Town Board - Regular Meeting

All right, calling our second day of our planning retreat to order. Thank you everyone who presented yesterday. We're excited for another day fun plans for the town of Huntersville. We have big plans. Um it's kind of a short schedule, but um feel free to ask as many questions as you want. Okay. All right. You ready to get going? Yeah.

Just uh real quick case I know we're going to be probably uh we're going to try to get out of here uh and finish everything before lunch and uh lunch uh Kathy's at 12. Yes.

We may be able to speed it up by a few minutes. I don't know. But um plan is if you want stay eat lunch and then we're getting out of here right after that. But there'll be time to check out. Um, Katherine's going to check to make sure. She doesn't know this yet, but I'm sure she already has done it. Um, I think if you're up here, you can check out here. They said we could, but we'll double verify before then. That way, you just check out here and go get stuff in the car. That way, you can roll soon eating. Um, but we will cram in what we can today. I think we'll get all of them. So, maybe if you know, I'll just pick on one real quick. Um, four years stagger. I don't know. We'll solve that here today. you know, that's on the list because I'm sure Emily has a presentation on that. We've done that before. We just want to make we don't want to spend all day here. If y'all have tons of questions on that, we can set up a preme on that if we needed to, but we're prepared to talk about that. That may be one that may take a little bit longer. But other than that, um, uh, let me just before I forget because everybody's be running around. um you know all the department heads in this room and the ones that were here yesterday and and really the people behind the scenes that work for them, you know, made all this happen. I know they put it together making the presentation, but I'm sure they had people underneath them help them just like um I didn't do any of this to all these people did. So again, thanks to them, thanks to Katherine for, you know, putting all this together.

Um Larry for getting it together and all that. again in case I forget, thanks to everybody and mayor and board for letting us come up here and do this. Take it away.

All right, let's go. Um, good morning everybody. And like Anthony said, thanks to my staff who's back in Hunters. We're working hard and making all this happen. I'm just the ring leader. That's it. They do all the hard work and they have they've got they're a lot smarter than I am. That's for sure. All right, what do we All right, here we go. Uh, population Jackie, that's one of Jackie's favorite things we talk about every June. And I think we did a pretty good job uh guessing what you know where we were going to be last year. Um last year we had an estimate of 69,521 for our total and we were just uh right now we're as you can see we're at just a little bit over 70. So we're pretty good pretty good guess. Uh inside the corporate limits our estimate last year was 66308. Actual came in at 66 955. So, I think we did a pretty good job doing our math last year. And this year, it looks like we're going to uh shoot for just under 70. So, we're at 69,61. That's where we're going to estimate that we are going to be inside our corporate limits come June. So, let's see how we did this year. Statewise, still sitting strong at number 16. Interesting that Jacksonville actually dipped down from 14 to 15. I think there was some movement over at the military base over there, but uh you know, we're just behind Apex there. what we can when we look at our city compared to other cities that are growing. Apex is pretty much our sister city, so we keep tracking along the same as them. It's pretty good, pretty good growth permits. Uh little bit of a dip last year, but nothing, you know, what I would say would be alarming or out of the ordinary. Um we did have that bumper crop of apartments, as everybody knows, coming in. Those take about 18 to 24 months to work through the system. So, we're probably midcycle on a lot of those. some of the early uh adopters um from like Solless up near Burkdale, those types of projects are coming online. Of course, next door with the the North State project, all those buildings are starting to get leased up as folks move in. So, I would say we're right along uh where we should be looking at national trends and regional

trends. Little bit of dip as we all know, but nothing to be alarmed about. Um talked to some developers over the last couple months, uh especially in the single family realm. They see a good strong market for the next couple years. As lots come available, houses go on. We don't have lots sitting there for months waiting for homes to be built on them. They're pretty much as that lot gets ready, the home gets built, gets sold, gets seeded, and then we move on. We get new residents. So, as you can see, we had that, you know, another uh just under 500 multif family units approved last year and 380 single family. So, good strong trend. Again, as I just talked about, as those things get constructed and come online, that's when we issue the CO. COs can range from anywhere from four months for a single family home is pretty quick as you can build one, about 18 to 24 months for those multifamily ones. How do we look in the commercial realm and industrial realm? Um, we got a lot of new construction. We did drop down a little bit, but the in 2024, we had a huge huge growth. um town hall got built. Lots of industrial flex spaces got built and a lot of those are still under construction or and are now coming to CO this year. So, did not surprise me at all that this dropped down to where it was. We just had a massive bumper crop in 23 and 24 for those construction numbers. Uh some of the big projects that uh got permitted this year was the Suncap flex space over on Mont Holly Huntersville Road. uh Lake Norman uh charter schools uh over off of M Wayne, the Solless apartment that's out over towards uh Publix on Highway 73. Uh Vermillion Village, as you know, that's getting ready to start coming online sometime first quarter, early summer. Uh and then a large remodel over at Honda. And then here's our town limits. Uh grew a little bit last year, about 70 acres. We did two annexations uh last year. We got three upcoming. We got two on Tuesday night and then one more the following month. So we keep growing slowly, slowly and steadily.

Aren'tations automatic? Um, no. Those are totally voluntary. So when folks come on in, they want police, fire service, trash, so it's advantageous for them to come into the town so they can receive those services. If they for some reason someone wanted to stay in out in the ETJ, that's fine. A big thing is if you were to build a subdivision and didn't do that, those roads would be uh need to be accepted by the DOT and they're not exactly uh keen to take a lot of residential roads. So most residential developers want, you know, want those roads turned over to the town for Kevin to maintain and then they want those services that we provide.

What about the Long Creek project? Remember we did that on 84 road they want to be annexed. If they approve if we approve a project that's the John and Katie the turtles. Yep. They would need to voluntarily annex to do that if they wanted to come in. I know they're in the middle of their permitting right now. They've kind of paused. Um but if they were to continue forward and they wanted to voluntar voluntarily annex, we'd be more than happy to run them through that process. Thanks.

Yep. Sure. And reszonings. Here's our update the updated resoning map. Francis and our GIS staff do a great job keeping this updated. Every Wednesday morning, if you guys approve a resoning, the next morning they update the map. We do publish the physical maps once a quarter. If you guys do want hard copies of these maps, let me know. We'll get those to you on Tuesday night. Um if not, everything is live on the internet. Uh ward of uh wisdom here. Sometimes Polaris at the county lags a little bit by a few months. So if you want to get the up-to-date zoning, check out our website. Uh that that's taken care of and it's lived in updated the next morning. So it's pretty pretty seamless in our end. Uh here's our zoning statistics. As you can see, we're still primarily residential. About 80% of our land is zoned residential. Um that's been a pretty steady trend since 1996. Uh we do have some small categories that change back and forth, but nothing I would say substantial. The largest one was back at about 0304 when we took about a thousand acres that were zone, neighborhood, residential, and zone those for corporate business. And that's where you're seeing that uh stuff come to fruition today. So where Southwire is, we've reszoneed about 300 acres over there for the town's business park. Also down towards Mount Holly Huntersville and towards North Lake Mall. There was another there were two other resonings down there that were about 300 acres each and that's where you're starting to see those flex paces and stuff. So again, that was in 2004. Stuff's getting built on 2025. So again, planning is measured in decades. We will we will quote Jack Simo forever on that one, but really that's the reality of it. It takes that long to get stuff done. Um, some highlights of of projects that were reszoned this year, the station south project that was just done a couple weeks ago, the TOD up on 73 and 115. And, uh, another good project that's going to come online hopefully later this year, uh, the Mission Stumptown project right there at 21 in Stumptown.

Uh, approved development map. We're always adding subdivisions. again, um, for our newer board members, a couple years ago, uh, if the board saw wise that if a subdivision met all of our rules that staff could administratively approve a major subdivision. Um, we've got a couple of those that came online this year. Nothing large, but the larger ones that you guys see that need exceptions to the rules and those types of things, those come in via resoning get approve or disapprove those projects. Um, so again, we had about uh we had a couple of those But nothing nothing crazy. Here's what we have in the pipeline. Currently, we have 37 subdivisions or different projects under construction physically. Um the biggest one, as we uh all attended a couple weeks ago, was the groundbreaking for town one. They're hot and heavy. They're looking to go um I know the town home builder wants to go vertical as soon as they can um this spring to get some of those units online for the fall. So, we're helping them get through that process. But again, you can see large list of uh projects that are under construction. We got about 17 ones that are planned. Um, some of those that are I know are probably going to come up uh starting this year. Alex Yards uh down near Charlotte is going to move forward. Um, we got the views of Brighton that's over towards uh Ever Keith Road. They're getting ready to go. Uh, we're hoping to work uh with one of the local developers to get the Second Street and First Street projects up and running this year. Get some more folks living downtown, which would be exciting. And then we anticipate there's a large subdivision over on the West Morland farm on 73. We anticipate them breaking ground sometime, you know, late spring, early summer if uh things stay on track. Uh currently in our inventory, we got about 1,600 single family units approved that are unbuilt, about 370 town homes, give or take, and uh there is that 4,000 number for multifamily. And I know that can be alarming to a lot of people. Um, but there's about a thousand units in there that sit in Brighton. Um, but the

way Brighton was developed and approved back in 2006, it anticipated the train coming online back then. As we know, it's still going to be a couple years out before the train gets up and running. So, instead of sitting on that land, that developer decided to move forward. Um, so they'll have about a thousand what we call ghost units sitting there that are probably never going to come to fruition until maybe that train comes in and they decide they want to redevelop one of those projects. they want to take something and go more vertical, then they can draw down on those units. So, you're going to have that thousand buffer in there. So, if you really want to look at real market rate, take a thousand off and kind of sit it in the in your uh back pocket just in case one day that might happen down at Brighton. So, there's about 3,000 in the kitty for that. Any questions as to construction before we move on to plans and studies?

I see a lot of lot of no so far. The board had concerns about multifamily and they to, I don't know, possibly slow that. Sure. Um, how would they go about doing that?

I'm going to say this. Um, I would be hardressed to find a scenario where a buyight multif family project can happen outside of Brighton right now. So, you guys have the ultimate authority to say yes or no on multif family projects via the resoning process. Um, you will hear staff speak on both sides of the fence on this one. And it's not to be um, let me say it this way. There are places where it's appropriate and there's places where it's inappropriate. So, you will see staff support some projects and a similar project in a different location. We will not support it. You looked on paper, they man, these are like exactly the same project. But depending on where they are located in town, staff is going to say yes, it's appropriate or no, it's not appropriate. And again, it's up to you guys to make those decisions. Um, we have a great opportunity to push for affordable housing in these in these opportunities, high level of design, amazing urban open spaces. I know we pushed some developers to the brink last time and they almost walked away. Um, but we got good-looking apartments, uh, good-looking multifamily, uh, units integrated with, uh, some vertical integration with commercial, upped all of the urban open spaces and those that were Pers is a great place to be. But you know what? We're here. Let's push them. Let's get the best for our citizens and our residents. And that's what we're doing right now. Any other questions on multif family?

Yeah. Well, I do think that this board something to think about is that We have, you know, 4,000, say 3,000 units of multif family online. Like, we're not hurting for multif family. Yeah. So, is it necessary to approve every multif family that comes even if unless they're a sparkly unicorn? Probably not, right? Can't argue with that. Something to think about. I'm going to Can I use that my next staff report? Sparkly unicorn. Sparkly unicorn. Okay, we'll do that. All right. Great. That's my fancy way when you say excellence of design. Absolutely.

Spark unicorn. It's okay to say no. You know, we are in a great place. I tell everybody, uh, our community, we have, we're a lot of communities that I deal with, some of my peers around the country, they're envious of what we're doing here. They're envious of what we have. Um, they're recruiting uh undesirable industrial things to do their economic development. We're we're kind of sitting in the cat bird seat. We could it's okay to say no unless it's a great project and the perfect fit. That's your guys' prerogative.

All right. Well, there I will just um jump in. We do have to have a reason to say no. So, we have to tie that to something with our um you know, for example, um when you make the motions, we always talk about a reasonableness statement and a consistency statement. So, if it's not consistent, for example, with our um community plans, that is one reason why you could put in your motion that you are saying no, but it can't be I don't like the color, you know, that they're proposing or I don't like something about it. It has to be a legitimate reason as to why you are saying no. So, just keep that in mind when we are crafting the motions for denial. If you do decide to deny a project, it

can't be arbitrary. It has to be cannot be arbitrary and capriccious. We may need to add unicorn statement in seen one yet. So we none of sparkly unicorns. Sparkly unicorns. Absolutely. Not sparkly enough. Right. That's right.

Great. All right, let's move on to plans and studies. Um we're making a big distinction this year in in the planning department about plans and studies. So um one thing I I asked staff to be very clear about how we go about these projects is that studies are to gain knowledge and and get information. So that's the reason we do studies. Plans are what we're going to call executable things. Well, we'll get these at the end. We'll have that list the top 10 things that we got to go build, we got to go do, we got to go change and those things are what we're going to start working with Stephen and everybody else and putting those in the CIP moving forward. So studies going to grab knowledge plans executable. So, we have our community plan which is our giant executable. And every year we go back and kind of recap of what we've done um for the short, long, and and short range, mid-range, and long range. And as this was approved back in 2020 and here on 25, we've gotten a lot of things done as part of the uh community plan. Again, Huntersville's uh game plan, keep our major uh infrastructure and density towards that I77 2115 corridors. As you can see, we've got the uh six major uh mixeduse nodes and and activity centers. And then along Batty's Ford and out out east, we've got some smaller uh more regional ones where you can get your groceries or some local day-to-day services and those types of areas. And as you spread away from the interstate densities, you know, go down towards the outside. Again, that helps prevent sprawl, uh helps us support the uh our residents with uh good services, helps with response times and those types of things. uh so you really don't get spread too thin. We've done a pretty good job executing that so far. Um some highlights of the of our 2040 action plan this year. Of course you guys know we recently approved the Pottstown uh plan. We'll get more into that in a in a little bit. Um one great highlight that happened this year is we updated our design guide book. Brad Priest took that

project on. Um did a fantastic job with our consultant and actually won an award. So, I know Pam's put some social media out on that. But that's awesome for us to to be recognized for the hard work and efforts that we've got for our community. Um, and I've got a lot of good feedback from developers when we've handed them that design guideline. It's helped them understand taking what we have in our code and what does it look like in reality. It's got great pictures. It's got good um good pictures, good concepts for them to go ahead and take a look at because they might think an urban open space looks like this. And we're like, we're not quite on the same page about that. Here's some other ideas. Here's some things that have worked in town. Here's things we've seen around the country. Take a look at this. And again, that helps us raise that high level of design and getting good projects for the town. Um, some other ones to highlight on this one. Uh, downtown 4.1 talking about government spaces. Obviously, we just had our our grand opening for town hall. So, that's a big check plus for everybody. And again, thanks to Bobby and the team for getting that done. Kudos to them. It's a great place. And I can definitely tell you from my staff's perspective, there's been an uplift in morale being moved over there. And you can just see it's a great place for everybody to work and we're looking forward to grow over there. Um, one thing that we did delay from last year was the downtown transportation study, and I'll talk about that more when we get to transportation planning, but we're getting ready to kick that off this summer. Um, Heather did a great job getting this thing ready to go. Uh, kudos to Michael and his team. I'm not going to steal his thunder, but they've gotten some greenway projects. Um, and as part of we were do putting this presentation together this morning, um, some of the, uh, administrative staff said, "How come there's other other departments listed in this 2040 plan? Isn't this the planning department's plan?" No, this is the town's plan. Okay? So, you'll see that there is a lot of overlap. You'll see shout outs for the police department, public works, engineering, administrative staff. This is the town's vision plan for 2040. How did we get there? We're just giving the update as to what things have happened this year. Again, kudos to Michael on his projects and some of those things that they've added to this year as well. Um, one of the highlights that I know

we've talked about a little bit this year is uh adding a town arborist. We had some interviews over the last couple weeks. We will be extending an offer on Monday to a candidate. So, we uh hoping we can get that wrapped up. Looking forward to working with Laura and her team and getting all the uh background information and all that stuff taken care of. So, that's been exciting. Again, here we go on some of the infrastructure and transportation plans. Um, of course, the mobility plan was adopted in April of last year. Uh, you can also look on here. We talk about working with CMS. Give you a quick update of where we are on our three major school projects. Uh, a lot of people know Northmech High School is under construction. So, what they're going to do is build a new high school in the back where the football stadium was. Um once that is built, they'll move all the kids and students and teachers over to the new school, get that thing up and running, and then then they will go back and remove the high school that's up along the highway. And that will leave them about 18 acres that CMS can sell, redevelop, come up with some kind of planning before that. So we'll be working with them to come up with a plan for that front 20 acres or so. So that's moving right along. Um I know there's a lot of interest in Huntersville Elementary School downtown. We've met with CMS about two or three times on the design for that project. So, we're still in that design phase. Once that gets done, um they can move on to permitting. And then from there, it'll take about 18 to 24 months to get that school up and running. And then the last one is the new middle school that's over on Stumptown Road. We've met with them just a handful of times on the PL on that project. Um that one's actually in really good shape. They came in with a good solid design, so there not a lot of comments from our end. Um so, it will be interesting to see if they get let those two go at the same time or if they go one year then wait another year. So, uh, we're rocking and rolling there. Any questions on the 2040 plan? All right. Downtown master plan, of course, that was approved back in April of 23. Got a lot of things going on downtown. A lot

