Town Council - Regular Meeting

[Music] Good evening. I'd like to welcome everyone to our December town council meeting. Thanks for the plethora of folks in the audience today in council chambers as well as those joining us on our YouTube video this evening. Our first call to order will be our agenda adoption. Is there a motion on the floor to approve the agenda as presented? Motion to approve. Is there a second? Second. All in favor? Motion is carried. Thank you. At this time, we will have Councilman Bevon lead us in our invitation this evening.

Thank you, mayor. Let's pray together. Father, we thank you uh for this incredible season where we can come together and uh God, it's it's a season of newness and we thank you for that as we uh welcome in our new council. Uh God, we just ask your blessings over them. Uh and God, just uh pray for our meeting tonight, God, that you would uh you would bless us as usual with civility and respect for each other. And God, help us to go about doing uh great business for a great town. So, we thank you and give you all praise, glory, and honor in Jesus name. Amen. Amen. Thank you. Will everyone 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. First up is our Harrisburg Youth Council, Grow with Harrisburg. And Casey is going to introduce Good evening, Mayor and Council. Um, I'm excited to kick us off tonight with our 2025 2026 Harrisburg Youth Council Capstone presentation. It is called Grow with Harrisburg. But before we get into the details of this year's capstone project, I want to introduce our Harrisburg Youth Council. This year, our youth council is made up of 38 students. It is our largest youth council yet. And those students represent Hickory Ridge High School, Cabaris Health Sciences Institute, the Canon School, JMR Robinson High School, and the Cabaris Early College. And on top of serving on our youth council, those students are responsible for serving on one of four committees within our youth council. And those committees are our community service committee, our member recruiting committee, our grant committee, and our capstone committee. And we actually have some members of our capstone committee with us tonight to present that project. So before we get into the details, um I want to go over what a capstone project is. So a capstone project is a project to address real community issues and find an actionable solution. Um that project theme is selected at our August youth council retreat. Our youth council breaks up into groups. They decide on a theme within that group. They then present that to the rest of the youth council. and by the end of the retreat they decide on what theme they want to move forward with through the year. So in 2023 and 2024 um you may remember we had a organized job job shadowing opportunity for our high school students. Last year our students hosted a book drive with elementary schools to boost literacy in the classrooms and expand those classroom libraries for elementary schools right here in Harrisburg. And this year, I'm excited to introduce Grow with Harrisburg, which is our 2025 2026 Harrisburg Youth

Council Capstone Project theme selection. And I will hand it over to our capstone chair, Nadila, to talk about the details. Hi. Um, my name is Nadila. I'm a junior at Hickory Ridge High School and this is my third year um in youth council, my third year on the Capstone Committee, and it's my second year as capstone chair. So, what is Grow with Harrisburg? Grow with Harrisburg, as Miss Nester explained earlier, is the third capstone project that we as youth council have undertaken. It focuses on biodiversity this year. And this year, we decided to work on creating a pollinator garden with native plants. Native plants are plants that are endemic to an environment. And they're suited to this area because they've evolved alongside the other plants and animals in the ecosystem um over the years. And because of this, they're all very they are all able to coexist properly. And so by filling the garden with the native plants, we will maintain a thriving garden year round. And with this, we will be able to we will work on educating the public and encouraging community involvement by both inviting them to help establish that garden by planting native plants at our planting day and by encouraging them to visit the garden on their own time so they can learn more about native plants as well. But why did we choose this? So as Miss Nester explained, we chose the capstone project at our youth council retreat that started the year. Beyond that, however, we chose this project for several reasons. Firstly, to educate. The Capstone project's main goal is to educate and inform our community about the many facets of our chosen subject. So, the overarching goal of the project is to educate and promote community involvement. Secondly, we want to foster biodiversity by promoting native plants and coexistence with pollinators such as bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds. As um as you know, Harrisburg is a growing town and um we want to maintain green spaces amidst urbanization. As statistics show that 89% of Americans will live by urban urban areas uh um and cities as time goes on and so our one of

our main goals with this project is to maintain that nature and people can grow and live together. Lastly, we wish to engage with the community by hosting our plant day initiative which you'll hear more about in some of the later slides and by also um you know kind of as I mentioned the educate aspect. We want to encourage community participation and public interaction with the garden as the capstone project really is for the people of Harrisburg at the end of the day. And next up I'm passing off to

Hi, my name is Anisha Hayermath. I'm a sophomore at Hickory High School and this is my second year in youth council. Here are groups that we have identified who will benefit from our capstone project. This garden will provide a hands-on learning opportunity for local families to learn about native plants, pollinators, and gardening. It will serve as a shared space where teachers, students, and local organizations can host educational opportunities and programs. The garden will also create and provide ongoing volunteer opportunities to support gardening, sustainability, and beautifification. It will provide an engaging space for multi-generational citizens as gardening is a hobby for anyone and everyone of any age. Here is our draft garden design. We plan to make a U-shaped garden with the gravel walkway in the middle. This garden is designed to have the taller flowers in the back. As you can see in the yellow, the shorter and smaller flowers will be on the sides. We also plan to have a trellis at the entrance entrance with vines. These are some rough measurements, but the measurements will depend on where a garden will be.

Hi, my Hi, my name is Vishu Viranini. I'm a 10th grader at Hickory Ridge High School and this is my second year of youth council. And so what are our goals? Our first goal is we want to increase community engagement for the local environment with people of all generations and all ages. Our second goal is we want to gain recognition from the North Carolina Wildlife Federation. And so we want to get our pollinator garden as a certified wildlife habitat. And so the requirements for that is we need a source of food, a source of water, cover and shelter, and a place for their animals to raise their young. And so that is why we are continuing to look for a location that satisfies all the all all those needs so we can get a certification. Our next goal is we want to educate students and adults on environmental preservation and horiculture horicultural practices. And finally our last goal is we want to encourage sustainable gardening and at home and that's mainly through the take-h home pots which we will be handing out at our plant day. And how are we letting people know about our goals? Well, the first way we're letting people know is we're going to be ed educating and advertising people. We're going to be educating and advertising people via flyers, graphics, and promotional videos on the town of Hairsburg social media. And we'll be handing out pamphlets on planting day, which will have information so people can go home and learn more about the plants and hopefully become more interested in biodiversity. And hopefully they'll uh take that into their own hands and contribute to that. And we also want to have an educational presentation on planting day by members of our youth council where where they're walk where they're where they'll walk around interacting with members of our community and talking about our pollinator garden so they can learn more and hopefully we'll be able to raise more awareness about our pollinator garden and biodiversity. And the next way we're letting people know about our goals is we'll be having a planting day. And so we'll have live planting by the youth council, but we'll also be inviting me members of our community to come to raise awareness

about our planting, about our pollinator garden. And we'll be handing and we'll be handing out take-home pots and seeds with pamphlets and presentations by youth council members so people can learn more about our um about our garden and why we're doing the garden. And we'll also be providing information to people at the plant day through the presentation. And we we also plan to have labels about each of the plants to raise information about the plants. So if they're interested, they can take home the specific seed they want and then we'll be able to foster biodiversity with people in their own homes.

Hi, my name is Tenmay Jala and I'm a sophomore at Hickory High School and this is my second year in youth council. We initially began this project in September and October by researching native plant species best suited for the town of Harrisburg. Our goal was to have flowers to attract pollinators such as bees and butterflies as the garden that we're doing is a pollinator garden. We also brainstormed ideas for partnerships in the community and began the process of submitting out grants and other proposals to further aid in any extra supplies we might need. After that, in November, we started working with the parks and wrecks department and the head of the native garden from Ready Creek Park to discuss and understand what major components we would need and the overall layout of the garden. At this time, the capstone committee divided the entire youth council into five main subcommittees. These subcommittees are advertising, take-home pots, plant day, materials, and plant research. We established these five subcommittees so that each member in the youth council would have an active role in the project. Currently in the month of December, we are here now presenting in front of you town council to about our project to get your thoughts and comments. We're also in the process of scheduling a build date for the garden, hopefully having it sometime in April. Coming up in January, we'll finalize the location and prep up the site by stripping the grass and getting the cardboard laid down to set the foundation of the garden. We're also going to be confirming the volunteers to help maintain the garden, which will include the FFA or Future Farmers of America from the Hickory Ridge High School. These volunteers will be following a consistent maintenance schedule by by signing up in shifts. After the site is all prepped up, we'll be confirming the plant purchases and begin advertising for the plant day in April, mainly through the advertising subcommittee. Additionally, in March, we'll have two

building days to clear and get the soil ready for plant day. Once all is done and ready to go, we'll commence the community plant day and open our garden to the public, featuring our native plants, educational experiences, and community engagement. After that, as the project comes to a close, we will come back to you town council to present our results and statistics from the recent plant day and the capstone project in general. Finally, for the upcoming summer, we will continue to keep the garden maintained and assigned shifts, including some extra aid from the parks and reccks department and the public works department. Throughout the planning stages of this project, um we've been very lucky to very lucky to work with Mr. Nathan Strife and Miss Kendra Dixon. Uh Mr. Nathan Mr. Nathan Strife is the parks and right superintendent for our well our own town of Harrisburg and he attended one of our Harrisburg youth council meetings where he described his experience his own like personal experience in establishing pollinator gardens and he talked to us a lot about how endemic plants are important to maintain ecosystem balance. We will continue to consult him for matters concerning um the garden design as you saw in one of the earlier slides as well as some of the general um like maintenance issues that come with having a garden. Miss Kendra Dixon is the head of the native plant garden at the Rey Creek Nature Preserve. She attended one of our um capstone committee meetings and she spoke to us a lot in detail about the specifics of native plants and how you have to go about when choosing the plants for a garden and how all these plants interact with each other. We'll be continuing to consult her in the future for where we're going to be sourcing plants and also um like the specifics of how we're going to maintain the garden and how we're going to set up the plants in the garden as well. Um and we are we're so excited to undertake this project and thank you so much for listening. Are there any questions or comments? Um this is wonderful. You guys did a great job with the books last year. I

think this is a wonderful project. What I'd ask you to come back with in May is what's the next step? If you guys are successful in this garden, I see all kinds of common areas out here. I see the flower boxes going up. If you work with parks and wreck, is there something we could do to put flowers out there? Or somebody has a vacant piece of land that they've cut all the trees down. Can we throw some flower seeds out there? This is like way above my plant knowledge. Um, but I drive down I 85 sometimes and I see these medians that have these wonderful flowers that come out twice a year. Um, so it'd be great to see a next step from this group and a recommendation where you've already generated success on a small scale, planted a seed and then said, "Okay, what can we do next for our town?" But this is wonderful. Love it.

