can get to your parks, you can get throughout the town without getting in a car and without getting on the main roads. Our events connect us. We invest a lot in our events and and that's where people go and they see each other at the end of a busy week and they're able to to speak with each other and hang out. Our youth sports connects us. It's it's something that pulls us together and and makes us build those those memories and our public spaces connect us. If we don't have public spaces to gather in, um where are we going to gather? So, I I think if you look at tonight's agenda and you look at the totality of um what we keep putting in front of you each and every meeting, um sometimes it can get mundane, sometimes it can get overwhelming, but I think it really feeds all of these. And I I just didn't want to miss the opportunity to mention why we do it. We do it so that we can maintain that small town feel even though we know we've long left the small town numbers that Harrisburg used to be able to enjoy. And that's difficult. It's difficult to do it. It's difficult to keep the tax u rates down while you do it because it's not uh inexpensive to maintain that that feel. Uh but we're doing it we're doing it very well and I would just say that that is um all because of the the dedicated staff that we have. They do an excellent job. They understand their mission and they stay on it each and every day. So um want to thank them. I want to thank council for the support on that and thank our residents for coming and always expressing uh their heartfelt desires for for each and everything that they like about our community. That's it. Mayor,

are you sure? I can keep going. Are there any questions for Rob? All right. Next, we will have our finance monthly report. And kudos to Brian for managing the $40 million in grants because that's a lot.

Glad to do it. Good evening. have your finance report as of the end of August. So, here is a look at the revenue and expense dashboard over operations. So, you can see tax collections at 2% that represents motor vehicles that we've collected over the first two months and that feeds into the 6% overall revenue for the general fund. This is very typical as we see every year until escrow payments uh escrow accounts start making payments on property taxes for real estate. So, no concerns there even though they're shown in red. The water and sewer fund had a pretty big month with an 11% gain jumping up to 19% and that reflects the irrigation use throughout August. So that will start to trail off as we go through the winter months and the storm water fund is essentially right on track at 16 to 17%. So no concerns over our revenues there. Uh looking down at the bottom of the slide, departmental expenditures over operations. All of the general government departments here range in a tight window from 16 to 19%. So, they're all on track and uh no concerns there. Same story across all remaining general fund departments uh with parks and wreck actually already pulling back into the yellow this year after uh the July 4th celebration. So, good news there. And you will see one department at only 1% that is our deputies which are contracted through the county. And so, we pay that bill quarterly. And so, that uh might sneak its way into next month's report, but no concern seeing that at 1% this year. The water and sewer fund is at 15% and the storm water fund also at 15%. So both on track there and salaries uh townwide are right on target at 17% this year um as we sit two months through the fiscal year. Now moving on to our project dashboard. This is a look at our single year projects. So the first one here is the warning light at fire station number three. The design for this uh project has been approved by NC DOT and that is a pretty monumental thing to uh to have happen on any of our projects. So the one

remaining thing to do before we move into construction here is easement for the uh telephone pole that will go across the street from the station. So once that gets worked out, we'll be ready to move into the construction phase. The next is the wayfinding sign replacements. Uh concrete footings have been completed all around town. Uh, one that you may have noticed and seen covered over the past week or two is right in front of the Lowe's Food Shopping Center. Uh, I saw that and didn't know quite what it was until I asked uh Devon and John, so they let me know what that was. Uh, but those signs will start to get mounted over the next couple weeks and that'll be wrapped up soon. Next is our ADA sidewalk program. Uh, this project will mainly take place in Kensington Forest, removing trip hazards on the sidewalks. And this is a pretty quick hitting project that should only take a couple weeks to wrap up. And then lastly on this slide is the artificial turf at Harrisburg Park that Rob mentioned a little earlier. Uh we have an RFQ out right now and we've had uh about seven vendors who have notified us that they intend to propose on this. We actually got some uh proposals in today as well. Uh so we have really good interest in the project and we have a quick uh schedule to turn those around into construction documents and get them moving through the winter season so that we have two uh very nice turf fields for our spring athletics. Now moving over to our multi-year projects in design. The first here is pedestrian facility on Oakley Drive. Uh the survey was completed last month and the design is underway and progressing pretty quickly at about 25%. Um, this is done in-house with our engineering team. So, they will complete these plans and then move straight into construction. Next is the Back Creek Greenway and trail head. A popular topic tonight. Uh, design is complete and the construction contract is on the agenda for consideration tonight. So, with that, we'll shift this over to the construction page um for next month's report.

And I mentioned this last month, but just wanted to get one more reminder out there that the Hickory Ridge sidewalk um public input is uh the 25th of this month at six o'clock. So, anyone who's interested in weighing in on that project, please join us for that. And now moving over to our multi-year projects under construction. Uh the Highway 49 lighting improvements project has a conceptual design that's been completed by Duke Energy. Duke Energy will also uh do the actual engineering and design work and then construct it as well. So they have started their process and are about 5% through that project. Here is a look at the landscaping for uh Veterans Park. So a lot of work has been taking place out there lately. They're about 65% done. Um landscaping and concrete has all been done with the stairway and some concrete around the fountain. And uh now they're working on the waterproofing and enhancements to the fountain. Oops, I think I skipped a little bit. Oh, no. I'm sorry. This is our 2025 annual sanitary sewer rehab. There was a lot of work done throughout the neighborhoods um that we showed last year with some of the the lining of the sewer and the manholes. Uh one of the last pieces of that project is this Abington well generator. And so you see that's been placed there. and um and that will wrap up that project for this year. Now, moving over to our equipment projects, we only have one uh project this year that has not gotten started, and that is the sidebyside for the deputies, but other than that, everything has been ordered or uh is is progressing nicely. So, here we have our camstrap meter collector antenna. We have a couple of these around town. This one is near our public works facility, which will give us a better reach to a part of town that is a little more difficult to collect for our new water meters. And here's our vehicle list for the year. Uh we have one at the bottom that was canceled out due to not qualifying

