City Council - Special Meeting

I have to call this emergency meeting to order. Madam Clerk, call the roll.

Ms. Jamison. Present. Ms. Gosselin. Here. Mr. Nolte.

Here.

Mr. Simons.

Here.

Mr. Danvers.

Here.

Mr. Davis. Here. Ms. Gale. Here. Ms. Gap.

Here. And we have a quorum. Councilwoman Gills, would you please lead us in prayer? I pledge allegiance to you.

Let us pray. Father, in the evangelist's name, Jesus said, we come thanking you for this day, God. Father, we thank you for the opportunity, God, to show forth your characteristics, God. Father, we ask and pray that you be with us in the midst of this meeting, God, that we will do all things to the glory and honor of you, God. and not of our own agenda, God. We thank you for what you've done, God. Father, we thank you for this city and how you're leading this city, God. And we pray and ask that you continue to bless us, God. Continue to bring prosperity toward us, God. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

Thank you, Councilwoman Neal. I just want to welcome everyone that's here in the community and thank the Council for coming together in such a short notice. And Mr. Manager, I will run it over to you.

Mayor, City Council, how are y'all doing this afternoon? As you said, you've added a couple of items, but I want to tell you that five phones plus a good cyber and an IT department, along with a contractor. So the first thing you'll see is our emergency management. Grant and Rio have been awarded and was pressed for time because we have to accept them today. um this grant i'm again um captain ball as well as patrick they've been working hard on there they believe in the details before when i met with them too early today it's basically we have a cheaper service over the two years of repayal firm but we'll be able to recoup the funds over two years to get a better service separate where we can handle our oit and our cyber security more effective if you want details out more and more on the web phone brand from captain ball here to talk that's a but I had to go for my quick meeting. We don't have to put in approximately $320,000, but with the current contract we have with the current vendor, we will be paying that over two years anyway, but the current rent will pay that forward. where we'll be able to get these other amenities that we don't get now. Right now, we're working with the state. We don't control a lot of the emails that we got to pay for them. We can't take them all. With this system, we can take them all and it won't cost us anything to pay for the additional service when people leave and come back. So, but we have a better, we have all the bills and whistles that we wasn't able to afford before. This grant allows us to do that.

Council? Yes, ma'am. May I partake? Thank you, Mr. Vann. I would like to hear some of the logistics. I've always been interested in the cyber security that's offered by the League of Municipalities. And since day one, I've known that they are able to come into your municipality, set up software, work with you over the course of a couple of years and ensure in the long haul that you would never have the type of cyber security breach that we had. Um, but I would like to hear the logistics. I've been talking about this for 3 years prior to our cyber attack, but I'm very excited because this is a grant and if you are on board, I know it must be something special.

In reference to that, we also have separate another grant for relief municipality to support this grant as well. It was an amount of 25,000. You're right. Thank you.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. So we work with the league already and gone through a cyber assessment and they've come back with their recommendations that we just have to fund. However, they have granted us around $25,000 in hardware equipment refresh. That's basically no matching funds. Nothing the city has to pay out. That's already in the works. We've already signed the MOA for that. Should we get in that in the next month? The other grant is through the emergency preparedness that we actually applied for last fall and just found out about that we were granted it yesterday and gave us till midnight tonight to accept it. But for the city, it will actually be a net advantage. The matching funds will be less than what's currently in the budget. So you'll actually pay less and they pay more and beyond the minimum that we have now, be able to add additional email filtering, security awareness training, multi-factor authentication, inborn detection and response, vulnerability scanning, assessments, penetration testing, all of those fancy terms that we just don't have currently. And the grant will pay for that as well as bring in about a $228,000 over two year additional savings for paying for stuff that the city's already paying for. So it's quite a large grant. I've written it. help write it for the city of oxford and then for you guys as well um theirs was a bit smaller because of the smaller entity but to me i understand there's due process and everything and but the time constraint is an issue but essentially the city saving money spending less and getting another three or four hundred thousand dollars of services that you don't even pay for now to further strengthen the cyber security posture of the city excellent thank you

Want to say something?

Council and Mayor, the fund, like you said, the 40% match is already more or less allocated in the budget already. It's just some extra enhancement to help us provide those services. We have undergone two assessments since our cyber attack with the North Carolina National Guard Cyberterrorism Task Force. And then Patrick has done one with the league.

Part of the National Guard.

And that's part of their recommendations. And that's what was presented in this grant to help us get these funds, which, like you said, we scrambled around. We found out just this afternoon. And luckily, we had a meeting today that we could present that to you. Great job. Excellent job.

Awesome. Awesome. Thanks, guys. Do we have a motion? A motion that we accept the grant? Second. We have a motion on the floor by Mayor Prozac Walker. and seconded by the Councilmember Venable. Are there any discussion? So I just want to say thank you for your work before you call the roll, Madam Clerk. Mayor Pro Tem, I do remember you bringing up, and this might be just for y'all to note, that you talked about that financial software as well from the lead. So that might be something I wanted to look at too. Madam Clerk, you can call the roll.