That'd be a really cool opportunity to explore in the future if this project goes really if when this project goes well when you succeed. Yes. Yeah. Any other questions or comments for youth council? Thank you all so much for being here tonight and presenting this to us. It looks like a very exciting project and can't wait to see how this turns out.

Next under special presentations, we have our Citizens Academy 2025 award. And Casey is joining us again for this one.

Hi. You're uh one more presentation for me tonight. Um, last month, as you may remember, we did do our 2025 Citizens Academy recognition. And I just wanted to uh introduce one person who did complete our Citizens Academy program tonight. She completed all nine weeks of our program and she is here to accept her award. And that is Mrs. Jelina Crumb. if you want to come up and accept your award. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Crumman, for all of our Citizens Academy graduates. That was a lot of fun to see that many people go through at this time. All right, moving right along. We are in the section for public comments. We do um have a signup sheet. We've got three names on there this evening. If you could just please keep your comments to about 3 minutes. Um when you come up to the podium, if you could just state your name and address for the record, please. Um first up, we have Rosa Culver Sims. wave time or you're not

I'm not going to speak. Okay. Thank you. Um Mark Monroe.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. Good evening.

My name is Mark Monroe. My address is 6751 River Hills Drive, Harrisburg, North Carolina. at 28075. Um, I wanted to discuss an issue that we've got uh in my neighborhood. I'm going to this this issue goes back to 2012. There's a lot of history to it and I'd be happy to talk offline about this because I don't have much time to discuss all the details, but there is a gate at the end of Shamrock Road which basically is a barrier from the the road going into the Saddle Creek development. And back in 2012, there was an agreement signed and I have a copy of it here. Uh if y'all don't, I'd be happy to provide it for you. Uh this is an agreement that was assigned agreed to between NC DOT and the town of Harrisburg. And it was signed by the mayor at the time, Tim Haggler. And um when the bridges and railroads were closed down, there were discussions as to how things were going to be handled and what was going to be done. And there were some debates and discussions with regards to how Shamrock was going to be handled. To summarize that, uh there was an agreement made between NC DOT uh and the town of Harrisburg that there would be a permanent barrier. Uh well, let me just read it to you. Uh there would be public access would be restricted by a gate or method by jointly agreed upon by NC DOT in the town of Harrisburg. The connection from 49 to Shamrock will be available only for emergency services vehicles after the construction is complete. So basically what that's saying is there's going to be a permanent barrier. The only traffic allowed would be emergency traffic and that was signed between the state and the town of Harrisburg and Tim Haggler.

Been issues with the gate. I don't know that we had a really good solution. I don't know that we really spent a whole lot of time working on it. Uh, so it's been that way since 2012. Uh, in my neighborhood forum, uh, Mark Morgan, who is the NC DOT contact, uh, there's been some going on with him, and I've actually spoken to him at length about this situation. Back in the middle of November, the gates were removed. Um, they were removed by Rob. NC DOT was not informed. They were pulled and through traffic was then allowed to go from Shamrock through the gates through that road onto 49. Uh in specific violation of the agreement that was signed by the town. Um I spoke to NC DOT about it. They did not approve it and they do not want the gates removed. Mark told me specifically we did not want them removed. Uh he said they need to be replaced. We need barriers there. That was the agreement. what he has told me is he's working on uh options uh different things we can do with Rob to get that barrier back in place. All that I'm asking is that y'all understand this agreement that was made and work with NC DOT on getting the barriers back in place as it was agreed upon in 2012. Uh I don't think it's going to be very expensive. Uh Mark explains to me that there's specific types of mechanical ballers that can come up and down that have recessed locks. There's no chains. There's no locks that can be cut uh that are affordable. All that I ask is y'all work with this situation and make it right according to the agreement for not only NC DOT but the residents and the people that have agreed to this. So um that's really all I got to say. I do have a copy of this. I'd be happy to talk to you offline. I'd

be if y'all have not seen this and y'all probably weren't even here in 2012. I'd be happy to give you copies of this so you can actually see what was agreed upon. So, thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mark. Are there any more Shamrock before I There's just one. So, what? Yeah, I don't there's only one other person signed up to speak and it's not for Okay.

Yeah. If it's not Shamrock, then I' I'd be happy to to address this. Most of council's been copied on the email that that that Mark and I have had and the three others with with the neighbors out there. Um, our staff removed the gates. I'm not strong enough. I'm I'm not in public works anymore. So, we had our our staff take the physical gates out. Um, but certainly we'll get a copy of that agreement if you guys don't don't have it. Um, agreement's a a loose term. It's a term sheet which is part of an emir memorandum of understanding from 2012 signed by the mayor between NC DOT prior to the rail project. A lot of history involved with that cliffnote version um is a little bit different but Mark has it mostly correct. Um there is an agreement and he he read it properly here that says a gate or other means and methods of restriction between Shamrock and Saddle Creek and from 2012 to the spring of 2018 it was not a gate. The gate was installed in 2018. So for the first six years of that it was restricted by other means. If you guys remember Tom Pledo was here at the time. he was the public works director. Him and the current administration at that time decided to try a gate and it had a um a mechanical opening so it was motorized so that the uh emergency vehicles could come up, they'd hit a button in the in the truck and it would open up and close. That was another way to make it a little more strict than what was being done for the first six years. Um a few weeks after that, no more than a few months, uh that public works director left and I got the wonderful pleasure of inheriting that department along with the uh engineering department that uh I was running at the

time for two years from 2018 to 2020. Um, I m I maintain that gate. That that gate continued to get um opened with just trucks that will push up against it and push through and break the the motors. And Mark and I discussed all this on the phone that evening. Um, and then we quit maintaining it that way. We started putting a chain on it with a Nox box. Um, people cut the chain. People broke the Nox box. So then CO hit. Nobody was going anywhere. We just didn't do much with it. we just quit kind of maintaining it. It It wasn't an issue. Fast forward to to about 2022. We said, "We're going to let it just kind of be a soft. We're not going to maintain it. We're going to let it sit out there and see what happens." And we heard nothing in the area. We from a town standpoint, we weren't maintaining it. We weren't putting a lock on it. We weren't putting a chain on it. Um, however, it did start to get chained and locked, not by us, but by businesses or residents or folks that lived in the area, which created an issue where we have two scenarios. We either have a gate that is wide open because we can't maintain it. So, it's always open and people can just go through and there's no other means of restriction. There's no signage and there's no patrolling. or we have a gate that's locked by private entities in which case we can't get fire, police or EMS through there. Both those two scenarios are are not tolerable. So this fall we looked at so what what can we do out there? What can we try? What other means and methods are are available to us as the agreement allows? And we went and we signed it and we changed the traffic pattern and we put stop signs out and stop bars and we put restricted traffic sign and we put deputies out there. So we measured the traffic volume and speed prior to we

worked with the businesses and said you have to route all your trucks a different way. They they can't go this way. Tell your employees they can't go this way. We're going to sign it and we're going to enforce it with deputies and see how this works out. Um Mark and I had a conversation the night we decided to clean that area up because the businesses were complaining that that area was just we're getting couches and mattresses and we have this old rusty gate and the gate is busted and it looks like heck and we're trying to invest in here. Can you clean it up? So we said yes, we'll clean it up. And we physically took the metal gates off of the hinges at that point. That's when everybody noticed, hey, this this is an issue. Mark got a hold of me. three other members, uh, three other neighbors on that road got a hold of me and I explained to them what was happening. Um, I met with NC DOT last Wednesday about it. Um, we're talking about, hey, if if those if this method doesn't work, what else can you do? But you do have to go through a process of elimination. We know the gate from a town standpoint doesn't work. I did talk with NC DOT if they feel like there's another gate mechanism where they can man it 24/7 and make sure that it's closed at all times except for when fire EMS and police and and folks have to get through by all means they can put that on Shamrock. That's a state road. They can they can do as they please. Um but what we can do is try this method measure see if it works. If it doesn't work, we're working with NC DOT on are there are there ways to put raised medians there tra traversible um entrance exits with with kind of grass pavers. Um can we um slalom the curbs so that trucks and things can't get through and make it make it hard to get through. Um, but all of this has been communicated um with Mark and the three neighbors who have who have reached out and I've offered to go out and and meet

with them in the neighborhood and take a look at at what they're looking at, also explain some of this, look at these documents. Um, that same document that says we'll restrict traffic on Shamrock. um also says and I think it's paragraph F subsection 1 that the town and DOT realize it's necessary to connect Shamrock to 49 via grade separation um amongst four other things that were that were needed including the Veterans Road extension from Veterans to Hickory Ridge dual lefts um off of 49 onto Caldwell and vice versa. Um, so it it it lays out about five major traffic improvements that DOT was committed to helping the town achieve um 13 and 12 years ago. And I pointed that out to NC DOT and to the neighbors that DOT has moved nowhere on any of those. and we now have a population that's double and we have a business park that's double and and so we had really good uh meeting with uh the rail representatives at NC DOT last Wednesday I went out to AL tomorrow and met with them in their office as well as Mark Morgan Mark told me he's retiring here in a few months so everybody that knows Mark knows he's put in many years of service um and they were fine with the process as it is understanding they probably they want to measure and make sure it doesn't excuse me get get worse. But um but they didn't have a solution either when we had those questions and and Mark and I discussed on the phone. What would you like to see out there other than like these electronic ballards that can be motorized underground and and come up which which Mark mentioned? Um and those aren't really used on public transportation routes. you see those in commercial settings and

u traffic traffic uh parking decks and things like that. Um I think this this process from what we've looked at so far um is working but if it doesn't we do it so far the the speed before versus the speed after. So the speed after we we made the uh restriction change went down two miles an hour and the volume total volume on that road after um the restriction change is around 100 vehicles a day. So in the peak hour you're looking at 10 to 12 vehicles in the peak hour, peak morning A.M. and peak PM. Um, you know, having 10 to 12 vehicles in your busiest hour is not something that all the other roads in Harrisburg are are unaccustomed to. Um, you know, I we did make the mistake. I'll say I make the mistake because I know Mark of, you know, should have reached out to Mark and and some of the neighbors and explained the signage and the deputies ahead of time. It just sometimes you miss them, right? So, um, short of that, we spoke the day it came out. I've offered to go out. Um, all four of those emails have have declined that offer to go out and speak. Um, but we we remain ready to look at the issue and and fix anything as it comes up.

