Commissioners - Regular Meeting

I'd like to call to order the May uh Mon County Board of Commission meeting. Sure. We have a big agenda tonight. Uh pickle ball budget. Some exciting things within the county. Just a brief reminder if everyone can mute or silence their cell phones. That sure would be appreciated. He's talking to me, so I got it. I wasn't going to say. All right. at this time. Uh, Miss Tammy, do you have any announcements?

Yes, sir. I've got two announcements. The first one is that this meeting will be continued until Thursday, May the 21st at 9:00 a.m. for a budget work session will be held in this room. And then there will be a public hearing on the fiscal year 2026 27 budget on June the 9th at 6:00 p.m. during the regular meeting. Thank you, Manager Cape.

Yes, sir. I actually have two. Uh the first one is an announcement about the U code enforcement software process. Their new software system will go live tomorrow. Uh so that'll hopefully make that process as we learn how to use that a lot easier for the folks that actually have to apply for permits, etc. And obviously we may have a few bugs we'll work out over the process, but that actually starts tomorrow. Uh and then the second announcement, uh there's a new parking area where you can access the greenway. Uh we have some things are going on with the boardwalk. We're going to actually replace the boardwalk on Arthur Drake Road. So when that happens, we'll have to have another way to get on to that north end of the greenway there. So, there's a temporary/permanent parking lot that has been installed there off of Riverview Street, a depot extension right uh directly across from uh uh Iowa Street right there where the Barbara McCay Apple Orchard is. So, just want to make the public aware of that.

Thank you, Mr. Kate. Commissioner Breeden, Commissioner An just welcome to everybody and I don't think I've said this yet, but welcome to uh all the future commissioners in the room. Thank you, Commissioner Shields. Just want to say uh thanks for being here and being interested in county business. Thank you, Commissioner Shur.

Chairman, I have a few announcements. Um one is we have a very active planning board now. Um, and we have been we've met twice and um, we've been discussing the redistricting. We have gotten a lot of uh, input from folks out in the community and um, and also on the planning board. The next meeting is not June 4th. It will be June the 11th at 5:00 p.m. So, and it will be a continuation of um, the talks with the redistricting. That's one. Number two is um what was it? Last month we had um some uh students in here that was recognized for the 250 and um and the work that this uh committee has done for the celebration uh for the America's 250th has uh been pretty extensive. There's been a lot of work going into it. There's a lot of excitement coming for July the 3rd and 4th. So, I would encourage all of you to pay attention to what's actually happening and signing up when you get a chance for the festivities that we're having. And we also got a a word the other day that we're going to have a local celebrity here performing on July 4th. Um, any of you that um is familiar with uh Braden Rumfelt? Um we caught word the other day that uh Braden will be here July 4th. So that's good news. Now the next thing um and most everybody in here is probably and the commissioners have um encountered this. Um when you go to a store, you go to a business such as Food Line, Tractor Supply, anywhere like that, they're asking you if you would like to round up

today. Lowe's. So that got me thinking. What if we and I don't even know that this is a viable option for us if it's legal or not, but what if the business community of Mon County said, "You know what? Maybe if we do the roundup and keep the money here locally, that will give us some additional funds instead of sending it around the world." So, it's just something that um I've been thinking about trying to figure out a way to get out of the taxation system and create funds. I did it yesterday and not even thinking about it. And it wasn't um it wasn't really my intentions to round up, but the guy said, "Here, here's your change." No, give it to the next person if if they need that change. Well, then that's what led it to that. If we if maybe uh the chamber of commerce um uh Rotary um leaders, all of I mean, if we could come up with a plan, I think if the business community would come and get behind this instead of sending that money elsewhere, it would help us get to where we need to be without taxation. So, that's all I've got.

Thank you, Commissioner Cheryl. That's that's a good thought. Uh, Miss Lindseay Leopard Council.

Thank you. All right. This time, I'd like to ask uh Commissioner Shields to lead us in a moment of silence in a pledge of allegiance. Stand if you're able. Let us bow our heads. Let us pledge pledge allegiance. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Thank you, Commissioner Shields. We have no public hearings. Uh any additions to the agenda, anybody? All right, we will now enter the public comment period. Nurell Gentlemen, we all grew up knowing that the work the Lord works in mysterious ways. But sometimes he comes forward and does something so obvious that the solution for problems that we've been wrestling with are obvious. And I apologize to the audience in order for you all to see this. Are we at a good angle? And you'll recognize that the greenway is coming from the south right here. The rotary

circle is down in this area and it ends where the red hatching is. Last month, Mr. Luperly undertook to repave all of his parking lot. It's a fabulous job and it extends, you can see this little extension about 10 ft past the buildings. This has given us an opportunity to complete and connect the Re Greenway by putting in a path maybe about 60 ft or if you wanted to go in a diagonal, a little more direct. But I thought this was the safest way because then you see this dark heavy line. Anybody who's roller skating or bicycling or running can stay on the safe mechanum and not have to deal with that horrible gravel. And this would be one whale of a lot more cost effective than going all the way over to here because this has now been impeded by some new trash bins that the restaurant has put in blocking that. So this would be a very logical thing. And all I'm asking is for the commissioners, you've done the apple orchard. We just talked about that paving. This would be a very simple paving project if you could undertake directly.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Are still bad so I have to get home before the light fades. I apologize for good to see you. Thanks for coming. All right, Miss Amy Owens. Welcome Amy.

Good evening, Mr. Chairman, commissioners. Um, I'm here to invite you all and the general public to a public comment and input session for the main street transformation project that the town is undertaking. U, we have partnered with McAdams and Tool Design to look at Main Street not only from a beautifification perspective, but from infrastructure, traffic calming. We all know parking sometimes is an issue. So, this is going to be a long-term project. That's why it's called a transformation, not just a short-term fix. But, we have two dates that are coming up. May the 28th and 29th. Um, all of the events will be done at 28 Main Event Center, which is beside Rene's Cake Shop downstairs. Um, if you've never seen a drop-in studio where they actually draw everything while you're sitting there, it's pretty impressive. So, there's two different times um that they're going to do the drop-in studios. Come in with your 10,000 foot ideas. I mean, nothing is is too crazy at this point. And part of what Tulle and McAdams will be doing with the town and with the county, we've got some representation from the county on there as well, is to take some of these ideas that you may think are far-fetched and see if we can't make it happen for the future. So, we want to make sure that Mon County and Franklin is well represented in the region and that our downtown area is a destination. It's not just a pass through. Unfortunately, some of the data that we've gotten so far from them has been most people use Main Street just as a pass through. They don't stop, they don't shop, they don't do much of anything but just go from point A to point B. So, we want to take the opportunity and work into the future to make downtown a destination and we want to do it in conjunction with you all and

with the public. So, remember, come on out on the 28th and 29th. Thank you so much. All right, Tracy Roland. Hey, you guys all know what I'm here for.

Um, we were just curious. We've been here in front of you guys. This is the fourth time about Team Hollow. Nothing's Nothing's changed. It's the same. and they arrested some people this last week. Um, so it's been a little little bit quieter since they left. But I don't Are we even Is this where we need to be um airing these grievances? Because I haven't this is the fourth time over three years. It's been going on for like probably five or seven years. Ma'am, I'll speak on that. Um, we did file a lawsuit this past week. Okay.

And so that was filed on Thursday or Friday of last week. So that is a matter of public record and that's why I'm able to speak to you about it. But we have filed a lawsuit about that and we are working on on that and I think progress is made. I received a call today from from another person that Well, that's good. I mean, we just needed I just wanted to hear something like because it just seemed like it was falling on their ears, but maybe it wasn't. Okay. So, we'll just wait and see what happens. Things are in motion. Okay, good. Well, then I'll just let you spare you the rest of my my speech.

Thank you for coming in person. And it's hard. I wanted to say that. Didn't know how far we could go, but we we've had a lot of internal discussion and some of this stuff is a lot of red tape. Yeah. Thank you. All right. Well, thank you. All right. Lorie Smith. Okay. New business. What did Lor say? If you have any any public comment. Okay. Um Josh McCall. Maybe John McCall.

Okay. John McCall. Come on up, my friend. I'm sorry. Well, there's nobody for me to come up since gentleman said there's done been a lawsuit by I mean John knows Mr. still know that place up there mess nothing else the health department should have contended that place a long time ago septic tank there's no septic tank they've had a big hole out there at the park where they dump the waste and they drink the creek water bathe in the creek plus that mill that belongs to my step come on up here he can't oh I'm sorry Yeah, he can't. Okay. Do it.

Okay. Yes, sir. You're doing good, John. Thank you. My stepdaughter inherited boy t place. Okay. The bill that goes with that finding needles in it and all kinds of garbage, right? Their dogs carried over there and she has to pick all that mess up. I travel up in there every now and then. She is my back. I mean, that's something else. I feel that burning the place out. Period.

Several years. Well, I want you to know we've seen pictures last month. I hope so. And it's horrific. And we this this whole board is uh we've got your back. It's it's hard. We're following our council's lead right here. And just know we're working on it. Okay. People that they arrested and ended up in jail. Well, that's like putting them in a hotel after living. They got water. I mean, my lord. Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you, Mr. McCall. All right. Constance Neely.

Good evening. Good evening. I have just a quick question. Um, given that the board for the Mon County Library, the applications are due in early June. I'm very curious if you could articulate the process by which they're going to be chosen and if the applicants if the citizens are going to be able to see the applicants and their qualifications. Just a question. Thanks so much.

You want to so I can I can answer part of that? Yes, the applications will be attached to the agenda packet when it goes out next time. The the process will be normally it's handled here with the board to come before the board and they'll vote on those individually at the end of the meeting. So, I think that answers your question. And the voting process is with a paper ballot and and everyone on record will hear which you know commissioners support which candidates and I believe it's going to be in June. Is that right? Next the next meeting be the next meeting. All right. Heather Johnson. Heather.

I'm Heather Johnson. I'm from Otto. And first of all, I want to thank the county for recognizing that initially the Mon County Public Library Board openings had not been announced within the timeline that this body had previously agreed upon and then adjusting the deadline to give adequate public notice because we can all agree that we want the best qualified candidates for this job. Unfortunately, the past four years, we find our library and several of the Mon County Public Library board members and their spouses in the news, but not for reasons we can be proud of. Over and over, two board members and their spouses in particular have shown an egregious lack of respect for the institution of the public library and its staff, going as far as to employ underhanded means to achieve their agenda. This has been confirmed by the local press. Several wonderful staff have resigned due to harassment. Next month, you have the opportunity to appoint qualified candidates that want to uphold the library's bylaws, staff, and increase the public's access to library materials, making our library the best it can be. I urge you to use this time to call the references listed on the applications and meet in person with the applicants. I hope that you will select folks who have attended library board meetings in the past and have a familiarity with the institution of which they will be representing. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. JOHNSON. All right, that wraps up public comment. Any adjustments to the agenda. All right, hearing none. Looking for a motion to approve the agenda. Second. Motion by Commissioner Breeden, second by Commissioner Shields. Any further discussion hearing? None. All in favor, please signify by raising your right arm, stating I for the record. I I. Any oppose? All right, Miss Tammy. Motion passes 5. Thank you.