for vehicle replacement with our new uh vehicle replacement policy, but all others are in some stage of being ordered except for the deputy vehicles, which are the county's responsibility to get those. but we have authorized those from the town side. We have four vehicles that are on the agenda for your consideration tonight. They're all water and sewer replacement vehicles. Those did meet the new vehicle replacement policy. Um and the proposals that you have are well within the budgets. And then lastly, our professional services projects. The 2025 financial audit is going on this very week. Um so it's done remotely now, but they are definitely in the house uh this week. We noticed them today. So, um, they're they're getting everything done. We have a draft of the financial statements ready and are on track to turn those into the state by October 31st.

And with that, I welcome any questions. Can you go back like three slides the side by side? Yes. Was it completion? Yeah, right here. We had that just by the end of this fiscal year for completion date. Oh. Um it it should it you know I don't want to speak for the county but once they decide to order that it should be pretty quick. Okay. It just seemed like June 30th was a magical date. That's just the end of that's just Yeah, that's just the end of the year. Okay. Any other questions for Brian? Thank you, sir. Thank you.

We're happy to have Lieutenant Helms with us this evening to give the sheriff's update. Welcome. Thank you. Good evening, Mayor Council. Glad to be here. Uh, this is pretty short and sweet. Um, our law enforcement activities for August totaled a number of 41 or 4,12 um calls for service, including 1988 security checks and 925 uh traffic stops. And our average non-emergency response time was 6 minutes and 14 seconds. Uh, one very good thing we did, this is a uh joint investigation between our uh the sheriff's office vice narcotics unit along with the FBI and Homeland Security. Uh, we were able to to arrest two suspects and remove 10 kilos or roughly 22 pounds of methamphetamine from a residential home in in town. And that investigation is still serious.

Further further uh going for potentially more charges and see where it develops from there. But that is all I have. That's enough questions. That's enough. Yeah. Are there any questions for Lieutenant Helms? Thank you, sir. And we have Assistant Chief Wooten with our fire update tonight. Welcome.

Good evening. Uh, mayor and council and management. All right. I get the joy of going through the fire department report. You're lovely. I'm not as energetic, I don't think, as that guy Jim was, but I mean, I could maybe try to see if we can liven it up a little bit. Um, so first slides about our fire marshall activities. Uh, August is when school starts back. So, we start back kind of full throttle in our fire prevention activities. So this um month we saw or this past month we saw uh about a thousand people during our fire prevention activities. We uh got to partner with uh the National Night Out with the sheriff's office at the arena where we had over 500 uh kids at that one. So that was that was pretty pretty eventful on that. Um next thing was uh our inspection activities. These are normally the same numbers pretty much every month. Y'all kind of probably already figured that out. Uh this picture that we're highlighting in this one is a blocked electrical panel.

You're supposed to keep stuff away from the electrical panel in case there's a fire, you need to be able to cut the power off. So uh we're supposed to keep 3 ft of clearance. So that's just one that we saw to try to at least highlight something on that. Um our next slides, uh believe it or not, fire extinguishers was not the highest violation this past month. So that was I was kind of shocked. I saw I was like, "What? What?" Uh this one was fire inspection and testing. Uh and that is when we do businesses that may have fire alarm systems or sprinkler systems. Um those fire detection systems are required to be uh annually maintenanced and tested. Uh in this case, he may have gone out and seen a lot of places where they just didn't have that paperwork. Uh so that could have been a violation of those. As far as our fire stats go, we ran 265 incidents last month. uh it's 530 unit responses and then uh our average dispatch to arrival did increase slightly. We believe that's probably because of the school traffic that comes up and then also doing all of the fire prevention activities that we do. We're not in our normal station locations. So, we're being dispatched from unusual addresses. You'll see that as the uptick on this slide where it shows. Let me slide that up a little bit so I don't hit it every time I do it. Um the working fires uh we had two working fires uh this past month. Uh one of them was caused by a small drop cord that was being used to uh power a plet smoker grill. Um, we would always suggest that you try not to use a drop cord and plug directly into an outlet. But if you are going to use a drop cord, how about find one that's a bigger size that's able to handle the load. Uh, the other that was in the Farmington Town Homes. Um, the other uh was assisting Concord uh fire department with a garage fire over in

the Skybrook neighborhood over by Concord Mills. Station two and station three are dead even this past month, but station one's always still the busiest as far as response uh calls in their area. Again, I the number almost didn't even change percentage-wise for the uh medical calls. I mean, it's just it's always right at around 45%. So, um good intents and service calls are the other things that we see the biggest increase in. And then again, our heat map. Just remember that the red dots are like the frequent flyer type things. That's where we've been there four or more times at that one specific point and it uses the actual lat long of the dispatched address. So that's an accurate if we've been there more than four times to that specific point on a map. So the grays would be we've been uh there two to three calls at that address. And then uh some of you were there with us for our um uh our inbridge grant that we received um for our water rescue team. We received $30,000 for that. um which will be used for uh you know water rescue equipment to help to support the mission of that team. Um also the building fire that we had that was in our area, we had a $650,000 in savings for that. Uh we only had a $5,000 fire loss. Uh and that was just using that one particular unit, but I think it was one of four units. So I could have added the other ones in there, too, but I figured that'd probably be a little bit more accurate. Um and we again participated in the Cabaris County National Night Out which uh where uh all of our um partner agencies in the county uh really showcase and have a great event for the kids. So we really had a good time with that. And with that I will answer any questions that you might have.