Rob, real quick, you know, when you talk about the grade separation, who was going to take on that project? Was that going to be NC DOT or was that going to Yeah. So the term sheet alludes to to basically state money and no money is paying for these cuz Shamrock's a state road and 49's a state road.

I mean there are projects on the no but that's not one of them. I mean there's and there's stuff that goes back to 2012, but it it has the you know the the last project was even near us that was of large cal large size was taking um the bypass and running it all the way over, you know, to 49. So, so our conversation Wednesday, you know, at at NC DOT um delved into a lot of that and I have um uh a meeting in January set up with with Felix the um you know, the new Scott, the new uh um after Scott uh Brett and and now Felix has taken that. So, you may see Felix on the news getting yelled at about I77. Um we're going to bring him over into into this situation as well. But you know that we went into that conversation about what what was the genesis of the restriction there and it and as Mark said it does have a very complicated history with it but ultimately they were going to close that crossing at at Saddle Creek and one of the businesses there had connections and got a hold of the governor's office and that that crossing was put back in and as part of that overriding of staff that made that hey should be closed and all these all that traffic was supposed to go out shamrock. But when they put that back in, there was some NC DOT versus this uh private business owner hurt feelings and they said, "Well, fine. If it's going back in, then you can't use Shamrock, so we're going to restrict it." And I heard that from the person that did the design. So, we had that conversation in that meeting last Wednesday about, okay, it's been a decade and a half.

Realistically, what does it need to be safe? Because vehicles are crossing that rail right now. We're talking about putting an Amtrak rail station right there. Trains are going to be stopping there. The the dynamics have changed. So, you know, once I apologized to that person from NC DOT for whoever stepped on their toes a decade and a half ago and said, "Can we just look at this from an engineering standpoint?" Um, at that point, we all were able to look at it and go, "Yeah, I think there could be some things here. Let's let's get together and not only look at the Shamrock and Saddle Creek gate and restriction and and what you have there, but what else can we do? How many vehicles can we send out Saddle Creek and and across that crossing? Because remember, we have no agreement, the town has no agreement that we can't send unlimited traffic out Saddle Creek. Um but DOT did make an agreement with NC Rail to say, "Hey, we're we'll put some barriers on that." Nobody knows what those barriers are, what those limits are. Um but they're digging into that. Um, and the people at NC Rail that we that we deal with that that Lee and I are on, you know, a meeting with every other month are the same people that would have to give permission to change this. So, we we feel like we have all the same players. Um, you know, the times have changed, populations have changed, the traffic volumes have changed. Um, but one thing's for sure, we won't let a bad situation go on Shamrock. I've been with the town a decade. I've been in a multitude of roles. No matter who's in charge, no matter what council we have up here, no matter what staff members we have, we never abandon the residents. So, if there is something getting out of control out there, we'll we'll address it. Um, I do think though that it is unrealistic for anyone in Harrisburg to think 20 years from now

your road may be the same as it is today. Things are things are going to change whether we like them or not. Um, we try to make sure they change in in the most tolerable way possible, but things can't continue to stay stagnant in a town that's growing as fast as ours. Thank you. Thank you, Rob. Um, last on our sign up for public comment is Karen Batton. Is there a Karen Batton in the room? I have nothing to say. Okay. Thank you.

That concludes public comment. Next, we have our consent agenda. Is there a motion on the floor to approve the consent agenda as presented? Motion to approve. Is there a second? Second. All in favor?

Motion is carried. Thank you. We do have one um public hearing this evening. This is consideration of extending an annexation agreement between the town of Harrisburg and the city of Charlotte and Shelley is with us to present this evening. Thank you, mayor and councel. Okay, so this is a request to consider extending an annexation agreement between the town of Harrisburg and the city of Charlotte for the purpose of defining municipal boundaries to provide certainty for service provisions and long range capital facilities planning. It is staff's recommendation to conduct the public hearing and adopt the annexation agreement time extension between the town and city of Charlotte as proposed. Town records show that Harrisburg and Charlotte entered a 10-year annexation agreement effective January 1st of 2006. This agreement was extended by both jurisdictions in 2016. Therefore, the current agreement is set to expire on January 1st of 2026. Excuse me. If approved this evening, the agreement would be effective January 1st of 2026, again for a 10-year period. Therefore, it would expire in 2036. The draft annexation agreement provided has been reviewed and approved by both the city of Charlotte and our town attorney. The city uh the city of Charlotte Town Council is also conducting its public hearing this evening as well to consider the agreement extension. So that concludes my presentation. I'll be happy to answer any questions you have uh prior to the public hearing. Any questions for Shelley before we open up the public hearing? At this time, we open the public

hearing. There was no one that signed up to speak at the public hearing, so we will then close public hearing. All right, council. Any questions? Or is there a motion to adopt the ordinance extending the annexation agreement?

No concerns. Um, I make a motion to adopt. Is there a second? Second. All in favor? Motion is carried. Thank you so much.

We will move into our communications portion this evening. First up, we have our town manager report. Good evening, Mayor and Council. Um, for tonight's manager report, I actually have a presentation. I know how much everyone likes long presentations, so I wanted to get at least one more in uh before the council changes over. Um, tonight I'm going to go over um the annual state of the town and kind of hit some of the highlights of what we've been up to and then also um introduce and explain um what you have in your hand which is the first ever quarterly report by the town and really excited to to jump into a lot of this. So, just give a quick, you know, background on what I think everybody already knows here, but may not know how quickly um we're getting there, which is the state of the town of Harrisburg is doing excellent. Our population is now around 25,000 people. We project that we will add around 650 new people this year. That Harrisburg remains a highly desirable place to live. That Harrisburg has a strong sense of community, uh, pride, and belonging. But I do want to go back a little bit on a process that that we refer to internally as our, you know, from renewal to results process that goes back a couple of years and really just has some building blocks associated with it. Most of the people here have been involved in one way or another as part of this where the first step in in 22 was just kind of some renewed uh leadership and uh a focus on organizational stability, community stability, political stability, really building that foundation so that we can do all the other things that we're going to show this evening. The next year we adopted that new mission, vision,

values, and goals which was extremely tough. There was a lot that went into that and a lot of negotiating back and forth and then expanding our regional partners. Um we don't operate in isolation and everything that we do in here has some type of partnership. 24 got us then into that real process improvement doing all these major capital projects and coming up with our consensus budgeting method by where we can make quick decisions and decide how to accomplish our goals. And finally, the last step of that is transitioning into a long-term strategic execution. Now, it's doing all the things that we put on paper. All of the hard work, all of the planning, all of the bargaining and negotiation goes into one Harrisburg. And what did that look like from a practical standpoint? Uh the first thing we did was invest in people and and our um benchmarking demographics really show this out really well. So here's two graphs that I I love to show and it's just if we invest in our people, we get performance. And by investing in in our employees, if you look at the left side here, um we do it we do everything that we do with about half the staff of all of our peer groups. The peer group average is 12 um employees per capita and we're at six. And that goes right over to general fund expenditures per capita with our peer group being at about 1350 and us being at 750 almost half of what everybody else in the in the peer group is averaging. We then turn that right over to tax rates. Our tax rate is 41 cents compared to the 54 or 55 cents of our peer group average. And the only community on here in our peer group that that beats us is Leland who also has a fire services tax which would actually push them just a little bit over us. So we have the lowest tax rate amongst any of our peer group and we're delivering those big city services in that small town

efficient way. That starts with strong finances uh smart investments. This graph shows half of everything that we do is in public safety. Um, half of every dollar that we spend, half of the taxes that come into the town go into public safety. And that's important. As we go through, you'll see you'll see why. Prepared, equipped, ready to serve. In the past several years, we've we've nearly doubled the amount of deputies that we have, going from 17 to 32, having one deputy for every,200 residents back in 2022 to now one deputy for every 675 residents today. We've pushed our fire safety up as well. Fire personnel is now at 55 firefighters strong, investing more than 10 million just in the new capital equipment, new ladder trucks, brush truck, engine. Uh we have two swift water rescue teams ready for support so that we can keep one locally and send one out throughout the state and throughout the region as a resource for the entire state of North Carolina. You know, after public safety, I I think everybody in this room would agree that that the second biggest thing is traffic. Um, we had one public comment tonight and it has to do with traffic. Traffic is always the biggest issue in Harrisburg and we've tackled that head on. Not only have we done the hard work to go out and get all the grants and build all these projects and and be ready, we're now executing to the tune of $25 million in transportation improvements over the next four years. Caldwell Road Extension, Main Street Roundabout, Highway 49, and the train station being the biggest bulk of those with Caldwell being $6 million out on the the west edge of town connecting 49 up to 29. The Main Street roundabout right here at at Main Street and and Roberto Road connecting our town center to our major thoroughfare, nearly $4 million in that project. the Highway 49 improvements,

converting Highway 49 um from east to west all throughout Harrisburg into a boulevard style recognizable downtown that's walkable and livable with 10-ft walking paths and a boulevard center. And then the east flank of town, as we had talked about the the Saddle Creek and and that area, also having a train station. Um, this would be an Amtrak train station right here on the east side of our town center that would connect us to Raleigh and Charlotte, but more importantly to DC and Atlanta as the uh that rail line continues to grow. But that's just the beginning of what we've been doing. Obviously, recreation history and community pride have been something that that we've been passionate about here as both a town board and a town staff. and we get that from the community. This is my single favorite uh photograph that we have. I don't I don't know who took the drone shot. I'm sure Casey's told me a bunch of times. Um