of energy, a lot of excitement, a lot of inquiries, which is nice to, you know, especially since the tax referendum was approved. We've seen an uptick in folks going, "What's going on downtown? What's going to happen? What can I do? How do I open a business? How do I do this?" So, we've definitely seen a marked increase in um questions from folks reaching out about that. Um some things to highlight, coordinating with cats on our on their station area plan that got put on hold until that tax was done. So, we're going to start ramping up. I would anticipate more meetings with them over the next couple years getting land secured, um designs and those types of things to get that ready to roll for when the when the train happens. Um again, getting ready. We'll do some more details on the downtown transportation plan that's going to kick off this summer. Um text amendments about increasing the types and lot sizes and those types of things. I know Lauren did one earlier this year um on part of our omnibus changing how how that's all laid out and designed in the uh in our zoning ords for that as well as a private developer came back and introduced a new single family lot type um that's rearloaded. So we're moving forward on that. So that's good to see that those things are continuing on. And then again, I keep going back to the transportation plan, which we had hoped that kicked off, but you'll see why we didn't here in just a few minutes. And then we'll move on over to some other things here. Bobby and the public works team and Stephen have been working on uh the storm water system inventory for downtown and some light modeling for region regional ponds. We anticipate that being wrapped up in this fiscal year as well. So, making a lot of progress in that realm. So again, taking the pot or the downtown plan and we're e doing all the executables that we list in the back. This is just a little update as to what we're going through right now. Uh the most recently small area plan approved of the potound community preservation plan. Surprisingly, we have a few things that we've already been taken care of as we started those during the process of this

plan working with community and there are overlaps with the 2040 plan and the and the downtown plan as well. Um, we're now we're currently coordinating with the Historic Landmarks Commission to do a study on on homes and to see if it's appropriate for a historic overlay. We heard that loud and clear from the community. Um, so we will be be meeting with them to talk about how that works, what it looks like, um, impacts, those types of things. So, we'll give them some options to see what's a best fit for them, and that will be working uh, happening this year. David and Lauren are going to be working on those things. Um, all the things in yellow are kind of getting ready to happen, have already started to happen. Uh, we'll work with them getting a community web page set up. Uh, again, talking about those preservation zones and and community overlays. Um, something that would take a little bit longer. I know it was thrown out was a land trust. That's a whole third party entity. We, you know, we could help support setting that up, but again, going to need to meet with the community, get them on board to find out what's the best the best tools and the best fit for them to see how they move forward. And then again, uh, kudos to Stephen and Kevin and those guys and and getting some of the safety aspects installed, the speed humps and the speed studies. I know we've got some other things coming up here in the next couple weeks, but they've done a great job getting all that data and uh, I believe you got some of those installed already, correct? Yep. So, they're already out there on Delwood. So, great job for those guys. Again, upcoming we've got more studies uh that we'll be some action on Tuesday night for more traffic calming out there on Central Avenue. Um and again, we're involved in a lot of different things. They asked for an analysis of the truck traffic in that area. We've gotten all that data uh wrapped up in house and we'll start evaluating that data to see what can we do to make that a little bit better for the for the residents there as well. And then uh signage. I know Lauren and

and some of the community organizations have been working on some signage. Uh the toppers and those types of things for the community and we anticipate that's going to get uh started or wrapped up in in the spring of this year. So, lots of activity and a brand new plan. Uh that's good. It's got a lot of energy. We're not going to let that energy, you know, drop down. We're going to keep the things moving forward. Uh we know that those are uh great citizens and been here a long time. So, we want them to feel uh feel well love if feel good and loved from us because we there it's a great great thing. Any questions on any of those three plans before we move on to planning planning. All right. Quiet quiet group this morning. Transportation planning. Okay. Um let's go down to these piece by piece. You'll see why we had ended up delaying the town transportation plan. We were all hot and heavy and ready to go. Uh but uh kudos to Heather Maloney and our staff. That is an amazing staff member. She has brought us many many many opportunities that we did not have before and we've received a lot of grant money because of her. She is a rock star. Um just and I just want to make sure everybody knows that. Uh she's awesome. Uh downtown transportation study. We were going to spend $200,000 of town money. She went out and found a grant for $160,000. So our cost drops down to 40. Bang. There's a There you go. I mean, instant savings right there. All we had to do was delay it. We'll get started July one. She's going to put the RFPs out in the next couple weeks. So, literally July one, we're off and running on this thing. We'll get committee set up and everything everything done ahead of time. So, it'll be executable uh come this summer. Uh she also received a $240,000 grant for a safe streets for all safety action plan. year before she did another study uh got us prepped for this because we got that done and approved we were eligible for this got this done again um as part of this we do not have to put the $60,000 out in cash we will match that in in kind means

hours so between our staff members we have a nice database that we can track how many hours we work on that project and those hours count towards our match for that grant so again $240,000 seam steam trail study we will put some money into that one That's the 160K, but we're going to get $40,000 from CRTPO to get that going. So, we'll be working with Michael and and Pam and the communication staff to get that uh up and running. That's good a great study so we can try to figure out where the seam trail goes as we uh continue to grow as a community. Um, some other ones that are coming up, there's a feasibility study for the south south prong of Clark Creek Greenway tunnel under Huntersville Concord Road and a feasibility study that uh, this will be new and this is rated related to an upcoming resoning that you guys will hear Tuesday night for a pedestrian tunnel under 73. Uh, we did anticipate at one point in time the pedestrians going over 73. We worked with Cats, we worked with North Southern. probably not the greatest plan to try to get folks over top and mixing the the rails together with passengers. So, uh did a quick study with a consultant and realized uh due to elevations we can go underground with a tunnel. So, I think that's the idea that we're going to explore and that's what we're going to study on this one. Um and again, we'll show you guys some plans Tuesday night on that as part of our presentation for the resoning. Any questions on transportation planning? All right. general planning, continue to encourage affordable housing options. Every time that someone comes in, like the first or second question we ask, what are you guys going to do for us? You know, how are you going to help? Um, you know, help in this realm. This is important to our board. And, uh, we're getting positive feedback. You saw and we have those 60 plus units on board. um got confirmation yesterday that the mosaic plan that was done approved on Battis Ford Road a couple years ago. They're going to move forward with a smaller version of that plan. Plans are

in. They are under review now. So, we'll see some more units there. And then I've got a couple other um developers I'm talking to about some LITC projects around town uh and opportunities for them. So, we could see that 60 bump up real quick next year when we do that uh recap for everybody. So, hopefully those things come to fruition this year. Um, but it's great. Uh, also going to spend some more time now that we have we're fully staffed in the planning department. Knock on wood. I do have one who's going to leave in a couple months, but that's okay. Um, he will be sorely missed. But we've got some staff who have interest in in historic in history and those types of things. So, we're going to go ahead and spend some more time working with the HLC and get some more properties, you know, designated as historic or historic eligible. So, that's exciting as well. And then again, back to uh I know we've applied for this in the past and we just missed it last time was the bill grant. Um Heather is evaluating right now and updating those documents. And um we're hoping to work with Anthony and you guys to submit this again. And uh if we do that, you know, that would be get us eligible for upwards of 20 to $25 million in cash for different projects in in certain areas, prim primarily the Pottstown area. So once we get that stuff up and running, we'll get that submitted and and keep our fingers crossed that we win that grant. It's a It would be a good one. Any questions of general planning? All right. And here we go. The $300,000 question. The Unified Development Ordinance, as we know, um our ordinance was put into place back in 1996. It was cutting edge at that time. I would argue that it still is today. Um we have folks from all around the country looking at our ordinance. Charlotte has copied it. um Cornelius and Davidson, our sister cities. At the same time, we all got together and and did these form-based codes and we've been cutting edge ever since. Um we've learned a lot in the last 30 years about what works and what doesn't work. Um so part of what what I would ask is for some funds so we can update this. Um

it's not throwing the baby out with the bath water. What we have works. It's great. Again, people from all over the country come and study us, what we're doing, why it works, how it works, what's different about it, what and uh it it is different than traditional zoning and traditional construction. Um, but it's what makes North Meckllinburg and Huntersville special. That's why folks want to be here. So what I would propose with this is an opportunity as for modernizing for modernization simplification and clarification of what our ordinances are calling for making it you much more user friendly to use putting a lot more kitchen English in there going back to some old stormwater stuff that was great concepts in 96 not really great executables today um we've got better technology let's put those technologies in here in a clear and concise fashion and makes it easier to use um so we will be asking for some funds to do that. We're going to meet work with Bobby and Jackie and Anthony to come up with some ways for some cost savings on that as well to help keep and minimize those um very specific targeted who we will go look for. We'll get an RFP out. Um I know some former staff members of ours are are over in different cities and they're putting out RFPs and a lot of them basically are asking for their ordinances to mimic ours. Um so that's great. that shows you what success and I won't mention what communities but there's some regional and some in other states now that these folks have taken these concepts to and people are buying in. So um I that will be my big ask for this year when we come to budget but I think we've got a good opportunity to u just make something that's great even a little bit better and a lot user friendly and looking forward to the future. So that's it for me and I'm here if you guys have any questions about planning. You touched on um Northmech High School.

Yes. The other Huntersville Stump Town. Are they in the process? Are they

They're in process. So, uh neither of them have submitted for permitting yet, but we've met with them to do all the preliminary designs and those types of things. Huntersville Elementary School, we got a little bit of work to do with them. Um they did have a staff change on CMS, so they're under some new leadership. So, we got to get those folks up to speed as to where we're at and why we do certain things a different way in Huntersville than than other places. Um, so we'll looking forward to meeting with them and getting that taken care of. The school on um the middle school on on Stumptown, it's pretty much going to be plugandplay. They they they've they had a very successful design when they did um the other middle schools and and other concepts. I don't know if they use different design teams on those different things, but that one was like it they they knew everything ahead of time, so they designed that school properly. Elementary school is going to be a little bit different. We know it's integrated into the community, and that's our big thing. We want their front door on the front of the street and it's going to be open and inviting, safe. Obviously, that we all know school safety is very important. We're not we're not ignoring that as well, but they just need to work on some design elements on that one.

The car rider line that caused all the headaches for our friends on Sherwood. Yeah. Yes. We know stacking is always a challenge. We have some u unique ideas for the elementary school that we'll be involving the board and and J and Anthony um about some physical um implementations of different infrastructure there to clear that up to to lessen the impacts on the community. So once we get those ideas vetted out, we'll present those to everybody. Do you do you think know when the subtle will start? No idea. I was the last one to come in and that and honest to goodness that's probably in my opinion that's they're six months ahead of the the elementary school. Okay.

Yeah. I mean if they if they were to drop the permit off tomorrow we're going through the process. There's no significant changes. The elementary school there's a little little work we need, you know. Cool. Um, can you and going back to the bill grant, can you kind of just give a general overview of that again just to kind of familiarize everybody? And also, you said that we were just kind of shy of receiving the grant. Can you tell me what specifically did we miss or how did we miss the Great question. Um, I was not in on the feedback meeting.

Um, and of course, you know, they they can I would say they gave us very frank feedback. Uh, in a nutshell, they said if we had submitted that project the year before, a lot of times that first time you go in, it's hard to get it. It's hard to get the grant.

Um, but they saw a lot of key things that you normally don't see in a first-time submittal in that submission. Um, then they tell you where you're lacking. You adjust those and then you you rise above the level to where all right, depending on how funding is that year, you're on, you know, we were on the plus side of the line last time. Um, we believe with how they're working on making these last minute tweaks and updating all those things, we we would be on the plus side of that of the thumbs up, thumbs down line. Um, so that's depending on how much money goes into the pot, we don't know where we're going to fall out. You can never say, "Yeah, it's it's a done deal." But we got very positive feedback being a first-time applicant last time. Um,

and with the change in that administration, the name of the program and the program changed, right? So even though that did happen, our application was still very competitive. We made some changes, we just didn't quite get all the way there. Yep. So with the name change, because I know it was the raise grant initially, as the bill grant, did some key components change with qualification wise for the grant that you have any anything to say on that? I would say it's more the nuance of the wording, right? the the bill language was emphasis on leveraging development investments to leverage development

which I know necessarily is not what some folks want to see happens down so we tried to tow that line between connecting the community to downtown where we do want the investment and I don't think as much money was given the second round we had a lot of people that were on the wait list so again we were close but didn't give money that second Um, and so I think we continue to look um, you know, we now have plan that we could reference you could reference some of the opportunities for future development that that raised up. Um, so we've got a little bit more meat that we can put into that application. I agree. Thank you. Sure.

And then you as just the broader concept for the new commissioners, um, you saw a number of projects sort of in and around the Popstown area, sidewalks, paths, street improvements. Um all those were kind of going to roll into the church street um and all the sidewalks in Pottstown. It was going to roll into that build grant race grant application. So that's what all that was for trying to get roughly 20 25 million in the grant for the town's 20 30% match. Yeah, good opportunity if we can get it. Let's with the, you know, the red line coming in, you know, 10 years or so. Yes.

Is um putting out there to think about like what do we want the town to look like when that's happening? Sure. I think that's something we need to think about as well. Absolutely. And a large part of that will be with the the downtown transportation study. you know, how what do our streets look like? What do our infrastructure? How does that look like? How do we handle that influx of of traffic? Um, again, if more residents live downtown, that's less people driving in to utilize that station. So, how do we keep developing downtown? How do we encourage those types of things, business, those types of things? I assume developers will be asking maybe not in downtown, but along there for much taller buildings than we traditionally approve, and is that something that we want?

Correct. That's something to think about. Again, I know we did the downtown study, you know, the downtown master plan a couple years ago and we settled in that three to four range. We've already had inquiries about 456. Um I, you know, explained to them they have the opportunity to come in reszone, ask for, you know, ask for an additional story or two. Um there is a break even point economically from what I understand is when you go to that fifth floor, then you start looking at deck parking potentially. That's when it starts becoming economically feasible. Anything below that, it's surface parking. So, do you want to use your land for parking or do you want to lose your land for economic development? That's a big question we have for us. Yep. Lots to keep in mind. Yeah, absolutely.

Anything else? We'll move on to the next group. All right. Appreciate everybody and we're here. You guys have any questions? Thank you, Brian. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Michael J. Hi. Good morning.

All right. So, we just kind of finished our 30th year as a parks department. Hard to believe, but department's been around since 1995. And I'd just like to start out with more of kind of what happened this uh la last calendar year. So, park visits. Um, we had 1.9 million visits in 2025. So, these are just the parks that are not, it doesn't include the school fields that we use at all the schools and the gyms so forth. These are just standalone parks. Uh, this is the second year in a row we have 1.9 million visits. Uh, in the previous years, we've never been to 1.9. Uh, visitors spend an average of 1 hour and 34 minutes per visit. So, that totals over three million hours in our parks. So once again, heavily used parks. People are staying there longer, uh, which is a great thing. Bradford Park, for the eighth straight year, was the most used park, 552,000 visits. And Rosedale Nature Park, which was open in 2022, uh, has more than doubled its park attendance, but it increased from last year to 2025 by 23%, but has doubled since the first year it opened. So, a little bit of history. Believe it or not, it's been over 20 years ago. So, at this meeting 20 years ago, uh the town board set one of their goals is to be an amateur sports destination to bring more tourism into town. Uh after that, in the next couple years, some of the parks that were built were built first, they were built because there was a local need. Secondly, they were built to help generate tourism such as sports tourism. And so, those two parks were built 2008 2009. Uh in addition to those two facilities, we also host events at HSN athletic parks recreation center and a little bit at Northmech Park. We trying to over the years as Bradford and Richard Barry were built, we're trying to make North Mech Park more of a neighborhood park so it's not, you know, tournaments every weekend. That's more like at Bradford just to keep that more

community use and it's not overran. So those four parks had 1.7 million visits and more than 100,000 of those visits came away came from more than 100 miles away. So tip if you ding 100 miles for a weekend event typically you're staying the night. So once again we feel like we're doing a great job. We are bringing a lot of tourism with these events u you know those 100,000 visits how many of those stay the night. We got some idea where they're staying. We have a little bit idea. A lot of them are staying in hundreds of hotels. Uh so that was one of the benefits years ago building these parks. So when you have more facilities in one location, not only is it easy to host events, but it's also easier for the local leagues to run their programs because you got multiple fields in one location. You're not spread all over town trying to run your leagues with umpires and coaches. So there's many benefits to these facilities. Like I mentioned firstly, we wouldn't build these unless there was a local need. But we're now actually serving two needs. Local need as well as bringing tourism for local businesses. Uh every year we look at our waiting list. Uh once again, every year weight lists are getting bigger and bigger. U so last year 99 recreation programs had a total weight list of just over,00 participants. You know, down that list, you kind of see it varies all over the place. I would say about five years ago, we just had weight list for summer camp and that's it. But as we've grown, we built the rec center, more opportunities to offer more programs. Community is growing. Words out what we're offering. We're offer great programs. Uh once again, summer camps are still a huge weight list, but even other programs that prior to like preschool programs that we have now have waiting list. And on top of that, there's programs people want us to offer, but we can't offer because then we obviously we would have to increase the weight list on other programs or take away the programs. But we will talk about some of the good things coming up that will help us address a lot of these weight list. And also, just to let you know, we do assignments for uh residents first

before non-residents. So, like our summer camps, I don't think there's probably any non-residents because we want to make sure we're taking care of the residents first. Just to let you know that. And some impacts of some of the recent park projects. So, this kind of just shows you when you approve an existing park that maybe needs a lot of help and renovation, it does change the way people feel about coming to it. So, Abernathy Park, uh, we completed major renovations there in 2024. Prior to those renovations, the average attendance at that park was about 14,000 and now it's over 20,000. So, you know, increased by 64% just by changing the infrastructure, the amenities, nicer, newer uh uh playground, making it safer has really impact the amount of use that park's getting. Uh, also Northmech Park splash pads. That was our first splash pad we built back in 2004. It was always one one of the top amenities that people requested in our park master plan. And so this past summer there was 3600 visitors just in that summertime when it's open. And then Hullbrook Park uh the impact of pickleball courts. Previously there was six tennis courts and now there's eight pickle ball and three tennis. Park attendance has increased by about 25%. So now Hull Brook Park receives over 100,000 visits per year. Like Brian mentioned about the downtown master plan, uh one of the one of the goals in downtown master, even the first one was Huntersville to, you know, provide more events downtown. So in 2018 when Veterans Park was opened up, really focused heavily on hosting events in downtown Huntersville. So last year we had 30 special events and over 30,000 people attended. This year for the first time, we're trying to find other ways to activate your space. You know, you got your parks, you got your trails, but what else can you do to maybe encourage

people to come down and actually see what's there? Some people might like, I don't walk. I don't walk on greenways, but I have something to take my kids to see lights or something different or family visiting, introduce you to the greenway. Now, you might come back to see what else is going on. And so, that winter light wander trail at downtown Greenway saw 8,000 visits in the last two months. That's the coldest time of the year. It gets darker early in the year. So, typically your greenway usage is down. Obviously, that's the most usage we've had in the two-month period. Uh so, once again, a lot of people came from all over the place. This was our first year. Our goal is to continue adding some lights to the trail, but we've had great response uh on that. And then also the top four busiest days in the downtown district. Look at the downtown district. All four of those days were days that we had events at Veterans Park. And those four days are the only days that more than 6,000 people on the downtown district in 2025. So once again, we want to help draw people downtown. But also on top of that, there's more people living downtown. So once again, those are uses other facilities as well.