All right. This is like the Super Bowl for the county manager. I think pickle ball kind of out shown me tonight, Mr. Chairman. All right. We have the fiscal year 2627 budget presentation by County Manager Warren Cape.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. uh obviously in front of you all you have the uh complete budget package and you just got that tonight so you haven't had time to to look over that. So I want to give you a brief summary on what's included in that packet. Uh then I'll take questions tonight and I'm sure then when we go into the work session we'll obviously discuss more detail about things that are in here. Um, so first off, I just kind of wanted to go over a couple of the accomplishments that we've had this year, and they're fairly numerous. Uh, when you really look at the uh the things we've been able to accomplish with the uh the tax rate we have and the budget we have, uh, we're continuing the Franklin High School project. That's $122 million project. So, that's a considerable size project. That's probably the biggest project in western North Carolina at the moment. Um, we've done numerous repairs, roof replacements at the library, detention center. We've had a lot of upgrades on the greenway. Uh, I talked about a few of those earlier. We we're getting ready to redo the uh Arthur Drake boardwalk there, which is significant. Uh, we completed the tennis court renovation uh last year or actually this fiscal year. Uh, and we've actually initiated construction of the pickleball court area. We've already started demolition and got the site ready for the next process which you're going to hear about tonight. And we actually have received about a little over $3.8 million in grant funding to help us accomplish many of those projects. So the significance of that will become apparent later on because when you start thinking about how much a penny brings in on the taxes and we've we've heard conversation we want to keep the the taxes low. Uh that's that's a lot of pennies right there if we hadn't received those grant funds. So that's significant for us to be able to accomplish these things. Goals for this year. Uh obviously pickle ball court that's very very high on our list and may be number one after tonight. Um Carson Convenience Center we've already had discussions about

that. We're finishing the design on that. Of course that was part of the grant funding. We were able to fund that completely with a grant. So there we don't have to rely on tax dollars strictly from Mon County to take care of that. Uh that'll also include renovations and upgrades to the recover and recycling buildings at the uh at the landfill. Those are also grant funded. Uh we're going to try and make the recycling building a little more uh accessible and we want to promote the recycling efforts that we have there. Talked about the boardwalk. Uh we've got some stuff on the agenda tonight about repairs to make an early college building. Uh a couple of things that are on our radars. We need to look at some electrical upgrades here at the uh at the courthouse. Uh we've also been talking about for a while about the remodel of the National Guard Armory building. Of course, previous boards have leased that to Southwestern Community College. Part of the lease agreement was that we would make some pertinent upgrades or some remodels to that facility for them to use as a classroom facility in conjunction with the burn building that's uh that's going to be there. And I'll talk more about that, too. and then also resurface the driving track at SEC to accommodate CDL licensing classes. We we first started talking about that in the budget work session last year and we're right now ready to uh to make that come to fruition and I'll talk about that just a little more. And then of course we we still want to maintain the the service. We are in a service business. Uh we want to maintain a quality service at a at a cost that people can afford. Uh we want to keep maintaining the buildings that we've had that we have now. We we've obviously had to deal with some maintenance issues and that's one of the things that that we've tried to make a priority is addressing those issues early before they become a big problem. So, you'll see some of those in there. Uh we've had some discussions about space needs. We've had various departments talk to us. We we've we've talked about senior services, board of election, veterans, housing. We've talked about future needs for justice center. we there are some

significant space needs that we need to get a direction on and figure out how we're going to deal with those. So, that really needs to be one of our priorities this year. And then, of course, uh we had some conversations two months ago about our capital improvement plan. Uh, and I think we want to make that as robust as possible and make it as honest as possible so that you know what you're looking at this year, next year, five years down the road, or 10 years down the road so you can make appropriate decisions when we when we decide to spend these funds and to make it as make it as logical as for you and the general public to understand what we're looking at as far as funding these projects going forward. So, the big thing that everybody wants to know, um, this year the proposed budget for 2627 maintains the property tax rate at 27 cents per $100 value. So, no property tax increases included in this proposed budget. Uh, we'll talk about revenues and I'll show you some charts in a second. Our revenues are slightly up. Uh, the taxable value of our properties have went up because obviously you have folks that that build and improve and those numbers will go up normally during the year. uh our service fees are up. If you look at some of the reports we get from code enforcement, those other agencies, particular with building permits and environmental health permits, they're constantly going up, which which therefore means an increase in those fees. Uh we've also had a slightly higher increase due to sales tax revenues. Um I'll talk about that a little more when I get to the next slide. uh inter intergovernmental transfers are up. But even with all that, uh when we received the requests, our requests exceeded our revenue by a little over $7.5 million. So even as as much as we can whittle and as much as we can work and as much effort as we put into it, there was no way that we could get to the point where we could fund all those requests even even though we know many of them are valid. Uh it's just a point of being able to prioritize those

and make the decision on what we need to do. And and honestly, I don't know that there was a department or an agency that didn't see an increase in in their request request this year just because your normal operating expenses because purchasing items is more expensive, fuel is more expensive, anything you do anymore seems to be more expensive and we basically saw that across the board. So let's talk about revenues. This slide talks about uh where most of our revenue comes from and you will see that tax collections is the biggest majority of our revenue about 54%. Uh sales tax is a close second with about almost 14.5 million. Um we are still reasonably conservative on our revenue estimates. One of the things that Lindsay and I want to make sure of is we don't overestimate the revenues that you have coming in so that that creates a financial issue for you sometime later in the year or next year. Um we I fully anticipate that that number will continue to climb, but we've seen a few months where it's been reasonably flat, but then we have some months that have some pretty pretty significant growth. So the way we calculate that is Lindsay essentially takes an average of that growth and then we figure out a growth factor on top of that. So those revenues are still fairly conservative and that's important later on when I talk about some other things. But but it's a number that we're comfortable with. I hope they continue to grow. Um and of course it shows the other money there. But the one thing that I do want to bring your attention to uh you'll see there I have a fund balance appropriation of $1,150,000. So the balanced budget that I'm going to give you with the tax rate of 27 cents per 100 would require an appropriation for fun from fund balance of $1,150,000. Now that normally governments do that. We haven't done

that in a couple of years. Um but I'll explain to you why here shortly. But I'll also explain to you why I'm not terribly concerned about that appropriation as we move on into this slideshow. Revenues as far as a breakdown. Uh this tells you a little more about our our personal real value and our personal value. You'll see that we have a little over 13 billion dollar of real and personal value on our tax scrolls. Uh we have a little over $500 million on vehicle values. Uh and that's actually increased. See the increases at the bottom. We're up about $244 million on the real and personal value and about $46 million on the the vehicle value. Uh we still maintain a a very significant collection rate of 98.43%. And then the other thing that I want to bring your attention to, you'll obviously you see the $36 million that we bring in from that 27 cents, but if on the bottom there you see what one penny brings us. So, one penny brings us $1,348,000 in some change. Um, that's significant when you go back and you think about the $7 million worth of ass that folks had because you can see how many pennies it would take us to generate that $7 million. Also, if you're looking at that $1,150,000 that I appropriated out of fund balance in this proposed budget,

it would almost take a penny for you to generate that if you wanted to fund that out of operating instead of doing appropriation from fund balance. And I'll explain more about that in just a second. Expenditures this year. This breaks down the categories as far as expenditures. Um, nothing extravagant or extraordinary about this slide. You will see education. and we're going to talk more about that in a minute. That education piece of the pie right there includes Southwestern Community College and Mon County School System. Um, if you look at this chart compared to the chart from last year, you'll see a little bit of a shift from human services over to the general government side. Um, you'll notice or remember that back early in the year, we consolidated the health department. So the way you categorize some of those uh funds or expenditures now they're categorized on the general government side as opposed to the human services side. So when you see that shift in funds that's an internal thing on our from our accountability standpoint as far as what we did as far as consolidation of the health department. It's essentially moving funds from this side of the house to this side of the house over here. Um, and then that essentially breaks down the different categories on where we spend our money at. Capital expenditures. This talks about our our payo capital, which are your big expenditures over $5,000, typically over $100,000 for a lot of them. Um, but those are the ones that we pay for. Uh, we we don't debt service those. We pay for those out of the operating budget. Um it includes vehicles, some IT stuff there, an ambulance. Um and then of course it includes the capital outlay for the uh the school system there. Typically we budget 600,000 for technology and the the other 550,000 is for the general operating capital for the school system. Um I will say typically our normal payo capital is usually $2,750,000.

uh in an effort to to maintain that tax rate and to keep your budget as low as possible, we even made some significant cuts to the u the capital expenditures uh in order to try and keep that financial process in line with where we want to be. Uh for instance, there was another request for an ambulance remount in there and we we ended up taking that out and then the sheriff's department usually we budget for six cars. is this time we took it down to four cars on this capital budget just so we could make sure that we maintain a budget that was as tight as possible but yet still hopefully maintain the the minimal service that that we get and yet not have to force you to do a tax increase that you weren't comfortable with. Couple of the highlights for our employees. Uh you always heard us talk about our employees being one of our best resources because obviously we are in the service business. Um this particular proposed budget includes a cost of living allowance of 2% for our employees. Uh it does maintain the existing pay plan with step adjustments. Um back I think it was 22 2022 I think is when we actually started the process of following through with a step increase every year. And for those of the folks that may or may not be familiar, our our pay system was established with a minimum entry level salary and a maximum. And there's 30 steps in between there. And the intent always was that over the course of 30 years, you advanced through that pay grade based on years of service. And that's how you got to the maximum. Uh due to various circumstances throughout the years, whether it was funding, financial, whatever reason, we didn't we didn't really follow that up until 2022. So this particular budget proposes staying on that same track. Um, we did have an increase in health insurance rates. Ours wasn't terrible. We were about a 6% u increase on our health insurance rates. There are other governments that are seeing anywhere 22%

and up for those health insurance rates. Um, so we did absorb those in the budget. So that's part of our our process there. We did not pass that on to the employees. So that was one of the expenses we absorbed this year. uh county contributions to the to the North Carolina retirement system increased. Uh that's the mandated increases we have to give the state of North Carolina general employees and Lindsay correct me if I say anything wrong. They're 75% increase for general employees and a little over 1% for law enforcement retirement. Uh and that's something that we don't have any say so about. That's that's an increase over what we had last year which also increased. Um, one of the things we talked about also last year, you remember me talking about employees and looking at our pay scale and and trying to make sure our employees were paid correctly and we were in the right spot, but yet we didn't want to to do a a large pay study. We didn't want to to I'm not a big fan of spending a lot of money on a pay study that tells you basically the same thing that you already know. So one of the things we looked at were the I would call them inconsistencies with our pay scale as far as the steps uh and what had happened over the years for various reasons. People would get promoted they change jobs uh different circumstances particularly with the formula that we were using to calculate folks when we gave credit service those steps might not coincide with the the years of service. Well, through some mathematical work between the finance office and the HR staff, we we have figured out a better solution for that that that eliminates that complicated equation. And we found a a solution that's much simpler to operate that puts people reasonably close to where they should be. Uh, and that's essentially no less than three steps below where their work history would put them. And there's an example on there. If we have a 15 15-year employee, you would assume