Guten, I do have a question. Um and forgive me for not knowing this until tonight that the heat map is the same address. So, is there any opportunity to connect those residents with whatever service they may need? I know there used to be, you know, the man that would fall a lot.

Yeah. So, um typically if we have an incident like that where we're out multiple times, um if it is something medically related, the county has a community paramedic programming and we will uh refer them for the community paramedic program with that. Um if it's something related to fire or like sometimes um as people get maybe near the end of their life, they're having issues uh like being able to pick them up or something, we'll go out a lot of times for lifting assistance. Uh unfortunately, sometimes that happens a lot as they're getting older and honestly that's a service that we provide and you know, we're happy to be able to help when we can. So, um, we do try to, uh, make sure that we, um, go out to those, um, addresses and try to put them with the right resources to help them with what their needs are. So,

thank you. Yep. Especially if it's a like fire alarms or keep going off or something, we we try to get that corrected through our fire marshall's office so we don't keep going back out there. But, any other questions? Thank you, assistant chief. All right. Thank you. appreciate it.

Just a few mayor's comments this evening. Um, I wanted to thank Jennifer and Brian from our engineering department. They actually presented to the youth council last month. Um, thanks to Casey and Nicole for setting that up for that group. They were very engaged. They had a hands-on simulation. Um, I believe it was for water runoff and how development um, affects all of that. That was kind of fun to sit back and watch. Um, we already covered our fire department grant. Kudos to those folks. That was fun to witness. Rob has already mentioned about the unified development ordinance webinar coming up. Um, we did attend the grand opening and ribbon cutting for Hot Tuna, which is our newest fine dining restaurant right here in Harrisburg Town Center. Um, I really appreciate the investment that Jenny and JJ and Pete have made in our community. They also own Bubba's Monk House and then they will be opening up a bakery that is adjacent to Hot Tuna. So they really have um invested in our community. So if you haven't had a chance to visit those um please be sure to to patron our local businesses. Last week we also attended the Cabaris Economic Development Summit and that was again at 10 Motorsport on Morehead. It's a beautiful facility. We had the opportunity to hear about our North Carolina community colleges and just how they are responding to our workforce needs not only in our community but across the state. Um, I think it's really important to notice or to note that Rowan Cabaris is actually the eighth largest and the third largest short-term training provider for North Carolina. So, they are really providing specific skill sets for these businesses that are coming to our area, which is great. Um, this coming Saturday night is our Rockin the Berg featuring Absolute Queen and then our last Rock and the Berg will be October 11th and that is the Docksiders. Um, and then next Saturday is the multicultural festival on September 20th. That's from 10 to 2 at Harrisburg Park. That's always a great time. This is the seventh year.

Um, hope to see everyone out. And just a reminder that co the Cabaris County Fair is currently going on through the 13th. So that is at the Cabaris Arena. I believe they have a rodeo addition to that this year. Um, and lastly, I wanted to share some facts about development in our town. I'm kind of going to piggyback on what Rob touched on before. We were so heavy for housing developments for so long that now we have um shifted that focus to economic development. But I wanted to put some numbers for that. Um I think we've seen kind of an uptick in misinformation on social media sites. Um so in the years 2018 to 2021, so this is um prior to my tenure here, there were 1,682 homes approved and many of those were approved with large public opposition. Um so in 2022 to the present we have approved 204 homes. Um we have even worked with a developer on a project that was approved under the previous admin administration to reduce that development from 164 houses to 60 and that was on bigger lots with an 80 acre donation um back to the town for public use. So that's a reduction of over 90% in new home development in four years. Um, I think that transparency and really listening to our community has and will continue to be a priority for myself and for this council. So, I encourage if you have any questions about anything that you are seeing um online or about any of the projects that we have going on um please reach out. We are all incredibly accessible. Um our communications department has really up their game. We try to put all of this out on our websites, our social media sites. Um, so please use that and feel free to share all of the good facts with the community. So with that, are there any council comments tonight?

Um, I'll just share that um, September is suicide prevention awareness month and I sit on the Cabaris County Mental Health Advisory Board and one of our biggest goals is just increasing awareness and accessibility to resources. Kind of like what assistant chief boot was talking about with community paramedics. That's not something that the town offers. We partner with the county to make that happen. I would love to see us partner with the county in the realm of supporting our families that have been impacted by um by suicide or those that are having struggling with mental illness and understanding that our community has certainly been impacted by suicide in the last several months. And I know that we'll talk a little bit more about that in safety around the verbot tracks and otherwise later on in uh tonight's meeting. We also um in the mental health advisory board meeting, if you remember a few months ago, I was asking the community to participate in the needs assessment survey that Cabaris County was doing. Well, Dr. Jessica Grant presented the uh top four needs that um showed at at that survey. And the first one was the behavioral health concerns which you know we're getting that behavioral health clinic up um in the Copperfield area and then early childhood development housing and then transportation. So, um, you know, I encourage everyone to just go to the Cabaris Health Alliance website, the Cabaris County website, and read the survey so that you can see what, you know, the needs are and the efforts that not only on this board, but other areas are working to address the four identified areas.

Um, the only other comment I would add is related to food. I missed the grand opening of Hot Tuna, but I've made up. I've been five times. I'm gonna keep going.