What were those events? So, holidays in Huntersville. Hello, Huntersville. Veterans Day parade. The fourth one was I have to go back and see the fourth one. I know those three were the top three. Um, we had a couple of rentals, too. So, might we had some rental events as well? Junth was huge and Junth that could have been and the Diwali was huge also. I think that one didn't reach one of it might have been bless you.

Uh so greenway usage. So some of Larry's awesome cameras, they actually count and keep data. So that's a great benefit. We're glad. So we just started using that in September. So what we did was along three points of the greenway. Uh so starting out to the west Torrance Creek Greenway as you go under Gilly Road heading out west there was just now this is just a fourmon period between September 18th and January 18th. So think about half of those months it gets dark early it's cold. So once we have more data for a whole calendar year I think these numbers going even grow more than this fourmonth period. So on that west side it was 20 just over 29,000 counts. So if you walk by it once and come back that counts you twice. If you walk one way, it don't come back that way, then count you once. So, there was 29,000 counts there. At the tunnel under 77, there was almost 32,000 counts. And then the downtown greenway at Whole Brook Park was over 24,000. So, a lot of use now that things are more connected, uh, more traffic. People know now they can get from one side of the interstate to the other, uh, to bike or walk. U, I think I I'm going to guess probably all these have over 100,000 counts. if you look at a whole calendar year, but next year we'll have all that data for you. So this is the first four months of data we've collected. U so back in 2024, our department set a goal of planting 500 trees by 2030. So these are trees that aren't code required. These are just add an additional tree canopy. Uh so in 2024 we planted 97 trees. Uh last year we had created a great partnership uh Tree Charlotte uh we did our first plant. We had 179 trees planted probably in two and a half hours. Uh Tree Shaw is a great organization, great volunteers, wellorganized, probably the one of one of the best organized volunteer groups

I've ever seen. Uh so that the value of that planting was about $40,000. Tree Charlotte paid for all of it. All we did was pre-dig the holes. They they paid for all the trees. They paid for all the watering to keep them alive for the first uh 12 months. That one's so good. We already got another tree planted for next year at Richard Berry Park. Once again, they're paying for everything. I think most of their partners don't pre dig the holes. So, I think that little extra pre-digging holes is encouraging them to come back. So, once again, I think we might might hit our goal probably in the next year or two just because of having a great partnership like Tree Charlotte and they're originally doing most of their stuff in Charlotte. They're actually all over Me County now. So, it's been a great uh partnership and definitely want to keep that going.

All right. So, there's there's two levels of planning of parks and rec. So, you got our comprehensive master plan which looks out 10 years. You typically update it every seven years or so. Then you got your park specific master plan. So, we'll talk a little bit about both of those, but this is just one of those uh pages from our 2030 park master plan. So, this was approved back in 2020. Uh, to the left, you'll see some of the key findings that were in that plan. Uh, obviously, most of you probably hear this greenway is always number one requested amenity, but you see a lot of these other amenities that are in here that the town has done, such a doll park, splash paths, which we didn't have any of those a few years ago. Uh, some of the some of the concerns uh and common themes we heard is lack of parking. We've added over 300 parking spots at existing parks. a lot of those thanks to Kevin's team. So once again, we have parks that are heavily used, but we don't have enough parking. So that's helped a lot. People felt u lack of parks on the west side of seven. So we added Rosedale Park since that time. And so then the graph uh for amenity type, not these aren't all the amenities, but these are the major amenities. So part of that master plan, we look at what we currently had. We look at what was at capacity, what was over capacity. uh and what our future needs are based on population estimates. Uh population estimate of 20 of 85,000 by 2030. Kind of shows you what we currently have, what we need new by 2030. And then the next line is what we completed since 2020 just to see how we are doing. Uh then the next line is currently funded. So currently funded means either it's completely funded or we committed to funding it such as joint use agreements and so forth. And then future projects are some of the projects we'll talk about a little bit that are out in the future. Any questions about that? So also in 2027, we'll probably look at updating this plan. So we're not going to ask for

the update this fiscal our upcoming fiscal year, but we'll be asking the next fiscal year. Like everything in this community, everything's changing so much. People's recreation interests have changed. People are moving from different parts of the country. Nick didn't play pickle ball seven years ago probably. Now he's playing pickle ball. So, he's not new, but he has new interest. So, it's always changing. I could talk about this, but you can't. So, I've been I've been threatened.

All right. So, we'll go through these uh current projects pretty quickly because you get most of these reports on uh what's going on. So, Waymer Park splash pad. Uh this is taking a little bit longer than we like. Uh we're trying to time up and coordinate with me county's project at way which they're doing a lot of uh work out there as well. So making sure our plans and our permits and storm work and treat what they're what they're building. So it's kind of taking us a little longer. We are submitted now. We hope to start late spring. We're hoping to open by the summer month or two in the splash pad season. Uh so once again that is moving forward. Uh first responders park. So those who don't know that master plan was approved last year. Now we're moving forward with the development. We did receive a state grant to help fund that project. Um it is between the new lake chart Elementary School Main and fire station before. Chief Dulli was kind enough to give us the seven acres that he didn't need for the fire station to make this park. So as part of our park master plan, we also look at where future parks are needed. So this area of town was an area that we were focusing on needing a new park. Just happened to be the town had land and totally didn't need the land. So now we have a nice community park. I think this is a great interaction between a public facility, a public park and a school interacting and using each other's resources and sharing infrastructure costs. And thank Kevin. Kevin will be handling the road improvements and a driveway. So, whatever staff he needs, make sure we give it to him. He's saving us money and he's saving us money and doing it quicker. So, we're excited about that. I'm glad that his team's taking that on. It's a big help. We hope to start the park actually sometime late summer. It's about a 12-month uh process. It'll have a splash pad, playground, uh pickle ball courts, a shelter, some nature trails,

you know, open lawn areas, and of course, they'll have a I don't want to call it more, but like a dedication of for first responders. Uh, Northme Park Greenway. So, this is we're almost finished, but now all this cold weather's kind of halted us down. About 60% of the trail has been paved. Uh, hoping to be done by end of February, but we got to let this weather get a little better before we finish the paving out there. So, kind of bogging us down. Uh if we keep on getting cold, snowy weather, we might not make the end of February being done, but hopefully we get some clear weather and complete that. So that's a onem greenway connecting uh behind uh on 73 and Hampton's and uh and Harvest Point. It's about a mile long. And then Lake Norma charted uh joint use agreement. So this is the school I just mentioned. I just showed that's next to fire station before and first responders park. Uh this agreement. So these are some pictures most update pictures. It's part of that joint use agreement. We'll have access to their gym which will help us a lot with those waiting list. We talk about different sports and also it will have six lighted tennis courts. So this agreement is is the fourth agreement we have with Lake Norman Charter School. So now we have four gyms and those six tennis courts as part of those agreements. uh once again addressing the growing needs for indoor court space as well as tennis courts and this joint use agreement will begin in fall of 26. So once again this is going to help us tremendously. Uh some greenway projects just I was just looking at something earlier. So the greenway projects that are are funded, so they're either under construction or they're in the design, there's about $50 million with greenway projects and the towns may be paying for 20% of that. So Mecca County is paying about 30 million and we received almost

over over 7 million in CRTPO grants for non-motorized projects such as greenways and tunnels. A lot going on greenways and once again that's the one requested amenity. So the park greenway is about % design. As you can tell, it goes to the business park. It comes off the existing Torrance Creek Greenway. It goes on to McCoy and into the business park. We did a CRTO grant for that 1.7 million approximately 1.5 miles. And for example, some of these greenway projects from Mech County, you know, they have so many projects they can't do them all. They rank their projects. A lot of times if there's a partner, a lot of times those projects will get jumped up ahead of time. So these next two are examples where the town has committed to paying for the design to get the sooner. So these next two probably wouldn't be happening right now if it wasn't for those partnerships. So the town is committed 1.8 million and it's estimated that the county's cost will be about 19 million. So that just shows you we're paying like 10% of the cost and they're currently at 50% design still doing some real estate uh acquisitions. So it's just over three miles. Uh once again, this is going out to the west side of town exist existing Tors Creek Greenway uh just past Vades Ford Road. And here's the other one. We committed 1.5 million towards the design. They're estimating about 10 million for construction. They're about 30% design. This is three miles. So now this is going out to the east. So we're getting a long stretch of greenway going east west now once these projects come online. When did we do these 2018

19 I think.

So just to show you even with partnerships on these greenways to move them off the list it still takes a long time to get them to completion. But if we run a partnership be 30 40 years. So it worked out well. So unlike parks that can be built quickly, greenways are I won't say like roads, but similar to roads, a lot of times you got to get the property that takes a lot of time. Uh NC73 uh pedestrian bridge that Brian mentioned. So Heather and Tracy, I give shout to both of them because Heather and Tracy had pretty much done all the grants for the nonmotorized transportation. I mentioned 7.4 million between this bridge and the 21 tunnel and the park greenway. But these are some renderings of what that bridge would look like over uh 73. Once again, taking all that pedestrian traffic off of a you know a wide road makes people feel a lot safer if you're got a stroller or a young one you're walking with. Much rather be away from the traffic than in the traffic. So that's a $3.1 million grant. We're part of Becker County to pay our match. Design work is U Stephen can correct me if I'm wrong. The last time I saw they're hoping to start construction 27 somewhere around there may be done by 2030. So I didn't put those dates on there because I don't want to be wrong. And then the highway 21 greenway tunnel. So those who use the greenway now going from downtown to the west side of town under 77 currently got to come to the light or cross the light. You got to make sure cars aren't turning left and run you over or cars in front don't turn right and run you over. So, you got to have your head on a swivel. Well, this project will take you off of that road and go under the road. This is a $2.6 million CRTPO grant. Uh NC DOT is currently secured easements. U this

we're also looking at other routes, other options too because right now this is taking you under the greenway, but you got to come back up to get back to the greenway to get to 77 tunnel. So, we're looking to see what options there are to make that more direct on the west side of 21. I think once again, I think this one's looking at, you know, 2027. I would the easy way to say about early 2030 needs to be done. And with all that being said, uh I always like to call the seven mile greenway. So after all these years of planning and efforts with many partners, so in the next five years or so, you'll be able to go seven miles from downtown Huntsville to Burkedale. You take four tunnels, one bridge. You would avoid 97,000 daily vehicle trips by these these tunnels and bridges. And below are some of those daily vehicle trips. So when I when I talk about 77, I'm just talking about the traffic on exit ramps because obviously you want to be walking across the interstate itself. Uh, so these are actually just X-ray counts. So 97,000. So 15 20 years ago when we had this master plan for Greenway, I never thought all this would actually happen to be honest with you. But I think NC DOT has become more open to to non-motorized transportation and all their planning efforts. All right. Some future projects. One of one of the goals we've always had is that Veterans Park is awesome park to hold events at, but if you want like a big heard a bigname act coming to town or thousands of people to come. You know, Veterans Park is not that big of a park. So, our goal was to always have another amphitheater, a location that you could host thousands of people. Athletic Park, that venue is much larger than Veterans Park. We have thousands of public parking spaces between our partnerships with CPC and Lakeland Charter School. So, once again, it makes it a good site for parking. Uh also has an indoor facility nearby. If you need to get people indoors, you can do that

as well. So, That's something we're looking at uh asking for next year is to build the amphitheater at home athletic park. Brian, close your eyes. But this is the only graphic I have. This is not the final layout and final school building, but uh for those of you who don't know, so in 1999, Huntersville entered its first joint use agreement with uh with uh Charlotte Mechford Schools at HS Elementary. It was the first joint use agreement CMS have done with anybody. So 27 years later, we're still using that uh joint use agreement. Al that school's going to be replaced. So part of that replacement, we've been like Brian staff, we've been meeting with their staff on the layout, the design, what we need, what kind of space we want to have in the gym, you know, and all that stuff. So like Brian mentioned, our key contact we've done a lot of these agreements with is no longer with CMS. He's been there for many years. So we're kind of working through that. But also as part of this agreement, we also want to look at so all of our agreements with CMS expire June 30th, 2029. So say if that happened, we lose three three gyms, like seven or eight fields. We would be in big trouble. So the goal is part of this agreement with the new elementary school, the hope is that we would spend all the rest of our agreements on the same schedule, kind of like what we did the charter school, because we don't want 2029 to get too close and then trying to how we're going to do this. This is an opportunity. We got to add a new agreement to it. Let's go ahead and expand all of them. So, we're kind of working through that now. So, this is not adding a gym. It's just keeping what we have. And also, when the Huns Recreation Center was open in 2018, when we built that facility, uh the steel structure on the west side of the building was beefed up so you can attach to and expand knowing that the growth all this is going to happen. Uh so that's one of our goals is to expand a rec center. U

obviously I mentioned about all the weight list and everything we have at a lot of these programs at the facility that you know and our master plan talk about expanding this facility. So we like to try to start looking at okay what can we fit on the site? What now what are the needs now compared to 2018? Have those changed? What kind of space do we want to have in there? Is it more gym space? There's a little bit gym space more community room space. We talk about I can help you out with some ideas. Okay. Word. I didn't say it.

So, you know, so we want to start at least planning to see what what's going to be in the facility, what we can fit there, and so we get a better idea of what the cost is because saying we know what the cost, we don't know what's in the facility. You know, is it all just one big gym area expansion or is it maybe partly gym and maybe two stories with some community space? So, we need to figure that out before we really get a good idea of what the cost is. And as part of that process also we would also get community input like we do with all of our park projects. A Rama church park or Rama Rama however you want to say it. Uh that mass plan was approved last spring. This is just kind of this is in the future out. Uh these are some of the park amenities. We had great public input in this process. Also working with the fire department with the location of the fire station as we move forward. Once again, I like to say this is kind of like a Rosedale on steroids. Like a Rosedale park, but much bigger. Once again, a lot of use, not very active like from sports standpoint, but from everything else that we're hearing that people want, this park has something rel. The town built enough or bought enough land because at the time we to do a training center. We wanted to hire our own firefighters, put them through training, and then, you know, they would have a place to a job to go to. uh between myself, Chief Barbie and Cornelius and Davidson, we really pushed CPCC to get involved in the whole, hey, why don't you open up a training center and then we could use it from the north end fire departments and throughout the whole state really if people wanted to come here, listen to firefighters and instructors from Charlotte or and our roundabout uh you know, cities and towns. And that's where there that's why we didn't need any of that land anymore because that was going to be our training center or our very own that we could train our north end uh department. Uh you know when Michael approached me

and said hey what are you going to do with this land? I became his best friend number one. We decided to do this. I became his best friend and me and Michael. Sorry Paul I can't include you. Everybody wants to be back. The same thing happened when the town management, you know, and found this land. You know, what are we going to do? It's too big for our obviously for everything we needed for, you know, the park again. So, good relationship. So, Brian Richards, uh, the CPCC expansion where the fire training center has been approved. Have they approached you yet about the plans? Do we have a date on when that might happen?

Do not have a date, but we're working through those reviews now. And I do remember Chief Dull when he saw by he was looking for a fire station, but he can't find land small that he needs. I was like, well, our maskman shows a need for a park. Large parcel came available. He didn't need 25 acres. So, once again, you know, working together, knowing what everybody's needs are is always beneficial.

So, one of the longtime goals we had uh this whole park expansion. I mentioned our 23rd park master plan. So you look at I think it'd be hard you know if you live in New York City I doubt anybody in New York City says I wish Central Park wasn't so big I wish it would been smaller that's kind of well also this is a lot smaller but tons smaller so the idea is in HR parks are central park how's there a way to expand that more from a passive standpoint uh obviously more residents coming downtown greenways being connected uh the goal's always been to expand that if opportunities present itself so more of like a raised canopy walk, gardens, overlook areas, shelters, natural players, exile station, some more paths of keeping the tree canopy in the core of your downtown. Once again, you have one chance to do it. Uh here's some photos. Uh the one on top left, that is a photo from I think that's the Atlanta City of Atlanta's Botanical Gardens. So once again, it's a raised canopy walk. Gives you an idea with the trees that you see next to Brook Park. This will be a raised canopy walk that goes around it. So, let me tell you this. So, the green line is the current greenway. It's probably hard to see, but the purple line, you can't see the purple line on the outside there would be where the future canopy walks envision to be. So, once again, it's going through the canopy. Um, have out overlook areas. Below it could be more passive trails, maybe some flower and gardens below it. Uh, once again, just to having a signature downtown park that, like I said, this would only be maybe 16 acres. about 8 acres. Uh but once again, right in the middle of the core of your downtown would be really cool. There might be opportunities. Maybe some of these properties are developed. Maybe the back end of the properties the canopy wall could come through it. I know there's been some talk with some uh local developers about that as well. So just want to keep that on the radar. Obviously the one parcel the town purchased recently. Uh but that's a

vision we had. You know, without a vision there's no reality. So that's our vision. So the purple line is Yeah, the purple line will will represent the canopy walk through the trees. So to the left, you see that canopy walk going through the woods. That purple line kind of represents what that would look like. Okay. And 760 is just below this, right? Yeah. 760 is at the bottom. Yeah. And we'd enter from the street as well. What's that? It would we we could also enter from 115. Yes. Yeah. Got it. Yeah. Because if you look if you go down 115, a lot of that property drops off. So the idea is that you would have a raised elevator Right off the competitive we

obviously we all we have uh use agreements for all the parking and stuff back here. Obviously we own this cash here too. So there may be an opportunity like MJ said there has been some talk of developing these properties but not that one but the ones up here. Who knows where that go? May come back to us. It may not, but eventually it will develop. So, we'll see. We uh So, I've always dreamed of Central Park in That's the first time I heard that. It sounds good.