normally they would be at a step 15, but for whatever reason, they're not. Let's just say this one was at a step nine. This budget proposal looks at those positions that are inconsistent, moves them up to a to a step uh 12, which puts them three steps below where they should be and gets them closer to being in line across the board with where they should be. Um, couple other things that we did. We we looked at our full-time positions that were in our bottom pay grades. Um I think our lowest grade now is an 18, 17, 18. Um those are typically your folks that they do very important work for us, but they can also be recruited very easily from other businesses. Um and we took a lot a look at those bottom grades. We matched those with what I would consider to be some identified standards on what wages should be for those lower grades. We made adjustments for those based on the job duties to put them where they need to be. So we we tried to take care of all of our existing employees. We we took into consideration the economy as far as the cost of living. We also tried to do a fix to hopefully make some corrections to some inconsistencies that have happened with the step process over the years. and we looked at the lower grades to make sure we were making they were adjusted correctly and were making a a a decent wage for the duties that they were producing for us. We also we did do our own study of sorts. Uh we didn't go into great detail, but we pulled a sample of positions that were in our agency and compared them to other agencies outside of Mon County. And I'll start at the bottom. The standardized positions are positions that I would say you could walk out of Mon County and you may go to work for one of your businesses. It could be a maintenance worker. It could be a administrative

assistant. They have skills that that can travel from business to business to location to government. Um those were fairly close to our entry salaries are fairly close to what market is when we looked at those folks. We're not far off with them. But when you look at what we call specialized positions and specialized positions are positions that may have a certification. It may be a law enforcement officer that has to have a certification or a paramedic, a nurse, um somebody from information technology that has to have a a particular credential or code enforcement folks. They can't just walk out and go to work somewhere else. And those they have to have those credentials. Somebody can't just walk in here and do that job. So those are what we kind of classify as specialized positions. When you look at those on average on the on the positions that we looked at and we did a sample of various occupations from administrative assistant to to nurse to deputy to EMS to maintenance, we we did a cross-section of those folks. Um we're about 3.25% below what entry level salaries were for anybody else. Now, if you break out public safety, because public safety is a specialized position, but public safety tends to have its own sector underneath specialized, and if you pull those positions out, we're about 7 and a half% below what entry would be in in other areas. Now, what does that tell us? Gives us a little base information to work off of. Um maybe we need to look at some of those a little closer as we move on into this year, next year. But one of the other one of the other things we need to look at and it's not just this percentage. There are other things that we do to hopefully bring those back in line. So in your budget this year as in other every other year there's a 1% appreciation bonus that usually gets paid out in November. So that 1% if you

took that off of the 3.25% you're down to 2.25%. So that that gets us a little closer with those. uh we still do the 2% 401k which it's not money in your pocket but is a 2% contribution to the 401k and then the other thing that's 100% essential for us to keep doing is to offer credit for service when we have people that come into Mon County um if we hire a detention officer that comes in with five years of experience we we may not put them still at five years but we need certainly not start them at zero years because it's one thing to say what your entry level is but it's another thing to say what you hire people in at. So we want to make sure we maintain that that process. So we'll talk about debt. Last year the the slide I talked to you about debt increasing semi- significantly last year particularly because of the high school. Uh this year our debt service is a little over $9 million which is actually about a $240 $50,000 decrease from last year. Um, that's important. But the other important factor of this, look at year 2028 and year 2029. You'll see almost a u well from 28 to 29 there's a million dollar decrease. So you you see a pretty st sharp decline on that debt service over the next couple of years. Uh, and the reason that's important is remember I had some conversation earlier about our our space needs.

You heard Mitch mention it when we were doing our capital improvement plan. You know, I'm not one to promote borrowing money. However, in certain situations, debt service is not a bad thing. And if you have the capacity, it's something that you need to look at, particular if you start looking at a justice center or something that's going to be a $50 million plus facility. So, I want to make sure you saw that so you can see through the next couple of years, you're going to have some some space in there if you want to look at some type of debt service for whatever capital need or whatever project you're inclined to to pursue, you're going to have that space. Uh, and you'll hear Mitch reference this. I'm going to have him come back to the work session. You'll hear him probably talk about that a little more in the work session. Bacon County Schools request. This is always a big one. Uh you'll see at the top that uh their request was an increase of a little over $3.5 million uh from last year which put them at about 14 a little over 14 and a4 million dollars. The proposed funding that I have in the budget is the the numbers there in the yellow and I'll explain to you how I reached those numbers here on the next slide. But the tober total operational funding allocated for county schools is $10,731,569. Now you also see the next line there. I talk about the, $150,000 capital. That's that's the money that I pulled out of fund balance or proposed pulling out of fund balance as a one-time appropriation to fund their capital needs this year out of that fund balance instead of you having to consider any type of a tax increase for you to fund that. Now, the reason I'm okay with that is traditionally on average over the last four years, every year our fund balance has grown by about $4 million. The average is about $4 million. It was as high as 7 million back in 22. Some in the neighborhood declined over the years some because we spent some money. Last year was an

anomaly. Uh we only grew it like a little over $400,000 last year. However, last year you had some big projects. We had a almost $10 million payout that we paid for the Highland school renovation. So even in years that you have paid significant chunks of things out of that fund balance, even in what's considered a very busy year with those projects, we still grew that fund balance by a little over $400,000. So it doesn't bother me much to go ahead and make that appropriation of $1,150,000 out of fund balance because I have every reason to believe we don't know the numbers yet till the year end finishes. by the time audit comes around and probably before we're going to know that that that number right there is probably going to be a wash with money that we're going to put back into fund balance. So, I don't see you decreasing your fund balance. I would honestly I think I'd be safe to say we're going to break even or probably grow it a little even by using this appropriation. Now, you have other monies that we're going to talk about tonight and going forward that you're going to pull out that fund balance, which we need to make sure

I'm going to get with Mitch and we're going to look at our 10-year outlook on that CIP before we come back to that work session. So, there's some projects we need to tweak and see where we stand so you get a really good picture of that. But that's why I'm really not concerned about that appropriation this year. Now, if the board is so inclined and you don't want to do that, then you can obviously attempt to raise taxes for that amount, uh, if you wanted to fund that with a tax increase, that's just a little over 8/10 of a cent to raise that amount of money. Um, if you wanted to do the full maintain request up there, it would be a little over two and a half cents. And if you want to do both of those, you're 3.4 cents to fund all that with a tax increase. Um, my general impression is that that was not the direction that the board wanted to go this year. So, this is the best option I can get you for that. Now, we can talk about trying to cut somewhere. Um, Lindsay put the brakes on me on capital because I wanted to keep pulling some capital out, but she makes a very good point because if we start pulling some of those PGO capital items out, patrol cars, ambulances, some of those other vehicles.

It may help you this year, but what's going to happen is next year you're going to be behind and instead of buying six cars, you may be buying 10 cars next year. So you all you're doing is postponing the inevitable with that when you do that. So we we have we have looked through this budget and I don't know at this point I don't know anywhere else that we can trim much to get you certainly not a million dollars worth somewhere to get to that point. Uh we we have worked and we have cut and we've made some difficult decisions on some of this stuff and I may not be very popular after this budget with some folks but we've we laid it on the table made those decisions and made you the best proposed budget we could get with those dollar figures. Um, in addition to the, and I'll talk about the numbers up there at the top, you see the solid waste fees that we budget, the the current expenses or operating money, capital supplement money, and then of course timber sales or pass through monies that come to us that we we pass directly on to the school system. We also allocated the the $50,000 for the um CTE pulse internship program from EDC funds. We've been doing that for the last two years. I actually talked to the EDC about this uh two weeks ago. um school systems applying for a Appalachin Regional Commission grant. They're going to try and leverage this for that grant to to bring them even more money into the school system. Uh we were notified this morning that the preapp pre-application was approved, which is your first step. So now they'll go through the full application. So they'll use that money to leverage against that. So you don't have to worry about coming up with any money later on for that. And then and for full disclosure and for full clarity, we've had conversations particularly last year with the budget. Do we ever get to the point where we we fund a percentage of our budget to the school system? That was one of the things the board talked about last year. Well, we we started looking through all the expenses and when you try and tile that together, you need to think about all those expenses

when you come up with that percentage. So, one of the things we did when I show you the next slide, we allocated the the, $1141,000 and some change for the school resource school resource officer program and the $418,000 for the school nurse program. We will show that in that percentage for the school system because those funds we've actually moved those over to show as an expense into the education expense for making county school system. So when you see this slide and if you go back and you look at the other slide, it showed that educational funding was 21% but all of a sudden you look at this slide, it says Mon County Schools is 23%. If you read the bottom there, this this slide actually includes all of the things in the footnote at the bottom, uh, which is the expenses I just talked about, the supplements, solid waste fees, school resource officers, school nurses, and it includes the debt service because out of that $9 million, all but $112,000 of that debt service is for the school system. So, this also includes the debt service that we apply toward that toward the Megan County school system. Um obviously we are nowhere close to to getting what they have asked for.

Um this is a shot of the slide that they had last year on the 2025 2025 2026 budget with their maintenance uh request and then they're going to come do their presentation to you at the work session on 21st. But this is the same slide from this year from 2026 2027 budget. So, the numbers that I plugged in on the other side, I didn't just pull those out of the air last year. The items that I highlighted there were were those numbers came from. Um, I matched the county appropriation we did the year before. And then I funded the the supplements, the local sub supplements and the athletic supplements, including what they projected those increases to be to generate that number for you last year. Then last year, remember I also upped those by $400,000. Then when we came into the work session and the final budget process, I had $200,46 something like that in contingency and you move that money over to the school system. So there was actually roughly a $600,000 increase to that county appropriation last year, which you'll see it reflected down on the 2026 2027 request they're going to have for two for $9.8 million. So the numbers that we generated this year to give you a basis to work off of. Uh we we budgeted in the appropriation, the county appropriation from last year, what they estimated their local supplements needed to be the local supplement increase on the other side. And we also included the what they projected as a retirement increase and a hospitalization increase because we knew from doing our budget, we had the same issues with hospitalization and retirement increases. So, we plug that into that number that I showed you on the slide there. Now, obviously, that is nowhere close to to what they have asked for. There's some other numbers there. Um, I'll talk about the 7% and the 5%

raise. They had estimated those figures. Um, the issue we had with that and and Lindsay and I talked about that and decided we we need to take that discussion up at a later date. Those are projected numbers. Um, state hasn't passed a budget yet. We we will have passed two budgets by the time the state passes one this year. I can only imagine the financial difficulty that they have trying to interpret a budget and come up with a budget not knowing

