Commissioners - Regular Meeting

the March 16th regular meeting of the H County Board of Commissioners. And our first order of business will be our pledge of allegiance and after that we'll have our invocation. So if everyone if you can please stand for the

pledge. United States of America to the standy. Proverbs chapter 16:9 says that the heart of a man plans his way but the Lord establishes his steps. I would invite you to join me in prayer. Heavenly Father, thank you for this day as we go about the conduct of the business of the people. I would pray Lord that you would establish our steps. That you would also be a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path as we discuss and talk about the relevant issues affecting this county today. May our hearts be pure. May you lead, guide, and direct our thoughts and our actions on this day. And it is in the name of Jesus Christ that I pray. Amen.

Thank you, Sheriff Wilkey. Okay. Our next order of business will be a public hearing to inform the community about the consolidated planning process for the Southwestern North Carolina Home Consortium's 2026 2030 uh consolidated plan developed in accordance with the United States Department of Housing and Urb Development requirements. So, Southwestern Commission project manager of housing, Len Scheler, is here tonight from the Southwest Commission. Welcome, Elen.

Thank you as always. Um, and good evening. Um, so yes, um, the Southwestern NC Home Consortium is holding this public hearing as we begin development of our 2026 through 2020 consolidated plan. This plan guides how federal housing and community development funds will be used over the next five years within our service, excuse me, within our service area. Um the consortium service area is the seven most western counties of the state. So that being Haywood County and West and the municipalities within Haywood County is the lead entity and the approving board for these funds. The purpose of this hearing is to inform the public about the consolidated plan and invite comments regarding housing and community development needs, priorities, and potential strategies for the upcoming 5-year plan. Public input will help the consortium identify the most pressing needs and determine how these funds should be prioritized. Residents, community organizations, nonprofit agencies, housing providers, local governments, businesses, and other interested parties are encouraged to share their input throughout this planning process and may do so by providing written comments to myself or through our public survey. I have both business cards and flyers available um for anyone that's interested. Uh the public input will be accepted through April 24th, at which point the consortium will return to Hwood County to hold a second public hearing with a draft of the consolidated plan that will be made available for public view and comment for another 30-day period. After considering the public comments, the final plan will be submitted to HUD in June. Um and I thank the board for their time and allowing us to come and do this.

Thank you. Thank you. So you did you have anybody sign up for that? Not for the public hearing, just the regular public comment session. Okay. Does anybody have any questions for Len? When did you say that second public hearing was? Um, we plan on having it the first Monday in May, assuming I get that lined up with Haven. Um, but it will be in May either way. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. No, nobody's signed up to speak for that public comment, so we'll let you go. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you, Len. Y'all doing good work.

Okay. Next up will be our public comment session. I would ask that you limit your comments to three minutes. And I have this handy dandy timer right here. So, that'll help you kind of keep up with your time. So, when it gets down to uh when it gets down to zero, then it starts going the other way and it's red. So, if you would please stop your comments at that time. I'm going to let Haven I'm going to put this up here. I'm going to let Haven uh you know because I won't be able to see it. So, and if you would just limit your comments to three minutes. Um no personal attacks. U audience members may not address the board at any time during deliber deliberations unless recognized by the chair. All right. So, our per I have 22 people signed up to speak. Okay. So, the first person signed up to speak is Holly Greenwald.

And I can't see that timer. Can you move it up to Oh, I'm going to Thanks. And if you would if you would uh um uh limit your comments to three minutes and I had a thought and I forgot. Go ahead.

Okay. Hi, I'm Holly Greenwald. Um okay, commissioners, thank you for letting me speak. I'm here to ask for changes to our animal ordinance. On approximately February 23rd, 2026, Evie Kedler sent a proposed ordinance to each commissioner. That proposal was sent in good faith with the hope that Hwood County would take meaningful steps toward stronger protection for animals and improved public safety. Going forward, I'd like to address a situation with a dog named Zoe. Animal control was called several times between 2019 and 2025 to a property at 782 North Main Street in Canton. Zoe remained at that address until November 2025. A local resident and animal advocate Karen Owens was able to purchase Zoey from the abuser in November of 2025. The abuser handed over Zoe willingly for $500. Zoe had been abused badly. When she was rescued, she presented like a bait dog. She had multiple wounds on her head. Two large scabs covered her back which appeared crooked. Her left leg barely functioned and that muscle in that right leg had atrophied. She could not walk before collapsing. The veterinarian believed she was in pain. She clearly had been neglected. Zoe was euthanized in December of 2025. This situation should have never gone that far. Repeated calls were made over a span of years. Yet Zoe remained there until someone paid for her freedom. This is not protection. That is failure in the system. And it was not just Zoey. The black dog at 97 Farley Street has been living on a chain for years. His plastic igloo shelter is in horrific condition. Neighbors are afraid to speak up because of criminal activity in that neighborhood. Can we please set better

conditions for the dogs on Farley Street and for other dogs throughout Hwood County? Can we make sure dogs like Zoe never again suffer for years only to be euthanized because neglect went unchecked? Stronger ordinances are not about punishment. They are about prevention. They are about setting clear enforceable standards so animal control has the authority to act before abuse escalates to irreversible damages. I hope each of you have taken the time to review the proposal ordinance that Kei sent in February. That proposal offers stronger definitions, clearer standards, and better tools for enforcement. This is not about emotion. It is about accountability. It is about public safety and is about doing what is right when we know better. Zoe did not get a second chance. The dogs still living on the chains in this county deserve better. Thank you. All right. Thanks.

Okay. The next person signed up to speak is Brandon Jones. James. Brandon. James. I'm sorry, Brandon.

Good afternoon, commissioners. I'm here to talk about uh I know we talked to each of you in sort of personal level at a at a few times through Farm Bureau about some farmland preservation funds. And since this uh new development coming in at John Queens over here is has had a lot of comments, you know, on it. Uh we've done, as we presented y'all last year at, you know, at the Farm Bureau meeting, uh roll back taxes has to be paid back three three years previous. That's a lot of money. You know, uh it would be nice to follow these other counties in suit, you know, to put that into farmland preservation fund. And I ain't I'm just done the Queen Farm as an example because that was easy records. Uh you know that was $3 million on the first part of it. Uh if my math's right, that's $65,000 for every million I think. So if that was that's $195,000 that we could put in farmland preservation. Uh these beautiful farms is leaving every day. We got to I'm a firm believer in property rights that you can sell your land or whatever you want to do with it if you pay for it and pay your taxes on it. But, uh, if we can somehow get this program started, get the ball to rolling, uh, you know, a lot of these people are may be willing to put it in preservation if they've got some money, if the county's got some money to help match it. Henderson County got a $425,000 grant here last week or week before last. Uh, the county has to match that. That's $850 as we all know. But now 850 won't go too far. But if we do this every year and keep all this land that's coming out of farm use in a fund and rolling it back, the back taxes, we could have a we could have a substantial amount of money, you know, in a farmland preservation fund for our county. Uh, everybody likes to come see our beautiful farm fields and farming and this and that, one thing another, but if it all keeps uh being built up in Dr. Horton houses, they ain't going to come

here to see it, you know. Uh and uh everything people has in common, one thing every one of us does, we have to eat. So if they is uh nobody's got nothing to eat, we're all doomed. It don't matter who you are, what kind of line of work you're in. But if we don't have a land to produce the food, we're all going to starve to death. So I encourage you to keep this in the back of your heads. If we can uh do something to get this program to rolling uh and get a little money on the table to get some federally matched funding, it'd be great for our county and preserve some of this good farmland. Thank you for your time. Okay, next person signed up to speak is Terry Rogers. Welcome, Terry. Good evening, commissioners. When I stand up, my mind sits down. So bear with me.

Hey, I was speaking to the mic there. Oh, I want to look at you when I speak to you. That's right.

Any anyway u let's see where where did I start? I got out this morning and drove around in the community a little bit and there's nothing prettier than a bunch of black cows are grazing on green house green grass on the hill. Nothing prettier than that. So you you know that I I meant to say I know all you commissioners and I love every one of you, especially Jennifer. But anyway, uh uh do you want to know who the most important people in this country is? Who's the most important people in this country?

Farmers.

Farmers. Thank you. And and uh you people need to need to have farmers every way you can. Uh, I have a feeling that some of your advisors don't realize that farmers are the most important people in this country. I have that feeling. I hope I'm wrong, but you just need to look at it closely. Uh, uh, I've talked to Kevin about this and Brandon mentioned it. Uh, uh, these roll back taxes, that's farmland. It needs to be used as farmland to preserve farmland. And uh if we don't I was just thinking you commissioners one of these days your grandchildren come up to you and say grandma, grandpa, why don't we have any food? You'll have to tell them that we didn't have the farmers when we should have. You just need to think about that. Uh, let's see. I think that's a I think that's about all I wanted to say. But but but think about that seriously. It's a it it's going to be a big problem. You crab upper crab trees pretty area of the county right now, but you go down Jonathan Creek, it's not too pretty. But think about that. Let's use that use these roll back taxes to preserve this farmland. Uh, I was going to say I've been a farmer all my life. My daddy is a farmer all his life. Both of my grandparents is farmers all their life. Both of my greatgrandparents was farmers all their life. Now this out on upper crab tree and if we don't look after that land that's it's going to be gone because it's slipping away all the time. Thank you very much.

Okay, thank you, Terry. The next person sign up to speak is Jeffrey Jensen. That right? Welcome, Jeffrey.

Hi, and thank you. Good evening, commissioners. My name is Jeffrey Jensen, and I'm a Haywood County taxpayer, a lifelong animal owner, and someone who has spent most of my life caring for animals. I've had cats and dogs, and numerous other animals throughout my life. And for more than 20 years, my family and I have owned a healthy pet market for dogs and cats. Um, and helping animals live healthier lives has really been a major part of my work and my life. Animals are not simply objects or property. They are sentinent beings. Science has proven this. Capable of subjective experience. They do feel pain, fear, comfort, and pleasure. They experience suffering. And because of that, they rely entirely on us as an individual. and as a community to protect them from neglect and abuse. That's why I'm here tonight. There are three issues involving the Haywood County Animal Services that are deeply concerning to me and many others in the community. The first is feral cat recordkeeping. It's been reported that feral cats brought into the custody of animal services are frequently not assigned intake numbers, making them effectively untraceable in county records. Any animal taken into public custody should be documented. Transparency and accountability are basic expectations of any publicly funded agency. I respectfully request a review of these recordeping practices and a full accounting of animals removed without documentation. Second, there are the Beaver Dam deaths, e equin deaths between 2023 and 2025 over a three-year period. documented neglect at a single property resulted in the deaths of a donkey and two horses. One of those horses, Sam, arrived with a

body condition score of one out of 10, essentially starving to death. And despite roundthe-clock volunteer care, he died on Thanksgiving Day. A local rescue contacted the animal services director four times with no response. Animal Services did not act for five days and no charges were filed against the owner. I personally met Sam and I know that if you looked into his beautiful brown eyes, you would feel something deep in your heart. He's not a name. He's not a photo. He was an animal and he was a sentinate being that felt the sun and felt the wind and felt the love from his caretakers in his final days. Third is the case of Zoe, which you've already heard about today. Um, in all of these cases, animals suffered and in some cases died as a result. So, I respectfully asked the board to investigate these cases and as residents of Haywood County, as we all fund this department, and we trust it to protect the most vulnerable animals in our community, those who cannot speak for themselves. When that trust is broken, it's the responsibility of leadership to restore accountability. Animals cannot become animals cannot come before this board and ask for protection. So tonight, I am asking you to do it for them. Thank you for your time. Okay, the next person signed up to speak is Karen Owens. Good evening. I only talk to y'all about once every 20 years. 20 years ago, Star

Ranch started. 176 horses have come through the gate. We've done We know how to help starved horses. We know how to do that. A lot of people couldn't be here tonight because of 3,500 feet above here. It was pretty bad. Everybody who's here that kind of is here for the animals, would you all stand? Just stand up. Okay. I just want you to know there's another dozens of people who couldn't be here tonight. Um I have the actual animal control reports about two dead horses and a dead donkey. Zoe didn't have to die. Neither did the donkey, and neither did the horses. On January 1223, a a caller came in. Horses are eating dirt. Um the uh HCS called the owner who had absentee and said um the horses are being fed by a neighbor. 15 days later, dead donkey. January 27. 15 days later, that's when they responded to that call. Um April 10, 23, I left messages. April 5, ape trying to get help for horses in Beaver Dam. 10 days later, at this time, none of the animals appear to be in immediate danger. will follow up as needed. 92 one horse in a area is looking really bad. 94 observed horses to be thinner than ideal will monitor as needed to ensure the animal does not decline. October 10, another call these the and he called the Canton police. Uh 10:21 HCS is monitoring the conditions of this location to ensure improvement of the thin horse 113. These horses are looking worse. Same day, horses are being looked at by a vet. Supervisor Bible is on the case and she is handling it. November 5 sent photos. These are looking worse over the next few days. November one day later, a neighbor called Dream Haven who allowed her to come in and she saw Buster dead in a dry in a dead creek in the dry creek and she took Sam, even

though the owner didn't want to surrender her, she let Sam go. 5 days later, animal control did finally go there and sure enough, Buster was dead. Sam died as you heard on Thanksgiving Day. Howard did how now you have to understand we were calling Howard, calling, calling, calling. He didn't answer his phone or his cell phone and he doesn't call back. Howard did however call Angie and say he was going to come out because they got a complaint about a goat that had gotten out. Now, he was going to come out and talk to her about a goat that got out, but he couldn't call back about a dead horse, a starved horse moving to Dream Haven, and then Sam who died. Two horses and one donkey could have been saved. Actually, we we actually know how to do that. We were strictly rehab. Um, Angela Ramsberger at Dream Haven is available to help. He has all our contact informations. Um, I don't believe that Nancy Wthbone Litman, the owner of those horses, or Walter Emerling, um, Zoe, I don't think any charges were ever filed against these people. This this kind I feel like we're starting all over again. You know, there's a way that we can help horses and donkeys in this county. Um, cruelty is cruelty. I know animal horses are livestock, but we don't need them. And I just think it's time that whoever

That's Tom. Um, sorry that we need to have we need a new animal control director. Thanks. Okay, the next person signed up to speak is Laurel Smith.