I think uh thank you, Michael. You know,

Jared uh shout out here. I if there's one picture that sums up who we are, this is it. um a a vibrant, diverse um community in enjoying each other and being out and and just being out with our families. And when I look at this picture, it's a beautiful day in a beautiful park with with beautiful people. And um we're continuing to invest in it. You know, just a few years ago, this park didn't exist. Um this this park came online um after 2020, right? We were we were building this uh for years. There was a there was a small um area here that that had fields and stuff, but this amphitheater, the splash pad, the the breezeways, the the additional fields, the pond, um you name it out here, everything that you see is brand new and it's relatively um brand new, just a few years. And we continue to to invest in that. Um we have investment and we also have private investment in the new Harrisburg YMCA that is now open for everybody to go check out located right in Harrisburg Park. We gave the land. We went and advocated for state funding and and have some town funding in that as well. We now host our youth basketball program in those gymnasiums. So, we're really excited about that. We approved and and are in design and have plan to have these online for spring athletics. Jim, uh not sure where he's at, but I just put them put them on the uh put them on the case there. Um March, we plan to have these in in March. 80 plus thousand square ft of new turf athletic fields in this park. We just did the ribbon cutting for new playground equipment in in here as well. And that isn't that again that's just what we have done. And what we plan to do is continued major park improvements over the next 10 years. The parks uh and wreck master plan outlines, you know, millions of dollars of spending. And the

most important uh part of that is new parks and trails throughout the town, not just in one one small park, recreation upgrades to the existing parks that we have, Farm Mill, others. Uh beautifification projects, continuing to maintain our stuff, and and most importantly, we're funding these things through already established funds. We're not going to increase taxes. We're not asking for additional revenue. We fund these through grants and public private partnerships. As new folks come in and build projects, we tend to get them to invest in these. And then our staff works really hard to find outside investment. One of the most exciting ones that we just recently have have talked about is the historic mill and museum. a great example of something that we don't have now and we will soon have building this, you know, first of its kind um reestablishing the old farm mill site so that we reestablish the foundation of the mill, make a boardwalk where we can have canoe and kayak launches, access to the river with fishing and recreation, nature trail walks, and then be able to showcase some of the some of the history and and um you know belonging that we have here as a community with a real working water is the idea here and uh Councilman Patrick so kindly volunteered to proono um the architectural work on here and we already have the civil site folks worked out. So, we're we're looking to move with with speed on this and have a meeting space where our community desperately needs more meeting space to to gather and and have events. Um, but also showcase some of our history and what Harrisburg really is. Okay, those are the top top three. Um, I'm almost done. And I promise I won't keep you here all night, but the top

three are that they're public safety, um, parks and recreation, and the, uh, transportation. The what supports all that is our investment in our growth and opportunity. And last year, we we rolled out economic development as a department here in the town, and we've been doing an incredible job there. The reason we need that so well is what you see in this first strategy here, which is really business retention and expansion as as well as the entrepreneurial development and how those push quality of life. If we're going to continue to do what we have been doing, which is slow the residential growth so that we can raise the quality of that residential product and we can address the transportation issues associated with it, then we need a robust economic development department that can help our small businesses grow and can help our entrepreneurs thrive. because if we're going to have high standards, we're going to need to help folks get through some of those standards that are the targeted um types of businesses, restaurants, retail, recreation amenities. Those are all the top business development priorities for us and they have to follow in fall into those quality of life priorities of not contributing negatively to traffic flow, being walkable, bikable, preserving green space, activating our town center, and improving access to utilities. We've done a few things here. We now have a an asset inventory map and we also have our project map. You can go on our website and you can view anything we're doing in the town. If our staff has access to it, you have access to it. So, you can go on our website, click on any of these dots next to your house and see what's going on and see every plan that is submitted to the town. We've also we're also doing site readiness. Ryan um ushered us through this. So, it's a very intense project where we looked at nearly 500 acres in the Morehead West area through Duke's site readiness program to understand

what makes that site ready when we're ready to develop for industrial. When we have an end user that we like, the last thing we want to have is not have utilities or not have road access, not have the things that that we need out there. So, we've also added site readiness to that economic development. And then ultimately, none of this matters if we can't communicate it out. If nobody knows what's going on, then we can we can do all of this and it just falls on deaf ears. And we have been connecting with our community in in very intriguing ways. First and foremost is just a update to the website. So, a refresh of our website, adding the mobile app, making this more accessible to everybody, both from um a true accessibility standpoint, making it ADA accessible, but then having this app available that's easy to use that people can sign up for notifications and everybody can can stay informed. One of the things people like to do most, um me included, is complain. So, an easy way to complain is you get on quick fix, which we rolled out this summer as well. And this is part of our app. You don't need a second second app. You can just go to the to the Harrisburg app. In there, there's a button that you can sign up on. You have the quick fix. And now you just geollocate everything that you see. You're out and out in the neighborhood. You see litter, you take a picture, it geoloccates it. It gets off to the people here that take care of litter. You get an email response. Hey, we've gotten this. Here's what we're doing. Here's when it's done. when it's done, you get a notification. Also, if you're the fifth person that saw that and you go to take a picture, it's going to say, "Hey, there's there's four that already reported this. Do you just want to follow instead of making a fifth?" And you can just click follow and and you'll get those same updates. So, trying to make it easier to just work, live, and be in Harrisburg. And also the, you know, we rolled out the town waste cart recycling, but I think that's

a a bigger topic of just branding in general. And so we're branding everything, including going out and having all of our surveys, our youth engagement, um updating all of our signage, creating that sense of place as our borders. You know, when you come into Harrisburg, it looks different, it feels different. And that leads us into to the next step, planning our future together. or the one Harrisburg plan, the long range comprehensive plan that just pulls all of this together, transportation, housing, parks, growth management, um focused on sustainability, um preserving small town charm, inclusivity, um really getting ready for going from our 24 25,000 people to what does it look like when we're at 40,000? How do we maintain all of the success that we have now with nearly twice the population? And those, you know, people in this room, I'm sure, have engaged in that because our engagement's been been off the charts. We've already completed our summer and and fall sections here of 25. Our next steps are implementation strategy, working on building vision statements, developing strategies, continuing our public engagement, drafting that plan. We've talked about a housing summit as part of that. and then in summer and fall of next year actually adopting this plan, engaging the community and the stakeholders and reviewing this and getting it adopted here at the town council. The way we're measuring that all of that and I'm really proud of everything that we've done and I and I wanted to get all of that out and and make sure everybody understands how great our staff's doing at executing all the plans is our first ever quarterly report. Council has a printed copy. This is on the website as well for anybody wants to see it. And this will come out um each quarter. And we'll be able to um really look at the highlights of key accomplishments and

initiatives that we're working on. And those things reflect the town's ongoing commitment to service excellence, transparency, community growth, and we're doing that in a very technical way. You'll see the table of comp contents here on the screen um where we go over the town as a whole first and look at some of the goals and objectives that that we've set and where we at progress on those where we at year-over-year financially and then dig down into what does this look like individually. Everything points back to our vision, mission, values, and ultimately the goals that we set as a group. The goals and objectives are in the report and we have um status of those. But even more interesting as you go in, it'll give you um very measurable data that's interesting to look at. Customer service data for instance, you know, how many calls have we have in the quarter? 8,798. Nobody would know that number um short of having reports like this. um our quick fix orders, utility bills melt on time, our turnover rate in in in HR, number of employees onboarded. Um you can go through through this in detail and I encourage you to um year-over-year or month over month numbers on for instance our Instagram Instagram impressions um views up 65% interactions up 23%. and and you'll go through any department that that you like to see there and just see how are we doing as a group which brings me to the last slide which is um how are we doing and and that ultimately for me is all that matters and what we've gone from is is kind of going from a city who knows we're we're doing pretty well but we we may not know exactly where we're going to an award-winning community that's really second to none.

In the past quarter, we've won awards for uh the Central Regional Award of Excellence for Innovation. Uh we're the first community to become a hearts safe employer in Cabaris County. We won the visionary destination award from the Cabaris um visitor and convention bureau. And we were named the healthiest employer in the entire state of North Carolina amongst all employers our size, public and private. And here is just a sneak peek at some of the um initial results of our um comp plan, which is what are the perceptions of the town. And these are the ones that I'm most proud of. When when you look at the the gray and the blue, that's the national and regional average. So when you ask Americans, um do you think this is a good place to raise your children? 57% of Americans say yes. They think it's a good place. If those Americans live in Harrisburg, it's 95%. 95% of our residents think it's a great place to raise children. 94% think it's a great place to live. 91% uh are satisfied overall with their feeling of safety. Compare that to the Atlantic region, which outpaces the nation and and Harrisburg is just doing incredible. And I can't uh I can't wait for the next steps. So, with that, I'll uh finish up my my last report for a few of you and take any questions that you have.

Well, Rob, I I'll jump out first just on the idea being the uh most tenure council member up here. I'll say I I've seen a lot of changes over the years and what we've gone through in the last four is nothing short of tremendous and amazing to watch. Um but I you know this election as with any election actually brings it to the forefront again people don't realize government travels very very slow because of the checks and balances that are in place all the various layers that are there right um so they get ahead of themselves and they're like oh I got this great epiphany this great idea I'm going to do this I'm going to champion that and and I I talk to the candidates that are out there and I'm like hey go have a conversation first when when you get elected Ed, you'll realize probably a lot of the challenges that you've pointed out or said that are bad have already been discussed and that potentially could be in the works tonight. You showed a lot of things that are in the works that maybe not everybody's aware of. Um, if I could get you to go doortodoor, that'd be really great. Um, I I even thought as you're doing that if we had some kind of animation that we could put on the web that would capture I mean I can always point people back to our video and say, "Hey, watch the uh the council video." But council videos are boring. We know that. No one sits around and says, "Oh, what do I watch tonight? The council video." Yeah, my wife does, but you know that that's a whole different world in that space. But with that, I just say thank you for to you and the staff what you guys have done on this. Um, but it's not by mistake. It's very defined and we're proud to have you. I'll say that, you know, on my behalf. I'm proud to have

you leading us going forward in this effort and wonderful report. Thank you. Um, Rob, can you go back to that sheet that had the towns on it? It's only the very beginning all the uh employees per uh yeah and this would be helpful as we approach budget season next year and I'd be curious as to I saw some of the there's a lot of I went through a lot of stuff here right yeah I mean what is Lumberton doing that we're not doing and how are I mean

do they have it wrong or do we have it right and you And you don't have to answer it now, but I just have to go through.