Uh it's excellent. It's one of the number one things we get hit with is why don't we have a great restaurant in um Harrisburg? Well, you got it. And why aren't we doing more in Town Center? Well, they're doing it. So, come by and support those guys. It's really a great place. Sorry, missed the grand opening. Mayor, this uh past Friday evening, I was able to attend the Lions Club fish fry. It was the first time I've been. It was it was great and want to encourage the community to go out and support them. Uh they're actually having uh this Friday night they're having a spaghetti dinner. Uh it's free spaghetti dinner. Uh if you just want to bring donations of canned goods uh to help with their blessing box, I'm sure they would appreciate that. So, uh, that's all I have. Thank you.

Go early if you're going. Yeah, go early. Any other council comments? Okay, we do not have any public hearings or old business. So, we will move right into our new business presentations. And first up is the consideration of supplemental service agreement with RK&NK for the Harrisburg Rail Trail Greenway Design Services. And we've got Devon Houston with us tonight. Mayor, quickly, should I step out for this since it's uh Is this the one? No, this the uh 6B would be on the B church property. Good evening, mayor, members of council, and friends of Greenways.

Uh the as the mayor said, the consideration for professional services contract for Harrisburg Railen Trail Greenway. The this Harrisburg rail and trail project consists of approximately one mile of greenway trail that would connect from Harrisburg Park crossing over the railroad tracks and then going behind the industrial park connecting to Calwell Road at a trail head parking lot. So the current contract that's under consideration this evening is only for the portion that connects the park and includes the crossing at the railroad, the grade separated crossing. We're not 100% sure whether that will be a tunnel or a bridge quite yet, but it will be grade separated. Um, and then the future we will come back with the remaining portion of the other phase to connect it to Carwell Road. This this rail and trail that we're calling it is a subset of the back the overall proposed back greenway trail. So with that, this is just the red circled area is the portion under consideration for design contract tonight. We'll call that phase two. It may shorten a little bit if we have the ability to connect into the greenway, the multi-use path that the YMCA has already built. Whether that's feasible or not, that's what this design contract will help iron out. It's broken down into two separate tasks. The first task is going to be surveying drainage and the general design along with some other preliminary engineering stuff. And the cost for that is $148,543.79. Task two is 235,130. This is largely dependent on the results and everything that comes from the work done in task one. So there is possibility for this number to

change a little bit, but we won't know that until we get through task one. And that's going to be the final structural design of the actual bridge. And we'll have to determine how much geotechnical work will need to be done to support any bridge or any um boardwalks that may be necessary. The total fiscal impact of both of those tasks combined is $383,67469. As you can see in the table, this was approved in the fiscal year 2025 budget uh with a total amount of $2,87,000 for the total project. Uh you can see the contingency. We've adjusted that which is the proposed budget and ordinance connected with this item tonight. We've adjusted that to account for the overage expected for the design. It doesn't change the total amount as of right now. And this was RK and K is one of our uh design firms that we have pre-qualified using an on call RFQ earlier in the year. And with that, I'll take any questions on this side item. Devin, how confident are you in the 1.5 that we're not going to find some boulder or Indian burial ground or

it I think Jim Mr. the the from McGill spoke earlier and he said if we had a crystal ball we could tell you the design will really dictate hopefully we're close um but there's always some uncertainty in these sorts of things. So, as a result of task one and task two, we might find out this is a $3 million project. I I won't say no. There's a possibility, but um the hope is that at least for the design portion of it that we'll be able to get through it and then get it get that number ironed out to what we need before we move into construction phase. Fair and honest.

So, Devin, question for you on the design portion. What is there an opportunity for us to see like you know before this design is finalized like if it's going to be a pedestrian bridge or a tunnel like you know the safety measures of that before it's complete like at I don't know 30 to 40% complete safety measures yeah I mean whatever whatever it's going to look like with that design is yeah as far as which options I just want us to get to the end of it

they're gonna they'll get into preliminary and they will do essentially the survey will be kind of what dictates the most. So, they'll be able to see the actual grades and how it'll work. Um, then they'll take into consideration construction of a bridge versus construction of a tunnel, which time and funding wise is a huge different. It's a different undertaking which one goes. So, if we know the extent of the bridge, it could be a lot cheaper than a tunnel or it could need to be a massive bridge so the tunnel becomes cheaper. We just don't know till we get through the design phase. um question. Will we be able to use some of the findings from this um professional services expenditures? And has we approved the 250 to explore this potential like Robinson Church Road extending that either above or below the railway? Like is there going to be any like benefit to us that we can leverage from here to towards that that project? that project. I would say not necessarily specifically the the the analysis they'll do will be sort of narrow in that regard. However, if we look at how much if if they do an exercise to see how much a tunnel is going to cost to go through there and they get to design what it's like for pedestrians or a bridge for pedestrians, then we could scale that potentially a little bit to get at least an idea of what a future project may look like for vehicles. Okay. Are these fees um is is it just because you're having to deal with the rail and I know what they're like to deal with. I'm just used to seeing, you know, fee to fee to construction costs, you know, like the state of North Carolina has a goal of like 10% for instance, and we're at like

20 and we're stealing contingency to pay like is this a rail problem? It's it's a multitude of different possibilities. So, yeah, 10% I agree. If I were to estimate the a project and how much the PE would cost based on how much I estimated the construction to be, I would go 10 to 12% for sure. Um, so again, this this number was estimated a few years ago. I believe it was done back in 2022. So,

it's a it's a little bit outdated. That was kind of a tumultuous year to kind of try to estimate anything. And then just we had uh the next item actually we had one bid at what will be presented tonight for 374 and another bid for 668. So estimating just is it's a whirlwind right now. It's really hard to estimate anything completely accurately. RK and K is just saying look this is what the design costs. Correct. They don't they don't know what the real construction they will they will give an opinion of probable cost as they get closer to

telegraphs to me that they think it's going to be um FYI but you're pretty I mean you beat them up at least one time this is actually yes we did and then they're also this we reached out to two we got two proposals there you go then I feel good they were the lowest all right good thank you so who who who's doing the study on Robinson Church Road. Is it R RK and K? Okay. Somebody get a frequent flyer discount. You would think. Yeah. I'm in the wrong business.