Yeah. So, Hobber Park actually there was some LWS LWCF funding 25 30 years ago. That does help for more grants. If you have a park that's LWF funded to expand that does help your your chances of getting grant funed.

So you might have looked at the 2030 plan of all the needs for baseball fields, softball fields, soccer fields or where are those going to happen? Uh most of our parkland is is pretty much built out except for Bradford Park. So this will be our one opportunity right currently that we could actually expand and add more outdoor sports. Uh so this master plan does need to be updated. uh it was done in 2004 so it's 22 years old so a lot of the amenities and needs of the community has changed so we're working county and Davidson on looking updating this plan to see what needs to change one thing that this master plan doesn't show is the land the county purchased that backs up the Rama church road so where you see master plan that's all county land now so over the years because of the traffic on 73 the goal's always been to add an access road for Rama Church Road because a lot of the traffic during the week is coming from Huntersville. Also, when 73 is expanded, you won't be able to take a left out of Bradford Park to go back to Huntersville. You got to take a right to U-turn and come back. So, as part of that future development, we also want to really make a priority of getting that driveway off onto Ramen Church Road. I think that helps with fire response or EMS response or any kind of response to get traffic off of 73 like so. The dark green to the right is what's actually at the park. The five softball fields, three soccer fields, shelters, disc golf course, and so forth. And then the future is more in the shaded area where the, you know, soccer field, baseball field, tennis courts, shelters. Now you see a location for a rec center. Obviously, the county built a northern regional rec center not too far. So more than likely, you won't see a rec center built at this park. So that's one of the changes that will probably happen as the master plan is updated. Once again, we operate the park. We lease the land from Mecca County. Davidson pays us 20% of operation cost.

Town Davidson gets 20% of the usage. So that's kind of how that partnership has worked since we opened the park in 2009. And I think that is it. Any questions? Yep.

You guys are busy. So here's the big one. Um, first you have a phenomenal staff and it was great working with Jennifer with the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. celebration. I like to present this to you and my colleagues. I like to bring in the new year in Huntersville. Um, I have a vision to uh have an H dropped to bring in a new year. We can find some location and start planning it. We have about 10 months to do it. We can have a crane or something just to drop the H down. So, I know brought it to infamous attention told us to bring it to you today. So um that's something I would like for us to do for bringing in 2027 in years um past.

Okay, that sounds like a good idea. Can we some crystals over it? You can be sitting on the edges. Sparkle. Maybe it's a vine. Jackie. I was thinking the bond at one time. So, what we could do is um we can have a planning committee just like we had with the U M King. Jackie had a great idea. So, uh the mayor put together a team and we just make it happen. Sounds awesome. I'm sorry. Shouldn't tell you what you've been doing, but what you put together team. Here we are.

Surprise. Surprise. If that's something that the board wants to do, I mean, like I said, it'd be the first thing. Just kind of get a group together so we kind of assess the cost and try to nail that down, put it in the budget, make it happen. We were in Chris and M for New Year's this year and they had a similar type thing. They did um drone fireworks and held the band and food trucks right on the water there. Does that you don't have to vote on anything, but is that something you want us to sort of work towards? Might as well. Yes or no? You know, give us some thoughts, ideas heading that direction.

We can do it at MJ's new amphitheater there at the rec center. That may take a little while. So, move in that direction. Cool. All right. And you got to move in that direction. All right. Sounds good. I wanted to ask about one other thing too. Back in the fall, we talked about um deed restrictions for our parks. Anthony, do you remember that conversation that we had, we all chatted about this? And so I just wanted to check in on the progress, I guess, of that because I think maybe it was in your court last or I don't remember, but we had talked about getting some deed restrictions on our park so that we can protect them. Does anybody sold is that

Emily? you want to take a stab at where I know you did a little research on that. I think uh so I know we had chatted and I think that you said that the county does something.

Um one thing though that I wanted to bring up and actually this is a great example. um if you put a deed restriction on it that does reduce flexibility for if the town needed to use the land for something else. So like for example you heard about maybe we purchased the property for a park but then actually we need it for a fire station instead. So you just want to keep things like that in mind. Um we we typically don't restrict our own property. I think what we have done in the past is if someone else wants to offer up a park or if we sell property to someone and they're going to build a park or affordable housing for example, we would put deed restrictions in that deed that if we conveyed it to them, if we sold it, for example, saying you cannot use this property for anything else like we did with craft works, we we put a restriction for a certain amount of time. it has to be used for a brewery when we sold that property. Um, we've put restrictions in property when we said it's going to be used for affordable housing recently. So, normally when we're utilizing those tools, deed restrictions, it's if we're selling property to someone or if someone is offering up something that is going to be on property that is not townowned. That's not to say that we cannot put deed restrictions on town owned property, but it does reduce flexibility and it's not something that we have done in the past um just to protect the ability to change the governmental purpose if needed. For example, town hall, as you are aware, um that was previously a governmental use, but now we're holding it for potential economic

development project. So, if you put deed restrictions in place, just keep in mind that that can reduce flexibility for changing the use if needed. Um, again, I'm not saying that we should or should not do it, but we would need buyin from the entire board if the board does want to move in that direction. um then you know it it's something that we can add to um you know future projects. I don't know that would be worth trying to go back and change deeds that are already existing for park property. Um but you know if you guys wanted to start some sort of initiative where if we purchase property we can tell the seller that sells us the property for the park to put deed restrictions in it. But usually that's not something that we've done just to try to, you know, like I said, if we need it for something else in the future, we're able to change that use.

I think the county's policy is like it can only develop 10% of it. So like for instance, the park you were just talking about, you know, how much of that is being developed for the fire station like a percentage wise. Yeah. And that's certain parks, all their parks, they don't have the 10% on. I think it's certain types of parks like their nature preserves. reserves, but you know, their large sports complexes, you know, they don't have that 10%. But you're right on the nature reserves, they do reduce on 10%.

And that that may be also something distinct to have the um nature, you know, the conservancy easements, things like that. Those are longer those are a little bit different than just a pure deed restriction. um because I know that that that um you know when they are trying to enter into a long-term conservancy you know program or situation that's a little bit different than a deed restriction thing can only be used for a park most of our parks 90% of them are county own parks so if they wanted to put restrictions on they could they own them so in reality

we don't have many the one we just purchased but uh and then Abanath very small But our large parks are all county owned. So they could, I guess, potentially go in and restrict them how they want to and they own them. Yeah. I think our rec center, that's county property, right? Yeah. And HSSA. And a lot of those we have lease agreements in place and they dictate what it can be used for already. So it says, you know, specifically it's got to be used for a park. So that's done through a contractual agreement. um they likely don't have a restriction on the deed for the property that they own, but they're doing that contractually. So, through an agreement,

you could potentially do it like Oramo depending on, you know, that would drive the development. I know we've master planned it. Um and there is quite a bit of natural area there, but you know, that could be a potential restriction there if that's what the board chose. I don't know what right now how much is planned of the we'll just say roughly 20 acres that remains. It may be more than that depends on how much the station builds on but we'll just say 20. Um MJ may know off top of his head how much is

Yeah. I mean from a tree canopy standpoint that park we're pretty much keeping the existing tree canopy. Now once again when you build trails and uneven surfaces that are paved you have to select certain trees that aren't as valuable as others. So I mean that pro project you would now another thing is what do you consider developed and undeveloped? You know we got grassy areas that maybe weren't grass but now there were flat grass and walking trails around so I don't know the exact number of how much asphalt concrete I can run those numbers but it would be less than 10%. Because most of it's still open. So really the only develop there is really the playground area the shelter restroom buildings everything else at ballpark that's grass

trails everything around trails is grass so I would say it's less than 10% of all church and also the easeway um sorry I was easeway I was trying to say greenway easements um the easements that we get for the permanent uh greenways those also specify that they are granting us an easement specifically for a greenway and that is what we can actually use it for. So we have that in place too um for the greenways especially. I think part of where this conversation came from in addition to the county sharing that information with me was you know in the past there was talk about selling Veterans Park, right? And so okay,

you know wanting to protect these spaces in the event that another board came in and was like we want to sell this land. Could they I guess the question for Emily is let's say we did put a deed on veterans part another board come in and pull that deed off right

so that'd be one thing they could come you know if they were just heart knows that they wanted to get rid of veterans part that they could come remove that deed um now if we obviously preserve lands it's if we spend if boys spend millions and millions on that land like a church who knows how much we'll spend. Who knows? The land and the development all probably close to 10 million bucks. You know, time is all said and done. Um it'd be hardressed after that for any board, Republican or Democrat, to come back in and say, "Let's put houses out there." That be

I just hadn't seen that happen in my 30 years. Now, I'd say it can't. I just That' be tough. I mean, you're going to the pitchforks in the uh uh torches probably going to come out then when that happens I'm sure but that's something we look at with the new park I mean as we buy new land or as we develop it I think that would you know make those statements of look we want to see it all be natural or preserved we only want 5% of it be developed those things before we go as we get into master plan I think you guys should drive that and ultimately at the end of the day if that's what you want that's what we can develop around those

and that that could also be a policy instead of necessarily um putting deed restrictions. You could have a policy about percentages of you know development or percentages that had to stay a specific um you know use park be you know greenway whatever. Um so it could be a policy if that's what the board wanted you know to try to preserve some flexibility as well.

So just yeah just Let us know y'all talking amongst yourself if there's like I said it's just getting feedback here now if there something we want to approach or if there other areas out there that doing it that we can learn from we can we can do that. Yeah, we can definitely try to reach out to other jurisdictions too to get examples of what they may have in place whether it's a policy or if they're using deed restrictions and you know how they word it that's something that we can look into. Okay.

But I think county really the county would be driving force with us because they own 90% of it. So if they say they want X then uh probably going to get X because they own all the land for the most part. But MJ can do if you'll do a little research see what's out there. have some basis to to talk maybe more intelligent than I am right now. So, and that is accurate, too, because most of the larger parks are out in the ETJ versus within municipal limits. And so, that's why we don't actually own most of the property. So, yeah, he's right about that. We'll put the chief in a tent station instead of roof.

We can run the numbers to just show you an example with uh Rama Church as his what percentage developed? So, at least give you an idea. Yeah. Thank you. Is that all you got in Jay? That's it. Uh that's about uh break time. I mean, any other questions on parks and rack or any ideas, thoughts before we hit the break? All right. If you'll if you haven't checked, Katherine, we good for them to check out up here. They can check out just on the front. That's right. So I would say

with electric cities.

Yes. Good morning everyone. The all powerful gap. Let's get this thing started. I'm Kevin Joseph from Electric Cities. Uh at Electric Cities, I'm the vice president of distribution operations. due to some vacancies. I'm the acting electric systems manager for Huntersville, Cornelius, and Pineville. So, I'm being stretched in several different directions right now. Um, Bobby asked me to kind of give a one minute commercial here. What is Electric Cities for the new board members? So, Electric Cities is a membership organization with I think we have upper 90s, maybe a hundred members, mostly municipalities and mostly in the state of North Carolina. We have some in Virginia and some in South Carolina. We provide a bunch of services, government relations support, safety and training programs, uh, economic development support, communication support, retail rate assistance, uh, and then of course I'm in the area of distribution operations. We operate the distribution systems of four municipalities, Lexington, Cornelius, Huntersville, and Pineville. Uh and most importantly, Electric Cities manages the power supply for two municipal power agencies. The one in the western half of the state, North Carolina Municipal Power Agency number one. There's 19 municipalities as part of that, Huntersville being one of those power agency members. Um that's one power supply that we manage. The other power supply is in the eastern half of the state, North Carolina Eastern Municipal Power Agency. There are 32 municipalities as part of that. So we manage those power supply programs. That's probably I would my opinion the most important thing that Electric Cities does for our membership. So back to this presentation. So Electric Cities has been operating and maintaining the electric system in the town for the town of Huntersville since 1997. That contract is coming to an end at the end of June. But that doesn't mean the

relationship with the town of Huntersville and Electric Cities comes to an end. Huntersville is still a member of the power agency and can take it fully take advantage of all the services that electric cities provides. Today I'm going to talk about um the electric service territory in Huntersville. I'm going to list out I'm not going to go into too much detail, but I'm going to list out the capital projects in the current fiscal year and then next fiscal year. I'll discuss where the substations are that serve the town of Huntersville and uh the I guess I'll end up with the project that's happening right now. If you drive by CVS, the new substation that's being constructed and is almost done. So, let's uh so the electric service territory is essentially everything, not everything, but it's it's in the kind of blue shaded area on this slide. It's a lot of stuff east of I77 and a little sliver that includes Rosedale that's west of I77. This is the assigned service territory uh by some territorial agreements that happened well before my time long time ago. The town of Huntersville is the electric provider in this footprint, this service territory. Some capital projects that are happening in that service territory. So for fiscal 26, I got this list from our engineering department. And you know, obviously projects don't start and stop with the fiscal year. So there's some carryover, but some of the projects that have been worked in 26 are listed here. Uh the bottom three, Hambrite Junction, Maxwell Town Homes, North Creek, phase one were completed. The ones above that are in various stages of just getting started to half complete to, you know, we're working on stuff there. Um I guess the point of this slide is there's a whole bunch of units listed

here 12 uh 1 1216 and that's a lot of load growth. You have to have the electric infrastructure and substations to be able to serve those customers. It's a great news story when you have growth like that. Uh there's some communities that have no growth or one commu one subdivision coming in, but Huntersville is uh is definitely rocking right now uh with a lot of low growth. Next slide. This is kind of fiscal 27 what we see coming up. Once again, you know, you have a staggering number of units that are being added. In this in this graph, it in this graphic, it's 1,600. So once again, you need the uh electric infrastructure and substation capacity to be able to bring on those new customers and handle that new load. Um, in talking to Bobby, he wanted me to add this project because it is a capital project that'll be coming up in the next uh couple years. Shephardd's Vineyard, uh, it's my understanding that was a subdivision that went in some 35 or so years ago. Uh, it's a really poor design where underground lines were put in on rear lots, everybody's backyard. So, the cable's kind of at end of life. 35y old underground cable needs to be changed out, needs to be replaced. Uh we've seen a couple failures in recent times and it is just a nightmare having to get in those rear lots. People have built sheds, there's gardens, there's landscaping, there's Rottweiler's doghouse, all sorts of stuff back there that that our crews need to kind of work around to dig up underground cable, make make certain splices. So the redesign project will bring all those facilities to Front yard. That's kind of the the standard design that we uh that we use currently and it'll be much cleaner. Um I put this on here because it will be a messy project and it will cover multiple

years. So when you have to do that this kind of infrastructure improvement, uh it'll get messy, but as people that are taking over taking ownership of the electric system, this is one of the things you'll have to deal with. So, how is the town of Huntersville served? There's three main substations. We call them delivery points. Those are interconnection points with Duke Energy. The first one, we call delivery one kind of serves the northern part of the territory. Delivery two serves the southern part of the territory and what we call delivery three serves some industrial customers at Commerce Station. I believe there's uh some new customers coming on as well. Jackie, I did verify that the Southwire expansion has been accounted for in um you know the the load projection for delivery three. That's kind of an overview of the three substations. Now, when the town of Huntersville does not have electric lines going out to certain areas, uh, but maybe Duke Energy does, but the town doesn't want to relinquish these customers, we've set up two temporary delivery points. So, these aren't substations. These are actually on the overhead system. They're kind of metering points with Duke Energy. So, they allow us to do this on a temporary basis. The first one, well, I'll call it number five. It's actually the second one on this slide. that's over by Publix and that serves Publix and I guess that's the North Creek area which is exploding right now. Um and then the second one has been out there a little bit longer. They even they they usually number these temporary delivery points or these delivery points, but this one was supposed to be such a short-term thing they just call it Blackwood Null, but it is extended several years uh that we have this this temporary delivery

point in place. Uh the thought is when the substation's completed, we'll be able to construct lines out to these uh locations and be able to take that absorb that into the town of Hunterville system and eliminate these temporary delivery points that Duke has set up for us. Uh costwise, just ballpark cost, um running overhead underground lines to get rid of these temporary deliveries. uh roughly 600,000 for Blackwood Null, 400,000 for the uh Sanford Road delivery. So roughly a million dollars plus or minus um to eliminate these temporary deliveries. All right. So on this graphic, I show all the deliveries for the town of Huntersville, uh 2A and 2B. That means there's two transformers at delivery, too. Um, number four is the new substation location uh next to CVS five and the temp. Those are the small deliveries that I talked about on the previous slide that are uh serving those areas until we can run permanent lines out there. There's a certain contract capacity with Duke Energy for each of the each of those deliveries. You can see that listed in the contract capacity column. The next column is peak load. The town of Huntersville is a summer peaking like most municipalities in North Carolina. So this is the peak load for calendar year or the summer of 2025. We had some the big concern last year when David Lucor was giving this presentation was that delivery one was going to be overloaded in the summer of 2025. So they worked really hard to switch load away from delivery one and they basically looked at every option to move load off of one so that it'll be okay

over the summer. We kind of held our breath and you see it came in at 89%. Which was fine um for the summer 2025. You know, this year we'll be it's 89 was 89 last year, so it'll be in the 90s this year, approaching 100%. But the new substation should be online then. And then we'll kind of rebalance things after that new substation goes online. Yeah. When a substation gets to this 90% mark, you know, you should have a plan in place to relieve some of that to move load around to balance your substations out. So, the fact that uh the town of Huntersville has made the investment in the new substation, it's a great thing. Your system will be in great shape after this substation goes online. This is a chart just showing some of the historical load for the last several years. And you know, unlike some of the other members in the power agency, you know, their load may be flat. I mean, Huntersville is growing. The presentation early this morning, there's development all over the place and within that service territory. There's a whole bunch of development happening. So, we anticipate this to continue to grow uh for the next several years. So, the most important thing, like I said, is this new substation coming online. I think these are uh maybe two weeks old of the new substation. If you haven't seen it yet, it's right uh it's in the parking lot behind CVS. Drive over there. There's a lot of construction happening right now. The picture all the way on the left just shows the transformers out there. The picture in the middle shows some circuit breakers. Picture on the right shows some voltage regulators. So for an engineer, this is great. I mean, we love to see shiny new equipment and you know, the towns have funded this and it's a great thing. It's going to be a great thing for the town of Huntersville. Next slide is just more photographs. The

one on the left just kind of an outside view looking at the substation and the the next two kind of show that uh transmission structure. The transmission is going to come into the substation overhead and it'll hit that structure and then hit the transformer and the other equipment. So in summary, new construction continues in the town of Huntersville which continues to increase electric load. We all know that existing substations are nearing capacity. There's limited margin on the system right now. Low transferring activities in 2025 help that situation, but there's not really a lot of options out there for for this summer. Uh but for the new substation, new substation will relieve capacity concerns, provide more contingency and margin in the system and the progress on the new substation. So the actual construction of the above ground equipment, you saw most of it's out there, but that's not quite complete yet. So that'll need to be completed. Right now we're in the easement acquisition phase for the first couple of 12KV feeders that are going to leave that substation and interconnect to the existing system. Uh Duke Energy still needs to do that transmission tap to get to the substation to feed the substation. And we're anticipating the sub substation will be complete June 2026. And your system will be in great shape after that thing is online. With that, I'll take any questions.