what you've got coming in from those folks. Um fortunately for them they have another option. They can they can ask us. So they have different funding methods. We don't have that option. I can't go anywhere to ask. So we we don't have that issue. but we weren't sure how we could plug that in not knowing what those numbers are really going to be. So that will probably be something for sure that we need to have in that discussion with them and see how we want to handle that if how you want to deal with that in the future. And then of course the other operational expenses that they have plugged in there. I'm sure they'll provide more detail to that when they come to your work session. As far as Southwestern Community College, uh the college would request a fund amount of a little over $2 million. Um, I actually put their proposed operational funding at 510,439, which is the amount that I plugged in last year. Uh, last year, remember, we did some some various operational monies with them, including a maintenance position. Um, we funded a maintenance position for them instead of sending one of our maintenance employees out there. Um, they had some other funds requests in there. They also in the the capital total they had plugged in 800,000 as a placeholder for the uh for the driving track. Uh the estimates have really come back on that they're going to be way less than that. They're going to be 600,000 or less. So I think that's I think it's prudent for us based on the the financial constraints that you have at the moment knowing particularly that school system there's $3.5 million there that we didn't get anywhere close to getting them. Leave this operational funding where it is at the moment. We'll have Dr. Thomas and his staff come into the work session. We'll talk to them to see see where they're at financially. The capital projects, including the uh the driving track, we'll address those on a one-on-one basis like we do our normal capital projects when they come to us, bring the information, and we

deal with those. Um last year, we made a uh a concentrated effort. We originally had estimated $2.5 million in the CIP plan to do the National Guard Armory. Uh we've worked really hard to value engineer that design down so that for the $2.5 million we should be able to do the renovations to the armory and do the driving track and still be able to pull that off. And if I had to push an urgency for anything I would say that I would like for the driving track to come back before you preferably in the July meeting so we can go ahead and appropriate that money. Uh because I know they've if the board is so inclined they've already got the the details worked out for class to start this fall. So if if we want them to continue with that, we need to certainly consider that very quickly. Uh and then one other thing that uh they had talked about in the in the lease agreement and other discussions we've had with the Southwestern Community College, they've talked about when the burn building comes online, there there's two projects. You have the Armory renovation, you have the burn building, which is a modular structure that they're putting there behind the uh the classroom facility. when it comes online, they've they've basically told us for years, several years, that to be anticipating a request for another maintenance position for that facility. Um, they did put that in a request this year. Uh, they asked that it start uh it' be in December for a seven-month position. Lindsay and I decided that we're going to hold it at the moment or I decided we're going to hold it at the moment. And when we get closer to the point when that building will actually be constructed because they're still waiting on some timing on it because it's actually got to be built somewhere else and shipped in here and uh to go through this process rather than us setting aside money that we may be two or three months early or four months early or something. We'll go back and address that in a year as we get a little bit closer to that deadline somewhere. Library funding. Um the library funding this year was requested at 1,628,276,000.

That's that's a almost a $400,000 increase over what the request was last year. And a significant amount of that request was attributed to Jackson County leaving the FRL. Uh, by all intents and purposes, it's our understanding that Jackson County chose to to withdraw a year ago and that year is up at the end of June. And it's our understanding at this point that that withdrawal probably will take place. And of course there are some uh back of the house expenses with that with FRL uh some of subscription services some other things that typically had been shared with three counties now would only be shared with two counties which which is where the u the increase came in. Um so for for budget proposals I proposed 1,249,601 in the budget which takes in consideration the budget we had last year. uh they did have some employee costs. They have the normal operating cost increase that everybody else does. So that gives them a little bit of funds for uh for that, but I think we should have a a discussion with Fontana Regional Library System. They do have a fund balance. So I think we we should have a conversation with them. I thought it was prudent to at least discuss with them not knowing where this is going to land as far as how the operational expenses are going to work out over the next year if there only two counties involved in this. Let them at least have the discussion if they could fund that increase out of their fund balance this year just as we're having to do because of an increase somewhere and have that talk and see where we can land before I committed that extra $400,000 there that that was pretty crucial for us to have in other places capital improvements um the fund balance that we're talking about the the there's some monies that we've already essentially I wouldn't say earmarked but we've we've either said or committed

that we're going to spend um many many years ago. Uh the boards have the boards prior have basically committed a little over $2.6 million to this burn building project and we've now moved it into a fund because we think that construction is going to be coming very very quickly. Uh the $2.5 million, you've heard me talk about that already. Previously, the board had committed to $376,000 and some change to a science room improvement at the Grove Center. Uh we discussed it last year, but they removed it and kicked it forward a year because they're going to wait and see where they landed on with with funding on the burn building to see if they had any money left. Uh in their request this year, and I'm sure you hear Dr. Thomas talk about it,

they've got pricing back on that. So, they're going to come back and ask for some more funds for that. But I plugged the same number in that the board had previously made a commitment to a couple years ago with 376,000. Um, we're going to talk about the pickle ball courts tonight. Um, I plugged in $3 million. You're going to hear some other figures tonight. Uh, the the capital improvement plan projection for that is was between two and a half to $2.8 million is what we had planned in the capital improvement plan. Um there's also some repairs make it early college we're going to talk about tonight. Uh we've been approached by some folks from the uh the Highlands playground folks. Previously the boards have made some commitment to for $350,000 for a playground that I understand is now beginning to take place in the Highlands that the board will need to consider if they're going to honor that commitment to that funding. And then there's still some some communication issues that we need to be thinking about with the school system as we move along to make sure we're good there. Um remember a couple months ago we actually applied for some part of funding for the next phase of the rec park project. Uh the next phase will include the amphitheater, the multi-use court and a new restroom facility. Um and that was like $1.25 million I believe is the request. But out of that if we get the part of funding you would be on the uh the hook for $650,000 and the board's already made a previous commitment to that. If we got that grant we could fund that. Now, you could always if the grant comes and the money's not there, you can always turn it down, but you need to be planning for that since you've already thought about that. So, I plug that in for our discussion. Um, capital improvement plan. You've seen some stuff in the news lately about East Franklin, possible replacement of the elementary school there. Uh, we've had it plugged into our uh capital improvement plan. Uh, there's 36 million that we need to think about for there. However, uh the plan would be and

particularly in the capital improvement plan, that money would come from the uh the lottery funds, the needs-based lottery funds. Um we've plugged 36 million in. You'll see in my my budget message. I mentioned 42 million. The max on those elementary schools, if I'm not mistaken, is 42 million, but 36 has been the number that's been plugged in there for years. So, of course, that may change, but if if you were to receive that lottery money, that's that would be a wash on those funds. Then, of course, I talked about maintenance needs at our facilities. We we tend to have those $100,000 projects pop up that it's a lot of money, but it's something we have to do because if we don't do a $100,000 project now and the roof's bad, it'll be a $300,000 project in three years. So, there's always those projects we need to consider. And then there's $350,000 requests that folks from Hudson Library came back to you uh a couple months ago. So you need to be thinking about that. Of course, I'll I'll ask those folks to to talk to you in the work session about that. And then what do we want to do moving forward? Um I think we need a clear priority on our future projects. We we've talked some things through. We we've made good progress. One thing about this board that I'm pretty proud of is we we tend to make progress. We we have done things. We've accomplished things, but but we need to narrow down our priorities on where we want to go. Um our commitments, evaluate what commitments we've had with our fund balance already, like the the playground money or the burn building money. Let's see where we want to go with some of these capital projects. Do we want to do pay go for them? Do we want to do debt service? How do we want to do that? deal with our maintenance issues and then make sure all these funding decisions that we have correlate with our our existing financial policies. Um yeah, solid waste enterprise fund that's completely separate budget from the general fund. Most a lot of folks don't understand that. That has to run like a

business. Um couple of things going on there. Obviously the new sales under construction. We're going to integrate a hauling strategy to try and extend our sale capacity. Depending on how far you wanted to expand and how you haul, that current facility could be at least 40 years uh of life, depending on how far you want to go with it. Uh something we need to keep in mind, we've talked about the Carson Convenience Center that we're going to fix with grant funds. We talked about the recovery building with grant funds. We're going to talk about fees in a second. We've had to adjust our brush fees, brush disposal fees. Our grinding contract has went up. Um, basically that's a pass through cost for those. Um, and I'll show you the differences those in a moment. Uh, we are going to propose some adjustments to some various fees for them. I'll give you a little more detail on that and I'll have Jamie come to the work session and she can speak a little more in detail and we're going to propose a an increase to the tipping fee of $6 per ton. And that's across the board. And basically what that does is that covers our increased operational costs. There are some brush disposal costs. We in Highlands particularly, we don't figure in any any expense on our part for handling. The cost we have up there is strictly for a contractor to come in and grind and haul. So things like that unfortunately you have to cover somewhere else. Um I fredded over the $6 a ton sum. However, I I broke it down to the per pound. And when you look at per pound, that's not a lot. Also, I hate to say it, but when you've priced gravel or some other things by the ton lately, $6 is not a whole lot. The other other dilemma that I've pondered over when we did this budget discussion, we have two ways of funding solid waste. We have an availability fee, which is the fee that's charged per household, goes out on the tax bill, and we have our our normal tipping fees. Those are the business charges you charge, and you can change those anytime during the year, but you can only change the availability fee when you send out the tax bills.

Well, in my mind, the availability fee is the fee per household. That's what grandmother and grandfather pay to be able to go to the convenience center to throw their garbage away without having to pay a tipping fee when they get the landfill. Uh it also goes out as part of the tax bill. So, to me, that's more of a tax increase. So, I kept those rates flat for for that side of the business over there. Um the $6 per ton will affect more your commercial folks, the folks that haul in somewhere. Um, obviously it's the board's decision on what to do with those fees, but I felt that was the most prudent prudent way to shift that revenue requirement to the some folks to hopefully generate some more revenue to make sure that facility stays uh economically viable. The proposed fees that they're in this slide, uh, you see the change in the tipping fee from $66 a ton to $72 a ton. Uh you see the difference in the brush fees from Franklin and Highlands. Obviously Franklin the grinding is cheaper here because it doesn't have to be hauled here. So the grinding is done on site and disposed of here on site. Uh Highlands is more expensive because obviously you have to truck that from Highlands down here. Um that's a fairly significant increase but that's the pass through cost on it. That's what our contract was for charged. And the one thing about brush that I can say for brush that I can't say for solid waste is there are other options to get rid of that. If if that fee is not doable for folks, there are other options. And unfortunately, if if you didn't want to pay the the money in highlands, you could certainly bring it to the landfill down here and pay a less expensive fee. Um tires. We Jamie looked at some of the things particularly tires, mattresses that that are very bulky that we were charging by the ton. Well, when you some of those items, either no charge or by the ton. And when you did that, you were in no means compensating yourself for