Again, we we have um multiple firms that we qualified through an R RFQ process earlier in the year. Uh and I reached out to both two firms for for proposals on both of these items and Eric K and K has come out on top both times. All right. With that, is there a motion to approve the attached supplemental service agreement with RKNK in the amount not to exceed $383,67469 for design services related to the Harrisburg Rail train Harrisburg Rail Trail Greenway and the related fiscal year 2026 budget ordinance and project ordinance amendments? Motion. All in favor?

I did. She get [Applause] Thanks for the applause in the audience. Next, we have consideration of construction services contract for Back Creek Greenway Trail Head. Okay, before you start, Devin, I just want to double check and make sure since I'm one of the pastors at the Berg Church, do I need to step out or I know this is a constructive construction agreement. Just want to make sure I'm above board on that. You're not going to benefit personally financially, are there? No. Okay.

He doesn't work for RK and K apparently. I do not.

With that, this is my second item this evening for the construction services contract for Bat Creek Greenway Trail Head. This is again one portion of the overhaul Bat Creek Greenway which I have displayed up here. It stretches from Caldwell Roading all the way through Hickory Ridge crossing over connecting to what Chameleia Gardens built and then continuing on to where it would meet a future Fuda Creek Greenway at that last crossing there in the corner. Uh you can look at this color chart. The the light green is future proposed. The orange section is what is proposed construction now circled in red. And that's what this item is recommending tonight. And then the dark green is what's currently existing and in place. This is a design of this is what the design looks like and what we are looking to get built. And you see the connection to the existing greenway that Chameleia Gardens built. And it stops at the the the bottom the toe of the slope there um at Hickory Ridge. And then that final connection will be made and designed with the Hickory Ridge Road project sidewalk as it goes through and comes to completion through there. But until then, uh access will be through the through the uh the driveway there and through the parking lot to that connection down there. This easement agreement was made and entered with uh the Berg Church in April of 2024 to allow the greenway and this trail head to be built on their property. Uh it's the the parking lot is intended as mutual use so that we can use it for public access for the greenway. It'll provide access over to the the inter mural fields over at the middle schools which we also use for parks and wreck activities. And then it'll allow the church to use this as

additional parking as needed when they may when that may arise. It currently there's 66 gravel spaces that exist. Now this design converts 44 of those to paved. It leaves 22 gravel spaces in place and then it will add an additional 33 paved spaces. The fiscal impact of this contract is 379 $379,87.67 and the budget amendment proposes to transfer 160,000 from the transportation capital projects fund over to this project to cover the additional costs. And this con this contract met the requirements for an informal bid procedure. So we estimated it below $500,000. So, we were able to do an informal bid process and Ramping provided the lowest responsive bid.

And with that, I will take any questions. I'm just a little confused. The the asphalt is for the greenway and the parking lot. Is the greenway asphalt or is Yes, sir. Okay. So, that this is everything. Yes, sir. everything the the the gray darker gray hatched area in in that area and what remains gravel your it's not shown in this aerial but to the right um you can see the the kind of stretch of tree or bushes that do exist

on the angled portion that area is actually already existing gravel um and then the same sort of area with the with the bushes that exist going through the gray shaded area on both sides of that there is some gravel that the church had already put in place over the last couple of years. Is it gravel? I'm sorry. So the this darker the bushes area, you said that in the So what appears to be grass with the with the bushes. Here we go. Thank you. So these bushes here um either side of that. So these spaces that exist here

and here that's gravel and then here's gravel as well as on the other side is gravel existing. Okay. So we'd be converting this this area and then expanding these spaces beyond and are we concerned about how that area floods?

If you can barely see it just above this line that is the actual floodway line. Now, this this lot is within the 100, which is also on this plan, but maybe a little bit harder to see. It kind of cuts through here roughly. Um, it does flood. Uh, it is a paved surface lot. It should you you can have that in there. It exists. Whether it'll last as long as if it wasn't in a flood plane, that's yet to be seen, but it it it'll be all right for now. And then the greenway itself, those are in floodways all over the place. So,

and Deon, I just want to be clear, maybe it was on a earlier slide. So, this immediately becomes effective. This is not a trail to nowhere, right? Correct. If this this portion here exists and that is what um Chameleia Gardens built. Let's see if we go here. So that green, the dark green exists. So this will actually complete all the way up to here and then once Hickory Ridge sidewalk is built, then it will complete the loop all the way around. So there will be a complete loop around and then these other lighter green areas will be other pieces of the pie that will have to come back with future projects.

I got you. Okay. And then the beneficiaries of this parking lot are people who want they're free to come park here and get on the greenway and walk. And the church is free to use that on Sunday or Wednesday. Correct. And there's no restriction. It's first come first serve. Everybody wants to walk and go to church on Sunday then. Correct. If if if the church has an abundance of parking on a Sunday during their service, it is f it's first come first serve. But um most of the time I No reserve parking. No, none of the residents will be told you can't park here on Sunday at 11. Right. Correct. As far as as far as the easement is as far as the easement language goes. Yes, sir.