Good evening, commissioners. I'm here to share my concern for the neglected animals in Haywood County, neglected by their owners and also by the county. Um, like children, animals don't ask to be born or owned. It's a it's the responsibility of society, of humankind, to protect them. Next door is full of stories of neglected animals and people who've tried to help them, but their hands are tied. If health is offered to owners and it's refused, those animals must be rescued and in a timely manner. I urge you to do the right thing, the humane thing, and fix this very sad situation. Thank you. Okay, the next person sign up to speak is Dee Taylor. Welcome, Dee. Hi there. Uh, I can't repeat uh everything that they said, but you've heard it. And uh just uh to leave an animal miserable in the cold or in the hot sun. I've seen that too. Unable to reach food or water, even dirty water, and not provide them with shade for the sun or warmth in the cold and no shelter is it's just inexcusable. And each one of you can help. Everyone sitting up there, you can all

help that. So I'm sorry for the people who have treated animals in their sphere in this abusive way in these leaving them in such miserable conditions because they have most likely been mistreated themselves. uh or they think uh they've been treated as a tool or or worse themselves. Uh but that doesn't mean we should allow the people to abuse the animals that they have control over. And uh I just please allow uh the animal control to remove uh abused animals and let the rescue groups uh do their job. Thank you. Okay. The next person stand up to speak is Vicky uh Nordozi. if I'm if I Okay, you can correct me when I get up here, but welcome Vicki.

Hi, my name is Vicki Nardozi. I'm a Haywood County resident and I'm not going to repeat some of the things that you've heard and I'm sure you're going to hear more, but I know we have an ordinance in Haywood County that's intended to protect these animals and it is either insufficient in its current status or the people tasked with enacting it are not doing what they need to do to enforce that ordinance. Um, I doubt that there's a person in this room that has not had an animal in their life that was really important to them. And that it's hard for you to imagine the horror that these animals that now have died as a result of our county's inability or refusal to remove them from the danger and mistreatment that they faced. Um, I would like to see something done that makes a change uh so that animals don't have to suffer and that people don't have to come out and beg for the safety of the animals in this county. Thank you. Okay, the next person is Michelle Olman. Thank you. Welcome, Michelle.

Thank you. You got it right. It's Olman. So, good evening, commissioners. Thanks for letting me speak tonight. I've typed my comments because I'm not used to public speaking, but this was important enough to me to come out and and be heard. So, I'll try not to repeat what others have shared. Um, I am a a taxpaying Haywood County resident and I'm here tonight on behalf of the animals in your care. I want to speak about the Hwood County Animal Services and the pattern of conduct that represents a serious violation of the state law and a betrayal of the community's trust. A former HCAS officer with 10 years of service has stated that when Director Howard Martin arrived in 2020, officers were instructed not to assign intake numbers to feral cats. In any licensed shelter, an animal without an intake number does not exist. It cannot be tracked or euthanized on record and it can simply disappear. This is deeply disturbing to me as a cat owner my entire life. This officer refused that directive and was forced to resign rather than to be fired. The very same officer personally witnessed a shelter employee leaving a leaving with a vehicle full of cats headed to Hendersonville. When a concerned resident contacted Blue Ridge Humane Society to check on the cats received from HCAS in 2020 and 2021, the answer was two cats. Not a car load, not even five, but two single cats. That gap between what was witnessed and what was recorded is exactly what happens when animals have no intake numbers. They leave and there is no paper trail. HCAS reported 737 CAT intakes in 2024. Given their closed to surreners on weekends and weeksl long surrender weight list, those numbers warrant independent verification against actual software logs. There's also a separate

issue with the dogs. Transfers to rescues like Sarges and Brother Wolf were recorded as adoptions. However, a transfer is a transfer and these were not adoptions. This is a second independent pattern of miscata miscatorization, sorry, that inflates outcomes and obscures what is actually happening to animals in the facility's care. I'm asking you to please commission an independent audit of HCAS intake, euthanasia, transfer, and adoption records from 2020 to present, including documentation maintained by shelter vet Dr. Plemens, conducted by someone with with access to the records, but not the agency reviewing itself. I have no doubt that most of the people in this county love their pets and care about cats and dogs and all animals. That compassion must extend to every animal that passes through the city shelters. A community's character is reflected in how it treats its most vulnerable. And right now, we cannot account for hundreds of animals in our care. These animals have no one but you. And I urge you to please act. Thank you. Okay. The next person signed up to speak is it Jen Jones. Welcome.

Hello and thank you for listening to us. Um my name is Jennifer Jones and I live in Wesville. My husband and I have volunteered at many animal rescues over the last 18 or so years, including Star Ranch, Hope for Horses, Misfit Mountain, and Dream Haven. I am here because I'm outraged that animals in Hwood County are allowed to be abused, neglected, and even starved to death with no meaningful consequences. On November 6 of 25, Angela of Dream Haven Animal Rescue received a call about some starving horses in Beaver Dam. This was the first time Dream Haven was aware of these horses and Angela immediately got into her truck and brought her trailer to the pasture to evaluate the situation. Um, she returned with a severely starved horse and some horrific pictures of what became of his pasture mate, Buster. Angela found Buster dead in a dry creek. Buster had been dead for a while. Animal Control was aware of these starving horses and they had been aware of this dire situation for at least three years. They knew this owner, Nancy Wthbone, allowed her donkey to starve to death in 2023. They knew Nancy had additional horses and mules about nine other equin. Um, animal control animal control continued to receive numerous complaints about these animals not getting fed and in poor health. Animal control stated they were monitoring the situation to make sure the animals didn't decline. However, under the supervision of animal control, two more horses starve to death. This is not acceptable. I was a dream haven when Sam arrived. I remember how skinny he was and that it was hard to look at him without crying. I remember how hard it was for Sam to walk because he was so weak. We thought

he might die that day. It was a very difficult day. It was pathetic and disgusting how these horses were allowed to suffer and die while Haywood County ignored them despite receiving many pleas for help. I was at Dream Haven when Sophia saw us unload this horse and she said, "I know this horse. It's Sam. I learned how to ride on him about three years prior to this." Um, I was there when Sophia realized that the deceased horse was Buster, the horse her brother learned how to ride on. Um, shame on animal control. They could have saved these horses and they did not. I want to know why Nancy Wthbone was allowed to keep and continue abusing animals after she allowed a donkey to starve to death. I would like to know why animal control doesn't return calls or follow up, especially when rescues call out for help. They could have again, they could have saved Sam and Buster, but they didn't. And those deaths are on them. I want to know why animal control failed. Okay, there's a lot of things I want to know. I hope you have questions, too. You have the power to find out and investigate. Please do. We care. Okay, the next person signed up to speak is Sophia. And I can't pronounce your last name, Sophia. Starts with a P.

Dear commissioners, my name is Sophia Fowler. I'm 16 years old. I'm talking today because I witnessed something that has deeply affected me and I believe it shows a serious failure in how animal welfare cases are being handled in Hwood County. Last November, while volunteering at Dream Haven Animal Rescue, I learned that a horse had been found severely neglected, unfed, uncared for, and left in a pasture next to his deceased companion. When the surviving horse arrived at the rescue, I immediately recognized him as Sam. the same horse I had grown up riding eight years ago. Seeing him so thin, hungry, and sunken in was heartbreaking. I was then horrified to learn that the star of horse found in a dead creek bed was Buster, his best friend. How could the Hwood County allow this to happen? What makes this even more upsetting is that animal control claims that they were actively monitoring that herd? Many people had reported concerns about these animals long before Dream Haven intervened. Yet, no effective action was taken, and the neglect continued until it was too late. I do not understand how someone who could have who had already allowed a donkey to starve to death was still permitted to own horses, donkeys, and cats. I volunteered extra days while Sam was in our care and did everything I could to help him. Despite all of Dreams Haven's best efforts, we were too late. Nobody had stepped in to taking care of him until we found out and it was too late and he died. He they animals suffered and died because the system that is supposed to protect them failed to act when it mattered.

I am asking the county to review how this case was handled and to ensure that future reports of neglect are taken seriously and to make sure that those responsible for responding to those calls are properly trained and held accountable. No animal in our community should ever be left to suffer the way Sam, Buster, and others have. Thank you for taking the time to hear my experience. I hope it leads to meaningful change so that no more animals endure what these horses went through. Thank you.

This is Sam the day we got him. This is Sam the day we got him. severely neglected. They haven't seen a starved horse. That's what they look like.

Okay. Thank you. Uh the next person signed up is Jessica Loger. Hey everyone. Uh, my name is Jesse Loger and I wanted to share my own experiences. Um, I started working at a ranch in Clyde in the beginning of 2013 with many farm animals. What I saw were small cages, many animals living in builtup feces covered spaces, unhealthy animals with skin issues, infections of the eye, ears, no enrichment, and long nails and hoofs. But soon realizing animals were not top priority there. I would beg them for a vet to come, but most always was denied. Of my knowledge, none of the animals receive a vaccine of any kind, no deworming schedule, no current frier, none have ever got their teeth floated, no yearly checkups. So, you can imagine without the proper care, the results are suffering and many deaths. At the end of 2014, I no longer was allowed to step foot in any of the animal enclosures. I had a bad feeling for their futures and unfortunately was right. My findings were the same. sick, injured, lack of hay, water, and deceased animals. On June 21st, 2025, I sent over to animal control a five-page report with everything I witnessed along with the present animals that needed help. In this first picture, um, this mini horse, Ranger Dan, I chose to focus on today. As you can see, he's in good weight in my care in March 2014. The second picture, June 2025, a huge decline down to skin and bones. And the

last one, October 7th, emaciated and too weak to stand up. I took the video and sent over to animal control saying he needs desperate help. Thankfully, Laya and Howard did visit the property later that day, but to my disappointment, nothing was done, and their report was as follows. Mini horse is elderly whom is receiving alphaalfpha and extra grain. The mini horse in question appeared thinner than ideal and was standing upright with no signs of distress or inability to walk. I was told he's around 25 to 30 years old, but minis can live to be about 40s. Being elderly is not the issue here. It's the lack of supplements, care, and the lack of appropriate amount of food he needed. His status is unknown. Animal control was my only hope. They have been called to this property three other times in the past. I'm defeated. I'm sad. And most importantly, these beautiful innocent souls were failed. Um, today we have the chance to do the right thing. We need to enforce and strengthen animal laws and hold the abusers accountable or else history is going to repeat itself over and over again. My last words, I always say, put yourself in their situations and ask yourself, is this okay? Thank you.

The next person signed up to speak Is it Joy Johnson? Edley. Okay. Okay. Next person signed up to speak is Matt Brazelton.

Welcome.

Thank you, commissioners. Thank you for letting me speak. I'm actually speaking on behalf of a good friend of mine. um we both live in here in um Hwood County and taxpayers. Um his name is Andrew Freried Freriedman. He was unable to attend. He wrote a letter, but then we found out you were not accepting letters. So I'm going to read his letter that he wrote for you guys. Dear commissioners, as I was out as I will be out of town for work on March 16th, 2026 and therefore unable to speak during the public comment session of your meeting scheduled for that date, I hope that you will consider this letter in lie of my oral comments. It has been brought to my attention that there are serious concerns about the performance of Haywood County Animal Services under Director Howard Martin. Over the years, Director Martin has repeatedly promised to not only care for and protect the animals in Hwood County, but also to ensure that animal, state, and local welfare laws are followed. He is quoted on your website, Haywood County website, our top priority is the health and safety for animals of animals as well as ensuring state and local laws are followed. He's also quoted on the Facebook page of Haywood County Animal Services. Our top priority is the health and safety of animals as well as ensuring the state and local laws are followed, said Howard Martin, director of Haywood County Animal Services. We remain committed to working with state officials and community members to protect the welfare of animals in our county. Notwithstanding these promises, it appears that Haywood County Animal Services is falling short of its obligations under county and state law. For example, I have heard that feral cats taken into HCAS custody are

routinely processed without intake numbers leaving no official records of their of their disposition. As mentioned before, I have also heard about a pattern of doc of documented ecquin neglect throughout the county, particularly in the Beaver Dam area spanning roughly three years resulting in the deaths of multiple animals, yet no charges were ever brought against the responsible party. Similarly, I have heard that despite well publicized video evidence of a small dog named Zoe being repeatedly harmed in violation of the Haywood County Ordinance 91.03 and North Carolina's cruelty to animals law while in the custody of a resident of Haywood County. HCAS declined to seize the animal as required by the Haywood County Ordinance 91.03 103 and instead facilitated a paid surrender. To date, the abuser of these animals have not been prosecuted as required. Um, according accordingly, I am requesting that the board investigate not only HSC's recordkeeping practice, but also the manner in the in which it acts in cases where individuals are alleged to be intentionally injured, tormenting, killing, depriving of animals necessary sustains.