Well, I mean they I mean they're off the scale here and we're getting all this, you know, as you said, wonderful stuff done for $742 and everybody else is at 1300 and I've ridden through Lumberton. It doesn't look like Harrisburg. Um, you know, so I mean, do they have some unfunded pension plan that we don't know about? I I I use that as a cautionary note so that we don't wind up in the $1,300 barrel and still got all these wonderful things done and perhaps it's a it's a budget question when we approach budget season, but there's got to be something in there. You know, maybe they don't get services from the county or maybe they have their own water and you know, there's got to be some efficiencies that we're realizing. I'd like to know and understand those as we move forward in 2020. That's a that's a great question and without picking anybody on here, I think that's what this is uh you know an important part of and and that's the important part of the new frontier that we've gone over you know the last 6 nine months and and that is a part of our everyday work now which is benchmarking data analytics and understanding exactly why something is what it is. Um if we you know we can sit up here and and feel you know a certain way um but ultimately the proof's in the pudding. the numbers are what the numbers are. Um, and you you know, sometimes you can even get in a scenario where you're doing, you know, too well in an area, right? If if if you have really good satisfaction at something, don't increase spending on it, right? You're good. You're you're you're meeting your expectations. You don't want it to slide back, but it's a way to to identify overspending um as well as under spending on on some of these things. So, you know, some of these some of these folks have some some built-in, you know, usually when you get around the the edges, there's some major easy thing that our staff goes through and can find because we ask those same questions. Um, but ultimately, we're we're not just the these are just

topline benchmarks.

Um, several of our staff went to benchmarking sessions at the school of government in this quarter to go look at their department benchmarking, right? if they want to be really good at something, they're meeting with their peers and looking at how are they doing it right? And um you know, I'd love to say um you know, and our staff is second to none. I I'll be the first to say that we have the the best folks. Um and that's by design. We've we've made that intentional decision to have the best staff. Um but we're not inventing all of this out of thin air. We when somebody does it right, we do what they do. And then if we take the 10 communities that are doing 10 different items the best and we try to emulate those 10 different things, then we're better on a on a halt. And it and it proves out on our spending, it proves out on our staffing, it proves out on our tax rate, and ultimately it proves out in the quarterly report all the details that you see here. Be it a a reduction in turnover, be it, you know, the the I think uh if you look in here, fire saved $10 million in property over the quarter. So, um, these things just just prove out time and time again and we get granular with that and and go back and and look at what we can do to make operational changes.

Great. Thank you, Rob. Next up, we have our finance monthly report with Brian Lee. Good evening, mayor and council and the public. Get through this.

You can do it over again if you want. Quite a few slides here. Okay, here's our finance report as of the end of November. So, 42% of the way through the fiscal year. You can see our revenue and expenses operationally at the top of the screen here. Uh tax collections and the general fund's overall revenue up 5% this month from last month, which brings us to 19% for tax and 26% for the general fund. Uh we will receive the vast majority of our property tax deposits this month and a little bit into January from escrow accounts. So no concern here. And for comparison, this was 27 and 20% last year. So, uh, right there on target with the with the prior year as well. The water and sewer fund continues to outpace our estimates at about 9% per month. So, we see that fund getting a little bit ahead at 46% and the storm water fund is essentially right on target at 41 42%. So, no concerns over our revenues at this point in the year. Uh, the bottom half of the screen is showing our operational department expenses from the general government accounts or departments and uh, no concerns here. We see five to nine% increases for the month. So, um that's right in line with our expectations and none of the departments are coming up on any sort of concerning level there. Uh same story across all remaining general fund departments. They're all in good shape there. Parks and wreck has now come back within 1% of our target and the water and sewer fund is at 37% and the storm water fund at 34%. Uh so all of our funds and all of our departments are in great shape with our operational spending and you see there at the bottom salaries. uh townwide at 38%. Now moving into our facilities and infrastructure single-year projects. I'll give you a second to look at those. And the first one to draw your attention to are the median improvements. We show

this at about 55%. This is the median pictured here on veterans. You can see it under construction. And then the finished product before it gets its uh planting and landscaping in there. And then we'll also be doing the median on 49 as you approach from Charlotte. This here is uh a view of the ADA sidewalk repairs that we do to remove trip hazards and other uh dangerous situations there. So, we're able to uh grind down that that trip hazard there and not have to rip up and replace the sidewalks. Uh we spent about 89% of our funding for the year. So, we've got about 11 grand left for the rest of the year. And so, uh, like Rob was talking about with the quick fix program, if anyone sees a trip hazard in their neighborhood or in front of their house, uh, we ask that you go and file that. And we've got some funding to, uh, possibly take care of some of those projects this year. The next is our pavement resurfacing with the Powell Bill project. That's about 75% complete. Um, most of the work is done in Founders Reserve, Valhalla, Harrisburg Park, Orchard Park, and Fentindale. We have a little bit of work to do in Flowers Farm. And then just some punch list items to wrap up that.

Here's a look at our multi-year projects in design. Uh just some standard movement on all of these as they work their way through design and engineering. Multi-year projects under construction here. We had some movement. Uh Veterans Park. Um a lot of us were out there for the Veterans Park rededication ceremony on Veterans Day. You can see the picture of that event here and then a shot of the park as well. Um, so that has just a couple punch list items uh remaining, including one of the uh plaques that will go in one of the new pedestals. We have two projects that's moved to complete. The storm water and playground improvements at Harrisburg Park. Uh we've seen the curb, the storm water improvements, um the new stairway, a lot of the new turf, and so here's our new playground equipment with shade over it, and then we also have shade structures over a lot of the benches for the parents. Uh, we also completed our 2025 annual sanitary sewer rehab, but I did not think anyone would want to see a picture of that. Here's a look at our equipment projects. Everything has gotten off the ground for this year. Has at least been ordered. Uh, the deputies received their two golf carts and their side by side. And, uh, these will all be outfitted with lights and wrapped to match our town vehicles. And, uh, so, Captain Ash did want to mention that this is not going to be orange. It will look like the deputy vehicles when they're done with that. Here's our SRT trailer for the fire department. This has been outfitted with cabinets and all sorts of gadgets and things on the inside. The only thing that needs to happen now is um the graphics on the side and that will be ready to go. And then we've mentioned this for a couple months with the grant that we got from Inbridge. Uh the fire department was able to buy the swift water tent for their deployments. So look at our vehicle projects here. We had a little bit of progress on the three fire vehicles that require building uh and everything else is uh awaiting to be delivered.

And our professional services projects for the year, our 2025 audit, those financial statements uh should be submitted to the state tomorrow. And so, uh we'll hear back from the LGC within a couple weeks on those and we'll have our audit presentation from the auditors at the January meeting. And then Rob went over a lot of the comp plan. Uh but just wanted to mention that we've had 12 open house uh 12 neighborhood meetings, one open house at the Y and we had about 900 survey respondents which is about double uh what we needed for a statistically valid sample on that. So very happy with the turnout in that project. Uh any questions? Thank you, Brian. Appreciate it.

And I have turned on the AC back here. Okay, we will um next up we have our law enforcement update with Captain Nash.

Good evening, Mayor Council for our December law enforcement update.

We're going to try something new. The fire department always had their fancy graphs and numbers, so I I had to do some graphs, try to spice it up. But this is is something that we're looking to continue doing in the future. you know, give you more data than just the number for this month. Um, so you may see some changes next month, tweaks or updates or maybe new information. So this is still a work in progress, but we're definitely trying to continue with showing you good data just than the numbers for the previous month. So this first one is the law enforcement related activities. If you see the far right is November, which is 3,558. The previous five months are also listed on there. So you can see the trends. Our all of our numbers are variable depending on, you know, we may have more traffic stops during the end of August, September because school starting. And then last month we had farms and at the shooter training. So you're going to see our numbers, you know, go up and down. There's usually a reason for that. Security checks far right November 1,975. Traffic stops for November, we had 1,075. And again, I think that spike in September was a lot of traffic initiatives for school being in session. You know, they did a lot of traffic stops and being in areas where schools were going on just to, you know, make people aware, try to try to slow down everybody. And then our non-emergency response time for November was 6 minutes and 51 seconds. Our average is 6 minutes and 38 seconds. And then also, as I stated, we had active shooter training this past month. We're able to get a school in a neighboring county that is no longer being used. It's it's always hard here, even during the summer when schools aren't in session. there's usually

something going on and you can't have deputies running around with, you know, guns and things while students or staff are there. So, we're able to use this school and get the best training that we could possibly get, the most real life training. Hopefully, that is something we never have to do, but we are prepared and trained in case it ever does come up. And are there any questions? I'm curious only because I saw a crime issue pop up the other night. Are we seeing increases in overdoses? Again, I don't have the numbers, but from what I hear the calls dispatch, it seems like it's been a decrease.

Okay. Um, again, I can get the numbers for you, but at one time it seems like every every couple of calls was an was an overdose and we were using Narcan. So, to me, just from what I'm seeing, it seems to have gone down, but I get the the numbers for those. I I just seen something pop up over at Harrisburg Village, and I was just curious if we were up, down, or where we were headed with those. I mean, it's always, you know, one is one is too many. Y, it's always a problem, but like I said, it just it seems to be going down. Thank you.

Thank you, Captain Nash. Thank you. Next up, we have our fire department update with Assistant Chief Wooten. Glad to have you back. Good evening, mayor and council management. You get to see my smiling face. Chief Dunn sends his regards. Um to answer your question too on that, Ron, uh we didn't have any Narcan uh administration in the last quarter. Oh, really? So, yeah, that's good to know that I just looked at that statistic on the thing before I came in here. So, well, thank you for that. Yep.