Okay. Yeah, they gave us the easements, but we we're still going to maintain that parking lot. Yes. Yes. It'll be our it'll be a public parking lot. It's the town's parking lot. Yeah. And so we would anticipate, you know, Sunday mornings for overflow parking to go here, but it would be more likely that the Bird Church would ask people to park somewhere else than we would ask residents to to not park there on on a Sunday. Can it be vice versa? Yeah.

Okay. There are no more questions. Is there a motion to authorize town manager finalize negotiations and execution of the attached construction services contract for the Back Creek Greenway Trail Head to Ram Pavement Services in an amount not to exceed $379,876 and the related fisc year 2026 budget ordinance and project ordinance amendments. So moved. Is there a second? Second. All in favor? I. Motion is carried. Thank you so much. Thanks, Sean.

Next up, we'll have Jonathan joining us. And this is for consideration of a contract with Precision Safe Sidewalks, and this is for the sidewalk trip hazard removal in Kensington Forest.

Thank you again, Mayor and Council. Uh maybe not as flashy as the one before, but definitely is important in my mind, and I think everybody would agree. Um, so just a quick history on this project or the the projects, uh, town of Harrisburg did complete an ADA transition plan back in 2021. That's a federal plan. Uh, there's a lot of stuff that came out of that. It was for the majority of the town. Um, there's a lot of components that have already been implemented throughout the years over the last five or six years. Done a great job doing that. Um, there'll be I'll show you a map here in a few minutes with that. But anyway, what we're going to be talking about tonight is some specific things associated with that is trip hazards essentially. Um, and again, those are areas one and a half to two and a half inches along a sidewalk or a greenway. Actually doesn't matter. Um, that you know could develop into a trip for anybody traveling along those corridors. Precision Safe Sidewalks has actually worked for the town of Harrisburg for several years in this capacity. They're sole source. They come in and do work. They've done it around town hall uh and in a majority of neighborhoods around for these trip hazards. Anything above the 2 and a half inches is really considered um something you got to go in do infrastructure removal or changes out. This is a map out of that ADA transition plan. Anything in blue on the map was actually what they evaluated at that time. Uh this is been going on again for that five or six years time time frame. A lot of this work has been addressed. Uh it was actually categorized in some high, medium, and low priorities. The high priorities were were done right off the bat. Um and those actually encompass some of the mediums and lows as well. A majority of the mediums are taken care of and then there's actually a a good portion of the lows that have been as well. So we're going to actually have to run a probably another transition plan in the next couple of years. Right now we're still trying to finish up these few things. Uh tonight we're going to be talking a little bit about obviously

we're talking about the Kinington Forest. Um, back last year during the spring of last year, we actually had Precision Safe come in do another assessment for us on just trip hazards. Um, and they did it in three communities. We were able to cover one of those communities last year with our money, which was actually Hawthorne. We're just working our way down the list. Um, next year will likely be Providence Manor that does have some trip hazards as well in it. They also they do a good job when they come in. they they identify um not only the trip hazard, but they'll give us a report of the areas that we may need to go in there and do work on as well. So, it's a great report. It's actually I think like if I remember correct, it's like 100 pages. It's a long report, but it does do a a very good extensive work on what we need to go in and take care of. U this is the recommended project tonight. I know the map's not great. This is straight out of the report, but everything's highlighted in um colorcoded. And so the blues are really your lower one one and a half to, you know, one half to inch areas. Anything that's red or your bad areas. So you can kind of see those scattered throughout. Um and then of course your yellows are your medium areas as well. So there was, like I said, there's about 800 trip hazards in this particular community. Uh and then there were several other identifications that we'll be working on from a maintenance standpoint. And of course with the additional funds that'll be left in our budget. Uh cost of that contract is $88,841. Uh we do have budgeted $100,000 in this year's budget to do this work. And then of course it does meet the goals of retain providing safe well-maintained dependable public facilities systems and services. With that I will take questions.

Who did the original install of these sidewalks and were they built in a defective way? Right. So, where are the guilty? It's a It's a great question. I'm not sure who that is. I think it was Nitlock, maybe. I'm not sure who it was. To follow that though, I might be a little bit familiar with Yeah, there you go. But this is just going to be a reoccurring project with the tree roots and how they're shifting. Um, like do you pick a different tree? Do you like what do you do to help prevent, you know, all the shifts? because I mean I like to see this, you know, because it is bad. I didn't realize 700 and something places bad, but sure, you know. Um,

so that's a great question, Mayor Pro Tim. Uh, so you're right. This is a reoccurring problem. Um, that doesn't mean you you can't go in, well, actually you're not required to address it. So, uh, tree roots are the major issue in sidewalks. Um, older neighborhoods like Kensington that was built, some of the trees that were there are not necessarily the trees we would put in those areas today. they have a lot of tree roots that come up. Um, you get a high water. You got a lot of irrigation along those corridors. It tends to grow well. Obviously, that's a, you know, that's a great area for those trees to thrive and they have. Um, the trees we use in some of the corridors today are not necessarily that same. And we also widened out those spaces, but again, it's just something you do see and we do see those areas um, coming back a little bit. But again, if you if you can get them addressed, it's it's a continuous effort, but it is something that's very important. But again, on your older neighborhoods, I don't know how old Kensington Forest is. You may know that

2007ish. Yeah. So 2007, so we're looking almost 20 years. And now we're really just having to address some of those major issues at this point. I think it's it's pretty good. And as you're replacing the trees that are damaged, are you replacing them with a tree that will be less likely to We are. That's a great question. Uh yes ma'am we do replace those with some trees that we would recommend today and I think we did some replacements in Kensington this past year last month the trees they just they just die storm damage it's not the uh well I mean we're replacing them in back in the ones that were there and we do have a requirement currently that they have trees in the

those are separate projects we replace trees as they die just as part of or um town ordinances, the the sidewalks. We have an ADA transition plan. A lot of towns don't. Yeah. Um you know, there you're supposed to.