Thank you. Okay, next person signed up to speak is Lori Finch. I believe that's Hi. Welcome.

Oh. Uh, I'm Oh, are you ready? Okay. I'm overwhelmed by what is what I'm hearing today. I came here to speak about Zoe and I had no idea that you all were here for many different kinds of animals. Uh, thank you for your comments. Thank you for listening. I'm a friend of Teresa Walsh. She's the woman that brought it to my attention and many others attention about this small dog, Zoe, that was being abused and neglected and who knows what else. Um, she essentially in few words paid the extortion money to get that dog and a second one out of its torture chamber. So, thank you to Teresa for bringing this to my attention, to many others people's attention, and thank you for Karen Owens for saving Zoe from dying in that position that she was left in. It is just horrific. Um, so I would like to know why after the animal shelter was called, why they couldn't take Zoe from the location, why did they leave her there? Why did they leave the second dog there? They took one dog. He had three dogs. And after those three were gone, he obtained another dog. And this is the gentleman who lives at 718 782 North Main Street, who I've come to known as Walter Emerling. I don't know what has happened to him, but he does not need to have dogs or cats or horses or any animals under his care. Um, it is he getting

charged? Why is he not getting charged? Why are dogs in this county not required to wear collars with ID tags? Every morning I wake up, there's lost dogs, dead dogs, wandering dogs. Oh, they're wondering why why don't we tax dogs, dog owners. If we if we have cars, we get taxed for that property. Maybe the county needs more money to take care of these investigations. I'm not sure what the answer is, but there's so many questions that need to be answered. And why was Zoe's case considered priority three? Why did officer Llaya Bible not take that dog away? And why was that case considered priority three? There's a lot of questions here that need to be answered. And um you know it's just it's a shame that when that doesn't work the system residents have to bring their pocketbooks to get three dogs eliminated down to no dogs and then pay for the veterinarian bills. Thank you for listening. I hope something can be done. Okay, next person that's sp sign signed up to speak is Blake Matthysse. Welcome. Hello, commissioners. I'm I'm from the county here, lived here my whole life. Uh I I don't see no reason whatsoever that we should be changing anything. Uh I

have raised hounds here in this county my whole life. I've kept dogs and barrels and on chains my whole life. I've never seen one freeze to death. I've never seen one overheat. They are fed daily, watered daily. There is no reason to change anything in the community. Leave it the way it is. I I wished y'all would stand with us. Thank y'all. Kevin Ensley, I feel that I owe you apology myself and I give it to you right here. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Okay. The next person signed up to speak is Ben Green. Ben. Welcome, Bill.

Good evening, commissioners. I'm Ben Green. I'm a taxpayer and property owner of Haywood County here. Um, I travel everywhere with my dogs. We go Wisconsin, New Mexico, Louisiana, Florida. We go all over the place. I keep my puppies and barrels and I keep them on dog chains. We try to keep them on six, seven foot dog chains. No different than a 10 x 10 lot. Um, the dogs are taken care of daily, u watered daily. Um, I literally have slept outside with my dogs. I've got videos literally sleeping with my dogs in the cold. I mean, dogs are tough as their owners. Um, they're no reason to be a barrel. They're fully insulated. They're quarter inch thick. You get the igloo houses from Tractor Supply. They got a 2 by two door on them that ain't doing nothing but letting cold air in. That barrel is a quarter inch thick barrel. It keeps all the wind out. I've even built some woodous. The only thing puppies do is chew them up. Everything else. Um, also the flea, tick, bat bills, the collars, everything. We we spend fortunes on dogs to keep them up and running and doing. They put food on our table. We take very good care of our dogs. I can't speak for everybody. Some people, the starving to death ones, I don't agree with that no more than anybody else do. We take very good care of our dogs. Um, that's just like the animal control. I don't really even give like the animal control. They have showed up twice at my house and found nothing. They can clearly take time with horses or answering everybody else's phone calls. They clearly can't answer. Show up at my hot dog house. They got clean water, clean food. We b we pay $60 bag dog feed for the dogs. I mean it's it's one thing after the other. Uh another thing would be all these cats and things.

Need to get them neutered and cut. There is I've got also five cats. Um it's like $165 to get them cut. Whole lot of strays less if you can cut them and nibble. Um, and as far as the dogs go, I can't speak for everybody, but they're I spend about 180 days a year with my dogs slowly. I mean, them dogs are very very well taken care of, probably better than myself, honestly. Um, they they I agree with some of the rules and some of them I don't, but as far as chains and doghouses go, you're not going to find more of a better insulated doghouse in a barrel. You keep shavings in it. there. No winds goes through a barrel. Chain no different to lot. Use common sense. Keep your dog cleaned up. I mean, keep shavings in your houses. I mean, common sense goes a long ways, too. That's all I got to say. Thank you.

Okay. Next person signed up to speak is Danny Heather. Welcome, Danny. Well, commissioners, I'm Danny Heatherley, longtime resident of Haywood County, maybe about 62 years worth. But, uh, I just want to thank you guys a great job. And I want to say thank you. I don't believe in any animal cruelty under any circumstance. and uh and that's not acceptable at all. It needs to be addressed. Whether if the person's on drugs and the neighbor's scared to call, the drugs need to be addressed. Whatever the problem is, it does need to be addressed. And I'll just tell you right now, there's not a greater group of men sitting right over here that cares for their dogs than bear hunters. They love their dogs. They feed them. They take care of them. And when one gets hurt, he's headed straight to the vet. And they'll carry them out of the woods. They sleep with them. They stay out all night to get them. And so I don't want any animosity toward bear hunters cuz these bar hunters doing a great job of taking care of them. Over time, u you know, back when I was growing up, it was necessary to have a good dog. Uh we we eat when we was growing up. We sold hides and we trapped and we it was survival. But as time goes on, I understand that laws and things move around and even my mind changes how I should treat dogs and how I should treat animals. And as we grow in life, we all should seek the better of all animals and the better of all people as far as that goes. And I think you are doing a great job and I appreciate your word. Thank you.

Okay, the next person sign up to speak is Zach Lancaster. Well, welcome, Zach. Hi, my name is Zach Lancaster. I've had dogs my entire life. I love my dogs and can't imagine what it would be like without them. They are they are loved and well cared for. I feel like my dogs I feel like my dogs do better and are healthier on grass rather than concrete. It's more natural and comfortable for them. It doesn't require chemicals to keep them clean that are harmful to my dogs. Again, I love my dogs and they are part of my family. They are treated very well as their parents were before. We only want the best for the dogs we love. Thank you.

Okay, next person signed up to speak is Donnie Stockton. Welcome, Donnie. Hello, commissioners. My name is Donnie Stockton and I've lived in Haywood County my whole life. I've basically owned dogs my whole life and me and several others was under the impression that mainly this was just the means in which dogs were kept on our property. Um, I'll be the first one to tell you I've had kennels. I've had tie outs. Some of my dogs has even run loose. And by far the best way, cleanest way, most efficient way for my dogs to be the healthiest was on a tie out. They have more room to move than in a kennel. They every time they make a lap getting exercise, which they can't do in a kennel. Every time they make a lap, they basically sweep where they're at. It is by far the cleanest way to keep your animals. And to the people talking about the black dog and Zoey,

the Yeah,

there's no reason to tolerate somebody being abusive to an animal. But at the same time, people have the misconception because an animal is tied that that's mistreating that animal. That is the furthest from the truth that you could imagine. You go to where a dog has been tied taken care of. If you have two side by side, you go to a pin and you go to where a dog's tied out and you tell me which one's the cleanest. It's by far cleaner where the dog's been tied. So that's all I have to say about that. Okay. The next person signed up to speak, I believe this is Savannah Rurn. Is that correct? Welcome, Savannah. Hello. Thank you for letting me speak. My name is Savannah Raburn. I am a Haywood County native. I've been working with animals for probably about 15 years. I worked for Bunkham County Bunkham County Animal Shelter and I'm also a vette. Um, I'll start off by saying that no animal should ever be mistreated and whatever Haywood County Animal Control Services is doing or not doing is rather the question, should be held accountable for that. Um, and I'm sure that every single person in this room, these men over here and these people right here will all agree. The reason that I am here to speak though is that there is a thing circulating on Facebook about dogs being in barrels and being tied out.

There is a complete difference between a dog being tied up with no food, water, or shelter or vet care. That is absolutely wrong and will not be tolerated. But in this county, there are multiple working dogs. For a working dog to be able to do what it needs to do, it is scientifically proven that they need to be acclimated to the condition that they work in. Meaning, if they work in a cold and wet environment, that is unfortunately where they need to be. And being tied to a barrel is not cruelty, especially with these working dogs. From May to December, these dogs are loose. I mean, multiple hours a week. I mean every day. They're not just tied up in isolation. They're not just left to rot. They are not property to us. They are our family. And I can attest that my father, Rodney Moore, I know that for a fact every one of his hounds are vetted. They're taken care of. They're checked on two to three times a day, especially during the winter to make sure that their water is not froze. And so all I'm asking for is that yes, there should be better treatment of animals in this county. There are definitely instances like you've heard with Zoe and the horses, there reasons to take into consideration, but there needs to be some middle ground of what people are looking for because hounds, you can't let them live in your house. They're going to destroy your house. Hounds can't be in a fenced in yard. They can't be in a lot. I would like to think they could be, but they're going to jump out and chase your neighbor's cat every given chance. So, I mean, for the risk of danger, it's better that they're tied up. And that's all I have to say. I hope that you guys keep in account that there are definitely instances of neglect in this county, but there needs to be a

fine line between the condition of working dogs and what's truly neglect. Okay. The next person set up to speak is Tony Moore. Tony. Is it Tony Moore? Yeah. Okay. Okay. No, that's okay. All right. That is all the people I have signed up to speak. We'll move on to Oh, Tony Moore.

No, we don't do that. Sorry. Okay. Okay. Um, I've had to crack down on our public speaking rules. I'm sorry. We uh Anyway, I won't go into all that. All right. Next is uh constituent concerns. Does anybody have any constituent concerns they want to voice? I do.

Okay. I just want to uh read a email I got after the election night. I I don't want nobody think I'm a sore loser because I'm not a sore loser. But I got this email just very few minutes after the election that I got this at uh 10:34 on March the 3rd, 2026. Uh Commissioner Ramy, you have clearly lost the support of the voters who elected you nearly four years ago. When may we expect your resignation? Thanks. Corey Balancort, politics editor, Smoky Mountain News and Smoky Mountainnews.com. All right. This was CCed to uh all the board members right here at 10:34 at night. And I think this is disrespectful to about 3,400 and something voters and I don't appreciate it. And I think it's disresect disrespectful to the county, the people that that have supported me over the years and that still support me. And uh I just want people to know that I will not be resigning.

Thank you. Okay. Okay. Anybody else?

Yeah, Mr. Chairman, I've got a I've got a couple things. First of all, for everybody came out to speak tonight, u appreciate you coming out and exercising your First Amendment rights to free speech and coming out and sharing with us what was on your mind. Uh I'm sure there'll be a whole lot of things to unpack from all the comments that were said, but uh to me, this is kind of a people thing. Uh, you know, one of the well, these wisest man that ever walked on the face of the earth, his name was Solomon. He said, "The righteous care for the needs of their animals, but the kindest acts of the wicked are cruel." I think we all heard here from both sides. It's uh it sounds like a people issue. And I I will never understand why people neglect babies. Uh you we've got our or DHS people here tonight. We had 157 foster care kids here a few months ago. Is that right? We had 157 kids in our county in foster care. That's because they were being neglected. That breaks my heart. And and I agree with some of the comments here. The righteous people take care of their stuff. Cruel and wicked people at heart. They don't. And so I don't know how we police this. Uh I'm sure we can tighten some things up from what I've heard. But good people take care of their animals. And I think that's a theme that we've heard here tonight. So if we can do better as a county, we should. And so

moving on, the two gentlemen that spoke about farmland preservation. The chairman and I uh we were in a dayong meeting two weeks ago. We were with commissioners from counties from Murphy uh to Haywood, seven western counties. That was uh I'll try to name them. Cherokee, Clay, Mak, and Swain, uh, Graham,