Okay, so fire department. So, for the fire marshall activities, I want to highlight on this one that our uh quarterly community fire prevention program was stop the bleed. This is a course that's designed to help the citizen respond to major hemorrhages and it basically teaches them the the ability to apply tourniquets. So, that's uh the highlight on that. We also taught a CPR and first aid class for the Puit Health uh here in town for their employees. highlighting on his inspection activities. Um, if you notice foster care, uh, we usually see an increase in our foster care inspections near the end of the year because it's, uh, every two years they have to have a a fire inspection. So, they typically start calling us near the end of the year. Hey, I got to get this done before the end of the year. I'm due. So, that's what that one is. All right. He had 28 uh, actual inspection activities, 20 first inspections. He had eight reinspections. Um, you know, reinspections are when he comes out and finds an error. He gives them an opportunity to try to fix it. Um, in this case in the picture, you see that they're storing stuff in front of a fire sprinkler riser. Uh, they can't store anything in in front of that. We got to be able to access those control valves and everything. Um, and in his violations, you'll see that fire alarm systems is topped fire extinguishers. So, that's that's kind of interesting. But uh in uh fire alarms are uh inspected annually and uh typically these violations are because they don't have their paperwork completed or just haven't got the stuff for us to review the documents on hand. For our fire stats in November, we had 242 incidents. That's actually down. So I don't know if you remember last month it was 271. So it's about a 30 incident drop. So uh that can skew the numbers too. Um, and you'll see it on this next chart where we talk about our alarm to arrival, you see how our dis our dispatch to arrival

time increased. So, because it's a smaller data set and we ran calls that were actually farther away from the stations in this month, that's the reasoning behind it. But also, like uh Captain Nash said, you'll see fluctuations and things, but if you look at that trend line, it's very even. It's very straight across. So, that's that's a good part on this. Um, one other thing though that we're going to start um, doing as far as our metrics. Um, in the quarterly report that uh, Rob presented to you, it has uh, 90th percentiles for the fire department. 90th percentiles are a better way for us to say how well we're meeting a goal. So, if you think about it, if we gave you a number and said that our goal is a minute and 30 second turnout time, that's from dead sleep to getting up, get on the truck, and going down the road. They have a minute and a half to be fully dressed, seat belted, and everything before they leave the station. 90th percentile means if for us it's um let's see the term well total alarm to arrival is 640 but so it's about it's about 122 right now. Um 122 means that everything 90% of those calls are below that 122 mark. So you won't see that number fluctuate necessarily as much as you see in these averages. So 90th percentile is what we're going to go with um moving forward. It's also what the North Carolina School of Government and International Accreditation Standards typically report on. So that will help us when we start looking towards how we compare with future data sets on stuff. So hopefully I explain that well, but you'll start seeing that in next year's reporting. Um working fires, we had four working fires. We had two building fires that were assisting Midland Fire Department. Uh we did have one vehicle fire that was over in Concord and we had one vehicle fire that was in our district. It was in a power line right away on Pioneer Mill Road and it was one of those logging trucks that trims the the trees and stuff. Uh we actually had

an 87% fire savings on that. We lost about $20,000 worth of vehicle. Um again, you kind of see station one's area dropped in this uh but they still do remain the busiest. station 2's area picked up a little bit for our incident types. Um, if you notice the good intent calls, that's like, you know, and false alarms, that's where we get dispatched to something and we're on the way to a fire alarm. Well, we see a lot of fire alarms when the weather gets cold because people turn on their air condition or their heat, you know, units switch from air conditioning over to heat mode and those sometimes it burns dust off or their first time starting their fireplace. So, we did have a little bit more increase in those type calls and maybe a little uh decrease in the uh the rescue side of things. So, if you look those dots closer down to the bottom are the reasons those are farther away from the fire stations that there's more of those there than where it's normally in there. But the red dots are like I said, we've been there four more times on that one. And then as um Brian alluded to earlier, uh we did get uh the equipment from the Inbridge grant, the the uh Swiftwater deployable tent and um we're still in the process of upfitting the new trailer that we received about getting it lettered and everything on the outside uh and um positioning equipment and stuff within it. And we did welcome two new lateral firefighters that came from other local municipal fire departments uh this past month. So, thank you for your time and your attention. And if you have any questions, I'm happy to try to answer them.

Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Yep.

Just two quick u mayor comments. Council, it's that time again for us to submit our committee and board primary and alternate representations for the upcoming year. So, if you would please be on the lookout for an email, I'll kind of list out what the opportunities are. You guys can rank them in order. Um, and we will present that at the January meeting. Um, I'm glad the weather cooperated for the Christmas tree lighting on Friday night. Thanks to everyone that came out um to all of our sponsors and vendors and community. That's a wrap on another fabulous year of events planned with our parks and recreation department. So, kudos to them for 12 months of lots of activity. Um, so with that, we will move into council comments and anyone other than Ian first. I have a couple of things, Rob. Where did we land on ensuring food for the people in our community?

So, we looked at the uh what communities or I said what cities, towns, municipalities can do in North Carolina and we are not directly empowered with the ability to do that um ourselves. So, the

there's no opportunity for private partner. There is an opportunity for priv private public partnership with 501c3s, but we can't give cash. So, the only partnership that you can ever have is if you were to, let's say, um, hire somebody under contract to perform a service. Um, so short of hiring somebody to perform a service, there isn't any availability directly with municipalities, um, that is permitted with like counties and folks that do health and human service stuff. um they can do direct spending but public expenditure in that realm is not permitted by municipalities other than if you say hey we have like a you know any emergency um tornado came through you can hire a contractor to clean up if you've got you know folks starving in the streets you can hire um an outside company to do something for you but it has to be through a contract and then there there's a pretty stringent and and what looked like mostly a cost prohibitive auditing process associated with that because then that company needs to submit their books to our auditors and it and it goes through a thing. So it was pretty cumbersome but it was not a a permissible direct expenditure from cities at least not from towns.

Okay. And so we had our risk management um board of trustees retreat and I'm sorry our quarterly meeting and there are a couple of things that I think are worth highlighting to make sure that we are doing all the things correctly. Uh Assistant Chief Wooten and I had a conversation about this earlier today but especially with us doing our one um Harrisburg plan and updating our UDO just making sure that we're partnering with the league especially Lisa Kinsley's group because they're seeing a lot of denial and claims because things are outdated. We spent a lot of time, I know I addressed this last month when we talked about FEMA reimbursement, but it's even becoming that way with um municipal claims and then having to issue reinsurance and those claims being denied. There was also um a suit from a municipality that they lost when there are is candy items being thrown out at a parade. So, we really need to revisit that um when as we look at planning for our July 4th. And the last part of that is ensuring that our insurance is specific to our special events, the things we have in our park. We have some outside of the gazebo. Um just outlining to make sure that as a town that we are covered as we partner with people in community or we host events. Um, and I the final thing that I want to discuss is when we look at our town of Harrisburg, I consider it a privilege to be able to represent people here in Harrisburg. And in our code of conduct, line number five, it says we want to make sure that we are inspiring confidence um as we govern within our town. And I think that we're in a rare time where this is the third time that there'll be an appointment to a seat in our council. This was this um resolution was established in 2001 and updated in 2015. I think it's fair um especially in the spirit of all things being transparent that we establish a policy or practice of how seats are going to be

appointed so that when when things like this happen, everybody knows what to expect. um it leaves it, you know, the two previous appointments have happened very differently and the reasons for those have been shared previously, but for our community, for us, we just need to know like, you know, establish like what that's going to look like going forward. Um and then the last thing as a part of that with our Harrisburg code of ordinances, it says um you know, in the mayor's absence, who steps in and what that role looks like. that has not been what it has been. Um, and in the role of mayor pro Tim, I totally understand that it is not written anywhere that you know what the president has been for this town. However, it has been that the highest vote getter is the person that is given that title. It is my understanding from speaking with folks on previous councils that this has not come into question except for when I won and now with our current um candidate who'll be sworn in here in just a little bit, Dr. Erin Banks. So I think it is also important too if that is what the president has been and we continue to move that forward just put that in writing so that there's no longer a question. There was a question when I won again I don't know where it's coming from but the questions have come up again um and ensuring that the those roles are fulfilled as what are outlined and again to ensure that we're inspiring the competence of the people that are trusting us to make decisions on their behalf. What questions are you referencing? I haven't heard any of

Thank you for asking. There have been several people that have asked whether or not we're going to continue with um the highest vote getter. Who are they asking? I mean me I can't speak for anybody else. I mean, but I've got not heard anything. There's no I've had no communications with anyone on anything about anybody asking any questions. I guess that's where I'm confused. You're saying you're getting questions or people are asking questions, but I've not heard of any questions. And that's I'm glad that you have not. I hate that they're isolated to me.

Could you not share those with us though when you get them so that we know there's some things that are, you know, maybe in your circles or Aline's circles or Mike's circles that there's some concern out there that we probably should Yeah. And I don't I don't think that they're foreign. I mean, I know that Bob's office is I'm even taken back to your statement that there was questions about you being a mayor pro Tim. I I I don't remember that. Um, and I would love to understand that as well.

I wish I could provide clarity. I wasn't a part of any of those conversations, but I do remember um it being a conversation in the community that to which um I plainly remember Pastor Watkins getting up and addressing that during public comment um during that time and um it was a conversation that I had here with with Rob at that time as well. And he pastor Watkins got up and said it. We don't I mean in the past we've never done it till January.

No. And again, so that's not so let me be clear. That's not my concern. My concern is that there are questions that are coming up around it. Um, if it is what the town's president has always been and it's if you intend to keep it that way, we intend to keep it that way, then why not just put it in black and white? I think that changes with council though because it's council's decision. You can't commit further future councils. We the other thing too is that um you know mayor pro Tim only is in the chambers in the absence of the mayor not all events either. And I think there's some um over the years people may have thought oh I should do this or I should do that. And

you know, like I said, I got sworn in 2015 and and I've seen it done probably six different ways and it's at the leisure of that mayor. So I would encourage you to read our code of ordinance section 3.2 where it gives the outline of it and it it details that and and that verbiage is not there. Can you briefly summarize? I can read it.