Um we're one of those towns that that are ahead of the curve on this. Um, but I I think in general the the simpler question, John's being very kind uh public works uh speak here is is that Kensington's almost two decades old. In every two decades, you're going to spend about $100,000 in in there. So, it's like, you know, that's just that's just life. Um, that's every neighborhood's going to be like that. after you get about 20 years into a neighborhood, they're going to have some shifting. Even if even if these were built perfectly, and I don't know if they they were or not back in

2007, but even if they were, um, concrete cracks, water gets under concrete, it moves, it shifts, um, tree roots do come up, you you adjust it, and see you in 20 more years after you go through and and spend $100,000. I guess what I'm struggling with a little bit, you know, if I'm in Camelot and I never got my sidewalk, but I'm a taxpayer and the folks in Kensington who have an HOA and have a wonderful sidewalk and have a developer who's long gone. The rest of us are paying for the sidewalk in Kensington, which probably need to, and I'm sure our attorney can tell us why we are.

That's how roads and sidewalks work. They're public infrastructure, right? So, you know, the taxpayer pays for the when the greenways uh crack and the floodways come through and wash them out, all the taxpayers will pay for it, not just the people that that walk on them. Um there are some neighborhoods that don't have sidewalks that came in before some of our development ordinances, but um nobody comes in without sidewalks now. Some came in with sidewalks on one side, nobody comes in with sidewalks on one side. Now, it's sidewalks on both sides with curb ramps and and all of those things. So, um the majority of our town has sidewalks, but there are some that would say, "Well, I don't have a sidewalk. Why do I pay for a sidewalk?" But in the grand scheme of things, we're spending about $2,000 a year per neighborhood to maintain sidewalks. It's It's really not not a significant amount.

So, this remediation, you just go in there with a grinder and knock down the high spots. Is that you you do? They actually have a So we actually have a grinder in house, but it does this one that they use is completely different. So I would I would actually encourage you to walk outside. There's one here um right beside town hall that was ground down using just a traditional grinder. And it's a lot um I would say it it's just a lot more rough. What they use, their process is a lot it's just a lot smoother. You you hardly recognize this other than the color. Uh the color of the sidewall changes of course because you know that is aged over the time but it's it's really smooth. Um easier to easier to access, easy to go across and then they also guarantee that it'll meet ADA standards. So when when it gets done they'll have it back up back to the ADA quality. And then I would say one thing about the maintenance as well. You know it's it's no it's really no different. We're required obviously to maintain our sidewalks but it's no different than us maintaining roads or any of the things that happen curbs. you pick the thing, you know, those are part of the maintenance budget that you're, you know, that people put together. Any community, it doesn't matter what it is. So, it's, you know, something that we are that transition plan is actually a federal plans requirement. So, you can get federal funds. I mean, that's that's the goal. That's the reason they're there.

If you have a sidewalk Yeah. If you have sidewalks, right? I don't have. So, you're you're using federal funds for that. Is that what this you are using federal funds for that? No, no, no, no. your your transition plan, you have to you have to meet those requirements to get those federal funds and for other things. So, you can use them. We we use state funds for this as well, like POW bill funds. Those those are state funds that can only be used on on your roadways. What about um is Kensington connected to any is there any future connection to any um greenways or is that in the plans anywhere? Uh I'm not sure I can answer that. I don't know. I'd have to look at the map to see.

Yeah. I mean, without looking at our greenway master plan, I hard to say if there's anything on that. If I had my way, every neighborhood in Harrisburg will be connected with a greenway. So, my short answer is going to be, yeah, but a little bit. I know there's sidewalks that can on either side. Uh, so a lot of times you can look at that way. And also to Rob's point, you're any any new construction we have today, you know, we're requiring multi-use paths along any of those. So, I know there is a subdivision. And I think if you look on your development map right behind that probably going to have some green waste on there, but I don't know if connected today. Are we in a situation right now where we're liable if anybody trips, little Jimmy falls down on the sidewalk about us?

I I don't know if I can answer that question. It might be an attorney question. I can actually answer that a little better. I mean, Rich is going to look over to to me, but you want to go You want to go first?

I'll give him the I'll give him the engineering liability. you can give them the legal liability. Um, that's why we have an ADA transition plan is in order to avoid the liability. So, if you don't have a plan and you know about this and you're doing nothing, you're liable. Um, if you have a plan and you know about it and as long as you're reasonably working on that plan, then you fall under the the same exemptions you do if somebody runs a stop sign and and things like that. Um, if you don't know about it, you also are not liable just from that same maintenance standpoint. I'm sure there's some other stuff that Rich can add to that.

Well, that actually pretty well sums it up except that if you do have a a lipage or, you know, a difference in the grade of a couple pieces of concrete, it doesn't necessarily make you liable even if you know about it. So, so, so what Rob said is the the general rule, but if if if it's if it's um something that is um clearly um seen by someone who's walking along and they trip over it, um then if they get injured because of that, like I say, you're not necessarily liable for their injuries. So, it's it's kind of a gray area overall. It dep kind of would depend on the specific circumstances of the of the situation. So, but overall it's better to have a plan like like the town has and be working it because that does um that does stand you in good standstead in in court.

Okay. So, we have this plan and we fund a h 100,000 every year towards this plan. Okay. Seems crazy. It's the right thing to do. You want good-looking sidewalks in a good-looking town, right? But I we've spent so much time on this. I'm just going to get off on my soap box for a minute.