Graham, Jackson, and Haywood. And then District 16, we had Henderson County, Transennsylvania County, Bunkham County, and Madison County. And we had breakout sessions. And what commissioners are dealing with universally is residents concerned about farmland preservation. And uh there are counties that are doing the present use value roll back which Mr. James and Mr. Rogers both spoke about. I have spoken with them uh prior to today about this situation. And uh if it's okay with the other commissioners here. I know it's on on agenda, but I think we can give a verbal nod for our county manager. If you could look into counties that are doing that. Uh it's a three-year roll back. When a piece of property comes out of farmland use, present use value and the current year, those taxes are rolled into a separate fund and they are assigned to farmland preservation. Now, I've talked to Secretary of Agriculture Troxler. I've talked to the Western Secretary of Agriculture Caleb Wrathbone about these issues. We walk a fine line between property rights. We're definitely four people's property rights. I have spoken with I have spoken with the persons over farmland preservation in our county. I had a lengthy conversation after that meeting and I will tell you that there's three things that that we do. The state assigns a certain amount of of money per acre for property rights. They will buy your property rights if you will sign a conservation easement. We do that in the county. A lot of people taking advantage of that. And I have I told Mr. Rogers, I buted my head with people in Raleigh about this for six years. They are not

keeping up with land prices here in Haywood County. Farmer Joe out here when he sells his property, why should he after he's waited the snow and the mud and the ice and cleared the land and built fence and kept that beautiful pastoral scene for all of our tourists to drive through and say, "Oh, look how beautiful that is." He scratched by his whole life. Why should he go ahead and sell his property rights for a fraction of what his land's worth? He should. And the lawmakers in Raleigh, they control the purse strings. And so if we can circum, they can speak platitudes, make it sound good, but they are not delivering the value of people's property when they go into a conservation easement. They are just not getting there, and I don't think they ever will. So I told this lady, that's still an option. We do this. President used to value you roll back. Is that okay with everybody, Miss B? Is that okay if we pursue that? We do that. That's another weight on the scales. But here's the thing that'll get it. There's somebody going to have to take the bull by the horns, start a nonprofit foundation just like Southern Appalachin Highland Conservancy or the Standback Foundation. They're going to have to get a pot of money that when a farmer decides to sell 40 acres right over here off of Raccoon Road, if that value is $40,000 a acre, that farmer needs to get that. That's what will move the needle for farmland preservation. Money talks, everything else walks. And so I have put that seed in the farmland preservation committee's ear. And I know, listen, no longer than I've been in this, I know that politicians,

they'll speak platitudes about farmland preservation, but in their hearts, they really don't want it. They want development. And I I tell you, I hate to take so long on this, but it's a it's a hot topic, Mr. Chairman. I watch these elections across the state. There was a certain election in a county east of here. I was friends with the man that was running in an open session right here in the commissioners meeting. He couldn't get it on the agenda, but he challenged his commissioners, made a motion, which is kind of we don't like to do that. We like to go ahead and get all this stuff hammered out before we come before you and make a spectacle out of oursel up here arguing. We try to do that behind the scenes, but this man couldn't get it on the agenda. He made an open motion, four meetings in a row to put a moratorium on all new development in his in his county. Yeah. Slightly illegal. I've come to find out he ran his race in a county east of here. He told me last night his opponent was backed by the Realtor League, big developers like Dr. Horton. his opponent received $50,000 to help him win the election against this man that was trying to save his county. So, at the ballot box in March, a few few weeks ago, he won his election over two votes to one. The people spoke at the ballot box what they thought about farmland preservation. and he went back in and the rest of the commissioners was kind of giving him cold show to want rid of him. But he stood up for the people. But here's the thing. If you want to save farmland, they're going to have to set up set up a independent nonprofit organization, receive donations from some big money people who are like-minded and save some of this

farmland in Haywood County. It can happen. So I planted that seed in in the lady that's over farmland preservation. We can do the pres used by value roll back and I'm passionate about this. Uh people know me know I'm passionate about it. Okay, that's all I'm going to say. But you know me, you know I'm passionate about it. There is a way we can coexist and make everything work good. But we got to have the money. That's that's just the same. That's just as simple as that. Uh those two things I believe, Mr. chairman. I did have a situation where Garren Bradish uh I had a constituent had a issue with a manufactured home uh situation. And by the way, Garren, I'll tell you that those people were just tickled to death that they came over here and got the information where they had you had refunded those fees, but this mobile home company was manufactured home. They were sitting on that money and didn't want to reimburse it. But when they were presented the facts, the receipt where you had reimbursed them, they forked up the money. So they were tickled to death. I just want to give you a pat on the back for for doing that for that constituent.

That's all I have, Mr. Chairman, and I'll yield back. Okay. Do you have anything?

Uh, so thanks to everybody who came tonight. There was especially a a young lady that spoke and I always want to commend our young people who are willing to get in front of the podium and exercise the opportunity to speak freely in a public um forum. There are countries in this world that do not allow that. And it is precious to be able to um you know stand in front of your your peers and your elected officials and speak what's on your mind and that's very important to me. Um so I want to get to what Tom is saying about farmland preservation and just give you a little bit of information about that. But I also will say that um we have just a yard full of animals. We got all kinds of dogs. We don't have cats. It's the only thing we probably don't have. And it is very concerning. Um I was familiar with the owner of the horses that passed away. And that's just the the most unfortunate of situations. You know, it bothers me and I I really believe that for the most part we all do a really good job and we do our job well. But you have raised enough of a concern tonight that certainly we need to, you know, maybe go back with a different eye and just look at things one more time. Um, I believe our ordinance is really good. I'm my husband's a bear hunter and uh I know exactly how the you know having a dog tethered is in Hwood County and I tend to agree with these folks on this side that we that I'll just tell you some of them people could sell a dog and buy a car. I'll just tell you they're not going to mistreat those animals. So maybe there is a, you know, in public policy there is a place where we can all come together and um and I will I you have my word that I will I will look at that again. Um um on farmland preservation, I serve on another board that is uh very active with farmland preservation. I farm, Tommy. All of us have at one point or another have had something to do with the farm. And I want to give y'all just a little bit of information. Haywood

County leads um is the leader in really in the state in farmland preservation. We were um we were the first probably one of the earliest to pass a farmland preservation ordinance over 30 years ago. And so it's uh it's not a new thing for us. I think we're seeing some some highly visible locations get developed and that's uncomfortable I think for all of us. um preserving preserving our farmland is critical and I want to explain a little bit about how that works. It would be the property owner would have the ability to um have an easement or a covenant placed on their property that would prevent them from having future commercial or residential development. Um those easements usually allow for a spot or two to be built. So, if on our farm we wanted our boys to each have a home place, then we could designate a place for each of them to build a future residence or a barn. Um, there are some grants and programs out there that will that funds, you know, uh, incentivizes, I guess, the ability to put farmland preservation or to preserve a farm. But like Tommy said, they're not um competitively priced and they're not if we don't have private funding, which is the new criteria. If we don't have private funding on those easement um applications, those applications are not scoring as high. So, it's very important to not all to not only have um you know, state funding or local funding, but to also have private funding. And uh there's a couple of different ways that we can do that. We've we have had one presentation not in this forum but in with the other group uh of an organization that I guess kind of leads the charge on that and we've talked with

the chairman about having them make a presentation here at the commissioner's meeting. Um we do have some local standback for for one and southern highlands. Is that the name?

Appalach. Yeah. and they've done a really good job helping us pre preserve some farmland here. So, we we're we're getting it right. We're getting it better than the rest of the state, I think, and have been doing that for some time. Uh just looking at some quick um you know, I have a masters in Google, as probably all of y'all do. Um, so we have 2,784 acres of of protected farmland in the county, but when we see these pristine rolling hills get gobbled up by um, you know, houses, it's it's hard to swallow sometimes. So, just keep that on your radar. We're working on that to get some to get the word out about having some private funding. And it is definitely important. We all love the uniqueness of Haywood County. And I've said many many times, we all live here for the things we don't have. And you you think about that. We don't have a lot of things that happen in Asheville or Greenville or Charlotte or all those big cities. And that's why what we have is so beautiful and unique here. And it's being able to come together, different minds, in the same forum, and try to come to a place where we can all work together that makes it even that much more special. So, I appreciate everybody that came tonight and had something to say. finally get to Mayor. It's

your turn. I

I couldn't agree with Commissioner Long anymore. You know, as we've talked about animals here tonight, I do sit on the HHS board and our foster care numbers have continually went up for whatever reason. So, I I challenge everybody that's sitting here in the room tonight. I know we've all got to fight for something, but I hope that we'll fight for these kids and uh just as much as we are the animals. Uh I do love and care about the animals. I do know that a lot of these guys sitting back here, I know probably threequarters of them, if not all of them. Uh I can tell you that they do take care of their animals. When you go pay $10,000 for a dog, and I may be off, they may be more now, but I can promise you they're not going to abuse them or not feed them or not take care of them because when they want them dogs to perform, uh they want them to do what they can. So, taking care of them, uh feeding them, keeping them out of the rain, uh making sure the ground that they're staying on is good. Uh I know that most these guys uh do that. Uh, I know that our tethering ordinance that we set back, was it in 2014, Kevin? Is that when 2010? That was before my time, but I know that we come to a compromise then with the tethering and and and the sheltering of these dogs. And I think it's worked good since then. I don't see no reason to change any of that. I stand pretty firm on that. However, I do hear your concern about horses and the donkeys and these other animals. And I'm just like the other commissioners. I don't want to see any animal abused uh or not fed or some of the pictures that you guys shared. Uh you know, that's uh that's not pleasant to see. And uh maybe it's time that we do sit down and uh look at some kind of a compromise to be sure that these animals are being taken care of and being sure that uh the folks

at the animal shelter is doing what they're supposed to do. Um going to the farmers, uh you can tell by looking at me, if you can't see me, my belly is kind of hanging over my belt. Uh I do like to eat, so I definitely want to take care of those farmers. Uh I I like the idea of a roll back tax. uh you know to take those taxes if that land is is is sold. That's a good approach. You know, I've always been a a property rights type of guy uh and always will be. You know, I believe if somebody has property, they should be able to do what they want to with it. And uh trying to tell them what to do or going down the zoning route, uh to be honest with you, I do have problems with that. But if we're doing the preservations or putting money aside to help with stuff like that, I'm definitely all for that. So, uh I think outside of that, that kind of covers uh the comments that were made tonight. I do appreciate everybody coming speaking your mind. you know, there's not many places you can go uh to to speak uh at a public meeting like this to share your concerns. And and I hope everyone knows how privileged that that you are that you can do that. Uh if you have a concern at the White House, you can't get before the the president or Congress or Senate like you can on a local level. So, I'm glad that everybody's able to do that and can come speak your mind, good or bad. and uh I think everybody in the room wants to work for what's best for all animals. So, thank you. I just uh first thing I guess is the farmland preservation thing. I I'm like Brandon. I think we need to uh put the roll back taxes in a fund. And I also think that we've got some people that have moved in here that are pretty well interested in that that that probably

have the funds to help in a private organization like Tommy was talking about. And uh I think they'll probably step up a little bit on that too. And like the rest of them, we're all in agreement that we'd like to see the farmland going into preservation instead of being developed. But uh with that said, then about the animals. Now, I'm in agreeance with a lot of this amateur. I see some things that I think needs to be changed a little bit, too. And I appreciate y'all coming out and explaining all this to us. And I appreciate all the guys over here because I'm like Brandon, they they pay a lot for their dogs and they're going to take care of them. I guarantee you that. And the dogs are took better care of than a lot of kids in this county. And and I I've seen that myself. And and I appreciate that. and but I think we need need to revisit some of this stuff and get maybe change a few of the priorities and see if we can't all work together and uh make this work. Thank y'all for coming out all of you. Okay, I'll uh on the farmland preservation I thought y'all might want to take a look at this. This is the county. That's the county right there. And so the wide area is m federal lands and the green specs are conservation easements that we have. You said we had 2,700 acres,

2784, I think.

Okay. And I'm working on about 500 right now. So we're about to have that in there. So I guess the reason I showed this is to show our county is eated up by preservation. So, uh, and I know people want to preserve the farmland, but we have a lot of we don't have a lot of land that we can use to to do something with because of the state and federal governments. And then the conservation easements and the way to do that is like Tommy was saying, I don't want to steal a property owner or a farmer's rights by taking his rights away that he can't sell his property. But we need do need to have a mechanism if the state wants to do this program to be able to fund the farmers for what they want to do with it because they have kept that in farmland all their life and for whatever reason they may their young their kids may have moved off from here and not interested in staying. It is hard work. I know that but uh I did it when I was when I was a child but we um it's why I don't do it now actually Tommy so I do a little bit but not a lot but anyway we uh so but in saying that we I talked with Ryan Olsen who is with u I don't think the group he's with but it has he he's with a conservation group in in the state and he was talking about maybe coming by and might have him on here uh soon to talk about he he can talk about different ways that they're using to try to finance these. Um it could be even you vote on a on a tax for for that on the ballot, you know, to where we can, you know, do it that way possibly, too. So anyway, he we we can maybe try to get him to come in and give us a presentation, Brown. I think that would be great.

It's the Trust for Public Land is the name of that. That's it. Mhm.

Trust for public lands. Yeah. And there are several of these like Appalachian, Southern Appalachian and stuff. Um, and then I think Bryant was going, you was going to check in to see how much money that would raise by doing the roll back on. And what that is is I know a few years ago I had a farm and we sold five acres off and I they had to go back and get three years taxes for that year plus three years back and so I had to pay those at that time. So that little extra money, that's something that the county probably doesn't exactly budget, but we do budget it because it comes in a fund balance. So we've uh that's that is a pot of money that's that's the pot of money we're talking about here is when you have to pay those back taxes when you take it out of farmland preservation.

Well, you're paying the back taxes on the deferred amount. On the deferred amount. Yeah.