I don't know if we've had any of you discuss it. Have we put any preference on putting um new lines underground instead of above ground to especially with like the ice storm we had last last week? Yeah, I mean underground is is the preferred method. Okay.

And um I mean it's costly to take existing overhead and put it underground. So you know that'll be something that you know you can struggle with. It's kind of like how much money do you want to spend? I mean, you can spend a boatload of money putting everything underground. Um, it's a good policy going forward to put stuff underground. All your subdivisions are essentially underground. When you do have those ice storm events, like you said, underground is fantastic. You know, who cares how much ice falls because it's underground. Your vulnerable spot is the overhead. Um, but you know, my opinion is that the the town of Huntersville systems a good system after the substation gets online. Then you'll have margin then it'll it'll be uh you're set up for the future really well.

So are those delivery from one through whatever four or five are they all interconnected? So if they're you know every now and then you know some squirrel gets on something and takes out a takes out a substation or whatever. So does it just you know fail over to you know delivery two goes out so it fails over to the other?

Yeah. So it's not an automatic failover but they are tied in the field on the distribution system. Right. So, if a squirrel gets in to uh well, actually, if a squirrel gets on any line and the circuit breaker opens, there's typically three, four, five, six feeders that leave each substation. If a squirrel gets on a line, the circuit locks out. That means all the customers are in the dark until our guys can go out and you can either backseat it or you can find the squirrel and then reput that line on. But there's options for for switching out in the field. And when you have this new substation online, um that just increases more you'll have more options to tie feeders together. If you were to have an event at a substation, you'd still be able to survive. I mean, these I gave you peak load numbers on a day like today. I mean, this isn't peak load. Peak load is like 95 degrees for three, four days in a row. You know, this is not peak load. So, you're not you're not at 70 megawatts for a system. You're probably at, you know, 30 or 40 on a day like today. So,

thank you. Any other questions? All right. Thank you.

That's what the schedule hold on tight. Make it very exciting. All right. So, what I've got here is our fund balance from 22 to 25. And as you can see the number Oh, dear Lord. What did I do? Oh, I just can't see it. Uh, Bobby, could you come up here a second? Sorry. Technical difficulty. What did you do? I don't know. I can't see the screen.

There we are. Yeah. Okay. Good. Okay. So, as you can time out. So, as you can see, here's our fund balance over the last four years. So, the number we really want to well, we'd like to concentrate on is our bottom number, which is the 59,672 263 at the very bottom in 22. So, we can see from 22 we went from 59.6 million up to 86.7 million. Okay. So that's great, but we also have to really remember that we can't go out and spend $86 million. I just can't go out there and say, "Hey, I want to do this. I want to do that." Because most of these numbers are tied up uh it for special uses, let's say. So if we go to under restricted fund balance, if we go to the state stabilization by state statute, that 20 million, $20 million number in 25, that is a number that the state requires us to have based on certain criteria that the auditors calculate that number for us. So I can't spend any of that money. Then we've got the streets, the POW bill, that's Kevin's money. If Kevin comes to us and says, "I spent every nickel of money I have, every bit of budget I have," I can say, "Well, you've got $2.2 million in additional in fund balance that we could appropriate. I can only spend that on on POW bill." the escros for future capital projects. That $1 million, that is the escros that Kevin that Stephen has for different projects that developers have given us the money for and we're holding it until that until we need to do that sidewalk or do some work for that for that development. Tourism tax, that's the one that's been growing steadily. It's now at 5.5 million. I can that is very on what I

can spend that money on. extreme limitations uh storm water projects that's also with Kevin so he's got $4 million so we've got $33 million of that 86 million that I can't touch I can't touch for general fund uses I can only touch it for specific things bills storm water tourism now the next line just to let you know is debt service so what we did in the past for years we we put some money into the fund balance related to debt service. So, I could use some of this $2.4 million to pay our debt service if I wanted to. The next category, the capital projects category, that is really at the end of the day, whatever's left over, whatever didn't go into a specific category gets dumped into capital projects. So, literally, that is the money that could be used to purchase land. emergency, purchase a fire truck, purchase something if something came up. So, a lot of times when I come back to the board and I say we want to appropriate fund balance, that's the number that I'm appropriating from. Then we've got emergency services, which is the fire department. They've got some money squirreled away that we've used, and you can see we used it from 24 to 25 to purchase new trucks or stuff that they need. um the subsequent years that's what we use to either balance the budget or that's purchase orders that I roll over from year to year. So that 13 million has already been accounted for so I really can't touch that and then the unassigned calculated what we do that is we take 40% of our revenues for the general fund and whatever that number is I put it in there. So we are saving we are saying we want to hold that money back. That's like the ultimate ultimate savings

account. That number used to be 45% and in 21 we dropped it to 40%. So if we said we wanted that number to be 35% then that difference would flip back up into our capital projects line. So what we could say is from 24 to 25 increased fund balance of $5.9 million. Jackie, is there anything you want to add to fund balance?

You're adding it in areas where it's difficult to spend it based on the way you're budgeting. An ad of 5 million sounds great, but if 60% of it you can't go out and use to buy property or use to whatever, how much have you helped yourself? Be careful about uh the argument that your fund balance is the highest it's ever been. That's true. But u be careful how you spend it. Just like at home, once you spend your savings one time, it's gone.

Yes. All right. The next Oh, y'all can see that. The next slide is for debt. So, what this does on the left side, it just lists all the debt we have outstanding. So, whether it's our police station, it's some bonds. You can see we've got the new bonds on there, the transportation, park, and wck bonds, bond series 24. If you go down a little bit, you can see the new town hall bonds that we have. Um, the thing to note here is the FY2027 bond payment. So, this is what will be in the budget for 27. So, we will budget $9.1 million in bond payments. Okay. Now, when we at the end of this year in June, when we pay our bond payments, our bond payments for June 30th, then our outstanding debt is $76,267,000. That number way right at the very bottom. So, we've got $2 million left on the police station. We've got $48 million in general fund bonds. There's the new town hall with almost 25 million. We've got a lobs that we refunded. That's some old debt that we've got a million4 left over. So that is the bond month. That is the debt. All kind of debt we have of at the end of 26 we it'll be 76,267. So if we do any new debt, a parking deck, a fire station, any of that, it'll increase that that this is where you would see it. Okay. the budget calendar. Uh today we are sitting here January 30th. Check. We can check that we've done that. Um next week when I get back, we're going to start sending out budget reports to the directors. They'll get their budgets. They'll look at their

people. They'll put new ads in, new projects they're going to do. They work on that basically for the month of February. And then they give us back March 2nd time frame their budgets back. And then what I'll do in first couple weeks of March, we'll get all that information together. In the month of March, we meet with Stephen and Anthony and Jackie and Bobby and we'll go through their budgets. Who are your people? What are your projects? What do you want to do? And we'll just get all the budgets together. Then we work on all the revenue budgets. And then what will happen on May? I'll go back to April 21st, but on May 4th, that's when Anthony will bring back to you a preliminary budget. On April 21st, we're going to go through this capital project and forecast with you again that we that we'll do next. Just so you can see, this is our five-year financial forecast with all the new numbers in. And after we've had multiple meetings about major CIP, we'll give you an updated CIP on kind of where stuff landed. During the month of May, depending on how many you want or we need, we'll have budget meetings where we'll go through and you'll say, I I don't understand this or what are we hiring here? or you know any questions that you have, you will get a budget book and you'll have time to go through it, kind of get your, you know, get your questions together and then we'll talk about that in a meeting. Um on May 19th is when we'll have the public hearing. So that gives the public an opportunity to come in, talk about the budget. They ask questions. I think they just have their concerns about the budget. Um I do we do have external agencies like um Hope House, Ada Jenkins. We send that information out to them on a put it on our website on April 2nd. We get that information back on

June 2nd. That's not part of the budget that you vote on. We have them come in and talk to us and then sometime July August time frame. Then that's when you decide on how much you want to fund the external agencies. On June 2nd is when we will hopefully adopt the budget. It has to be adopted by June 30th based on North Carolina state statutes. It's really, really, really bad if it's not done on June 30th. Okay. Now, Anthony, the CIP projects. So, Bobby, how do we bring up the CIP? It literally changed the day before we came here. We start to try to play with how we figure out the financial forecast to move and shift. So what you see today will change a bunch of time before we get to a point. Don't hold this as the gospel because I'm just telling you it's going to change as we try to figure out we may grant we may Stephen may find out one of his projects run into a hiccup and you know this project is on hold now for two years all sorts of things maybe go and get this bill when I don't know the when the money is it available five years from now I don't know got projects CRTPO funds don't come

in for five years stuff like that so all sorts of things have different times and different qualifications etc I was just going to spend a little time on the the uh CIP what I would would not worry or get too far out here in 29 and 30 and 31 these projects going to move like crazy. Don't know if any of us in this room will be here. Um, so what I'll probably do is spend a little bit of time on 27 projects, maybe most time on 27, a little bit on 28, and then um, not get too far. A lot of these projects carry on multiple years. You've already heard this from Stephen. Um, there not many one year projects is just complicated. Nothing's easy anymore. We can't even look sidewalk without having to buy a right away. So everything gets complicated and everything is super expensive.

And then one thing to remember on this, this is when the money needs to be funded, not when it's spent. So before I can sign a contract, we have to have the funding. So if there's a fire station or something that UNCC in 27, that $12 million, that doesn't mean that we're going it's built in 27 and I've spent all the money, that just means that that's when I need the funding to be able to sign the contract. Um Patty, tell them a little bit about the sort of first category. What what is

the prior year funded? Okay, so all these projects here and there are quite a few of them. This is the funded prior years means we may have funded it with 2020 bonds or actually 26 bond 2016 bonds or fund balance or general fund or transportation. So if it's in column F prior year, I already have the money held for that. So we don't need any more. That money is there. So like for example for Gilead Road West, we 500 $500,000 set up for Gilead Road West. So what the years do going out is saying either we need more money to to do the project. We got different Steven got different prices. So that's why you would see money in the out years. But if it's in prior year funded, that money is set aside and we have it. And just for example, Gileia Road West may need more money. And so Stevens put in a request to that. It's not showing up here right now. Um, but as he gets a little bit closer, his if he said it was 500,000, it may be a million. So as we get closer, as we maybe bid some of these projects out, etc., or we get closer to construction, these numbers change, and not many of them are going down, I will say. So even these numbers here, a lot of these unless it's a a number that we have a existing contract for or unless it's some agreement we have in place, these numbers change quite a bit, but obviously we go out and try to seek various grants. You'll hear Stephen talk about CRTPO grants all the time. Projects go up. If those projects had CRTPO funds again, a lot of times they're eligible. we go back to them and try to get more CRT funds when they come available. We won't get too far in the weeds of on these projects. Um, uh,

Patty has them colorcoded for how do we fund them, you know, whether it's a 2020 bonds, whether it's fund balance, whether it's, um, sales tax dollars, additional sales tax dollars, etc., etc. So, we try not to get too far in the weeds with you there because that moves so much as we move projects around. But we will get when we meet on April 7th, it'll be this page and then there will be a packet and each one of these projects will be on its own page and you'll know how much we have, how much we spent and how we're going to fund them going forward. So you will get a detailed packet on that. You get individual sheets on each every project

and we'll sort of list in how we if we did that today we have to spend a couple days we got into every line item detail on that. So, and most of these projects you've already heard about in yesterday and today but you'll have like I say individual individual sheet gives you a brief description tells you how it's funded over what years etc. I promise you again and again I'm going to tell you a thousand times it will change and you'll see these projects a lot of them year over year. Patty, can you blind too? Could you kind of just blow up? Maybe I can't even see here.

Jackie got me assuming they're in the same order. Um, I think most folks have it. Do y'all have it in your on the front of your screen? So, Bobby, that's about that is about as big as I can get it. I'm just saying they don't have it on their screen to follow either. So, Oh, okay. That that one. Can you email that? We haven't yet, but

All right. Um, so I'll just start Gilly Road West. I'm not even going to spend any time on that. You already know where that project is. Uh, you're here a few more years, too, probably. Um, Patty, if I get go a straight, I'm gonna read off my list because I can't hardly get there. Fairtown Parkway. Stephen mentioned that one. That one's already funded. Um, I'm gonna just be honest with you. I'm instead of reading all these projects, you can see them. You'll have access to them. Stephen's gone through every one of these. Um, and then some. What you see here is the same thing here. This project here, uh, Patty, what's that project? The four million. That's Stumptown.

Stumptown. It's just that one's over many years. Stephen said what, 20, 25 years. Who knows? Um, this is just more funding in that year. That's already funed project. So, a lot of those I'm not going to spend any time on. You're probably not even going to say a whole lot about those because we're already kneede in those, way deep in those projects. Um, next one down I guess is uh I've got 84 McCoy. Is that one? Right. That's right under Stumptown. Um, my well my STD is a little different now. So tell me what's uh what's the one with 1.1 town rans right here. This that's Ranson Road sidewalk.

All right. Thank you, Patty. All right. So, um, Ranson Road sidewalk improvement. Um, I say all of those are funded. I'm trying to look at new projects. Keep going on P. Just keep on going. New project.

Keep going. right there. It's a few new problems. So, um, if I sit here and spend time on ones that were already funded, just going to be you're going to look at me and not say where because we're so deep in those projects. Um, so as you get these sheets and get more details on it. If you have concerns about these projects, let us know. But these projects are funded. Berry Park playground is a replacement. Um, MJ probably already talked about. So, $500,000 for playground replacement. proposing at this moment. I'm just saying at this moment to potentially fund that project. Uh Northmech Park uh softball lighting replacing the lighting there would be a project that we will look to to fund uh with new LED lighting. Um Townley Connector, you heard Stephen talked about that. That's a project that uh over in Burkale that uh we have funding already tied to that, but also we um have an agreement in place for that 2.5 million to be reimbursed for that project. Um, town hall parking lot deck. You may think, geez, we just built a town hall. Do we need to look at a deck? Jackie and I were just talking. Um, we have roughly 60 what 69 66 69 employees that would be in town hall as of we'd say today if we were all there if every person was in the building. Um roughly 100 parking spots right now um in that surface parking lot. That includes um the uh lot that's over by the old town hall. All that roughly 100. Bob, is that right? Um, you know, you got some EV charging stations, you got handicap spaces, etc. I'm just going with it just to make a nice round numbers. 100 spots. If we do, um, most of the funding for FY27 for positions that will be in that building

would be up to roughly 80. So, 20 spare spots, we'll say. Um, eventually those will get eating eaten up. Um, that's just if every employee drove to work. So, we have 20 or so. spare spots just in that lot. If we have a bunch of folks meeting um during the day, those are going to get kind of tight. Um Anthony, in addition, you have employees who drive their personal vehicle to work and leave and go out in the field in a town vehicle. Yeah.

So, I guess the point is we will get tight um on certain days um and we'll need to think about that. I have in here right now just a placeholder number if this is something that you know board is interested in moving forward with sooner rather than later later. It takes a it's a process we'll have to go through probably a six-month process to get to a point where you know we're able to select a firm enter into a contract. Um it would probably take roughly six months to do that. 800 is just a placeholder right now. I know we have this on sort of side item list. can kind of show you what that looks like. Um, we would hone in on those numbers. It it may be a little bit higher. I'm not sure uh yet till we get a little bit closer on that. But that's a a placeholder on that project going on down. Uh you have Bradford Park driveway parking resurfacing. We may work with uh Kevin and his team to see if they can take on that project for MJ. Don't know yet. May be a big project. He's probably looking me like a deer in headlights now because we haven't had this conversation. But that may be a project. Uh his guys do a great job. That would be a a pretty significant project. It may say maybe better off to contract that out. Or we may look at can we use a street surfacing crew that is out maybe paving streets in town and see if they can hit that too. I don't know. Something we look at. But that that project I mean that park is used a lot. That's something we really probably need to hit. Uh Michael talked to you about the charter elementary school agreement we have. That's agreement we have in place. So we we have to pay that board has approved a greenway tunnel. Um that's an agreement we have in place for the US 21 greenway tunnel. Um the Burkeale uh Commons Extension Urban Cook Road uh that's a large project, but

Stephen um told you I think in his uh report uh earlier that we have CRT CRTPO funds for that. We just got awarded more CRTPO funds for that project. Hopefully we'll be in the month.