So, in the 1970s, I think it was Sweden, don't quote me, it was a Scandinavian country. Um the the largest insurance agent there, uh property and liability insurance company noticed that they were having a huge uptick in uh claims against personal injury. right? Kid people falling down. So they commissioned, you know, they're for profit, right? They commissioned an outsider to come in and do a study on it. Well, what they found out is that they had uh they had made all their playgrounds so safe over the past 20 years that none of the children were slipping and falling and scraping their knee and getting hurt on the monkey bars. And those children that didn't learn how to fall grew up to be adults who didn't know how to save themselves from falling. I'm not kidding. You can look this up. I'll send it to you if you send me an email. And so the insurance company started donating quote unquote dangerous playground equipment to every school in the country and they reduce their overhead payouts over the next 20 30 years by like 15 20%.

So interesting. That's my soap box on like maybe people can, you know, scrape their knees a little bit, but I think the sidewalk should look nice. So, it's just tough because like half the neighborhoods in the town don't have hairs sidewalks yet, you know. So, and that's I understand it wasn't a requirement. So, anyway, I'll send you this. You're welcome to drive over to Kensington, walk on their new sidewalk. She walks in our neighborhood. We don't have sidewalk. She likes our neighborhood. Orchard Park has sidewalks. We have partial sidewalks. Yeah. Windsor Forest. All the neighborhoods around us, none of them have sidewalks. Yeah.

Definitely not in common. Have sidewalks and everybody's flying on it like 80 miles an hour. You still see people trying to walk from one neighborhood to another. Yeah. You know, or like biking and trying to make it really quick from that one neighborhood to another. So, who's friends of the greenway now? Okay, with all that fun discussion, is there a motion to award construction services contract in the amount of $88,841 to Precision Safe Sidewalks LLC for the Sidewalk Trip Hazard Removal in Kensington Forest Subdivision? Motion on the floor. Is there a second?

Second. All in favor? I motion is carried. Thank you so much. And Jonathan is going to stay with us for our final yes decision this evening and that's consideration of design contract for phase one of the Morehead West Sanitary Sewer and Leatherwood pump station decommissioning capital improvement.

That is a lot. U we have had a lot of discussion about this tonight. Uh so I'm going to try to be brief. I know uh town manager has mentioned this and then of course a lot of our economic development folks as well um but this project was started back in 2021 and um was actually has already been designed and again this is an update to that design just a quick background 1600 acres between 49 and US 29 phase one's about 4680 linear feet of 12-in gravity 710 ft of 8 in gravity and then of course the decommission itioning of with pump station which is always a good thing when we can get one of our pump stations offline. Uh and then of course the project was bid in 2021 and was was decided not to move forward at that time just because of some of the high prices after COVID 19. Uh so we do believe that it's the time to do that now with all of our economic development interest in that area. Uh just a quick exciting future glance at that. This is some marketing um brochures that I was able to get from our economic development director. And you can kind of see uh what we have planned a little bit. Again, conceptual in nature, but the yellow line represents the phase one project that we're looking at tonight. Again, that's a large area. Obviously, you can see um and kind of the Cwell Road extension, your remembers coming through here as well. And then again, this this over here is where that project would start, which is an existing Wasach line. And then Leatherwood would be basically this area right here with Morehead running in between. Uh and this is a little bit more blown up of that same area. The proposed project tonight or the proposal is for project management administration permitting which is actually just updating some permits. There's several things that were have out have gone out of date since 2021. Uh and then they're also including some key elements from

value engineering that were uh when when the bid was when they were bidding this project back in 2021, the contractor and some of the some of the folks then were made some recommendations that we're going to try to incorporate into this project. Hopefully get those numbers down and then of course bidding award and construction based services. Cost of projects 103,000 will be funded by capital improvement and project meets the town's goal of providing safe well-maintained dependable facility systems and services. I'll take questions. I don't I don't have a problem with this project. How many pump stations do we have left? We've got 15 15 and like three we just never going to be able to do anything about.

Yeah, it's probably even bigger. And there's probably like six that Okay. that unless there's some major change, it they're going to be there for a long time. All right. Keep decommissioning. Yeah, we've got a couple on our capital improvement project for decommissioning. So, definitely we the more they being fooled off, they are definitely challenged. They're just money pits.

Yeah. And this one makes financial sense now because the economic development climate. If you remember those that were here, we paused it at the time because it the cost was so high, but it's always had that same benefit of we do have sanitary sewer overflows at this pump station. Um when when we get heavy rains, that's that's one of the first ones that that backs up and and that does go right into that uh that water source there. So, um, that benefit stays the same and and has the added benefit of the economic development component.

All right. With that, is there a motion toward contract to Black & Beach Engineering in the amount of 103,000 for the updated design of phase one of the Morehead West Sanitary Sewer and the Leatherwood pump station decommissioning capital improvement project. And this authorizes authorize town staff and the town attorney to finalize the contract terms and related budget documents. Is there a motion to approve? Motion. There a second. Second. All in favor? I. Motion is carried. Thank you so much, Jonathan. Action items. Rob, I have comp plan survey. Just making sure that we're looking into that. Okay.

I think there's supposed to be an update. Yeah. I I didn't have any action items, so that's I'll mark that one down, but that'd be the only one I had for this evening. Okay. That's the only one I had as well. Um, we do have a need for close session tonight to discuss land acquisition and a personnel matter. Um, for those in the audience, there is no more business after that close session. So, we will just come out of close session and adjourn for the evening. Um, so is there a motion to move to motion to motion to move into close session? So moved. Second. Second. All in favor? I motion is