Yeah. And that's another thing. It's on the deferred amount, not on the the cost of the land. In other words, if they you're selling it for $100,000 an acre, the roll back is not on what you're selling it for. The rollback's on what the tax base was, what the tax estimate was on the property, which is generally quite a bit less. And that's why that pot of money doesn't add up to much. But really what needs to happen is the state legislature needs to to, you know, take take it on to do that. As far as the animals go, there's nothing on the agenda tonight that has to do with animal issues, if you will. Um, I think there was some I don't do social media, but evidently it gets around the community. Um, but what I did hear tonight was that we I would like to look into the rules that Howard has to use to take an animal. I would like to know so what what pulls the trigger to take an animal. I mean, we we live in a nation of laws and I know we just can't go in there because we think something and anything. And then the intake number for cats. I kept hearing that quite a bit, but I I also heard that that they've heard that they do that and they've heard that they do that. But I would like to know what his uh you know what that is for the intake of cats kind of what he how he does that and everything. Brian, wouldn't hurt for him to maybe, you know, answer that. And I'm sure he can watch this meeting and maybe anything that's come up, he can he can respond to us, you know, and let and we can let you all know. And as far as the horses in Beaver Dam, I don't really I guess Jennifer, you knew about that, but u I know one thing I was always taught when I was growing up is you take care of your horses in Beaver Dam. So I I would like to know what happened there. U I know I had a horse one time and it got some kind of a parasite and we couldn't there was nothing we could we couldn't do anything with that horse and it got down so small. I mean, it probably looked like some of the pictures you guys have, but we would

feed that everything we could had a bunch of vet bills and we just couldn't couldn't get him to survive. So, he had some kind of parasite and I don't Anyway, the it was it was such that the that the veterinarian took him to Mills River. I guess they have a place there where they actually do studies to make sure that whatever parasite he had isn't I guess going around or whatever. I don't know how that works, but anyway. But he did want it to take it there so they could do an autopsy on it. So I know there are other reasons for animals but but lack of feed is is just so that is so that should never happen actually. So u and I was always taught that you take care of your animals and we always did. So in fact the cows and the horses got fed before we did. I mean that's what we did in the evenings. That's what we had to go do. So anyway, that'd be my thoughts on all that. Um, also I got a couple of constituent concerns. Uh, there will be a special joint meeting on Thursday, March 26th at 6:00 p.m. at the Health and Human Services Training Room 102 located at 157 Paragon Parkway, Clyde, North Carolina. And that's where the HHS is right now. They have a conference room there at the old Walmart. So that's where this is. And the purpose of the meeting is for Haywood County Board of Commissioners and Haywood County School Board to hold a work session to discuss the needs of Haywood County School System with key staff members and members. A notice of special meeting will be published closer to the date. Uh next, I want to just touch base on this. This evening, I want to recognize Chris Hill. And Amy said she probably wouldn't be here because she's not here, right, tonight? No. Okay. She's not here tonight, but she uh is with our finance department. She's with Christian's department. Uh and she has earned the 2026 Stephen C. Graham Achievement Award. And the Steven C.

Graham Achievement Award is a distinguished honor within the certified local government purchasing officer program, certification program for public procurement professionals in North Carolina. award is presented annually to the candidate who achieves the highest passing score on that test uh certification exam. Receiving this award reflects exceptional academic performance on the certification exam and demonstrates a strong mastery of North Carolina public procurement laws and best practices. And we're proud to recognize Chris for her outstanding accomplishment and for the experience and professionalism she brings to our finance team. Her achievement highlights the value of investing in professional development and reflects on the high standards of excellent we strive to maintain within our organization. So Christian Teller, thanks on behalf of the board.

Congratulations. That's great. And I think you know somebody in finance that achieves an award like that that just makes you guys look great and you and you do a great job. I mean you guys win awards for your reporting and everything. So I think the taxpayers should be very happy with with our finance office because and you guys are striving to get better all the time. So thank her for that. Okay. Has anybody else got anything? Yeah. Okay. Okay. We'll move on to uh administrative agency reports and presentations. And u this is probably what everybody ought to listen to, is it Brian? This is the 20. Don't leave yet. It's just getting good.

This is the fiscal year 27 budget planning session with our county manager. Brian, see what you did. Brian, you run everybody off. Brian, my my whole career, I've wanted a packed room for a budget presentation. It's It's like a kick in the teeth every

You may have to go get therapy after that, Brian. I mean, they all walked out right when you stood up. A sign of protest before he even started. That's tough. It's good to know where you stand, Bri.

That's all right. We'll we'll we'll push through. Uh, commissioners, this is about uh a month late. Uh, I usually would like to do this in February, but because of the delay in the uh the audit process, thought it'd be best to wait till we had some uh financials from last year to look at. So, um, I have about 40 slides, so let's make this conversational instead of me just reading slides to you. So, if you have questions, just just jump right in. Uh you can see this was presented at the uh by the auditor. You can see uh revenues outpaced uh expenditures for last fiscal year. We uh we increased fund balance by about $837,000. Uh but uh the percentage changed, right? Uh the calculation of uh fund balances numerator over denominator since the denominator was up uh the percentage dropped. Uh the red line is your unassigned fund balance. That's the money free and clear. And you can see that that's at about 37.1% as of June 30th of uh of uh 25. Uh and the available fund balance is is a little bit higher at uh 47.4%. Uh this is the amount of fund balance that we've used to balance the budget as of July 1 for the last few years. And you can see 6 1/2, 5.9, 5.4, 5.2. We ticked up a little bit in 25 to 6.8. Part of that was the the interestonly payment on the the new jail. Uh and then you can see because of the impacts of Helen, we had to tick up to 10.9 to balance the current year budget. But the red line is really important. The red line is that steep line that takes us from 10.9 million to 24.7 million in fund balance appropriated.

Uh how did we get there, you ask? Uh we had the 10.9 that we started the budget with through rollovers. Think about the times that we carried forward uh purchase orders for the purchase of vehicles and equipment, all kinds of things like that. But the big one on here is the debris, right? We we we appropriated $11 million shortly after we adopted the budget. Uh and uh that's really driving our fund balls this year. Uh now, while we're talking about the 11 million, uh Christian has prepared this. You saw an earlier version of this uh back in in the fall. Uh everything in green has been uh obligated and paid. You can see in yellow we've uh received partial payment on the million72 and the 831 we've not received. And then the things that are in that uh peach or beige color. You can see most of it's $14 million in uh in debris costs. So all in all, we think that the federal government owes us about 19.2 million. Uh they've paid us uh about $1.6 million. So, we have about $17.7 million in local dollars that we're trying to recapture. So, this is a lot of money. Uh, if there's technical questions, Christian has already agreed to bail me out, but please.

So, theoretically, obviously, we were in good standing um with a strong fund balance when Hurricane Helen hit and we were able to move forward with debris removal and other things like that. But theoretically, had we not been or for counties that were not able to front the money, so to speak, does that delay clean up? It it it does.

Do they borrow it from the bank? I mean, I'm really I'm really curious. I think it's important that people understand, I've had, and I'm sure the other commissioners have too, people have argued that we were holding a strong fund balance and that that was maybe not the right thing to do. But then in a case of an emergency where we're able to respond very quickly because we have the savings account to do it with. What would happen if we didn't?

I I I think we'd be asking ourselves the question, right? Because fund balance is just flexibility so you can address what issues come up, right? We've not just needed it for Helen. We needed an equal amount almost for debris for Fred and then and and later on we'll talk about EWP, right? That's the the the current funds were for the emergency uh debris removal that that that FEMA allows a more thorough cleaning of the the river is through the EWP process and we're just now coming up with estimates on that. So you're exactly right. If you don't have the funds, how are you supposed to to to govern? Yeah.

Any other just thank goodness we had that money available. If we hadn't, we'd have been like other counties. You know, that that what they had to clean up was actually more than their budget. I think we talked about that at our last meeting. But it's just it's frustrating to me and I guess I want to go on record as saying so that that we can't get this money any quicker from the federal government. You know, uh we're we're held accountable every day for uh for money that's handed down either through the federal government or through the state. And they need to do the same thing with storm clean up. You know, we ain't even cleaned the rivers up. We talked about the EWP part. We ain't even cleaned our rivers up. You look across the line in Bunkham County and their rivers are clean, free of debris. And I drive up Love Joy every day and look at trees that's along the river down at Washful Highway where there's literally a metal truck of some sort that's turned up on its side and you all probably seen it. That's still sitting in the middle of the creek. You know, it's frustrating to me that we have to keep begging and asking for this money and and again, I think I'm just frustrating frustrated and ironing some of that out. But, uh, this is money that that should be got gotten to us a lot quicker than it is. So, the frustration is is there and and and we we followed all of the rules to to the tea to make sure that we got our reimbursements. We paid our vendors in good faith and now we're just asking for the funds back, right? And and it's and more importantly, it it it's putting all of us kind of in a corner of making decisions on what programs we can and can't fund at the local level while we're waiting on on reimbursements. And so I I feel the same frustrations. And even last week,

I want to be clear, too, this is nothing pointed at our staff. Our staff's done a wonderful job. Uh we just got an award on the finance side, you know, and we we've crossed all the tees and dotted the eyes and done everything that we've been asked for, not only once, but many times. And uh you know, it seems like that they keep asking for the same information over and over again. That's frustrating. We ain't got enough time to do it anyway. You know, this is a an event that happened. Our staff's already maxed out. We're asking them to do this paperwork and then they come back and say, "We need it again." And that's frustrating. Again, not pointed at the county manager or any of our staff. I want to be clear about that because y'all have done a wonderful job. It's just the money's not flowing down like it should. I shared an email on Friday from from with the with the chair from from FEMA to to our staff, right? Some of the debris that we picked up eight or nine months ago, they've now asked state historic preservation and US Fish and Wildlife to look through the the the debris tickets. Well, that debris picked up 10 months ago with the rules. What What are they going to do? I think, you know, it it's very frustrating. And they they told us to expect 60 to 90 days. That means we aren't going to get this money back before we have to adopt a budget. Right. So, we've contacted uh Senator Tillis, Senator Burr, and uh Representative Edward's office to try to help this. And folks from the NCAACCC, Tommy, the Kevin Leonard's group has done a great job for us. They're they're working on our behalf, but it's it's it's it's very frustrating.

You keep poking the bar a little bit here, but you know, go ahead. Go ahead. Second.

You know, I I think it is time that we make those phone calls as well to let them know we're still frustrated and not to forget about us. You know, I've been to Washington twice. Actually, when I sat there last time, I took a copy of the mountaineer with me because on the front page, it said still waiting on FEMA money. And when I sit down in the FEMA office there with the director, he pulled a copy out. So he had already seen it. So know that your paper, so if you want to report on any of this, feel free to. But uh I said, "Well, good. I didn't have to pull my copy out, so I didn't have to bloody your nose right off the bat." But they do hear us. But what happens, I feel like, is tomorrow there's going to be another fire they have to put out. And so I think the consistency of all of us reaching out to our representatives and and being heard, the squeaky wheels going to get to grease. But if you can't tell, I'm frustrated. But

right, what what happens when they they all lot all this money and then it it just stops? What what's stopping it? Do you think? If if I knew, I'd go get our $17 million. I it seems like once it once they you know say we got it and then something else jumps up we don't get it. I don't understand that really.

I I've I've I've commented before it seems a lot like dealing with your personal health insurance claims. You know many times they'll deny that hoping that you walk away and you just pay the bill and and be done. And and from my perspective it feels that that way. The especially the constant uh they call it RFIs, requests for information. Uh Christian probably has night sweats about that and so you know it's nothing to get 10 or 15 on debris tickets and you're like it it doesn't make any sense that excuse and I can't get and not to evade your question I I don't know where the hangup is. There's so many steps I mean uh obligated and pending and it's it's just a

but they got us all this money but we ain't seen none of it. It's a but the debris pickup was so highly audited too by their standards. I mean it was there was a a chase car if you will behind every truck making sure that the what was being measured was what was actually or what was being accounted for was actually what was being in the truck. So it is frustrating that there's such delay. I was kind of sitting here listening when Brandon was talking and thought, you know, if it was the other way around, if we were having to pay them, there'd be fines and penalties and when it comes back to us, there's no fines and penalties and interest the other direction. So, and we're still down here doing business every day,

mandated business, we we don't get a pass on mandated business. Yeah. Well, one last thing. I'll be quiet. You know, this this is just the uh

the emergency part. you know, the EWP part that that possibly will not get funded is going back and and cleaning it up. You know, one last final time. You know, we didn't get finished with Fred or Barley got cleaned up. I think Rex's done a great job getting cleaned up fairly quickly. You know, here we are in March. You know, hurricane season's going to be right around the corner. We're going to be right back into some flooding. And I'm just concerned with our rivers and creeks the way they are now. I mean, you got a metal vehicle sitting down there on all Asheville Highway. What's going to happen when it washes down and knocks out a bridge or the big tree stump that's there at the jukebox junction? You know, when it takes that bridge out and you got to replace that bridge and detour traffic. Tommy and I live there. We know what that's going to be like. So, uh, we've got to speak out and try to get something done. But, all right, I'll yield to you, Tommy.

Oh, I've enjoyed I've enjoyed that. So, uh, that's what we need to do. We need to stay vigilant about more so now. But I was going to ask county manager. I had a conversation with you week before last about was either Rutherford or Poke County. They got reimbursed 14 point something. Have you had any contact with our county manager or have you heard anything about those circumstances? Why why did they get pushed to the front of the line?

I I I do not know why some projects get pushed through and others don't. and and they may have had their money in the hopper uh more quickly or maybe they didn't have the the historic preservation or the US Fish and Wildlife questions that we do. All of it's just very individualistic and uh a a lot of it is also the program manager that's assigned to your county. Uh some are more artful in their jobs than others. Uh so I I really don't have an answer on where the the money how some gets approved and how some doesn't. Well, Brian, while we're while we're looking at the woody debris, there's an elephant in the room. And the elephant in the room is all that rocky uh feel that's some places you drive up Crusoe. And I've I've harped on this. That hurricane changed the riverbed in such a dramatic way. It actually filled up the river channel 6 to 8t deep of river gravel. and the least little flood, it's going to be back out in the roadways all across the county. I've driven all across the county and there's been such changes where where that's filled up. Is there any any hope any program that you're aware of that

that we can get in there and get get those river channels uh open back up from the rocky debris, not the woody debris, but the rocky debris.