Oh, at the end of the month we will hopefully. Um I'm pretty sure, how about that? We will. Um but uh that's a project that uh we have those funds. We'd probably continue to move that project up the list. Uh also I77 US 28 get ready landscape. You hear him talk about that now. We got the scrub grass that we have out there and that project's about finished. We would look to take those islands out there and uh beautify those with some landscaping trees, whatever DOT will require, but that's a process you have to go through. And I think there multiple roundabout in McCoy, same thing. Um and then, uh the other projects that are on here are multiple projects that uh Badies Ford April miss pedestrian hybrid beacon. That's uh sort of like the beacon uh that Stephen talked about over in front of uh Northmech High School, that crossing. We will look to do something very similar at Hopewell. There's a couple neighborhoods that are very close and walk right across um in that exact same type of uh facility uh beacon there. Right, Stephen? So, that's something we'll be pushing for with uh that makes sense. We get a lot of requests over there. Batty's Ford Michael Wayne traffic signal. Um that's one with all development that's needed. Uh we got a lot of complaints. Stephen mentioned that one. Uh Glendale to Hunsville Concord Road. Um that's you come out of the curve on Hunsville Concord starting to straighten out. You get by um the Anchor Me Apartments there on the left. Glendale. That um that street there is warranted. a lot of cut through traffic from Rama Church over through to Huntersville Concord. Um and probably we'll get more once stump project goes through because that Rama church will be disconnected at 115. So

something there is warranted we'll look at a light and I think maybe somebody mentioned maybe a roundabout maybe Nick did. So, just starting on on that project. There a bunch of other projects on here, but Gree Stephen talked about um uh Hullbrook Road, Highway 115 Central. Um looking at starting those projects. A lot of as Stephen talked about, we got to start these projects. Never get them started. We never get them done. But these are ones that we're looking at sort of first run to uh fund. Um there may be some that slide and move, but this is sort of first take. Instead of getting into 28, 29, 30, and 31, these are going to move so much. We can talk about any project on this list. What I would say is Bobb's going to send this to you. We're going to send you individual sheets. Read those. Most of them you read probably five times except for maybe the new folks, but we did spend some time with the new folks. an hour and 15 minutes or so um before we even came here. Stephen regurgitated again while he was here. Um you're going to see it at least one or two more times uh before we even get to, you know, adopting a budget. So, I'd hate to waste your time just reading through those all over again. Um so, I'll just be quiet there and then let maybe Jackie and Patty get into sort of fiveyear financial forecast. So you kind of see how these project is what you saw up there and how we have them listed in the CIP and what fiscal years that transfers over to this five-year financial forecast. Um and it allows us to sort of do some um manipulating and plug in the various expenses and revenues and kind of give us a a look into um what it's looking like now and

and potentially in the future. Patty, for my benefit, will you go back to the CIP document just for a minute? Uh, since 8:30 yesterday, we talked about projects. Anthony just gave you a one-word blip, a one sentence blip on on the ones that we fund in 27. Uh, my most overused phrase today, I want you to see this document through my eyes. What I see when I look at this document is that total row that Patty was just on. $371 million worth of capital. You're very smart people. How how would we fund that? Is it realistic that we would fund all of that over the next five years? Uh frequently I have referred to our CIP not just as a wish list. It's a buffet. pick the most important projects off of the buffet and do those. To do $371 million worth of projects, you probably need more staff to deliver that. Most of these projects are multi-year projects that take to deliver and this is a funding document. This is not uh that capital will be on the ground in the last year where there's any funding in it. So, uh, 371 is a lot. You I hope you would find it, um, fun. I find it fun. Uh, listening to the inner workings of, uh, Jackie, Patty, Bobby, Anthony getting together and discussing should we move this project one year or or should we not fund it at all? But the inner workings of making this document work is fun for me. It's tense. everybody gets their way. Uh that there are Did we account for this? It's it's it's a lot. But uh so what you're going to see in the five-year forecast is anything

certainly everything that says prior year funds column F uh is is absolutely funded. 27 through 31 are absolutely funded. F the future column that's stuff that we think we're going to do but that is absolutely not funded. So the five-year forecast that we're going to show you doesn't even fund this 371. So there is a lot on here. Pick out the things that are most important to you. I think of the fiveyear forecast P. You go ahead and go over to that spreadsheet that tab. I think of the fiveyear forecast. This is not Jackie Patty balancing your budget for the next five years. This is a scenario builder. This is whatif. This is please start thinking about whether or not you're comfortable with being a part of this is what could happen to fund balance and this is the amount of debt we'd be taking on and um this is what the tax rate might be. That's what most people are interested in. The other thing I would remind you of we talked yesterday I did uh on solid waste fee or tax rate that's generating the same amount of revenue. So if you decide to do that or not, that's not generating new dollars to fund this capital with. And so uh I get nervous when I hear you say uh no tax increase because that starts keeping me up at night about whether or not we're really going to fund these projects. So, it's okay to keep the tax rate the same. Just understand what that does to funding projects or Anthony, I don't think we talked about in Laura's presentation yesterday. Historically, what we have placed in our original budget is uh we call it uh market uh

market what did we uh the CIP adjustment and the merit

uh we market is what we call CIP, right? So, uh we always put in the original budget how much CIP ch uh CPI changed in the prior calendar year. I don't want to argue with you with what I think CPI is going to do in the upcoming year. It it's irrelevant. The purchasing power change that employees experienced in FY in calendar 25 is inarguable. It's finished. It's calculated. It's over. when the federal government shut down for the length of time that it did, they never came back and calculated what CPI did for uh the month of October. And so we have 11 months worth of data. Why does the federal government do what they do? Uh CPI was 2.6 2699%. They call that 2.6%. Uh that sounds like 2.7 for me. Uh the difference between 2.6 and 2.7 is not going to make a material difference. So, what we're likely to build into the budget to maintain our salary ranges to keep from having to make such a big jump later when we fund the salary study is a 2.6% raise. That's purchasing power to employees that just maintains what they were at the beginning of the calendar year and then we start talking about merit. 26 or 27

somewhere between 26 27 would be the cost of living adjustment that we do every year and that's a fixed number. We don't go make it up as Jackie said we keep track of that. Yes, that's what we bring forward so we don't pick some random number that we bring forward.

So when you start thinking about the uh adding new personnel and what you might fund existing personnel and the CPI change to the uh garbage uh collection uh obligations. The other operating expenses that will change, we didn't operate all of New Town Hall all year long. So, we got 12 months of operating new town hall uh in to look forward to in FY27. And then we start looking at this capital. In addition to this capital, uh we have what I think of in my mind as recurring capital. Uh uh the police cars, you don't see police cars that we need to replace every single year on this list because that's something that we I don't want to say baking the cake, but that's something that we naturally assume is we're going to need to replace some number of the police cars. Uh window behind the curtain. Uh Chief Graham is not at full staff like he's going to be at the end of this calendar year, right? And so if we ever get all of those positions filled, there's going to be a budgetary impact of that. Uh we've not had to budget at all of the positions we've approved because he's not full. But Chief Graham has committed he's going to get full. So there's a budget impact.

No, that'll get you.

Good job. Good job. Uh I thought inject a little bit of humor in my spreadsheet. I can't have you falling asleep while you're anxious to get out of here. Okay. All right. I should do a little bit on I still call it the pay act. The additional sales tax. We believe that's going to generate 12.5 million a year for us. A million dollars a month. Woohoo. We're going to get to fund a lot of stuff, right? Uh Jackie, where is she? Where did she go? Jackie is the author of That's the near That's the equivalent of more than seven cents on the tax rate. Okay, seven cents. We're gonna find a lot of stuff. Uh there's a limited amount of debt that you can fund with that. Uh it has to be street related. So it's not going to help us build any fire stations or the rec center or a new police facility. Um in addition, we talked about using it to pave more streets and and patch more potholes and build more sidewalks. All of which is allowed. You get to spend that one time and then it's gone. So

just a quick question. When will we actually see money from the payback?

Please find out and let me know. Um I think we'll get a full year's worth of it in FY28. Uh I thought that it would be uh that that uh retail purchasers would fill that penny in July 26 in five months from now. July 126. I thought so. I'm not convinced they won't. The department of revenue is the department of revenue. And so, uh, vendors have to collect it. They send it to the state, the state sends it to us. I thought I heard that the state of North Carolina said the absolute, you know, we work super hard. We think we might be able to get it to you in January of 27. And they said, gosh, you know, maybe October, but probably not. Most likely January. I don't think there's an answer to that yet. I apologize for using all those words to say nothing. I think we're going to get 12 months worth in 28. I don't know how many months worth we're going to get in 27.

Yeah, it hadn't been solved yet. Okay. January is likely if I had to put my money bet and I'm going to go with January that we would start to see that up 27. Okay. And with uh once they get in cycle, is that a once a year thing? They do it every three months, every six months. Today we receive sales tax distributions monthly. It only makes sense to me that this would be an additional additional distribution monthly. Kind of logical. We'll see until we get it. We don't know till we start. So hopefully in January of 27 we start into that cycle. Gotcha. Okay.

Uh we built uh additional that payback uh row 18.

Uh so the payback is built into FY27. We fought when when we sit around and have this fun argument. We fought over whether that's $3 million in 27 or four million and we had six looked like we left it at six. We don't know. I'm I'm concerned about you counting on an awful lot of that in 27. Now I feel pretty good about you counting on it in 28. Surely the state will have their ducks in a row by then. and and uh we have assumed that the fact the new sales tax dollars will grow at guess what rate? The same rate that we assume that sales tax dollars would. So once it becomes 125, we hope that it's not going to stay at 125. It's going to continue to grow thankfully. So that's the only revenue item that's new this year. Uh we anticipate expenditures to grow. Um, new debt row. She said 32. Thank you. New debt. Okay. The row above that says existing debt. Guess what that is? If you don't issue another dime of debt, Patty's 9.1. She knows she needs to budget in 27 just to make our existing debt service payments. If you've already commit, if you are a previous board is already committed to repaying that debt, we put that in the existing debt row. We're very clever about our names, aren't there, aren't we? So, if it's debt that we think you're going to issue in the next five years, we cleverly put that in the row that says new debt. Uh, all right. So, new debt theoretically then is the only column, the only row that is new. So, we've estimated for you what we think is realistic revenues by year. We've estimated for you what we think is as realistic expenditures by year. And we've assumed for FY27 through 31 from the previous capital spreadsheet that you'll either fund it from fund balance or you'll issue debt on it.

Patty, that uh new debt assumes we be issue a little over a hundred million in debt, right? Uh okay. So let's take a minute to talk about that. That's assume that's assuming that you would issue the 29 million but still available authorized by the voters and not yet issued. That was 25 million in transportation debt and 4 million in park bonds. The 4 million in park bonds would give us our start on Rama Church Park. Yes.

Yes. Thank you. Uh all right. That also assumes you'd be issuing some debt on a parking deck. That also assumes you' be issuing debt on three fire stations. Patty. Yes. Uh, I love this column. This column makes me happy because you're going to have to figure out what you're going to issue debt on. If you're not issuing debt on it, you're either going to get a grant for it or you're going to have to come up with it out of fun balance. So, the parking deck, a fire station, uh, the land on the police facility. Uh, do you remember hearing Steve uh, Kevin mentioned uh, more than 24 hours ago, we got to have some expansion space at Seagull. We're busting at the seams. How are we going to continue to do brine and salt and pave roads and maintain parks? That's our maintenance facility. Something's got to be done about that. Uh the parking deck Anthony talked about just a minute ago. Additional debt on the

that's over issuing the bond. So that's assuming we issue just south of 100 million. 100 that well 120 million right there. Yeah, you got debt service payments to make if you issue all of that debt. So, all of that's funded. So, Patty, let's go back to uh why are you doing that? This doesn't even in here a new

So, as Jackie talked about, it's probably if you add all of just the buildings up the fire stations and I'm just round numbers. three fire stations, public works facility, parking deck, police department, $100 million just in buildings alone. Um, that's that's a lot. That fist fight of aring what ought to be in there and what shouldn't last.

It's tough. How are you going to fund everything? That that's how this goes. All right, Patty. Uh, we beat dead to death, I think. Let's go back to the forecast. We've talked about revenues. We've talked about expenses. Okay. So, if you do all those things, the cumulative change to fund balance, that's row 36, right? Yes. Do you want to be the board that has contributed the fund balance a couple of years in a row and then starts using it at the rate of 12 million and then almost 20 million and then almost 20 million again. And and so we're we're estimated to be 12 million under. What was the question? We're we're estimating to be 12 million where like in debt right here

that that cumulative change to fund balance. If you fund everything that we just talked about and and you pick a uh guesswork percentage Patty just talked about she's not asked directors what they need to operate next year's budget. So is a random 5% increase in personnel or 4% in operating whatever we've built into this spreadsheet so far. Is that accurate? No way in the world. We got to wait till see what directors say they need to operate their department. But and that number won't turn out to be that you know that number for EYE26 won't be 12 million. No, it won't.

I don't think it will. Now that's not the EYE uh we're not funny and I that's estimated year end. So we're we're trying to tell you we've not just automatically plugged in how we balance the budget, what we've spent so far, but we've done several budget amendments. So, there's been a little bit more spending than we originally budgeted in this year's budget. Plus, Chief Graham didn't get to full staff yet. So, we won't I'm going to wear that out. We're not at full staff. So, we won't spend every uh personnel dollar you budgeted. So, we we acknowledge in this document that you're not going to spend exactly how we budgeted and some of the revenues are going to come in a little bit higher. Sales tax is coming in a little bit higher. So we we're acknowledging here that we've already changed that from the budget call because that's not what's not what's going to happen. Okay. So if general fund fund balance at the end of 25 was 86 million you don't want to end up with at the end of 31 31 21 $21 million. I don't think that's total fund balance. So remember Patty's spreadsheet where there was a portion set aside by reserved by state statute and there's specific things that you have to do to set aside tourism fund balance and PAL bill fund balance and so on. My personal opinion is that if your fund bal total fund balance got as low as 21 million, probably hard to make payroll in between July and October, you don't want to be that bored. Jackie, Patty, Anthony, Bobby don't want to be a part of that staff. Don't this is only suggesting to you that spending at a rate that you're probably just going to have to figure out. Patty, let's go down and look at tax rate.

So, we we won't let that happen obviously as staff, but this just shows you as we plug in these numbers and these project some left out like police state's not in there. You know, we've got it. That's why I tell you this thing is going to change tons of time.

So, if you ask me, if you tell me if y'all want to tell us today that you've made the decision the tax raise 2275 or if you told us today that you're changing it to 25 because of the change in how we calculate the uh solid waste fee. Either one of those two scenarios going to be similar to this right here. uh we don't have the first estimate from the assessor that usually comes out in early February. I will I will be surprised if the growth rate is anything other than between two and four. Uh it has been the last two or three years in a row. I think it will be again. I don't think our base will have grown by 10%. I don't think it will have gone negative. I see just all the building that you do. I think it's going to have grown. I don't know by what amount. I have no insider information. But if you tell us that the reason you see uh that use of fund balance of whatever it was was it 19 almost 20 million is because we haven't identified any re new additional revenue sources with the exception of that six million that we put in for payback the new sales tax dollars. So we can stay here through this snowstorm this weekend and listen to me get into the intimate guts of this spreadsheet. But the takeaway here is if you're going to a lot of these projects, not deliver them yet, but get in a position so you can deliver them by funding them. You're probably going to have to think about some funding sources. We always go first to the tax rate because that makes up more than 50% of our general fund revenue. That's always what we think of first. You what could you change in fees in parks and wreck that would generate a lot of revenue? There's not there's nothing you can do there. It's that's That's our primary funding source. That's why we do it. I got to give a little blur because I started it yesterday on the rebal. I have plugged into this spreadsheet that I'm uh uh for math purposes today

looking at a 12% increase in in the rebal. You are required to display a uh you're required to disclose a revenue neutral rate. You are not required to adopt one. The county is not out yet on what they think the rebound is townwide or countywide. I got no insider information, but I don't think it's flat. So, Patty, you're more than welcome. Go up to that 12% and listen to a board member shout out. Jackie, make it 20, make it two, make it whatever number you want. uh even at doing so look if there is a 12% increase in the reval that use of fund balance you saw that level of fund balance that assumed that in 20 FY27 the budget you'll be adopting in June that you adopted a 22.75 and that with a 12% average increase in value in FY28 you wouldn't drop the rate so everybody just got a 12% increase in their tax bill on average. Then it assumes that in FY 19 after taxpayer just got a 12% increase in 28 that you would increase the tax rate again by 3 cents. Uh and and keep the rate the same and still have a $21 million fund balance. Please don't let this intimidate you. Uh that's not the purpose of this document. The purpose of this document is start making some decisions about what you'll fund and if you don't want to fund it, let us take it out so we're not showing that our the impact on our fund balance would be so stark. Uh uh so I've said I'm not sure you'd make payroll. If you're not making payroll, you're not be AAA bond rated. Just to state the obvious. Now the reason to be AAA bond rated is about the rate at which you'd issue future debt. So, if debt is a

funding source for you, which it you're going to need to need need that uh be putting some deposits in the bank in your head about that. I do one more thing. The payback the new sales tax dollars. You can use that to pay debt service on anything that was eligible to be paid for out of payback dollars like building a new road intersection and and building new sidewalks. That's fine. Michael, you're going to have to cheat on the a little bit and make Patty a best friend, too. There is a funding source available. I'm not suggesting avoiding the voters is a good idea. Don't avoid the voters. But you have 29 million 25 million in transportation bonds available to be issued at I'm I'm will say whenever you want to issue them. That's not completely true. The local government commission is going to shoot on you a little bit and say you should not issue new debt until you spend the bond proceeds that you have outstanding and not yet spent. That's a great idea. Don't argue with them. Uh we have not spent all of our previously issued bonds. So, but you got 25 million in transportation and four million in parks. So, we've got a funding source for that. You can issue Patty Patty uh our financial advisor is exceptionally smart. You can issue debt on park projects and use as collateral the land on the park or the improvements in the park, the restroom buildings, the the uh playground equipment. It's pretty easy to issue debt on a park project. Chief Long, when we get to the point of issuing a a I don't I would not advocate you issue 35 you use 35 million or whatever number it takes to uh give you the building

that you need, be it an addition or a so totally separate asset. I would not advocate we take all of the money out of fund balance to do that. The reason being you're going to use that asset over a period of time. So you want to the cost of that asset over the time period when you're using that asset not going to be cheap. I think it's we already warned in the space needs assessment is going to be over 30 million. I think it will. The longer you put it off likely the more expensive it's going to be. But effectively what we did the last time you bought a police facility was issue debt on something that's comparable to an office building. For banks, if you want to issue debt on a police facility, they will treat it just the same. It is very easy to issue debt on a police facility. It's very easy to issue debt on three fire stations and we better hope so because we're going to need those. There's not good collateral to issue debt on streets. So even if you wanting to use payback sales tax dollars to issue debt to do more in more streets, you're you're going to have to go back to the voters to get more bond authority to issue that debt and then just pay it back with the proceeds from the payback money. You can do that and and and get more assets more quickly rather than just paying up front for a street asset or a sidewalk asset. You can do that, but you there's not a when you issue debt on a police station or a fire station or a park asset, you can issue debt that is very comparable to your mortgage. Your mortgage at home is probably the highest debt uh balance that you ever issued. and and your promise to repay the debt the bank gave you to fill that house is is the your collateral that the promise to pay that back is is the collateral on that debt

works exactly the same on these assets on a police fire and a park asset but on roads roads aren't great collateral you got a strip of land and asphalt what bank wants to hold that as collateral prior to the 2008 economic crisis. Uh you've probably heard a lot about banks issuing debt without checking income post that there are rules in place. You just can't issue debt without good collateral. A road and a sidewalk is not good collateral. So even if you want to use payback money to issue debt, you're going to have to go back to the voters and and that doesn't happen overnight. So, uh, I would not recommend you go back to the voters and ask for more debt authority prior to you using what's outstanding now, the 25 million in roads and the 4 million in parks. But 25 million is not going to go far in a list of capital needs of 371 million.