Yeah. It says um let's see. All right. Um let me get back to it. My apologies. Let's um the town council shall choose one of its one of its number as to act as mayor perm and he shall perform the duties of the mayor in the mayor's absence or disability. choose. It doesn't say top vote getter. Right. So So it doesn't say top vote getter. It says choose. Right. Right. It's it's two-part. Right. So

the first part of what I was saying was whom gets identified as such. The second part is the role of set person and the role is in chamber to that's not what this says. It's so So then you want to update the resolution that was passed in March of 2001 as well. I'm just saying that over the years it's always been I mean I've had to host meetings when I was mayor pro Tim, but I it didn't extend to ribbon cutings or anything like that. It was whatever the mayor had directed in the past. But each council and each mayor is different. So

I think that the policy should be updated to reflect as such. for any policies, you're going to need um majority of the council to vote for it. I would agree. I mean, I'm not one for straddling a future council on that. I mean, it gives enough leeway depending on what's going on with the current council to be able to make that decision. On which part? So, they on which part? All of it. So determining whom is in that role and the role of said role. Yes. Then that doesn't that's not clearly defined in what this section says.

I'm just asking for it to be clearly defined on two parts. Whom gets it and and the role of set person. Okay. I'm not apt to make that decision because I think that's up to Oh, I'm not sitting seat or

I'm not asking for a decision to be made on tonight. I just we need to address this in a future meeting, maybe in one of our work sessions. I mean, if you want to add it to a jour to an agenda process is either you get the town manager added to an agenda or the mayor and you have to have supporting council members to be there to get it added. I I don't know that it's going to be added or it's not going to be added, but I I guess you get with either Rob or Jennifer to discuss when it comes up for discussion and what's what the parameters are. I mean, I hate it. I missed last last month's meeting. I mean, same thing happened. Something came up and, you know, we we referenced uh our youth organization and we did it this way. Well, the youth organization that was referenced went to the town manager and to the mayor ahead of time. It wasn't a surprise instance. It was we had already discussed it. the youth organization had discussed it as well with the park and rec director and exposed their financials and showed where they were short.

Okay. And I wasn't a part of any of those conversations, but it was all brought it was all brought properly to the manager and to the mayor to be added to the agenda that night for discussion. As opposed to last month, it was not Okay. Is it turn yet? Any other comments of her?

Mayor, I'd just like to say just thank you each and every one of you all for the last three years and it's truly been an honor to serve with you on this on this council and uh to serve the town. um try to do my best and uh look forward to the future of Harrisburg. Rob, you you put out a incredible report and uh kudos to our staff. Uh you know, I think you don't hear it enough from the council. Uh but to each and every one of you, um we see how hard you work and um none of these numbers would have made any difference uh from what we do. Uh it's all because of the work you guys have put in and uh so thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much for uh for the hard work you put in uh the 742 uh versus the Lumberton. Chris, you asked about what's Lumberton doing that we're not. Um there's a lot that Lumberton's not doing that our staff is.

Probably agree. So thank you guys so much. We really appreciate you. That's all.

I think we have to let Ian go last, right? Yeah. so he can stick the landing. Uh Mike, I want to thank you for your service. I know your heart. I know where you are and you are in a statistical dead heat. Um so, you know, I again I I can't thank you enough because I I see you show up when it's raining and when it's cold, you're there. So, I appreciate you. Uh Ian, uh thank you for your mentorship. Going to a better place, I guess. I don't know. just take us with you when you go uh when you get up there. Don't let them forget about Harrisburg because we are in the county. Uh and you bring a wealth of experience and I know you'll poke at it when they need it. Careful what you wish for. You got Ian Patrick cuz he's he's on his way. So, thank you for that. Maurice, uh I appreciate your mentorship and and leading along the way. I know you couldn't always be here at the end, but uh I really appreciate getting to know you and all team. Congratulations to you. Thank you,

mayor. Congratulations to you. Welcome back. We'll do this party for two more years or as long as they'll have us. Uh so, thank you all for that. And uh congratulations to our new members. See what you're signing up for. All this uh it's going to be fun. Uh we welcome you and uh look forward to getting started. Maurice, um always want to seat at your table. That's right. You know, you started this with inviting us to your table. Brother, I will just always want to be at your table.

Thank you for your service and thank you for your friendship. Mike, you know where my heart is. I always like Mike. Love you like a brother. Ian, get a Kevlar vest and a fire suit cuz your work's going to be cut out. Um, and I'm sure we'll call on you as we need you, but thank you for stepping into that role.

I never expected to be in a place like this cuz I come from a land where these things don't happen. I come from a place where we don't sit at the table like this, where drama is created. so that you can make an excuse to do what you do. Um, I never thought that I would find the friends that I have here. Freaking warriors, people with hearts and passions, wisdom. I have no politically correct words. I have no politically correct character and I never expected to be accepted here. But I was more than accepted and it's been an honor to serve you. I apologize for the last 18 months. I just haven't been able to. But, uh, I was telling the mayor earlier, um, were there not for circum circumstances, I would have sold my house a year ago and I would have left. But I love this town. And, uh, some things are about to change, so you'll see me. I'll be sitting out there. Um, but I thank you. It's been an honor to serve you. It truly has. and Rob. Oh my goodness. What you done, I wish I could take you back to the land where I came from so that you could do it there. It's been truly a pleasure to watch you guys. You, Lee, Jim, all of you, just to see what you do. Amazing. So, it's been an honor to serve you.

Thank you, Maurice. All right, Ian.

All right. Have to follow that. Love you, brother. My God. Um, it goes against every fiber of my being to read to people. Um, but there's only one way I'm going to get to the through this. So, I'm going to read the letter that I sent to the mayor and copied uh our town manager this morning. Bear with me. I might have a few aides. Um, Madame Mayor, it is with mixed emotions I write to inform you of my resignation from the Harrisburg Town Council effected immediately at the conclusion of this agenda item. As you're aware, I've been selected for appointment to the Cabaris County Board of Commissioners. While this is a great opportunity to serve the people of Cabaris County, including Harrisburg, I am saddened to be leaving such an extraordinary group of public servants. I am incredibly proud of the work we have done together. Lowering taxes, expanding our sheriff's department, receiving grants to fund transportation projects without burdening the taxpayer, and supporting staff through innovative benefits so they can best serve the residents. Rob, I'm so glad you did that presentation on what we've accomplished. It's so much. This was going to be 10 pages long. Um, we've also executed or in process of completing a few key plans that will ensure Harrisburg's continued commitment to the vision that we created together. Harrisburg will be a distinctive family focused community where memories are made. The 2025 strategic plan will ensure that Harrisburg keeps this commitment to the residents for generations to come. I have certainly made great memories with you and the rest of council along with my family and friends at all the great events Harrisburg holds for our community. It has truly been my honor. I want to thank the residents for supporting me throughout my tenure and their thoughtful engagement. The civic

pride that everyone I've ever met demonstrates for our town is extraordinarily heartwarming. Each time someone in the community is in need, there's zero hesitation from the wonderful people of this town and helping them. I remember clearly neighbors helping neighbors after the tornado tore through Camelot. Within hours, there were hundreds, and I'm not exaggerating, hundreds of people cleaning up debris and cutting down trees for no other reason than to provide a helping hand. That is the spirit of Harrisburg that I know and I love. I also want to take a moment to take thank Leadership and staff. Town manager Dunham and all the department heads deserve an enormous amount of credit for our success. And I've never worked with a more engaging, hardworking, and above all, caring staff. They truly love this town as much as you and me, and it shows through every project and every interaction. If I didn't live in Harrisburg, I would steal every single one of you and take you with me to Cabaris County. Their excellence is unparalleled. So, with that, I enthusiastically recommend that council fill my seat with Councilman Mike Theban, who will continue to work for the good of this unbelievable town and her residents. After all, he was the top vote getter in an election no more than one month ago. It has truly been my honor and I promise to continue to support the town in any capacity you ask of me. Warmest regards, Ian. And we do have a plaque for you if you want to come over here. We'll have a picture.

[Music] So hold it to the side so it doesn't so you can't read the name.

Perfect. Everything You'll kill somebody.

Maurice, we would also like to present you with a plaque for your service, sir. WE ARE INCREDIBLY GRATEFUL. SO MUCH LOVE. SO MUCH LOVE for you, sir. [Music] Thank you. Thank you so much. Such a pleasure.

He's not leaving.

And last but not least, Mike Feban. You can do it that way. Facebook. All right. And with that, we will now begin with our oath of offices to swear in.

Yeah. So, I think uh obviously you guys have a um seat on council to appoint any um action on that. I would recommend moving that to new business. So, at this point, we would get into swearing in and seating of the next council. And then you guys have um new business, action items, close session, and adjournment after that um that you can deal with anything that you would like. Okay. Great. Thank you. Thank you.

I'm going to go up and I'm going to start calling names and get everybody in. We have four um to swear in. So, at this point, um Janet's going to do the first one and I'm going to ask Lex Thomas to come up and be sworn in as our newest council member. Oh yeah. Do you want frame darling up? You bring your family out. Lex. Lex's family. Come on up.

My kids are too embarrassed to do this. left hand on the Bible, right handle swear do solemnly swear that I will support and maintain the Constitution and laws of the United States that I will support and maintain the Constitution and laws of the United States and the Constitution and laws of North Carolina and the Constitution and laws of North Carolina not inconsistent therewith not inconsistent therewith

and that I will faithfully discharge the duties of my office as council cher and then I will faithfully discharge the duties of my office as council person for the town of Harrisburg. So help me God. So help me God. Yeah, there's Oh, I have to sign. Yes, you have to sign. Let me reread this.

Put it right.

Oh, I'm sorry. Ninja, thank you so much. All right, next up will be Dr. Um good evening um mayor, council um members and everyone in attendance. It's my great honor to um swear in my dear friend Dr. Aaron Banks. Dr. Banks, if you will raise your right hand, left hand on the Bible and receive the town council oath of office for me. I Dr. Aaron Banks do solemnly swear. I Dr. Aaron Banks do solemnly swear that I will support and maintain the Constitution that I will support and maintain the Constitution and the laws of the United States and the laws of the United States and the Constitution and the laws of North Carolina in the Constitution and the laws of North Carolina not inconsistent therewith not inconsistent therewith and that I will faithfully discharge my duty and that I will faithfully discharge my duties of my office as council person of the town of Pearford. as my that I will I will faithfully discharge my duties that I will faithfully discharge my duties of the office of the office as council person as council person of the town of Harrisburg of the town of Harrisburg. So help me God. So help me God. Wonderful. Thank you.

too. [Music] Okay. Thank you.