The Chairman. Yes. Ms. Bowman-Temenna. Yes.

Yes.

Yes. Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes. Yes. And the motion has passed. Moving forward to resolution 2640, amending the opioid settlement advisory board by votes. Mr.

Manager. So from the last meeting, what we did was I worked with my team for us to modify. So what we did, we increased the amount of for citizen, so each warden had two participants, two representatives. Now, because we're talking to staff, we understand it's hard James Forrest, Norcal PTACC, he or she, get the quality of service that we put into the experience board what we did was if the war cannot find a person to match or have two people. James Forrest, Norcal PTACC, he or she, will then leave the board and the Council to go use the applicants in the area that works here and lives here with the same category and experience and select them only for one of your terms. The terms for the citizens in the war will be three, and the person who's not in the war but has the expertise that we're looking for can be appointed to the war for one, just giving the war the opportunity to have somebody come back in at a particular time than a true by-filing member. But this gives us more teeth in the game where this was Spanish people, but if we wasn't able, at least the war would not have a representative for them completely.

Thank you, Mr. Manager. I also just left a note in training over at the Seventh Day Adventist Church, and I left the people there that took the Friday note as well. So, Council, how would you like to proceed?

I make a motion that we have a wellness settlement. Second.

We have a motion on the floor by Council Member Venable and seconded by Mayor Pro Tem Walker. Is there any discussion?

Yes, ma'am. I'd like to make a... Go ahead. Well, good afternoon everyone watching us online and also here in our council chambers. I just have a point of clarification with this resolution, which one is it? 2640. Mr. Manager or Mr. Interim City Manager, the changes that you just described are immensely wonderful and I agree with them and I agree with the core values in each and every single one of them. However, although I know that ultimately this will lead to nowhere, I believe that it is imperative for me to at least say on the record that I am for the thoughtful reform that we are doing through these new bylaws for this opioid settlement advisory committee. However, I am not for changing the eligibility after seeing the field of candidates that we received. Again, this will not get me anywhere, but I am here to voice my opinions for four years. And that being said, my objection is not necessarily to those ideas that you just mentioned. My objection is changing eligibility standards after applications have been submitted and after we know exactly who those standards will include and exclude. These bylaws that we adopted last month, they were not inherited 10 years ago or whatnot. We all unanimously adopted those bylaws last month with no ifs, ands, or buts. So if council approved them, my question truly would be, If certain applicants have not applied, would we be here today pondering on these bylaws? So again, this will get nowhere, but I'm here to represent my constituents, Ward 1 at large, and thank you so much for your time.

I would like to respond to that. I would like to say that those applicants are not out of the pool. They're still in the pool. We're still opening up. As soon as we finish this meeting today, the flyer, the marketing flyer will back out. The application is the same thing to go back on all our media platforms we used before. Then we'll bring it back to the board and we'll be able to vote as you or as you may. But again, we're not going to sit there and put them to the side, regardless of the reason, but we are going to have the money. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bain. And for clarity purposes, I believe that the board wanted to make sure every board had records and nobody be excluded but every board had someone to represent from the award. I believe that was the situation. All right, so we have a motion on the floor and we have a second. Yes, further discussion.

Oh, I'm sorry. The other night when I said, I said what I said and I meant what I said, I said merely that everyone in every, somebody in each ward need to be represented. And I stand by what I said, no doubt. But the reason why I said this is because if I represent one, the other person represent two, what's wrong with having someone being represented on this opioid? Chad GPT did not tell me that they should be excluded. Okay.

No, ma'am.

I'm sorry. So that's the reason why I mentioned what I mentioned. And I stand by that decision that I made the other night. I feel like the representation should be more broader. Everything came off near Oxford Road. I did not agree with it then, and I don't agree with it now.

I'll finish there, Mayor Elliott. Thank you, Councilman Chamblee. But again, we have an opioid situation across our entire city of 15,000 people. And I only think it's fair, and I think the board decided already, that we give representation for every board. So let's move forward. Madam Clerk, please call the vote.

Ms. Domenic, a minute.

Chante, you continue to not say this. Yes.

Senoal? No. JoAnne Hanrahan, Mr cyber no. JoAnne Hanrahan, Mr devil yes. JoAnne Hanrahan, yeah yes. JoAnne Hanrahan, Yes.

JoAnne Hanrahan, Yes, and the motion has passed. JoAnne Hanrahan, Thank you all moving forward to the close session. JoAnne Hanrahan, Okay, so. Closed session pursuant to North Carolina General Statute 143-318.1183 is attorney-client privilege. And if you all will pick your books up as you go. We have motion to go into closed session. We have a motion to go into closed session. We have a motion to go into closed session. We have a motion to go into closed session. We have a motion to go into closed session.