That's down road by itself. Yeah. So, Jackie is right. We'll have to in future years go back for transportation model 12 million whatever it grows to in sales taxes half road project so just can't pay cash for those

uh Patty is good at it uh I'm enthusiastic about answering questions about this Bobby will distribute it uh look at this document ask us questions privately let's talk about it at a future your pre meeting if you want to get serious about which capital projects you're willing to fund. Uh Bobby talked some yesterday about attainable housing. You have much of the money that you've done that with already I would term as an operating expense. If you want to increase what you're funding there, we've got to find a funding source. Uh I don't have much more on this document, but I'm willing if y'all want to do a Zoom call while you're driving. I I'll talk more about this on the way home today.

Yeah, we I mean, like I said, we're very early on in this stage. You heard sort of all the um wants, needs, etc. Um from the department is we haven't baked all this into this spreadsheet yet. You know, Jackie said the CIP is in there and it's going to move. It's literally moved. Um, like I said, day before we got here, um, we've got to continue to plug this home, hone in on it so we can bring you back a better product for FY27. We're just getting this information to start plugging it in. Um, I don't know that we can fund all the positions that's requested. Um, those are things we got to figure out and bring back to you and try to hone in and, uh, seek guidance from you on tax rate, you know, on whether we rolling in the garbage fee into the tax rate. Those kind of things we will start to, you know, chip away at and get that from you. But, um, anything you see that, you know, is important to you that we need to try to push up, you know, let's talk about it. Tell you, can we push it up? It makes sense to push up, yes, no. Um, that's sort of the guidance from now until June we'll be looking for to move things forward.

Uh, cut my mic off after this. One more thing, we have we have an incredible staff. I love working with them. We have an amazing financial advisor. And so Henry and I went to him and said, "We're thinking about issuing close to 140 million in debt in five years. You can tell me I can't do that, right?" No, I'm not going to do that. And so he has produced a financial model. He's amazing. I believe I've worked with multiple. I believe he's the best in the business. Having said that, if you go with him to the object objective, uh what he looks at is a debt affordability analysis, that's great. And so he will talk to us about uh what the impact on the tax rate might be of issuing that 147 million in debt in five years. Uh Patty showed you in her PowerPoint that we have outstanding in debt right now. 46

76 76 million. If you double the amount of debt that you have outstanding in total. Jackie just goes, "Oh my gosh, the impact on the tax rate that's going to be huge." There is a financial model that he has built that looks at nothing but debt affordability. It doesn't look at what you might for years for employee races. It doesn't look at what you might need to add in personnel. Why would you build fire station five and not fund enough employees to operate fire station number five? Why would you build the rec center if you weren't going to have enough uh if you weren't going to budget enough operating expenses like Bill and and personnel to operate that facility? All he's looking at is debt affordability. That's not bad. Um uh his suggestion is building those assets uh could be done for as minimizing on the for as low a number as somewhere between a penny and a half on the tax rate and two and a half pennies on the tax rate. And you better hope so if you're going to fund the personnel and operating to do that.

Okay, I have a question. So I'm looking at the CIP fund 2027 full and I'm seeing a total of 53 million. I'm not seeing and I see CIP major capital I'm seeing like five million for 2027. Is it six? You mean between the worksheets? Yeah. Because only thing that goes to the front page is the general fun is the general fund and the payback numbers.

Those two numbers because other other items are done by CRTPO or transportation bond or park and red box. So you won't see 52 million go to the front sheet. You'll only see the piece that's related to the general fine. So the six millionish, yes, that's what we're Okay. You're going to see you're going to see these two numbers go, the 6.4 and the 125. Okay. Plus I can let me I can just show you how that this worksheet works between Yeah.

between the two. I can come show you that. Then we take into account purchase orders that we have currently outstanding that we haven't spent the money on. Okay. So we say we're going to spend that over the next five years. Got it. You factor that in. Also, you have funded a fair amount of projects that we haven't spent the money. Now we've got to set it aside so we can meet those contractual obligations, but we haven't spent it yet. So we we have to assume that you're going to eventually uh spread that out. You didn't cut my mic when I asked you to. And so to me there's one more thing. There's always one more thing. Uh so FY27 assumes we would fund 43 million total in new capital. Yes.

And then 52. It's unprecedented that we would fund that level of capital. Uh it it's hard to do a whole lot more than 12 15 million. And so to triple it in one year and then do more than that the next year, we need to work on uh as Anthony says, pushing projects out or if if you're committed to funding it, then then we have to identify funding sources

and Jackie and Patty do a very good job being conservative. Um which is great. That's why we are in the shape that we're in and allows us to do what we do. But I think the the clear message, no matter how conservative they are, you cannot fund all these projects based on even doing like she said, you know, they're taking look at a tax rate and and assuming 12% in the revalue and and not moving tax. It's you just I told you $100 million in buildings and then all these uh capital projects 300. You just can't do it. So no matter how conservative they are, you may be able to get away a year, you know, not raising the tax rate, but eventually you have to.

What do we have in like just our slush fund like savings account unrestricted? Oh, Pat, Bobby, I don't know how to get back to that. I think it was

so, you know, you'll see up here It's not up now, but dipping in the fund balance. You know, we've talked about previous years. I may have dipped in, we may have showed you originally because the way things spend, we don't spend as much. We get a grant, etc. Yeah. You know, I may have shown in previous years, I think one year may have shown 15 million, you know, dip in fund balance and we did. So, things fluctuate throughout the year. Um, yeah,

we typically end up better than what we show what we want to do. But regardless, it's just no way we can fund these projects without pushing them out, without getting a lot more grants, without looking at tax rate increases. Um, but I wouldn't get too hung up, like you saying, future years because these things are going to move and shift. Yeah, we're going to be coming back with 27. We got to do some work on that. And, uh, Jackie's right. We don't typically fund 50 some million. It's like more like a 15 million. So, we got to we got to sharpen our pencil or either the race of one. I don't know. So, we're at 27 million.

Well, the the capital projects that 7.2 number right there. Yeah. That that's highlighted that is truly like money that we could appropriate fund balance for. that that is kind of free money or just whatever's left over. What Jack? It's available. It's available. Yes. Got it. Now, the unassigned what that number is is that's the number in our policy that says we have to keep that much money held back. Yeah. State required.

No, that that the state requirement is the state stabilization. This number is I take 40% of what our revenue budget was and that's what that number is. So we hold that back. It's a fund balance policy that funds that allows us to get the ratings that we do um when compared to other municipalities etc. Jackie can get into that that restricted uh subheading means some external agency has put some restriction on you and is dictating how you spend those funds.

Got it. committed and assigned means you as a board have chosen to do something with it. So could you choose to do something else with it? Sure you could. But restricted if somebody externally put that restriction on you, you have less opportunity to uh decide to use it for a different purpose. So there we have the 27 million and then apart from that we have a 7 million. They're not if I spent 7 million I'm not we're not down to 20 million that you were 40. They're two separate numbers. They're two separate numbers. Yeah. All right. Sorry. Trying to get my small brain around all this. Yeah, it's two separate numbers.

But I mean this tool, Jackie built this tool back when we were in Cornelius and when she came to way before me brought this tool. It's a unbelievable tool to to plug every revenue, every expense into and allow you to model. And I mean it's it's a wonderful tool. It's a scenario builder and quite frankly the the bond rating agencies ask if you have a a future plan and so we show them this and it's compelling. It makes it look like you're not just taking a one-year approach to the budget and that's really important. Go ahead, Stephen.

Yeah. And also another thing to just remember some of the projects if we're say it has CRTPO money that's not money they give you up front you have to spend the money and then you get some of it back. Got it. So in every agreement that we have even with DOT they're different some some of them will give you funding up front some's at the end some of them in as you go along the way they all different

and so that year 31 if your fund balance goes down to 21 whatever that number was what Stephen's telling you is you lose your opportunity to preund those grants because you got no cash to do it with Right. Like like I said, wasn't a scare tactic, but it's really to show you what's coming that we've got to address. And I mean, it's okay. It won't look the same. It's going to change. It has to change. That's that's really what we want to talk about. We've got a few minutes. We could uh hit a few topics before MJ's stomach calls. Thank you, Patty. Okay. You're welcome.

Bobby, you want to try to see if we can hit a couple little wrap up topics? Um, what's the first one we got on the list? E, economic development. That one's that one should be pretty quick. Um, um, Stephen wants Fairhawk Drive all over again. Bobby, we have Do you have like a little slide or we just talk? I don't see him over there.

He went out. So, so on economic development, we just really more talk real quick and Bobby probably do it a little more justice, but um you recall um uh the Lake Norman Regional EDC. We disbanded the Lake Norman Regional EDC. That was a three town um cooperation. Hunters, Davidson. um we got out of that business as we were continuing to grow. I mean years ago we were having problems trying to get um industrial flex space and um jobs here. We don't have that problem now. I mean we have industrial flex space. We have commercial buildings going up all over town. million. I would say five to six million square feet, you know, on that back side of the business park, I mean, Alexandria, all that area there, millions of square feet have gone in. Even over on 73, um across from right beside the uh Ambassador Church, that business park there, school, I meant to say, um just tons of um economic development been coming to town. Uh what we want to talk about a little bit, what are we doing now that you know the the Lake Norman regional EDC broke up and we're doing our own thing. We're partnering with the county. Bobby's back ready to go.

Yeah. All right. We we'll turn it over to Bobby. He's got slides up.

Yes. Just a couple updates on here. Um I'll say years ago when the EDC was formed um was a regional effort. Um I think all along we thought they would work themselves out of job and that's essentially what they did. Um, we've reszoned over a thousand acres of land for economic development. Um, and when it was started in the early 2000s, the county wasn't really involved. We didn't have a ton of brokers with a ton of websites promoting parcels. Um, some of the comments that were mentioned like Kevin with potential economic development coming in Commerce Station, Brian alluded to it. Um, people who own property are working with commercial brokers now that that really wasn't happening back in the day. Um, so we still have a variety of economic development activities going on. I know the town's goals seem to have shifted to interest in seeing the downtown diversify, become a little bit more uh of an economic development zone. Um, to see a variety of of business, uh, retail, restaurant activity, uh, which that main street focus is a little bit different than the, uh, sort of the bigger, uh, hunting big fish, so to say. Um, when it comes to the economic development game, we still work with the city of Charlotte, we work with Mecklberg County, uh, the Charlotte Chamber, the state of North Carolina. They bring us projects. U, but much like we talked about with the attainable housing, a project that's bringing jobs that pay 4550,000 does they don't make a lot of sense if you the employees can't afford to live here. Sometimes what the state sends us, they're looking for a million square feet, which we don't have. um they're looking for 50 megawatts of electricity, which you saw our capacity challenges. We don't have that. We're not going to go after things that don't make sense for our community. Um so we we've really become a lot more choosy when it comes to economic development. Um but we do continue to see and you'll hear it said a lot, your best chances for economic development is the expansion of companies that you do have. Um like one of the recent announcements with Joe Gibbs Racing, an offshoot of

that uh with the defense side of things uh expanding here in Those are the success stories we want to continue to see. Those are things we're still involved with, still working on. Um, and so this just kind of summarizes some of where we've been, some of where we're going, where we're at. Um, and and really do want to hear kind of what the board thinks. Um, you know, again, the downtown seems to be an area of focus. It's it's been suggested we might want a downtown economic development person. I would imagine that economic development person could still go out and do the business retention visits, still go out and support our existing companies. Um, and it would be one person completely dedicated to Huntersville as opposed to in the past we were sharing an economic development person, an economic development staff between Cornelius and Davidson. I guess if I could just jump in here. I know Anthony and I have had conversations about hiring a downtown economic development person to not only promote downtown, but getting those businesses to work together for events or whatever. And it wouldn't necessarily just be for downtown, but that would be the initial focus, but tying in our business community kind of like what the chamber does, but with a with a heavy focus on trying to promote our downtown. Again, there are other municipalities. I know years ago um we met with the folks from Lincolnon and they have a a whole group that does you know promoting the businesses um looking at you know events. It's kind of like the uh New Year's Eve event you know those kinds of things to promote that. So I would I would for me I would think we'd want to look at somebody to to to move into that position.

I love that.

Yeah. So, you know, we I'd say our big fish now like the industrial buildings and stuff like that, the county is sort of handling that manage because they used to not have their own economic development folks. Then the last uh two years they built their own team. So that's why we kind of bolded said why don't we use those, you know, assets, those resources um to do that. and Bobby's sort of our point person now. But as Nick said and one of the things we kind of wanted to, you know, get from you guys to see obviously we're starting to build downtown, not there yet. We making big waves there. Um, but imagine when some like the Hullbrooks opened up, we'd already had businesses sort of queued up in interest there and instead of them just simply going out and looking for tenants or hey, we've got this restaurant or whatever that is looking to move to Huntersville and If we go down that path, we would, you know, that person would probably do more than just downtown. We would probably have him probably pull Bobby out from, you know, working with the county because this individual would work with the county on everything. But also, you know, focus on downtown more than because that's never been a focus. Never had really a downtown. Um, the regional EDC at the time never focused on anything but sort of industrial type light industrial type businesses, not shopping centers, not downtown, none of that. So, this person would sort of flex and move if we decide to do that and do downtown and all these other things, too. But it would be Huntersville focused only. So, just thought out there. If that's something I want to do, then we just need to know that that is not in our, you know, budget numbers yet. We have that's why we're starting to have these discussions.

I can say today, but it's just something to think about. Do you see a downside to having that developers for downtown? No. I mean, they would work with all the different departments. Planning, you know, sometimes we get projects on you. Hard to believe, but some people complain that planning may not be going fast enough or, you know, uh or engineering may not half the time it's them, not staff. It's you know, one hadn't read the code etc. But you know we use them sometimes to actually okay find out what the developer is doing wrong so that we can help get through the process so that person can help with those things too. Okay. I think I think a great idea.

Just uh if uh we can start to see what that looks like. if there's enough head shaking to say put something together and look at it, we'll start to look at that. So, we we'll come back with something and see what that looks like. That's really what we want to talk about there. Um, we're getting close, but if we can get a few more minutes, maybe we knock out a few more of these. So, just real quick on uh Townson uh RFP. U Bobby give a just a super quick highlight on um the what I'll call green space and then where we can go from there.

Yeah. So um at this room uh I guess maybe two years ago um the board said hey let's take a run and see if there's a market or someone wants to buy that piece of property from us. Um all along it was envisioned I'll jump ahead to the picture on the next slide. the one there at the bottom all along the town center building where DPK is was envisioned to have a partner perpendicular to it to be a 100% commercial building. So, we did an RFP asking for commercial development. Um, we got two responses. One was 100% commercial with a food hall, couple restaurants, it's a banquet space. Um, but that I also had a um a caveat that the town needed to build a parking deck very much like what Anthony talked about with that $8 million number uh of a placeholder on the CIP. Um it seems like that might check the box if that's a way the board wants to go. The other request we got was um retail restaurant with apartments above which was not 100% commercial. Did not really meet what we were asking for. Um, but you know, if that's something the board's willing to consider, it would take a reasoning, but if you're willing to consider that and you still want to pursue sale of the site, we would suggest you make that clear. We make that clear in the RFP. So, we just to, you know, we got those proposals back, um, obviously as we were going through that and sort of looking through those proposals, when this parking issue came up, we realized, okay, this is going to be a problem. We had DPK lease. Um the original DPK lease had some we'll say parking restrictions. So that kind of made it complicated if we were going to do something with some potential developer. Um having those restrictions on that parking deck um caused some problems. So when we went back and were able to renegotiate the lease with DPK, um we were able to pull out those restrictions. I'm being very simplistic, but basically now that

parking that that the parking deck that that exists is free for all. When I say free for all, it's free for the public to use. There is no guaranteed so-called spaces for DBK. If they fill it up, awesome. They fill it up. If uh we have an event downtown, we fill it up, awesome. There is no worries of well, there's restrictions, so that you know causes problems. So now that sort of opens it up for us to really start to focus on this green strip to um take out any of those potential issues. Um so it's really we're ready because that probably been it's too much probably need to go back out uh for potential new RFP. Um, but we would like to is it do you want to just have an open canvas and whatever comes back or is it strictly commercial that you want? Um, and I'm going to pick on Jake. Jake's project was um had commercial on two floors. Think at one time may have been a three story and went to two twotory. Um, I'm not a developer. Uh, I thought his project was awesome. I'm not I don't know that it is feasible, but I'm not in that game, so I probably shouldn't say that. But, um, you know, we're just starting to get some of the smaller um businesses coming down. So, if someone could pull that off, that would be that would be uh impressive, I'll say. But I don't know that that put my dollar bill.

I'd be open to either fully commercial or a mixeduse. That's I mean because I think the market's going to dictate what's we can we can put it out there any way you want. I guess it depends on what restrictions you want. If you say we want only two floors of commercial or whatever three floors of commercial um that's all you want. That's what we put out. As you have seen in downtown what we're getting is typical mixed use.