the space that you took up in the landfill. So, that's why we decided for for instance with the mattress, instead of charging $66 a ton, we do a $10 item charge on a mattress. Um, useful materials, one of that's that's stuff, rock or other things they bring in that we can use at the landfill. Um, and then the mixed trash. When you got recycling and trash mixed together, obviously that's harder for us to sort. Uh, so that stuff didn't go in the landfill, so that's what that charge is. And then electronics is is a good example of per item charge or a minimum load charge. We proposed a minimum load charge because you could come across the scales with something and depending on the weight of it, you might get charged a dollar. You might get charged a dollar and a half. Well, when you really look at the business end of this, remember it does have to run like a business. Your processing charges on that dollar, dollar and a half, $2 is more than what you're going to bring in revenue. So, essentially, it was prudent for us to set a $5 minimum for that as far as adjusting that fee. fire departments. Three fire departments had changes this year. Highlands Fire and Rescue's proposed a two cent increase um in their budget. Uh Kis Gorge Fire and Rescue has proposed a 9/10 of a cent increase in their budget. And Cow Fire and Rescue has actually proposed decreasing the budget on the Burning Town district because you remember when we when you merged them together, they kept both service districts. You have Cowi and you have Burning Town. They have proposed adjusting the Burning Town district down to the Cali area and dropping off two hundreds of a cent there to make those equal. Uh and of course those two increases I'll have them come to the work session so you can talk to them about the increase that they've requested. So in conclusion, I'm well over my 15 minutes that I allowed myself. The uh proposed budget is $68,45,08 with the tax rate remaining the same as

balanced for your consideration. I will also tell you when you look at those numbers, um if you look at our actual budget this year, our actual budget this year is just a little over $70 million. Um typically what happens is we have grant monies come in during the year. You have other revenue streams come in during the year. Um, there was a transit. The only position that I included in the budget, you'll see in the documents this year, was a transit position. Uh, the reason I considered it is it was funded 100% by a $200,000 grant from the state of North Carolina. So, when you put those funds in, you'll see those numbers rise, but usually there's an offset on those, the reason those numbers go up. And I I think that's an actual portrayal of where your your budget's actually going to be. So this time, gentlemen, I will certainly be open to questions tonight. I'm sure you've you haven't had a chance to look at all this. There'll be more of them in on the 21st, but I'm certainly open to questions.

Well, thank you, Mr. K. Good job. And Miss Lindsay Leopard, there was a lot of work that went into that. Very well put together, very crystal clear. Um, I know I'm going to take a few a few days to digest that myself. Does anybody have any questions?

No, the presentation it looks um looks really well. The county employees are recognized in this budget. Um maybe not to the fullest, but also the um taxpayers of this county is recognized with no tax increase. So I think it's at early stages of this budget is um I think it's a win for everybody. All right. Any other comments? Well done, sir.

Yeah, I I do want to express my appreciation. The HR staff and the finance staff have been fantastic. This was I won't say it was an easy process but but they have worked really hard to make sure that we generated you a good product. Thank you so much both of you and all your staff. All right. I hate to just move on after all that discussion but I'm good. It's fine. There's a lot of information right there that All right. Well, we're going to move on. Uh old business. Approval of updated Mon County Recreation Commission bylaws. Parks and Rec Director Seth Adams. Welcome, Seth.

Good evening, gentlemen. Um, I'm here tonight uh for your consideration and approval of a new set of bylaws for the recreation commission um in the county as proposed. Um some of the the main changes is we're going to switch it from a seven member board down to a five member voting board with two county commission liaison. And those five members will consist of somebody from the Franklin area, somebody from the Nana area, somebody from the Highlands area, a school representative, and a senior representative. Um those are the main main changes. Um, if you guys got any questions.

Well, I feel like we uh we talked about this last month. Took a few days to digest. Commissioner Shur, any thoughts? All right. Is that in the form of a motion? I'll make a motion that we adopt this um new set of bylaws for make county recreation. All right. I hear a motion by Commissioner Shur, second by Commissioner Breeden. Any other discussion? Hearing none. All in favor, please raise your right arm, state I for the record. I Any oppose. All right, Miss Tammy. Motion passes 5. Thank you, Seth.

All right, that was quick. Update on the quarter cent sales tax. Commissioner Shields.

Uh, thank you very much and I appreciate you people coming out here and staying in here with us. Uh what we're wanting to present to you tonight is hope that you understanding of the one quarter of a penny sales tax and I hope you can take it out into your communities and uh share that information. Uh what we've done, we started in November 25 putting a team together. Uh we had um I saw Betsy here base somewhere. Betsy, she's gone. Okay. And myself. We put a team together and we started into three phases. Phase one we looked at trying to develop a resolution and it was uh exemplified here in February where the board here passed that the resolution would be uh capital improvements for the monies that we're bringing in. Also, it would be uh voted on by the voters of Mon County. And uh at this time uh Eric Haggard uh he's a um one of our members on this team and he's put a little slide together here uh to uh just to educate you a little bit because we're going to come out into your communities. Uh this we're in the sec uh second phase now moving into the third phase. Uh when we start marketing uh he's going to show you what we're going to market tonight. Then we're going to move it out into your communities, whether it's uh rotary clubs, whether it's your fire stations or whatever it may be, and share it with you. And uh we hope you have an understanding for it. This will be the third time we've proposed this uh one one quarter of a penny sales tax and we hope it goes through this time. In our region, region A, we have seven counties. uh all six counties already have passed this proposal and Mon County is the only

one that hasn't and we would like to u put this type of money you're talking about $2.2 $2 million to say put that in Warren's budget here. It's your budget and try to help out uh a little bit uh w with going forward in the budget things. Uh Eric Hagert is the the guru tonight. Thank you, Eric, for being here.

Yes, sir. Um thank you for having me here. I um came onto the committee in January and there was probably 15 of us that were meeting and our last meeting we had two folks. Uh it's kind of dwindled but um as as Mr. Shield has already introduced part of this. This is an educational piece for the folks in Mon County. Um what this one quarter of a penny um will be used for, how it will be collected, and who will pay and how uh it can be used going forward. Um and to see this will be an educational piece that we'll take out to the folks in the county. Thank you. So, it's of course titled to get to know the facts about this one quarter of a penny uh sales tax. Little history. Back in 2007, uh the general assembly of North Carolina granted county board of commissioners the authority to levy subject to voter approval an additional one quarter of a penny sales and use tax. So, the local sales and use tax referendum was on the ballot 22 and in 24 and it failed those two times. What is going to be on the ballot in November that we'll be voting for? This is the exact uh verbiage that will be on your ballot. Local sales and use tax at the rate of one quarter percent which is 0 or 0.25%. 25% in addition to all other state and local sales and use taxes. Mon County voters will vote to decide whether they want to approve this tax or not.

Excuse me, Eric. Let me let me say one thing. When you see this on the vote, remember that says one quarter. Please explain that before we get there. That's the way it's on there. But it's one quarter of a penny. 1/4 of a and but when they that's hurt us before that one quarter. I was presenting this back in the 24 22 in one of our districts and I thought he's going to run me out of there uh when I said one quarter of a cent and they didn't hear the scent. So help me with that out there is it but that it's the way it is on that ballot. So, make sure we're trying to save one quarter of a penny and we just keep saying that. Thank you, Eric.

Yes, sir. Um, so again, this is not an automatic tax increase. Um, this is, as we'll show throughout the rest of this presentation, um, how this tax is collected and who pays it. So, some of the questions that I'll try to answer throughout the rest of the presentation are who pays the tax, what is the money going to be used for, how does it affect you personally, when would it start, and where is it already in place, and we'll walk through each of these steps clearly. So, who pays the tax? local residents, visitors, um people who are shopping from other communities here in Franklin and and in the county. A key point is that visitors contribute uh which helps bring in outside revenue to support the community. Now, you saw some of these uh slides. This is an example of um the budget and these are some line items that some of this money could be used uh to pay towards some of these capital projects. Public safety, um police, fire, and EMS, schools, infrastructure, community services. The goal is to invest in things that benefit everyone in the county. So when would it take effect? So in November the refer if the ren referendum was excuse me passed by the voting public the board of commissioners then decides if they would wish to levy the tax via a resolution. Once adopted the board of commissioners must send certified copy to of the resolution along with a copy of the election results to the North Carolina Department of Revenue. So, in short, if the referendum doesn't

pass in November, nothing else happens. But if it does, the steps to the right um that we just talked about, um the county board of commissioners wish to levy the tax. They provide 10-day public notice of its intent to adopt adopt a resolution to levy the tax. Once they adopt a re a resolution to levy the tax, they send it on to the North Carolina Department of Revenue. As Mr. Shields mentioned earlier, um in region A, there are seven counties. Um but I expanded out a little bit to Madison and Lunkome counties because they also have levied this quarter of a penny tax to their uh on their county. Um, we are there at 6.75%. And the the proposed one quarter of a penny increase on this sales and use tax would generate roughly $2.3 million. So, some of the things that this uh sales and use tax do not apply to are grocery items. Many of the staples of foods that you buy at your grocery store will not be increased. Prescription medications, certain medical items, some equipment and supplies, farm and manufacturing exemptions, and resale purchases. Items that are subject to this quarter of a penny are tangible personal property. Um goods you can see, feel, or touch like electronics, furniture, clothing, and household items. Prepared food and beverages, meals from restaurants, fast food. Um prepared

foods that you can purchase at a grocery store like a salad bar or a food mint bar. Soft drinks and candies. uh some warranties and uh maintenance contracts, digital property, leases and rentals, laundry and dry cleaning and admissions for shows at the theater, concerts or sporting events. These items are subject to that one quarter of a cent sales and use tax when purchased here in Mon County. So, how does this work? this small change um as Commissioner Cheryl you mentioned earlier today this evening about rounding up at grocery store or rounding up at your when you're paying a bill at the store. I too rounded up at Lowe's today um to make that dollar purchase even and uh it was for veterans. This is rounding up from 6.75% to 7% but that's one quarter of a penny. So, when you go to shop and you uh spend $4, the increased amount that you're going to pay is only one penny more. So, if an item costs you $428 now, it'll cost you $4.29 if this goes through. And then it scales up the more that you um spend on these items. But the money that is generated from this will stay here. Um it will go into programs that will benefit us all. public safety, our seniors and our community centers, education, infrastructure, our animal shelter, and other capital improvements. That's really about it. This is meant to be an educational presentation and it's

also meant to uh start conversations so that folks are getting the correct information about how this is going to come into effect and where the money can be spent to. Now, that QR code does work. Um we have a Facebook page um where we will be putting a lot of this information uh as we go forward on into the um November referendum vote. And if you have any questions, please ask them on the page. Um that's all I really have.

Okay. Another thing that uh we hope to do, we're going to put legs on this thing here and we're going to move into the community. Uh, as as I said a while ago, Rotary clubs, fire departments, and those type things uh to give more information. Uh, I I've got another person I want to introduce here. Uh, I I I'm being on his brain a little bit there the other day. Um, Roger French. I see Roger. Stand up there, brother. Now, Roger is a is a marketing guru also, just like uh Eric there. And uh what we feel like it's important when we come out to your meetings and things like that, it's like anywhere you go, you can go to Rotary, if they put on a meeting, they got a visual part that you can see, you can see it and you can hear it. But we want to make sure that we leave a leaflet so that you can take that with you. And uh some things happen here tonight and you can see a leaflet that we're handing out outside for another uh piece of this program. But Roger is uh a person I didn't find him the other day. We were in the same meeting that has some ideas on on leaflets, how we can leave leaflets and how they have meaning. So when you come to one of our meetings or we come to you in one of our meetings, we want to leave you something that you can put stick in your shirt pocket and you can walk out the door with it and read it later on when you're sitting on the porch doing whatever. Uh, Roger, appreciate you being here. Anything you need to say. I'm putting you on the spot.