Yes, that's right. All right. Next up, Councilwoman Aline. All right. I Alinkel I Alinkel

do solemnly swear do solemnly swear that I will support and maintain the Constitution that I will support and maintain the Constitution and laws of the United States

and laws of the United States and the Constitution and laws of North Carolina and the Constitution and laws of North Carolina. not inconsistent there with not inconsistent therew with and I will faithfully discharge the duties of my office and I will faithfully discharge the duties of my office as council person for the town of Harrisburg as council person from the town of Harrisburg so thank YOU thank you so I can't remember this is certainly not these Mayor Jennifer.

All right. I, Jennifer T. I, Jennifer T, do solemnly swear do solemnly swear that I will support and maintain the Constitution that I will support and maintain the Constitution and laws of the United States

and laws of the United States and the Constitution and laws of North Carolina and the Constitution and laws of North Carolina, not inconsistent there with not inconsistent there. And I will faithfully discharge the duties of my office. And I will faithfully discharge the duties of my office as mayor of the town. Mayor of the town. right here.

Just trying to care. Oh, no. I got it.

We're going to use the auto pen. That was good.

That was very clever. Thank you. Are we 88? All right. Well, welcome to our new folks up on the dis this evening. So, that concludes our swearing in. Um, as Rob mentioned before, I know the topic came up about um filling Ian's seat and that's best put under new business so that our folks new on the dis can participate in that.

Um, anybody want to add anything? Are we are we commenting on the new seat? Yes, because it was it I think Ian brought up about having Mike replace Yeah. which makes logical sense given the timeline of things. Mayor, if you want to pause a moment, I guess say people are shuffling out and I don't want um all the audio to get messed up, but if anybody isn't going to stick around for the last new business, I would say go ahead and and uh

take off now. If you aren't out in the next, I'll say 60 seconds, we're going to we're going to lock you in like Braveheart and stay for stay for the rest of it. So, Oh, that was to her. Okay. I thought it was uh while they're filing out, similar to what Latrice said, I I don't know what the rules are. Can we do anything we want? It's it's council's decision on on appointments. Okay. Period. It's always been that way because we are the elected body

and we can just say whatever we want. We go with top vote getter. We can open it up. We can do any of that. Okay? And we I've seen it done a host of different ways. It honestly has depended on timing of things, right? Um I think for this particular seat, we're in a little bit of a gift situation. Um you know, we already are starting off with our budget retreat coming up in January. Um those are already on the schedule. You've got an individual who ran this last election, was within five votes, just makes the most logical sense, who's a seasoned council member and is willing to serve.

How close was the And I apologize for not knowing. Yeah, I I know he that was like I said earlier a statistical dead heat. Who was the next? They weren't even close, right? Okay. They were not. Um and then over in the county, which is different because they're partisan, the party picked. They had a set of rules. That's and that was with with their rules by the state. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, I just want to make sure we're on clear ground that we can do what we want. And if we do that, we do that, but we don't have to. And the question I raised last time, do we open it up for public hearing or not? We could do that or we don't have to do that. Is that the rule? I mean, we've been elected to make those decisions, right? So

we for reference we went down this path when Mike was appointed when Rodney left. Yep. So we had Rich go and research all that and you know the the thing was was it was at the pleasure of the council essentially. um you know in that instance we took applications because it was outside of a traditional election um and we weren't sure where that lie and that's why we consulted Rich to say should you know

had it been closer to an election we know where to go right uh in that in that regard we didn't so rich came back and said yeah it's at the pleasure of the council so what you do whether you take applications, whether you don't take applications, it's whatever you guys decide. As the mayor said, we were elected by the residents to make choices and decisions on behalf of the residents. Well, I can get my head around. I think we took applications. Those were the people who ran in the election, right? I mean, if you were interested, you should have applied, right? Because it's only been what, 20 days? Yeah. And

and I I I appore uh commenting during uh council comment section. So, apologize, but for the two new elected officials, um, our charter defines how the appointment process goes. And that just the council, the sitting council appoints that seat. Everything else is is up to y'all to just decide, but the process is you you just pick and there has there is no um criteria other than you guys pick somebody to fill that vacancy and it's for the remainder of the term. and obviously consideration of working with this group and particularly now that we have two brand new folks that are going we're bringing up to speed. It would be nice to have season

who's been serving and has gone through the election process.

Absolutely. And I think that since we had election, like you mentioned over just over 20 days ago, we had over 1,700 residents that voted for Mike and really like statistical dead heat of someone who's now on the council. So that just seems like a no-brainer. Um, and Mike has been on the council for several years now. He's been engaged. He's up to speed on everything we've got in the hopper. Um Mike has um been participating in many budget seasons with us and I know this is something we're going into and we're already going to have two brand new um folks to the to this council to kind of bring up to speed to and that's someone with Mike we won't have to worry about that whatsoever. Um and I think it will be very much in line I think primarily with what the residents wanted. So, I think that before it was way outside of the election by that time, you don't know what people want to do, but this is someone that wanted to run and almost was elected.

Good thing we didn't have to flip the coin like they did in Midland, I think. Oh my god. Mount Pleasant. Yeah. So, with that, um, I'd like to move to appoint Mike Evan to, uh, um, vacant Ian Patrick's seat. If there is a second, there's a motion on the floor to appoint Mike to the remaining term of Ian Patrick's recently resigned seat. Is there a second? I will second. If there's no other comment, everybody,

well, now that you have a motion and a second, you can have debate on the on the motion and then you take a roll call once the mayor concludes debate. Mhm. I want to add something. How do I What do I need to do? Oh, that on my mic. There's a Yeah.

So, Al, uh, council member Aline, I'm Cartel, I'm glad that you mentioned um with the, you know, and speaking of all of these appointments and the mayor pro him and all of that, I just want to add that, you know, I agree that um Mike ran and he was the next one and it makes sense. So, in in speaking of what Latrice said, uh, excuse me, council member Glover, what she said, um, I think when we consider the mayor prot, we should take that same approach because I was only about 28 or so points away from what uh, Mayor Teague received. So, if we want to take that precedent, I think we should take that in everything that we do and not be selective in how we use precedent or decide to make these decisions as a council. That was just one comment out of many. I do not expect it to be a precedent. I'm not here to set the precedent. Um Mike has been a long-term community member. He's been a resident of Harrisburg for over 35 years, I believe. So, he's been on the parks and wrecks. He's um advisory board. He's gone through the um citizens academy. And of course, he's been on the council for several years. So, I think that's those are the reasons that I think strongly go um to support his candidacy for this replacement

and and I agree with you. Um just want to also add the other additional uh thoughts while we were talking about the appointments and having this conversation. Yeah, I think we've had a couple of different situations. This one is unique. 20 days away from the election, next top vote getter, proven track record. I I but if we were doing something midterm and it was somebody strange to us, maybe we open up an application process and try to balance balance it out. We did that last time. So I don't know. I think we are evaluating this and not setting a precedent. It's timing. And by the way, I was I don't want to say I was a jerk, but I was I was less enthusiastic about the way we did it last time

because it was a little different. But this it seems like I mean the ballots are like still in the box. They just came in yesterday. It's pretty close. If we'd like to set a precedent seven votes. Okay.

If if uh what I'm thinking, if you'd like to set a precedent, from what I understand, mayor prom role is to facilitate a meeting. So let's say we come to the meeting today at 6 p.m. and Jennifer is not here. What do we do? Latrice jumps in and facilitates the meeting. So one thing that I think that role is good for someone who's been sitting at this dasis the longest shoulderto-shoulder with the mayor who's been here for many years who knows how the meetings are held wasn't wasn't just participating or listening to the meetings but actually participating in the meetings that would be a good precedent to set for example for mayor prom but that's that's outside of the question that we're discussing right So, I will second.

Okay. So, there's a second. I'll second. All in favor? I. Any opposed? Did y'all vote? Is this for which which which one are we talking about? We're talking about Mike, right? Mike. The motion was made to Yeah, I raised my hand for Mike. Okay. Okay. Motion is carried. Motion's unanimous. Motion's carried. Uh, Miss Janet Rankley. Let's do this one more time. Where's Mike at? Hopefully Mike didn't leave while while he was listening. He's over at Chipotle. I thought I heard him say it was moving to Men Hill.

He stayed until you said seven votes and then he was like, "Okay, I'm out. I'm out of here." You're back. Hello, sir. Welcome back.

You want to do this again? Let's do it. I Mike Bevon I Mike Bevan do solemnly swear do solemnly swear that I will support and maintain the Constitution that I will support and maintain the Constitution and laws of the United States and laws of the United States and the Constitution and laws of North Carolina and the Constitution and laws of North Carolina not inconsistent therewith not inconsistent therewith and that I will faithfully discharge the duties of my office that I will faithfully discharge the duties of my office as council person for the town of Harrisburg as council person for the town of Parisburg. So help me God. So help me God. Welcome back.

Mike, you have to turn in your plaque. We had it crushed. Oh. Oh, yeah. Mike got a sign. Here come down here.

Thank you. Thank you. Welcome back.

Is that his new seat? He just took his own seat. Appreciate it. That was it for new business. Um action items. Did you have anything on your list,

Mayor? I had a a handful of action items. I think most of these I'll be able to just um uh send an email out on the uh Fourth of July um candy throw coverage, making sure that we're we're covered there, as well as kind of our our special events that kind of happen on properties to make sure that those are covered. Um when it goes to like seat appointments um in sort of the mayor prom roles and responsibilities um I'll send out those are um codified in the um charter and in the state law. You can certainly add policy and procedure on top of that as another layer. Um what you can't change is is the charter or um obviously the state law and policy is uh only from one council to another. So um it it serves while you serve, but a new council can ignore a policy, change a policy. You've seen that in the council code of conduct over the years when folks have written in and and you know pointed out that it's not uh not enforceable. But I'll send an email out on on those with the charter and um state law on defining the manager form of government as well as something on the um event coverage and the parade candy coverage.

Perfect. Okay. We do not have a need for close session this evening. So with that, is there a motion to adjurnn? So moved. Second. Second. All in favor? I meeting is complete. Thank you all.