We first started having this conversation during Tropical Storm Fred recovery, right? and and there's simply not money for stream restoration what you're asking for. Of course, I think EWP through FRED was a little over $7 million and there there was hardly any stabilization uh uh funds either. It's really just picking up a lot of woody debris. Not a whole lot of cobble wry be removed. Uh now, we also know that because of both storms, the FEMA maps are out of date, right? and the Army Corps's uh working on a project to get us better maps uh so we can prevent that. But uh if there's money to to restore streams, I I'm not aware of it. And quite honestly, the damage is so great in in western North Carolina, I couldn't imagine how much it would even cost if they started that that route. Well, I guess the state legislators better go ahead and come up with another pot of money to start fixing roads back because the next flood event there going to be more roads washed out because there's nowhere for the water to go but out in the highways in some of these places. And you you know where I'm talking about.

All right. Um back to our our revenue picture, you can see uh last year we had a 50 we had about 57.1 million in property tax. Uh current year budget was set at 565. We took a little conservative estimate based on uh year-to-ate trends, things like that. And the end of year projection, it's not on here, but uh it's 56.9 million. So, we think that at the end of the year, we'll we'll beat budget by about 350 $400,000. It will still be a couple hundred less than last year based on where we currently sit uh uh year to date.

Um you think that's do you think that's largely responsible for the property damage due to we had to do all those revals because the properties were so damaged? We we went ahead and had to do that. you know, the properties that were damaged, we had to go. You couldn't

Yeah, there there's a lot going on there. Uh and and certainly Helen uh damages is one of those for sure. Uh yeah. U value of a penny. I know we talk about the tax rate, things like that a lot, but I want to draw to your attention even with the growth that we've had, right? Look how how small of increases we get in the value of a penny. And this is represents 50 55% of our general fund revenue. You can see 956 to 983 to a,000 or a million8 and only a growth of of of a couple thousand of $1,500 from one year to the next. So property tax is very stable, but you don't see huge gains. And that's that's that's tough for us. Um, even with the growth, uh, revenues are stable, but they are not keeping up with the cost of of of county government. Um, uh, also our collection rate has dropped a few few percent. It's not percentages. You can see we start we were at 9838, we're at 9802, right? It's only.36, but that could be about $350,000 if we had that uh back to the to the 98.38 would be additional revenue. Sales tax is was was chugging along. You can see uh the red line uh represents last year and the blue line represents this year. So you can see growth July, August, September, October, we're up $1.1 million over last year, which is great news, right? Uh the problem is look at how November drops. Last year there was a bump in November and we actually dropped this year and we'll pulled the sales tax for December uh just this morning. It's too late to add to this slide, but this year's December was $35,000 less than last

year's December. So sales tax December Christmas, we would have hoped to have seen a bump and actually came in $35,000 less. Now, that's out of a $16 million in sales tax. That's not endall, but that's kind of an alarming trend that we're seeing two months down. Brian, do you have a reason or do you know why that's

happened? It it's all speculation. Uh maybe the government shutdown was the reason for the drop in November. I'm not sure about December. Uh and and we'll see. So the next month, the way the way sales tax works, it it's usually 90 days behind. And so we'll see what January numbers are uh in in about a month. Um the the problem with January is that's where uh refunds are issued. People buy a lot of Christmas gifts, people take them back, get the cash. So we'll see refunds on January. So, we're sort of in a hold pattern. Hopefully, we only have the two months of of a drop and not a third. So, we'll monitor it for sure.

State given you has the state given you any guidance on sales tax next year?

You know, um not yet. It's a little early. Usually they'll they'll roll out something uh through the League of Municipalities. Uh typically they'll say three, three and a half, but each location is is very uh specific. I'll show you something that that is promising. These are some sales tax comparisons. This was pulled from uh state department of revenue. And you can see this is the growth uh in sales tax for the region uh through November. And uh while Madison outperformed us at 11 and a half% growth in sales tax, that's great. uh November and December are scaring me a little bit, but uh those first few months, that's that's a great problem to have. It's outpacing uh budget and last year's uh investment earnings. Uh this is another one we're continuing to watch as we had large numbers of in our fund balance and interest rates were were higher. We were getting some money. You can see uh this year's budget we set at 2.7 because we knew we'd have less fund balance because of that debris uh uh expenditure. The uh the problem is uh interest rates are a little bit down and we have less money. Uh the good news is out of the 2.7 million we budgeted, it looks like we're going to be at about $2.9 million at the end of the year based on current uh interest earnings. So again, uh revenues are stable, but we're we're monitoring them. questions on on any of those? Okay. Uh general fund expenditure history. You've seen this graph plenty of times. You can see uh it the general funds creeping up uh year after year. Uh the current budget was about $2 million 2.4 million over uh actual last year. U expected budget drivers for next year. Uh, and these are the same almost every

year. It's it's going to be our compensation, what we do for employees and uh uh COLA and merit. Over the last few years, we've been able to fund 3% COLA, cost of living adjustment, and 2% merit. U most employees receive close to the 2% uh in their evaluations. The current year we actually held uh our uh health insurance flat and next year we're we're actually going to have to increase that about $1,800 per employee per year. Hindsight uh we we we sort of gambled this year to make sure we could hold it flat. So think of next year's $1,800 increase really a two-year average. uh with Helen and all of the impacts we were trying to see if we could skate through this year, but next year an increase is necessary. Uh for sure. Um and that applies to retirey insuranceances as well. Uh the state is has announced another increase to uh retirement. And keep in mind every 1% of compensation be it 1% increase on retirement or a cola is about $480 $490,000. So, the state retirement system is going to cost us about $480 $490,000. And uh then again, the the one big beautiful bill act uh takes into effect in the upcoming fiscal year. We know we'll need some new eligibility specialists for for uh Medicaid specifically and uh SNAP administration. Uh think of food nutrition services. Uh the administrative cost will be given to the counties. The state won't absorb that. and we expect about a $400,000 increase in our admin costs for next year. Um the the the chair just announced that we're having a joint meeting with the board of education. We've been talking about their budget request. Uh the

funding formula expired. Uh so we don't currently have one. So hopefully on the 26th we can work with the school board to come up with another funding formula agreement to try to get us uh 3 years or so down the road. uh community college. I've talked to Dr. White. Her requests will probably come in at about five five and a half% increase. Uh and I think they're going to present those on um April 20th at the at the board meeting. Uh Reval, we we had to delay Reval because of so we've had some additional costs, but next year you'll see uh even more costs for printing, mailing, all of the kinds of things that we do during the reval process. Uh good news is uh we've got the bike park underway. It should be done in, you know, uh in in in time for summer, especially the Red Bull event we announced for September. So, we know we'll have some additional costs there, some staffing concerns. And the armory, I think uh Tim uh said this morning it should be done at the end of end of August. Uh with that, we'll have more square footage and and things to take care of, but the armory is going to be a very nice facility for us to have. Uh on on a lot of different fronts, we're seeing um pretty large increases in our maintenance contracts. This is everything from software to the striker uh uh uh CS that we use in our ambulances. Everything is going up. Fuel costs. Uh if id have prepared this two months ago, I wouldn't have known uh wouldn't have had this on here. But I'm kind of concerned with fuel, especially diesel. Keep in mind, our ambulance is put over 50,000 miles a year and and that's at now what $5 a gallon. So, uh of course we we don't pay some of the the taxes on that, but we are filling uh the squeeze at the pump just like uh every resident. uh insurance and bonding. We're having uh increases in the in the cost of our insurance,

especially general liability insurance and then utility costs. Uh we're served by Duke and HMC in the town of Wesville. So, as people get rate increases, we we get those as well. Um I have EWP on here just because it it's we think that's going to be somewhere between seven and $10 million. Still working on some numbers. This is going to be something that you guys had to decide and and I there's some hesitation. We've already got a a $14 million federal debris program that we've not received our reimbursements for. Do we start a $7 million program on top of that, you know, and that will be for us to how to we balance the expectations of the public but also to safeguard ourselves financially because you can you you can only stretch your out self out so far. Um, and then vehicles. Uh, uh, Chris has done a great job in, uh, uh, managing the fleet over the last few years. Uh, this is kind of a down year for, uh, vehicles. We only have eight total for public safety, not counting ambulances, two for social services, and the big one. Three ambulances and one remount. But, uh, it seems like just, uh, last week we were here and we bought about 10 ambulances in in in a year. uh it takes 24 to 30 months to get these delivered. So, it's time to start preparing uh for uh the delivery of ambulances for the replacements because 50,000 miles a year, they they it takes a while. So, any questions or anything that we talk about on those uh those budget drivers? Um okay. Jail expansion. Uh just to kind of rehash, in 25 and 26 we used fund balance to pay those debt payments.

That totaled about $3.4 million. In uh 27, we've got a $2.2 million payment for the for the jail debt. Uh keep in mind as we move through this, interest drops off about $60,000 a year. We structured the the the the debt is level principal payments. So, our interest drops every year by about $60,000. And then we know we'll have to have some positions to staff the expansion and uh additional operating. It's 33,500 ft². So, we will have to heat it. Uh we'll have, you know, all the things that come with ownership of of of 33,000 ft. Um I know we've uh seen this before. This is the county's debt profile. No school debt, no college debt. This is just uh for for county facilities only. See, it's it's a pretty pretty good debt profile. It's dropping off clearly. The the LGC supported this, but this last few years, we had the bump from the jail. Health insurance. You can see this is just another way to show how it's grown. Uh it's up about $1,000 a year. Uh and keep in mind, I think national health care costs go up 10% a year. We're below that, doing all right, but uh still looking for ways to to get uh our cost down. Uh Elders rate already touched on this. You can see it's up to 15.2% or 15.10% for next year. Um kind of to talk about operating in the dollars that we use, you can see from 22 our operating was about 38.2 2 million and uh current year adopted is about 42.5. So, you know, uh what's that? 4 million bucks. Let's just call it up

$4 million over that five years. But inside that number actually is where we fund the schools in the college. And so you can see here uh county operating when you pull out education went from 18 and a half to 20.6. So overall we're up just a little over $2 million. And if you actually control for the time value of money and what uh a dollar in 2026 buys compared to 2022, we're actually under in operating almost $2 million. So the the statement do more with less. County staff has been doing that, right? And and I I'll show you some it's back to that balancing of the public, right? I think they expect fast emergency response, safe detention facilities. I know they expect reliable social services and they they expect us to take care of the buildings and and those are some of the things that we focus on and I just kind of want to show the things that some of our employees are are doing. Uh this is the dental patients over the last few years. We had some hiccups. Uh but but through Ira and and Sarah's work, we we've writed that. So you can see we have the dental patients coming in. There's not a whole lot of places in the county that would accept Medicaid for dental care. And so having this feature at the health department is huge. It it it it really is meaningful. Uh look at the number of Medicaid enrolles over the last few years. These numbers just keep increasing from 13,000 to 19,000. Of course, the state expanded Medicaid and now with the changes at the federal level, we had to verify those not once a year but twice a year. So instead of Iris folks having to lay eyes on somebody uh the 19,563 once a year, it's twice a year. So doubling the staff is not out of the question since you have to do it as twice as often. Um

that's an interesting number if you consider that the population is somewhere about 63,000. Yep. Huge number. It's a huge number. Yeah.

Uh we've already talked about foster care, right? Th these are the things that that that the employees are are working on. You can see 162. I think we said 157 162. It's still a big number. Veteran services there. There's two people in veteran services. That's it, right? And and they saw 985 folks last year. Um, I know it's not a general general fund uh activity, but uh look at the amount of waste that's hauled from the MURF to the to White Oak Landfill and the convenience centers to those, right? There's plenty of work to be done by county staff and I'll keep in mind our our rate our solid waste fee is at 159. It had been at 164. So we we've done it with a $5 less per household per year, but the workload has not dropped off. The the cost of getting rid of this waste who everybody has has not diminished. Uh number of calls at the at 911 last year it was 172,000 calls. You can see the spike 183,000 for Helen, right? Last month, each telecommunicator averaged 323 calls. That's a lot of phone calls in a month, isn't it? That's not just barking dogs and trash, Brandon. And you know, we we've talked about this, Brian. With the elderly population that we've got with migration population increase, our elderly are going to have to call 911 more and more. It's just a fact of life. You get older, you're gonna have you're gonna have medical needs.

Yeah. And so that's something that, you know, I mean, I see the spike here from Helen, but I think the trend I'm I'm encouraged it was down there a little bit in 25, but I think long term our our trend is going to be steadily going up. Yeah, I agree. On that same topic, are we adding those ambulances to the fleet or are we replacing those ambulances in their fleet? Those those are not additional. Those those would come with staffing requests. And Travis has requested some some additional trucks.

He uh I don't have it with me. I think he requested six additional folks. Employees, not trucks. Uh, no, but I believe that would be one truck. I' I'd have to go back and and I just was curious with us having the new base and you know, like you said, aging population. Just wondered. These are calendar years that you're showing us right now. Calendar years. Yes, sir.