I think you said it all.

All right, brother. Uh, thank you, Eric. Thank y'all very much for being here, staying here, spread the gospel. We're coming into your communities. And, uh, this one fourth of a penny, what's that word? Quarter, but I'm telling you, it's on that ballot is a quarter. One quarter of a cent. And uh we appreciate how you help put monies into the the bank account. We can make making county safer. We can make it more healthy and we can uh help a lot within the schools. We're just a small contributor. Uh I believe it's estimated around a little bit over $2 million, but that's a lot of money to me. And I want to say thank you very much for staying around to listen to this. Eric, it's I mean it's back yours.

All right. Warren. All right. Thank you, Commissioner Shields. A very well put together presentation. Thank you. This next item on the agenda uh has been ongoing for years and years, but I'm glad to see it on there, and I do see me many members of the um Kalisa community out there. Uh discussion and approval of resolution authorizing county manager to convey property to Pinerove School Community Club, Inc. Uh Mr. Cab and Attorney Rener.

So, Mr. Chairman, uh we have been working with these folks over a period of the last year. We've we've had you started this discussion probably well over a year ago in order for them to hopefully take that building over as a community club facility. We actually met with them probably a month and a half ago now, maybe a little longer. Um, we've made some improvements to that facility, some heat and air improvements and some structural improvements to make sure the building's sound for them. Uh, they are financially stable now at this point. They're very active. Uh, they have informed us that they are to a position where they're ready to assume ownership of that facility. U, that process needs to be done by resolution. and Eric can explain more about that, but basically there's a resolution in your packet transferring that ownership to them. Uh it does maintain the stipulation. We'd like for it to be a polling place obviously. Um but essentially that's all I have at this point. I think we're we're ready to do that. I don't know if any of those folks have any comments they want to make.

Any comments, Mr. Becker?

Eric, anything I missed? Um well, we've got the um we do have some covenants in there um that are proposed. This is up to you all. It's a three-step process. The first one is you all pass the resolution authorizing Warren to um to execute the deed. Then he has to publish it in the newspaper uh giving notice of the intent. And then once that out 10 days after after the notice is published then he can go ahead and convey it. In the past there has been cabinets on it and so I included those thinking you might want to do it but we can revise or add as many as you as you all want. Um so those are in your packet. Um we made it subject to the following terms and conditions. It is to promote the public interest and provide beneficial services to the residents, including but not limited to use by the citizens of the county and the public in general as an historic site and for us as directed by the Mon County Board of Elections as a public polling place for the citizens of Sugar. It's it the nonprofit is responsible for the maintenance, repairs, renovations, improvements, and utilities. County manager is authorized to include such additional terms as are customary. Uh so if there's something that comes up after this warrant, you're still given a warrant at the authority to add those to the deed before we record it. And then in the event that it should cease to be used for public purpose um or the conditions fail to be kept and observed for a period of over 30 days after written notice of any violations of the upkeep and maintenance. Mon County Board of Commissioners may declare the title reverts back to the Mon County and record a deed confirming the same. That

is what we did in the past. Although we did go ahead and and have that that nonprofit execute the deed just to make the title cleaner. We have cleaned up the property. There were some overlap boundary line overlaps with some of the neighboring property owners and we exchanged deeds to clear that up so that we own everything in between the two two main roads there. And again, it's up to you all if you wanted to add or subtract from from those conditions on the de comments. I think it's well written and um and it has been um discussed with the uh community um and the county has um as Warren said have done a lot of work for this facility to get them up and running. They're financially stable to do this. So I think um u good with it. That's so at this time I would like to make a motion that we authorize the county manager to execute the deed as uh discussed.

Second. I hear a motion by Commissioner Shur, second by Commissioner Shields. I'd just like to add that that's a very special property. It's a pillar of that community and I'm just glad to see it's going to get the love that it deserves. So, thank you guys. Any other comments? No, I'm like you. I'm thankful that u that group of u community leaders took this um we had it sold and u then we rethought that process and said this has much more value to the community of Sugar Fort than those few dollars that we were going to get. So, thank you.

And I think it's a positive that it's a polling station. You know, I think that's pretty sentimental. All right. All in favor, please raise your right arm, state I for the record. I I Any oppose. All right, Miss the motion passes 50. Thank you guys. All right,

over here that way, too. That's good. Need a little break every now and then. All right. discussion and consideration of making early college repair bid. Uh, planning director Joe Allen. Good evening. Joe.

Hey guys. Uh, we'll pass out some pictures of the early college in case you guys haven't been out there lately. Uh so the uh Mon County Early College is a similar building to M County Public Library which we had repairs on last year. similar construction, similar time frame. Uh we've got corners pulling away column uh brick column corners pulling away from the corners of the building. Uh timber frame support posts that are decaying and in need of repair. Um so we have two options. We've got a bid for those repairs which is $165,433.95. Uh the school system actually asked us to explore the possibility of enclosing that area and to make some additional office space for them. Uh that's basically two 12 by 12 rooms offices. Uh that total will be $647,3461. So, if you have any questions on the repairs or the potential addition of office space, I'll be happy to

I haven't been there before a number of times. I want to say it's uh it's a safety feature here. Uh I see four doors there and you can walk in, but uh if you're out there today and you walk in those four doors, you're you're in the inside of the of the school. and give a little breather there before you get totally inside the school is a safe piece. A lot of things can be evaluated during that safe time. Appreciate what you're doing.

Thank you, Joe. Any other comments? Need a motion on that? Sure. So, yeah. So, what was the what was the number just to fix the order? Just to make the repairs is $165,433.95.

And I will say the the number we originally had in the bid package, we had some options there we had to discuss. So, if you don't mind, Joe, repeat that number again for enclosing that office space. Right. So, enclosing the office and is $647,3461. And that is basically a $481,912 difference between repair and addition. And I did have some questions as to why that was expensive, but Joe explained to me that's really hard space there to convert into office because the way that structure is

and I will be glad to go into that. How many square feet is that? $420 roughly. 420. So you're looking at like $1,150 a square foot. Yeah. Wow. Well, I'd say I'd say one thing. It's hard to put a dollar figure on a person's life. And uh if it any way possible, we should uh move forward uh with the safety move.

Question on the entry doors. Are they not electronic like the all the other public schools? Yeah, you have to be buzzed in. Yeah. So, I mean that if if the safety piece is there that they're in that foyer before anybody knows, well, that's the way all schools are. Well, Mon Middle School is not. You go through a before you you can walk in to make a middle school. They buzz you in from the outside, then you're in an arena before you go up to the secretar's desk. You got some space here. You do not have space. it immediately turns into tables and students. And for someone here from early college, you can elaborate on that. Um

actually went out there a couple years ago and they showed me they actually discussed with me the plan of wanting to do that. It actually makes a lot of sense to to do it. It is expensive, but at the same time, for the safety of these kids, it makes sense. Mr. Bale, I see you back there. How many students we have out there? A couple hundred. 150. And how many faculty members? 150. We don't know because a huge duplication of expenses there. Correct. We wouldn't we wouldn't be tearing something out that we've already fixed.

There will not be. So currently the way the addition is drawn, the reason why that price is a little bit higher and I I I agreed with very completely $1,100 per square foot is seems exorable, but those support post that are actually holding the roof structure up right now. If we did the addition would go away. You'd have a structural slab, exterior walls be carrying the roof load just like normal. you'd be basically doing away with the timber frame look. So to your point, Warren, yes and no. So you would we would be redoing we would be tearing out what we what we had just repaired basically the majority of what we repaired if we decided later down the road.

How many bids did we get? Got one bid. One bid. So I will speak to that. The first time we bid, we got one bid. So then we put it back out for rebid again and we only got one bid the second time when they came back in the second time. It's actually been bid twice.

So at this facility are they only needing 420 ft to put them over the top? I mean, seems to me like we have this and let's just go ahead and enclose it. Whether that's going to solve all the needs at the early college. Um, I mean it 420 square feet, two offices. Um, if they have that many students and faculty and stuff, probably ought to look internally with that and see exactly what all is needed there. Uh, but I can't um I mean I agree the um the building's got to be fixed, but $1,100 some dollars square foot, one bid um 420 ft without any real knowledge of what is truly needed by the early college. Uh I just I'm not

I'm not What about Excuse me, John. What about the construction people that were out at the library when they were working on the front of that building there? the same group that bid on the early college and they're the only one bid. Yes. We must have run them off. Oh, they No, they they uh we actually had three guys, three other two other biders show up to the pre- bid meeting, but they chose not to put a bid in a reason. A reason that we were given. Is it typical to just have one bid on stuff like this? But out at the library, you had about three bids. Didn't we have about three bids on that? I'm sorry. On which on the library?

On the library. Uh, that was I don't remember for your time. Yeah, I was I don't remember how many we had on that one. There's more than one. The company that bid on bid on this was Ren Wind River, which is the company that did the repairs on the library. They did a great job. I mean, they do good work. Um, they're the they were the only bidder that we Where are they from? It's their local company. Sean Callahan, Sean Callahan's company. Any idea why? Any idea why only one bid?

It's a complicated project. Um, I don't know if you guys remember that library repair, all that shoring that you have to do. Um, it's you're showing up a roof and working underneath it. I mean, it's not not for everybody. Plus, I mean, we live in a time where the construction business is booming. A lot of these guys don't want to get off the jobs that they're on to come do something like this because it's going to be an aggravating job. It is going to be aggravating. I'll share with you my thoughts.

You probably couldn't have picked a worse meeting to present this increase. I feel like we have no choice but to make the repairs. But uh you know this budget Mr. K presented, I heard him make a comment about cutting back an ambulance, cop cars, several million dollars behind on the school system. I feel like we have to work on this budget before I can allocate $600,000 to a 400 foot entryway. I think our asks are so high and he just presented the budget to us. I just feel like I have no problem fixing the immediate need, but I don't think today I could support expanding the whole project in today's time knowing what I know from Mr. Cape. That's just where I'm at.

Understand it, Joe. On the repairs also underneath this roof. Of course, they're going to frame all this in and make offices. Of course, all the the brick columns and stuff has to disappear and all that other stuff

in the repair. Can they actually and that's just question. Can they not abandon this area until we get a better picture on the needs for this the early college and the addition? Could they not do the other external repairs and leave this alone? And um because there's no need in fixing this when it's potentially going to be enclosed cuz you're you're spending money repairing this that you're going to rip out um to enclose it.