We haven't got any fully commercial. Yeah. you get a doctor's office, um you know, things like that, you may get that there, but if it's you want like restaurant, retail, we're not seeing that yet. Um but it's kind of up to you. We want We just want some guidance. If you want blank campus, a blank canvas, let folks bring back whatever, and then we'll make decisions from that, that's fine. Well, I I would say at least one floor of commercial. I wouldn't want to see just like a three-story apartment building there. Absolutely not. just some permits.

So, I'll jump in. We originally put this out as an economic development um possibility. So, meaning that we put in the RFP that the property would be disposed of through the economic development disposal method. And that disposal method is specific to commercial or industrial. It is not it does not make any mention of residential um in that statute. um rather if you want to sell it by private sale utilizing that disposal method, it in the statute in my mind is specific only to commercial and industrial because that's the those are the two terms that it uses. It does not say anything about residential. So I would say if you want to be open to mixed use, we probably want to consider a different disposal method um for the property. You could do an upset bid process which allows for negotiated offers to be submitted and those could contain mixed use residential and commercial and basically you would just be evaluating whatever um their proposals are when they are submitted.

So we put restrictions on that. Um you would not typically be putting deed restrictions on something that you dispose of through a negotiated offer process that is upset bid. But we don't have to take it. No, no, no, no. We always include in uh the language of the upset bid resolution that the board reserves the right to reject any and all bids. So if somebody came, let's just say did said okay we want to do you know some kind of mixed use and we sold it they would have to do the mixed use or at that point they can do

so we would into a purchase agreement and the purchase agreement can dictate that it's for that specific proposal. Okay. Yeah. Kind of like when we did the whole Brooks all those years ago. Yeah. I think that's the method that they actually used when North State developed that property in town. I'd be good with that.

So just looking for guidance. Don't care either way. We can go down and say you want all commercial, we'll go down that path or we can you blank canvas it. We'll figure out which uh which process to go down. But at the end of the day, you get to decide whether to move it forward or not. No different than the old town hall. Whatever you decide to do is is ultimately they bring back any picture they like be the most beautiful thing. And at the end of the day, you said nothing. So it's really just just seeking guidance. Do we Why did we not go forward with the some of the requests we received?

Um so we we had the one from Jake. Um we eventually got to one the price. They didn't get to the appraisal price. Eventually got to the appraisal price, but as part of that, and I don't have in front of me, but uh there were all sorts of things like we want you to build a parking deck. That was never part of the res. So that changes the whole game. Yeah. That well maybe you do meet the appraisal price for the land, but I got to build a you know eight n$10 million park deck. So above what we already have from Yes. And so because there were restrictions on the parking, we couldn't kind of couldn't guarantee, you know, any type of parking

and the banks want to see that you've got parking before they give you the loan on the space. That's a big

So we had to say pause one pause in that all right, we need to at least whatever we do take care of the restrictions in the park. So, we finally got that done and now we're back able to uh reconsider options, but we probably not, you know, there are things we have to work through in planning whatever, excuse me, proposal we get back. How much parking needed? Can they use a parking deck? Um, but we have to enter into an agreement. No different. I mean, it it it's not going to be a simple project. It's going to be like old town hall would be if we move forward. is going to have all sorts of potential restrictions or going to make sure you get the right product you want.

So maybe I was trying to read between the lines of what you were saying, but do you think it's realistic to do just commercial? You know, I I don't I haven't seen any of those projects yet. Probably the only one that I've seen is Brian Hines's little building that he's moving forward with now, the new building is all commercial. I think that's about the only would be a sparkly and I and I say like ret you know when I say commercial I'm talking retail restaurant that kind of stuff you said doctor's office sure I bet I could probably you know one of these atriums no or whoever

somebody probably put up a twotory doctor's office sure probably but I don't know if that's exactly what we want them to They're great. There may be other options now too that the that we worked to remove the um parking uh dedications to you know uh DPK because originally the lease did have a specific number that were allocated to them and now that is not the issue not the case anymore. Um maybe you might get something different if you put it back out. I don't know. They still may need restrict dedicated parking. I think they were looking at five or 600 parking places. So for me that was a showstopper from the getgo.

There's no way we could provide that. So maybe there's a different use or a smaller use or something that could work. Could we open that up for

I say we could we could figure out um whatever process to go down. I think if you're if you're open to anything and everything, but if it's just um strictly commercial, then we probably need to go down the process of economic development process. If it's residential and then we may need to switch the process and go down, you still have final say no what we come back with. I don't know what we'll come back with. It may be just residential I mean commercial on the bottom and residential love like other stuff you seen. president say no you want two floors of commercial and residential above really don't know what we'll get but at least in canvas now the restrictions are gone that may give it a little more a few more options or maybe some better ideas

I think we should figure out plan B and re re ask for whatever scope we want and then you know start resolved situation and we're considering building a parking deck that ask do we want all commercial do we want to include res

Emily could we I'm just rambling here because obviously we haven't had much discussion just talking trying to get ideas could we seek um just request for proposals of potential ideas and then decide what process to go down. So, could I open a canvas and say, "Hey, we want ideas

with what we did before." Yes. Because it was for economic development. But if you're just doing something that would be anything and everything, that's going to have to follow a more standard process because we can't do the private sale. So, what we'd need to do is you would put it up and anyone could submit a proposal on their own and you could evaluate them, but it would be an upset bid process more than likely. That's we would still get the negotiated offer proposals because they would be providing with whatever their bid is what they are suggesting. So, they could be commercial, all commercial, could be a mix and then we decide what we like and figure out where we go.

Yeah. and I wasn't here at the time, but I believe that is exactly what they did with um the North State development is that they used the upset bid process and received a negotiated offer that outlined specific uh uses. And I think as part of their contract that they had reserved the right to approve the site plan because that was that was part of the um one of the sticking points I remember with the resoning is that they wanted a very detailed site plan and that was a contractual obligation. Yeah. Because we went back and forth with them a few times on that. So I think I'm hearing or I think I'm seeing hearing um open it up. Let's see what we get

and then we can decide from there. I'm good with it. And if you've got any specific requests or asks or thoughts, just shoot me an email. We'll we'll update the documents. We'll make sure developers out there, you know, hey, it's free-for-all. We want we want as many proposals we can get. So, if you know folks anywhere in the world, send them send them my way. And I'd say, I mean, what we got in the two responses was largely conceptual. It wasn't it wasn't firm. They were concepts.

All right. I think I'm good on that one. Uh, one more and then then let's call it. We'll go eat. Um, Bobby, let's see. Uh, well, this one I just real quick. Um, one of them on the list was potential FY27 goals. What we'll do is you have the FY26 goals now. So, I will make sure we if we haven't sent those out, we will resend those to you.

Okay. If you have those, then what we'll start to do is get the board to sort of start thinking take that as your base and I can go clean it up because some of it's already done. Um, we clean it up and maybe send it back to you and just mark out stuff that's been done. But use that as your base to let's start formulating your FY27 goals. We're not going to solve that right here. Take hours, days, um, weeks. So, that's all I'll say about that. We don't really need to have any more discussion on that. mayor will sort of take the lead on that and help us sort of uh and staff will work with her to work with y'all to help formulate those so we can get that done. Uh budget survey.

Budget survey. Um uh I think uh mayor was working with um Pam, Ethan. Um trying to think who else on budget survey. I know some towns do budget surveys. I'm going just pick on Cornelius. They do a very small sampling budget survey. Um if this is something and mayor's probably talked to you some about this. Um, if this is something you want to do, we can obviously do that. I would say kind of keep it um, small. You don't want 100 questions out there because you're not going to get anything out of it. I I think Mayor, Pam, Ethan have worked on maybe some questions, a small sampling. Um, I need y'all to just figure out if if these are the questions you want because we want to make if we do a survey, we want it to be valuable and not just throw something out there, be throwing it out there.

Can you go Anthony has been on the screen. This survey is on the screen. So, this is what I think staff uh has with Ethan and Pam have worked together with the mayor and I'm sure they've pulled and I'll put words at Ethan. We've pulled some of this from other towns to sort of have a base. Um,

so it just starts off with basic questions like kind of touchy feely. Do you like where you live? Why, you know, how do you feel about where you live? um where you work. Do you work here? Do you like that as well? Do you think it's a nice place to go and play? Um and then it has this sliding scale here that says like how how do you want to prioritize funding? And it has $1,000 the cap, but that's just sort of like a theoretical thing for people just kind of play with like saying like prioritizing like a thousand would be like the most highest priority, you know, 500 medium. and it slides along there based on um how people you know want to we want to fund basel give us an idea have them weigh in on how on what priorities they are it's very similar to what Cornelius did that's where I got the idea to do this because they have a very short um and then it just it just kind of ends with um I think has demographics at the end um some couple questions I don't know if you need to include these questions that are That's think about it. Um, and then some demographics. Where do you live?

So, what we can do, and I don't know how, like I said, we just kind of got this together. Wanted to share first share. You may have already seen it. I'm not sure. So, we can send that out to you. Um, let's, you know, work together. The team, decide what you want. We've got time to ship it out. I mean, we've got a base. It's ready. Uh, Pam and Ethan knock this thing out. No problem. But just need to make sure we put out what you want. So I would say maybe next two weeks, Mayor, there's a draft link. I'm going to send you our monthly communications report. I'll send you a link to this in that email, too. This two will go out on our website on our in our newsletter and on social media.

Yes. And and so I think what we just wanted to make sure is that everyone is question and just recognize that less is more. You don't need to be super detailed in all the things that we're asking. So we don't we can't possibly cover all the stuff that the town does. I don't want to mayor and I think the goal is to just get a read from people.

Um I also want to recognize that we have 70,000 people live in the town. We are this is not going to be scientific. We're not going to be able to do it. I was just going to say there's got to be clear up front because sometimes we do these and people say I voted on this and why didn't you do it? And that's what says the town has limited budget. You can't do everything that you wish for. This is just trying to get a sense of what people are thinking about.

It's an opportunity for feedback because what's going to happen is the budget process is starting now, right? But you won't pass it until May or June. So you have As a president, you have an opportunity to attend public hearings. You also we will also probably do what we did in the past events, right? Where people can also ask questions and learn information as well. So this is one thing in the entire process. And so again, when you see the link and you review it, you'll see the intro that we put together to try to spell it out. And I people don't read. People don't understand. So again, we're we're trying to do this in the best way possible. Um but understand there's limitations to what we're going to get back. And then also too, like we don't want to set up expectations in correctly. So it is an opportunity for you to give us feedback. I don't I'm not the kind of person who's like just give me a check mark. No, please review it. take the time if there's something missing or if you think we're going too far, let us know.

So, if if the board was sort of obviously we're going to send this out, look this over in the next two weeks, fine. I think we'll be fine. We figure out a time, Pam, and then we'll know, you know, when we need to send this out, but want to get it right. If it's we don't want to do it, that's fine, too. So, you just need to tell us if this is what you want, you don't want, no problem. But this is just a tool. We're not gonna solve the world's problem with a seven or eight, you know, question survey. So, that's not what it's about.

So, uh you hopefully you'll have it. If you don't, you will have it before the days out and we'll check back in Pam and Ethan will sort of check in and we'll get it and have one last look at it and decide whether y'all want to ship it out. All right. Um, I say we go we we're not gonna unfortunately Nick, I know you you're gonna we might have to fight on the way out the door, but uh we're probably not going to solve four years staggering terms today. I don't think we're going to get to it, but we we'll maybe if the board wants to, we can have a premeating session to sort of talk about that. Just educate everyone and then you give us direction. Yeah, you already have a presentation prepared, right?

I didn't prepare presentation. I think they had some slides from when this issue or topic came up previously. Um, so we could use those or you know, we'll let Emily dust those often. Yeah, yours probably better.

We'll let her you know, put them in her words, but uh we have a basis on so we'll set that up on the upcoming premeating. We only had two other topics. One was parking deck and then um I think cash and lot. But maybe we'll go eat on the parking deck. It's really more of you know we've got it in there. um in the FY27 uh budget unless you tell us not because it's going to take some time. It's going to be needed um over behind town hall. Um it's rather we start the process. Really the question was some folks had mentioned do we start the process now um if it's something new you're going to fund and get a a jump on trying to you know start the six-month process to get to a point where we you know get in in line for you know contract uh worked out then

I vote we start the process. That would be my vote. Yeah. Pull the band off. Yeah. Let's get it going. It's going to take a while to be proactive. So, I'm I'm seeing the majority of you saying please start the process. Yes, sir. Absolutely. All right. That's really all I was going to talk about on that. You want me to try to knock that out?

So, on cashing, Bobby may have a picture he can bring up real quick. So, you know, I'm gonna give the short version. Um, you know, we bought the site, we cleaned up the site, had storage tanks or gas tanks underground. Had to clean up. Had to dig up a um we have some I'm going to call them whales of plumes or whatever on the norththeast corner. Um that you see some little concrete, you know, little things sitting on top of ground maybe that big. There's maybe three or four out there. Uh they were just out there last week testing. I'm I'm wearing very high level. lobby's going to, you know, bring me back down. Um, they've tested last week. They turned that in, sampled through um, DEEQ to see if we need to continue to um, monitor that or maybe they got it this time. If not, um, next step will be they'll probably come back in and um, what I'll call, I'm being very simplistic, pump pellets in the ground. That sort of helps. Um, there's some contamination and I will tell you there's nothing to be worried about. contamination down on the groundwater. Um, but you can go lay on the dirt, roll around, drop a sandwich, and eat. You can go smoke a cigarette and drop them all around those. It's not going to hurt anything. Um, but if we were to do something on that site, what I would tell you right now is that corner where you see those, we would not want to cover those up. We would not want to put concrete on top of those. We want to stay away from that until we get those cleared. We may get those cleared sooner rather than later. What we have out there now, grass and whether we want to go sided and, you know, make it a beautiful park and put some food trucks out there. What I'm just throwing all sorts of crap out. That's no harm. We can do that. What I would probably tell you we could do right now if we went to build a basement and put a house there, you know, underground basement or something or some underground parking deck until we get that sort of squared away. I would say we probably couldn't do that

or that wouldn't be um wouldn't be advisable. But other than that, and that's very high level, um we're really looking to see where do you go next. We're still going to we're going to clean the site up. We're going to close what we call close the site. Um that's our ultimate goal. There's funding available for that. We're going to do that, but there is no harm um or we wouldn't have walking paths. We wouldn't have grass. wouldn't have a bench out there if there was a harm of any danger. So, I guess now it's what do you want to do next? Do you really want to do you want to sort of like we've talked about for the um space across the street and um over by DPK Town Center. Do you want to just open it up for all sorts of ideas? Probably not, you know, some two-story buildings or anything like that. It could be, you know, expansion of the park. It could be some um uh jewel box buildings, maybe smaller little incubator jewel box buildings like you see in Burkedale, not the Brewer Real, you know, things, but some of the little small ones down near the movie theater. Throwing out all sorts of things. Food truck venues to cool ideas that maybe some other towns are doing um in their downtowns that we haven't even seen yet.

Are we talking about something permanent? I mean, I thought we were waiting until our downtown transportation plan found out. Do we need a turn lane? Do we want a traffic circle? Um, it will probably have some impacts on that. Um, we need to sell it, put a building up and then we have to tear it down.

Probably won't be any like say big buildings and they would be we would be whatever we sort of throw out there is going to be the buildings are going to be probably closer to any type of food truck is going to be closer to 760. We would kind of keep our ideas open for roundabout. It's not going to be anything what I'd say super permanent yet. They have buildings when um when I was just in Tampa, they had um some cool commercial buildings that were already call prefab that um serve the same sort of purpose that could be movable that um um that were pretty cool. They had downtown sort of and some pocket parks. Um so there's all sorts of things we could do. just kind of looking for ideas as we continue down the path of cleaning up, you know, that little area

because you would also need access. So, we'd have to work with 760 because we're not going to do a curb cut there. Probably not. Yeah. So, we'd have to work on them. It it's going to take some time, but if you have ideas or if you want to throw it out, you know, to get ideas while we're working through, you know, whatever we may have a turn lane, a roundabout or nothing, um, we can start to work on something like that. But if you're happy to Anthony, go plant some bushes and trees and keep getting it, we'll do that, too. I'd love to see a big water feature. I told these guys water feature there with some little those little box stores kind of on the back corner. We could tap into the underground gas and maybe have like a know

roast our marshmallows and take a bath. I mean, personally, I like it as is. I think it adds the charm to what the town of Huntersville was and is for Yeah, it kind of it ties into the park. Yeah. And I think that we could do different things with like food truck Fridays or something like that. The open what we have right now. I mean, we would make it a lot prettier than it is. I mean, this is just a temporary what we did just to kind of create I thought we did an awesome job. I mean, I thought, you know, it it brought it to life. It got people to thinking. People got excited. That's what you want.

So, if we were to do that, I think it looks great, but we would make it 10 times better. Yeah. I think um like 760 used it in the winter time. They did like a holiday market and the holiday stretched out and I heard tons of feedback. Oh, they were the ones that that space became part of that, you know, kind of tied those two. I mean, you probably day I mean, but he does he does it quarterly, so he does it four times a year. He gets a good turnout. Yeah, I think I didn't see it, but I heard that it was a lot. So, that that's always good. I think we can get creative that way and come up with ideas and throw it out and see what comes.

Why don't we sort of y'all throw your ideas our way? We'll get MJ sort of working on it because he's probably going to sleep for the next week now that you've told him that. Yep. We'll we'll put him on it and see what he can come up with. Someone said they need a carousel downstairs. I did. I love a carousel. I think for him. Anything else to add to that? No, just um I know cost is always a concern. The state has a trust fund for cleaning up these sites. We're hitting that trust fund. We're getting reimbured what we're spending. So, that's a good thing. Okay. All right. We're done. Again, everybody, thank you. Sorry we ran over. Well, we didn't run over, but we maybe ran over lunch, but we uh done. That's good. We need to officially adjourn.

Yes. Yeah. May have a motion to adjurnn. Second. Seven.