You know, it goes back to what we talked about a few minutes ago. Our our folks are already maxed out. You know, you talk about two people at veteran services, which they do a phenomenal job uh there and and the 911 operators, our sheriff's deputies, our whole staff, you know, and it seems like that each year there's more and more demand on on on all of them. And uh again, that's that's why I'm totally behind the cola and the merit. You know, we don't pay them what we should. We pay them all we can, but uh we don't pay them what we should. But u I mean I see what you're pointing out here and we all know this. You know the the ex the expenditures seem like they go up and uh revenue stays the same as you pointed out. So it's tough. It's going to be a tough year. But

yeah, just a few more. This this is the number of dispatch sheriff's calls. You can see a little over 25,000 last year. Uh and and the note from March 25 to March of 26, a fully staffed sheriff's office deputy would average 521 calls in in a year. That's that's a lot of work for one deputy to respond to. So the calls went down almost 11,000. Yeah. And and or 10,000. And I think in 24 there was a bump because of Helen. We we haven't had a chance to to dive into to to those u and and see what the what's caused that trend.

Well, hopefully it's less crime. So, that's what I Well, it goes back to what we talked about too. You look at the EMS calls. Yeah. And I'm afraid I'm afraid we're going to start seeing more of those because of the

Well, don't don't beat me to my own slides. Now look, this is EMS call volume and response time and and you can see uh it's it's over 15,000 the last two years. But what's interesting is the blue line, right, is is the is the decrease in the response time. So while we while we're having an increased work, Travis's folks are are doing a better job getting there. And some of the things we've done is is added more units. We've added more paramedics, but we also the rust base is probably not even in here, right? But having uh where you staged the the vehicles, things like that. So, I think all in all, EMS is needs more resources, but they're holding their own with with this kind of performance data. Uh facilities, I had to show you this because this is this is something that's is pretty great. uh number of work orders continue to increase, but the number of days to complete is decreasing. And what that is is Tim and his folks have switched to kind of uh work on the front end, preventive maintenance. They're doing a better job so things aren't breaking and it takes time to order parts and get those in. They they've got a process of how to keep things running in in good working order and it's working. And I think this is a uh a very positive uh trend. Any questions on any of this stuff about how the departments are performing? We I I have more slides that we could talk about, but I wanted you to get a flavor of what what what's happening inside the departments.

I'm going to tell you that response time with EMS, if you are the person, if you're the caller on the phone waiting with your loved one for um EMS to arrive, 30 seconds can seem like I mean that's that's huge. it. You know, you think 30 seconds is nothing, but that if you're if you're holding the hand of somebody that you love and you're waiting to hear those sirens, it's an important that's an important number. And and also as a property manager that understands what a work order means to have to go from go to that next slide if you don't care to go from eight days to four days, basically cutting that time in half of getting a repair made. You know, that could be the simplest thing of a loose door knob, but it could also mean you don't have air conditioning or heat. And I've said when I first came to the board, I felt like we were the county, not necessarily anybody specifically, was a bit more reactive to to caring for our facilities. So, we were responding when it broke, but now I feel like we're a step ahead of it and we're preventing maybe some of those breaks. So, I think both of those things are really to be celebrated. Another thing too, I was thinking about something Brandon said. Um, you know, think about Christian's department. She, you know, is doing all the finance for the county, which in itself is a daunting task for somebody like me. And then let's add a a major catastrophe on top of it and FEMA and all these things and they're just in there plugging away every day. I just really think that that's to be commended. It it really is. We're doing we're doing a lot with a little across the board really. All good stuff.

Thank you. um we were sort of heading in the direction and I wanted to talk about employee turnover and and and the cost uh because in in it was in 2021 that we did our pay study and increased wages but it's been a long time and one of the things that there is a cost of turnover and for entry level and frontline general standards is it cost 40 to 60% of their salary to replace For those more skilled, it goes up to 80 to 100% 120%. And then leadership cost could be 120 to 150%. And I think those are important as we talk about um turnover, which leads to a lot of other issues. Uh so I hope you can see this. This is the number of employees we've lost since 2023 through 2025. This doesn't include retirements uh or death. Uh the these are folks that that left for some other reason. And you can see some of the especially over in in health and human services, right? There's a there's a large group there and in public safety. But when you go back to these percentages, and this comes from SHERM, I think there's a Society of Human Resource Management. And there's also some some peer-reviewed papers from uh you know universities. So the these statistics I feel have some some credibility. You can see on the low end the vacancies for paramedics cost us about $267,000 in loss in in cost for turnover. You can see the social workers at the bottom, the IEAT, 565,000 over that three-year period, 23 through

25, turnover could cost between 3.1 and $4.6 million. And that's just, you know, that's just the budget guy talking, right? What what also happens is employee safety and burnout. And we see that in in vacancies. People have higher workloads. Burnout happens. response times could can it somebody knowing the job doesn't get it done as some good as somebody that's been in it for four or five years, right? The the action being able to to do the job independently and more quickly. And we see that especially if we have trained paramedics or deputies that then have to have training, right? Um we we lose the institutional knowledge. uh and in many cases for instance uh for the income maintenance workers we have to have uh two things one we have to process those applications within a certain amount of time and we have to do it with a certain accuracy level so anytime those folks walk out we have liability because if there's an error by one of our workers on the Medicaid side the state government looks back to us to make them held harmless. So, uh, and then overtime costs. We have, you'll see costs for overtime, especially in EMS and the sheriff's office, uh, driving pretty high. And a lot of that is related to to staffing turnover. And not all of it is going to be structural, meaning pay, right? But there are things people leave jobs for, but I feel like we're drifting further away from the market and we're seeing the cost and turnover. Uh, one of the last slides I have is is is really just the impact of underst staffing. And this is uh because uh health and human services was so prevalent on that sheet, I wanted you to see full staff and the cases per per employee. But when you look at the actual staffing levels we have and what

those cases do, right? in Medicaid family and children from 17 full-time staff cases would be 927 versus when we're staffed at 11 they have 1,400 cases. So all of these things I just wanted to bring your attention to it because turnover is having a uh an effect on the organization. Uh and then probably last thing to talk about is is capital. Keep in mind we we have about 717,000 square ft of buildings. Uh it's a lot to take care of and uh we've got some projects that are almost near completion. Uh the detention center expansion is all but done. We're waiting on some inspections from the state. So hopefully we get the green light in the next week or so. Uh Russ Avenue base is actually complete. Like I said earlier, the armory should be done by uh end of August. Uh the bike park better be done by the end of August because we've got that uh that that uh um Red Bull coming. Uh, and then the library. I think it's all done. We do have some more money in for some carpet uh for upcoming year. And then we've got some requests uh for some swiftwater rescue equipment, a lot of replacement of equipment for emergency services. Uh Sherry has asked for shelving, I think, every year that I've been manager here. Uh so I want to make sure we have it on the list, Sherry. Uh and then we have our standard uh rooftop HVAC replacements, some painting, carpet, all those things we need to do to be able to take care of our facilities. Uh next dates, uh like I said, uh the uh schools in the college will be here on the 20th. If this schedule works for you guys, I'd like to uh present the budget a little early, May 4th this year with the public hearing on the 18th. and then hopefully we could get a budget adopted

on June 1st. Uh at at this time I don't have anything else uh questions, concerns, comments. We're all going to take a much deeper dive on this in the coming weeks. I do have some questions, but I'll save them for when we do that. just a comment I guess you know some of the things that you talked about you know back in our first responders it's something that we all five campaign on and and not only campaign on we stand behind it so uh that funding education cola merit new jail basically everything that you've talked about you know it's stuff that's that's needed so uh during this budget process we're going to really have to nail down what we truly want. You know, these services, for example, an ambulance, if if if somebody in my family calls for an ambulance, I want it to show up. If I call for one, I want to show up. If you need law enforcement, same thing. We want our kids educated. You know, I've got a my first grandchild, as I've mentioned, and I want him to attend Haywood County schools, and I want him to be educated to the best that he can. And uh like I said earlier, taking care of our employees I think is a huge priority. Uh we've talked about how great they are and the job that they do that they do, how overwhelmed they are, and I believe we need to reward them for it. So with all this and the new jail, you know, that's going to be a another huge huge cost. But unfortunately, we're having to put people in jail. You know, uh we can't let them walk the streets. We got to put them in jail. I get calls all the time of or not all the time but uh more than I would like about uh why someone

ain't locked up, you know. So, uh now we're going to build a jail and we're going to lock them up. So, uh all these things put together, you know, I know it's going to be a tough budget season and uh uh it's going to get interesting, I know, but uh uh we'll do our best.

You know, when I first came to the board, I know you remember this. I really thought I'd go in that fir first budget meeting with a red pen and I'd just I'd just line out all the unnecessary things. That was really what I thought I'd do. And um once you go through that budget line by line and they've been I'm sure like they have with y'all. I mean you you go through it and you think, well, there's just not anything that's not important in this or that we have to have. And it was um you know I think I've kind of changed my way of thinking about things is that I thought I really did think that I would go in there and I would start lining out things that we were just not um you know we just didn't need or we could trim the fat on. And I think now it's just like you know I'm I I celebrated a few thousand dollars for the library you know and it's um it's really tight. It's a tight budget. So I'm I'm curious to see what it'll be this year. It's going to be it's concerning.

Just add to that one last thing too. I guess I'm pretty pretty talkative tonight. I'm out doing Commissioner Long tonight. So, go for it. Take out. Y'all don't know what's got into me. You know, there's only a small percentage of what we're talking about that we can actually control, too. That's right. you know, and again, I didn't realize that when I first sat in this seat. You know, I figured I'd go in with my red pen and trim it all back, but you learn that most of our budget is usually unfunded mandates and uh stuff that the state makes us do. So, there's some things that are required and outside of that, we have a small percentage that we can control. So,

right, I want to thank you for the hard work you've done to work on this. I think you already wore that red pin out a whole lot. I I appreciate you doing that. And I as far as that I I like that chart you showed us where how much we're losing when we when we're short employees and stuff that uh on that to me it seems like we we need to think about some way of uh maybe using that money that we're losing to help keep employees some you know or something when we get we you know we get where we can that because if we're losing it anyway I believe it'd be better to put it to use than just losing it.

I I I couldn't agree more. Right. It's it's a right or left-hand pocket. Which one you're going to pay out of? And what do you lose with that turnover? The the expertise, the the training, the the the morale of the folks that are picking up work while you're waiting to hire. It's it it's a it's a bad cycle to get into. And I think we run a lean ship here, right? from look at the operating costs and the the staffing numbers. Uh if we're going to run a lean ship, we have to take good care of the best employees we can. Right.

People don't realize when you when you lose employee, you don't just lose the training for that one employee. You've got to train another one for that position again. So, you've lost twice. And if we're losing that kind of money, you know, it seems like we got we got to figure something out to get the best use of that money we're losing. That's I don't know if that's the way you say it or not, but that's the way I see it. As you know, is looking at that.

I I think it's an investment in not losing folks, right? You're going to spend it one way or the other. Uh and and to a degree, you know, I I don't like being a farm system for some of these bigger counties, right? We get folks trained up and for a couple of years and then somebody takes them. I I I don't like being a farm team. I want to see us keep the best folks playing on our our team. Brian, do we have do you know what the percentage of folks is that's leaving that left last year because of money compared to when we done the pay study in 21?

You know, no. And a couple things. Some folks won't admit it in in an exit interview. Exit interviews are not super super reliable. In many cases, we see it's money. And u Sean that works in HR, he he runs every posting by me. And if it's not clear why that person left, I always ask. And and sometimes it is. It's simply just a financial decision. But a lot of times it's family. We see uh uh child care issues. It's it's it's all over the board. But but money is mentioned more times than not. Sometimes that extra money would help in child care and stuff, you know, if if we can work it some way or another.

Exactly. Exactly.

Can I can I talk? We'll turn our mics.

Well, every speech I make is a long speech. You get what I'm talking about. You know, Brian, there's something you hadn't told the other commissioners, and I'm sure some of them are aware of it, but you know, you and I sat through a tax reform meeting for about three hours. And in the state legislature right now, there's an agenda item and it's kind of moved over to the Senate, but that's all pending. The results of a of a recount on election, but I guess there's there was a wait there. the North Carolina House of Representatives are proposing tax reform and uh it's it's very concerning and I I know Bryant and I set the NCAACCC group that went and lobbyed the legislature and actually they had to educate some of the legislators and I I've been in contact with some of our folks down here and it's interesting that 33 I think 33 sitting legislators used to be county commissioners and and they said that about 15 of them had forgotten the challenges that we face as county commissioners. And uh but that next meeting, I know it's 10:00 a.m. Wednesday morning. The next uh reform tax reform meeting is 10:00 a.m. this coming Wednesday. Just so you'll know, it could affect it could affect a lot of things. Maybe we can get by with this budget, but uh next year may not be that way.

Yeah. and they they want to cut stuff and and pat theirel on the back, but at the end of the day, we have to somebody has to pay the bills. And if they've not got a replacement revenue stream, if they want to do tax reform, that's fine. But if they don't have a uh replacement revenue stream for counties, it can get it can get tough in a hurry. And so I know you and I are very concerned about that. and and the House is that committee and it's my understanding that Senator Burger is going to uh do something in in in April from the Senate side depending on what comes out and right the FEMA reimbursement it could it could really break our backs I'm still hopeful that we get that FEMA money back by by the end of of June certainly before we adopt the budget. Um but uh coupled those two things coupled together really are concerning as as far as how we run county government. And to go back about 90% of what we do is is mandated by federal state government. All we want is some help to do the job that they task us with, right? Not not tie our arm behind our back. So

thank you all. Thank you Brown. Thank you. Okay. Next order business discussion adjustment to the agenda. I don't have anything. Does anyone else? Okay. Next order would be consent agenda. We have five items on the consent agenda. Does anybody have any questions about any of those?