Uh I think so. I I don't think it's in that roof is in in immediate danger of falling. Um it's getting in bad shape, but I don't think it's going to fall tomorrow. Right. That's what you're asking. Do Yeah. I mean, I just hate to put money into this when um we're going to potentially rip it all back out again. So, and I just don't see the funds. Um unlike the chairman, I just don't see the funds. Um Joe, if we put if we even if we just did the repairs, can we put this out to bid again?

Uh not without some significant changes. If we just do the repairs, can we put this off a bid again? I mean, yes, you nothing's going to prohibit you from giving like future bids, but I was just kind of sidebaring with him. If you go and start changing the scope of, hey, don't do this.

You're risking some probably you would probably need to rebid what you're asking to do because you've changed the whole scope of the project. other people might have bid if they didn't have to do that piece of it or something like that. So, I think you have to award repairs only, repairs and renovations, scratch it and rebid it how you want. But that would I'm going to tell you they re they've bid it twice. So, I mean you're going to have

and John and Danny and Warren to your point that alternate number five is actually putting that structural slab in there. So you could add that to your repairs and have the slab ready to go once it was ever sided and close that area. But if you're going to change the base bid specs, I would say don't award it at all and rebid it with what you guys are wanting or bid by base with all that. Joe, would you carry out that gable all the way out to enclose that area? Is that what's proposed on the design? It's We're enclosing what is underneath,

but you'd have to replace it is what I'm asking. The whole roof, the whole structure, they're saving it. They're they're going to be profiting it up, building walls underneath it. $600,000 just to go blow roof. Yeah. And there's I mean there is a little cover entryway, cover porch type area right at the the door going into the new addition. But yeah,

take a second look at it back and look at it again. See uh if there's other options or better price or something like that. I think I think the price is high, but the need is great. Uh revisit it. go back and see what you can uh next month come back to us again. See see if it's still the same or higher. We do that, Lindsay, without making significant changes to the scope.

I think Yeah. I mean, if you're going to change what that the what it was originally bid as as the base bid. If you're changing any of that, we're going to have to just have the board just reject all bids and rebid it. you're not going to be able to negotiate that base bid spec. So, if you're not pleased with, hey, we're just going to repair it, then I think you reject all bids tonight, it's going to have, you know, you're have to have Joe and work with the architect again. I'm not sure what that's going to

I almost feel like we need to come to a decision because I like the local bidder. He's already bid twice. Nobody else is interested. I mean, odds are if he bids again, it's going to be a higher bid or he's not going to bid again. And I'll be completely transparent. This is really his third bid because we bid it the first time and it was not we were not in compliance. So, we just we just rejected and moved. And he has been very patient with us. I will say that the bidder has been very patient with us through this because we've had some struggles with What kind of time frame are you working in? Can you finish during the summertime? I think if we gave him the go-ahhead pretty soon that he could finish it in the summertime. Yeah.

So, you wouldn't have students back in that area until August. So, you'd have all summer to roll around whenever you need to do. When does that bid expire? Uh, I think maybe 30 days. Was it 30 days? Usually it's 30 to 60 days standard. I'm not sure. But you guys I mean the last thing I'll say is I think that you know I don't know what the growth is. Mr. Bill, do you know what the growth is out there over the last five years?

I'm very Yeah. But we don't have any feedback from Southwestern. That's their pretty much their students, the school system. I mean, you know, county school. Yeah. Yeah. But it's through the, you know, Southwestern. It's the early college. Um, I just feel like we're jumping into this and we're doing a project for a hefty price tag, you know, and and Commissioner Cheryl's not wrong. I mean, if if there needs to be more space out there, then why aren't we having an assessment done saying, "Hey, this, you know, are they going to come back in two years and say, well, we need to add two classrooms to this cuz we're out of room."

We did meet with them, Mr. Shields. We met with them back when I first came on with the principal out there and the staff and that's where the original layout came from from this facility, but that really hasn't changed since then. So, I I agree. I think I think you have two option or a couple options. You either you either approve the repair bid, you could reject the repair bid and we bid again, or you could table it maybe even to the to the work session or the uh to the June meeting to buy yourself a little more time. I'm I'm sure within reason I would assume the bid's going to be good to that point anyway. So if you want to have some more time, have some more input, we can obviously do that. If you want to table it tonight and have more discussion at 21st at the school system.

Last question. What are the two offices used for? What are they going to be used for? Administrative person and the SRO was going to be there in the front was the original intent when we had the discussion with them.

That's where they have the middle school. You you got that's where they have at the middle school when you walk in. You got the uh school resource officer on your right. Then you have your secretary and it's all protected. You can't go down the hall. You can't do these type can't go in the lunchroom. U it's it's all safety. So you are bringing the entry point out. the students are still going to enter through that addition. Correct. That's correct.

Okay. So if the SRO officer is roaming around, regardless whether the entry point is 12 ft out or it's 12 ft in, the entry point is still the same and subject to the same entry of whoever that you're trying to say that the safety issue here. The safety issue is there's an entry point regardless where it's at. So the students are still going to go through there. They still have to enter that building through those doors. And again, the SRO officer, if he's not in his office, then they open the door and whoever that you're trying to say that could go in there now is still going to go in there. So that's not going to stop u anyone from being able to enter that school. and and actually 12 ft go to where they are now.

I I agree or disagree to a certain point on that because the uh when you go through those doors right now, you're in a classroom. You're in right you're with them. You could sit down on the side of the table with the students and I'm trying to create a space. So you'd have a thinking space or person who's trying to be an intruder or you trying to react to an intruder that you have a space that you can react interact with. You walk right in there to the class right there. That intruder already captured that whole group right there. And your two officers is on the right and left. But you need some breathing space out there or reacting space uh if at all possible.

So, Mr. Shields, the the two current entry doors, the two current entry doors, y are going to be openings now. So, once you walk through this entry door, you're going to be in the you're going to be in the school. You're going to be not a second set of doors. Not a second set of doors. That's going to be an opening. But I I'll agree with that. But you still you've still got a space reacting space there. That's very important uh for people to react. Either they can escape the area or the people in charge can approach the intruder. Yep. There's a space there. I didn't see that

not having that second door because if you go through the middle school, once you get through the first doors, you have to go through another set of doors to access the students. This one after you go through the first part, you you're accessing the students. I mean, nothing John is technically correct. Nothing's going to change. I mean, you're going to be standing at the door. Somebody's going to buzz you in. You're going to walk in, you're going to be in the school. Is there a reason for them like removing those second set of doors? I mean, they could stay, but then you're they're be buzzed in again at you could probably leave those doors. We can make that change probably with a contractor to say, "Leave those doors and we'll buzz you in again." You think we should table this until the 21st when we can talk to the school system and Southwestern, they'll both be here.

Franklin High School, you go through one set of doors, then you got another set of door and got it through there. There's a reaction space that's that's really important. And to me, for those other doors to be closed, you you got to open classroom. Why do they have to be open? I'm trying to find you a reaction space to intruder or somewhere like that. Uh I I wasn't aware that those doors would be open because to me, that's a classroom you're going to walk into. Just like at the middle school or the high school, you got a space that you can react to. Well, I think it'd be a good idea to take this. That's a lot of good discussion. Thank you, Joe.

Thank you. Any desired action from the board at this time? I believe you said we just listen at it on the 21st. You okay with that? Do you need me to reach out to architect and go over options on our end between now and then? And if so, what options would you like to look at? If those doors are going to be open there, which I didn't think they would be. If they're going to be open, you just giving somebody headwind to get into the room into the building. That's the plan. I mean, it's opening. There's not even doors there.

I think that and then amendment five, you know, the slab. Maybe look at that. See what that look like. Keep doors in. I think that you can I don't think we have to rebid or redo anything to do to add a alternate five. That's already been bid. If you want to add that into base bid, that's already been bid. The opportunity was there to bid it. So, you can add that into that's if you keep both doors. Now, you have to zone that and HVAC that room. Well, it's going to be a it's going to have many splits. The room is going to have that included area is going to have many splits in it. So, it's already going to be Thank you, John.

It's just reaction space is what I feel like is necess necessity for people to have or the administration or the school resource officer. And I we can Lindsay can feel free to weigh in on this, but I don't believe leaving those doors would justify rebidding. No, I would think that would be even more of a change order because it's probably going to just say, "Hey, we've decided not to remove these." I think if you go changing that face, that's that's where the issue is. Well, good good discussion. Talk about Yeah. Yeah. Thank you, Joe. Thank you, Joe. All right. Joe need Joe, you need this back. Oh, well, I'm out. Okay.

You're going to announce it. That'd be mean. All right. Well, I guess Joe, you're hanging around for me. I'm waiting on you to leave. If I if I leave right now, they're going to run you out of here. This is what everybody's here for. We can't skip this one. He's saying something to you. Discussion and consideration of pickle ball courts, Mr. Allen.

Uh, all right. So, looks like we've got a lot of people very interested in in this presentation. Uh, so I will say that, uh, through discussions with McGill, uh, we have decided that we would break this bid into two separate bids. Uh, one bid would be a site package including the restroom facility, paving, grading, and any underground utilities. Uh, the second bid would be a court bid, which would be courts, fencing, lighting, uh, structures, anything associated with the pickle ball courts themselves. Um, we have some soil testing done on that area. As you know, that's a lowlying area. Uh it's a sole report. I don't know if that made it to your packet, but if it's not, I will give you a copy of it. But anyway, Kessle Engineering recommending that we not use a traditional asphalt type material on that field. Uh McGill proposed a solution of post tension concrete uh which from our understanding can be placed on pretty much any type of soil material without any remediation of the soil uh with a 50-year warranty. So we had three bids for the site contract. Like I said, site contract is grading bathroom paving. Uh the low bid on that was by Beccan Suns, Inc. at $1,31,000. And then the the court contract is actually a meter term.

It's a qualification qualification. Pre-qualified doesn't have to be bid. Specialty item. Uh, and that base bid came in at 2,313,548.15. Now, that is lighting half of the courts. If we want to light all the courts, we would need to add another $169,746.94 to that court contract. It's a lot of money for a few lights. That's a lot of money for a few lights.

How many courts will be lit? We have half the court. So, 10 10 lit, 10 not lit. And Seth also mentioned that there would be conduit ran around if we didn't do the lights now. The conduit would be there to the lights. But but of course that would be more expensive probably. But I mean I'm still hung up on the lights. They just lit the whole fairgrounds for $40,000.

We're asking for 10 lights. I mean, I really want to illuminate the whole thing. You go to the tennis courts at 9:00 on a Friday night. I mean, I I don't play t pickle ball or tennis, but I assume we have them. We might as well use them. I I agree. I think that we if you're going to do it, you light the hall of it right now. You think we could talk to them about that? We have not entered a contract with them and we definitely could discuss lighting. That's a little bit of leverage. Get that number down to where it's practical.

I will say um going into this project, I thought that 10 would be enough to be lit at night, but if any of y'all have went to the tennis courts over the past month, month and a half, there's 30 to 40 high school kids playing every night. Um it is Yeah, it it Yeah, they're playing pickle ball. They're not playing tennis. Uh, so this is this is not the demographic that that the total demographic that we're that we're aiming here. Um, I've been I've been in recreation for over 30 years and I have never saw anything take off like pickle ball and and sustain. Um, pickle ball is a game that you can play young. Um, it's not hard and you can play

old. So I didn't want to say old but but that's true. And and I tell you, everybody that plays gets addicted to it. I mean, there's no telling how many folks that have came to me and said, "Hey, I tried pickle ball last week and I I'm going to buy buy this racket." you know, I mean, it's

later, but uh but anyway, um I I know that that's expensive and it was it was more than what I had thought to, but um I don't think that it would be a waste. Um from what I'm hearing, um it's going to be a high school sport within the next couple years. Um Well, it is, but an official high is what I'm saying. So, that'll be our home, our home court, you know, and it's going to be the nicest facility this side of Charlotte. It'll be a revenue stream.

Is there a particular color for pickle ball courts? Is there something that um No, it depends on like at Raven they did red and green. Blue and green is the best. Blue and green. Blue and green just like just like the the drawing. Yeah. Yeah. You know, Smoky Mountains are rivals and they're blue. Be really hard for me to support blue pickle balls. Well, I know it's taken a long time to uh to get this facility,

but there it's not been because we wanted to. There has been a lot of changes, a lot of thought going into this thing. We went from nine pickle ball courts shared with a uh softball field over there and then we went to the changing for all the racket sports. We were going to uh have tennis courts and pickle ball courts. Then we got the information that hey, you know, I think it's 20 uh 16 or 20 courts and you can have state and national tournaments. Then we get the word that the school is going to soon start pickle ball. And so there has been a lot of changes. It's been a lot of time. There's been a lot of thought process in this to make sure this place is right when it's done. And um and so if I agree with the chairman that $160ome thousand dollars to light up 10 more courts is u I wish we could uh have a little work on that but um I've I'm ready to see these um this action happening on these um these courts. We did the tennis courts and they're absolutely amazing and um so it's It's It's time.

Would you What's the best approach there, Joe? I mean, is there I don't want to delay the contract. I think that we or you guys uh have a number to Warren to go negotiate to. If he can get it done for X amount of dollars with field turf, then let him go with it. That's what I would do. Whatever number you guys feel comfortable to relight the other 10 courts. And I will I mean if you look at this breakdown I've I've got some questions about it too. I I I would like to know why that we can light the first 10 courts for 155,000. It cost 169 see 169 for the next 10 courts.

You said 100 for the first 10.

The lighting for the first 10 is 155 695. The lighting for the second 10 is 169 746. So here's another thing we need to be take into consideration. It is using them. They're a source well contract bidder bidder. It's very similar to state contracts. So this has already been went through a bidding process. If you would have had the money already budgeted for, you would not have had to approve this. We could have just said, "Hey, this is what it is." So just know that this pricing has already went through a bidding process. It doesn't prevent us from also bidding it, but it's not like they just pulled this number out of thin air. They've I mean, I've got the contract up, so I mean, it is legit.

I would be curious though from Field Turf if they've added extra thinking that they were going to have to remobilize at a later date to do those 10 lights, those additional 10 lights, and that's why the price was increased. They did all at one time. I wanted to get it the same at the same price and 155 price. I don't want to delay the agony, but I I I'm curious if we were to omit all the lighting from the contract and then hire, you know, put out forbid just lighting in general, what that would look like, you know, from the guys who who illuminated Parker Meadows or the tennis courts. What did it cost to light the tennis courts? You guys remember that? 40

46. But they were poles were already there. It was just the tops. It was just the tops. It was just a lot. The to do any wire or anything like that, but the the live pictures themselves were were 42,000. Would you guys want to expensive? No. Mark,

the I I will say this. This company filter turf technically they could have gave us proposal the whole thing and we took it. We could have took it. McGill was pushing that to a certain extent grading building everything. We did pull those things out to give our local guys a chance at part of this project because it felt like it's right right thing to do. I don't know how much willing how willing they're going to be to allow us to start pulling other stuff out of their proposal without them saying we're done. Get somebody else to do it.

And and they are a specialty company. One of the the only other option the uh the soil assessment we had done out there, you you can't just lay asphalt over top of a base. you you would have at a minimum the recommendation you'd have to do soil cement which is the same stuff we've dealt with at the high school which is actually going to I think every parking lot we did there that adds another 200,000 or so just to the to the base of it and the reason we started looking at this tension concrete is because of its ability to to float so you're not as it's not as critical on your subgrade to get it to a certain compaction matter of fact I don't think they even really care what the convection is.

And we we don't have the warranty document in front of it, but the conversations we had with them, it was a 50-year warranty on that that concrete. So, if that were the route you were to go, technically supposedly there there should never be any other work to be done to that as opposed to any of the other surfaces. 10 years on the paint. And $2.3 million is a lot of money. I mean, it that's a lot of money, but if we're getting 50 years out of these pickle ball courts, the court surface itself, it's probably a lot cheaper than asphalt would be long term.

Well, and it's it has definitely improved with the design and all the materials since um Josh and I and the rec committee and pickle ball players and stuff came up. So, it's really an investment. Um, it's not going to cost us um um it's an investment 50 years. I mean, what about speakers? Did we wire in speakers? Are we doing wireless stuff?

So, there's a the the other camera plan. You guys can speak to that. We we've tied in a network plan with that. When when we talked about the fairgrounds and that security system at the fairgrounds, we we applied for some grant funding that will cover cameras, wifi, extra broadband connections over there to tie it in with the fairgrounds. As far as speakers per se, no, those would be there, but the infrastructure is there to to function with those over that network. You could put them there easily. Jeff Lee actually designed a a broadband camera system for that to go out there. So, and we've got the conduit. We we had him

we had him meet with the architect for this to make sure his plans match this and took into consideration the next phase of the rec park out there with the amphitheater and other stuff to make sure we had that included in the same plan and and the grant funding that we've applied for for that. You think if I started playing I could use the cameras to scout my competition? Yeah, football.

Also, we've been talking about this for three and a half years and and and we are at this point now and and actually for what we're getting, what we started at, and what we thought this was going to cost in a 50-year contract or concrete has been an upgrade. Um, and I don't see that uh we're spending any more money than what we really thought, even though the numbers are larger, but the materials that we're using have been extremely upgraded to what what we started out with. So, um, I I make a motion that we u that we move forward with the u contracts as presented.

Second. So, I will say for discussion on the one bid, there is a 10% contingency allowance in there. So, I'll just make sure that motion includes that proposal with that 10% contingency in there on the on the base bid for the grading in the building process. I have here a motion by Commissioner Shur, second by Commissioner Antoine. Does that include the lighting all the courts? Yes. And and would include include the associated budget amendments moving those funds out of fund balance. Correct. Lindsay. All right. All right. There's the motion. So, all lighting. All lighting. Contingency. Yes.

All right. Any other discussion? And do we want to Lindsay? Have you got I've got that number. You want to check my number to make sure just so we know what that figure is. Barry said it was $3,914,396. No change. Uh the grading bid was $1,31,000. So your 10% will be $130,100.

All right, we have a motion. We have a second. Any other discussion? All in favor, please raise your right arm. State I for the record. Most that's been a long time coming.

Hey Joe, when is the start date?

Uh reach out to me canon sun. That's BSI construction which is the win bidder. um they will be able to mobilize in 2 to 3 weeks after contract is being signed. Uh there is a discussion I think we need to have with Seth and the rent commission whether we want to push that to the Monday after the 4th and let us be able to use that field for parking being that we're at that time. you. We we had that discussion. If it's going to take two or three weeks to get them mobilizing up and running and we're going to start construction the third week in June, I'd rather postpone it one more week and get past the 4th of July. That we have that way we have extra parking and then we'll start the week after 4th of July depending on the contractor.

I don't think that uh what work they're going to get done in a week is going to be worth as much as parking is to us for the 250th board. Cool. Thank you, Joe. All you got. There you go.

All right. Go ahead. And we'll have one for you. Okay. I'll see y'all. It's every single time they came in. Good job, John. That's good.

Yeah, thank you. I mean, you need it needs to happen. I just Three and a half years. I know. It's a lot of money. If we would have delayed it, it would have taken I've never seen it. Chairman, can I just do it? I'd like to make a motion that we approve the consent agenda. I hear a motion by Commissioner Breed and second by Commissioner Antoine. Any other discussion? Consent. Consent agenda. All in favor, raise your right arm, state eye for the record. I Any oppose?

Motion passes. Five and sorry Barry's throwing his curveball over here. All right. Appointments. Uh child fatality task force. Um in your packet there, we had uh uh two recommendations. Mr. K, will you elaborate on that?

Um, I can. Eric, I think has information on that or Tammy, but those are very positionspecific recommendations for that task force. That that is not an appointment that you ask for public appointees to. It has to be a member of, for instance, EMS or sheriff's office. Has to be that particular case. So, at this point, if you've only got two, I think you can make a recommendation to approve those and add them. All right. make a motion that we uh the recommendation that we approve the two one for law enforcement and one from emergency medical services as presented.

I hear a motion by Commissioner Shur, second by Commissioner Shields. Any other discussion? Hearing none. All in favor, please raise your right arm, state eye for the record. I Any oppose? All right, Mr. Hammy, motion passes 5. Uh the rec commission, we just changed the bylaws to five seats. Um uh we should have ballots to uh appointing. Yep. We've now split the rec commission into districts and we have two applications for a district and we'll have to vote on that.

So I do have ballots that can be prepared for the Highlands area. We have one applicant area. We have Morgan. For the school system, we have J Brooks. We have George and the Franklin area. We have two different We've got unless you do write in ballots. We've got one there on the Thank you. Somebody hopefully has two.

Yeah.

Yeah. Do Get check. What's wrong? 8:15. for the first four seats for Highlands Nanahala. I'm sorry for we have unanimous for Timothy Dur on Highlands, unanimous for Michael Morgan on Nanaha, unanimous unanimous for Jay Brooks on the school system seat and unanimous for George Mccclure on the senior seat for the Franklin area seat. We have Danny Antoine for Jessica Madri followed by

Commissioners Young Reeden Shur and Shields for Timothy Crab Trees. So we have a 4 to one on Timothy Crab Tree. Uh that's a majority for that. And you all want to make a motion to uh approve that vote? Make a motion that we approve that vote. Hear a motion by Commissioner Breman. Second by Commissioner Antoine. Sir, he got you. Any other discussion? All in favor, please raise your right arm. State for the record. I Any oppose?

All right, Miss Gizer. Motion passes 5. All right. Uh do we have a need for a close session? Yes, Mr. Mr. Chairman, very brief. I'm not brief. We have a general statute in a close session. Yes. 143-318.11 A3 to speak with an attorney and it's either five or six for property acquisition discussion. I can make a motion we enter close session. Motion by Commissioner Breeden. Second. Second by Commissioner Antoine. No. No action is expected. Okay. Okay. All in favor raise your right arm. State I I. Motion passes 5. Miss Tammy.

All in favor, please raise your right arm. State I for the record. I Any opposed? Oh yeah, I lost.