Just one comment, Mr. Chairman. Item number five is a uh budget amendment for the sheriff's department, $80,000 to accept and appropriate a USDA grant for law enforcement. If you looked into your packet and and got took a little deeper dive into that, it's very interesting that some of that that money is director Zola Helen and our sheriff's department having to uh patrol some of our wildlife areas down toward Harmon's Den up toward Lake Logan and around 276. It's it's spelled out in in the packet. But what's really nice about that, and I guess sheriff's department should be really happy about this, was there's money in that $80,000 for eight Viper radios, and they're $5,000 a piece. There's $40,000 within that item in our budget to receive these these monies that are earmarked for Viper radios. So, there'll be eight new Viper radios, I guess, at our disposal, which uh is is great news for us. I I just wanted to make note of that. It's in the consent agenda, but it's worth mentioning.

Have you got other comments? Okay. I entertain a motion a motion we approve the consent agenda as presented. So moved. Second. Second. Okay. Any discussion? Okay. All in favor say I. I. Anyone want to oppose? Okay. Unanimous. Next order of business is a re regular agenda. We have uh two items. The first is a request approval of a budget amendment community college debt service fund $770,000 to appropriate fund balance for previous year's physical unspent annual capital allocation. Hey Christian.

Good evening. Yes. Um Hwood Community College has requested that we allow them to roll over their unspent capital funds from fiscal year 23, 24, and 25. um they were late starting on some projects that they had budgeted. This is their money that's reserved in um from sales tax that we reserve for them in their um debt service and capital fund. Okay, I'll entertain a motion we approve item one. Make that motion. Second. Okay. Uh any discussion? All in favor say I.

I. That's unanimous. Okay. Item two. Thank you, Christian. Item two is to request approval of four new positions for the substance use treatment and prevention program financed by opioid settlement funds public health services division director Dr. Sarah Banks. Hey Sarah,

I'll be super fast because I realize I'm the only thing standing between you all and getting home. Most of this information you have seen before, so I'm going to do a quick recap. Um, and the last couple of slides kind of dive into the positions that we're asking for. All right. So, our program proposal, as you know, we most of you all have been with me since the inception of this program a couple of years ago. Um, our agency along with our community partners has built a program that aims to reduce morbidity and mortality rates through early detection, treatment, accountability, and education. Um, this program is not, it is housed in public health, um, but it certainly does not go without, it doesn't work without mentioning our partners. We have a great partnership with Recovery Court, um, with the sheriff's office and the detention center that that really make this program work. Um, we've been at it long enough now, a couple of years in, that we're starting to get referrals from the community and from other providers in the community. So, we are growing and expanding, which is why we're here asking for the positions. This is an assessment of need. I just pulled a couple of quick slides just to show you um like a snapshot of overdose deaths in the state of North Carolina. Um these are for the month of January 2026 across the state. So, it's showing 217, which is actually down from 249 in January of last year. This is for Hwood County alone. 2024 is the most recent data that is provided on the website right now. So you'll see that in 2024 we had 57 ED visits um involving overdose um which was down from 68 the year prior. Um we talk a lot about the consolidation of our agency and how we're kind of one-stop shopping. So when patients come into our agency um for substance use issues and we start seeing them, we refer them to other programs. A lot of times they don't have insurance. Um so

we refer them to the other side of the house for Medicaid applications and food and nutrition services. Um they are patients in our wick division. Um they are patients in the large number that you saw Bryant show you of our dental clients that are coming in. So they're we're referring them to a lot of other services in the county and also in our agency when they are there. So this is the program built out um including the four uh positions that we're asking for this evening. Um we currently have our advanced practice provider who is seeing our substance use clients along with all of our clinic patients as well as the substance use treatment nurse that you see at the bottom of the diagram. Um, we're asking for other positions in between. So, the psych mental health advanced practice provider is one that we're asking for. The substance use treatment program director we're asking for. And there are two case management positions at the bottom um that will provide peer support and making sure they get to doctor's appointments and court appointments and all the other things as they try to rebuild their lives. So, again, these are the positions that we're asking for. So the program director is the primary purpose of that is to keep it all kind of between the lines if you will. Um this person will be direct oversight to um the nurse and both of the case management positions. Um ensuring that the relationships, you know, that we have built continue to work um that we're still showing up at recovery court, that we're still able to work with the detention center to make sure that clients are getting from there to us and back. Um, and to make sure that we're out in the field and making sure that these clients are getting where they need to be. The psych mental health advanced practice provider, either an NP or a PA, will serve solely in this program. So, all they will do is see these clients on a daily basis as

our program grows. And then our case management and peer support positions, like I said, will be kind of out in the field and making sure that these clients are getting what they need. Are we getting them help with work first? Are we getting them job applications? um do they need housing assistance? Are they filling out their Medicaid applications? Do they know how to fill out a job application? Do they know where to go to get something to wear to a job interview? So, they're they're going to be really embedded with these clients and and getting their lives back on track. So, these are all the things that we br I brought to you initially that we are measuring as we go along. Um because we know that the the quantitative stuff is important as well as those qualitative stories that you hear. Um, we bring you success stories that happen in our program all the time, but at the end of the day, especially when it comes to finance, and Christian will be happy we're keeping up with all of these numbers. Um, so that we can fill our reports out properly. That's it. I tried to make it quick.

I've got a quick quick question. Sure. On slide five. Oh gosh. And again, it's a little frustrating because the data isn't updated like we'd like to see. The latest one's 2024. 57 as opposed to 68 deaths the year before. Do you have any idea where we're at in year 25?

I don't. I don't. And we hope that those numbers are coming down because of efforts that we're seeing. Um there's a lot of widespread um Narcan distribution, so we're able to reverse those effects a lot quicker. Um, we're seeing a lot of medicationass assisted treatment programs both in the community and in detention centers. So, we're capturing them a lot earlier than we used to. Um, so I hope that those are the things that are contributing to those, but I don't have 2025 numbers. Okay.

No, you go ahead. The program director is built out as a nursing supervisor. Um so it will fall in line with um like my clinic nurse supervisor and the school nurse supervisor. Um the advanced practice provider we already have built in so it will be under the same qualifications. And then the case management and peer support um is more of an entrylevel position. Um the peer support is not a requirement because we can send them to peer support training. It takes about a week for them to complete and then come back. Um which we have done actually with two employees, one at the detention center and then the the nurse that currently works in the program. So we're not requiring a special degree for the case management position. We really just want somebody that's going to be passionate about what we're doing um and willing to really to to keep these people engaged. So, do they do they'll be in house or you'll be hiring somebody?

Yeah, they'll all be housed at in public health. So, they'll be So, the new position, do you have a new nursing position or It'll be the same nurse that's there now. So, the nursing position we already have. So, she's going to just have more duties or That's what I was trying The nurse will continue to work in the clinic with patients. Okay. That'll be what she does. Okay. Yeah. And then the other one is just they're entry level two of them are and then the other one was the mental health was that what do what's

so it'll be a nurse practitioner or a PA that will be able to see them um in the clinic and write prescriptions that are necessary and that sort of thing. Oh okay. Okay. Um on the CA on the peer support positions What do you estimate since you're asking for two that their workload will be? Number of cases I guess that they that will be divided between the two positions.

I guess it depends how many clients we end up seeing. When we started this project, um when we kind of relaunched and revamped our MAT program, we started out very small because we didn't really know what to expect. Um one of our goals was to build a program that was based on accountability. um because we feel like the clients that come into this program are as responsible for their recovery as we are. And that doesn't always work for every client. Um there are other programs in our county, in our region, that don't have the same expectation. And so there have been clients that have come into our program that have not been successful for that reason. But we also realize that dealing with their addiction isn't just about the addiction. It's about all the other things. So, it has there has to be somebody that will help them organize their life and make sure that they're making it to appointments and that they're holding themselves accountable, that they're getting to, you know, job appointments and court appointments and doctor's appointments and all the things. Um, I don't really know quite honestly. I hope that the case load will be large. Um, but without the without these other positions, it's hard to know how big we can be because right now we're very limited by only having two employees that are working in the program.

And then any idea or speculation on how long it will take you to fill the positions you're requesting? I mean, some of them are pretty specific. They are they are I guess they all are even at the the entry level is going to have to have a certain um knowledge I guess and empathy at the same time. Yeah, that's that's not in today's world that's not readily available.

I think probably the advanced practice provider is going to be the hardest position to hire. Um we don't generally speaking have a difficult time hiring nurses in public health. But you're right, it's it's certainly a very special population that is going to require employees that really have a passion for this work. It's not going to be like any other nursing job that they've ever had. Um, so that's what we're looking for. It'll be hard. I hope not. I know you're up to the challenge, though, sir. I know that we're going to pay for these positions out the opioid settlement funds. You know how long we can do that?

I'm going to phone a friend on this. I didn't know if there was a certain amount of monies we can do or if so as of right now we have budgeted all the funds we have received up through fiscal year 2025 to run this program and we have 2.9 million in this program um for FY26 we've received about $800,000 um there there'll be more coming this fiscal year but all in all I'm I'm trying to remember our our 18-year allocation. Bryant, do you happen to remember that number? I

I was thinking it's over 17 years. And and that's one of the things we we've taken some time. The last thing we want to do is build a program that's not sustainable. So, I think we've got it crafted to where we we we can live off the opioid funds for for for the the tenure of it. Uh unless we grow it so big that, you know, victim of our own success, if you will.

Thank you. You know, that really puts it in perspective for me because when, you know, we first got word of this money coming down, this settlement award, there was a flurry of things we could do with it. Lots of ideas and, you know, that kind of brainstorming, I guess, is beneficial, but it it is good to know that that funding is allocated, like you said, for and it does fluctuate though. So, you've done a good job or whoever Christian, Brian, Sarah, whoever's done a good job of of um holding on to that to build a base, I guess. Yes. And that funding is very regulated. Very, very regulated. What we can and can't use those funds for as we're learning. Yet another thing finance keeps up with, right? Yeah. Yeah.

I think it's important to remember too, we've got money allocated um because one of one of the things that is allowable is the medications that we use for treatment. But the goal is for them to come in if they are uninsured or underinsured and help them get stable insurance so that we only pay for those medications for a certain period of time. So then that money becomes reallocated to somebody else down the line that will need it for medications. I'm excited that you're going to have some numbers to report back. That's very important.

Yeah. And one last thing, you know, I I was hit up by a constituent, I guess two weeks ago, asking about if some part of that money couldn't be used to make sure that, you know, as a followup that people's making it to their appointments or making it to work or whatever, trying to help them. So, it's it's good to see that some of this pos one of these positions uh will be uh will be doing that. So, I guess it's just one two maybe two. Okay. It's good to see that we'll have two of those people doing that so I can report back that that we are spending those funds in that way. So, thank you. Anybody else?

Okay. Kindly entertain a motion we approve item two. Make a motion we approve item two is presented. Second. Okay. Any other discussion? All in favor say I. I. Okay. That's unanimous. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Banks. Okay. Under appointments, request approval of appointment of Kathy Leande to serve an unexpired term through June 30th, 2026 as an extr territorial jurisdiction or ETJ as we call it, representative on the town of Wesville's planning board. Did you need to say anything? No. Okay. Did I guess the town sent this to us as Okay, they did.

And so I assume this person lives in the EJT. Yes, they do. It's a requirement. PTJ. Yeah. We've had it posted for a long time and honestly didn't get that many applicants, but this one applied and Town of Wesville recommended them. Well, it's good that the ET ETJ has a representative. They're on that planning board. So, yeah, they probably don't want to be on that planning board right now. That's probably why. So, okay. So, I have a motion. I mean, can we have a motion to approve item one of appointments? So, move. Is there a second? Second.

Okay. All in favor say I. I. Anyone opposed? Okay. Does anything Anybody have anything else to bring before the board?

Uh, one one thing, Mr. Chairman, I any of you and I know everybody here's run for office. you've had to do a campaign finance report if you've been above the threshold and and it it's pretty cumbersome that that document hadn't been upgraded in 30 years. And so any of you Jennifer's chuckling it it can be quite a chore and Jeremy Fish up the board of elections I'm sure has to do a lot of handholding to get all these reports put in. But I I was privileged to be tapped by the state auditor Dave Bolick uh here a few weeks ago to sit on a election reform committee at the state level. There was only there's 23 people I believe on it and there's only two commissioners from the state of North Carolina that's that's represented and myself and commissioner Alan Thomas from Hope County and we've been having meetings. It's been pretty pretty fast and furious. And hopefully hopefully we're going to get the campaign finance software updated. For those of you I see some people out in the audience has had to muddle through that, but hopefully we'll have it more user friendly and uh more up to date to where when people run for office, they don't have to stress out about trying to wade through that cumbersome electronic filing uh form that's being currently used. So hopefully we'll have something for for everybody across the state pretty soon. So very good.

Anybody else? Okay. Motion to adjurnn. Motion to adjurnn. Okay. Is there a second? Is there a second? Okay. All in favor say I. I. Everybody be safe out there.